Until Fools Find Gold (Providence Gold 1)

Now that I was alone in my office and he wouldn’t spoil her cinnamon munching, Levi’s gloves were off.

Steepling my fingers and bringing my hands up so that my chin was resting on them, I gave him a blank look.

“To what are you referring to?”

His eyes narrowed even more than they had been, and he stomped up until he was leaning over my desk.

“Don’t piss me off even more, shit brain,” he snapped. “I know that I told you repeatedly from day one not to touch her. I told all of you not to touch her. So, what was that with the trip to the warehouse? And Rich said y’all looked mighty cozy when he pulled up.”

That betraying bastard. I made a mental note to tell his full name and the Rico Suave association to even more people. In fact, I might get a decal made up for the back of his truck that said, ‘My name is Rico Suave, and I heart Uranus.’

Eh, that was a bit lame. I’d have to ask my cousins for suggestions. They had evil brains that wielded magic of this kind all the time.

“I don’t think I need to explain this to you, but for Luna’s sake, I will,” I measured my words, but spoke slowly to him. Sure, this was to piss him off, but it was also so I didn’t reach out and throttle the little shit. “First, I don’t answer to you. Second, she’s an adult so she can make up her own mind. Third, I never agreed to your Luna law…”

Just as I was gearing up to the rest of my list, he stuck his finger in my face. Most siblings would do what I did then which was to grab hold of it and pull it backward. The squeak that came out of him was mildly satisfying.

“Let go,” he yelled as I twisted his wrist back now too.

“Only if you promise to drop it.”

“Drop what? My hand?”

“No, you prick,” I growled, now twisting his digit back as far as I could get it to go. “Drop the shit with Luna. You know I won’t treat her badly and that I’ll make sure she’s safe, so let that crap go.”

After a second’s hesitation where I made a point of moving like I was going to bend his finger to the point of dislocation, Levi nodded quickly. Unfortunately, I hadn’t banked on him continuing to nod, so as I brought his finger back up again, it met his face that was on the downward movement of his next nod. This meant that his finger got shoved up his left nostril to an alarming depth.

Of course, this would be the moment that Luna decided to come in and ask what we wanted to be done with an email that had just come through.

LunaRefusing to stop eating my cinnamon heaven, I watched Levi as he made a big show of shoving a tissue up his nostril and dramatically lay back on the couch in the office.

“There was no need for him to take it that far,” he whined.

I believed what Noah had said had happened. Levi had done similar things regularly since I’d known him. Granted, not as bad as his other brother, Tate, but dumb all the same. Because of this, I didn’t even have a second’s hesitation in continuing to enjoy my yummies– words were unnecessary.

“Hey, son, have you seen…” his dad, Jer, broke off with a sigh when he saw the dramatic condition of his son. Rolling his eyes at me, he just continued without even asking what had happened. See, he totally wasn’t a stranger to being a twat! “Have either of you seen Rich?”

I burst out laughing, almost inhaling my mouthful of heaven.

“Rico Suave,” I said hoarsely thanks to the cinna-crumbs that hadn’t joined the rest of the cinnamon bite when I’d stopped their descent into my lungs.

“Enough already,” the man in question snapped as he schmoozed into the room. That was the only way to describe how he walked– schmooze. It was like a smooth, sexy, masculine strut, but in a more gentle and natural way.

“Did your mom know?” I had to ask it, I just had to. No one would be able to not ask what the hell his mother was thinking, regardless of what Noah had said earlier.

“No,” he sighed, looking more exasperated than I’d ever seen anyone look. “She didn’t know. I don’t even think it was a thing when I was born.”

Always the fountain of knowledge, I reeled off the information that I’d found online. It was likely that she hadn’t done it on purpose because technically, our use of Rico Suave and what it meant hadn’t really been popular until around 2008. Before that, it was a South American rapper and weird shit like that. This knowledge just made it even better– it was truly some bad luck. Like your name becoming the slang for herpes or something like that. What were the odds of that happening?