Until Fools Find Gold (Providence Gold 1)

“There’s a wolf!” I screeched, launching myself at Noah. He went back on one foot as I hit him, then lost his balance.

He landed on the grass first, the oxygen leaving his lungs audibly, and then I landed on top of him, winding him even more. Seeing an opening for some up close and personal time, Bogey came bounding up and started licking our faces with his tail wagging like it was a machine.

Neither of us dared to open our mouths, regardless of what had sent me running outside like a crazy woman.

There was only so much a person could take though.

“Staaaaaaahhhp!” I shrieked, throwing my arms over my face to try to protect me from his tongue and putrid breath.

“It stinks! Don’t you ever wash?” Noah yelled, doing the same thing with his arms.

“Why is it burning?”

“Put it away, you ugly bastard,” Noah gave up trying to hide and started gently pushing the huge hound away.

“Motherfucker!” came my brother’s roar over through the phone that was miraculously still in my hand. “You better not be talking to my sister like that!”

“Mad?” I gasped, moving to bury my face in Noah’s stomach, whilst trying to continue talking into my phone.

“What the fuck is going on? And what’s in the pantry?”

“What pantry?” Noah asked, finally coming out from the protection of his arms seeing as how Bogey was now licking his own balls.

“That’s why I came out,” I jumped off his torso and pointed back toward the house. “There’s a wolf in the pantry!”

“And that’s what I was just about to tell you about,” Archer snorted, crossing his arms with a huge grin on his face. “You have a visitor!”

Noah“A visitor?” I asked in disbelief. “You left a wolf in my house?”

“No,” he said slowly, using the tone we normally used with Tate. “Seems you and Levi spoke to Benito about something,” he lifted his eyebrow in question but continued to grin at me.

Oh shit, I’d forgotten about that.

All of a sudden there was a huge crash in the house, and we all spun to face the door. Moving in front of Luna, I placed myself between her and the dog that I’d asked for. I didn’t think anything would happen, Benito was the best at training them, but you never knew.

There were about ten seconds of silence before a tan-colored face appeared in the doorway. I could feel her tensing up behind me, but then the rest of the dog appeared, and she let out a ‘huh?’ type noise and relaxed slightly.

I watched as it sat down and then tilted its head to the side as it watched us back. It was a cane Corso, one of the best and most protective guard dogs available. Benito bred and trained them and was also contracted by the military and police to supply dogs to be trained by them. Levi and I had discussed this weeks ago, and I’d forgotten all about it.

“Benito says it’s a formentino cane Corso,” Archer informed us as he stared at the dog too. “He’s not fully grown, but he’s trained. Unfortunately, he’s also the runt of the litter, so Ben said it would be harder to shift him onto someone else.”

Moving slowly out from behind me, Luna leaned into my side and asked, “Is that the dog from Turner and Hooch?”

When we all shrugged, Archer pulled his phone out and looked it up. “No, but they look alike.”

“Will someone tell me what the hell is going on?” a voice yelled, sounding far away.

Jumping, Luna lifted her phone to her ear. “Sorry, sorry! It’s a dog, apparently it was dropped off and Archer forgot to tell Noah. I’ll call you back, okay?”

I didn’t hear whatever was said back, but she hung up and shoved the phone back into her pocket.

“Is he friendly?”

“Ben said he was. He’s trained to obey Russian commands,” Archer replied.

“Why Russian?” Both of us asked at the same time.

“Most dogs are trained to obey German, but people were cottoning onto that and learning the commands. That made the guard dogs and service dogs easier to confuse and try to control, so they switched recently to Russian.” He’d totally asked Benito the same question, there was no way he knew this information. “Here’s a list of commands,” he said as he tossed a folded piece of paper in my direction.

Opening it up, I looked at the words and then shook my head. “I don’t know how to pronounce this shit!”

“Google it,” he suggested as he whistled at Bogey and turned to walk away. “Oh, by the way,” he moved so that he was walking backward and watching us both. “Seems your new puppy is still growing!”

Both Luna and I swung to face the dog again, taking in the size. How fucking big was he going to get?