Until Fools Find Gold (Providence Gold 1)

“What?” pleasantries be damned.

“We have a problem,” Levi growled down the line.

I really fucking hated those words!The weather had shifted overnight. We’d had a relatively warm spell, and now that had gone to shit too. We’d realized this as soon as we’d opened my front door and had been hit in the face by a wall of ice-cold air.

Turning to pick up our jackets, scarves, and gloves, we both suited up and then stepped back out into the icy hell that awaited us with Vlad on his leash beside us.

“What the hell?” Luna muttered, her breath making puffs of smoke in the air. “How the hell does it go from one to the other so quickly? And why didn’t they warn us?”

Pulling out my phone, I saw the weather update on my screen about the cold front and snorted. Figures!

Taking her hand, I pulled her closer to me and kissed the top of her head. She lifted her chin to look up at me and I almost tripped as I realized something. I’d already known it, but this realization hit me in a deeper more meaningful way.

She was mine– all mine!

“Yo!” a voice bellowed behind us. “Waidpup!”

Turning around in confusion as Vlad started growling, we saw Tate loping toward us. His face was pale, but his nose was red like he’d been outside for a while.

“Tiho,” Luna said to the dog, and he stopped immediately. She’d studied a YouTube video on Russian dog commands last night and it was clearly paying off. “Molodets!” Vlad looked up at her and wagged his tail, his tongue flopping out his open mouth like he was smiling at her.

Looking back at my brother, I asked, “You okay, man?”

Shaking his head, he stopped in front of us and rubbed his gloved hands together.

“Itsth cold ath assth,” he said, his lips hardly opening to help him form the words.

“The fuck? It’s cold as ass?”

Had he fallen and hit his head?

“Doh,” he shook his head and tried again. “Itsth cod ath asssth.”

I stood staring at him in confusion, but Luna appeared to understand him.

“Honey, are you trying to say it’s cold as ice?”

Nodding his head furiously, he pointed at his face. “Tong foden!”

Nodding back, Luna rubbed his arm, making my back stiffen. I knew it was just an innocent touch, but for some reason, it was bugging me.

Shake it off, asshole. No one likes a psycho!

My mood plummeted further though, regardless of what I tried to tell myself to do. I wasn’t an irrational person normally, so this could only be due to lack of sleep.

And then my phone went off again. Looking at the screen I saw my buddy Sven’s name and knew that the only reason he’d be calling at this time of the morning was because of Luna’s father.

Answering it, I listened and replied when necessary with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no.’ Then he hit me with his suggestion, and I looked over at Luna who was talking to Tate, or at least trying to and smiled.

“Definitely,” I said through my smile. “I’ll see you then.”

Hanging up, I walked over to the duo and listened to the tail end of the conversation.

“The pronunciation is difficult, but they break it down for you. So far, I think we’re doing okay,” Luna said, patting Vlad and giving him a smooch on the nose.

Even with her broken foot, this could totally be done. I’d just make sure she kept her legs in the air and that her foot was wrapped up tightly. She’d been adamant she wasn’t going to wear the boot again, and the Doc had said that was okay…

Oh, this was going to be so much fun!

“Hey, Miss. Priss,” I called, walking closer to her. When she turned her head looking irritated at the name, I grinned and caught Tate’s frozen chuckle. “Wanna go on an adventure with me?”12 Luna“Wanna go on an adventure with me?”

The wrong answer to that had been ‘yes’. An adventure was fun, it was exciting, it didn’t lead you to your death.“It’s okay,” his friend’s wife, Maggie, assured me. “I was exactly the same the first time Sven brought me up here. I still feel it!”

“He said it was going to be an adventure,” I explained, holding onto whatever I could get my hands on that was attached to the tiny plane we were in. “Adventures don’t end up with you being dead! At least, not normal ones.”

Laughing, she leaned against her husband and nodded. “I totally agree. I’ve gotten some great photos of us doing this, but I’ve also gotten some great photos of our family doing family things,” she kept stressing the word and saying it loudly, getting her husband’s attention. “In fact, that’s how my husband and Noah met. They did a jump for charity, bonded on the ground, and the rest was a reckless fun and mayhem version of history.”