Mad Gold (Providence Gold 2)

It was like a hand version of Goldilocks, there was no ‘too big’ or ‘too small’, it was just right. At least I had the consolation of knowing that if I ever quit working for the Townsends, I could take up a career in writing cheese for greetings cards.

I wasn’t of the belief that there was one person destined for another person in this world – science and reality just didn’t allow for it – but if it had, she’d have been that one for me. Everything about Dahlia was different. She made me smile, she made me laugh, she made me feel lighter and less like I was suffocating in the reality of the world we lived in. She made me look forward to every day, she made me turn into a crazy man thinking of ways I could spend time with her. She was different. My organized – to the point of an obsessive-compulsive disorder – world and way of living was now a mess. In the past, if that happened, I would shut down and work to get it back to its normal order. Now? I was off balance, but I was enjoying the extra freedom it was giving me.

I was enjoying her. That’s why I was taking this slowly, even though it was killing me. What we had was different to anything I’d ever experienced, and I didn’t want to rush things and risk losing her if I fucked it all up somehow.

“Is this going to cause me pain?” she asked, her soft thumb absently stroking the back of my hand as she chewed on her lower lip.

“No,” I chuckled. She’d been asking questions here and there since we’d started driving, and each one got the same response.

“You do remember my shitty luck, don’t you? Do you really want to test how bad it can get?”

“Already explained about that, baby,” I muttered, not finding this as funny as the other things she’d said. “Bad luck? It’s all relative. I also refuse to believe that you are in any way ‘bad luck’. Far from it.”

“I hate that saying,” she groaned, leaning her head against the window as she watched the scenery pass by us. “It’s all relative,” she repeated in a sarcastic voice. “No shit! Everything in life is ‘all relative’. What asshole came up with that saying?” She lifted her head back up and threw her free hand up in the air as she continued. “Probably the same asshole who came up with, ‘is it just me, or…’ and then adds on something stupid like using Facebook and that ads keep coming up for things they’d searched for online. Yeah, genius. Out of all the billions of people in the world, you’re definitely the only person to ever have had that happen to them.”

“I’m sensing a bit of an attitude from you there, sweetheart,” I snorted as I took the final turning that would take us to the surprise.

“Well, seriously! How can anyone be that dumb?”

Slowing down as the wooden barn came into view, I took a quick look at her and answered as bluntly as I could. “Some people are stuck on stupid, I guess.” Steering the vehicle onto a patch of grass, I put the parking brake on and undid my belt. “You finished with this? Or would you like to come see what you’re going to help me with?”

Taking in the building carefully, she frowned and asked warily, “We’re not here to shovel horse poop are we?”

Bursting out laughing, I opened the door and got out. “Not today, babe.”

“Not today? What does that mean? Do you do it as a hobby at the weekends or something?” I closed the door and walked around to her side to help her out. “Seriously, I don’t think I want to do that any day. When I was little, I stood in horse poop when I was barefoot. It went between my toes and covered me up to the middle of my shin. The smell was so bad I threw up. So, can we skip that?”

“Why were you walking around horse shit barefoot?”

“It was at a friend’s birthday party. Her parents had gotten her one of those mini farms that come to your house for kids to pet the animals or ride on the ponies. I jumped down off the trampoline and a rabid chicken started chasing me so I couldn’t put my shoes back on.”

How in the ever-loving hell did this shit happen to her?

“Anyway, I was too busy looking back and trying to convince the chicken it didn’t want to bite me, and I went into a pile of poop,” she shrugged, like it wasn’t one of the most random things to happen to someone.

Staring at her for a few seconds, I tried to figure out how to respond to that. To any of that.