Tainted Gold (Providence Gold 3)

“What’s this now?” Lily asked, looking confused.

Wincing, I caught her arm and moved us out the way so the two men could exit, before steering her onto the elevator and rapidly hitting the button for the second floor.

“Come on, come on.”

“Tate,” she warned.

How I hadn’t told her already, I didn’t know, but in my defense it had skipped my mind. Hell, she already wore the right one, so it’s not like it would have been relevant to any conversation we’d had.

Still…

Taking a deep breath, I turned to face her as the doors closed and we started moving. I had fifteen seconds to tell her the brunt of it.

Here goes….

Twenty seconds later…

Disgust, judgement, a look of betrayal, calling me a dickhead… none of that was what Lily did after I’d told her. Actually, I’d just opened my phone to the folder that had the pictures of my reactions to lip balm and had shown her that, followed by, “I’m allergic to all lip balms apart from cherry Chapstick, so I used to buy it for the chicks I was dating. I bought so much everyone thought I was gay and Mom started doing Pride parades for me.”

She’d done a triple take at the photos as I skimmed rapidly through them with my thumb (thank you iCloud for downloading them every time I got a new phone), listened with wide eyes, and had then burst out laughing.

She was still laughing now. In fact, she was laughing so hard, I had to carry her off the elevator and over to the receptionist's desk to check-in.

“I’m gonna pee, I’m gonna pee,” she howled, her hand going between her legs, making me realize my arm was right under that faucet if it turned on.

“Miss James,” a nurse called right at that moment, meaning I couldn’t put her down and had to carry her to the room.

“Pee,” she wheezed, her face bright red.

“Good, we need a sample,” the nurse turned and moved to a door that had a toilet symbol on it. “The cups are on the side, just bring it out when you’re done.”

Awesome!

I leaned against the wall and waited for her in case she needed help, listening to what sounded like the urination version of Morse code.

Dash – splash – laughter – splash – splash – “Cherry Chapstick” – Dash – Dash – Send help and toilet paper.

Sighing, I smiled awkwardly at the two women who were now standing beside me, waiting to use the bathroom for their own samples. Not knowing what else to say, I wisely ignored the big bumps in their stomach regions and asked, “So, what are you here for?”TenLilyThe last three months had been a lesson in all things Tate Townsend, and just the Townsends in general.

They were a close family who were hella loyal to each other. Sure, they ripped each other to pieces and enjoyed each other’s embarrassment no end, but the loyalty and solidarity between them was insane.

Pretty much everyone in town loved them, and all of their employees. I’d watched them over the last twelve weeks, and it had been a lesson in the true meaning of awesome. Every single employee was treated like a family member, regardless of how long they’d worked for them. If there was a problem for them at home, the Townsends helped. If they didn’t feel well, they’d get the doctor to them or nurse them back to health. If one of their kids was sick, they sent a balloon bouquet and helped where they could. I’d asked what their turnover of staff had been out of curiosity, and in the last year, there had only been one person who’d been fired, and that’s because he’d set of bombs and shit around the site and had then shot Dahlia.

Once you were in with them, you were in. There was no ‘them and us’, it was just ‘us’ and I loved it.

Tate wasn’t who I’d thought he’d be either. He was so easygoing and relaxed about everything, but absolutely nothing passed him by, and underneath it all he was a brooder. He genuinely cared about my wellbeing, not just the baby’s. He was worried when my blood pressure became a problem, he was quick to help me when my pelvis was giving me pain, he worried about my hours at the bar and had made sure I wasn’t lifting anything, he’d enlisted his family to help whenever they could, he would come into the bar and spend time with me after he finished work every day, he spent time with my animals and cleaned them out or took them for a walk, he loved my animals and didn’t kick up too much of a stink when I named the puppy Foxy Cleopatra (or Chew Barka)… he was just a kind of man I hadn’t ever banked on having in my life. That was who the real Tate Townsend was.