Going For Gold: Providence Gold Series Book Four

by Moore, Mary B.

  “Well I do now.”

  His lips twitched when I whispered that to him, but he quickly went back to being serious. “I can promise you that I want to keep growing what we’ve started. I don’t want to go back to a life that doesn’t have you in it, so any chance I get to make it deeper, stronger, whatever, I’m going to do it.”

  Tilting my head to the side, I rubbed my thumb across the lines on his forehead where he was frowning. “Even if it means getting ‘Lottie’s bitch’ tattooed on your forehead?”

  “Even if it means getting that tattooed on my forehead,” he chuckled. “So long as you get ‘Levi’s my master’ tattooed on yours.”

  Pretending to think it over, I shook my head. “They might think I mean the jeans.”

  Dropping down to his back beside me, he scrubbed his face with his hands. “I hate that they told you that.”

  This time, it was me leaning on an arm and looking down at him. “You can’t keep anything a secret, I’m afraid. The walls have eyes.”

  Dropping his hands, he grinned up at me. “Wanna give them something to talk about? Maybe we can put them in therapy with position seventy-two.”

  Holding a finger up, I reached behind me for my phone and opened up the messages. “One second, I’ve got an appointment to make with Parker.”

  That made him sit up straight in bed, yanking the warm duvet off me at the same time as he lunged at me. “I’m getting you raw?”

  The look on his face was so intense that my mind went blank. “Raw?”

  “Without a condom, baby.”

  It’s strange how something like removing a piece of latex can mean so much to someone, but the emotions on his face showed that it was in fact a huge deal. It was to me, but I hadn’t thought it would mean so much to him.

  “Yeah.”

  Leaning down to give me a kiss, he murmured against my lips, “Tell him to see me at the same time. I’ll get checked, you get covered, and then you’re all mine.”

  Grinning, I typed out the request and set my phone down beside me. “What’s position seventy-two?”

  He did better than describing it to me, he showed me. And just to say, if the walls did have eyes, I was never looking at any of them ever again.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Levi

  Four days later…

  Lottie was going out on Night Rider again while I rode along on an ATV with Archer’s dog Bogey.

  Dad had a horse that was a cantankerous asshole, so Archer was going to ride him at the side of her. I wasn’t sure who I felt worse for – me or him.

  It was no exaggeration that Bogey had death breath, and no matter what it just never got better. Archer had taken him to the vet, he’d had his teeth cleaned, he ate the chews to get rid of bad breath, he had a special diet… that dog was born to kill people with one exhale. Which was why he was going in the back of the vehicle.

  “Now, you remember what you’re meant to do?” Archer asked as he checked all the straps on the saddle.

  Nodding excitedly, Lottie reached down and scratched Night’s ears, getting a happy grunt for her efforts. She was lucky she could ride after our appointments with Parker yesterday. That asshole had almost ended up with his stethoscope up his ass.

  Now, as someone who’d never had sex with a condom and who’d always gone for his physicals and passed, I didn’t expect him to pull out a swab and tell me he was going to stick it up my dick. I’d assumed it would be a run-of-the-mill blood test and then pee in a cup, but no. I wasn’t sure how other men coped, but if he’d given me an anesthetic, I might have come out of it in better shape. It was like he’d stuck a fork up there and scraped it around.

  Obviously, Lottie hadn’t needed to get tested, but she’d been awesome when I’d come out limping. It was going to take a couple of days to get over it, and I had yet another reason to be relieved that I’d found Charlotte seeing as how I’d never have to go through it again.

  Looking up, I watched as they took off at a slow trot and whistled for Bogey to jump up behind me. While they were riding, I was going to go through the list of options for what to get her for Christmas. Well, so long as the death breath being panted over my shoulder didn’t kill me first.

  * * *

  Three days later…

  “Parker’s an asshole.”

  Looking up from the screen of his laptop, Archer raised his eyebrows. “Not got the results back yet?”

  Shaking my head, I sat down in the chair on the opposite side of his desk. Looking around his office, I realized what was missing. “Where’s the Gila monster?”

  “The what?”

  “Gila monster. It’s a venomous lizard, how don’t you know this?”

  Still looking confused, he looked around his office. “I know what it is, but I don’t get what you’re talking about because I don’t have one.”

  “Sure you do,” I nodded over at the dog bed in the corner of his office. “He’s got four legs, droopy ears, drools everywhere, and goes by the name of Bogey.”

  “He’s not venomous, asshole,” he snapped, throwing his pen at my head and hitting me in the beard.

  “Respect the beard, pube face. And when was the last time you had his breath tested?”

  Ignoring me, he went back to whatever was on his screen. Welp, I knew a cure for that. “Ok, I’ll tell Bonnie you said hi when I see her at my house in… oh,” I looked at my watch, “twenty minutes. Catch you later.”

  I only got as far as the door when he gave in.

  “She’s going to your house?”

  “Yup,” I threw over my shoulder, taking the corner in the direction of the exit to the office building we worked out of.

  With everything going on with Lottie, I was lucky that it was so close to home and also that I could work from home. I rarely went to the drilling sites nowadays, I was more of the planning, permission, contracts and paperwork guy which I loved doing.

  Just as I cleared the door, he came running up beside me and fell into step with me. I didn’t have favorite siblings, but if I did, it would probably be Archer. Personality wise he was like Noah, but he was more closed off and a great listener. When he let his humor out, though, he was fucking hilarious. I just found it easy to be around him – and to wind him up.

  Which I was going to do now.

  “Where you headed?”

  Shoving his hands in his pockets, he kept his eyes forward as he mumbled, “Figured I’d head and see if there was anything I could do to help out at yours.”

  “She said if you were there she wasn’t coming.”

  Grabbing my shoulder, he turned me around to face him. “Is that what she said? Jesus Christ, I wasn’t paying attention and when it happened it I wasn’t expecting it, so I…” he stopped and squinted at me. “You’re fucking with me, aren’t you?”

  Refusing to answer the question, I started walking again. “You’ll have to wait and see.”

  “Wait,” he called, jogging to catch up with me. “What does that mean?”

  I wasn’t sure, but I was hoping they’d made some popcorn. I wanted to see what was going to happen.

  * * *

  Turned out, the joke was on me. Nothing seemed different when I walked through the front door. The girls were all sitting on the couches in the living room, but there were bags of shit everywhere.

  Glancing at the top of one as I passed it, I frowned at the blue cushion poking out of the top. Blue? Where was she going to put blue?

  The thing was, I didn’t have it in me to even care if she did. She could change whatever she wanted, so long as I still had some green in my bedroom. And the den. And some out in the living room. Ok, so she could add some blue in with the green.

  “You redecorating, Lottie?”

  “No?” she rasped, looking at me like I was crazy.

  Walking over to where she was sitting at the end of the couch, I sat down on the armrest and leaned into her.

  “What’s with the blue cushion then?”


  That’s when I heard it. Small scratching noises followed by what sounded like high pitched squeaks. Archer – who’d been discretely looking at Bonnie the whole time – heard it at the same time and looked around the room for the source.

  “You guys got rats?”

  Standing up, I looked around the room just as a tiny speck of brown dappled with white shot past my foot, followed by another one.

  I dare any man to say he didn’t do what I did, which was to get back on the armrest and lift my legs in the air.

  Archer went a step further when he yelled and stepped up on the armrest closest to him – which just so happened to be Bonnie’s and put his dick at the same height as her face. Oh, you bet your ass she looked.

  “What the fuck is that?”

  Watching the creatures with a smile on her face, Lottie sighed, “I’ve called them Burt and Ernie. Aren’t they adorable?”

  Looking up at my brother I saw a matching look of horror to the one I knew for sure was on my own face. “You bought yourself pet rats?”

  Standing up, Ariana walked slowly over to where Archer was still balanced. “No, brother, she bought them for you.”

  This time, I aimed the look down at Lottie. “You bought me rats?”

  I hated rats. I wasn’t afraid of them, but they were nasty bastards who reproduced at an unnatural rate. When I was a kid, I was in the stables helping clean out the horses – one of the few times I ever did it – with one of Dad’s friends. He was digging with his fork in the corner of the box when a freaking massive rat jumped out at him and he raised his fork just in time to protect himself. To this day I swear it was going to attack him, but it ended up impaling itself on one of the tines of the fork. At the time Ariana had a pet rat called Rastus, and I never looked at it the same way again. Ironically, Rastus escaped, so these might even be related to him.

  Getting up, Lottie walked over to them and bent down to pick one up before I could stop her.

  “They’re not rats,” she murmured, cradling it to her chest and walking back over to where I was sitting. “They’re miniature Daschunds.”

  I started to lean backward as she held it out to me until this tiny little face peaked over her fingers and I saw what she was saying. As soon as it saw me, it tried to climb out of her hands to get to where I was sitting staring at the adorable little guy now. I’m a man, just a normal man, but inside I was kind of melting at the cuteness overload in front of me.

  Reaching out to touch its ear, I chuckled when it quickly turned to lick my finger. “You should have told me you wanted a dog, Lottie. Wait, did you say you got two? Where did the other one disappear to?”

  And there began the hunt for the missing Daschund. When it didn’t answer to everyone calling its name, we split up into teams and started searching inside and outside. It wasn’t until an hour later when I was walking out of the second search in my den for it, that I heard little whimpers and found him underneath the couch.

  I could only just get my hand under it, so I had to lift it up and balance it with one hand while I grabbed it with the other.

  Holding him up in front of my face, I muttered, “How did you get under there?”

  “Holy shit, you found it?” Archer rumbled behind me. “You need to call that thing Red October or something, because even Sean Connery couldn’t have pulled that off.”

  “Hey, Lottie,” Bonnie called, seeing us looking at the puppy who was now trying to lick my face. “We found him.”

  What Archer had suggested gave me food for thought. He did have reddish brown fur that was dappled with white like his brother’s, and if my math was right he’d been born in October or thereabouts.

  As Lottie joined us still carrying the other rug rat, I made my decision. “This is Red October, Red for short.”

  A frustrated noise from the doorway was followed by, “See what you’ve done, Lily? You’ve broken everyone with your weird names.”

  Not taking offense at what Ariana was saying, she just laughed. “I kinda like the name.”

  Now we just had to think up a new one for the other one. I was thinking Rambo.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Charlotte

  I was sitting on the floor with Red and Rambo, watching them both pulling on the same little rope toy. It was like tiny canine tug of war.

  “Don’t you just love them?”

  We’d only had them for three days, but in those three days I’d fallen head over heels in love with them. It was going to suck when Eric was caught and I had to go back to my own apartment. I’d get to see them and maybe I could babysit them on my days off, but it wasn’t the same as having them around.

  Running his finger down the middle of my forehead, Levi picked up on my change in mood. “What’s causing that face?”

  “Can I babysit them on my days off when I go back to my apartment?”

  Pulling his hand back, he thought about what I’d just asked. “You can’t go back, Lottie. Not while Eric’s still hiding.”

  Yup, all of this time, all the people out there looking for him, and the ass breather still hadn’t been caught. Somehow, through the haze of drugs in his system he’d managed to evade everyone. The guy couldn’t stop himself getting caught fucking my best friend, but he could hide from the law?

  I’d even called my parents one day and left a message to see if they could convince him to go home – where he’d be arrested by the police, but still – but they hadn’t called back. Not that I’d really expected them to, but I’d explained what he’d done to me and I guess a part of me wanted them to care.

  Seeing that Levi was still watching me, I pointed out, “But once he’s caught, I will.”

  Chewing on his lip for a second, he mulled that over. “Do you want to go back?”

  Did I? The simple answer was no. I didn’t want to go back to not having him around, not having his family there to laugh with. I loved being around them, and I’d discovered that I really loved playing with the kids. I still wasn’t sure what babies did exactly, but I was a pro at holding them now.

  Initially Jamie had been wary of me, like she thought I was going to take her uncle away, but that had all changed now. Shaw was a little flirt and had immediately decided that I was his property. As soon as he heard me talking he started crying, and the second they passed him to me he stopped.

  Out of all of them, Rebel was the easiest seeing as how she just slept and on the occasions when she was awake, she just wanted to look around the room and be nosy. But I was getting better with tiny humans, and I loved being around them all.

  And I didn’t want to not be able to see Levi like I could now.

  Deciding to go with honesty, I sighed, “Not really, but it’s where I live.”

  His reply was said so quietly that I almost didn’t hear it. “Move in here.”

  “You want me to move in here?”

  “I really want you to move in here,” he corrected, picking up Rambo and holding him up in front of his face. “We all do.”

  Doggy blackmail… it was totally unnecessary. “Isn’t it too soon?”

  I already knew what his answer was going to be before he even said it. “Not even slightly.”

  My heart was racing as I thought about actually living with Levi officially. Nothing that he owned was of any significance to me, I didn’t care about material things. What I cared about was sitting right in front of me, offering me the chance to make it official. Only a crazy person would be able to say no to that, and I definitely wasn’t crazy.

  “How would it work?”

  Getting up, he walked over to me and stopped when there were only a matter of inches between us, meaning that I had to tip my head all the way back to look at his eyes.

  “We’ll sort that out when the time comes,” he whispered, pulling me up onto my feet in front of him. “Now, are you moving in with me?”

  Like he has to ask me twice. Not even thinking about it, I threw my arms around his neck. “Yes, I’ll make honest puppies o
ut of them.”

  Bursting out laughing, he picked me up and spun me through the air, making Red and Rambo start yapping at us.

  “I’m fairly certain this isn’t an appropriate time to be laughing, but I couldn’t care less.”

  Grinning down at him, I warned him, “I’m fairly certain what I do next isn’t a standard response either, but I don’t give a damn!” And threw my arms up in the air, making him laugh even harder.

  Somehow, through his stomach bouncing me as he laughed, me being a dork, and two tiny dogs now yanking at the hems of his pants, he managed to lower me without dropping me until I had my legs wrapped around his waist and we were face to face. Slowly the smile disappeared as he watched me, like he wanted to say something, making me tense up.

  “If we’re going to go on certainties, I’m definitely certain I don’t like that look on your face right now,” I mumbled, hoping he’d go back to smiling, but he didn’t. In all the time that I’d known him, I’d never seen him looking like this, and it worried me.

  “I know I want to say something, but I’m not sure if it’s the right thing to say.”

  Taking a deep breath in, I tried to lighten the mood. “I know,” I pointed at myself, “that you know,” I shifted so that my finger was now pointing at him instead, “that you can say anything you need to, to me. You know?”

  Chewing on his lip for a second, he shifted his eyes to the side, and then looked back at me. “I’m definitely certain that I love you, Lottie.”

  I’d been bracing myself for him saying he’d changed his mind or that he’d been hiding a sixth toe, so initially the words didn’t register but the relief sure as hell did.

  “Is that it? That’s what made you look like you were…” I trailed off, replaying the words in my head. “Wait, you love me?”

  Narrowing his eyes, he started walking, ordering the two dogs to go to their bed – which they did, surprisingly. I was so dumbfounded by what he’d just said and was still staring at his nose when he started lowering me down, that it was a shock when I realized I was now sitting on the edge of the bed.