Then I remembered Jones, Dad’s best friend. He had spare keys to Dad’s house, but he wasn’t the most reliable person for remembering his phone. He was the last of our emergency back-ups though, so I was going to have to give him a go.
Pulling up his contact details, I hit the screen and waited for him to answer.
His slurred reply of, “Foffff!” had me cursing the world and serendipity and all who sailed in her. Because if you asked me, serendipity was bullshit unless it was the name of a ship.
Apparently, what my dad and I hadn’t taken into account when we’d planned the back-ups, was the possibility that his friend might have drunk one too many beers leading to him passing out on another friend’s couch. If we had, we’d have made sure to give another key to someone else. This was now the plan for me to do first thing in the morning.
This meant that I was now up shit creek.
Incidentally, this was also how I ended up spending the night at a stranger’s house. That and the fact that when I’d been given my luggage and purse, that had been left behind on the plane in their panic to get me medical attention, my wallet had been missing. All my cards, my money, everything – gone. I had another account, but the card to that was in the drawer beside my bed – in my locked house.
Of-freaking-course it was!
It was only his address, which was on land owned by the Townsend family, that swayed me into accepting his offer to spend the night in his spare room. I knew the Townsends from school, so how bad could that be?
At least that’s what I was repeatedly chanting in my head for the duration of the journey to his house.
In the boonies.
In the middle of a freaking field with only the tiny twinkling of lights from other houses in the distance.
See – calamity! I was stuck with a gorilla shifter in the middle of a shifter plot. If this one had the accompanying sounds of banjos, I would run (willingly) for the first time in my life.
Madix
“Yo,” I snapped at my sister Luna as I drove home from the airport. “I need you to meet me at my place.”
I waited until she agreed and then hung up. How the hell did I always end up in situations like this? Well, this was the first time this had happened to me, obviously, but still. I wasn’t big on weird shit.
“My baby sister will be there, and she’ll help us,” I tried to reassure Dahlia, but I think it was more for me. “You’ll also meet her husband,” I hissed the last word, not sure why I’d felt the need to add that bit for her. “His name’s Noah Townsend.”
I still had issues with the fact that her asshole of a sperm donor for a father had kidnapped her and put her through hell.
She’d also had a freakin’ Elvis wedding.
To a Townsend.
None of that family were right in the head, not one of them.
Fucking Noah Townsend!
Five minutes later, we turned onto the dirt road that led to the houses that were set farther back on the land. They were all spread out with a decent amount of distance between them to ensure that everyone in the family had privacy.
Regardless of the distance, this was Townsend land. That fact was an explanation in itself for why distance needed to be had between the properties, and why I’d chosen the one farthest away.
How I’d ended up here had been down to my sister. I’d been disillusioned with law enforcement and the amount of corruption in the squad that I’d been working in. Then, my sister had been kidnapped and sold to a raping asshole who’d tried to kill her. You just couldn’t make this shit up! Anyway, to be closer to Luna, I’d quit and taken the job to oversee the security for Townsend Oil company. They had been looking for someone, and I’d taken the job. I loved being able to see my baby sister on a daily basis and couldn’t wait to meet my niece or nephew, but I’d come to realize something – no Townsend had ever met a stranger, but I had. By that I mean they immediately brought me into the family, acting like we’d spent every day of our lives together. In contrast, I preferred my own space and socialized when I felt like it. There was no such thing as personal space to this family though, so it was taking me time to adjust to that.
Speaking of which, the pains in my ass were all lined up on the front porch of my house with big grins on their faces. My heavily pregnant sister was leaning against her husband watching as I pulled to a stop.
Sighing, which I seemed to be doing a lot today, I got out of the truck and groaned at being able to stretch my legs properly. It had been a helluva a day, and every muscle felt like it was wound tightly inside me.
Looking up at them, I waited, and waited, and waited. When the questions that I’d expected to be inundated with didn’t come, I let out the loudest sigh possible and rubbed my face with my hands.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Yup!” someone shouted, accompanied by snickers.
The other door of the truck opened, and I heard her faint footsteps as she walked around the front to stand beside me.
“So, does Benadryl cure a swollen tongue?” someone yelled, but I was too busy watching Dahlia to look at who it was.
She was leaning on the front of the truck with a marker and a piece of paper she’d gotten from somewhere, frantically scratching something onto it.
When she turned around, she held it up and shrugged.
Leaning around her to read it, I growled as everyone else burst out laughing.
My ass isn’t itchy anymore.
“Cute,” I muttered, and started walking toward the asshole gallery and my front door.
“Di deed asth,” Dahlia mumbled awkwardly around her swollen tongue.
I’d never seen anything like it when the doctor had explained what it was. Jesus Christ, it was freakin’ massive. Why would someone get their tongue pierced if that’s what happened?
“Did she just say she needed ass?” Hurst Townsend, the grandfather of the family asked. I was sure I’d find out soon enough why he was here instead of with another branch of the Townsend family at their ranch in a place called Piersville.
“Ice,” I hissed through clenched teeth.
How I had already learned to understand her convoluted speech, I don’t know. But, at that moment, I realized that ironically Dahlia felt less of a stranger to me than the Townsends did.
Stomping through to the kitchen, I filled a beaker with ice from the thing on the door of the freezer and walked back to where Dahlia was now standing, looking at the line of weirdos who were all staring at her.
“So, you got your tongue pierced?” Levi asked, leering at Dahlia, which pissed me off. “You single?”
Dahlia squeaked and took a step back right into my chest. The squeak that followed was louder, and she tried to jump and turn at the same time, ending up groaning and bending over as she held her stomach.
This had been another surprise – the reason for those weird movements on the plane had been the fresh piercing in her belly button.
Who the hell got their belly buttons pierced before a flight?
“Is she okay?” Jer, the father of the younger generation of Townsends asked, taking a step forward as he looked at her with concern.
“She got her belly button pierced today too,” I explained, gently helping her straighten back up again and passing her the ice.
“Belly button and tongue,” Levi said as he grinned and took a step forward, wiggling his eyebrows up and down. “Seriously, are you single?”
My hand shot out, grabbed the beaker of ice out of Dahlia’s hand and launched it at his head before I could even think about what I was doing.
I didn’t stop to see if I hit the target as I turned and went back to the kitchen to get her a new one, but a thud followed by the sound of ice hitting the floor and his groan filled me with immense satisfaction.
“Don’t poke Harambe?” My sister was asking in confusion as I walked back toward them with the new ice. I refused to drink out of glasses, they didn’t hold enough, so I had big plastic beakers
– non pussy tumblers.
“What the hell?” I sounded just as confused as Luna had.
“Wasn’t Harambe that gorilla?” Noah asked, taking his phone out and tapping the screen. Nodding, he held it up and showed us. “Yeah, that was the gorilla who was protecting the little kid and got shot. Well, it sounds like he was protecting him,” he muttered the last bit, frowning as he looked back at his screen.
“Who’s Harambe?” I asked looking around for a gorilla.
When I looked back at her, she was pointing at me and grinning.
All the pieces of the puzzle fell into place and I groaned knowing that this would now haunt me for the rest of my life. “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me!”
“Easy there, gorillas in the mist,” Tate, one of the brothers, chuckled.
“Why me?” I asked no one in particular, but it truly needed asked. All I wanted was a peaceful and normal life.
That’s when I felt something poking my hand and looked down to see Dahlia holding a banana that she’d gotten from the bunch in the fruit bowl on the coffee table.
Snatching it from her hand, I walked back to the kitchen listening to the gorilla jokes start behind me.
“Come back, King Kong. We’re only messing with you!”
Fuck my life. Seriously, fuck it hard!
Three
Dahlia
I hadn’t seen or heard from Madix Blue since the morning after I’d spent the night at his. That night, he’d put me in his spare room, given me some Ibuprofen to help with the swelling and had then said goodnight. The following morning, he’d dropped me off at Dad’s friend’s house (to pick up the keys since he was sober) with a grunt, and that had been it.
That had been a week ago, and I hadn’t even bumped into him. Not that I had before, but if this was a movie, wouldn’t we now be seeing each other everywhere we went?
I might not have seen him but I’d seen his sister, and in the most bizarre places.
The first time, I’d been in the store looking at the new types of tampons when she’d walked up to me saying, “Fancy seeing you here!” Considering she was heavily pregnant, yes, yes, it was as strange as she’d made out with the tone she’d used when she’d said it.
The second time, I’d been taking my dog to the vet for his vaccinations. As we left, I’d heard someone yelling in a foreign language accompanied by the strangest shrieking noises. I’d looked up as Luna walked toward me along with her huge dog called Vlad, and a small Dachshund called Banshee, who had been the one making the weird noises. Just as we’d said hello, my dog, a Labrador called Bing, made the strangest honking noise and had projectile vomited over both of hers. I’d been horrified and had gone to open my purse to get out the travel pack of Kleenex I always had in there, when a truck had driven past at high speed, hitting the puddle beside us. I’d squelched back to my car with Bing while Luna had taken hers into the vets, not caring one bit about the fact she was soaking. Then again, my body had acted as a wall for the water seeing as how I was standing between the puddle and her when the truck had hit it, so she hadn’t received the tsunami to her ass that I had.
There had been four other meetings, all even more bizarre, but fortunately less disgusting than the second.
But I hadn’t even had a brief glimpse of Madix Blue.
I loved saying his full name, it reminded me of a superhero. Or a porn star! He looked like he had the body of a porn star too.
I wonder if it’s true about a man’s feet and the size of his…
“Dahlia!” A voice yelled behind me, making me squeal and jump.
Turning around, I saw my dad’s best friend, Jones.
The swelling in my tongue had almost gone down, so I’d gone back to communicating like a normal person instead of on a small whiteboard.
Doing my best to clear my head of where my thoughts had been headed, I put on a smile and prayed that my face wasn’t as red as a Twizzler.
“Hey, Jones!”
His eyes narrowed as he took in my face. “What have you been up to?”
Shrugging, I turned back to my desk to pick up a random piece of paper and then waved it in the air between us. “Just working.”
I caught sight of the words at the top of the piece of paper and moved my prayers to hoping that he didn’t see the name of my OB-GYN, followed by the freaking massive letters that said OB-GYN after it. Why, oh why, had I opened my mail while I was at work? Why couldn’t I have opened it at home, where it was frigging delivered, like a normal person?
And why in the ever-loving hell do they ‘invite’ you to go for a pap smear? It’s not like you hit a piñata and get cake after it.
“Uh huh,” Jones muttered, assessing me even closer. “So why’s your face the color of a strawberry?”
“Sunburn.”
“Sunburn?” he snorted. “You spend every day in this office, and I know for a fact you haven’t been out of it all day. So how in the hell did you get ‘sunburn’?”
I wasn’t pro-lying for any reason. Own up to your shit! But at this moment, I decided to break my no-lying morals and let rip with the biggest pile of bullshit in the history of mankind.
“Glare off the bonnet of one of the trucks outside,” I explained, using my thumb to gesture over my shoulder at the area behind me.
Here’s why lying shouldn’t ever be a go-to tactic for anyone – you always get found out. Or you forget the lie you’ve told. But regardless, you always get found out. And if you had my luck, you got found out immediately.
I watched him look over my shoulder. When he raised his eyebrow, crossed his arms and straightened to his full height, I tried to avoid his eyes by looking over his shoulder instead – and immediately saw the window behind him.
This meant that I’d been pointing at a wall.
Shit!
I’d also forgotten that the window showed an empty parking lot because we weren’t that busy today. Even if I’d gotten the direction right, he’d have seen through my lie.
Double shit!
“Start talking,” he ordered as he pulled his cellphone out his back pocket. “Or I’m calling your dad.”
Wringing my hands in front of me, I grimaced and bit my bottom lip. “I really don’t think I want to…”
Jones had his phone set to that irritating tap tapping noise as you typed, and when it started as his thumb flew across the screen, I panicked.
“I drank some of the milk in the refrigerator and it gave me diarrhea!” I yelled, just as the door to my office opened.
“I’ll come back,” a familiar deep voice that I hadn’t heard in a week muttered.
Why me, Jesus? Why me?
Madix
It had been a week since I’d seen Dahlia. Initially, the reason had been down to me being called out to one of the drilling sites because someone was stealing small pieces of machinery like power tools. Then, when I’d gotten back, it had been because I didn’t know what to say to her. When I’d realized that I knew where she worked and I could just pop in with the bullshit excuse of needing my vehicle checked, I’d done just that.
From being a cop, I’d learned that you had a less chance of being stopped and questioned if you looked like you belonged there and knew where you were going. Not wanting to risk being stopped by a helpful employee in her dad’s garage, I’d walked toward the back of the building, figuring that’s where the offices were, and avoided making eye contact with anyone.
What I hadn’t expected to happen was to walk around the corner just as she was saying, “I drank some of the milk in the refrigerator and it gave me diarrhea!”
Wincing, I went to turn around and leave just as the guy she was talking to turned to look at me, and found myself saying, “I’ll come back.”
What else could you say? I couldn’t just walk out with him looking at me. He’d call me back and then I’d have to dig myself out of an even deeper hole.
“Madix?”
She sounded absolutely horrified as she said my name
. I really hoped it was because of what she’d said to the other guy, and not just that she felt that way about me showing up.
“Hey,” I replied awkwardly. “I, uh…,” I took a quick look back at the guy who was studying me. He was about nine inches shorter than me and looked around the same age as my dad. I didn’t notice any similarities between him and Dahlia though, so maybe he was a family friend. “Have you got a minute?”
“I’ll just go and make sure there’s plenty of toilet paper in the bathroom,” snorted the guy, turning around and walking toward the door. As he exited the room, he shot over his shoulder, “Wouldn’t want you to get caught short, seeing as how your colon is about to blow!”
I fought the smile that wanted to break free at that moment for many reasons. Firstly, I wasn’t a smiley person, it just wasn’t a natural thing for me. I had to force it a majority of the time and then I felt like I probably just looked creepy. Secondly, Dahlia’s eye had started to twitch, and she was reaching in the direction of a huge mug on the desk beside her. She hadn’t thrown it yet, and I didn’t want to push her over the edge and end up having to lie when she got arrested for assaulting the guy. Absolutely I would lie for her regardless of the fact I was a former cop. Why though, I didn’t know. Something about Dahlia intrigued me past anything I’d come across in my life.
Her hand had reached the cup by this point and was lifting it, so I decided to say fuck it and moved to take it away from her.
“Give it back,” she hissed, giving it a tug. “I just want to hit him once.”
“You’d never get me,” the guy’s voice sounded from the hallway. “With your luck, it’d probably go through the window and kill a bird.”
For some reason, that totally deflated any fight Dahlia had in her and she let go of the mug instantly, leaving me holding the thing away from her just in case she changed her mind.
“He’s right,” she muttered so quietly that I had to strain to hear her. “It probably would,” she sighed and hunched her shoulders as she looked at her feet, deep in thought about something.
Mad Gold (Providence Gold Series Book 2) Page 3