Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  Dropping her purse beside the couch, Ari gestured to the kitchen with her head. “Do you want a drink?”

  A bottle of Jack with a straw would be awesome right now, but I needed a clear head for this.

  “Have you got any carbonated water?”

  I knew that it was like asking her if she had oxygen in her house because it was pretty much all she drank.

  Giving me a wry look, she headed into the kitchen and grabbed two bottles of water out the fridge. Movement coming out of the pantry distracted me from watching her straighten up from her bent position—her two Dachshunds. The second their paws went from whatever flooring had muffled them in the small space to the wooden floors of the main house, their legs started moving at a faster rate. I want to say this was because they wanted to get to their mama quickly, but in actual fact, it was because they had no traction on the varnished surface, so they needed to double time to maintain any speed.

  Grinning, I watched their little legs whirling as they started making the weirdest squeaks with excitement. The only part that confused me was when she glanced nervously at the pantry and then over at where I was as she chewed on her lower lip. Whatever was going through her mind ended up with her closing the door to it with her hip before walking toward me, stopping when the excited canines almost tripped her up.

  “Y’all are going to hurt yourselves one of these days,” she murmured, putting the bottles on the top of a counter and bending down to catch them, only just managing to avoid their excited tongues as they got close to her face. “Put those Fruit Roll-Up tongues away. I know where you put ‘em, and I keep telling you sharing isn’t caring with that shit.”

  When I’d first moved here, I’d stayed in a guest house on the Townsend’s land until I found a place of my own. The invite to remain in the property was there, but I’d wanted to find the perfect home for my new beginnings. I was currently renting the place with the possibility of purchasing it after a year, but I wasn’t sure.

  Ariana’s place had originally been a large barn that’d housed three tractors. She’d loved the amount of space available and the overall design of it, so she’d had the contractor make it into a house instead of knocking it down. It was like a one-bedroom version of the house from Little House On The Prairie. Downstairs, it had an open plan kitchen and living room with a guest bathroom. Upstairs, the attic conversion was stunning with old oak beams and a bathroom that even I’d fallen in love with the one time I’d used it when I was helping her brothers move her bedroom around for her. Her bedroom took up the whole upper level, and it all just worked perfectly.

  Mine was an older house that’d been remodeled by the owners three years ago. It had three bedrooms with en suites, a half bathroom downstairs, and a small room that I’d turned into a study. The yard would have been hell to look after if it wasn’t for the small guest house with an open floor plan like Ari’s place. My brother was going to use it when he came to visit, something I’d made clear I wanted to happen so that I didn’t bump into any of his ‘guests.’ Then again, the improvements I’d made this year to my life had spurred Dale to make some of his own, too. He didn’t have issues for the same reason I did—his were more survivors guilt related. I’d made sacrifices for him, and it tore him up. Neither of us had led the life of a saint, but those days were long behind us now.

  “Do you want to sit down?” Ari asked from right in front of me, snapping me out of my thoughts.

  Smiling gratefully at her, I followed her to where her overstuffed couches were and sank into the cushion of one of them as both dogs jumped around my legs, finally realizing they had a new person to harass. The second they saw I was seated, they both started trying to jump up beside me, whining when their little legs couldn’t give them the boost they needed to get up onto the cushions.

  Wincing, she clapped her hands to get their attention. “Sorry about them. They just like to love on everyone.”

  Helping them up, I made my own face avoidance moves to get away from excited tongues, doing my best not to shudder visibly. “Not a problem. They’re too cute to ignore.”

  Glancing around the room with a frown, Ari muttered, “Jerry’s around here somewhere. He’s probably waiting for these two to calm down or fall asleep.”

  Jerry—her cat, and animal I didn’t like much. A couple of years ago, when Ari had come to Piersville, she’d seen Sonya’s munchkin cat and fallen in love. There’d been an advertisement for a litter of them closer to home, so she’d gone to see them out of curiosity, wanting to know how small they were as kittens. Jerry had only been two weeks old, but he’d crawled away from his siblings and made his way to where Ariana and started chewing on her little toe. She’d put a deposit down on him within ten minutes of it, calling him Jerry after the movie Jerry Maguire because he ‘had her at hello.’

  Scratching the dog wearing a gray collar, I thought about the potential complexities of owning a cat and two boisterous dogs at the same time. Weren’t the two species meant to hate each other?

  “How does having cats and dogs at the same time work?”

  This time when she looked at me, I realized I had her undivided attention, and I felt something in my stomach clench. Ari was one of those ‘million thoughts, one brain’ type of people. I don’t think I’d ever seen her when it wasn’t obvious her mind was working on multiple things at once, not even as a kid.

  Except for now.

  And it was the kind of realization that snatched the air from your lungs.

  Unlike her brothers, Ari had hazel-brown colored eyes circled by a slightly darker ring of the color. They were unusual, and their uniqueness suited her perfectly. When she was pissed, they went darker brown—happy, they had a hint of green in them. Right now, they were what I knew was her content color—a warm hazel shade of brown.

  “I got all three of them when they were babies,” she explained. “Hanky and Panky are brothers from the same litter, and I got them when they were thirteen weeks old. Jerry was the runt of his litter and struggled to put weight on, so I got him when he was twelve weeks old. Anyway, the boys came home three days before Jerry did, and the same chick who helped Noah out with Luna’s dog helped me settle them in together. Seeing as how he’s a cat, Jerry’s more temperamental and likes to have his own space and dictate what happens in that space. When he’s ready, he comes out and interacts with me and the boys then goes back to his comfort zone.”

  “Sounds like Dale,” I snickered. “He’ll interact with you when he feels like it, but his home is his space, and he’s picky about people being in that space.”

  “Exactly,” she said, snapping her fingers. “That’s exactly how Jerry is, too. On his terms. The boys get that and respect it, so there haven’t been any of the problems you’d expect between cats and dogs.”

  “Ah, but how do you know they don’t fight when you’re not here?”

  Raising a finger, she pointed to the corner of the room at a small white camera. “I’ve got those in every room, so I check in on them through the day. They’re attached to the base station over there, and if I see anything going on, I just hit the unmute microphone icon on my phone screen and talk to them.”

  Smart!

  “Have you ever caught them doing anything they shouldn’t?”

  The side of her mouth tipped up in a half grin as she pointed at the couch. “That’s the third couch I’ve had since I got them. Granted, the first one I inherited from Mom and Dad, the second one was a cheap one that I bought on impulse when I saw it on Groupon. This one…” she shook her head and cringed. “It would kill me if they ruined this one.”

  I could see why.

  “Not a Groupon?”

  “Hardly,” she laughed. “I saved forever for this couch after I saw it. The dogs know they’re not allowed on it when I’m not home and have been quite good since I got it. I was worried the smell of the leather would attract them to it, but they seem happy enough with their own one,” she pointed at where one of the dogs was no
w curling up.

  She’d had an old crate turned into a couch looking bed for them with their names painted on it. It was kind of cool and totally Ari.

  Turning back to her, I caught her watching me like she was trying to figure me out. That was my problem, she always picked up on more with me than I wanted. Well, until now. Now, I wish she could just read my mind, so I didn’t have to say the words out loud, but that went against what I’d discussed with my new therapist.

  Leaning forward, she tilted her head to the side, looking at me more gently than I’d seen her look at me in a while, like she knew I needed that from her.

  “Parker… What’s going on?”

  Leaning forward, I put my face in my hands and braced my elbows on my knees. I’d been all fired up to tell, but now that we were here, I needed a moment to get the courage back to do it.

  Feeling the cushion beside me move, I dropped my hands and turned my head to look at her, seeing the worry on her face.

  “I have something to tell you,” I told her lamely.

  “Okay?”

  Fuck, this was hard!

  Struggling to look her in the eyes, I dropped my head to stare at my feet. Even all these years later and looking at it through adult eyes, I knew it wasn’t my fault, but I felt dirty and ashamed.

  Taking a deep, shuddering breath in and clenching my hands into fists, I started.

  “I need to explain why I reacted the way I did. There’s… fuck, there’s a lot you need to know. I’m going to start by saying that my reaction was in no way a reflection on you,” I turned to look at her so that she could see how honest I was being. For a second she looked hurt, but that changed when she saw my expression. “When I was twelve, Dad remarried. Losing Mom was hard, and watching her die slowly from breast cancer… I don’t think any kid would recover from it.”

  “I can imagine,” she murmured. “Is that why you became a doctor?”

  “In part. I also did it to piss my dad off.”

  Her head jerked slightly, and her eyebrows scrunched into a frown. “What? How could being a doctor piss him off? I thought every parent wanted their kid to become something big like that?”

  “He wanted me to take over the business and had been preparing me for as long as I can remember. When I told him I was going to Med School and what I intended to do, he flipped his shit. After that, each achievement was another twist of the knife.”

  I didn’t regret that one bit to this day.

  “Is that why Dale went into it, too?”

  Grinning, I shrugged. “Probably, but I can’t say for sure. But when it came to me, Dad tried to stop me from doing it, including tearing up acceptance letters and getting rid of my college fund.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “What did he do with it?”

  “Gave it to his new wife. She spent it on a tummy tuck, a nose job, getting her tits done, a Brazilian butt lift, fillers, and a whole ton of shit.”

  Her mouth opened and closed a couple of times, then just remained open with the shock of it all.

  “Anyway, after he married Chantal,” I cringed even saying the name, “I thought maybe we’d have one of those perfect homes, the ones in the movies where the stepmother loves the kids as her own. I missed Mom so much, and I guess I was looking for a way to have her back.” Fuck, it hurt saying that. I still missed her.

  Reaching over, she took my hand and gave it a supportive squeeze. “I think any kid would.”

  Clearing my throat, I continued, “A week after my thirteenth birthday, I woke up because someone was touching me. I didn’t know what it was, but when I turned the light on, she had my dick in her mouth.” I could have worded it more delicately, but there was nothing delicate about what had happened.

  Ari gasped, and her hand spasmed around mine.

  “I didn’t know what was going on, but I knew I didn’t like it, so I tried to pull away and told her to stop. She let go and told me that it’s what stepmothers and her boys did.”

  “That’s a lie,” she hissed, moving to stand up but changing her mind. “That fucking bitch!”

  I smiled a smile that I knew didn’t reach my eyes. “I knew that. Even at thirteen, I knew she was lying.”

  “How did you get away? She could have done it again.”

  “She did,” I said quietly. “At least once a week for two years. If I argued with her, she’d do things to Dale in front of me, stroking his shoulders and hair, kissing him close to his mouth…”

  “Did she…” she stopped and swallowed loudly. “Did she rape you?”

  “Not completely. Not in that way, at least.”

  A tear fell slowly down her cheek, tearing me up inside as I watched it. “How did you get away? What about Dale?”

  “Your family and the Montgomerys. I don’t know what they saw, but they started inviting us over all the time, including us in Thanksgivings and Christmas, and they gave us a sanctuary. At the time, I thought they were doing it just because they love everyone, but when I went to college, I started to think they knew more than I realized. I’d spoken to Dale and told him Chantal was hurting me—he was too young to know what was going on—and he moved into my room in the house. That meant she couldn’t continue to do what she’d been doing because I was always there.”

  “I hate her,” she croaked, more tears falling now. “It sounds weak, but I hate her so much that I have a pain here,” she hit her chest. “Why didn’t you tell your dad?”

  This part was the biggest betrayal out of all of it.

  “We did. I even went to him with evidence, but she told him I needed to see a therapist because I obviously had issues from losing Mom. She was such a caring person,” I hissed, my hands clenching tight, “that she even gave him the name of one.”

  Ari’s jaw tightened even more before her eyes squeezed shut. “He denied you’d been assaulted, didn’t he?”

  “Considering he was her boyfriend, yes, he did,” I confirmed, and her eyes popped open in shock.

  “I thought you were going to say she paid him off. That’s… holy shit.”

  My mouth turned up in a smile that wasn’t even close to a humorous one. “Yeah. See, after I left home, I did some investigation into why a therapist would lie for someone. Before I’d moved out for college, I’d made a point of installing one of those motion detection cameras in front of Dale’s bedroom door. Dad thought I was being overly protective of my brother ‘in account of me losing my mom, and all,’” I muttered, shaking my head at how twisted his mind was over the situation. “I also installed them outside his window, and in other places I knew she’d be able to corner him in. She was pissed, and shortly afterward, I got an alert on my phone that the camera at his bedroom door had been deactivated. So, I called Dale and told him not to go home, and he stayed with Mark Montgomery for a week while I called Dad up and got him to get a technical specialist round to look at the camera. The guy just put the cable back in the little receiver box and told Dad to be careful no one tripped on it again.”

  Looking like she felt sick at the thought, Ari shook her head slowly. “That twisted bitch.”

  “Anyway, I also discovered she’d been in a relationship with the therapist for a couple of years, and marrying Dad was a sort of financial arrangement between them. He was a sick fuck, too, and apparently liked that she’d been molesting me.”

  “How do you know that?” she gasped.

  Clearing my throat and cracking my neck, I fought against the flight reaction that wanted to take over. I’d discussed this with my doctor, and I wanted Ariana to know all of this, so I had to do it in a way that didn’t make me close up. That meant saying what I was comfortable with, but this part she needed to know.

  “I found a video in her home office that she’d taped to the underside of her desk. In it, they were fucking while he asked her to repeat what she’d done and my reactions. She lied about most of it, saying that I was screaming as I came and started crying afterward, but I never did any of that. I never let it get t
hat far. The second she touched me, I’d wake up and move out of her reach.”

  More tears fell as she digested it all. “I want to hurt them both.” When I went to say something to her in response to this, she held her hand up. “No, I’m serious, Parker. I want to cause them pain so bad, it’ll torment them for the rest of their lives. I’m not talking about killing them or anything, I’m talking about hitting him in the nuts with a baseball bat, or her in the tit with it.”

  This time, the smile and small laugh that came out of me was genuine. “Well, that’ll definitely be hard to forget.”

  Turning so she was facing me with her leg on the couch between us, she reached over and carefully took my hand, giving me time to say no if I didn’t want her to touch me. Part of me didn’t. I’m not going to lie, I had issues with being touched unless I was the one controlling it. But, a large part of me wanted her to do it, too, because it might anchor me and help me feel less vulnerable. So, I didn’t argue when her soft fingers wrapped around my palm.

  “Parker, I know enough about therapy to know this is going to take time to get over. You’ve had your trust in humans, women, medical professionals tainted big time, and that’s not going to heal overnight. I can’t even imagine what it took for you to talk to a therapist or even tell me, but I want you to know that I won’t repeat it to anyone. I promise.”

  In those words was the message: I’m not going to force you to tell me more.

  Taking a deep breath in, I squeezed her hand with gratitude. “Thank you. There’s more to tell you, so I appreciate it hugely.”

  Then she shocked the shit out of me, momentarily shaking the balance that the deep breath had just given me.

  “I have a phobia of bats, you know. I’m not talking about screaming because one flies past me, I go catatonic if I see one. If I’m in an area that’s got bats in it, I have a panic attack. You’re probably wondering how I deal with Halloween—” That hadn’t even occurred to me. I was wondering why she was telling me such a random fact. “—but after years of it, I don’t freak out now. I do the girly scream, though. I can’t stop it happening, even if it’s just a bat pinata or decoration.”