Forbidden Gold (Providence Gold Book 5)

by Mary B. Moore

  “Yeah, I do. He’s a great guy.”

  Her upper lip raised in a sneer at this. Seeing my frown at the move, she smoothed it back out into a semblance of a smile. “Great, I’m sure he’s a lucky guy. Anyway, what do I owe you?”

  Telling her the price, I smiled and thanked her when she told me to keep the change. Just as I went to say something else—the devil on my shoulder taking over—there was a scream from the end of the bar that made everyone jump and look to see what was going on.

  Sadie was jumping up onto the top of it, now screaming, “Gimme, gimme, gimme!” at an older woman who was carrying like a hold all in her hand with an exasperated frown on her face.

  “Sadie Odessa Dahl, will you control yourself,” she muttered as she reached her, her voice audible only because I’d walked down to see what was going on.

  Having also heard the commotion, Levi, Gramps, Noah, and Tate had come out of the office to see what was going on and were standing watching it all with perplexed looks on their faces.

  “Hey, MeeMee,” Sadie squealed, hugging the perfectly put together woman.

  The poor woman’s eyes bugged out of her head as she was crushed into Sadie with the force of the hug and then met mine as she mouthed, “Help me” with a small smile on her face.

  The humor seemed so at odds with how she looked that I wasn’t sure if I was okay to laugh or if I should help her. I don’t think I’d ever seen anyone so elegantly dressed in my life. There wasn’t a hair out of place in what I swear was a professional chignon, and her slacks and a silk blouse were immaculately pressed. My family dressed however the hell they wanted to depending on the weather, so I couldn’t help staring and wondering how long it took her to get dressed in the morning. Did she even spend that time on her appearance on a Sunday? Hell, she was even wearing three strands of pearls around her neck.

  “Darling, we’ve discussed your overbearing greetings before,” the woman, MeeMee, replied, patting Sadie on the back.

  Not letting go—in fact, I swear she squeezed her even tighter—Sadie just chuckled. “And when have I ever followed your rules?” Then, punctuating it with a loud kiss on her cheek, she let her go.

  Taking a step back and patting her hair, the lady’s mouth twitched. “Mmm, this is true. If you did, I wouldn’t have had to take care of this ugly creature.” She pointed at the bag she’d carried with her. “He’s evil, and he needs to go on a damned diet, Sadie Odessa.”

  Clapping her hands excitedly, Sadie sat down cross-legged on the bar and opened the bag, making cooing noises as she reached into it. “Who’s my big boy? Mummy missed her baby, yes she did.”

  I was expecting a Pomeranian or a Chihuahua. Instead, she brought out… something from the bowels of hell.

  Elijah had walked around with Grams to join the others, and when she lifted it high enough for them to see, they all took a step back and stared at the animal in horror.

  “Sadie, that thing is as far from a baby as a fish is from a bird. It weighs three times what it should, and I know that because I weighed it. It also consumed an entire tub of moisturizer like it was milk.”

  “You’ll hurt Dobby’s feelings,” Sadie murmured, rubbing her face on the things head, making us all cringe.

  If I had to describe it, I’d go with the love child of a butterball turkey, a forty-pound one, and one of the evil Mogwais from Gremlin. Oh, and it was bald and looked like it wanted to rip her head off.

  “Dobby?” Tate choked.

  “Yeah,” she sighed, rubbing her cheek on it again. “There’s a chain of gardening stores in the UK called Dobbies. I found him eating out of a bin when I visited a mate at Christmas and we went to get her decorations from one. I couldn’t call him Dobbies because there’s only one of him, so I went with Dobby.”

  “So, it doesn’t like socks?” I asked, thinking I was funny making a Harry Potter reference.

  Turning around to look at me—and I wish she hadn’t because I made eye contact with it—she said brightly, “I have to be careful when I wear them because he eats them when I take them off or builds himself a nest with them.”

  “Because he’s a minion of Lucifer himself,” MeeMee added, looking at all of us as if to say, are you surprised? Look at it!

  Taking a hesitant step closer, Elijah drawled, “He looks—”

  “Evil?” MeeMee suggested.

  “Weird?” Gramps added.

  “Ugly?” Tate muttered, taking a step back when it hissed at him.

  “I was going to say pissed. He looks pissed,” Elijah explained, cringing when the thing looked in his direction again. “Does he have some sort of health problem?”

  “When I first found him, I wondered if he did, but the vet I took him to said he was a Sphynx.”

  I loved all animals, but my preference was for little ones that I could cuddle. And I’d seen Sphynx’s before, two of my friends had them, and even though they looked a little bit weird to me, they were actually kind of cute. This one looked like it’d been given way too much skin, waxed bald, and then inflated. And his face was just the grumpiest cat face I’d ever seen. There’s no way in hell I’d sleep under the same roof as it, he’d probably eat me.

  “I brought the box of gloves I’ve been using to put the moisturizer on him that you said he had to, and the veterinarian checked him over and is satisfied with the pet passport he traveled in on. So, he’s now clear to go, and you can have him back,” MeeMee told her, nudging the bag toward Sadie with the tip of her finger. “Seeing as how he ate the whole tub of moisturizer you gave me, I bought him a new one. I also bought him some other things to stop him attacking my home,” she muttered, then said to the side, “not that it worked.”

  Suddenly remembering that none of us knew the woman, Sadie gasped, “Oh my lord, I’m so sorry. This is my grandmother, MeeMee. MeeMee, this is Hurst, Elijah, Levi, Tate, Noah, Linda, and Ariana Townsend. Well, Elijah’s a Townsend-Rossi, but he’s still a Townsend.”

  Looking at us and taking us in, MeeMee smiled warmly at us. “I’ve heard all about you. Thank you for looking after her.”

  And, just like that, my grandparents came forward and started talking to her as they led her to a table, leaving the rest of us still staring at the cat. I swear it was assessing all of us like it was thinking about which one to kill first.

  Then, the one who’d been quiet up until that point, Noah, asked, “If you get it wet, does it turn back into the cute Mogwai?”

  Sadie turned her best glare on him, but it was like trying to fight a war with cooked spaghetti coming from her.

  “I would never have expected your grandmother to look like that,” I nodded my head in the direction of where MeeMee was sitting. “What’s her real name? I feel silly calling her MeeMee.”

  “Miranda Elerson Dahl. She hates being called granny, grandma, nanny, or anything else close to that, so we call her MeeMee.”

  I guess I was calling her it, then.

  “She looks like the kind of grandparent that would make you write and recite grand poetry,” Elijah mused, looking from Sadie to her grandmother.

  “Oh, she did!”

  That had us all intrigued.

  “What kind of shit did you write?” Elijah asked, leaning forward with a smirk on his face. It wasn’t a nasty smirk, it was an I’m getting to know you better than you think smirk.

  “On a boat from Birmingham to Westminster, sat a very uptight spinster. A handsome young man called Huck said, ‘dear lady, I’ll teach you to—'”

  “Sadie Odessa, I told you when you wrote that not ever to repeat it again,” MeeMee snapped, shocking all of us considering Sadie was whispering, and the woman was sitting a good thirty feet away from us.

  Smiling proudly, Sadie sighed. “I was never great at poetry, but I write a fucking dirty limerick.”

  “Sadie!” MeeMee shrieked as Gramps made his way over to us, leaving the two grandmothers alone.

  When he got to the bar, he sat down on the stool next to Elija
h’s. “Okay, hit me with them.”

  Proving it wasn’t just Sadie’s grams that’d gotten bat-like hearing, Grams turned around and scowled at him. “I apologize in advance for my husband. He’s got the mental age of a twelve-year-old. They all do, Linda. They all do.”

  Driving up to Parker’s home was an experience. Yes, I’d been here before, but I hadn’t been here since the changes in our relationship. It was weird, but I was excited.

  Seeing that his vehicle was already there, I parked to the side of him in case he was called out later on. We’ve all been in the situation where we needed to leave quickly and couldn’t because some dick had blocked us in—i.e., one of my brothers because they had shit for brains. Ironically, it was usually them I was trying to get away from. Parker’s job made this a strong possibility, and let it be known that I never wanted to be like my brothers, so I was thinking outside of the box now.

  I’d only just opened the door of my car when he appeared on the porch of his house with a huge smile on his face. When I grinned back at him, he walked quickly down the stairs and over to me, engulfing me in a tight hug that made me feel settled. This beginning part of our relationship was making it a little hard for me to settle. I didn’t know how to read him all the time, I couldn’t always tell what he was going to do next, I wasn’t sure of the tone he’d used in some of his texts, and I just felt slightly off balance. I apparently also overthought things, but that was me. So him welcoming me like this felt awesome.

  “Hey, baby. Did you have a good day?”

  Burying my face in his chest, I inhaled the scent of his shower gel and just him—with thankfully no hint of the overbearing man deodorant my brothers used to use—trying to commit it to memory. Call me a pessimist, but nothing was guaranteed to work out the way we wanted it to, so memories like this could be important in the future.

  “Yeah, it was like most of my days, seriously unusual.”

  The laugh that huffed out of him shook my head slightly, but at least he didn’t try and lie or sound shocked. Instead, he wrapped my ponytail around his hand and murmured into my hair, “It makes life an adventure, right? Better to be unusual than mundane.”

  True story, but my ‘normal’ days were also an adventure, sadly. It was the luck of the Townsend draw.

  “At this point, it’s all the same,” I snickered, enjoying feeling the rumble of laughter in his chest against the side of my face.

  “Dinner’s almost done if you want to go in and get settled?”

  Someone cooking for me? Wait. “What kind of cook are you?”

  Leaning slightly away from me, he waited until I was looking up at him to ask, “What do you mean, what kind of cook am I?”

  I thought it was a straightforward question, but okay. “Are you one of those people who can’t cook for shit, but you do it anyway, and I’m going to have to lie about how good the food is? Are you a mediocre cook who either hits or misses? Or are you a great one, and I’m going to finally be able to eat food made in my own kitchen?”

  His eyes widened at the last question. “You don’t eat food made in your kitchen?”

  “Frozen stuff that I can put in the toaster? Yes. Pop-Tarts? Yes. Toaster waffles? Yes. Stuff that I’ve cooked? I’ve made that mistake three times and ended up with food poisoning, so no.”

  His surprise was almost good for my ego—almost. “You can’t cook? I thought you could do everything.”

  “Uh, that’s a fat negative. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that if I’m starving and have to eat something I’ve made, that it’s going to be either uncooked spaghetti noodles or overcooked ones that are fused together in a big gelatinous clump.”

  “That might be okay with sauce from a jar…” he said, but the grimace on his face said it all.

  Again, that would be a big fat negative.

  “Um, no. One, I hate sauce from a jar. It’s either too sweet or tastes like shit. Two, the last time I made it, I put the jar in the microwave to heat it up—”

  “Did the glass break?”

  “Not exactly. I unscrewed the lid and then left it resting on top of the jar.”

  His mouth opened and closed a couple of times, and then finally, he asked, “Aren’t the lids usually metal?”

  Nodding, I told him about the time I’d almost made my microwave explode… two days after I’d moved into my house.

  “So, what do you eat your spaghetti with, then?”

  “A small lump of butter, some salt, and some grated cheese.”

  Judging by his grimace, this didn’t sound appealing to him. If that was the case, he hadn’t lived. It might be hit or miss with how well I cooked the pasta, but that shit tasted good if I cooked it right.

  “Well, I’m a good cook. I used to do it for Dale and me after Mom died. Chantal never took an interest in it, and I hated living on takeout, so I used to watch cooking shows on television so I could learn how to make stuff for him.”

  Aside from the grimace when he mentioned her name, he looked happy at this memory, so I hid an enraged reaction I wanted to give because she was such a fucking c-word that she couldn’t even cook for her step kids. Then again, she was a pedophile, so why would she want to cook for them, too.

  Not wanting to ruin the mood, I asked as we walked toward his front door, “What did you make me tonight?”

  “One of my favorites—crawfish boil with crab in it.”

  Swallowing the saliva that’d filled my mouth at the memory of the one I’d had when I’d visited my friend in Louisiana two years ago, I waited for him to close the door as I dropped my bags on his couch.

  Parker’s house was old fashioned, and it suited him perfectly. It was neat, organized and the dark brown sofa screamed ‘man with yummy cologne’ at me. Any woman who says she can’t imagine that was lying. Some men wore sweet cologne, some of them wear that musky shit that sticks to the back of your throat. Men like Parker wore a light manly cologne that made you picture dark leather and rawr, and that’s what the couch did, too.

  “I love crawfish boils. I had a one in Louisiana, and I swear it made the angels cry. Actually, it would probably make Satan cry because they’d added eight fresh scotch bonnet chilis to it because it was an old family recipe, but it was freaking awesome.”

  “I add chilis to mine, too,” he told me as he pointed toward the kitchen. “I had one in New Orleans when I went on a mini vacation during college. They put thick pieces of Andouille sausage in it, fresh chilis, crawfish, shrimp, corn, and fresh crab, and I can’t eat it any other way now.”

  That probably should’ve made me wary of how spicy it was going to be. I loved spicy food, but fresh chilies, seasoning you usually put in the boil, and Andouille sausage? But, it didn’t even register because I was too distracted by how great he looked in his kitchen. Him standing in it, surrounded by all the sleek brushed steel appliances on concrete countertops… I was starting to think maybe I should pack more underwear when I came here in future, the ones I was wearing were toast. I’d never thought a man would look sexy in a room as functional as a kitchen. A gym? Yeah. A bathroom? Absolutely. I’d seen the man with soapy bubbles running down the dips and bumps of his muscles, all that tanned bare skin—

  “Ari? He called, snapping me out of my special moment.

  “Mmm?”

  “You were licking your lips,” he pointed out, and it took everything in me not to blush. “Are you hungry?”

  No, I’m a pervert who was thinking about your naked body. Sue me!

  I didn’t go with the whole truth, but I went with part of it. “Absolutely.”

  “It’ll only take two minutes to serve up. Why don’t you get a drink and sit at the table.”

  Getting us both a beer from the fridge—I had a vagina, so yes, I was a woman, but I was also a vagina woman who hated wine—I took them over to the neatly laid out table and sat down, watching him drain the meal and put it in a big serving bowl. I guess when you’re inside and have furniture as nice as he did, pouring
it out over the table wouldn’t be a good idea.

  Reading what I was thinking, he explained as he placed the bowl down, “Getting the smell out of the wood would be nigh on impossible, and I don’t want my house smelling of crawfish and crab for the rest of its life. Next time I make it, we’ll sit outside, and I’ll lay it out properly.”

  Over dinner, we discussed everything and nothing. I told him about Sadie’s MeeMee and her ugly cat, enjoying his laughter as I described it to him. I told him about the dirty limericks she’d recited to us all, as MeeMee glared her into dust from her seat. I also told him about the woman who kept coming in and how weird it all was.

  “Do you think I was sensitive enough?”

  He’d looked wary as I’d told him about the changes she’d made, but it softened with my question. “I think you dealt with it the best way you could. It’s strange that she keeps coming back and goes to those lengths to be unrecognizable, though.”

  “I think I was only really aware of it because I did it on my nose for so long,” I explained, pushing a piece of crab shell around my plate with my index finger. “Hers looked like a professional job, though, so if I’d only glanced at her if I was walking past her, I probably wouldn’t have put two and two together.”

  Wiping his mouth with his napkin, he picked up his beer and took a mouthful. “What did she look like?”

  “Which time?” I snorted, but it sounded weak.

  I was freaked out by her and the way she watched us all, and I was starting to imagine some Single White Female shit happening.

  “All of them.”

  As I listed all of the looks I’d seen her in and tried to think of any instances when maybe I hadn’t served her and she’d been in the bar, Parker’s face turned to stone. “What does her face look like?”

  “Slightly heart-shaped without the makeup, I think. She’s got a small nose with a slightly upturned tip”—unlike mine, both before and after the surgery—“and brown eyes. Probably three inches shorter than me, too.”