Until Fools Find Gold: A Providence Gold Series and Until Series Crossover

by Mary B. Moore

  Then a thought hit me.

  “Do we have any Cinnabon left?”

  Now that was a cake. Funfetti mixed with Cinnabon.

  “Sorry,” Tate stuck his head around the corner and smiled at me evilly. “I didn’t realize they were yours.”

  I did my best to look unaffected by this world ending news, refusing to give him the satisfaction.

  I would make him suffer. Not now, obviously, but soon.

  Noah

  “Shout if you need anything, okay?”

  I felt nervous as hell leaving her to sleep in the room next to mine. Sure, it only had a wall between the rooms, but I had so many what ifs going through my mind that my hands were sweaty with the anxiety.

  “I will,” she slurred, only just conscious as she snuggled down further on the bed.

  After dinner, she’d had two helpings of cake followed by a painkiller that the doctor had given her at the hospital. Doc had called in another favor and she’d been seen under a different name and treated like a VIP at the hospital.

  I was relieved that it wasn’t a major break, but she was still in pain and wearing a weird boot on her little foot. Thankfully, Doc said she only had to wear it for a week and then she could move onto a bandage. It was only a small fracture, and they didn’t cast them– which seemed dumb to me. It was a fracture!

  I would make sure that she rested it and that it healed properly though. I’d also cut her broken toenails that had turned into deadly weapons from where they’d broken off when she kicked the table. Those things had been dangerous as hell!

  Giving her one last look, I walked out and went into my own room.

  Turns out I hadn’t checked the weather forecast for the area, which was unfortunate given how bad the storm that hit an hour later was.

  I did my best to leave her alone and just lay there listening carefully for any noises or movement in her room. It was torture, but I didn’t want to scare her even more by going in and her potentially waking up to me standing over her.

  But then the power went out…

  Luna

  There was something different about my room, I just couldn’t figure it out when I opened my eyes. Then everything hit me at once.

  There was no light, and now something warm was moving against my leg.

  A rational brain would tell you that you should reach out and turn on the light. It would also tell you that there was someone that you trusted in the next room so go to them.

  It might also tell you that the mental image of a snake slithering up your leg was wrong because whatever it was that was on my leg was so warm.

  My brain didn’t. My brain told me we were under attack and that the heavy pounding of rain on the window was part of it. It also decided that the thing against my leg was one of the snakes that you see in the photos with a human or crocodile in its belly.

  My reaction to all of this was to scream my ass off, then pause in case the snake took it as a welcome to eat me, then scream again hoping that it would decide to eat whoever was attacking us outside.

  I hope it spared Noah!

  “Baby,” it murmured in my ear, which was kind of nice of it to do. I wouldn’t have expected a snake to use endearments or sound so much like…

  “Noah,” I gasped. “You have to run. I’m gonna try to get the snake to go after the baddies!”

  The snake stopped moving against my thigh, but then for some reason started bouncing slightly on my back and laughing. I knew it was the snake because I could feel the vibrations of its laughter every time it tapped my ribcage and I sure as hell wasn’t laughing at that moment. I was the closest that I’d ever been to making a mess in my drawers, is what I was!

  “What the fuck?” he rasped, sounding like he was laughing too.

  What if that was a red rag to a snake? Him laughing while it was laughing?

  “If we both jump out at the same time and lock it in here, it might work!” I tried to explain as quickly as possible.

  At that moment, the vibrations and sounds of laughter still very obvious, the snake curled around my waist and started to squeeze.

  That was it for me, I screamed as loud as I could hoping that someone would hear it and come and save us before it swallowed us whole as I then tried to kick back with my non-painful foot and hit it somewhere that would hurt.

  I wasn’t sure what a snake’s anatomy looked like, but it had to have a vagina or a set of balls. I’d been hit in the vagina with a baseball when I was a kid, that shit hurt. In retaliation, I’d thrown the ball back at my brother and hit him in the nuts. His reaction was my introduction to the fact that men were pussies and that a hit to the nuts hurt them.

  Unfortunately, my foot hit something that didn’t feel squishy like reproductive organs should feel like. It was warm and I could feel bone.

  What if it’s the body of the last person it ate?

  Just then, a huge crash sounded outside making me jump and scream.

  “Calm, baby,” Noah soothed, still chuckling slightly at whatever the hell he found so hilarious about our life or death situation. “It’s just the storm.”

  “Where’s the snake?”

  If he could get that close to my ear, then where the hell was it?

  “There isn’t a snake, Luna,” he assured me. “And there aren’t any bad guys in the house either. The lights went off with the storm, so I came through to sleep here in case you woke up,” he explained.

  Damnit, that made more sense than a python or anaconda. And the full weight of the situation was crashing down on me now too.

  Desperate not to make myself look a total dork, I made myself sound as sleepy as I could as if I’d just woken up, and said, “Oh, hey, Noah! I was having a bad dream. I think I must have watched Anaconda recently because I was having a dream about it.” I cleared my throat and tried to laugh, but all that came out was a high-pitched squeak.

  There was silence from behind me, and then he started roaring laughing– the big fat turkey.

  “A dream?”

  “Yeah, you know– the little movies that play through your brain when you’re sleeping?” Why this explanation made him laugh harder I didn’t know, but the entire bed was shaking with the force of it. “If you’re just going to keep me awake with your ridiculous…” I struggled to find a word, so I gestured with my hand in his direction. Unfortunately, although he could feel my arm move, he couldn’t see what I was doing because it was so dark which only made him laugh harder. Always one to make the best of things, I gave him the birdy– repeatedly. “You can go back to your own room now!”

  “There’s no electricity, baby,” he rumbled. His laughter had died down a bit, but it was still there.

  Then his words hit.

  “Oh, shit!” It came out choked, the fear behind it blatantly obvious, stopping his laughter altogether.

  “I’m right here,” he stroked his hand down my arm trying to soothe me, but once the panic took hold there was little that would stop it.

  I couldn’t see anything in the dark before, but I really couldn’t see anything now. It felt like all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and the walls were closing in. Every breath I tried to gulp in only filled about five percent of my lungs and my heart had started beating in overtime making it worse.

  “Luna,” I could hear the voice far away, but it wasn’t registering. That one word was followed by more, but all I could do was try to get oxygen into my lungs.

  The faster I breathed, the less I got until my head was spinning.

  I felt myself being moved and figured that the time had come, and wasn’t it just my luck that I didn’t get to see the light that everyone always spoke about in near-death experiences? The irony of the girl who was scared of the dark not having the light to walk toward would have been funny, but I was scared out of my ever-loving mind.

  On my next attempt at a deep gasp of air, something closed over my mouth. It was soft, it was gentle, it was accompanied by a really fantastic smell. I
was now relying on my nose for the oxygen that I couldn’t take with my mouth– and I’d be lying if I said that it beat the sucky light that those other losers had. Mine was way better!

  Deciding to truly make the best of it, I opened my mouth and got to experience the taste too.

  Holy flying monkeys it was better than Cinnabon and Funfetti mixed together.

  Something gently brushed against my tongue and then swept over it. Its movement was confident but gentle at the same time.

  I was lifted slightly and held against something warm and hard. I wasn’t actually sure what my body was doing in response, I could only focus on what it was doing.

  All too soon it disappeared, and I tried to move to find it again. This time, something soft brushed down the side of my nose. Hoping that I’d be able to see what it was that had felt so freaking awesome, I opened my eyes. I could just make out the jawline and eye of someone and the newly found calmness started to freeze inside me.

  And this is why we need oxygen– we don’t do stupid things when we have it. Well, no, that’s a lie. I did, regularly! But I was going to blame kissing Noah Townsend on lack of oxygen when he shoved me away and ran for the hills.

  “It’s just me,” Noah’s familiar voice reassured me, telling me something that I already knew.

  Then what he said hit me, followed by the fact that he wasn’t running out of the door to lock himself away in a panic room.

  My next actions I could also blame on oxygen starvation if they were ever questioned, which I hoped they weren’t.

  “Hmph,” was the noise that left him and traveled into my mouth as I slammed into him, trying to tip him onto his back on the mattress.

  Unfortunately, I misjudged our positions on the bed thinking we were more in the middle of it than we actually were. I’d also thought it would take more force to get him onto his back than it did. When he fell relatively easily, my momentum continued, and I cracked the corner of my forehead off the edge of the bedside table.

  Never a dull moment for me!

  “Shit,” he snapped, moving the palm of his hand to my head.

  Most people would have missed and hit another part of a person when it was pitch black in the room. Not with my luck! Nope– his hand landed right on the damaged and bruised part of my face making me squeal.

  “For the love of fucking Funfetti,” I wailed, doing my best to move my face away from his evil palm.

  “I think you’re bleeding,” he muttered, trying to move me into whatever little light was coming through the window.

  “No, that’s just my brain crying,” I whispered, choosing that moment to go back to sleep.

  7 Noah

  “I’m going to kill you,” Levi hissed into the phone. “One night. One fucking night,” he snarled.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” I explained for the millionth time.

  I’d had to call him at an ungodly hour to give him the news that Luna was having four stitches in her head thanks to the body slam and table head butt incident. Since then, he’d called me at regular intervals to repeat pretty much the same words to me. I say pretty much because sometimes he’d add how he was going to kill me, and other times he’d actually count how many hours it had been since he’d left to when I’d called him with the news.

  “And what were you doing in her bed?”

  This question had the other occupants of the room raising their eyebrows at me with amused looks on their faces, whilst Luna blushed and looked up at the ceiling– or the white dressing on her head. I couldn’t decide which it actually was that she was staring at so hard.

  I’d stopped answering my brother’s calls, as had Luna, after the eighth call. Now, he was calling on other family members phones. They obviously found this amusing, so they answered each and every time and put him on speakerphone so everyone could enjoy it.

  “I already told you that,” I snapped. “There was a storm, the lights went out, I went to check on her,” I left out the parts that followed.

  A heavy sigh came from Luna. “I thought I was being eaten by an anaconda at the same time as us all being under attack. Your brother saved me from it, and now I look like Harry Potter except not in the middle of my forehead.” She suddenly stopped and a huge smile graced her gorgeous face as she looked at me. “Oh shit! Maybe I was being attacked by a basilisk? I really am Harry Potter!”

  “By who?” Tate asked, sounding as confused as the rest of us were.

  “You know, a basilisk,” she repeated like it was obvious what that was.

  “You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Levi muttered from the cell on the table.

  “What’s that?” Tate asked, looking at Ariana who was nodding her head like this could be the real reason like Luna said.

  “The big snake in Harry Potter,” she explained. “It was dark magic, which stands to reason. All the lights went off,” she held up a finger. “There was a wicked storm no one expected,” she held up a second finger. “There was a snake…”

  I interrupted just as she held up her third finger. “That wasn’t a snake, that was me.”

  “Gross!”

  “You think fucking highly of yourself!”

  “Not in front of your mother!”

  “I will kill you!”

  Were all the responses to this from my family. Movement from Luna caught my attention and when I looked at her it was to see her shoulders shaking as she laughed silently.

  “I’m just saying, all of those can be explained by rational reasons.”

  “I still think she could be right,” Ariana shrugged, tapping the screen of her phone. “Look, here’s the information on basilisks on Potterpedia,” she turned the phone toward us, but not one of us focused on it.

  “Potter…” Tate choked out, “Pedia?”

  “Jesus Christ,” Levi snapped down the phone, obviously unable to see what she was holding up, and also obviously totally over the road that this conversation had started to go down. “You’re not Harry Potter,” he continued, making both Luna and Ariana gasp. “And Noah, you sure as shit aren’t the size of a snake,” he said to me, making my eye twitch. I made a mental note to kick his ass when I saw him. “What happened was - you snuck into her bed like a dirty little pervert and she ended up hurt.”

  Archer’s chuckles and Ariana’s “gross,” didn’t go unnoticed. I guess he was saying I really was an anaconda– something which I’d have been prouder of if it hadn’t come from a family member’s mouth.

  “You guys need to find Jesus,” Levi directed this at the two who had vocally responded to the last bit of what he’d said.

  “Levi,” Luna called. “Will you just frigging leave it alone? It was an accident.”

  There was silence in the room as we waited for him to calm down.

  “Okay,” he eventually replied, making us all sigh with relief.

  Just as Archer reached out to end the call on his cell, Levi had the last word. “And you’re not Harry Potter!” And hung up.

  The outraged gasp that came out of her might have been funny if we didn’t all have to lunge at the same time to stop her from either getting the phone or running out the door. Both would have had disastrous consequences. Even as kids, their verbal fights had been brutal. So brutal in fact that if they’d been physical fights, a long stay in hospital would have followed it. Words cut deep! If she’d gotten to one of our vehicles to drive to him, which was another possibility… actually, no, that didn’t bear thinking about. Her driving skills were the stuff of nightmares!

  “I think Erica still has some Funfetti,” Dad said hesitantly, looking pleadingly over at Mom.

  With a haughty sniff, Luna walked over to the door, opened it and motioned impatiently at Mom to lead the way.

  It might have seemed rude, but she didn’t have a disrespectful bone in her body. It was just another step closer to the Luna that we’d known and loved for so many years. It had been happening more and more, but there was always this air of fear or insecurity when she
did things like this before now, regardless of how relaxed she looked.

  This action right here had none of that. It was the response of a confetti cake lover who had self-confidence and who felt secure and safe with the people around her.

  I wasn’t the only one who realized that and saw it for what it was.

  Sounding almost choked, Mom said, “When I’m done, I’m going and buying the whole store out of Funfetti.”

  “Really?” she hobbled out the door behind her, sounding absolutely delighted at the prospect.

  “Hell yes,” Mom’s voice sounded from further down the hallway. “And I’m getting every pot of Funfetti frosting and sprinkles I can find too. White, blue, purple, pink…”

  “It comes in green as well,” Luna added.

  “Whatever they have, I’m getting!”

  The door closing behind them prevented us from hearing whatever else they had to say.

  An idea hit me, and I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone.

  “Whatcha doin’?” Archer asked.

  “Looking on Amazon for Funfetti stuff,” I muttered, then swore when I saw the words on my screen. “Shit!” They had none in stock. Not one thing!

  “Too late,” Tate smirked smugly. “And I got a gift receipt with it, so she knows who it’s all from.”

  Normally, I’d kick his ass, but I had an idea he’d never be able to beat.

  Texting Rich, who was on his way here to pick up a part, I gave him my request and then text Mom to let her know.

  Now to distract Miss. Priss!

  Luna

  “I’m not sure about this,” I repeated for the billionth time from fifty feet in the air. Ok, maybe not fifty, but it felt like it.

  “We’re not doing anything complicated, just walking,” Noah replied, yet again.

  This conversation had been going back and forth for the last hour ever since he’d told me what this afternoon’s plans were. Then, when we’d got to the stables, and he’d thrown me like an Olympian javelin thrower onto the horse’s back, I’d started repeating it over and over again, but in a more panicky tone.