Tainted Gold: Providence Gold Series Book Three

by Moore, Mary B.

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “I’m counting how much longer I’ve got left until this baby shoots out of my vagina.”

  The sound of chairs screeching on the wooden floors was loud, but apparently not loud enough for Beau to not hear what I’d said. Either that, or she could read lips.

  Just as everything quietened down and the lyrics to Sweet Child Of Mine became easier to hear, Beau yelled, “You’re pregnant?”

  That was when I heard a, “What?” followed by the smack of flesh on flesh, and then the thud of something heavy hitting the floor.

  Confused, I turned around and saw Tate kneeling on the floor, with one of the regulars, Pervy McPervertson, real name Rob Robertson, standing next to him, grinning with blood coming out his mouth.

  “Gotcha, bitch,” he sneered, snorting in a mouth of nose gunk and blood.

  Tate’s eyes slowly lifted to meet mine, and then faster than I thought was possible when you were a mere human (versus an Avenger made of steel and superpowers), he stood up and hit Rob with an uppercut to the chin that sent him flying backwards, landing on a wooden table which split in half.

  The table had just so happened to belong to Rich who rolled his eyes and moved back in time for Rob to land on the floor instead of on his legs.

  “You’re pregnant?” Beau yelled, getting the attention of everyone now that the fight was over.

  Looking back at Tate, I saw him looking at my stomach like he could see the pregnancy through my clothes.

  Porcupine quills up my asshole. Welp, there goes the issue of breaking it to him… thirty years earlier than I’d planned.

  Tate

  Five minutes previously…

  Lily had been serving a guy I’d gone to school with, Rob Robertson, when I’d first walked in. He’d had a worrying love of alcohol when we’d been in high school, a worrying love of alcohol when he’d come to graduation drunk, and he’d been drinking ever since. He was also a pain in the ass and a handsy fucker with the ladies.

  Walking up to the bar, I’d caught his shoulder just as Lily had taken a step away from where she’d been standing focused on her drink, and he’d leaned over the countertop to leer at her ass.

  Swinging around to look at me, he’d lifted his hand to high five me. “Check out the ass on that. You could fuck her all night, right?”

  Thankfully, she hadn’t heard it as she walked past us, lost in her thoughts walking toward a table where a woman was sitting glaring at Rich. That’s all I saw of her, because I was too busy watching my own woman to really take onboard who Rich had pissed off now.

  That was when a waft of her perfume hit me, and I suddenly remembered a shit load more about our night together. Her mouth on my cock, my mouth on her pussy, what it tasted like, what her nipples tasted like, how she felt on the outside, felt like on the inside…

  “Those tits too, more than a handful. They could bounce in my face all night long. Bet she’s tighter than fuck,” Rob sneered, grabbing his crotch and thrusting it at her behind her back.

  That got my attention. “Shut the fuck up,” I hissed, getting closer to him.

  Either he didn’t get the warning that was clear in my tone, or he didn’t give a shit, because he carried on. “She’s a class piece though, bets you gotta spend some cash for that gash.”

  I was done.

  Pulling back my fist, I let it fly, hitting him right in the mouth and watching as blood trickled down his chin as he turned back to face me. Rearing back, he let his own fist fly, missing my face and hitting my shoulder which sent me into the chair behind me.

  In every bar when there’s a fight, people do two things. They not only move themselves out the way, but they move their drinks out the way and protect those things like they’re made of gold, which is what happened on this occasion too. That meant that for a matter of seconds, the screeching of the feet of chairs on the floor filled the bar, masking the sound my fist made when it connected with Rob’s gut.

  When it stopped, I heard the opening lyrics of Sweet Child of Mine and had a second to mourn the fact I’d missed the opening guitar bit of the song, but that ended when I heard a woman screech, “You’re pregnant?” from the table that Lily was sitting at. And I knew it was that table because I could see out of the corner of my eye that they were the only women in that area now because the others had moved closer to the door.

  Just as I went to turn my head slightly further and a step toward her, Bastard McFuckerson’s fist hit me in the jaw and my legs gave out, leaving me on my knees on the floor.

  I was a Townsend, and Hurst Townsend didn’t give his genes to a pussy, so all it took was two blinks where I inspected the grain of the wood while my head cleared. The clearing was also helped by Rob upping the ante on how much a fuckwad he was. “Gotcha, bitch!”

  Making sure Lily was out of the way if he fell, I stood up and hit him in the jaw with an uppercut that had downed men bigger than him on a couple of occasions. When you were a Townsend, you learned to fight properly. When you weren’t the oldest out of a large amount of Townsend kids, you learned how to fight properly and effectively, so it wasn’t a surprise when he dropped down to the floor out cold.

  “You’re pregnant?” I heard again, but I was already pivoting to look back at Lily.

  Looking down at her stomach, I tried to figure out what I was feeling through the billions of thoughts and emotions going through me.

  She’d been tight, really tight. But I also remembered wearing a condom…

  Oh, fuck. Had I used the one from my wallet?

  Thinking hard, I groaned and tipped my head back when I remembered that I had – the condom my friend had given me when I was fourteen. We’d thought we were the shit, and when he’d decided he was joining the Army when he graduated, we’d decided it was bros before hos and those were our bro-ho good luck charms.

  That meant, I’d based our contraceptive safety on a condom that was at least eight years old.

  I was such a dick!

  As if knocking one asshole out tonight alongside finding out I was going to be a dad wasn’t enough, the next pain in my ass walked through the crowd of people looking between Rob and Lily in shock, not knowing what was more interesting to focus on.

  “She’s having my baby, y’all!” Chris, Lily’s ex yelled, holding his arm in the air.

  Hearing that, I blinked, wondering if Rob had maybe knocked something offline when he’d punched me. I hadn’t considered that at all.

  But then, Lily hadn’t seemed like she was interested in him to begin with, let alone on that night when we’d hooked up…

  “I never touched your dick,” Lily snapped. “We were together for five freaking weeks. Five, if you can even consider a couple of dates two people being together! And I saw it while you were sticking it to Carly and I can confirm,” she added nodding at all of us, “that the fact you’re acting like such a huge cock right now, is the complete opposite of the one you’ve got hidden away in your pants.”

  His face went gray as he looked around, and then he took a step toward her intending to say something back, but as always there was someone with a quicker mind than he had ready to say something.

  “Eat shit and die, asshole,” Annie yelled from behind the bar, having turned the music off so he could hear her. “She wouldn’t touch your specker of a pecker if it was made from diamonds.”

  “This is true,” the woman with Lily added. “Although, judging from the look on his face, his dick was made of them.” She pointed at me.

  I might have been shocked to shit, but when Chris charged at me, I started swinging. Thankfully though, Rich took my back when Chris’s friend jumped into the fight too. After that, the two of us took each other’s backs, and landed more hits than we took. I hated fighting with a passion, but this just had to be done.

  Not exactly the normal way one celebrates one's impending fatherhood, but that was my kid in her belly, I was sure of it, and no way was he getting near it.


  Three

  Lily

  There are many things in life that make you feel uncomfortable as hell. A trip to get your vagina checked, a man being the one checking it, your ex trying to lay claim to the baby you’re carrying when his dick is probably more diseased than a sewer, the fact you never touched the aforementioned dick meaning he was either delusional or believed in immaculate conception, sitting on a plastic waiting chair that felt like it’d been made from concrete sourced from the fiery pits of Hades, probably a doctor sticking their finger up your ass and wiggling it around to find something, getting a bead stuck up your right nostril when you were three and a doctor who had eaten then bulbs of garlic blowing up the other nostril to get it out, getting another bead stuck in your ear three days later, toothache, braces and sitting opposite a large group of people who are all looking at you like you knew the whereabouts in France of Max Valentin’s golden owl.

  “Have any of them blinked yet?” Beau whispered out the corner of her mouth, doing exactly what I was doing and looking anywhere but at the large group of Townsends.

  We’d tried leaving just after they’d all gotten here, but then some overly helpful shithead from behind the desk had told us that our ‘boyfriends’ would be released shortly.

  This is where trying to do a good deed never goes unpunished.

  Someone had called the po-po when the fight between Chris and Tate had broken out. By the time they’d arrived, the big guy called Rich and a couple of Chris’s friends were beating the shit out of each other too. When they’d tried cuffing Chris, he’d yelled about how he was just trying to be a good father and protecting his unborn child from a psychopath. Tate had lost his shit and gone after him again, while Chris had screamed and tried to hide behind me. Two patrons had stopped him in case he pushed me or hurt me so Chris had then started hitting them too. This meant that more patrons had jumped in, and you had another war breaking out.

  Feeling guilty for being the reason that Tate had been punched twice, first by Rob and then by Chris, I’d told the po-po that my boyfriend was just protecting me and our child from my ex who was turning into a bit of a delusional stalking bunny boiler. I’d also made sure to point out to everyone that at no point had the penis attached to Chris’s body been inserted into the vagina on my own.

  Chris had then said something that I hadn’t heard which had Tate going psycho again, dragging a police officer behind him as he attacked Chris, only this time with his feet which were the only part of him he had free movement of.

  One of Chris’s friends had said something about Beau and Rich had also lost his shit again, so Beau had tried a similar reasoning but without the baby added in, obviously.

  All fifteen men involved had been arrested and taken in the cars with pretty flashing lights to the station to be processed and questioned. We’d followed them, along with a further thirty-three patrons, to give our statements because Chris insisted he was pressing charges.

  Fortunately, one of the men arrested was Rob who had said something to Chris once they were situated in their temporary new residences at the station, resulting in a fight in the cells between the men, which went in Tate and Rich’s favors.

  Unfortunately, during all of this, the Townsends had been called down, and as we’d been going to leave, the most helpful man in the world yelled out that our boyfriends were going to be released. This meant we had to sit and wait, under the examination of five billion Townsend eyes, and that we were still waiting two hours later.

  “I don’t know, that piece of gum on the carpet by the door looks too interesting,” I mumbled back, nodding in its direction. Actually, I was looking out the door at where freedom lay, but I didn’t want to say it out loud in case one of them heard.

  Both of our heads turned in the direction of a door opening loudly – unlike the Townsends who didn’t take their eyes off us – but our hopes were dashed when out came the officer who had arrested Tate. Seeing us still waiting, he walked over and dropped me right in the biggest, deepest vat of shit in the history of mankind – well, unless you were cheating and your sex accomplice walked up to you in front of your partner and said thanks for the hard banging last night. Just to say, I had to imagine that would be a bigger vat of shit to wade in.

  “Congratulations on the baby, ma’am,” he announced as he walked over. “Gotta say, I’ve known Tate since he was just a little ‘un and I don’t think I’m alone when I say this,” he gestured with his thumb to the crowd behind him. “But I think we all thought it best he never reproduce. That said, that guy is taking the news better than I did. He’s back there talking to Suave about diapers, butt cream, Gerber’s baby clothes and wanting it to be a boy.” Not waiting for a response, the over sharer then turned and waved at the Townsends and brought them into the conversation too. “Congrats y’all. I fainted when I found out I was gonna be a daddy and made her go to three doctors to make sure. That boy ’o yours is prouder than a peacock, though. Why, I said just now to her,” he used the same thumb in my direction now, not seeing the glare I was directing at his back, “he’s talking about all things baby. Like he’s a walking pregcyclopedia.”

  “A what?” Levi asked, and then rubbed his face with both hands. “Jesus, I thought we discussed getting his balls done before he hit puberty?”

  “No, you wanted to call a vet in and get what Rocky had done to his balls done to Tate’s,” a woman hissed at him. There was one Townsend I hadn’t had the honor of meeting or even seeing in passing, Tate’s mom Erica, so I figured this was her. “We didn’t agree, plus it was illegal.”

  “What about the pill? Don’t they make them for guys now?” Levi countered, flicking a quick glance in my direction.

  “Well, it’s too late now,” the woman replied, looking happy about that as she grinned at me and looked at my stomach.

  Wasn’t she supposed to be calling me a liar? Calling up a chat show to get a DNA and lie detector test done?

  “A pregcyclopedia,” the po-po with the big mouth repeated, not to be deterred from his running commentary. “Ya know, What to Expect When You’re Expecting, Pregnancy for Men, The Day-by-Day Pregnancy Book and things like that but all in one.”

  “Stop talking,” Beau snapped, getting all of our attention. “Jesus, man. You’ve obviously shared news that these people had no knowledge of, yet you’re still here sharing more.”

  “Yeah,” Levi agreed, nodding his head. “How do we even know it’s his?”

  And there it was… Maybe I shouldn’t have tempted fate?

  A loud growl had all of us turning our heads to see Tate looking more pissed off than I would have ever thought he could be. He was a bit like a kitten or a puppy, even when he’d been rolling around the floor fighting. Yet, there he was, his fists clenched as he glared at his brother and walked toward him.

  My mom was an amazing woman, and I loved her to death. She worked hard, but never let fame go to her head, preferring to live a ‘normal’ life, and not once forcing us to be a part of the media hype that surrounded her. I’d grown up with people quizzing me about what it was like to be the daughter of a famous actress, but to me she was just Mom. An amazing mom who was on TV.

  But, I was about to realize that Tate had a mom as awesome as my own when the woman Levi had been talking to previously got up and started smacking her son with a woman’s magazine.

  “Take that back, you little gooch grabber,” she snapped, hitting him in between words. “I don’t know what kind of women you do…” she broke off looking for the word.

  I felt for her, no one wants to think of their kids or family members having sex.

  “Stick your spangled wanger in?” the guy who I knew as Archer helpfully suggested with a shrug.

  “Yeah, that. But, if your brother is certain it’s his, then I would think you should give him some credit and congratulate him, instead of insulting this poor girl. And you know Petey, you think his daughter wouldn’t be cut from the same cloth as him? Her mom’s Rachel James, th
e Rachel James. What does she need to lie about who the daddy of her baby is?”

  Thinking about it, I had to sympathize with Levi. I was a trusting person, but in this instance, I don’t think I’d have been as trusting as the woman who I was still assuming was Tate’s mom.

  “I’m just sayin’…” Levi tried, but was cut off with a hand being held up in his face.

  “Well, don’t. You sit there and just say nothing.” Turning to look at me, she grinned again. “She looks like a lovely girl, and we’ve met her daddy quite a few times and really liked him. Lilith, right?” she asked me, giving me an encouraging nod.

  Leaning back and moving slightly behind Beau, I nodded back. “Yeah, uh Lily. People call me Lily. Lilith is a bit old fashioned, so Lily sounds better. More modern, ya know. But you can call me Lilith if you want. Or Lily. Or Lil’.”

  “Is there something in the air in here?” Beau asked us all, looking around. “First the po-po overshares. Then asswipe there shows his ass. Now you’re doing it too!”

  I tried pinching her side, but she stood up suddenly, leaving me to either face plant where her ass had been, or catch myself with the arm that had been moving to pinch her. Seeing as how I didn’t want to put my face anywhere near where her ass had been, or who knows how many other asses, I chose to catch myself and missed her by centimeters.

  “Okay then, Lily,” Mrs. Townsend smiled, not reacting to my current position or the rambling that I’d just done. “I…” she was interrupted by the man who’d been sitting beside her clearing his throat loudly. “We would love to get to know you. I know your daddy hasn’t been well either, so you must be run off your feet.”

  Those were two statements that had no bearing on each other when you heard them said in the same sentence the first time you met the mother of the guy who knocked you up, minutes after they’d been released from a prison cell. So, I took them as that and smiled and nodded, thinking that was the end of it. We’d be like passing ships in the night, only catching up about the baby and things like that.