Tainted Gold: Providence Gold Series Book Three

by Moore, Mary B.

  “Did she give you a brain injury too?” Beau asked, looking at me closely.

  “What’s wrong with his name?” Lily whispered, looking almost heartbroken that I didn’t like it.

  Oh, I definitely liked it, and for this reason. “Baby,” I breathed, holding her face in my hands. “It’s called King Ferdinand the chicken. His initials are basically KFC.”

  It took a second for it to register with the rest of them, but after that, the only one not laughing was Lily as she stared in horror at the pet in question.

  What neither of the females had mentioned though, was that KFC wasn’t the only pet she had – something which I found out at that second as a freak of chicken nature walked out of what I’d thought was a tool shed inside another enclosure. What it really was, was a house big enough to hide the King Kong of cocks.

  “Holy shit!” Rich spluttered, taking a step in front of Beau when he saw it. Then again, it’s not like you could miss it because I really wasn’t kidding when I said it was fucking huge. It would fill thirty buckets at KFC and still have pieces left over for people to snack on. “What the fuck is that?”

  Copying his move, I placed myself between Lily and the big beast, trying to get over what I was seeing. “That’s..”

  “Original recipe? Extra crispy?” Rich interrupted, his eyes not leaving the animal as it walked up to the door of its enclosure and stared out at us.

  “Chick-fil-A?” I suggested.

  Sighing, Lily tried to get past me to where it was standing, it’s eyes not leaving us. “His name is Bojangles, and he’s a blue Jersey Giant.”

  Refusing to let her get closer to it, I looked over at Rich who was doing the same with Beau. “Babe, the Giants are New York, but I guess that includes Jersey, too. But all the same, I don’t think you can get away with naming a chicken after…”

  “That’s his breed,” Beau snapped, losing her patience with Rich and shoving him out the way. “What is it with you two?”

  “Have you seen the size of that thing?” Rich asked incredulously. “It’s the size of a fucking dog!”

  I was starting to think my brain had been connected to my dick though, because yet again it took it a stupid length of time to make the connection between the animal’s name, it’s species, and food. “Oh, fuck me,” I muttered, rubbing my eyes with both hands. “You named it after Bojangles, didn’t you?”

  “Actually,” Lily sounded sheepish as she replied, “I named it after the song. It wasn’t until I visited a friend in Charlotte and went to the restaurant last year that I realized my mistake.”

  I wasn’t familiar with the song, but I sure as hell was familiar with Bojangles chicken. “And you didn’t make the connection between King Ferdinand the chicken and KFC until today?”

  Wincing, she absent-mindedly scratched her hand as she looked between the two birds. That was answer enough for all of us.

  “Is there something wrong with it? Like, does it have a thyroid problem or something?” Rich asked, looking back over at chicken Kong.

  “Was it exposed to radiation even?” I added, looking for a way to explain the size of the second chicken.

  “No, it’s the breed. He’s kind of at the max of his growth now,” Lily replied, sounding relieved. No shit, if he grew any bigger, kids could ride on its back.

  Squatting down in front of him, Beau stuck her finger in and started stroking the flappy vagina skin under its chin.

  “That’s called his wattle,” Lily informed us all for some reason.

  “Huh?”

  “You called it flappy vagina skin, so I told you it’s called a wattle.”

  It was no surprise that I’d said it out loud. I was staring into the eyes of a chicken left over from the Jurassic era, with what definitely looked like the skin from a vagina under its beak.

  “How big is he now?” Beau asked, chuckling nervously as the rooster lifted its beak into the air and made some sort of pterodactyl crowing noise.

  Not only did it look creepy, but it sounded creepy too. Apparently Rich was in agreement with this because he looked up at the sky and turned around like he expected a flock of the things to start dive bombing us.

  “He’s twenty-five inches tall, and weighs in at sixteen pounds.”

  It would take a lot of fries and ‘slaw to complete the meal it would make, that’s for sure!

  “Lily got him when he was a baby, too,” Beau turned around from her vagina skin tickling to tell us. “Her mom knew someone who said they’d had baby chickens hatch on their farm, and they didn’t have space for them all…”

  “No wonder,” Rich muttered under his breath.

  Either she was unphased by it, or hadn’t heard it, because Beau continued, “So her mom took one and gave it to her for her birthday.”

  “She also gave me Snickers,” Lily smiled, looking over my shoulder at the side of her house.

  I was going to regret it, I knew I would, but I had to…

  “Who’s Snickers?”

  * * *

  “You have a pet squirrel,” I repeated for the third time, watching the animal as it flew around its enclosure, hidden away at the side of Lily’s house.

  “Gorgeous isn’t he? I have to keep his cage separate from King Ferdinand and Bojangles’s cages because he gets them riled up.”

  Looking at me over her head, Rich raised an eyebrow. “How does he do that?”

  “He was constantly running around…”

  “And he was throwing his nuts at them, too,” Beau added, interrupting Lily.

  Both Rich and I looked back at the animal, a very specific part of the animal at that. It was impossible not to notice them, they were just there. And they were absolutely fucking massive.

  “They’re not always that big,” Lily snapped, seeing exactly what we were looking at. Well, you just couldn’t miss them. How the hell did he move so quickly with balls that size?

  “Was he throwing his actual nuts at them?” I asked, nodding my head downwards to show what I meant.

  “There are female squirrels around just now who are ready to mate,” she huffed, rolling her eyes. “That’s why they’re like that. Normally you can hardly see them.”

  Another look at the nuts and I called bullshit. There’s no way those things went down unless someone let the air out of them, or he had surgery.

  “Why don’t you have normal pets?”

  I mean, what was wrong with a dog or a cat? I wasn’t a cat person per se, but I could see the merits of having one over the pets that Lily had.

  Spinning around and glaring at me, she was about to blast me when a brown pellet went flying past us. “Did he just take a crap and throw it?” Rich wheezed, ducking behind Beau this time.

  As another pellet flew past, followed by another, it became clear that it hadn’t just been his nuts he’d been throwing at the chickens. No wonder they’d lost their shit with him throwing his at them.

  Six

  Lily

  Never work with kids or animals, wasn’t that what they said?

  “Any other pets I need to know about?” Tate asked still laughing.

  May as well get it all out.

  “Mom has a friend who owns a rescue shelter,” I explained slowly. “Last week a truck was pulled over for something, and inside it they found a shipment with a variety of animals in it, including a tiny red fox cub.” His eyebrows shot up at that before lowering into a confused frown. “Come to find out, they were smuggling it for a guy whose kid wanted a pet fox. She took the cub and Mom asked me if I’d be interested in going into the sanctuary and helping out with it. I can’t bring it home because it’s against the law in Texas, but I can help them with looking after it. They also want to talk to me about some of the other animals that were in the van, and Mom said ok.”

  Tate blinked a couple of times before asking, “Why would she do that?”

  Time to divulge a weird fact about me to the father of the baby I was carrying, something which my parents still di
dn’t know about.

  “I have a habit of collecting pets.”

  “No shit,” he shot back, not missing a beat. “You’ve got a horse-sized chicken, another one whose species is a sick joke, and a squirrel who has massive balls and throws shit at people.”

  Well, when he put it like that…

  Not giving him the satisfaction of agreeing with his summary of my animals, I forged on. “So, I need to go and see them today.”

  “You’re fostering a fox cub? Or one of the other animals found with it?” he questioned slowly. “And what exactly were those other animals?”

  “Like I said, it’s against the law for the fox, but the shelter specializes in animals like that, so that’s where it’ll stay. I’m not quite sure what else was found, but it’s likely I’ll be looking after something.” What the hell did he think I was going to do after telling him the story of where I was going and why? I could come out with random shit, but to just tell him that and there not to be a point to it would be random even for me.

  “An unknown animal?”

  “Yes.”

  Tilting his head, he frowned. “Can you do that?”

  “Do what?”

  “Foster any animal.”

  Had he not been listening? “Yes, you can do that depending on what area you’re in, their laws, and what animal it is. Some people accidentally have pet foxes because they become tame and kind of move in, but to actually own one here is a no. That said, if one of the other animals needs a home I’m open to it.”

  He didn’t say a word as he digested this. I figured I’d wait it out and let him get his head around it all when his eyes moved to the corner of the room and became unfocused. People helped to rehabilitate unusual animals all over the world every day. Sometimes they were assholes who’d smuggled the animal or bought it from smugglers, sometimes they were animal enthusiasts who wanted to protect a vulnerable creature from harm. Other times they were there to help get it to peak health so it could be released back into the wild – there were a lot of examples, but regardless, it wasn’t unusual.

  “How long will you have it for?” he eventually asked.

  Shrugging, I flicked a piece of fluff off the couch with my finger. “Depends on the species… and other things.”

  “Like what?”

  “If I keep it.”

  I had a feeling we were gearing up for a big argument over this, one where he’d tell me I couldn’t do this or get another pet, and one where I would most definitely tell him to shove that up his ass because he couldn’t tell me what to do. Knowing someone for five minutes didn’t give them the right to dictate to you what you did, regardless of whether or not you were carrying their baby.

  Thankfully, the argument never happened, at least not between us that was.

  “You asshole!” Beau screeched from the kitchen, followed by a splat.

  “Hey, you almost hit me with that,” we heard Rich snap back.

  “Well, excuse the fuck outta me. I’ll make sure the next one hits you right in the…”

  Whatever she was going to say never came out because there was another splat followed by a yell, then a splat, then a yell.

  “Stop throwing boiled eggs at me, woman!”

  “Woman? Woman?”

  Now, it could be said that I hadn’t exactly known Beau all that long in the grand scheme of things, but in the time I’d known her, I’d never heard her sounding the way she did then. It was a cross between angry, hysterical, and tears.

  When we’d come in from introducing the men to the animals, and escaping from Snickers escapades, they’d shooed us into the living room while they made us something to eat. It had all looked copacetic, but apparently that had changed in the ten minutes we’d been apart.

  I heard a hiss and looked back over at Tate who mouthed, “Throwing boiled eggs?”

  Shrugging, I bit my lip trying not to laugh at the look on his face. He looked torn between laughter and disappointment. The latter most likely because he’d said repeatedly that he was hungry after we’d come in from the garden.

  “Are you ok? Do you need a hand?” I called out, wanting to make sure she was ok, but not wanting to intrude. I didn’t know what their issue was, but I wanted them to work it out for her sake, and his. I might have snapped at him when he’d first arrived, but Rich seemed like a nice guy and he worked with and was close to Tate, so I had to assume we’d be seeing a lot of him if Tate was going to be around for the baby.

  “Oh, I’m so ok. In fact, I’m the most ok I’ve been in a long time,” she yelled back, sounding like she was now having a blast. “Probably best to stay out of here. I wouldn’t want you to get hit.”

  Both Tate and I looked at each other with wide eyes.

  “Rich, you cool?” he asked his friend who had been silent since we’d last heard him.

  “Yeah!” Was all he said back.

  When the splats and yells continued from the kitchen, Tate got up and grabbed my hand. “Wanna come eat with me, pretty girl?” he whispered and then bent down so he was face to face with my vagina. “Breakfast for my baby. Whatever you want.”

  My heart almost flew out of my chest when he did that and then plummeted when I realized that we still needed to have a chat about the baby. I couldn’t understand why he believed it was his and why he was so cool about it. I mean, I wasn’t upset about it, far from it. I guess I was just waiting for him to turn around and call a TV show to do a DNA test or something.

  I almost tripped over my feet when I looked back over my shoulder down the hallway to my kitchen as he steered me toward the door. “Where are we going?”

  Ignoring my question, he yelled over his shoulder, “Y’all clean up after yourselves. I’m taking Lily for breakfast.”

  After the duo assured us they would, we walked out the door, and I placed the fate of my stomach in Tate’s hands.

  Here’s what you learn if you read books and watch movies – vague answers are never good answers, or at least they don’t lead to good shit. There are arguments, psychos, broken shit, you name it.

  Or, in my case, the first sign that you’re pregnant, aside from having no period obviously, reared its ugly head with a vengeance.

  * * *

  One hour and almost a death later when the tainted asshole denied me my coffee…

  “Both Noah and Madix told me you weren’t allowed it,” the big shit face repeated as he moved around his kitchen making the best smelling food I’d been around in a long time. Figures he’d be able to do this too, it was like he could do everything for fuck's sake.

  Yes, I was in a pissy mood. I’d been surviving on coffee since I was ten and had been accepted onto the junior diving team at my school. Four out of five mornings a week we had to be up before the ass crack of dawn to get to training before school. This obviously took a lot of energy, and on top of it we had endurance training with light ankle weights on when we went off the board to help us build up the ability to keep our legs straight before we hit the water. Sounds brutal, but it built up your stomach and thigh muscles so you didn’t wilt like cooked spaghetti during a dive. Anyway, without coffee to see me through it, I would have died.

  I didn’t live without my joe. And if he kept getting in the way of me and the pot of coffee on the side, he wouldn’t live either.

  “I don’t care what they said,” I growled, yet again. “If they told you that for fatherhood you had to have your pubes permed, would you?” He shot a curious glance over his shoulder at me. “Or, if you had to have them braided with bells put on them, would you do that?”

  “Why are we discussing my pubic hair?”

  “It’s an example, asswipe.” It’s at this juncture I should probably say that I hadn’t been deprived of coffee ever since that first cup, so I had no control over what was coming out of my mouth because I didn’t even know what was going to come out of it.

  “I’ve got some decaf k-cups somewhere. I’ll hunt them out and you can…”

  “Don�
��t say it. Don’t even suggest it!” I warned.

  Turning around to face me, he crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me. I was being somewhat dramatic as I supported the top of my body on the counter of the island in his kitchen like I couldn’t hold my body up, but not by far.

  I’d never seen anything like the counter top under my cheek, which when you looked at it this close up was like varnished streaky concrete. It was awesome. Then again, I now knew that Tate had a kick-ass house. It was a barn conversion on steroids. He’d told me as we drove over here that it had been the original barn for the land, and he’d loved the outside of the structure so he’d paid out the ass to have it made into a house for him. There were tall ceilings, beautiful wooden floors, and paneled glass floor to ceiling windows. His kitchen was thankfully separated from his living room, something which I appreciated because who wanted the smell of dinner soaking into their couch, and it had space for two dining areas in it.

  Then there was the lounge, which was flipping huge, with a wooden staircase that suited the house leading up to the four bedrooms upstairs. I vaguely remembered some of it from our night together, but not much. The bourbon was to blame on the way in, and my randy vagina was to blame for the speed that I ran out of it the next morning making me miss how awesome it all was.

  “Is it really that bad?” he asked, pulling me out of my musings about his house.

  “Yes,” I whined, smacking the inside of one arm. “My veins don’t even come to the surface when I don’t have coffee in my body. Look!” I slapped the area again for emphasis. “They don’t know which way is up. In fact, I think my whole body shuts down without it. It doesn’t know what it’s meant to be doing, or even what it’s there for.”

  I watched his lips twitch as he fought not to smile at my predicament. He could laugh, he wasn’t being executed.

  Eventually, after a gazillion years, he put me out of my misery. Just. “I’ll make you a weak coffee. Until we see the doctor and get some answers about it from them, someone whose job it is to know a pregnant woman’s body, then you’ll have to cut back and drink weak ass ones. Deal?”