“Where are you going?” Ren growled at him.
“To call the Guinness Book of World Records,” he said, continuing out the door without pausing once.
“It was the size of my thumbnail,” Ebru huffed, making me wonder if her eyesight was good enough to do medicine. That spider was fucking huge.
I needed to tell Tony that someone finally had him beat on the spider Oscars. Damn, I wish I’d recorded it.
Two weeks later…
I woke up to a sliver of sun coming through the curtains of the sliding doors at the far end of the bedroom. Because my left side was busted, I always slept on my right side, facing Ren, with my leg and arm on one of the body pillows. Opening my eyes, I saw that his side of the bed empty. His dad had been talking about an issue on the west side of the ranch, so I guess he’d gone to help out.
He never left me for long, but when he did he rang regularly to check on me. He’d also been there for all of my doctor’s and hospital appointments. Last week, I’d had the staples in my leg and arm removed. My surgeon had tried a new approach when he’d cast me and had cut out a window so that the wounds could be checked regularly. He’d then wound an Ace bandage over the panels once they were put back in the windows. Once the staples were removed, though, they’d put a new cast on to hold it all in place properly, so they’d cut my temporary cast off during this appointment.
When the technician had walked over with what looked like a small handheld circular saw, Ren had immediately stood up in between us and lain down the law.
“Hell no!”
“This is what we use to remove casts. It’s perfectly safe,” the technician had tried to reason.
“Yeah, and what if you sneeze? Or someone comes in and says boo? You’ll jump, and she’ll be a limb down,” he’d argued. “Not that I wouldn’t love you whatever way you are, baby,” he’d punctuated with a wink.
“Ren, over here, please.” I had pointed to my right side.
“Baby, have you seen this thing? Bruce used one of these once when he was cutting down wood for the fence, and you’ve seen the tip of his pointy finger, or lack of one.” He’d held up his hand with the index finger folded down at the top to make a point—or lack of one, no pun intended.
“Honey, a horse broke free and jumped next to his head, surprising him. It’s not the same thing,” I had tried to reason with him.
“And you’re telling me something similar wouldn’t ever happen here?” He had still been holding up his hand with the tip of the index finger folded down.
The technician had coughed beside us, getting Ren’s attention again. “Mr. Townsend, I’ve cut yours and your brothers’ casts off since you were little. Not once did I cut you, and never have I cut anyone.”
Ren had scowled harder and then stomped over to my side, watching the technician like a hawk as he cut my casts off. I’d thought he was going to pass out when they took the staples out and covered the wounds with a dressing, though. He’d kept saying that it was ‘barbaric’ as the doctor took the staples out with a special device. By the time the end was in sight and they were putting new casts on, I had been ready to kill him and had kept wondering why I hadn’t asked Colette or Christie to bring me. Oh yeah, because I was never given a choice.
After visiting Luke again, I’d spoken to his doctor; he was getting stronger. My family, Ren’s family, and bizarrely Isla’s best friends—who were living in her house while she was away—had kept him company the whole time, so he was never alone. I had left the hospital feeling like a weight had been lifted off my shoulders. Ren had still been grumping about the barbaric cast removals when we’d gotten home, but had stopped when I’d tried to get out of Hulk myself.
Smiling at the memory, I moved my hand and froze when something sparkled on it. Lifting my hand, I blinked a couple of times, but it stayed there on my finger, never disappearing or losing its sparkle. Why did I have a diamond on my finger? Did Ren…no, men ask, don’t they?
“Ah, good, you’re awake,” Cole said from the stairs, scaring the shit out of me. “Whatcha doing?” He jumped onto the bed, bouncing me up in the air. Thankfully it didn’t hurt as much as the spider incident.
“Do you see this?” I moved my hand from side to side, looking at the different sparkles.
“What? Holy shit, when did you…?” He jumped back up again and pointed at my hand.
“I don’t know…”
Walking up to me, he bent over and sniffed me. “I don’t smell alcohol. Did you get drunk?”
“No!”
“Roofie?”
“No.”
“High?”
“For crying out loud, Cole, no no no no. I woke up, and this was on my hand!”
“Wait, so he didn’t actually propose?”
Shaking my head, I looked back at the ring and finally took in the design. It was a very simple thick band in white gold with a large enough diamond that you couldn’t miss it and would immediately think ‘ooooh.’ Not so big that it looked tacky or people immediately thought ‘fake’ and ‘flashy bastard,’ though. I loved it!
Looking back up at Cole and seeing the pissed-off look on his face, I figured it might be best to stop talking.
“You need the toilet?” he asked, sharply changing the subject. I was past the point of feeling embarrassed by him seeing me first thing in the morning or helping me to the toilet on bad days. We’d done it so many times.
“Um, no, I can do it.”
“I’ll be back in a minute, stay up here,” he lectured me for the billionth time as he headed toward the stairs.
One time, I’d tried to do the stairs myself. The way they’d acted, it was like I’d been swinging from the banister. Yes, I’d lost my balance, and if Cole hadn’t been there I would have fallen, but it had been his fault for yelling at me as I’d taken a step down and scaring me in the first place. I didn’t have it in me mentally to argue that with him today, though, I had a rock on my finger to think about.
Ren
“I think we’re pretty much done here, son.” Dad stood, dusting his hands on his jeans. We’d been fixing some fences and following the tracks of the vehicle that had broken them in the dirt. Brett’s undercover security guys finished up placing hidden sensors on some of the beams before they put a thick wire above the fence that would surround the entire perimeter of the ranch. It would not only carry a small current, but would work like sensors and alert us if it was breached.
We weren’t taking any chances after finding out about the explosives and that there may be two different parties involved in what was going on. The day after finding out about Andy, I’d broken the news to Maya. As expected, she had been upset and had felt guilty for his death. She’d withdrawn for a couple of days after it, and I had given her that space, not pressuring her to talk. She was coming back to her normal self now, though, which was a relief for all of us.
As Dick was still a wild card and had shown an interest in Maya, Mace and I had gone to visit him, but no one had been at his home. His neighbor, Dorothy, had told us that he hadn’t been seen for at least a week, as he’d gone away on business. We were definitely going to tie up that loose end when he got home, though.
Following Dad back to the truck, we both came to a stop as Cole pulled up on one of the ATVs, looking pissed, with Dash chasing behind him, no doubt looking for some special one-on-one time.
“What’s up, son?” Dad shouted as Cole jumped off the ATV and stormed towards us. “I thought you were meant to be with Maya?”
“What, she doesn’t deserve romance and flowers?” he snapped as he got up close to me and stuck his finger in my face.
“What the fuck are you on about?”
“You just threw the ring on her finger, you twat. Did you not think that she would want, or at the very least deserve, a moment so special that she’d remember it forever and tell y’all’s kids about how their daddy proposed to her?”
I looked over at Dad and saw him wince and shake his head as
he looked down at his feet. Scratching the back of my neck, I started to realize I’d fucked up slightly. “Uhhh, was what I did bad?”
“Oh no,” Cole said, walking away from me and circling around. “No, when your daughter asks her how her daddy proposed so that she can measure every man against him, Maya can say ‘Well, sweetie, half my body was in a cast, and one day I woke up alone with a ring on my finger.’ Then your daughter can find herself a guy who doesn’t even bother with a ring, or hell, even a wedding!” He was getting more irate as he spun out the story. I’ll admit, I was starting to feel pissed at the thought of my baby settling for a cheap shit like that.
“What the fuck am I meant to do? I don’t want my girl settling for some half-assed cock nut who can’t even be bothered to give her a memorable proposal.” It hit me what I was saying and that that was exactly what I’d given Maya. “I mean, you read all that romantic shit, give me ideas.” I was starting to panic.
“Take her to the desert and dress up as a sheikh,” Cole said, waving his arms around. “Or take her to Greece and be a Greek billionaire. That always works.”
Both Dad and I stopped and stared at him as he spoke, wondering just where exactly we had all gone wrong when he was a kid. I got that he liked to read, but dressing up as a sheikh in the desert or as a Greek billionaire? Dude needed an add-a-dick-to-me done, because right now I was pretty certain he was a majority pussy.
“I gotta go,” I said, running to the SUV with Dash, leaving Dad to take a rough ride back with Cole on the ATV. I had damage control to do.
Throughout the whole twenty-minute drive home, I had idea after idea going through my head. The most important thing I had to do, I had to right now. Pulling up in front of the house and seeing a couple of the undercover security guys ‘fixing’ things around the area, I ran into the house and up the stairs as fast as I could. Maya was lying on the bed with the remote in her hand while her phone beeped with text messages beside her.
“Ren? Are you…?”
I cut her off, lunging for her broken arm with the ring on it. I pulled it off and walked away. Crisis averted; now to plan the proposal.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Maya
F ive days later…
I’d been struggling with the guilt of Andy’s death. When Ren had told me, I’d cried because he hadn’t deserved to die. Now that the shock had worn off, all I could feel was guilt, like it was my fault somehow.
Everyone had been supportive, and I’d had many long talks about it and was starting to accept that what had happened wasn’t my fault. It was just hard to understand why someone would kill him.
I was currently on FaceTime with Amy while Tony was getting us lunch, as she and Lucy now checked in daily.
“So he just took the ring off your finger without a word and walked away?” Amy looked back at me from the iPad screen.
“He ran in, took the ring, and walked out whistling, Ames.” I shook my head. It had been five days since Ringgate, as I’d started calling it, and he hadn’t mentioned it again.
“Maya, I know you love the guy and all, and yeah, he’s really, really hot, but I mean, if y’all have babies, are they gonna have tails or walk in circles or something?” Amy asked, looking at me wide-eyed and twirling her finger around in the air beside her head. “The guy sounds all kinds of special, ya know?”
I was about to defend him, but then a mental image of Cole getting his hand stuck in a pickle jar the other day, then getting it stuck again when we asked him what happened and he showed us, suddenly came to mind. Maybe she had a point? Nah, Cole was just…unique. Brett was fine; maybe a bit scary, but he was smart and sane. And the youngest brother, Tom, and Layla sounded like they were okay too. What if it skipped siblings?
“Listen, I gotta go and get back to Hades. My, if you decide to marry the guy, then I’ll love your kids however they may turn out.”
“Alright, sweetie, don’t let the bastards get you down.” I worried about her; she’d lost so much weight and looked exhausted.
“Sure thing, love, good luck!”
I was going to need it, but right now I needed a nap. I was meant to be having lunch, but I was exhausted. Tony won’t mind; he’ll just eat it himself, so long as he doesn’t look at the soup’s ingredients.
I must have only been asleep for an hour, because the sun wasn’t shining through the glass doors at the end of the bedroom. I’d been on the ranch long enough to tell the time of day from the placing of the sun in the sky. Moving my head, I grimaced when I felt a piece of paper stuck to my cheek and recognized Ren’s messy writing on it.
Meet me outside, R XXXX
Was he having a laugh? This was the guy who practically dialed 911 as soon as I got within three feet of the stairs, and now he was asking me to go down two sets of stairs?
“Miserable bastard,” I muttered, trying to push myself up, remembering at the last second that I needed to roll to the other side first. “This had better be good.”
Picking up both crutches, I Forrest Gump’d my ass, as Cole called it, to the stairs and threw one crutch down to the bottom. Carefully, I made my way down by holding on for dear life to the banister with my good hand and balancing on the other crutch, before grumping my way down towards the next set of stairs and starting all over again. By the time that I got to the front door, I was ready to tear Ren a new one. I was relieved to have my freedom after so many weeks of his dick-tatorship—another Cole-ism; he even had a photo of a dick-shaped potato for a visual. But at the same time, those stairs were no joke.
Throwing open the front door, I stopped when I saw a metal enclosure with the tiniest little pig I’d ever seen snuffling around at the food in it.
Before I could do anything, Ren walked up the porch steps and walked towards it with his hands in his jean pockets.
“She’s called Pippa,” he said, bending down to pick the tiny little baby up before snuggling it under his chin.
“What is it?”
He grinned as the piglet snuffled in his neck, making random noises here and there as he scratched its back and stomach.
“It’s a Royal Dandie micro pig. She’s six and a half weeks old, weaned onto solid foods, loves having her chin and belly scratched, and has already started her housebreaking training.” He flipped her onto her back and went to town on her tummy.
Hobbling up to her, I lifted my hand to scratch under her chin and pulled back when she looked at me with the most beautiful eyes that I’d ever seen. This was apparently not what she wanted, because she started making squealing noises and tried to flip herself to get to me or to run away, I wasn’t sure which. I’d always wanted a micro pig after meeting my friends’ three micro potbellied pigs, but I didn’t think I’d ever told Ren this before.
“Go sit, Maya, and you can cuddle her all you want.” Ren jerked his chin in the direction of the chair behind me and gently nudged me to get me moving.
Hobbling over, I sat down carefully and looked up at him expectantly when the piglet wasn’t immediately put into my arms. He was still holding her and grinning, and didn’t stop until he realized I was still waiting.
“Sorry,” he muttered, looking so like Cole with the sheepish look on his face that it was almost comical—until you got to know Cole, and then it was just…God, what if this is the father of my babies?
Bending over, he gently placed little Pip on my lap and crouched in front of me. “Just in case she makes a mad dash for it like before,” he said, keeping his eyes firmly on the piglet like he wanted to snatch her back.
She was now looking up at me expectantly like I wasn’t following the rules or I was missing something. I was scratching her head and chin gently; what else did she want? Just as I was about to ask Ren, she put her tiny front trotters on my stomach and started straining as she tried to climb me.
“Here, she wants snuggles.” Ren lifted her onto my chest so that her head was under my chin.
“Oh my God,” I whispered when she snuggled h
er face into my neck and instantly calmed. “Is she asleep?”
The smile on Ren’s face instantly dropped into a scowl. “Motherfucking cockblocker,” he growled, standing up suddenly.
“Listen, I know that Piplet is adorable, but seriously this reaction is a bit much. She’s only a baby and needs…”
“You think this is over a pig? I admit, she’s fucking adorable and actually smells kinda nice. She doesn’t hump people, yet, but I’m sure we can train her. And yeah, I’ll say it again, she’s cute, but I bought her for a purpose!”
I put my hand over the ear that wasn’t against my chest and hissed, “If you say you bought her to eat, so help me God, Renwick Townsend, I will geld you…”
“What the hell are you talking about?” he asked, looking completely horrified. “Of course I didn’t buy her to eat. Who would eat that? No, I bought her for you to give you the thing around her neck, which she tried to eat every thirty seconds until I ransomed that apple slices, and then she falls asleep!” His hands were in his hair, and he was tugging away.
Feeling around Pip’s neck, I felt a ribbon and followed it around until I came to the bow at the side of her neck and undid it. Holding the snoring piglet against me with my cast, I brought the ribbon in front of my face and saw the engagement ring that he’d taken off my finger a couple of days earlier dangling from it.
“Maya Price, will you do me the honor of becoming my wife?” Ren whispered on one knee in front of me.
I could hardly see his face through the tears pooling in my eyes, but I nodded and tried to get out the word ‘Yes,’ but all it sounded like was, “Isshhhh.”
I leaned in to kiss him when boots stomped onto the porch. “Aw, fuck, tell me Dash didn’t reproduce.”
Providence Series Books 1-4 Page 27