Providence Series Books 1-4 Read online

  We’d started on Ren’s house, and so far the renovations on the ground floor were halfway to completion, and the redecorating of the lounge and whatever could be done elsewhere was almost done and the furniture was waiting to be moved in until after all the painting and building work had been completed. Being there as often as I was made the project easier; I could get a feel for each room and add more details to it to turn it into a home for Ren. We’d discussed the bedroom at the end of the second floor, and he’d asked for it just to have carpeting put in and the walls painted, so we’d decided on this fabulous thick mushroom-colored carpet, and the paint for the walls was a latte color. Adding in the white trim, ceiling, and drawer units that I’d found, it was going to look beautiful.

  Luke and Isla were getting on better, and air hooker Kendal hadn’t been back. There had been a couple of times when Luke had to go away or leave early, but that was to be expected because we were almost suffocating under the amount of work that the firm had going on.

  I’d had a bit of an emergency last week when I’d needed the plans for a new build, so I could look at a design concept for it, and had walked into Luke’s office without knocking and looked up to see Isla sitting on his lap, looking flushed. I’d done a quick about turn, slammed the door behind me, and shouted to LeAnne that I was going for lunch. I ended up sitting in the garage for the rest of the afternoon with my laptop, looking at other projects and drawing and listing ideas on the paper from Ren’s printer. I’d accomplished a lot that day, but I could live a happy life never walking in on anything like that again.

  Unfortunately, there had been some more Francheska mishaps, but she’d only spewed her twisted crap and venom. After that night at the restaurant when Ren had looked me in the eye and promised that he’d never been involved in the shit that she’d said he had, I didn’t feel as threatened by her, so it was getting easier to ignore her altogether.

  We’d been in Jilly’s last Friday having a drink with my cousins, Mace, Cole, and the girls when she’d walked up to the table and started flirting with all the guys. Each time one of them went up to the bar, either she or one of her witches would go up with their tops pulled down to just above their nipples and flirt with them. They’d been ignored each and every time, but they got an A for perseverance, that’s for sure.

  At one point, Scarlett and I had gone to the bathroom together, as girls do, and on the way back we’d bumped into this relatively good-looking guy who’d introduced himself as Rich. I’d gotten a bad feeling from him immediately, and I could see that Scarlett didn’t like him either, as she was ramrod straight beside me, but he’d been focused on me and had asked a lot of questions about my job while standing way too close to me. With people I didn’t know, I had a huge thing about personal space; add onto it that this guy had alarm bells ringing for me, I kept edging away from him. Thankfully, Ren and Luke had come up quickly and had sent us back to the table while they’d had a word with ‘Dick,’ as Luke had called him, and we hadn’t seen him after that.

  I’d spent a lot of time with Ren’s family, and now it wasn’t unusual for his Mom and Gram, or both together, to come into the office with coffee or to ask me out to lunch. My Aunt Christie had even joined us on a couple of occasions, which I’d loved, because I hadn’t spent as much time with her as I had with the others since I’d arrived here. That was going to be remedied on Thursday afternoon, though, because I was taking off early to do a bit of shopping and hit the hair and beauty spot on Main Street. I was a girly girl who enjoyed buying shit and getting beautified, so this was like heaven for me. I was also going to take her into Scarlett Temptations because she said she’d only ever gone in for a couple of minutes at a time; she needed to appreciate the entirety of Scarlett’s shop.

  Just as I was finishing up a design, my uncle came in with a stack of papers in his hand and my stomach fell. I had six design requests awaiting approval by clients, and three in progress, and had already had to use five of my uncle’s workmen and had hired another five so far. Thankfully, he only had two construction contracts on the go at the moment, as they had just won five huge contracts in Italy and a couple of their other locations, so they were focused on those. Luke been away a lot on business to do with them, and my uncle had been away to the locations too. Even Isla had attended a couple of meetings and was due in Italy next week to look over documents and meet with the lawyers working on them. Her dad had been sent to Paris that week by George, so she wasn’t dreading it as much.

  “Hey, darlin’, you free?” George asked, standing in front of my desk, smiling at me. My uncle was a handsome man still, and there had been a couple of occasions when we’d attended a meeting and the women involved had flirted with him. Some of them had even been as brazen as to suggest “a business dinner,” and yes, they had even used air quotes. He was still head-over-heels in love with my aunt twenty-nine years later, though, and was totally devoted to her.

  “Sure, ‘sup?”

  “Do you remember a contract you did in Palm Beach for the Mackays?”

  I’d worked for a lovely family company about five months ago. They had pretty much adopted me, taking me away for weekends on their yacht and inviting me to their home for dinner at least once a week before I’d left. I’d tried my hardest to maintain a professional relationship with them, but they were so easy to love, and before I’d left I’d cried for over an hour while saying goodbye to them.

  “Of course I do,” I said, looking at my email and thinking it had been a week since I’d last spoken to them and that I should really get on that.

  “They’re opening an office and have bought a home roughly an hour away from here in Long Run, and they want you on the team, sweetheart.” George placed the stack of papers in front of me. “Have a look and let me know your thoughts when you have them ready.”

  As he was walking out of the office, his words sank in and, spinning around in my chair in excitement, I let out a high-pitched whoop and yelled, “Hell yes!”

  I could hear heavy footsteps moving quickly in the hall. Just as George opened his mouth, Ren came flying through the door, knocking him to the side with a scowl on his face before looking around my office and then back at me with his eyes narrowed.

  “Helllllooooooooo,” I squealed, still spinning until my stomach turned and I had to stop the excitable chair spinning so that I didn’t lose my breakfast. Closing my eyes and breathing deeply, my head thudded onto my desk while the room continued to spin.

  “What the hell, Maya?” Ren growled from somewhere over in the direction of my door.

  “A company that she worked with and had a close relationship with, from what I can gather from the clients, is opening up offices in Long Run, and she’s needed in Florida in three weeks to discuss the details with them,” George explained. My head snapped up; he’d obviously forgotten that fine detail when he’d told me the news.

  “I have to go to Palm Beach?”

  I had blocked Andy’s calls, but he was sending emails and his behavior was worrying me. In one of them, he’d attached a couple of pictures of him fucking different girls, and then the next day I’d received a rambling email apologizing and promising me that they were old photos. I knew that was bullshit, because he had a tattoo on his arm that he hadn’t had there when we’d been together, so they had to be relatively recent—not that I gave a shit. I didn’t want to be anywhere near where he was. I must have looked worried, because Ren was quickly on his knees in front of me with his hands on my thighs.

  “I don’t want to be anywhere that he is,” I whispered to Ren.

  “Why don’t we go for some lunch and talk it through, baby? Cole will be there, so we can be mean to him and make you feel better, okay?”

  He lifted me up from my chair gently. He was so right; I did love doing that. Not only was Cole repulsed by anything menstrual, but he had a huge fear of clowns and spiders. I’d had endless hours of fun with all three of those things; the first time had been as revenge for the lake
incident. Although I wasn’t a huge fan of spiders either; living in tropical countries had guaranteed me a healthy lifetime phobia of those eight-legged bastards, but at the moment, messing with Cole was just what I needed.

  After lunch, I returned to the office back to happy. I’d had Cole’s Coke delivered to him with a tampon in it. In fact, it had been in there for so long that almost the whole drink had been absorbed by the tampon. He’d screamed like a girl and had swiped the thankfully plastic glass to the right, flinging the tampon onto the window where it landed with a massive thud and squeakily slid down to the floor with Cole standing, pointing at it and gagging.

  The owners of the Diner had been in on it and hadn’t been upset by the sticky tampon track mark down their window; instead, they’d been holding their sides behind the counter and laughing their asses off. After that, I’d gotten a picture of a group of circus clowns and halfway through the meal, while Cole was calm and talking about his weekend, I’d flashed the picture at him and held it until he focused on it fully. He’d let out yet another scream, making the rest of the patrons jump, and had pushed himself back away from the photo. What followed had been one of the most hilarious things I’d ever seen. After he had pushed himself back, his front chair legs had left the floor, and the hind legs had gotten stuck on a slightly uneven tile, making it tip backward. As Cole was still screaming and had put his hands in front of his face to block the view of the clowns and save himself from ‘certain death,’ when he fell, he went back and landed still sitting in his chair, and his scream at the time thudded out of him like a pubescent choir boy. Yes, I’d felt bad, but he’d put wasabi in my toothpaste on Sunday, so it was only fair. Unfortunately, I’d laughed so hard that I’d had to make a pit stop at Scarlett’s for some panties, but it had been worth it.

  Ren and I had discussed Andy before Cole arrived, and I was going to let the Mackays know, as they had been aware of the situation before I’d left. They had some great security guys working for them, so they might be able to keep an eye on his whereabouts.

  Now that I had that squared away, I was starting to realize how much I was going to miss Ren while I was gone. He’d become so important and vital so quickly, and the thought of being away from him, even for a couple of days, made my stomach ache. We’d promised we’d talk daily, and I knew he was at the end of the phone whenever I wanted to speak to him, but it wasn’t the same. I needed to suck it up, because it was guaranteed that we’d need to spend time apart often, so getting the first time out of the way this quickly would make it easier next time…wouldn’t it?

  Ren

  I spent the day slamming things around in the garage, being an asshole to anyone who came near me; that was mainly Cole, though, so I didn’t feel guilty. He was walking stooped over and milking his fall in the Diner to the max; he’d even had Mom bring him in some cookies, the little shit for brains.

  At this precise moment, I was testing the weight of the wrench in my hand and picturing it shutting him up for thirty minutes.

  “I’m serious, Ren, I need to go to the hospital. I think I’ve fractured a disc in my spine or one of those bone things,” he whined. I gritted my teeth, mentally changing where my wrench would make an impact with Cole’s body, and instead thought about how many surgeons it would take to remove it from his ass. I turned and glowered at him, giving his colon a warning, but apparently the tip in his chair had knocked the sense out of him, because he just harrumphed at me. “What’s up your tush-tush, man? You’ve been like Layla when she has PMS”—cue the shudder—“since lunch.”

  “Maya’s going back to Florida.”

  “What the fuck?” Cole shouted above me, and I looked up to see him waddling out of the garage in the direction of Maya’s office. If I hadn’t been in such a bad mood, I’d have been laughing my ass off watching him walk like he’d spent a productive night on Brokeback Mountain. I couldn’t find it in me to laugh, though, so I did the next best thing and took my phone out to record it for later. “She’s going back to Palm Beach? What about her business? What about us?” he fumed as he waddled towards her building. What the fuck was he talking about?

  “Dude, did you hit your head? What the fuck do you mean ‘what about us’?”

  “Why the fuck aren’t you stopping her? I mean, you love her, and you’re just letting her move back there?” He’d stopped walking suddenly and was up in my face; well, as up in it as he could get with a broken ass.

  “Wait, who said she’s moving back there? It was only meant to be for a week?” His words sank in, and I was feeling sick. How could she leave me? She’d said a week maximum, hadn’t she?

  All of the questions were still running through my head when Cole slapped me on the back and started walking like Gollum back to the garage, and shouted over his shoulder, “Dude, it’s just a week? You’re acting like she’s moving back there. You need to get a handle on that, because that shit’s just embarrassing!”

  I could feel my eye ticking, which wasn’t a rarity when it came to Cole, and felt the weight of the wrench still in my hand and looked up to gauge where would hurt him the most, and then pitched it hard, hitting him right in the ass. I heard the clang of the wrench hitting the sidewalk and Cole’s howl of pain as I walked past him, collecting my new favorite wrench on my way.

  “I’m telling Mom,” the mouth-breather whined behind me.

  I felt better already; I should have done that hours ago. I just needed to figure out what to do between now and when Maya left to make sure that she knew exactly what she meant to me and how much I loved her; I needed to make plans. She was going for some girl time with Christie after work, so I had time to get some shit started. Pulling out my phone as I walked, I put it to my ear after I’d found the details that I wanted.

  “Mace, you got any free time, man?” This was perfect!

  Chapter Nineteen

  Ren

  I ’d arranged to pick up Maya from my parents’ once I finished at the garage, but I called and said I’d be a little late because I had to finish off a priority vehicle; the truth was I was heading to see Mace. He owned the best tattoo parlor in three counties and had been featured in magazines all over the world. Normally, his waiting list was around four months, but he’d recently taken on other artists who were almost as good at tattooing as he was, so his workload was lighter.

  With some of the weight taken off his shoulders, he’d created a dedicated piercing lounge; it sounded seedy, but it wasn’t. In every artist’s space, there was a television near the ceiling in the corner with tattoo shows playing on it. The beds were luxurious, the place was visibly sterile, and each customer had total privacy and luxury. In the piercing lounge, Mace had put a soft leather sofa for customers to relax in or for friends to wait while the piercings were carried out in a partitioned-off area. The room was relaxing and had almost a luxury home lounge feel to it, because apparently the statistics showed that customers found piercing more distressing than tattooing. Cole and I had spent hours discussing it, and neither of us could understand why.

  Since Ava had agreed to supply Mace with jewelry for his piercings, that side of the business had increased hugely; the only issue was the Mace-Ava situation. No one knew exactly what was going on between them, as neither would talk about it, but you’d have to be blind not to see the sadness in Ava’s eyes, and even I as a guy knew that if Mace didn’t figure it out A-S-A-fuckin’-P, he’d lose her forever. There was only so much she could take, so it was no surprise when I walked into the place to see Ava walking towards me. What was a surprise were the tears in her eyes as she dumped the box she was carrying on the front counter and walked past me and out the door. That was when I heard Mace yelling her name and the sound of a female moaning coming from the piercing lounge. I’d known Ava for as long as I could remember, and even with Mace being my best friend, I felt like beating the shit out of him for what he’d just put her through; fucking some chick in his shop when he no doubt knew that Ava would be dropping off shit.r />
  The moaning stopped, and there was a crash as Mace ran past me and out the door yelling Ava’s name. Seconds later, he came back in, raking his hands through his hair, and looked up at me with the most miserable look on his face that I’d ever seen, and that said something, since he and Gia hadn’t had the best childhood.

  “Fuck,” he growled, looking at the door to the lounge again. Going back into it, he came back out with fucking Francheska, of all bitches in the world. Was she trying to ruin everyone’s life? She’d almost fucked Maya and I up before we’d even started, the night we’d gone out to dinner and she’d let that shit pour out of her over the table, and I’d had to do some quick thinking to stop Maya running away from me for good. Now she was fucking Mace and Ava up. It was also Mace’s fault; he should never have given in to it, especially not with that bitch.

  “Thanks, handsome, for taking such good care of me,” she squeaked in the nauseating baby voice that I’d hated for the last 14 years since she started using it in high school. She reached out to touch Mace, but he jerked out of reach and just handed her the bill and her post-piercing advice sheet and waited for her to get her credit card out. She knew I was there the whole time and kept turning to look at me and lick her lips. The last I’d heard about her, she’d been seeing that twat Richard, who’d tried flirting with Maya at Jilly’s. The guy was a Dick by name and dick by nature, and he and Francheska were perfectly suited to each other, though I just couldn’t get my head around the fact that Mace had just fucked her in his shop when he had Ava and when he never did that. In fact, I didn’t think he’d fucked anyone ever since he’d gotten out of the Marines.