Providence Series Books 5-7 Page 20

  Almost like something out of a fecal zombie movie, the other kids walked up to join the three – all of them in exactly the same predicament; hair gelled into style with excrement.

  Looking down at my stomach, I realized that I needed to start preparing myself for another one of what was now standing in front of me.

  I could pray all I wanted, though, and it wouldn’t make a difference. It was a Townsend

  The End

  Until Tom, Finding Forever

  Tom & Sonya

  Providence Series Book 6

  Tom

  Life throws curveballs when you least expect it and my sister’s best friend was definitely a curveball. What do you do when you’re at a different college to the woman you want and who won’t give you the time of day? Why, you transfer to her college and bug her until she gives in, obviously!

  Sonya

  College was meant to be the start of my independence, and I was going to go for it and nothing was going to hold me back. Tom had never been part of any of my plans, but I just couldn’t get rid of him. He wasn’t bad, and he was great to look at, but he just wasn’t part of the plan.

  When an attempt is made on his brother’s life, Tom and his sister get ordered back to the family home. He wasn’t going to leave Sonya unprotected, so he used his secret weapon, his sister, to bring her back with her to the Townsend’s Ranch.

  Sonya might have been taken away from her plan, but at least she has her independence - right? Until alcohol becomes involved, and the one night that will never be repeated becomes every night.

  Slight stalking, a bit of coercion, a bottle of tequila, the wrong cat, these are all things he started with to make her his. After finding out that Sonya’s been taken by the person who has a personal vendetta against his family though, the relaxed easy-going Tom changes and he will go to any length to find her.

  Finding your one changes you, and Sonya changed everything.

  Prologue

  Tom

  T he meeting

  Grinning at Layla’s security guy Todd as I closed the door behind me, I knew that my little sister would be ripping him a new one for not giving her a heads up that I was there before letting me in to her apartment. The glare that he was throwing back at me showed that he knew it too.

  I would normally feel even a tiny bit of guilt about the pain that he’d be on the receiving end of, but this was the guy who I was sure was responsible for what had happened to me a few weeks ago. I’d stood in the bathroom at the diner yelling, “Paper towel, please,” at the towel dispenser like the sticker told me to for five fucking minutes. I’d even gotten louder each time, until I was screaming at it. When the video of it turned up on YouTube minutes after Jilly had pulled the sticker off of it, laughing her ass off, I knew it had to be him. Dirty rat bastard. So, the more pain Layla caused him, the better - I regret nothing!

  It didn’t matter that we’d had an ongoing war for over a year, he’d timed it to coincide with his departure back to college with my sister. That was a bitch move in the art of Townsend war and, as such, he must suffer. The main problem was that I’d fallen for it. However, in my defense, mornings weren’t my strongest time of the day, and people used them to their advantage – they were all bastards!

  “Give it back, you big fat hairy vagina!”

  Ah, there were the delicate tones of my darling little sister.

  “No, I had it first, bulging vagina flaps!” The responding screams made me trip over my feet. I had grown up with Layla Townsend’s tantrums - which were no joke. What I’d just heard…

  The thud of bodies hitting the floor had me dropping my bag and running toward the clattering coming from what I remembered was the living room.

  “Ow, give it to me,” Layla screamed as she grabbed a handful of the short blonde hair on the other person.

  I was hoping that it was her roommate and not just some random person that she’d come across. If this was how she fought off an intruder, I was actually embarrassed for her because she was fighting like a girl - which Layla normally didn’t do. I also would feel slightly embarrassed for myself for not getting involved on her behalf if it was, but Layla hadn’t pulled out the truly dirty moves yet. The second she did, I’d think about it. Then again, I hadn’t considered bringing my cup with me and Layla really did fight dirty.

  The gasp of outrage from the blur on the floor pulled me out of my musings.

  “You…you punched my favorite lady bubble,” the (hopefully) roommate snapped sounding like she really was shocked by it.

  I took a step further into the room and then burst out laughing when I saw that she was holding her tit. If I’d believed in this shit, I’d think that this chick was made for me. She fought like a Gladiator even though she was absolutely tiny, gave Layla as good as she got, and my left ball was my favorite one as well.

  If this was the roommate, this trip just got a helluva lot more exciting - and I hadn’t even seen her face properly yet.

  “You asked for it,” Layla shrugged and then lunged for the remote.

  “Did not!” The unknown chick got out as she did some bizarre roll backwards, still holding her tit and now the remote, and ran into me. She was that small that I didn’t even lose my balance or move slightly, but she bounced back a good eight inches. “Oops, sorry!” she spluttered, not even finding it bizarre that some random guy was standing laughing at her and Layla fighting on the floor, and then ran down the hallway.

  “Flatty!” Layla yelled as her bare feet literally screeched to a halt on the bare wood floors beside me.

  There was a hiss from the other end of the hall, and then, “Belieber!”

  That’s when I really wished that I’d brought my cup with me. Or that I’d stayed outside the front door.

  So, taking my life into my own hands, I did what any sane man would do. I ran like a bitch to the door, opened it, shoved Todd in and yelled, “There’s a guy attacking the girls!”

  Karma.

  Sonya

  Three days later

  He was persistent, I’d give him that. For the last two months I’d fielded off subtle requests to go out with him. You make the mistake of smiling at a guy, lending him a pen on a couple of occasions and - God forbid - sitting within a five-meter radius of him in class, and apparently that meant that you were interested. Oh, and also that the constant excuses that you were giving each time they asked you out were really just unfortunate clashes in schedules instead of the blatantly polite no’s that they were. I normally didn’t have it in me to be rude, but this guy had just pushed me to the point that I’d never reached before.

  Just as I’d started to spin around to tell the pimple faced rat dick (I wonder if rats dicks were in proportion to their bodies and if that’s why they reproduced as such a high rate?) to fuck off, when a hand appeared over his face and pushed, making him fly back.

  Then a deep voice rumbled, “Look man, she’s clearly saying no.”

  What the hell was Layla’s brother doing here?

  “No, she said she was studying for a blood test. I asked how long it would take and said I’d pick her up afterward. There wasn’t a no in there.”

  Holy shit this guy was stupid! How do you study for a freaking blood test? Didn’t he get it?

  Tom walked over, grabbed my hand and started backing us away from the crazy tit-twat in front of me.

  “How the hell did you even get into college?” He sounded as perplexed, yet curious, as I suddenly was about that last part.

  “I have a really high IQ…” that was as far as dick face got.

  “Bullshit,” Tom drawled, while I snickered. “You got high and had a DQ, maybe. But IQ? No way!”

  “It’s over a hundred,” the sneering weasel said smugly.

  “Cents. Your DQ was over a hundred cents. You paid a dollar, and now your parents are wasting theirs.”

  Damn, these Townsends were brutal - but honest because I’m pretty sure that what he was saying was true.

>   As we walked away from the spluttering guy, I started to go down the rabbit hole that I’d sworn that I wouldn’t.

  I wonder if Tom Townsend was as hot under the clothes, as he was over them?

  “No, Sonya. Bad, bad!”

  “The answer is yes,” he murmured, as he scanned the campus in front of us like he was looking for something. “And yes, you said that out loud,” he added.

  “That’s not what I was thinking,” I snapped, trying to yank my hand back from his grip. How long had he even been holding it?

  “Not yet, but you were gonna,” he shrugged.

  I might have been pissed by the confidence he said it with, but damn it if he wasn’t right.

  Cocky shit!

  Tom

  Four days later

  That was the last box in. I was officially moved into my new apartment and had transferred to my new college.

  After a week of dropping subtle hints to Sonya about going out on a date, I’d decided that as the old saying went: if the Sonya wouldn’t come to Tom, Tom would go to the Sonya. Well, mountains and Mohammed, but it would just sound plain weird if I said that.

  I’d tried climbing a mountain once, and discovered I had an awesome case of vertigo as it turned out. Maybe it was watching those movies like Cliffhanger and K2 the night before we left? Who knows, it just turned out to be slightly embarrassing when I held onto a boulder and refused to let go. After that mistake and watching Snakes on a Plane before a flight once, I now steered clear of movies that played with my mind. Layla and my brother’s wife Maya, had introduced me to TV shows like The Real Housewives and Vanderpump Rules and shit like that, so I watched them in my downtime. I had to add the ‘and shit’ when I admitted watching them, it made it sound more gangster. That ‘shit’ was good though!

  From my living room window, I could see the courtyard that led to the front door to our building. I say our because, as luck would have it, I was two doors down from Layla and Sonya’s apartment. I wonder what Sonya was gonna say about her new neighbor?

  Technically, I did them a favor. The dude who lived here before was a pothead to the extreme. What if someone had cookies and cake pops delivered to them and he’d stolen them during a bad case of the munchies?

  I was still wondering about my reaction to Sonya. I’d sworn off women and relationships after having my heart stomped on by Susy Baker, the relationship breaker. She’d sent me notes in class, given me a cookie at lunch, and on the Friday, we’d made it legit and I’d asked her out. Over the weekend, my brother had kindly shared his strep with me, and I’d been off sick the rest of the following week. On Monday, when I went back, it was to find out that she was now going out with Harvey Rocks and that they were going to get married and have babies together.

  Ironically, Suzy was actually a baker now, and she was also still a relationship breaker. The bitch targeted older married men, then took all the loot they gave her and locked her door once they declared that they were leaving their wives for her. Turned out, Harvey did like rocks too - meth ones in particular. He now had a room in a prison somewhere after trying to rob a policeman at gunpoint to buy his next fix. He thought it was a gun, turned out to be a zucchini. You just couldn’t make that shit up if you tried!

  I’d had a close call on that one, even if it had only been in the second grade, but it had put me off relationships for life. Or so I’d thought.

  Sonya was different, and I wanted to know everything about her. And Layla was going to help me.

  Picking up the big bunch of red roses that I’d bought for her, I walked out the door and went to introduce myself neighbor style. I wish I’d known that she’d never been given flowers, I would have bought her triple what I had.

  Tom

  The next morning

  Leaning against the wall with the cup of coffee (an offering Layla had called it) as I watched her slowly open the door to Sonya’s bedroom, I struggled not to laugh. My sister was a feisty little bitch and rarely showed fear, so to see her peaking around the corner, then pulling back and holding her breath, was hilarious.

  “You deserve an Oscar for this performance!”

  As she jumped back and covered her heart with her hand, I lost the fight with the laughter battle and let rip.

  “Are you trying to get us killed,” she hissed. “What part of ‘she’s an animal’ didn’t make sense to you?”

  “All of it,” I choked out through the stitch that had just taken root in my side.

  “You’ll see,” she whispered, and then did the quickest peek around the side of the door that I’d ever seen anyone take in my life. “Okay, we’re safe. She’s still asleep.”

  The next five minutes of this was excruciating, so I started to drink the coffee in my hand as I waited. A man could only show so much control.

  “What the hell are you doing?” she gasped, as she turned around to say something else to me. “That’s the only way we’ll get out of this alive. Go and get another one!”

  Sighing, I headed and got another pitcher of coffee. There’s no way these things were cups, so decorative pitchers they were. By the time I got back, Layla was now half way between the door and Sonya’s bed and was holding a baseball bat.

  “I wanted to wake her up, not kill her,” I snapped, lunging for the bat.

  “It’s the only way,” the quick little freak muttered as she fought for, and won, the bat. “You’ll see.”

  The growl from the bed made both of us freeze and Layla quickly pulled the bat up like she was defending herself from an attack.

  “What the fuck was that?” I’d never heard a noise like it in my life. “She doesn’t have a dog, does she?”

  “No, she wants a Maine Coon cat,” Layla replied, distracted as she watched the lump on the bed. Every time it moved, she’d stiffen up and hold the bat more firmly.

  “A what?”

  “A Main… why are we discussing this? I thought you wanted to wake it up?” she pointed at the bed with the bat.

  Sighing and looking at my watch, I saw that we had now had two hours until we had to leave for classes, which meant that we’d been at this shit for an hour already. Apparently, that was how long it took for whatever the fuck was going to happen.

  “Proceed,” I nodded.

  Creeping closer, Layla poked the lump and jumped back. When nothing happened, she poked it again. Then again. Deciding that she was safe, she started to sing a song that I remember mom singing to us in the mornings.

  “Wakey, wakey, little bird. The sun is up, haven’t you heard. It’s time to leave your nest and say…”

  “Fuck. Off!” came the muffled snarled response from the bed. It sounded like something out of The Omen or something.

  Gulping slightly, Layla continued. “Let the sun be bright today. Wakey, wakey, little bird. The sun is up, haven’t you heard. Spread your wings and let’s go fly…”

  “I’m going to kill you,” Satan growled from the bed. Taking a step back, just in case, I leaned against the wall and quickly scanned the room to make sure that I had an escape route. I wasn’t sure that Layla was overreacting now that I’d heard the voice from the bed. She only came up to my nipple and must have weighed around…I actually wasn’t touching that. Women were funny about shit like that, and with what I’d heard coming from her this morning – she could probably sense when people were thinking about her weight. I liked to breathe and be alive and I intended to keep my balls - so no I wasn’t going there.

  In a shaky voice, Layla started again. “Up into the bright blue sky. Wakey, wakey, little bird. The sun is up, haven’t you heard…”

  That was when she made the mistake of leaning slightly toward the bed, lost her balance and poked the lump with the bat. Now that it was awake, this had a completely different result than the previous times. An arm shot out, grabbed the end of the bat and yanked, pulling Layla fully off her feet and onto the bed.

  What followed was like something out of a cartoon. Screams, the covers flying, things
being knocked off the table beside the bed and just carnage, pure carnage.

  “Coffee,” Layla shrieked, reminding me about the pitcher in my hand.

  “I don’t wanna,” I whimpered. Now that I’d seen it all play out, I was rethinking ever waking her up. We’d get married, I’d let her sleep, in fact I could sleep somewhere else. Anywhere!

  “Pussy!” She yelled, as she managed to free her head from the half nelson hold that Sonya had put it in.

  Creeping close, I remembered the instructions that she’d given me while we prepared for this earlier and leaning over, I used my free hand to waft the smell of the coffee toward the tumbling bodies on the bed.

  A head suddenly popped up, my choking sister was freed, and a hand reached out and snatched the pitcher. I stood frozen to the spot as I watched her guzzle down half of it, before sighing and then smiling brightly.

  “Morning!”

  What the fuck had just happened?

  Tom

  Five months later

  This fucking sucked. I was lying in a hospital bed, having been shot in the ass - through no fault of my own - and now we were all going to England to get Sabine. If my brother, Brett, hadn’t been such an asshole, I wouldn’t have a hole in my butt cheek and I wouldn’t be leaving Sonya.

  Picking up the cell that security had left with me, after mine had cruelly been killed by an ass bullet, I dialed Layla.

  “…Lo?” the line was shit, but I only needed her for a second.

  “What’s the type of cat that Sonya wanted?”

  I didn’t want her left on her own. Sure, there’d be security guarding her - especially with some Townsend hating psycho who shot innocent people in the ass walking around the world - but what if she needed to cuddle? Not that I would know if she did even cuddle.

  “M…n” came the garbled reply.

  “A what?”

  “M…n…n” I made out, before the line cut dead.

  Looking at the phone in confusion, I repeated, “A Munun?”