Providence Series Books 5-7 Read online

  “Kissing his nuts goodbye,” Ren shrugged as we continued to stare down at it.

  Picking it up, I ignored the hisses that were now being added to the previous noises and walked out to get it over and done with.

  Hopefully, once he was nut free, he’d be a normal cat. If he wasn’t, and he was going to end up the size that Layla said he was, we were all screwed.

  Four hours later

  Driving back from the vet’s office, I rehearsed how I was going to break the news to Sonya about her cat. I wasn’t sure that she was going to take it well at all. In my defense, I’d only gone with what Layla and Maya had told me to do. I wasn’t to know that it would end up like this!

  Making sure that she was sitting down when I did it would be a good idea. Doing it while she was around sharp objects would definitely be a bad idea. Maybe I could get one of the others to tell her?

  The veterinary surgery was on the opposite end of town to where our ranch was, so as I drove back, I saw the sign that might actually get me through this unharmed and turned off to go through the Starbucks drive-thru.

  Pulling up to the coffee chick, I ordered one of the largest coffees that they did and a normal sized one for me.

  “Oh, and a chocolate chip cookie, a cinnamon roll and a muffin. Wait, make that a muffin with no nuts, please.” The snarling growl from the cat who was still doped up to the fur balls – or lack of in his case now - in the crate in the back of the car had me flinching, and coffee chick’s eyes opening wide like she expected a tiger to jump out. “Sorry, bud!” His hiss back at me was answer enough.

  Sonya

  All day, I’d been waiting for Tom to bring Dante home. The cat might be an asshole, but he was mine and I loved him. I also felt really guilty about sending him to have his balls cut off.

  Since we’d been here, he’d been great with the kids and had even let Maya’s daughter, Crystal, drag him around by his tail without even blinking. Shortly after it, I’d gone to give him a piece of ham from my sandwich, and he’d hooked himself around my hand, ignored the ham, and had tried to sever an artery or a tendon. We still weren’t sure exactly which one he’d been going for because it had been an attack of claws and teeth all over, but he’d given it one hundred per cent.

  Hearing footsteps, I leaned over the edge of my chair to look at the door and started to breathe a sigh of relief until I saw the huge coffee cup in Tom’s hand and the expression on his face.

  “Please tell me he’s not dead!”

  The pissed of yowl from the carrier answered for him.

  “I need to tell you something,” he started as he sat down. And then he explained it all to me.

  Five minutes later…

  “So, he’s pretty much going to stay the size he’s at now?” I asked in disbelief. How could the cat not grow past the size of my shoe?

  “That’s what the doc said,” he sounded so upset, I almost felt sorry for him.

  Watching Dante as he crawled with his ass in the air and face on the floor, I asked my next question. “And is he stuck like this?”

  “Hmm? Oh no. That’s because of the drugs from the surgery - I think?”

  “So, he’s a Munchkin, not a Maine Coon?” I hadn’t even heard of a Munchkin cat. It sounded almost cruel to call a breed of cat that, but then again, maybe the cretin in front of me had got that wrong too.

  A few taps on the screen of his phone and he was turning it to face me, showing me the information on this breed of cat.

  “I feel so bad,” he whispered sounding a bit broken. “I called him a mutant in my head, and it turns out, his stubby little appendages are caused by an actual genetic mutation. I mean, if anyone said anything about Wylie’s disability and his wheels, I’d be pissed as shit. Then I go and call Dante a psycho mutant.”

  Because I was so caught up in reading the information on Wikipedia about Dante’s breed, it took a while for what he’d said to sink in.

  “Who’s Wylie? Why does he have wheels?”

  His eyes lit up and he grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door. Seeing as how my little kitty was asleep in the middle of the room with his back end now flat on the floor, legs akimbo, and his head in the air, I figured it was okay to leave him for a couple of minutes. I was too intrigued by what I was going to see.

  Not in all of my musings as we walked toward Tom’s house did I ever think that I’d see a sausage dog with wheels on its back end, though.

  “Holy shit, he can go at some speed,” I breathed as he sped past us. There were little ramps next to every couch so that he could run up them and sit down, and he took those things at speed. Unfortunately, he’d misjudged this one and ended up with his wheels hooked on the arm of the sofa, as his body hung off it with his nose just touching the floor.

  “He does this a lot,” Tom explained, gently picking up the excitable dog and hugging him to his chest.

  Doing my best to distract myself from the screaming of my ovaries, because holy shit that was a cute sight, I asked the question that had been eating away at me. “Why did you call him Wylie?”

  “After Wylie Coyote, of course.” Like that really explained it.

  “You named him Wylie Coyote?” I asked slowly. “As in, the coyote that chased Road Runner?”

  Shrugging, Tom put him back on the floor. Wylie took off at high velocity again, skidded around the corner and hit the edge of the wall with an almighty thud making us both wince. I guess that explained it.

  “Wait until you meet my turkey!”

  After meeting Tom’s dog, I’d gone back home to look after Dante. So far, the only thing bothering him was the drugs that he was trying to shake off. I’d gone to the bathroom and had come back out to find him asleep with his face in his water bowl so I’d had to dry him off and had then tucked him into his bed. It might be safer for him if he was protected by the padding.

  Now, we were outside having a barbeque with the rest of the Townsend family. There hadn’t been any hisses or screams from Layla’s house so I was hoping that maybe the operation had calmed him down.

  “Why does Tom have a turkey?” I asked Hurst, or Gramps as he’d told me to call him.

  Everyone sitting around us burst out laughing, as he explained. “At Thanksgiving, we told him to go pick up a turkey. He left it until two days before, and of course the store was sold out.” I nodded my head in understanding. Most people have done that and then had to travel miles to find one. “So, he went to a farm because he’d seen signs for fresh turkeys and it wasn’t that far away.” I swallowed my mouthful of chicken burger awkwardly. I had an inkling that I knew where this was going. “So, Jake over there,” Hurst nodded in Coleman’s direction, “took him to go and pick one up. When he got there, the farmer took him to choose which one he wanted. Unfortunately, what he didn’t know was that they were live turkeys.” Yup, I was right. I shouldn’t have asked, I just shouldn’t have asked. “So, there’s this poor turkey, shitting himself because he just knows what’s coming. Tom ended up telling the guy that we’d kill him at home, sneaking the turkey into his house, and driving forty-seven miles to find a damn frozen one.” Everyone around us burst out laughing. “We sat down to Thanksgiving dinner, and this big ass bird comes running through the room with a dirty diaper in its mouth. It had broken out of Tom’s house, followed him to Collette and Jack’s and had gone through the trash. It was disgusting!”

  “But damn if that bird doesn’t follow him around like a dog,” Ren muttered as he took a mouthful of his hot dog.

  Like we’d summoned him, Tom suddenly yelled from the porch of the house, “Hey, Jake gobbled my wiener!”

  The huge group of people who had all been talking at the same time went quiet, then all heads turned in Coleman’s direction who stood there looking like he’d been electrocuted. With heads turning to look between them, I whispered to Layla, “Who’s Jake? What did Coleman do?”

  Maya’s best friend Tony, whom I’d be introduced to minutes previously, stood up and held
his hand out. “Pay the piper, folks! I told you he was gay. I didn’t know about Coleman, but Tom? Hell yes. Now pay up!”

  “Tom’s gay?” I hissed to Layla who was still sitting there with her mouth wide open.

  People started taking money out of their pockets and passing it to Tony, while Coleman broke out of his stupor and stormed up to Tom.

  “I fucking did not,” he roared. No one had gone back to talking, so it carried across the garden as if he was standing right beside us.

  At that moment, a turkey plodded out of the house and sat down next to Tom’s foot, followed closely by a still weaving Dante.

  “You did what?” Tom countered, looking confused.

  “I didn’t gobble your wiener! I don’t even want your wiener,” Coleman fumed.

  “Dude, gross! There are kids around,” Tom pointed over at the group of kids, sitting on a blanket on the grass giggling at the drama playing out just in front of them. One of them who had a twin sister held his chubby little fist up and waggled his own wiener in the air – thankfully a sausage one.

  “Then why are you saying I did?” Coleman was back to pulling at clumps of his hair - it seemed his go to when things got too much.

  “I didn’t. I said that Jake,” he pointed at the turkey who was sitting beside him while my cat did some sort of massage shit on his back, “did.”

  Then the ball dropped, and I buried my face in my hands as I burst out laughing. I’d already pissed Coleman off enough so maybe if he didn’t actually see me laughing, he’d be okay. I could always say that I was crying instead. I might be brave, but I wasn’t that brave - the guy was scary as hell.

  I missed what followed afterwards, but from the brief yelling match and the fact Coleman wasn’t around when I came back out of hiding, I figured he’d gone to sulk and be with his own wiener in peace. I wonder how much the guy was paid for the torture he went through every day?

  And why would you call your wiener a wiener, when there were sausage wieners?

  I just had so many questions for the world, some I could probably find the answers to on the internet, but I kinda preferred my own answers a majority of the time. A couple of weeks ago, I’d Googled why the UK drove on the left and pretty much everyone else drove on the right after I’d read an email from Layla describing her family’s issues with the change while they were there. I’d expected some hugely exciting reason and was left disappointed. If I’d have made up my own explanation for it, it would have been so much more interesting than the reasons given on the internet.

  “That’s because you want a boy and can’t accept that your kid still has a vagina,” I heard Maya snap at Ren as I focused back on the conversation going on around me. Now this sounded interesting.

  “Damn fucking right, I want a boy,” the big good-looking guy holding the world’s most beautiful little girl like she was glass replied. All of the siblings looked a lot alike, the only major differences appeared to be slight variations in the shades of their hair, and Tom’s eyes. His were a dark turquoise color, yet another Tomaly or Tom anomaly. I actually had a Sharpie that was the same color, and I was still in denial that it was my go to color for writing reminders to myself now - and that I’d bought another five of them from Amazon just in case one ran out.

  Confused why he would want a son and sound so disappointed when he had a healthy, beautiful daughter, I asked, “But why? She’s so gorgeous and the picture of perfection.”

  Like she understood how true it was, she turned her beautiful blue eyes on me and gave me a grin, revealing two tiny little stubs of teeth in her lower gums. Kids scared me, I was an only child and hadn’t really been around any growing up, but I’d done some babysitting in high school and the kids had been little shits. To this day, I swear that it had given me some sort of child-PTSD. Added onto that, I had an overactive imagination, so I couldn’t watch horror movies because they stayed with me and I started to imagine things around me. Unfortunately, I’d watched The Shining and The Omen and one of the kids that I had babysat was named Damien. Evil little bastard that he was. That led to a lot of nervousness and wariness when it came to the smaller human species. If I ever became a mother, I was fucked because knowing my luck, it would come out with 666 on it somewhere. This little girl though, she melted my heart.

  Leaning forward to get his beer, Ren took a gulp and swallowed it before taking another one like he needed it for strength for what he was about to say.

  “My daughter is the most precious thing in the world to me, along with my wife. I look at Maya,” he gestured with his bottle toward her, “and the realization that my daughter is gonna look like her is a kick to the junk.” He took another huge gulp from the bottle. “I wanted a son because with a boy, you only have to worry about one di…” he stopped and looked down at Crystal who was watching him and taking in every word. “Baby maker.”

  “And with a daughter, you have to worry about every ‘baby maker’,” Layla grinned as Ren glared at her. “Better start stocking up on ammo, man. She is gonna be a beauty and you are so scuh-rewwwed,” she sang making the baby in question giggle. Yup, he really was screwed.

  “So, do you want kids?” Maya changed the subject, more than likely to calm her fuming husband down. I thought she was talking to Layla or anyone but me, so I turned to face her and waited.

  Then I realized the question had actually been aimed at me, and that all eyes were now glued to me as they waited for a response.

  Jumping up from the table, I yelled, “Bladder!” And without another word, I ran to the safety of Layla’s house. I didn’t care if Dante tried to kill me or I was accosted by a perverted wiener gobbling turkey - I would gladly take that over the conversation back there.

  I thought I’d made it to safety when I saw the door to Layla’s downstairs bathroom, until an arm banded around my waist and pulled me to a stop making a cross between a huff of breath and a scream come out of me.

  “I’ve tried to do this slowly,” Tom drawled into my ear. “I’ve tried, I really have, but now I’m done.”

  Before I could ask what he was talking about because he reminded me of a slasher movie I’d seen when I was a teenager - and this is why we don’t watch that shit – he spun me around and gently moved me so that I had my back against the wall. All I could see was his, admittedly gorgeous, face coming toward me, and then his mouth was on mine.

  He was surprisingly gentle as he moved his hands into my hair and kissed me, his tongue gently rubbing along my own and flicking periodically. I totally forgot my hourly arguments with myself that I wasn’t going to get involved with him and pressed harder against him, tilting my head slightly so that he could deepen the kiss. Who needed oxygen? Not me, no siree. I’d happily forego ever breathing again if I could do this for the rest of my life.

  However, the Townsends are assholes - this declaration had come from each of them and was usually added into them introducing themselves to you. “Hi, my name is blah blah. By the way, heads up, the Townsends are assholes”. And this was proven right at that moment when a voice started to sing right beside our heads.

  “Tom and Sonya, sitting in a tree, k-i-s…uhhh…s-s-s-i-n-g. First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby…Oh holy shitting fuck,” it ended on a bellow, leaving me with a ringing in my ear. Pulling out of Tom’s reach, I saw that he was twisting the nipple of his grandfather. The only way to describe the hold he had on the thing was savage.

  “Run old man, before I tell Grams what really happened to her copy of Fifty Shades of Grey.”

  His reaction would have been almost comical if I wasn’t wishing that I was anywhere but where I was at that moment. I was also somewhat curious now to what had happened to her book and why he was so scared to tell her though.

  It didn’t win over my embarrassment and the panicked urge to run for the first time in my life, however. Using their distraction to my advantage, I decided to fuck my bladder - figuratively not literally because I’m pretty certain that it wo
uld be physically impossible to do that - and ran back outside.

  Just as I sat back down in my original seat Maya, obviously not one to be deterred, started right back up on the conversation that had caused me to bolt into the house in the first place.

  “So, kids?” She asked loudly, and all eyes were back on me. I could do this, I could brave the inquisition - I told myself. “Hey, are you okay? You look kinda flushed, especially around your chin. I get like that when Ren hasn’t shaved in a while and he kisses the bejesus out of me.”

  Tom squeezed in beside me at the table and took a good mouthful of food, just listening into what was going on around him. It was something that had taken me by surprise because he always tended to be the one talking, but he did have a lot of periods where he wouldn’t and it was like he was analyzing what was being said.

  That was until Layla’s security guy, dressed in jeans instead of a suit, sat down with us and started talking. After that, it all went to shit.

  Tom

  “So, you recovered yet, man?” Todd asked Cole and Ren with one of his little bitch grins on his face. I actually liked the guy, he was wicked and that was something that I appreciated. If it wasn’t pranks, it was his wit.

  “Fuck off,” Cole snapped as Ren glared over at him.

  “I feel like I’m missing something here,” Maya drawled as she took Crystal out of Ren’s arms like she knew something was going to happen. I guess after being part of our family for any length of time, you just developed a sort of radar for it.

  “It’s nothing, baby,” Ren reassured her, but his smile seemed brittle.

  “Absolutely,” Todd agreed, taking a bite of his steak and chewing it with a grin. “Hey, any of you ladies ever watch Steel Magnolias?” He asked the table, looking at the women who were looking at him like he had two heads.