Mad Gold (Providence Gold Series Book 2) Read online

  I wasn’t the most experienced person in the world. In fact, I’d only had two boyfriends. One in high school, Ronnie Cane, who had been such a great guy. Unfortunately, at graduation, I’d tripped on my gown and sent him flying into the fountain. This meant that his graduation pictures weren’t the spectacular memories they were meant to be. He’d dumped me before he even went on stage.

  My second boyfriend, Ian Trebeck, had been my first. I met him when he brought his car in for a service and we’d dated for about three months before I gave in and had sex with him. It hadn’t been spectacular, he hadn’t lasted long, and then he’d blamed that on me and had dumped me the next day saying he couldn’t waste any more time on someone he wasn’t compatible with in bed.

  Asshole!

  It had taken me a long time to get over what he’d done, and even today it still stung and made me wary of forming attachments to men. What if they decided we weren’t compatible again? Or what if they couldn’t live with my issues?

  That had happened three years ago when I was nineteen, and I hadn’t said yes to a date since then. I was pretty sure people thought I was frigid or a lesbian, but I didn’t care. I was wary of someone else doing what my mom, Ronnie and Ian had. People got dumped and left behind all the time, but they’d picked up on specific points I considered personal weaknesses of mine, so it had struck harder. Plus, I’d let Ian into a place where I hadn’t let anyone before and had given him something I could never get back, so that really did hurt. Were their actions on me? No, but I doubted there was anyone in the world who wouldn’t be wary if that happened to them. It was like a little niggle in the back of my brain that periodically turned into a siren.

  Why was I letting Madix get close to me then? Because he was special. Maybe our weaknesses balanced each other out?

  We’d now known each other properly for five weeks, and I hadn’t once looked at him and felt scared or like I should run for the hills. I vaguely remembered making out with him at the New Year’s party, but I’d been up for thirty-six hours by that point. We’d had a fleet of rental cars that had needed serviced before they could be rented out, and the paperwork had been a killer. Add on the glass of Jack Daniels I’d had with the guys as we celebrated finishing the cars in record time, the eight shots of tequila that my friend Sarina had made me have when I’d arrived at the bar for the place’s party (which had also been held in honor of the owners who’d just bought the place from the previous ones), as well as a few beers and I’d been G-O-N-E. I might be twenty-one, but I hadn’t really allowed myself to let loose and party, so alcohol was a phenomenon to my body – one it hadn’t liked.

  I really wish I could remember more about that damn kiss. Like, what did it feel like pressed up against him? Had I smelled of the garage?

  Oh my God, what if I smelled of oil or exhaust fumes? That had happened before.

  Just as I was working myself up into a panic and getting ready to call Bonnie in Florida to ask her how often I smelled like a car, the man himself walked through the door of my office. I’d noticed he was smiling a lot more nowadays than he had when I’d first met him. It was probably down to the fact that he was settling down here more. Maybe the Townsends had shaken the grumpy out of him?

  “Babe, wanna come help me with something?”

  Well, color me intrigued!

  “Where are we going?”

  “On an adventure!”

  Pausing as I reached for my purse, I turned to look at him warily.

  “The last time that line was used, your sister ended up strapped to her husband and plummeting to her death from a plane in Vegas.”

  It was true. Noah had asked her on an adventure and had taken her skydiving in Vegas. Granted, the video of it and the things that came out of her mouth was hysterical, but me no stupid. I wasn’t falling for that shit!

  Chuckling, he shook his head and looked at me with twinkling eyes. He seemed to have shaken off whatever weight he had on his shoulders when I’d first met him, and the relaxed look he now wore whenever I saw him looked good on him.

  “Can you imagine me jumping out of a plane with a parachute?” he asked, pointing his finger from his head to his toes.

  “You’d probably touch the floor in two seconds,” I snorted, although I wasn’t sure if that was far from the truth. He was just so tall! “Hey, can you see the weather from up there?” I asked him as we made our way toward the exit of the building.

  “Huh?”

  I grinned over my shoulder at him as I reached for the bar that opened the exit. “Well, you could probably see what weather was coming, right? In fact, you’re so tall, you might even be able to see into the future. What am I wearing tomorrow?”

  His roar of laughter triggered my own, and I tripped over my own foot, right into the door. I squeezed my eyes tightly shut and braced myself for whatever was going to happen next. All that happened was a pressure on my stomach as I was heaved up over Madix’s shoulder. This gave me the perfect view of his ass, which was totally edible. That was actually a disgusting expression when you thought of it, but damn it – it was so true. It also did not suck one bit that his hand was on my thigh, just under my own gluteus maximus. This meant it was also near an area of me which was growing slightly wet due to the proximity of his digits. The feel of his various muscles and body parts touching a majority of my body also did not suck.

  Focusing back on his ass, I decided that I really wanted to bite it.

  Never one to pass up life’s opportunities, I did just that and sank my teeth into his right cheek. It was only when he froze that I realized exactly what I was doing and carefully unclamped my jaw.

  “Uh…,” I tried hard to think of an excuse for what I’d just done. Fuck my life, there wasn’t one.

  While I was thinking, his hand skimmed up my side and gently lifted me off his shoulder. When he’d moved me far enough so that his other hand could fit on my other side too, he carefully lowered me down to the floor in front of him. There was a soft click as the door to the building shut behind us, and that click made something inside him snap.

  One second I was standing there looking up at him, wondering what I was meant to say. The next, I was against the side of the building with his body pressed tightly against me, and his mouth was on mine.

  After the first sweep of his tongue, I moved my hands, so they were in his hair and kissed him back. How this had happened from just a bite to the butt I’ll never know, but if that’s what it took, I’d gladly chomp away at a cheek any day.

  I don’t know how much time passed, or even what day it was anymore, but eventually my arms started to tingle from being up high for so long. There was a difference of fourteen inches between our heights, and I was feeling it as the blood left my fingers. Moving them down his neck, I felt the soft hairs of his beard rasp against my fingertips and moaned into his mouth. Who’d have thought it would feel so awesome to stroke a beard?

  Almost as if he’d been holding back and waiting for me to move my hands, Madix started to do the same thing. Being a curvy girl, I had insecurities about my body – who didn’t – and there were places he skimmed over that I’d either tense up, or suck in. It was just a natural reflex, one that I did every morning when I looked in the mirror too.

  On the second pass of my stomach which had me sucking it in, he pulled his mouth away from me, making me groan at the loss.

  “Stop,” he ordered, rubbing the area that was making me react. “I don’t know what’s going through your mind, but you’re perfect for you, and you’re perfect for me.”

  That made me freeze in place. He sounded so sincere and adamant about it as he stressed those two words. With the shit I’d gotten from the guys in my past… I was scared to believe him but scared not to at the same time. People couldn’t just get over their issues in the blink of an eye, our minds didn’t work like that, but his words meant everything to me.

  Something in my face must have shown that, because he grinned and pecked me on the nos
e. “Give it some time, baby. You’ll get there,” he assured me as he gave me a kiss on the lips this time. “Now, speaking of getting there – let’s fucking go.”

  Much to my disappointment, and not giving me a chance to say anything, he took my hand and gently tugged me toward the parking lot and over to his truck. I couldn’t help snorting when I looked at the size of it – which was perfect for a man of his height – and thought about him getting in my Toyota Yaris.

  Maybe he’d have to sit with his head through the sunroof? That was a feature I’d made sure I had on my car so I could get fresh air during the summer. Moonroofs just defeated the object when they could only tilt open so far. Now that I’d pictured Madix driving my car, I was grateful I’d gone with that option and seriously hoped I’d get to see it happening.

  “Where are we going again?” I asked, changing the subject in my mind in case he asked what was making me grin like a maniac. I was also hoping that maybe this time I asked, he’d tell me what we were up to. I wasn’t lying when I said that I wasn’t jumping out of a plane.

  “Nice try,” he murmured as he opened the door for me. “You’ll see when we get there.”

  I really hope it didn’t involve heights. Or snakes. Or anything else that would test the limits of my luck.

  Madix

  If it was possible to feel someone thinking, then that’s what I felt throughout the drive to the property I was taking us to.

  After I’d driven with my fingers clenched tightly around the wheel for a while, I gave in and reached over to take her hand. It had amazed me when I kissed her at how well she fit in my hands – in fact, I was pretty damn shocked by how well we fit together as a whole – and I appreciated it all over again when our hands fit together perfectly.

  It was like a hand version of Goldilocks, there was no ‘too big’ or ‘too small’, it was just right. At least I had the consolation of knowing that if I ever quit working for the Townsends, I could take up a career in writing cheese for greetings cards.

  I wasn’t of the belief that there was one person destined for another person in this world – science and reality just didn’t allow for it – but if it had, she’d have been that one for me. Everything about Dahlia was different. She made me smile, she made me laugh, she made me feel lighter and less like I was suffocating in the reality of the world we lived in. She made me look forward to every day, she made me turn into a crazy man thinking of ways I could spend time with her. She was different. My organized – to the point of an obsessive-compulsive disorder – world and way of living was now a mess. In the past, if that happened, I would shut down and work to get it back to its normal order. Now? I was off balance, but I was enjoying the extra freedom it was giving me.

  I was enjoying her. That’s why I was taking this slowly, even though it was killing me. What we had was different to anything I’d ever experienced, and I didn’t want to rush things and risk losing her if I fucked it all up somehow.

  “Is this going to cause me pain?” she asked, her soft thumb absently stroking the back of my hand as she chewed on her lower lip.

  “No,” I chuckled. She’d been asking questions here and there since we’d started driving, and each one got the same response.

  “You do remember my shitty luck, don’t you? Do you really want to test how bad it can get?”

  “Already explained about that, baby,” I muttered, not finding this as funny as the other things she’d said. “Bad luck? It’s all relative. I also refuse to believe that you are in any way ‘bad luck’. Far from it.”

  “I hate that saying,” she groaned, leaning her head against the window as she watched the scenery pass by us. “It’s all relative,” she repeated in a sarcastic voice. “No shit! Everything in life is ‘all relative’. What asshole came up with that saying?” She lifted her head back up and threw her free hand up in the air as she continued. “Probably the same asshole who came up with, ‘is it just me, or…’ and then adds on something stupid like using Facebook and that ads keep coming up for things they’d searched for online. Yeah, genius. Out of all the billions of people in the world, you’re definitely the only person to ever have had that happen to them.”

  “I’m sensing a bit of an attitude from you there, sweetheart,” I snorted as I took the final turning that would take us to the surprise.

  “Well, seriously! How can anyone be that dumb?”

  Slowing down as the wooden barn came into view, I took a quick look at her and answered as bluntly as I could. “Some people are stuck on stupid, I guess.” Steering the vehicle onto a patch of grass, I put the parking brake on and undid my belt. “You finished with this? Or would you like to come see what you’re going to help me with?”

  Taking in the building carefully, she frowned and asked warily, “We’re not here to shovel horse poop are we?”

  Bursting out laughing, I opened the door and got out. “Not today, babe.”

  “Not today? What does that mean? Do you do it as a hobby at the weekends or something?” I closed the door and walked around to her side to help her out. “Seriously, I don’t think I want to do that any day. When I was little, I stood in horse poop when I was barefoot. It went between my toes and covered me up to the middle of my shin. The smell was so bad I threw up. So, can we skip that?”

  “Why were you walking around horse shit barefoot?”

  “It was at a friend’s birthday party. Her parents had gotten her one of those mini farms that come to your house for kids to pet the animals or ride on the ponies. I jumped down off the trampoline and a rabid chicken started chasing me so I couldn’t put my shoes back on.”

  How in the ever-loving hell did this shit happen to her?

  “Anyway, I was too busy looking back and trying to convince the chicken it didn’t want to bite me, and I went into a pile of poop,” she shrugged, like it wasn’t one of the most random things to happen to someone.

  Staring at her for a few seconds, I tried to figure out how to respond to that. To any of that.

  “What happened to the chicken?”

  Sighing, she turned and pointed to the back of her leg, around the calf area. “It bit me. It waited until I got into shit – literally – and took a cheap shot at me. It took antibiotics and a bunch of other things to make sure I didn’t die of rabies or whatever.”

  It was an almost unbelievable story, but that made it even funnier. The fact that something so impossible had happened… I was struggling not to laugh.

  Rolling her eyes, she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “You can laugh. It’s fine!”

  So, with her permission, I did. Hard!

  “Oh my God,” Dahlia whispered after her eyes had adjusted to the darkness in the building versus the strength of the sun outside. “Are they…?”

  “Puppies,” I muttered with a grin and then chuckled when a chicken walked past us and Dahlia took a step behind me.

  “Please tell me that’s what we’re here to see and not them?” she pointed at a bunch of the birds that were walking around, pecking the ground.

  “We also have chicks, if you’re interested?” a deep voice said behind us, making Dahlia squawk and jump, getting answering ones from the poultry.

  “Hey, man!” I took a step forward and shook the guy’s hand.

  Brady was a friend of Archer’s and his dogs had just had litters of puppies. Litters as in three dogs, three litters. All within their own breeds, with no cross breeding involved.

  There were Boxer puppies, Cocker Spaniel puppies and Alaskan Malamute puppies, which is what I was here to see about.

  “Hey, great to see you again,” he shook my hand with a grin, and then looked at Dahlia. “Brady Atkins.”

  “Dahlia Ferguson,” she replied, still watching the chickens carefully even as she introduced herself.

  “Dahlia had a bad experience with chickens when she was a kid,” I explained when he gave me a confused look.

  “They can be mean little bastards,” he chuckled, resting h
is hands on his hips as he looked over at the foul in question. “But, they can also be loving and like little kittens. Look!”

  He crouched down and tapped the floor. As he did it, three chickens came running up to him and stroked their heads on his knees.

  “That’s…” Dahlia whispered, watching him wide eyed. “It’s a cross between a real-life horror movie for me, and a Disney movie like Snow White.”

  Picking one up and scratching it like it was a dog, Brady snorted. “Depends on the chicken in question, to be honest. These ones were hand reared in the house, so they look at us like their parents.”

  Hesitantly, Dahlia reached out and slowly ran her finger down the side of its neck. When the animal clucked loudly and rubbed back against the digit, the tension eased out of her shoulders and she started smiling.

  “Wanna hold it?” Brady asked her.

  Any choice she had in the matter was taken out of her hands when the animal moved suddenly and jumped in her direction. I wasn’t sure if she raised her arms to protect herself or to catch it, but regardless, it ended up with her holding onto a chicken who had decided that it was in love with Dahlia.

  That would have been all cute and fabulous if the little fucker hadn’t tried to peck me every time I tried to touch her.

  I was having chicken for dinner tonight, and I was going to enjoy every bite.

  Seven

  Dahlia

  “S o, which ones are you here to look at?” I asked, surrounded by puppies. I felt like I was in the middle of 101 Dalmatians, except I was surrounded by eleven puppies of different breeds. Oh, and a chicken who refused to leave my lap.

  Of all the animals to take a liking to me after both of the big bad chicken moments in my life. My driving test and that birthday party still scarred me, but I had to admit – this little clucker and the little chicks that were tumbling around the barn were pretty cute.