Until Forever (Providence Series Book 3)

by Mary B. Moore

  Cole

  I couldn’t help chuckling as I put what I needed in my cart. It had been a couple of days since my birthday celebrations at the lake, and I’d finally cleared the water from my ass. That was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Until you’ve had water going up your ass hole at what felt like five hundred miles per hour, you’ll never know the pain that I went through. How people had that shit done voluntarily, I’ll never know.

  I was walking down the pet aisle looking for some dog food and treats for Sparky, well Poppy as Ebru insisted on calling her. I was hoping that she’d get used to the name Sparky and I could tell Ebru that it was a fluke that she preferred my name to hers. On the shelf in front of me, I saw the cutest cuddly bunny with a squeak inside of it and threw it in the cart too. Next to it, was an elephant, so I got that for Winston. He may be a piglet, but the little shit was like Pippa and had humped the fluffy yellow chick we’d bought him from one side of the living room to the other the night before. That poor chick was now living in shame, so to give it a break I’d get him the elephant.

  I’d been planning my revenge over the unicorn Mustang incident, and pretty much everything for a while now, and the opportunity was too good to miss. Carrying the bags with the revenge bounty in them to the car, I couldn’t stop grinning. Revenge was going to be mine.

  The next day…

  I’d just sat down at the table in my parents’ house and was enjoying a quick catch up with Ebru and my Mom and Dad. They were discussing her mom’s treatment and how she was doing, and I took a second to appreciate the difference in Ebru from when I first met her to now. She’d always been beautiful, but her face was relaxed now, she gave genuine smiles, she laughed, and she just looked…brighter. My Mom and Dad had said it the other day too, and I loved that the weight on her shoulders had been lifted enough for the change to be noticeable.

  I’d just picked my coffee cup when my grandparents came in arguing over something. If I didn’t know for sure how much they loved each other, there would be days that I’d expect one of them to hold a pillow over the face of the other one and not let go. My bets would be on Gram doing it to Pops.

  “I don’t care,” Gram said firmly as she sat down. “It’s not happening!”

  “What are y’all arguing over?” Mom asked. After all of the years that she’d known them, she still asked, but I’m sure it was more out of duty than genuine interest.

  “He wants to go to one of those nekkie resorts in the Caribbean,” Gram explained as she fixed her coffee and I choked on mine.

  Not one word was said as I tried to cough the coffee out of my lungs, and not one of the shit heads at the table lifted a hand to help me as I choked. Instead, they were all sitting staring at my grandparents in horror.

  “Look, we’re not going to be able to join in for long,” Gramps said, just as I took a brutal sounding and much needed breath. It must have snapped Eb out of her horror because she belatedly, and unnecessarily by this point, started patting me on the back.

  “The answer is no.” Gram focused her attention on the rest of the table.

  “But I got me one of those man things that goes in the cheeks of your ass,” the old bastard said as I, unfortunately again, took my next mouthful of coffee and started choking. “I saw them on television, and on the world wide web they say that the place I wanna book us into is the one to go to. You only live once, Lindy!”

  I was at the stage now with the coffee in my lungs that I was genuinely thinking that my final moments on earth would be filled with my grandparents arguing over going to a nudist resort and my Pops talking about man thongs. As calm as can be, Mom got up from her chair and walked around and started whacking me on the back as hard as she could. I swear I heard a vertebrae or a rib crack, but it cleared the gallon of coffee that had settled into my lungs and allowed me to take a deep breath in.

  “Anyway, I already booked us in and got you the girl one of the butt spreaders,” Pops sat back in his chair and looked at Gram with the stubborn expression that we all knew meant he wasn’t bending. The flaw in his plan was that Gram had been married to him for two hundred years, and she did stubborn better.

  “Well, you go wear your butt floss to the lake and see what people think. If you get good news back from people, and don’t end up getting sued for mental trauma to the population, then I’ll think about going to one of those nekkie hotels with you.”

  “For the love of all things sacred, I’m begging you - stop,” I croaked out. I couldn’t hold back my thoughts anymore, and the flashing lights behind my eyes had stopped, which I assumed meant I at least had oxygen now.

  Grams winked while Pop just glared at me before turning back to Gram. “We’re going, and that’s final!”

  We were all saved from more mental and emotional trauma, as well as the life-altering mental images that you couldn’t help but get, by the front door slamming open and Ren yelling.

  “Where is he?” I could hear Maya trying to calm him down through her laughter and smiled when she walked around the corner holding baby Crystal.

  I was holding my hands out to take the baby, when Ren walked around the corner, and everyone froze for the second time in ten minutes. I’d decided to put orange dye in some orange colored body wash and green dye in his shampoo, so what just walked into the room was like a streaky Oompa Loompa on steroids.

  “What in the ever loving fuck?” Pops mumbled.

  “You,” Ren pointed at me. He looked as pissed as the time I took his Playboy and stuck photos of Mom’s face over the Playboy bunnies. “I know you did this ,you skinny dicked twat flap.”

  “And you know this how?” I asked, sitting back in my chair doing my best not to laugh. He looked like he was about to jump over the table to kill me when the door opened again with a bang, and I heard Brett bellow through the house.

  “Whichever one of you did this you better fucking run…”

  When he walked through the doorway, I realized that I’d mixed his and Ren’s bottles up. I’d put more dye in Ren’s because his hair was darker than Brett’s. He looked like the love child of one of those trolls with the crazy hair and the Oompa Loompa that created Ren.

  I think we all had the same expression on our faces as we looked at Brett and Ren standing next to each other, breathing like bulls. Admittedly, I hadn’t thought that the dye would make that big of a difference. I figured they’d look jaundiced at best, but what was facing us was Sunkist type orange, and the green was a neon color, so consider me corrected.

  The final recipient of the dye chose to arrive at that moment. I’d done something different with his, though, seeing as he had blonde hair.

  “Calm down, honey,” we heard Isla say after the door slammed. “You’re upsetting Dewi.”

  “I’ll fucking kill them for this. I have a meeting tomorrow that…oh my shit,” Luke said as he walked into the kitchen and saw Brett and Ren standing there. The irony when he burst out laughing wasn’t lost on us, especially as I’d put a neon turquoise color in his shampoo that had apparently dyed his eyebrows too and left streaks down his face. On top of the orange, it was…striking.

  “You look in the mirror, asswad?” Brett snapped, reminding Luke of his own predicament.

  “It had to be you,” he growled, making his way around the table to where I was sitting. Thankfully, I was now holding baby Crystal so I was pretty certain that they wouldn’t beat the shit out of me. Well, not at this precise moment in time anyway.

  “I’ll repeat what I just said to Brett when he said that. And you know this how?”

  Apparently, an indignant hand sweep of his body was the answer to the allegations, but it was hard to take him seriously when his hair and his skin were the color of highlighters. Fuck it, I love the internet. That one gesture broke the rest of the room out of the stupors that they’d been sitting in as they sat staring at the ‘Jaundiced Jacks’ in front of us, and the sound of laughter at a deafening volume
took over the room. It was so loud that the back door opened suddenly and a bunch of Baz and Coleman’s men poured in with their guns out, coming to an abrupt stop when they saw the three twat holes who were standing glaring at us. I’d like to say that they were going red with anger, but it was impossible to tell. They joined in the still laughing audience with Coleman and Baz standing behind them with twitching lips.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I was with Eb all morning.” Maybe I was begging to get the crap beaten out of me when I shot them a smug shit-eating grin after saying that, but hey.

  “Then you did it at some other time,” Ren snarled, only holding back because I had his beautiful baby girl in my arms.

  Shrugging, I looked over at Isla and Maya and said, “Did either of you see me in your homes at any point? Did you let me in?”

  Both of them looked at each other and then looked back at me and shrugged. The twitching of their mouths told me that they so knew that I’d snuck in, which was true.

  Losing the control on what little patience he had left, Brett stood up and glared at me. “I don’t know how you did it you little shit, but I know that you did do it. You wait, I’m gonna…”

  “It seems to me that if he did do it, that you have tortured him numerous time over the years. Perhaps you were due this? Consider it…” Ebru paused and took a sip of coffee. “Karma.”

  All three Oompa Loompa’s looked at her in shock. That’s right, my girlfriend is totally the shit.

  Walking around the table, Ren took Crystal out of my arms and gave me a smug look before walking away with Brett beside him. The joke was on him, my smug look was warranted. That little angel was totally shitting herself when he took her away. In fact, I’d been about to hand her back to her mother, so he saved me a job.

  “Holy shit,” Brett choked from the direction of the front door while Ren coughed. “What does she eat?”

  Looking back at the last asshole standing, well sitting now, I relaxed back into my chair and drank my coffee. Revenge was most definitely sweet!

  Chapter Thirteen

  Brett

  I’d finally gotten the orange off my skin and the green out of my hair a couple of days ago. I’d almost scrubbed myself raw trying to do it, but it had worked in the end. I still had a slight green tinge to my hair and looked a smidge jaundiced, but it was a huge improvement on what I’d looked like before.

  Sitting back in my chair, I took a sip of my beer and looked around the bar doing my best not to look at the phone sitting on the table in front of me. I hadn’t heard from her in five days, and it was eating away at me. No, it was pissing me off; eating away at me implied that I actually cared about her which I didn’t. I didn’t do relationships or caring about females that weren’t family, and she was no different.

  I’d been used by women all of my life in some way. Either they wanted me to buy them shit, thinking that a fuck entitled them to gifts, or they were hoping that I’d marry them. Or, like the close call I had a couple of years ago - they were planning to get pregnant to trap me. Thank fuck for Mom, she’d saved my bacon on that occasion. All of those experiences though meant that I didn’t do relationships or the whole falling in love bullshit; I fucked plain and simple. They come, I come, they go.

  Then five months ago, she walked into my life, and that was me screwed. I really didn’t like that I thought about her and wondered what she was doing. It pissed me the hell off that I found myself checking my phone for messages from her, or planning messages that I could send her. Most of the time, I went with nonsense work ones that didn’t need to be sent, but that I did it anyway. The thing I hated with a passion, though, was that I always had this need to see her; I wanted to be around her all of the time, and it didn’t sit well with me at all.

  I couldn’t stop myself from looking back down at my phone and almost threw it across the bar when there was no reply from her. Where the hell was she? What was she doing? Who the fuck was she with? The thought that she might be with another man had me so fucked off that I felt like I could crush the glass bottle in my hand. Why did she have this effect on me?

  Looking away from the phone, I scanned the bar again and saw a chick that I used to fuck in high school. Trinny wasn’t a bad looking woman, but she was a bike. Maybe this was what I needed to get my mind off of her? Part of me wanted to do it, but a bigger part of me was pulling my dick inside my body at the thought.

  She chose that moment to look around the bar, probably looking for fresh meat, and then stopped on me. The smug smile that she wore as she stalked towards had me wanting to get up to get as far away from her as possible, and the temptation to go home and scrub myself raw for ever sticking my dick in her was strong, but I had a purpose for staying where I was. I was going to get her out of my system. Or at least try.

  “Well, hey there stranger. How ya been?” She asked as soon as she got to the table, punctuating it by bending over and flashing her cleavage at me. I’m pretty sure that it was mostly chicken cutlets, though, because I knew tits and those didn’t add up, and they sure as shit weren’t plastic.

  “Good, sugar,” I leaned back and kept eye contact with her. “You’re looking fine, Trinny. Single?” The grin that she shot me told me everything. Time to go in for the kill. “What are you up t…”

  My phone chose that second to chime just as my brain started screaming no at me. Before I met her, I would have left it and continued towards the score, but it had become an obsession to check it as soon as it beeped, just in case. Looking at the screen, my heart sped up when her name flashed on it. Ignoring the train wreck still talking at me and flashing her fake chest, I picked up the phone and opened the message.

  Sabine: I’m sorry, I haven’t been well. I will look into that tomorrow and respond.

  Ever since the explosion at the offices, she’d had issues with her chest and had been put on antibiotics and steroids. The last I’d heard, though, she’d been doing okay. The mental image of her not being able to breathe properly and being alone hit me, and I got up out of my chair and dialed the pilot.

  “What about tonight?” Trinny whined as I walked past her. Looking at her, the thought that I’d even considered touching her turned my gut even though I knew that I wouldn’t have done it.

  “No,” I said as I made my way towards the door, just as the pilot answered. “I need the helo here as soon as possible.” I walked outside the building with Coleman behind me. He’d been standing nearby after I’d told him that I wanted some time alone when I’d gone into the bar.

  “I can be there in a couple of hours, sir,” McKay replied.

  “Do it.” I hung up as we got to the SUV and turned to Coleman. “We’re going to Dallas,” I opened the door to the rear of the car and got in, not giving him a chance to answer.

  “Everything okay?” he asked as he got behind the wheel of the vehicle and a new guy that I’d never seen before got into the passenger side.

  “Unknown.” I felt as grim as I expected I sounded. Once I got there and saw for myself what was wrong and got her the best medical attention I could find, then I’d relax. Until then, I needed to get my shit together and get to her.

  We spent the rest of the drive back to the ranch in silence, and I took the time to make plans based on a range of scenarios of what could be wrong with her. Getting out of the vehicle, I told them I’d meet them back at it in an hour. It took at least half an hour to get to the airfield that we’d decided to go to to meet the helicopter, seeing as we couldn’t use the normal one that was closer. Even though there hadn’t been any more incidents, didn’t mean that the person doing it had given up, so we were treading on the side of caution and would do until further notice.

  I packed my bags and threw them in the trunk of the SUV and ran to my parents to say goodbye and tell them where I was going. I think Mom suspected that there was someone, but she’d be wrong. Sabine was just someone who worked for me, and her family were in France, so she was here
all on her own. At least, that’s what I told myself as I ran back to the vehicle. Nothing had happened between us, and nothing would happen between us. She was just an employee, that’s all… Gritting my teeth, I knew that it was time for me to face the truth on this. For the first time in my life, I’d found a woman that hit a place so deep inside of me that I struggled to function without her. Did she feel the same way, though?

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Mr. Lewis”

  I’d been on my way to see my Red when the phone that had been quiet for months now, but that I carried around with me just in case, rang. I swear this bastard had eyes on me because he always seemed to call just as I was about to do something.

  “Sir,” I was keeping it cordial for just now. I knew that fucker was going to off me the second that this was all over or if I took a step wrong, but what he didn’t know was that I was gonna get there first.

  “Give me an update.”

  Looking around me, I took a step away from where people were walking and leaned against the wall.

  “They still have security tight.”

  “Mmmm,” I could hear papers being moved around on the other end of the phone and wondered what the fuck he did. If he was in contact with people every day, how the fuck did they not pick up on the fact that he was a psychotic son of a bitch? “I think,” he paused, and I did my best not to snap. I wasn’t going to keep Red waiting, not for this piece of shit. “Hang tight. We will stay our course for now. I’ll call you soon,” he added, and hung up without saying anything else. Fucking fine by me.

  Walking across the road, I headed to the small deli that seemed totally out of place in this ass backward hick town. Opening the door, I spotted her immediately and made my way towards her table.

  “Oh, hey there. I wasn’t sure if you would make it,” my beautiful Red said as I sat down. She was smiling at me, happy to see me.