Wild Like the Wind

“Is this . . . this . . . woman using you?”

He shook his head. “Can’t be used when you’re gaggin’ to be kept on that string.”

It was Jean’s turn to clamp her mouth shut.

She got over that quick.

“I’m not certain how I feel about this situation.”

“She loved him with a love that made even me wonder if there’s a God because only something divine could create that kind of beauty.”

She leaned toward him over her TV tray, her face earnest. “Please, find that for you.”

“It’s not out there for a man like me,” he educated her.

She sat back. “How can that be?”

For the most part, he was honest with her. That was what he gave his Jean.

But with some things, he held back.

Now, he put it out there.

“Because the man I am in here for you is not the man I am when I walk out that door. And the man I am for Keely and her boys is the man I need to be to replace the one they lost. But the man I am, there’s nothing divine about it.”

“You’re very wrong,” she stated irritably.

“I’m all kinds of right,” he shot back.

“You can’t be different men, Shepherd Ironside. You’re the same man who needs to be different for different parts of your life and the different people in it. You cannot tell me and make me believe that a single thing you’ve done in your life you didn’t have your reasons for doing it. So not in this house, Shepherd. Not sitting right across from me. You don’t talk yourself down looking right at me. The second man in eighty-nine years who I’ve given my love to, I didn’t give it foolishly. I know the man you are and it might not be divine but it’s blessed, because I’m blessed to have you here with me.”

Hound looked to her TV, his throat closing.

Jean didn’t care she lost his gaze.

She kept at him.

“Now, if this woman cannot see the blessing of you, then you need to find it in you to harden your heart to her and find one who does. She’s out there, Shepherd. She’s waiting. She’s lost and alone and she needs you in her life. So stop messing about and find her.”

Hound gave her his attention on a scowl.

“If it’ll make you be quiet about it, okay. I will,” he gave in. “But I’m still lookin’ in on you, I’m still lookin’ out for you, and I don’t want to hear another word about that. And that means with the money.”

“I have my own money,” she returned.

“You also have mine,” he fired back.

“I can pay my own way.”

“Good luck with that since you can’t pick up your own mail and you don’t have your freaking checkbook.”

She glared at him.

He pushed it. “So are we square?”

“Fine,” she snapped.

“Great,” he bit back.

She looked down to her plate.

Hound shoved up from the couch muttering, “You reaming my behind, it’s gone cold. I’ll nuke it.”

“I’m sure it’s perfectly all right,” Jean replied.

He pulled her plate out from under her fork and looked in her eyes.

“‘All right’ is not good enough for my Jean.”

Tears filled her eyes.

So he didn’t have to witness that crap, he took her plate to the kitchen and nuked it.

He brought it back to her hot.

Then he sat in her couch, drank his coffee and watched a morning show where he was pretty sure he would be happy killing every person on it—and none of that would be for good reasons, except no one could pull off that brittle, chirpy fake that early in the morning except them—but he was also pretty sure that wasn’t worthy of murder.

Jean ate her breakfast.

Hound did the dishes.

And with her stacks of books and the magazines she had left and her remote right there and her water pitcher fresh and her Baileys close and her box of chocolates closer, he left her on a promise to be back with her groceries and to get her lunch.

There was something he should have taken care of a long time ago.

But he never did.

So after his morning with Jean, he returned to her with her groceries and gossip rags and meds, and an appointment with her hair dresser, and getting her to the john then getting her lunch. When he was back on Chaos and he saw Tyra’s Mustang at the foot of the steps to the office of Ride—the custom bike and car garage that Chaos owned, ran and worked, and Tyra managed the office—and he saw Tack walk in that door, Hound moved that way.

He opened the door and was thankful to see only Tack and Tyra there, his brother sitting on his woman’s desk, his woman sitting in the swivel chair behind it, but she had it rolled close to her man.

They both looked to him when he walked in.

He closed the door.

“Gotta take some of your time,” he said.

“You need me to go?” Tyra asked.

“No, Cherry,” he answered, using the nickname the brothers gave her that had a lot to do with her hair, but it could be said it was also about her being sweet (Tack called her Red, that was Tack’s, and since it was no one used it, not even his older kids that weren’t hers). “I mean both of you.”

Tack went alert. Tyra kept her gaze pinned to him.

Hound launched in.

“Got a woman, she means somethin’ to me.”

Tyra’s eyes got huge and Tack stared at him, a man who was a master at hiding shit he didn’t want seen, he couldn’t hide his shock.

Maybe Jean was right.

Maybe it was time to quit banging biker groupies (and definitely Keely) and find a woman to make babies with.

Or something.

Fuck, he was thirty-nine, a biker, and he’d spent seventeen years . . . pining.

Jesus.

“She’s eighty-nine years old and lives in the apartment next to mine,” Hound continued.

They both relaxed.

“She’s got me and she’s also got no one else but me,” he stated.

They both grew alert again.

“If somethin’ happens to me, I gotta trust someone will take her on. And I’m askin’ you two to do it.”

Tyra’s lips parted.

Tack straightened from her desk and turned to Hound.

“You look after an eighty-nine-year-old woman?” Tyra asked quietly.

“Groceries, rent, make sure she’s topped up with books, her gossip rags, medical bills, personal care, get this chick to come in and do her hair.”

“Personal care?” Tyra whispered.

He looked at her. “She trusts me.”

With that, her mouth dropped clean open.

Hound looked to Tack. “You’re not in, I’ll ask Tab and Shy. Tab’s a nurse. She’ll—”

Tack cut him off. “We got her covered.”

Hound nodded.

“Somethin’ happens to me, you break it to her gentle,” he demanded.

Tack nodded.

“Nothing’s gonna happen to you, Hound,” Tyra cut in.

And Graham Black was on the way home with pizza for his family when he got jumped in the parking lot and had his throat slit before he could even begin to fight for his life.

“Shit happens, it happens to me, I want to know you got Jean covered,” he replied.

Her face got hard.

It was cute.

“Nothing’s going to happen to you, Hound,” she repeated.

He gave her a look then looked to her man.

“Jean?” Tack asked.