Wild Like the Wind (Page 30)

“Is this her style?”

Keely’s house was not black leather and chrome.

It was bold and in your face. If he was forced to describe it, it was like junked-up-cool, biker gypsy rock ’n’ roll.

“No.”

“So she doesn’t just come here, hiding with you. You’ve been to her home,” Jean stated, but it was a question.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“That said, you’re still hiding.”

“Jean—”

“You know I don’t understand this, Shepherd. You seem to be taking this in your stride but it makes no sense to me. She’s here every night. If she feels you deserve a better place to live and puts the work into making that happen, because I know it was her that cleaned this carpet, I heard it, then why is this what it is?”

“It just is.”

“It makes no sense.”

“You don’t live in our world.”

“I know if I was a young woman who caught your eye and owned your heart, I would not hide that in an ugly apartment that can be made nicer with decent furniture but it’s still no better. I’d shout it to the world.”

“That isn’t in the cards.”

“Because of you or because of her?” she demanded.

Because of her, he thought.

“Because of my brothers,” he said.

“And they matter this much to you that you can’t have the woman you love, who I’m hoping from the time she spends with you and the effort she takes to make your life better, cares about you too?” she pushed.

“Yeah.”

“And you think this makes sense?” she asked.

“I think it is the only way it can be and we’re both takin’ what we can get, how we can get it, until shit happens where we can’t have it anymore.”

“Would you give up your brothers for her?”

“That’s like asking me to cut off my own arm.”

She studied him again before she nodded. “I see. And this Keely understands this so she allows you to hide her away in this ugly apartment taking what she can get.”

He’d deal with whatever the brothers decided to dish out if it meant in the end he’d have them and he’d have Keely.

But she had the man she gave it all to, and he was dead. And although she had more to give, she couldn’t give it all making it worth it to butt up against the brothers to have her. She knew that so she was taking what she could get and giving it all the same.

He didn’t explain this to Jean.

He said, “The man she loved, my brother who died, there’ll be no one else like that for her.”

“Of course not,” she returned. “She loved him. She married him. She gave him children. But does that mean she can’t find another to love, if not the same, a different way that’s just as beautiful?”

Hound stared at her.

She didn’t wait for his answer.

She declared, “It’s clear she can’t. She may care enough to clean your carpeting, Shepherd, and she may think you deserve better, and I would very much agree.” She leaned his way slightly, just enough not to take her off balance. “You deserve better,” she stated.

“She’s a good woman,” he told her firm.

“I’m sure. But evidence suggests you still could do better.”

He felt his mouth get tight and forced through it, “Maybe we shouldn’t talk about this.”

She examined his mouth and murmured, “Maybe we shouldn’t.” She looked back to the room and finished it, “I like it very much. Whatever one can say about what’s happening, she had a mind to you when she furnished your apartment. It’s very much you. And it is definitely better than what you had and it looks very fine.” Her eyes came back to him. “What you deserve.”

He nodded, more than ready to do a snail’s walk with her back to her place and still pissed because he didn’t often want to leave Jean. Need to leave her because he had shit to do, yeah. But she was the calm in his life that was always a storm.

His preference, it was the life he chose.

It still was good to have a place that was calm.

“Don’t be angry with me for worrying about you, motek,” she said softly.

He wasn’t angry at her for that.

He was angry that she pointed out shit he was trying not to think about.

“I can sustain bein’ pissed at you for about ten seconds,” he replied.

Her brows went up. “Have you been upset with me before?”

“When you had that cough that lasted two weeks and refused to go to the doctor and they found out it was pneumonia.”

“Oh, of course,” she muttered.

“And when you got up in my face that you could still make your bed, then you took that fall and hit your head on the nightstand and I found you on the floor three hours later, out of it, and had to take you to the hospital.”

“I forgot about that,” she mumbled.

“And that time you got ticked at me for goin’ outta my way to borrow my brother’s car ’cause it’s easier for you to get in and out of than my truck when I had to take you to synagogue.”

Her eyes got intent on him. “You can stop now.”

He grinned.

Her eyes wandered beyond him.

“She didn’t buy you a new television,” she remarked.

He looked to his boxy TV that he vaguely remembered picking up outside a dumpster then calling in a marker from a TV repair guy he knew who was a biker to fix it.

“That’s my gig. Pickin’ one up tonight with a mount. I’m thinkin’ sixty inch.”

She shuffled with her walker toward his new couch. “Well, now it’s lunchtime, not tonight, so I say we eat some of the leftover food she makes you and enjoy your new furniture by giving your TV one last go. There’s a Law and Order marathon running on TNT.”

As far as he could tell from being in her pad as often as he was, there was always a Law and Order marathon running.

“Her name is Keely, darlin’,” he said quiet.

She kept shuffling toward the couch, didn’t look back, and replied, “I know.”

He felt his mouth twitch.

Then he watched until she made it to his couch and he kept watching as she shuffled around, aimed her ass to it and made it on the couch.

Then he went to the kitchen to nuke some of Keely’s leftover food.

He wasn’t going to give Keely the chance to win Jean over.

But he had a feeling her food would help the cause.

In the end, he didn’t know if he was wrong or if he was right.

He did know the huge-ass portion of spaghetti with homemade garlic bread he made her . . .

She cleaned her plate.

Pawns

Hound’s alarm went, and he opened his eyes seeing and feeling a naked Keely draped on top of him.

Fuck.

They were nearly two months into their gig and she hadn’t spent the night once.

But last night she wanted him up her ass, and he was feeling creative. They’d been settling in these past weeks with less sex (but it wasn’t less good, it was always spectacular) and more cuddling and pillow talk, so last night they went bionic.

He remembered his last orgasm.

He didn’t remember passing out.

He was lucky it wasn’t a weekend. He was having trouble getting Keely to go home on the weekends now. She didn’t have to get to work and Jagger didn’t have to get to school so he didn’t show for breakfast, which meant she had no reason to go and didn’t want to.