“Hound—”
He gave her a firm squeeze to cut her off.
“No, babe, it’s not gonna happen.”
She gave him a stubborn look.
He kept his mouth shut and took it.
Her look vanished and a concerned one took its place.
That was harder to withstand.
“I want her to be happy,” she said.
“This guy doesn’t make her happy?”
“He pays attention to her, and if they settle in, he’ll help her pay the bills. That’s what this guy does for her.”
He liked Bev. That sucked for her. She deserved more.
It still wasn’t his problem.
Or Keely’s.
He didn’t have to say that again.
Keely got it.
“Right,” Keely muttered. “We’ll quit talking about this because it’s making me sad.”
He rolled her and gave her some of his weight, getting all of her attention.
“Just talk to her,” he advised. “Tell her she should hold out for what she wants.”
“She isn’t twenty-two anymore, honey.”
“No. But she is a good woman and she shouldn’t give up.”
She slid a hand up his back, did it light and did it sweet.
“You sure you won’t talk to him?”
He shook his head, liking the touch but not giving in to it.
“You know how it goes, Keekee.”
Her eyes drifted away from him and something moved over her face that disturbed him more than the subject of their current conversation merited, even as tight as she was with Beverly and as obvious as it was this was bothering her, as she answered, “I know how it is.”
“Babe,” he called.
She came back to him and it didn’t make him feel better that it looked like she wiped her expression clean, like she’d lost track of it, knew what she’d exposed and was hiding it from him.
“Wanna tell me what’s in your head?” he asked.
“Just that this is one of the bad parts that you have to balance with the good.”
He could get that.
“Sorry, Keekee,” he whispered.
“It is what it is, baby,” she whispered back.
It was definitely that.
He touched his mouth to hers and left it there when he asked, “You want more?”
“Do you seriously have to ask that question?”
He grinned against her mouth and when he went in again, it wasn’t a touch.
“What d’you think?” Hound asked Jean.
She’d taken a rare shuffle down the hall because all of Keely’s furniture had shown up, Jean had heard the commotion over the last six days, and she was curious.
So since his place wasn’t a sty anymore (not that she hadn’t been over before, just that she was Jean, he didn’t subject her to that when she had a fussy pad full of stuff, but it was way better than his), he showed her.
Keely had even come over on Saturday morning before anything was delivered and steam cleaned the carpets. Some of the stains didn’t come up, but it still looked a load better.
“Was what you had before not good enough for her?”
Jean’s question made him look down at her, leaning on her walker inside his closed door.
“She didn’t like me living in a pit,” he told her. “She said I deserve better.”
Jean studied his face for a beat before she replied, “You do. Was her telling you this what caused you to allow her to spend a great deal of your own money on you?”
It wasn’t simply that Hound was keeping the two best parts of his life all to himself, not letting them meet each other because he knew it would end with Keely eventually, but also because Jean wasn’t her biggest fan and the fact it would end eventually was part of why she wasn’t.
Among other reasons.
“I had other motivation, Jean bug,” he shared. “I’m spendin’ more time here, and yeah, that’s with her, but it was a pit.”
She threw a bony hand out toward the room that didn’t actually look like a Harley-Davidson god puked all over it. The crankshaft barstools were cool but Keely left it at that for anything unusual, and all the rest of it was just masculine and comfortable.
“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 d
eserve.”
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.
But now she had reason to go, get home, get ready for work, but mostly, get gone from Hound’s crib so he could see to Jean.
He was pissed about this for a variety of reasons.
The most important was he’d passed out so he wasn’t conscious to enjoy the first time Keely spent the entire night with him.
Equally important was that they had a situation where he had to get her to haul ass at all.
Out there in the world, they were nothing to each other but members of an alternate-style family.
In his apartment, they were biker and old lady.
And as Hound had feared, having it all and not having it was getting under his skin like a tick, digging in and sucking out his soul.
Hound reached to the alarm clock.
Keely moved.
“Shit, it’s six?” she asked his alarm clock.
“You gotta haul ass, baby.”
“Shit!” she snapped. “It’s six!”
She kicked off the covers that were only over her legs and rolled over him, taking her feet by the side of the bed.
Slower, Hound followed her.
She took off for the bathroom.
He reached for his drawers.
He had them on and was pulling on his jeans when she raced in and started to yank on clothes.
“Jag’s home before you get there, what are you gonna tell him?” Hound asked curiously.
“Seeing as I’m gonna have to go to work unshowered and with fuck hair, this is not my biggest concern right now,” she replied. “But this is also not like the time he got his nose where it wasn’t supposed to be and I found him brandishing my vibrator, telling me it was a light saber. He’s not six anymore. If he hasn’t figured out mama’s gotta get laid every once in a while, it’s time he learned.”
Dutch was the oldest and except for his brush with fuckery when he was fourteen, from the minute he could, he’d stepped up for his mom and his brother.
Jagger, the baby, wasn’t exactly spoiled but he also hadn’t quite cottoned on to the fact his mother didn’t exist to make his life golden.
Case in point, the last time Jag figured out his momma was getting laid and not liking it.
Another case in point, showing at her place for her to make him breakfast before school every morning when he was nineteen and essentially living somewhere else.
“We need to be more careful, Keekee,” he said, reaching for his tee and straightening to tug it on.
“You need to be less awesome with your dick, Shep,” she shot back.
He pulled his shirt down his stomach and grinned at her.
She cut a fake pissed-off look at him and clasped her bra at her front before she twisted it around the back.
She put the rest of her clothes on.
He put his socks and boots on.
She grabbed her jacket and purse from the living room and he walked her down to her car.
They didn’t have time to make out so he gave her a quick kiss, closed the door after she folded in and then went to the sidewalk.
But he was late for Jean and Jean would worry, so instead of watching her drive away like he always did, he started right up the walk to the building, and through that, he played that cool.
However, when he was about to hit the building he started jogging.
Inside the building, he took the steps three at a time.
He let himself in Jean’s apartment, and right when he was about to make it to her bedroom door, she called, “Everything okay, Shepherd?”
He pushed in. “Everything’s cool.”
They did their thing. She’d had a shower the day before and she didn’t like to make him do it every day so it was about toilet, teeth brushing, making her bed and getting her dressed before breakfast.
They were finishing that when there came a pounding at the door.
Not a knock.
Pounding.
He twisted his neck and narrowed his eyes that way, feeling his mouth turn down as Jean murmured, “What on earth?”
“Stay here. I’ll find out,” he growled.
He left her leaning on her walker by her bed and stalked into the other room.
The entire time he
did that, the pounding didn’t stop.
When he looked through the peephole and saw what he saw, his vision exploded in sparks of fury.
He unlocked the door, yanked it open and moved immediately to press back a visibly enraged Keely.
But hearing the locks go, she was ready for him, hands at his chest shoving hard.
She pushed in, pushing him in with her, shouting, “Who you got in here, Hound? Who’s your side piece means I come to you after you do her and you get me gone so you can go back? Who, Hound? Who is this bitch?”
“That would be me.”
Hound was pulling in oxygen so he didn’t black out with rage, and this effort was not helped when both he and Keely turned to see Jean in her slippers and housecoat shuffling with her walker down the hall from her bedroom.
“Holy shit,” Keely whispered.
“As Shepherd knows, I don’t allow foul language in my home so if you’d refrain, I’d appreciate it,” Jean declared.
Keely said nothing.
Hound continued to expend effort so he wouldn’t do or say anything he’d regret, and this took so much, he couldn’t take any to speak.
Jean stopped at the mouth of the hall. “You’re Keely, I presume?”
“Yeah,” Keely answered.
“I’m Jean Gruenberg. As you can see, I’m Shepherd’s neighbor. We’re friends. Close friends.”
“Uh, Shep and I are, um . . . close friends too,” Keely shared.
“I know.”
“He didn’t tell me about you,” Keely told Jean.
“I’m realizing that.”
It was then Keely looked at Hound, and he might still be pissed as fuck at her but the look on her face said she was no longer that with him.
The look on her face was something else entirely.
And that look sliced clean through his gut.
“You didn’t tell me about Jean,” she whispered.
Shit.
“Keel—”
He said no more as her head jerked Jean’s way and she stammered, “I’m s-sorry. So so so so sorry. That was rude. Incredibly rude. I’m so very sorry.”
“Your apology is accepted, dear,” Jean said carefully, watching Keely closely.
Hound put his hand on her arm but she pulled that arm away, slouching to the side and looking up at him. “I, well, obviously, I should go. I’m sorry.”