Wild Like the Wind (Chaos #5)(18)

And apparently he could hold a grudge, because once he found the family he wanted, he never looked back to the one who didn’t want him. And apparently it was no loss to them, because they didn’t come looking either.

He had no idea how he took Jean Gruenberg on as family along the way. He didn’t know if he’d adopted her or she’d adopted him.

But she was the Jewish grandma to the atheist biker he never in his life expected to have.

And he loved her down to his soul.

“We’ve never talked about this, but hearing how upset that young woman was, I think the time has come that we should,” she told him.

“She’s a friend. The widow of a buddy of mine.”

Her faded blue eyes grew alarmed, then distressed.

“Oh, Shepherd,” she whispered.

“It’s been a while, and with some other buds, we been lookin’ after her, her kids. ’Cause a’ work I’ve had to skip a few times when I’d do things for her I normally do, and she got tweaked. It’s all good now.”

That last was a lie, and with anyone Hound spoke to he’d not give a shit he lied.

With Jean, it made his stomach feel sick.

“Perhaps—” she started.

“She’s just a friend, darlin’,” he cut her off quietly.

“You’re not getting any younger. You need to think about settling down. Finding a woman. Making a family,” she shared.

“I got a family.”

“Your own, motek,” she added.

He grinned. “I got my own family, Jean bug. I’m good. It’s all good.”

All of a sudden, those faded blue eyes on him were piercing. “You are the kindest, most gentle soul I’ve ever had touch mine. If you do not give that to a child, Shepherd, that will be lost to this world and that would be such a crying shame, it’d be hard to reconcile it.”

With her words, it shoved right into his head that Keely was forty-three.

Close to past it, but probably not quite yet.

She also had a twenty-one-year-old son, a nineteen-year-old one, and would likely not want to start that shit up again at her age.

Tack and his woman, Tyra, had not thought twice about starting up again after Tyra got in there with Tack, years after he’d rid himself of the bitch who’d been his first wife, Naomi. His girl with Naomi just gave Tack his first grandchild, a boy, and his two youngest with Tyra were barely older than their nephew.

It worked for that family.

The thought of telling Dutch and Jagger he’d knocked their mother up made him want to puke.

The thought that he was even having these thoughts made him want to kick his own ass.

“She was loud then I didn’t hear anything for a long time including your door open and close, Shepherd,” she said sharply. “Though I did hear it later, very late. It woke me up. Did you go out to a late-night movie? With her?”

This was no one’s business.

Except maybe Jean’s.

“Took some time to settle her down,” he hedged.

“It sure did,” she replied, gaze intent on his, lifting her coffee cup to her lips without breaking her regard.

“What happened shouldn’t have happened. She’s the widow of a dead buddy of mine,” he told her.

“I’ll tell you what, Shepherd Ironside, in some cultures it’s the responsibility of the brother who lives to wed the wife left behind in order to make certain she’s cared for.”

“That’s not our culture,” he reminded her, and it definitely wasn’t Chaos culture.

“Perhaps it should be. Perhaps there would be very lonely women who struggle, some of them with children, who wouldn’t have to struggle so hard, and their children would have a steady man in their lives who provided for them and gave them the understanding their mother was worth taking care of, because that’s the truth.”

Suddenly, Hound wondered what was behind that emotion.

“Who we talkin’ ’bout here, Jean bug?” he asked softly. “We talkin’ about Keely or we talkin’ about someone else?”

“My Haim didn’t have a brother, just a younger sister and she was a spoiled rotten brat.”

Hound relaxed and grinned at her.

“I’m old but I’m not stupid and I’ll tell you this, I’m sure it wasn’t gentlemanly behavior you used to settle her down,” she stated.

It was absolutely not that.

She kept at him.

“However, even so, it’s the way of the world today and today’s brand of gentleman would not have her out the door in the middle of the night. Did she need to get back to her children?”

Dutch had his own place. Most the time Jag crashed with him because he was his brother, not his mother, but also because his pad was closer to where Jag was taking classes to become a mechanic.

So it wasn’t just their ages that meant Keely did not need to get back to them.

“Her kids now are grown,” he told her.

“So it was you having to take care of me that made you send her on her way,” she declared.

“Jean, she left because she wanted to leave. It didn’t have anything to do with you.”

He felt the coffee he threw back after he gave her that stick in his throat when she said, “You support me and yourself, Shepherd. You seem not to have very many needs, single men often don’t unless they have expensive hobbies, which you don’t. But it’s obvious you have money. Why are you still in these terrible apartments?”