Ride Steady(176)

“He’s good with me,” he told her.

“He sure is,” Mrs. Heely said, a smile in her voice.

“You don’t have your truck,” Carissa told him.

“Swing back around when you’re done, you can take him home and I’ll ride behind you,” he said.

“Okay, sweetheart,” she murmured, leaned in and this time he turned his head so she didn’t get his jaw with her kiss but his lips. “See you later,” she whispered when she pulled away. She bent in to Travis, who turned his face into Joker’s neck and pressed, thinking she was going to try to separate them.

She blew a raspberry on his neck and he giggled but kept shoving into Joker.

She moved away.

“So cool to see you again, Mr. Robinson,” she said.

“Keith, Carissa,” he invited.

“Keith,” she said warmly.

They shook. Mrs. Heely said her goodbyes to Keith. Carissa came in for another lip touch for Joker and a raspberry for Travis. After that, Keith and Joker watched Carissa and Mrs. Heely walk to his woman’s wreck.

With his mother walking away, Travis exposed his plan and started struggling to get down, showing that he may like Joker, but what he really wanted was to crawl all over the dirt and grime of a garage.

Joker held him steady, eyes locked on Travis’s mother’s sweet ass.

“How old is he?”

At this question from Keith, Joker tore his eyes from Carissa’s ass and looked to the man beside him.

“Nine months.”

Something moved over Keith’s face that was easy to read. Unhappiness and anger.

“Please tell me Mr. Neiland is a better father than he obviously was a husband,” he requested.

Yep.

Nothing got by Keith Robinson. He knew exactly how big a jackass Aaron Neiland was back in the day, which was why he was a bigger one now.

“Far’s I can tell, he digs his son.”

“And Carissa has you,” Keith said quietly.

“And I got them both,” Joker replied.

“Would you like to know one of the best feelings in the world, Carson?” Keith asked.

Joker wasn’t sure he did. With all that had just gone down, anything could come of that. All that just happened but also, Joker was holding in his arms what Keith and his wife could not have.

Still, he said, “Sure.”

Keith looked him deep in the eye, Joker tensed at the force of his gaze, and the man whispered, “Being right.”

Joker drew in breath.

Travis shouted, “Bah goo dee fah luh dah koo!”

Keith grinned, looked to Joker’s car and said, “Now, if you have time, show me everything.”

Holding an annoyed Travis close, Joker did that.

*

Sitting at Carissa’s dining room table with the dirty dishes holding the remnants of the cherry pie Mrs. Heely made in Carissa’s kitchen, Joker felt something.

He looked to his right.

He was at the head of the table.

Carissa, being Carissa, had given Mrs. Heely the foot.

So she was sitting to his right.

And when he looked at her, he saw she had eyes to the couches and a look on her face he felt in his gut.

He turned his head that way and saw Linus and Kam’s boys crawling all over the couch, mostly wrestling with a lot of grunting.

Candy was sitting to the side, her little dress pristine, her eyes on her brothers like she didn’t know what to make of them but what she was coming up with wasn’t much.

As he looked, he saw Travis crawl around the corner of the couch, roll to his diapered ass, pound his fists in his knees, and screech, “Kee lah!”

He wanted in on the boy action.

Joker looked back to Carissa.

She just wanted that. All of it.

Kids and babies all over her couch and living room.

And watching the mix of peaceful, happy, and eager on her face, Joker determined not to freak her shit out by moving them forward at the speed he wanted, that being taking her ring shopping next week, hitching her ass to his the week after when they had Travis back, and planting a kid in her belly the second one of his boys conquered an egg.

But he still wasn’t going to delay.

Maybe a month.

If he could hack it, two.

“I got two boys who better cool it or they’re gonna get their booties tanned by Poppa’s hand!” Linus boomed the second after they heard a thud, which meant the wrestling fell off the couch.