“Oh yeah, that sounds like tons of fun!” I replied sarcastically.
“Tons!” He teased with a wink.
“Jerk. You better not joke about me weighing tons if I do get huge. I’ll find a way to get even.”
“I believe you.” His hand slipped down my hips, gave my ass a light squeeze, and then reached for my hand. “Come on babe, we better get back downstairs. My mom’s not known for her patience.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not exactly known to be nice either, in my limited experience.” Okay, so I’ll admit I was pouting a bit. Whatever! Apparently, I could claim hormones now and my moods had an insta-excuse. Considering the vomit-o-rama this morning, there had to be perks. Right? Right.
“My mom fell for Jenn’s shit. She should have known better. I’m not making excuses for her. I’m angry with the display she put on down there. That is not how I wanted you to be introduced to any of my family. For that, I am sorry, and I will see that it is rectified or she won’t be welcome here again.” My heart swelled even larger with those words. Never, would I want to alienate a mother from her child, grown adult or not though so I already knew I’d be sucking it up and dealing with it.
When we hit the last step and turned, Steel’s mom, whose name I still didn’t know, was standing there with tears in her big blue eyes. “Romeo,” she started while fretting her hands together and apart repeatedly. “I’m so sorry that I brought her here, I thought…”
“I know what you thought. I also know, and you should have too, that it wouldn’t have mattered. I’ll be damned if I’d live my life attached to a cheater. I told you that before. This,” he put both of his hands on my shoulders and held me there in front of him, “is my wife. JoJo isn’t going anywhere, so you’re apologies need to be directed to her. This is her house!”
“Our house,” I interjected and he smirked down at me.
“It was her house before my bum ass came along, and you not only strolled in and disrespected her in our home. You then pushed another woman at her husband in front of her. Worse though, was that this was the first time she got to meet her mother-n-law, and that was the impression you started her out with. She was made to feel about two inches tall by you.”
Steel’s mother definitely had her contrite mask on, but he wasn’t done. “We’re supposed to find out later if JoJo is pregnant, with my actual baby, and you’ve done irreversible damage to the relationship between my baby’s mother and yourself.” Steel still wasn’t done, even though he paused long enough to drop his large hands to my still flat, toned belly. “Now, suppose in eight months or so we welcome our first child, do you think my wife is going to want you around him or her? Do you think you’ll be doing a lot of babysitting, summer visits, or whatever after you treated my wife like trash in her own home?” His mother’s put-on mask fell away, and the tears were suddenly back.
“I’m so sorry. When I thought Jenn was carrying your baby I just knew I had to do whatever it took to preserve the family dynamic, and maybe convince you to come back home.”
“Including tear my actual family apart?”
“We all thought she was just part of some deal.” His mother was still dismissing me as if I were some common whore. Unbelievable.
“SHE is my WIFE!” Steel said with more conviction and more than a hint of anger. That was the third time he’d called me his wife and, Lord help me, I was really starting to love the sound of it. I don’t know if the circumstances in which we entered into our marriage kept us from fully becoming invested in those terms, but neither of us had used them at all since got hitched. I never called him ‘my husband’ and he never referred to me as ‘his wife’ until now. I had to admit, it meant a whole hell of a lot in the moment.
“I guess I just don’t understand your little temper tantrum, Romeo. You married her in order to save her business.” The woman actually wrinkled her nose up in displeasure as she said that. Lord only knows why, but that’s what Iceman said.” Iceman, I knew was her current husband and the President of the Dakotas’ Chapter of Aces High. I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet him anymore considering his wife’s flippant tone about me right now, and all the drama she’d caused this morning.
“Mom?”
“What baby?”
“Get out!”
“Romeo, you can’t. I mean, I just don’t understand.”
“You didn’t need to understand. You needed to apologize, which you still haven’t done with any meaning behind it. I swear, if you disrespect the woman I love one more damn time, we are done.”
Her jaw dropped. I’m pretty certain I was parroting her expression. I stopped though when I realized I couldn’t let this continue. I adored the fact that Steel was sticking up for me. At the same time I abhorred his mother’s deplorable behavior. I could understand her confusion though, so I spoke up.
“I hated your son when I met him,” was my ridiculous version of an icebreaker. “He was an arrogant, woman-hating asshole. He threatened to basically steal the business that’s been in my family for four generations out from under me. I’d just buried my father less than six months before, after watching him waste away for two years. Then, I found out the only way to keep my business was to marry a man who might, in fact, steal my business from me anyway. And to top off my really bad luck was my jack-wad of a brother who wanted, still wants, to sell the business that he’s had no part in building and maintaining, and take a hundred percent of the profit for himself while leaving me, his only living relative, high and dry. Then along comes this idiot, threatening to make sure my brother gets his way. It was like the final nail in my bad luck coffin. I was completely lost then.”
“She forgot to mention the serious boyfriend who took off because she spent too much time taking care of her sick dad before he died. Also, the MC she is an active, founding member of, who failed to have her back at all while she was going through all of this, and yet she still found the time to help them out of several binds,” Steel added. I looked up to see the admiration shining in his eyes for me.
“So, I hated your son. Then he crashed my girl’s weekend, pity party, in Vegas where I was effectively saying goodbye to my life as I’d known it. Before I could blink, he was volunteering to give up five years of his life for me. He simply said he had baggage he needed to store and hide from, and he wanted to help me in my moment of desperation. I had nothing else, and so I agreed.”
“She also tried to give me numerous outs from the situation. This girl, who needed something to go right in her life for once, gave me multiple opportunities to walk away. I didn’t take them, because I saw it in her from the start,” Steel said, cotinuing to add to my recollection of our brief history together.
“Saw what in her?” His mom finally asked after a moment.
“I saw all the goodness, loyalty, selflessness, and the drive that one person could possibly possess. It all shined out of her like a damn beacon calling to me. We’ve immersed ourselves in one another ever since. We work and live together. It’s put us to the test at times, and made us come to greater understandings about one another. There was no way to avoid falling in love with her. I tried to stay distant. It didn’t work. She has too much wonderful in her to ignore any of it.”
Okay, well, I was speechless, and teary-eyed yet again, so I leaned into him giving him one hell of a hug. “I may not have had her very long, but I’m not stupid enough to let her go, or let you drive her away. So, when you can honestly give her a meaningful apology for what went down today, then you will be welcome here with open arms. Until then, you’re not.”
“Romeo,” his mother started with a pleading tone.
“No!” He snapped at her. “I’m not the one you need to be speaking to, and if you can’t swallow your damn pride and admit you were wrong then you don’t belong here. I’m not putting JoJo through any more shit. She’s had enough.”
Steel’s mother glanced from him down to my face, and then lower to where his hands still rested over my firm abdomen. I c
ould see that she was trying to determine if the pregnancy was a calculated move on my part, or if there even was a pregnancy. It was almost as if she were transparent and I could see her contemplating each question as they arose. Finally, her eyes slowly made their way back up to meet the whiskey brown of my own. She sucked in a deep breath and let it out in a huff as if resigning herself to something she did not want to do. Carefully, hesitantly, she stepped forward and thrust her hand out towards mine. “My name is Carol McCloud, it’s very nice to meet you, Jo…” She shook her head and chuckled. “I’m sorry. JoJo? It sounds like a dog’s name or a child’s toy. What is your real name?”
“Mother,” Steel growled out. She swatted away with his outburst.
My eyes were squinted up and shooting death rays at the woman in front of me. Seriously, if looks could kill, she’d be flopping on my floor like a wounded tuna. “My father insisted I be named after his Grams, Cynthia Josephine.” Steel’s mom smiled, obviously approving of my full given name. “But my mom hated both grams and her name so she called me JoJo from day one. I loved my mom more than any other person on this planet. She was a beautiful soul, taken from this Earth far too soon. I’m thinking maybe because she was too good for this place. So, my name, the only thing I will answer to anyway, is Jo or JoJo, and only my good friends and family get to use Jo. You haven’t earned that right.”
“Are you going to allow your so-called ‘wife,’” Carol mocked, “to speak to me like that?”
“Get out!” Steel’s rage was barely contained. “Fucking Christ!” He shouted. “I thought you might try to be happy for us, for me and the woman who has made me smile every damn day since I met her. You flew a goddamn lying, cheating, whore here and paraded her around like she was some prize, but you can’t fucking bring yourself to apologize to, or be civil to, my wife? What the hell kind of shit are you smoking up there these days?” Steel had told me that his mom had at least a bowl a day pot habit before he took off from the Dakotas. I assumed that was what he was referencing.
Steel pulled out his phone, hit a button, and listened as a line on the other end rang out. “Yeah, you need to summon your old lady home. If she says one more wrong word to my wife, in her house, I will disown her completely, and I will make sure Hopper is aware she’s being shunned so the club will stand behind it and you can decide what’s more important; her or the club.”
I wasn’t sure what this “shunned” business was with his club, because we’d never discussed it at S.H.E., but judging by how sickly Steel’s mother looked all of a sudden, it seemed to skirt the epic side of the possible horrible things that could happen.
“You wouldn’t,” Carol whispered. Steel just glared at his mother, jaw set, as a voice on the phone yelled a very long string of profanity.
“She brought Jenn here, to my wife’s house. Does that tell you how bad it got?” Steel answered back whatever question he’d been asked. He pocketed his phone and we heard Carol’s begin to ring. “You might want to get that.”
“Hello?”
“You will apologize to that girl now, or you won’t be coming home. You were told Jenn Stallings was off limits and banned from the club!”
“But I didn’t realize…”
“You didn’t need to know why, or to realize anything, because it wasn’t your goddamn business to know. That alone should have told you it wasn’t your fucking grandbaby, Carol. Steel did not need this shit right now!”
“But I didn’t…”
“Apologize, now, Carol. You’re already on thin ice with me and the club.” It was obvious the line went dead in her hands then.
I turned to Steel, hugging him tightly. “I’m pretty sure that’s not going to win me any favors with her,” I whispered to him.
“She crossed one too many lines today, babe. She would have already faced trouble just for going against a club ban and bringing Jenn here. When my ex involved three brothers in her bullshit, how to handle Jenn and the baby, became club business. Something my mom knew better than to interfere with.”
Carol cleared her throat somewhere over my shoulder, but I didn’t bother to turn around. “I’m so tired,” I said into Steel’s chest.
“Come on babe,” Let’s get you back on the couch. You had a shitty enough morning with all the puking. I don’t think we have any crackers, but I can run and get some in a bit. Think you could stomach some toast until then?”
“Maybe. I felt better after the ginger ale. I just feel worn out now. Is it bad that I’m in my mid-twenties and I wish my mommy was here to make it all better?” Steel kissed my forehead and chuckled against my skin sending warm vibrations all through me.
“Not at all, babe. I wish she was here for you, so then you could get some first hand advice.” Honestly, I think we’d both forgotten Carol was still in the room, because when she spoke up it startled me.
“I’m sorry, okay? I was wrong. I didn’t realize this was more than an arrangement.”
Steel rolled his eyes. “Even after we told you an ungodly number of times?”
“It’s just not what I pictured for you. None of it is,” she admitted.
“Well, it’s not your life, mom. It’s mine and what I want. And right now, I still want you to go, because my wife is sick, and doesn’t need anymore damn stress.”
“Can I stay in the hotel here in town, or at the clubhouse, and come back tomorrow to set everything to rights?”
“You’re not welcome at the clubhouse right now, any of them. The stunt you pulled violated club rules. Not a damn thing I can do to help you there, even if I wanted to. And I don’t want to. You were specifically told Jenn was off limits. I can’t believe you went against that and brought her here knowing I was married too. Iceman was right, you’ve been with the club and the life long enough to know when you’re told someone is off limits it’s for a damn good reason.”
“I thought she was carrying your baby,” his mother pouted out.
“The club new better, which is why you were told OFF LIMITS!” Steel huffed out a huge sigh of frustration.
“We’ll see you tomorrow, but not before noon, and you need to call first. If I’m feeling bad I won’t be seeing visitors.” I finally managed to get the words out. They were the kindest ones I could come up with to try to keep the peace between my husband and his mother. Then, I rubbed my fingers over my throbbing temples, trying to alleviate the headache that was starting.
“Thank you,” Carol replied somewhat meekly, considering how hostile she’d been with me the whole time.
Steel saw his mother out, and I know they had more words while they were outside, but I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I stopped fighting the pull, and allowed myself to drift off to sleep for a bit.
Chapter 9
The whole world seemed a little fuzzy around the edges. I was hearing voices and my stomach felt like it was going to war with every other part of my body.
“That’s awful. You guys really can’t catch a break, huh? She was looking forward to meeting your parents too, since hers are both gone.” I recognized that voice. Knowing who was here, I dragged my body the rest of the way from my sleepy state and into the world of the wide-awake. “Hey there, sleepyhead!” Keys called out as I finally managed to crack an eye open.
“Hey!” I croaked the single word out and then reached for my now warm, and slightly flat ginger ale. Once I took a sip, I glanced over at my best friend. “I’m sorry, I can’t believe I slept all day.”
“You didn’t. I finished way earlier than expected and figured I’d bring some lunch by.”
“Awesome. Did you bring the tests too?”
Keys smiled widely as she nodded her head and looked off to the side toward my dining room where Steel happened to be standing. “Hey baby. Feeling up to some food? Keys brought you soup from that little place up the road.”
My stomach started making itself known again at the mention of the soup from the little drive up joint. “Yes, please! I’m starving.” Keys was still gri
nning like an idiot when I turned my attention back to her while Steel took off for the kitchen. “What?”
“I thought the whole test thing was a secret?”
Sighing, I looked at my friend and admitted the sad truth. “He suspected long before it ever dawned on me, apparently.” Keys laughed at my admission.
“I know,” she confessed. “He told me, and hey, don’t beat yourself up about it. You’ve had a lot of things going on that have thrown your world out of balance. So, do you want to go try those tests now?”
“Eat first,” Steel commanded as he came back in the room carrying a tray full of soup, crackers, and cold drinks. My best friend and husband bantered back and forth about some hacking job or other she’d been working on today. Apparently, some woman scorned had wanted to find out exactly who her husband was secretly sexting from the computer with a messenger style application. She was shocked to find out he had another family on the west coast, and apparently their marriage was not even legal, because the other wife had been around longer.
“That’s horrible,” I managed to choke out as I pushed everything away, feeling much better now that I had something on my stomach. It also had to hit a little too close to home for Keys. Her father had been a philandering dickwad of the highest order.
“No, what’s horrible is what both wives wanted me to do to get him in trouble with the law. I refused that part of the job. I do hope he gets what’s coming to him though.”
My bladder kicked in then, demanding immediate attention. “I’m gonna go…” I pointed upstairs.
“Bag full of tests already awaits you there.”
“Bag full?”
Keys shrugged. “I figured you’d want to be sure. You’re supposed to get best results in the morning when you first wake up, so maybe take two now, and save the others for tomorrow, if you need to re-test. If there are any left, I can just take them to the clubhouse. You never know when one of our RC members might need to do a quick check.” RC members were our riding club members. They paid their dues, and enjoyed usage of the clubhouse, but they did not work for us or earn dividends from any of the club’s businesses. Only the original members who paid in seed money at the start, and those who were voted up to the Motorcycle Club member level later were able to share in the profits.
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