Page 30 of JoJo

“Tonight, around five.”

Steel pulled out his phone and glance at the time. “Well, we have a few hours to figure out what we’re hoping for with the results then, huh?”

“Will you be upset if I am?”

“JoJo, were you not paying attention when I told my mom she was going to be a grandma, or when I told you I thought you’d make a great mom? Ideally, I think we could have used a little more time to get used to one another and whatever. Really though, we have eight more months to do that, and in the meantime, I get to watch your cute little ass get bigger.”

“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.

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