Page 21 of The Kings of Kearny

He stepped forward and slid his hand into hers. “You too, Mrs. Evans.”

“Call me Izzy,” Gran said as they released each other. She stepped back and prodded me with her elbow. “Well done, you,” she said in an appreciative tone.

I nearly choked. “Gran, he can hear you.”

“I know that,” she said, still eyeing him like he was a tall drink of water and she was just dying of thirst. “But he looks like he could be a mean son of a bitch under the right circumstances, and I want to get on his good side.”

“Gran, I am begging you. Put a lid on it.”

Jakob’s gaze slid to me. “I see where you get that mouth of yours.”

Gran let out a whoop of laughter. “Oh, I think you and I are going to get along famously, Jakob.” She stepped up to him, fearless, and slipped her arm through his. “Now, come inside and tell me how you met my baby.”

She led him right past me toward the living room. And he let her. I stood rooted to the spot, regretting this entire day more and more with every passing moment.

“At the bar,” Jakob said.

“Did you really? You know, I met my late husband at a bar.”

Her words snapped me out of it. “Gran, it’s not like that,” I said, joining them.

She glanced back and forth between Jakob and me and then snorted. “Bullshit. You two look about as prickly as a pair of pissed-off porcupines. If you didn’t just have a lovers’ quarrel, I’ll eat my shoe.” She dragged Jakob down onto the couch beside her and gave him a serious look. “What happened?”

Jakob’s gaze slid to mine.

I stared at him.Don’t be a dick.

“I told her a hard truth she didn’t want to hear,” he said, meeting my gaze.

Dick!

Gran patted the leather over his forearm. “Good. She can be stubborn as a mule sometimes. She needs a man with enough gumption to speak up to her.”

My face burned, but not with embarrassment. With rage. A hard truth? He’d told me a hard truth I didn’t want to hear? As if it was somehow brand-new fucking information that my leg was my weak spot?

There was a huge difference between tough love and being an asshole, and the way he’d told me I couldn’t take care of myself in the hallway was pure asshole. He hadn’t done it to try to keep me safe or make me face a difficult fact. He’d said it out of anger, and in a shitty tone of voice meant to both belittle and hurt me. Well, he’d succeeded. If Gran wasn’t here, I would have laid into him. There were several hard truths that Jakob needed to hear himself.

I sat down on the love seat opposite them. “Gran, it’s not like that,” I said again. Because it wasn’t. Last night was a onetime thing. Of that, I was now one hundred percent certain.

She turned to me with a small, teasing smile on her face, but then she caught sight of my expression. Her smile disappeared. “What’s going on?”

“Jakob is a member of the Kings,” I said.

“Who are the Kings?” she asked.

I’d told her about them before, but it wasn’t surprising that she’d forgotten. Alzheimer’s typically affected short-term memory first. She could recount with perfect detail the dress I wore during a fifth grade recital, but if I asked her what she had for breakfast yesterday, she might not be able to answer me.

“They’re a motorcycle club in town,” I said. “They think that someone working here might be stealing the residents’ medications and replacing them with placebos so they can sell the drugs in town.”

Gran frowned. Hard. “God-fucking-damn it, Krista. We looked into this place. It was supposed to be the best.”

I grinned. Yes, I had gotten my mouth from her. Also, she remembered looking into this place with me. Today must have been one of her better days.

“It’s a new problem,” I said.

“What do you need?” She looked from me to Jakob. “Want me to spy on the staff? Be an inside source?”

Jakob shook his head. “No. We want to have you drug tested and make sure your meds aren’t being messed with.”

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