Rodney: Marshall’s Shadow – Jaguar Shapeshifter Romance, Kathi Barton [dar e dil novel online reading .txt] 📗

“Yes. Trenton, do you—? Why are you shaking your head? I didn’t even get the question out.” Trenton said he was staying away from his house for a while yet. “Why? What have you done? Please don’t tell me you pissed Rebel off. She could turn you into a sheep if you did. Remember that.”

“Really?” Rodney shook his head while laughing. “Smart ass. No, you have a single woman at your home, and I’m betting donuts to dollars she’s going to be mine or Heath’s mate. That’s the way it’s been working around here. I’m not ready. Not that I think it will matter when she does come along, but my home is not ready. More than half the rooms are empty now.”

“So fill them up, you turd. That mate of yours won’t care a fig if you’re living on the street.” Grandda pointed to him. “Your brother here, he’s got himself a mate. I think he’s enjoying that.”

“I love her.” Grandda told him he’d better or he’d kick his bottom. “I believe you would too. But having a mate is so much more than just being in love. It’s a whole new world too. Friendship and love, I know now, go hand in hand.”

“It sounds like it makes you sappy. No thanks. I’d rather wait until I’m Grandda’s age before I think of looking for a mate. Someone to take care of me in my retirement age.” Grandda slapped him on the arm before Rodney did. “Oh, that won’t work either. We’re never going to get old as dirt.”

Rodney was still laughing at Trenton and Grandda as they made their way back to his house. True to his word, Trenton went home, but not before teasing Grandda about pretty women and pie. He wasn’t quite sure why Grandda went to the hospital to get pie, but he’d been doing it for years now, and he wasn’t going to get into a debate about there being a nice bakery not far from where they all lived.

“This little girl, she’s thinking of moving back here when she settles up her mom’s stuff. I don’t know why, but I feel like she’d be better off staying with you and Rebel.” Rodney said he was all right with that. Unless she wasn’t. “I think she’ll stick around. For a while, any who. But there is something about her that makes me want to take her under my wing and help her out.”

“Are you thinking she is one of the other two’s mates? Rebel thinks the same thing. Or she knows. It’s hard to tell with her sometimes. She told me she can see a bit into the future, but not much more than that. I can’t, which I think I’m grateful for.”

“Yeah, I thinking knowing too much would be hard to take.” They were at the house then, and Grandda asked him if he’d sit a spell with him. Sitting in the rockers, they sat there in silence for several minutes until Grandda started talking. “I miss your mom. Everyday. I have a hole in my heart, too, from when your grannie passed on. I’ve been thinking about this living forever thing, and I want you to tell me truthfully if you were me, nearly ninety years old, would you want this thing?”

“Can I ask you a couple of questions first?” Grandda nodded at him. “All right. What does your age have to do with you being around forever? You’re not sick. You’re clear-minded, a great deal more than men half your age are. You don’t seem to have any kind of soreness that keeps you from walking every day. Hanging out with the Forster kids when they’re playing street hockey.”

“That’s a good question, and you’re right. I’m fit as a fiddle. I do play around with them kids on account’a their daddy being out of the picture. They talk to me—trust me, they told me. So that’s a plus. But as for my age? I don’t know what that has to do with me being around either. What’s your next question?” Rodney told him. “You see, that’s all I can think about. Seeing my grandbabies being born. Growing up and becoming something. Seeing you boys coming to your own too. That’s a good one. I talk to your mom and grannie when I get out there. They understand, I think, that I’m building up stuff to tell them. I know it seems silly, me taking pictures and showing them to the headstones there.”

“Grandda, I think it’s wonderful that you share them with Mom and Grannie. I believe that they see them. Being around Lach and the others, I believe a great many things I didn’t before.” Grandda said that was right. “I love so many things about having you here. I love too that you come and stay with each of us for a while. Hang out with our mates. They love you as much, if not more, than we do. And I know that Bella’s dad is only thriving because you go there and talk to him.”

“He’s a good man. But he won’t be hanging around me too much longer. The dementia, it’s taking its toll on him. I see it more and more of late.” Rodney knew that as well. Bella and his brother were looking for a place for him to live that was safer for him. “The other day when he got out of the house was the breaking point for Bella. He’d broken his hand and some fingers trying to knock out a window in a car he thought was his. She cried for nearly an hour after he was found because she’d not been able to keep him safe. I told her it wasn’t her fault, but there was no helping her. That’s when they decided to find him a safe home to live in.”

“She asked me for some places I would