Page 12 of Single Mom’s Mountain Men (Mountain Men Reverse Harem #1)

Wes

I catch sight of Charlie as I slide the gear lever in his truck from park into automatic and pull out onto the driveway.

He's shirtless, carrying a couple of unprocessed lengths of timber on one shoulder, transporting them onto the crane. His forehead is etched in a way that reminds me of Mitch, and his lips are drawn down in a deep frown when he sees me. Not sure if the frown is for me borrowing his truck, or the fact that Patty’s in the passenger seat.

But he doesn’t say anything, and I wink at him, throwing him a salute on the way out.

Ha. It’s so easy to get under his skin.

Although that’s not what the outing today is about. I didn’t offer to take Patty and the girls grocery shopping to annoy my brother, I’m doing it because I want to spend more time with her. Annoying Charlie is just an unexpected cherry on the top.

Maybe if he likes her so much he’ll learn to talk to her.

Patty turns to me. “You sure your brother is okay with us taking his truck?”

“Of course. Why wouldn’t he be? ”

“He doesn’t look too happy about it.”

Ah, she caught that, did she? “Don’t worry about it.

Charlie has a thing against happiness and showing emotions in general.

He's just as sullen looking when he’s happy as he is when he’s pissed or sad or stressed out.

Thing is you never know with him, so until he says something, I tend to assume he’s just peachy. "

A smile drags across her lips as though she doesn’t quite buy my explanation. “Uh-huh. But you did ask him before you took his vehicle, didn’t you?”

“ Yup,” I lie. If I ask Charlie he’s just going to say no or give me a long lecture on things to do or not do to his truck. It’s tiring. It’s much better to just take the truck and have him chew me out later.

“Has he always been like that?” Patty says, pulling me back into conversation.

“Who? Charlie?”

She nods.

“For as long as I can remember. It used to drive my mom crazy when we were kids because Charlie could sometimes go a whole day saying two words in total to her. She thought there was something wrong with him, and she took him to a few doctors in the city. But they told her that he was fine. He was just a taciturn, emotionally constipated bastard. It got better for a little bit when he was a teenager and started dating girls. I think maybe he realized how hard it is to maintain a relationship as a mute. But then it got worse again after he joined the Marines.”

“He was in the Marines?”

“Yup. We all were. Mitch joined first and then Charlie and then me.” I swerve a little to avoid a bad patch in the road before continuing on our journey .

“Nice job,” Maddie says and I wink at her in the rearview mirror.

“You should see me on my bike, princess."

"Cool," she says and I feel even prouder.

“Y’all must be pretty patriotic then?” Patty asks.

“I suppose.” I’d never really thought of it like that before, so I think about it now.

“Although the reason we joined is more because of mom than any particular love for the nation or allegiance to the flag. Mitch joined because of all the buzz about the military in his school year after the First Gulf War – you know, Kuwait and all. After Mitch joined, she was constantly scared that he would get his head blown off. She would sometimes have nightmares about it because he was sent off to the Middle East during the Second Gulf War. One of forty-five thousand US Marines deployed to the region. He saw action in places like Fallujah and Nasiriyah where there was a lot of bloody hand-to-hand fighting. So, then I think Charlie joined so that there would at least be one person to watch Mitch’s back.

Worked it so that he was put on the same unit as Mitch too and in the same squad.

Mitch was annoyed that his little brother had followed him there, but there was no getting rid of Charlie.

The big guy can be pretty stubborn when he wants to be, and you can yell at him all you want but all you'll get is a silent blank stare. He got out there just in time to take part in the Second Battle of Fallujah – the bloodiest battle of the Iraq War. Well over one hundred coalition forces were killed, and six hundred wounded just in that one battle. Fortunately, Mitch and Charlie made it through. But they don’t talk about it. ”

“And what about you? Did you join to watch both your brothers' backs?”

He shrugs. “I guess that was part of it. Most of it was because the mill wasn’t doing well at that point and Dad didn't have any money set aside for my college.

Not that I wanted to go anyway, but the way my mom spelled it out, the only way I was getting out of her nest was college or the military.

Pops was gearing for me to take over the yard and then I would have been stuck here, without ever leaving this town.

" He shakes his head. “I like Gasten, Montana as much as the next person, but I don’t want to live my entire life here.

So, the military seemed like a better option.

At least that way I got to travel." I pause for a breath before continuing.

“And before you say 'thank you for your service' just know, I was in a different unit than Charlie and Mitch. There wasn’t too much combat where I was stationed.

I saw some limited action in Yemen in 2010, , but the vast majority of my time in the Marines was spent stationed in Uganda, performing routine reconnaissance missions and training the locals.

We were just a bunch of asshole marines who liked to fool around, play tricks on the new recruits and get drunk on whatever alcohol we could smuggle into the barracks.

We all got out in 2020 when pops died and mom needed us back here.

To be honest I think it was about time for all three of us to cash in our chips and move on with our lives.

“Still,” Patty says. “You did something dangerous in the service of our country. That’s pretty brave of you.”

I shrug. “It didn’t feel like it. It felt sometimes like I was just following arbitrary orders. And after a while, I started to hate it. If you haven’t noticed, I'm not really the following orders type.”

“Oh, I noticed." She smiles, and I wink at her.

“So, what did you do before you came here?” I ask.

“I was a waitress." I notice an almost imperceptible stiffening in her shoulders that I'm not sure she’s even aware of.

She doesn't want to talk about herself. I can accept that, for now .

But the way my curiosity is set up, it won't be long until I'm digging deeper.

I’ll let her hold onto her secrets for now, but sooner or later, I will want to know everything about her.

We pass the gas station where Patty had first met my brother Charlie, and I tell her more about our life, growing up, embellishing a few of the stories so I look cooler than my brothers.

She grins and laughs in all the right places, calling out my more obvious fibs, but each time I ask her about herself she sort of shuts down once again, and her smiles disappear.

Eventually, we enter the town of Gasten and approach two gray buildings separated by a fence, upon one of which sunflowers have been painted to provide a little brightness.

“That's the grocery store." I point at the other building. "And next to it with the sunflowers is the daycare-preschool and kindergarten I was telling you about, Gentle Roses. Been standing for thirty years and the lady who owns it once cleaned my diapers.”

Patty snorts.

“You want to check it out?”

She purses her lips. “I’m not sure." She turns to the girls. “What do you guys think? You wanna see the daycare?”

They nod frantically, and I chuckle. I guess they were getting pretty bored of staying at the main house all morning while their mother worked. I can't blame them. I get bored staying at the yard all day too.

Patty still doesn’t look too sure, so I say, “It’s pretty safe at Gentle Roses.

They have security cameras, and they closely monitor anyone coming and going.

It has a small class size, so they can pay special attention to the kids.

Mrs. Weatherby, the owner, loves kids and she's a pretty tough lady. She’s got what around here we call a “no nonsense attitude”.

Even shot at her ex-husband when he tried to hit her. "

Patty throws me a sharp look to the rearview mirror and I glance at it, realizing that her two little girls are paying rapt attention to what we're saying.

"Oh sorry, I mean...he uh…played rough with her. Anyway, he’s dead now thankfully.

Not from her gunshot through. A heart attack a few years later.

" And thank God for that. “He was known for drinking too much and getting violent in his cups. Anyhow, one night he came back late from drinking and gambling at the bar and he had worked himself into some kind of a violent fit, and decided to take his anger out on his missus. So the story goes, she grabbed his shotgun from its rack on the wall and shot one barrel up into the air and then aimed the second barrel right at his face and scared him off is all. Apparently he left the house in just his underwear, which he’d soiled due to the gun going off, and ran out into the darkness. Spent the night in old Mr. and Mrs. Simmons’ stable, bedded down with the horses.

They said he stank to high heaven the next morning where they found him lying on a bed of hay and sleeping off the alcohol, so they sprayed him down with a hosepipe and sent him home, a lot more sober and feeling pretty sorry for himself.

Although no one would have blamed Mrs. Weatherby if she did kill him, I'm glad she didn't have to face jail time for that drunken piece of shi... err… crap .” I glance back at the girls and Patty again who rolls her eyes at me.

“Nice save,” she comments with a wry smile. “Alright. We can check it out.”