Page 20 of Single Mom’s Mountain Men (Mountain Men Reverse Harem #1)

Wes

I feel a ticking at the back of my mind like a bomb is about to go off. It's been there ever since I heard Maddie's words, referring to her father hitting her mother.

My muscles ache from how stiff I've been standing frozen in shock. My heart is pounding like a keg on the verge of an explosion.

Patty swallows.

“How…. how much of that did you hear?” she stammers.

“All of it,” I tell her. Initially, I felt bad about eavesdropping on her conversation with her daughter. I followed her to check in on her and the kids and make sure they were okay, not to find out any juicy secrets.

But the second I heard what Maddie said, I couldn’t move, not even if my life depended on it. And the more I heard, the more the frost inside me turned into an icy rage.

“Tell me,” I say, walking closer to her. She takes a step back and I stop. Fuck, Wes, reel it back in . You don’t want to scare her .

The only person you want to scare is the fucker of a bastard who beat her . “What’s his name?’

“Whose name?"

“You know exactly who I’m talking about.” The bastard who you’re running from, who you moved halfway across the country to get away from. The one who put that fear and apprehension in the eyes of your daughters.

I should have fucking known that it was something like this, from that expression she made when I told her about Mrs. Weatherby's story. Patty’s extra protective of her kids, but she was willing to leave them with Mrs. Weatherby because of the history they shared.

Heck, that's probably what they talked about when I was out of earshot.

And I should have known from Patty's surreptitious behaviors. Usually, she's bright but every once in a while, I’ll get the sense that she’s more than just cautious, she's paranoid.

She constantly looks over her shoulder, expecting a monster to pop out of nowhere.

Not to mention how she sometimes puts herself down effortlessly.

Fat old lady , she called herself. That one pissed me off the most, not only because it was untrue but because it was unnecessarily mean. And given how easily it slipped off her tongue, I have no doubt she has said it before, or someone has said it to her enough times for it to stick.

Another time, when I complimented her cooking, she said something to the effect of, "Well at least I’m good at something.

" I almost turned her over my knee and gave her a spanking right then and there. I might have done it too, if my brothers weren’t there, and the spanking would definitely have led to more fun.

But I held back. I simply sent her a warning look and she blushed and looked away.

And it's that bastard's fault. Her low self-esteem, her cautiousness, her fear, everything is her ex's fault. And I’m going to make sure he pays for it.

“What’s your ex-husband’s name," I ask again, trying to assume a casual tone, despite the pure rage brewing inside me.

“He’s not my ex-husband,” she says. “And his name is… irrelevant,’

“Is it?”

“Yeah. And you're assuming... look, nothing happened. What you heard was a misunderstanding.” She can't even lie convincingly enough about it, maybe because I caught her off guard.

Her eyes drop from mine, and she crosses her arms over her chest as she bites her lip, probably trying to come up with a better explanation.

“A misunderstanding?” I ask silkily. “In what way?” I’m curious as to what story she’s going to tell me that’s going to somehow make what I heard okay.

She seems to realize that she can’t come up with one, so she shakes her head. “I need to get back and finish the dishes.” She tries to sidestep me, but I step in her way. No way in hell am I letting this go.

“Charlie and Mitch are already taking care of the dishes.” Or at least they were when they sent me over to check on Patty. “But if you would rather have this conversation in front of them then be my guest.”

Her eyes narrow. “You wouldn’t.”

"I will." It’s clear she wants to hide this information from us but I’m sure my brothers will be even more interested in finding out the asshole's name than I am. And none of us will take no for an answer. “Unless you tell me his name right now.” I'm not above using threats to get it out of her.

She releases a frustrated sigh and then finally relents. “Keegan. ”

“Keegan…?”

“Ward.”

It’s a lie. Her eyes flicker the same way they did when she gave her last name, but I let her have that one, focusing instead on the rest of the story.

“And did this Keegan fuckwit hit you?”

“Sometimes,” she says “Sometimes he was just a mean S.O.B.. Either way, it’s over with okay? I left him and got my daughters away from him and we’re never going back so it’s over with.”

I allow her a few breaths after the declaration before I ask, “Has he ever hit them?"

“Never.” Her vehemence leaves me doubt she's telling the truth, even as her eyes blaze. “I would never let him near them. Ever.”

“I never thought you would. Even if he did, it wouldn't be your fault.”

“Yes, it would," she says darkly. “I’m the reason they were around him.

I'm the one who chose him to be their dad.

He was…" She shuts her eyes and releases a breath.

"He was different when I met him. Sweet, charming, said all the right things. I was young and stupid. I never had parents, and I had just aged out of the foster care system. I was lonely with an empty future, and I so desperately wanted someone to tell me the things he was telling me. I wanted to be Cinderella with her Prince Charming, wanted a family to make up for the one I didn’t have growing up.

And because of that, I gave my daughters the worst dad imaginable.

" Her face contorts with emotion, and her voice cracks. Something in my chest breaks with it.

“Oh baby,” I say as I draw her into my arms. She holds herself still, keeping her arms crossed over her chest. I rub her back nevertheless, crooning onto her hair until eventually her resistance falls away and she leans into my chest, softly weeping.

“It’s not your fault baby,” I whisper into her hair, wishing I could take this pain away from her and give it to this Keegan tenfold. “It wasn’t your fault. You thought he loved you. You were a young woman with a big heart and the asshole took advantage of that."

She nods against my chest as she silently sobs and I run my hands over her back. All the while, my rage simmers in my belly.

I've always had a particular hatred for abusers, especially for pieces of shit who have the gall to abuse women and children. It just made no damn sense to me why anyone would lay a hand on someone like that, someone weaker, more fragile than them.

My father raised us to respect and protect women and to find out that someone as sweet as Patty was abused is making me see red in the corners of my vision.

But she doesn’t need my anger right now.

She doesn’t need me to go off like an angry bull and rant and rave about her ex.

She needs me to be a rock, to tell her that her abuse wasn't her fault, no matter how much she seems to think it was. She needs me to make her feel safe. And that’s exactly what I’m going to do, even if it kills me.

So I bury my anger for now.

But, if I ever do run into her ex, I’m going to make him a very, very sorry man.

Eventually, her sobs subside enough that she tries to pull back. I hesitate for a few seconds before I let her go.

She wipes her face, looking drained so I say, “Why don’t you go in with your girls? The guys and I will take care of the cleaning. "

She wavers, then nods slowly. “Are you going to tell them what you heard?”

I sigh. “Not if you don’t want me to, but I really think you should tell them. At least, let Mitch know. He has a lawyer friend and knows a cop that could…”

“No," she says, firmly shaking her head. “No one else can know, okay?“

“What if he comes after you baby?"

“He won’t. He’s getting... handled right now, but I just need to lay low for a few weeks to a month while he is still around.”

“What does that mean?”

“Please don’t ask me to explain anymore,” she says. “Just believe me when I say he’s getting handled. Okay?"

I take a deep breath. "Alright then. I’ll take your word for me. But if you need anyone to help you, no matter where you are in the world. Heck, you could be in China for all I care. You call me and I’ll come get you okay?"

She smiles. "Sometimes you can be really sweet, you know?"

"That’s what all the ladies tell me," I say, and she laughs.

"Thanks, Wes," she says and then reaches up to place a sweet kiss on my cheek. It takes everything out of me not to turn my face and make that kiss a little sweeter, but I tighten the reins of my self-control.

She’s not in the emotional space to handle anything like that right now and I’m too raw to be gentle.

So I let her walk back into her room smiling like a gentleman as she waves before she closes the door.

And then I walk away with the furious need to punch something.

I don't go back to the kitchen. Instead, I head to one of the sheds that Mitch turned into a makeshift gym, complete with an old punching bag hanging from the ceiling.

I take my anger out on it, hitting it again and again till my knuckles are raw. I don't know what this Keegan asshole looks like, but I imagine his name again and again as I attack. And then once the anger subsides to manageable amounts, I head back inside.

I find Charlie in his room on his computer as usual.

"Don’t you ever knock?" he asks as I walk in.

“Why should I? I figured if you were masturbating you would have just locked the door again."

He shoots me a sour look and I grin glancing at his screen.

Car videos again.

"You ever thought of just working at a garage instead of binging on these videos?"

Charlie cocks his head at me. “You too?”

“What do you mean ‘me too’?”

"Never mind " Charlie responds. "I don’t have time to work at a garage. Mitch has us working so hard we barely have time to wipe our asses."

"Our brother is insane. You know that, right?"

He gives me a noncommittal grunt and I finally get to the point of why I'm here "Listen, do you think that your PI friend could find someone with only a first name to go on?"

"Find who?"

"I can't tell you that."

"Why do you need to find them?"

"I can't tell you that either."

Charlie frowns at me and I raise my eyebrow. "Well?"

"You're going to have to give me a whole lot more information than that."

I sigh. "I was afraid you would say that." I was trying to think of a way to find this Keegan without implicating Patty but it looks like that's going to be difficult.

"What's the full story?" Charlie asks.

"Since when do you care about my stories?" I say.

"Since you started acting shady."

I grumble. Just my luck. The one time Charlie is being communicative and aware is the one time I want him to be his usual apathetic self.

I glance around the room, wondering how to get the information from him without revealing what I know. And then I see something that makes me pause.

"What's that?" I point at a pair of black lace panties in the corner.

Charlie follows my gaze, and his face heats when he sees it. He immediately stands to grab the panties off the floor.

I stand too, the suppressed anger surging back to the surface. "Are those Patty's?"

He doesn't respond, tucking the panties into his pocket. The implication of what I just found rips through my mind, and I piece it together with his locked door this afternoon and Patty's sudden appearance at Mitch's shed.

"Oh, you bastard," I snarl and then launch myself at my brother.