Page 45 of Single Mom's Mountain Men
She shakes her head and I kiss it. I turn back and gesture for Katie to walk to my arms and I carry them both into bedwith me. I hum to them, rubbing their back as they both fall back asleep.
And then I slowly extricate myself, heading back out to the kitchen to finish my chores.
Only to run smack dab into Wes who is standing at the entrance with a furious look on his face.
My heart drops.
"What did she mean?" he asks in a cold, deadly voice. "Did your husband hit you?"
CHAPTER 16
Wes
Ifeel 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, hercautiousness, 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.”
