Mountain Delights (Wild Mountain Men 2)

“What do you want, Mom?” I asked when I could finally look at her again.

Her perfectly sculpted brow winged up. For sixty, she looked good. Too good. While she hadn’t said it outright, I had a feeling one of her winter trips to Palm Springs involved a stop off at a plastic surgeon. Her hair didn’t have a hint of gray. Her makeup was subtle but perfect. Her perfume, the one she’d worn forever, was expensive and cloying. She wasn’t dressed to move furniture and clean out a fridge. She was dressed for a shopping trip in New York.

Since she thought she was better than everyone else, she had to dress that way, too.

“Want? I have to want something to see my son? My only… remaining child?”

I didn’t doubt she grieved for Erin. She might be ruthless, but she was a mother. And Erin had been her baby. The perfect child. Towed the Mills line. Yet she didn’t shed a tear, only used Erin’s death to guilt me with something.

“You asked me here to help you move. You don’t need it. So why am I here?”

Dad came around the center island and stood beside Mom. Side by side, they were a unit, a fortified wall that had always found me lacking.

“Son, you go off for days at a time. No one knows where you are, what you’re doing. Like when Erin… well, you were nowhere to be found. We worry.”

They worried? Only that I would do something to tarnish the Mills name.

“I go out on trips into the wilderness. There’s no phone reception. You remember the company I run; that I help other vets? When Erin was killed, I was off scouting a new location, planning a special itinerary for those who are missing a leg, who might not be able to climb a damned mountain.”

I’d returned after three days in the backcountry to a cell phone with a full inbox and a dead sister. I’d been questioned by Nix Knight, and my story had been checked. The idea they even considered I might have killed my sister pissed me off, but they’d been doing their jobs.

Dad waved his hand, tucked it into his pressed khakis. Mom was in an outfit of pale blue, Dad in a darker shade so they matched.

“We didn’t know that! After what happened, we don’t know what you might do. It’s not safe for you.”

“What happened?” I countered. I took a deep breath, let it out, counted to ten.

They waited. Watched for me to freak out. I wanted to. Oh, fuck did I want to. But it would only prove their point.

“What happened was I went to war. You know, the fight against terrorists. Bad guys. The one that’s still going on in Afghanistan?”

Dad offered me a patronizing smile. “But when you got home, how you had a breakdown.”

I closed my eyes for a moment. “PTSD. I had an episode.” More than one, but what happened was the one they’d witnessed. The freaking out. The violence. The anger. “I went into therapy. Got help. Still getting it, actually. Now I help others.”

When I returned, depression had kicked in. I jumped at loud noises. I didn’t sleep. Considered suicide. It had been rough. Still was at times, especially in the middle of the night. Cy had been there for me. He’d been the one to first take me off camping, riding his horses into the backcountry and let me just be. It had made a difference for me, and now he and I together were making a difference for others.

“You went astray long before that… episode,” he added.

Mom nodded. “That’s right. You took up with Kit Lancaster.” She sniffed.

“Jesus, Mom,” I muttered. Un-fucking-believable.

“She was trouble from the very beginning.”

“Careful! That’s worth more than your salary,” Dad shouted, pointing to one of the movers. I turned, looked over my shoulder at how they were struggling with an abstract painting that had been over the fireplace. It was supposed to be of the Montana prairie, but it looked like a kindergartner’s finger-painting project to me.

“Yes, you’ve mentioned how much you dislike Kit. She wasn’t trying to steal my money, remember.”

“Are you sure about that? She used her body like a weapon.”

Yeah, she had. But Mom was insinuating she was a slut or something to get what she wanted in trade for sex. Kit had been a fucking virgin. Hell, so had I. For a few weeks there, she had used her body to lure me in. I’d been nineteen, just got inside a pussy for the first time and I hadn’t wanted out.

“And when she broke up with me, I went as far away from her as I could. Remember, war?”

We’d had a good thing, but it had ended. I’d needed to get away, from more than just Kit. From my parents and their constant pressure to be something I wasn’t. From Cutthroat.

Mom pursed her lips. “You weren’t supposed to enlist. You were supposed to settle down with someone else.”