Owned By The Mountain Man (Montana Mountain Men Book 2)

by Gemma Weir

  “Hal says she’s tagging steers just behind the barn.”

  “Come on then. I don’t like my woman being bitchy to me because of something you did,” he growls.

  I follow him around the back of the house and past a huge wooden barn, and each step feels like one closer to getting Cora back. We spot Bonnie, laughing and chatting with an older guy as she hangs over a metal pen, clipping a plastic tag to the ear of a small tan cow. When she sees Beau, she smiles, but it fades the moment she sees me at his side.

  “What the fuck did you do?” Beau asks.

  Bonnie says something to the guy and he nods as she climbs down from the side of the pen, brushing her hands down her tight jeans as she strolls towards us.

  “Hey baby girl,” my brother says the moment she’s close, pulling her into his arms and kissing her.

  “Hey, what are you doing here? And why is he here?”

  “I need to know where she is,” I hiss, not bothering to hide the anger in my tone.

  “I don’t know where, but if I did, I wouldn’t tell you. How could you, Huck? Why?” she spits angrily.

  I’ve seen Bonnie pissed before, she ripped us all new assholes the first time Beau carted her into our house over his shoulder. But the way she’s looking at me now, she looks appalled and horrified.

  “She’s mine,” I shrug.

  “You deliberately got her pregnant, and some caveman bullshit is the best defense you’ve got,” she laughs. “I actually wish I knew where she was, then I’d send you there with just your neanderthal ownership bull crap and watch while she castrates you.”

  “Cora’s pregnant?” Beau asks, his brows raised in shock.

  “Yep, this asshole has been feeding her the placebo birth control for the last five weeks making her think he’s the perfect boyfriend, but instead he’s been lying to her their entire relationship,” Bonnie says, glaring daggers at me.

  “Me and Cora are none of your fucking business, Bonnie.”

  “Watch how you fucking speak to my woman,” Beau warns.

  “I warned you if I had to pick a side it’d be hers, Huck. She’ll never forgive you for this and I don’t blame her,” Bonnie says, shaking her head, her eyes angry, her mouth twisted into a firm line. “I’m gonna get back to work. Let’s eat here tonight,” she says, pushing onto her toes and kissing my brother before she turns away without another glance in my direction.

  Exhaling angrily, I curl my fists even tighter, barely restraining the need to demand she tell me where Cora is. But the truth is she doesn’t know, even through my furious haze I could tell she was telling the truth.

  Turning, I stomp back in the direction of my car and I feel Beau follow me.

  “Did you do it deliberately?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I refuse to ever lose her.”

  “Was she going somewhere?” he asks, his tone calm and reasonable.

  “You telling me you don’t want your kid growing in Bonnie’s belly? That you don’t want to know she’s yours in every way possible? That she wouldn’t be pregnant already if she wasn’t on the shot?”

  Beau’s low chuckle speaks volumes, because he’d do everything I’ve done and more to keep Bonnie. “Maybe, but I put a ring on her finger instead.”

  “Yeah well, I plan to do that too, only this way there’s no way she can try and say no.”

  “What you gonna do now?” he asks.

  “Track her ass down and tie her to my bed until she stops being pissed at me.”

  “Why don’t you just let her be? Let her calm down, she’s got to come home eventually.”

  “I can’t wait another day. I need her home now. Our baby’s growing inside of her and I need to keep them both safe. I need her to forget about leaving and accept that she’s mine and that’s never gonna change.”

  “You could try apologizing.”

  “I don’t want to lie to her and I’m not sorry she’s pregnant. I love her and I know she loves me. I’d do anything to keep her, even switch out her pills with the placebos to tie her to me in every way possible, no matter how crazy that might make me seem.”

  “Fuck,” Beau laughs loudly, amusement crinkling his eyes at the corner. “You better come up with something if you’re not even gonna pretend to be sorry. How you planning on tracking her down?”

  “I’m gonna see if cops really can track credit cards.”

  “Think her brother will rat her out?”

  “I don’t plan on giving him a choice.”

  Waving to my brother, I leave the Williams’ place and head straight to the sheriff’s office. The squat utilitarian building looks out of place against the backdrop of quaint shops and restaurants, but when the bureaucrats decided that Rockhead Point needed a new building to house the meagre offering of sheriffs and deputies, this is what they built. After parking on the street outside, I push through the swinging door and step up to the desk that runs almost the full width of the building.

  “Huck?” Cam says, getting up from behind his desk. “Is everything okay?”

  Dressed in his beige and brown sheriff’s uniform, Cam looks older than he is with his slight beer gut resting on top of the utility belt at his waist.

  “Cora’s gone AWOL, I need you to help me track her down,” I say simply, not sugar coating it or giving him an out to refuse.

  “What happened?”

  “That’s none of your business, but I do need to find her so I can straighten things out and bring her home.”

  “You hurt her?” he asks, his hand moving to the gun holster on his belt.

  “The fuck you say?” I snarl, fighting the urge to jump over this counter and beat the shit out of him for even suggesting I’d ever lay a finger on my woman.

  “If you didn’t hurt her, what the fuck did you do to make her run?”

  “She’s pregnant and freaking out.”

  Cam’s jaw drops almost to his chest. “You got my baby sister pregnant?”

  “My woman is expecting our first child, yes.” I say, my voice frosty. “So right now, I need you to help me find her. I need you to do that thing that cops do when they track cell phones or credit cards or something.” I know I sound deranged and desperate but it’s been over twenty-four hours since I saw her, since I touched her, and I’m on the verge of losing my shit.

  Cam scowls and shakes his head. “We’re a small town sheriff’s department, we can’t just do those kind of searches here, we’d need to contact Bozeman PD with a formal request and then it’d take a couple of days to get the records back. I can file a missing person’s report, but we don’t class anyone over the age of eighteen actually missing until they’ve been gone for over forty-eight hours without contact. When was the last time you spoke to her?”

  “She isn’t answering my calls, but we texted this morning and she spoke to Bonnie last night,” I reluctantly admit.

  “I’m sorry, Huck, but my hands are tied, there’s nothing legally I can do. She won’t stay away forever, I think maybe you’re just gonna have to wait her out. She’s an adult, if she wants to take a few days away there’s nothing anyone can do to stop her.”

  Exhaling slowly to stem the ever rising tide of anger that’s burning me from the inside out, I give Cam a terse nod and leave, storming down the street and into Bonnie’s mom’s store. Vivian’s helping a customer, and I pace aggravatedly for a few long minutes until the lady leaves with her purchases.

  “Is she back?” Vivian asks.

  “No. You haven’t spoken to her today?”

  “No, I was going to give her a call after I’d finished work, but I can call her now if you want.”

  I nod and she quickly rushes to the back of the store, returning a moment later with her cell in her hand. Tapping the screen, she presses the speaker button and then holds the cell in her hands between us as it rings.

  “Hi Mom,” Cora’s tired voice echoes through the cell.

  “Hi sweet girl, are
you okay? You sound tired.”

  “I’m just sad, Mom.”

  “Where are you, darling? Let me come to you and I can take care of you, you can tell me what’s happened and we can figure out a way to fix it,” Vivian coaxes, her eyes glassy with unshed tears at her daughter’s obvious distress.

  “I’m pregnant, Mom, there’s nothing that can fix that,” Cora says, her voice breaking on the word fix.

  Vivian’s eyes widen and she looks at me with a mixture of hope and shock. “A baby isn’t a reason to be sad, my darling. Children are a gift, even if you weren’t expecting it. You and Huck will be wonderful parents.”

  “Not Huck. Just me.”

  “What do you mean? Huck loves you, arguments happen, but you talk, you sort things out and then you move forward.”

  “He…” Cora trails off, and I swallow thickly, not sure I want her to tell her mom the circumstances around her pregnancy, just in case Vivian is as pissed as her daughter and stops helping me.

  “He what?” Vivian prompts.

  “I’m gonna come home, I don’t want to talk about this over the phone. I’ll get the next bus and see you at home later.”

  “Let me drive and pick you up. I don’t want you taking the bus when you’re upset.”

  “No, Mom, it’s fine. You have the store, I’ll just get the bus and see you at home later.”

  “Okay darling. But be careful, and if you change your mind I can come get you, the store isn’t as important as you, Cora, nothing is.”

  A choked sob comes from Cora, and we both hear as she tries to calm herself enough to speak. “See you later, Mom. I love you.”

  “Love you too.”

  The call ends and Vivian lifts her eyes, which are just as expressive as her daughter’s, and she glares at me. “This was more than an argument, wasn’t it? Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t call my daughter back and tell her you just heard every word of that conversation.”

  “Because I love her. Because I plan to marry her. Because she’s having my baby and I won’t ever stop fighting for her.”

  Her eyes narrow a little as she silently assesses me. “I’m not sure what you did to make her so upset, that she’s talking about raising your baby without you, but I’m giving you this one chance to make things right. If you don’t, I’ll do whatever I can to keep you away from her, even if that means helping her leave. I’m not a forgiving woman and neither is my daughter, you might want to consider that for the future.”

  Nodding, I try not to snarl at my future mother-in-law. There’s no point warning her that she’d need an army to keep me from my woman and child, especially when I know I can fix things with Cora, I just need to get to her first.

  Leaving the store, I move my car to a side street beside the bus station where I have a clear view of all the buses coming and going. Three hours later, I’ve watched several buses arrive, but Cora hasn’t been on any of them. I’m starting to lose patience, my need to get to her increasing by the minute.

  A silver bus pulls into the station and when the door opens, I watch a handful of people disembark. Carefully searching them for a glimpse of her beautiful face and red hair, I assume she’s not there, until the very last person appears. Waiting impatiently for her to move down the steps, I open the car door and climb out, leaning against the hood as I watch her. Her head is down, her arms wrapped around herself protectively as she clutches her purse in one hand and a couple of bags in the other. She’s not looking around her as she steps away from the line of people waiting to board and inadvertently moves in my direction.

  Pushing off the hood, I leave my car unlocked as I close the distance between us, making it to the end of the street just as she reaches the walkway. Not giving her a moment to fight, I lean down and wrap my arms around her, scooping her over my shoulder with my hands banding tightly around her ass and legs as she tries to fight my hold.

  “Stop,” I order harshly as I jog back to my car, opening the driver’s door and depositing her inside, immediately following her in and locking the doors so she can’t try to escape.

  Scrambling across the bench seat, she clasps at the handle, turning and attacking me when she finds it locked. Her tiny fists hit and punch at me, but I ignore her ineffectual fists as I start the car and smoothly pull away from the curb, driving us out of town as fast as I can without drawing too much attention as Cora screams, slapping and kicking at the windows frantically trying to escape.

  “Calm down,” I yell over her caterwauling, but she ignores me completely, trying to garner the attention of every vehicle and person we pass. Within a minute we’re out of town and I pull over to the side of the road, grabbing her arms in a tight grip and carefully forcing her to sit properly in her seat. Restraining her with one arm, I reach over and fasten her seat belt in place as she spits more insults at me than I’ve ever heard any one person say in my entire life.

  “You fucking asshole, let me go. I hate you and this is kidnapping.”

  “Do you know what, Cora, you’re right. I am fucking kidnapping you, so why don’t you just shut the fuck up and stop trying to hurt me, before you end up hurting yourself and the baby.”

  “Just take me home, Huck.”

  “You want to go to our home and work things out between us then sure. If you’re talking about your parents’ place, then hell no, Peaches, that’s not happening. You ran from me; I won’t allow that again.”

  “I don’t live with you anymore, not since you decided to take it upon yourself to sabotage my birth control and force me to get pregnant.”

  Her eyes are glaring daggers at me, and the furious anger in her tone does nothing to calm me down.

  “The only place you’ll ever live is with me. Me, you and our baby, there’s no other option, and if I have to keep you locked in a fucking cage until you understand that, then that’s what I’ll do. You’re mine, Cora, you gave yourself to me freely and I won’t ever give you up.”

  “You’re scaring the shit out of me right now, Huck. I want you to take me back to town.”

  “Good, I’m glad you’re scared, because now you might have some kind of idea how I felt when I found you gone and no one knew where you were.” I’m yelling at her and I know I shouldn’t be, but the relief I feel having her close to me is being smothered by my anger because she still wants to leave me.

  Her cell is in her hand and she’s dialing a number, her fingers shaking. Snatching the cell from her, I end the call, not bothering to see who she was trying to contact and shove the cell into my pocket.

  “Huck, give me my cell back.”

  “No. You’ll get it back once we sort things out.”

  “Huck, give me my fucking cell,” she screams, hitting me again as she tries to crawl over me to retrieve it from my pocket.

  “Sit your ass down, before I tie you to the fucking chair.”

  At my roar she quiets, scooting as far from me as she can, resting her head on the glass of the window, her fingers worrying in her lap. We spend the next hour in almost silence as she ignores me every time I try to start a conversation.

  When I pull off the narrow mountain lane and down a track cut out of the trees, she sits up and eyes our surroundings, obviously trying to figure out where we are. When the small cabin comes into view, she glances at me warily, then back at the rustic house almost lost in the surrounding woods.

  “What are we doing here?”

  “Oh, now you want to talk to me,” I snicker, opening the car door and climbing out.

  Circling the car, I open her door, but she’s pulled her knees up to her chest, her feet resting on the seat, ignoring me once again. “Get out of the car, Cora.”

  “I don’t want to be here, Huck; I want you to take me back into town.”

  “No. Now get out he car before I pick you up and haul you out of there. We aren’t leaving here until we get things sorted between us.”

  Her wide, fearful eyes fill with tears as she gazes up at me, looking like a scared,
broken doll.

  “Peaches, don’t look at me like that, like you think I’m going to hurt you, you know I’d never fucking hurt you.”

  “You have hurt me, Huck, all of this is hurting me. You say you care about me, but you’ve been lying and hurting me every day we’ve been together. Nothing between us is real when it’s all been based on a lie.”

  Burying her face in her knees, I can hear the muffled sounds of her sobs and something inside of me breaks. I carefully scoop her into my arms, lifting her from the car and carry her to the cabin. Once inside, I take her straight to the bedroom at the back of the small home. Placing her on the bed, I follow her down, unfurling her body and holding her to me as she cries tears that I’ve caused.

  For the first time, I feel regret for making her hurt. I’m still not going to apologize, but I never want to see her this broken. She doesn’t cling to me like she normally would, instead she’s rigid in my arms, not fighting, but not actively seeking my comfort and a part of me snarls and hisses that she’s not just letting me fix this.

  Curling my fingers into her shirt, I slowly start to lift it, ignoring her protests as I pull it from her head, then start removing her pants. She tries to push my hands away, wiggling to escape my touch, but I keep working until she’s only in her bra and panties.

  “Let me start to fix this,” I coo, pulling down the cup of her bra and toying with her nipple.

  “Sex won’t fix this.”

  “Then use me. Let me make you feel good.”

  Her arms fall to her sides and I smile against her breast, licking and sucking on first one nipple, then the other, before I pull her bra off completely and squeeze her tits together, licking a path from one to the other as she arches her back and pushes her chest towards my waiting mouth.

  Nipping one nipple between my teeth, she groans low and her hips start to move on the bed, silently ordering me to move lower. Kissing a path down her stomach, I pause below her bellybutton to press a soft kiss against her stomach where my baby is growing inside of her.

  She stiffens and I continue my path, hooking two fingers into her panties as I drag them down her thighs, pulling them from her feet and dropping them to the floor before I crawl back up and spread her legs wide.