“Men tell you things so you’ll fall for them, and then before you know it, you’re married with children and you can’t get away even if you want to.”

Cate hugged her mother tight, not wanting to let her go. “They’re not all like that, Ma.”

She’d seen what good men looked like; her brothers would never raise a hand to their sweethearts and they would protect her with their lives if they had to. Charlie had been the same, so like her brothers, right from when they were kids. So no matter what her mother said, she wasn’t going to tar all men with the same brush just because her daddy had been a mean drunk.

Cate leaned back and looked at her mother’s face, at the ugly purple bruise that curled around her right eye. He might be dead, but he’d still managed to leave his mark on one of them.

“You deserved better than him, Ma,” she said. “I’ll never feel sorry that he’s gone.”

Cate could see that day in her mind like it was only yesterday, the policemen coming to the door with news that they thought would bring a mother and daughter to their knees. And she was sure that’s what it looked like to the policemen, seeing them hug and cry as the news sank in. But it was because he’d never come home drunk and beat her mother again; he’d never come home looking like murder, waiting like a snake coiled to take his anger out on one of his children. Never her, because her mother and brothers made sure of it, but it hadn’t stopped her from being terrified of him.

She slowly moved toward Jack, shuffling in against him, refusing to be scared of him just because he was a man. He’d given her no reason to be frightened, and she wasn’t going to let old memories of her bastard father ruin every close experience she had with a man.

“You looked scared of me just before,” Jack whispered, his arm warm around her as she pressed her cheek into him.

“I was,” she whispered back.

“I’ve got plenty more reasons to be scared of you than you have of me,” he said gruffly.

She smiled into him. “Like what?”

Silence swam between them for a beat, but he didn’t answer her. “You know, my daddy used to beat the crap out of me when I was younger. I can still feel the sting of his belt on the back of my legs, and his knuckles colliding with my cheeks, even though I was barely ten when he did it to me.”

She swallowed, forcing a breath in and then out before answering. “How did you know?”