The Naughty List Bundle - Kylie Adams [196]
Elizabeth nodded.
“That was right after our wedding. Morgan wasn’t paying much attention to what happened around him back then.”
Morgan gave his wife a smoldering look. “You’re to blame for that, Malone, not me. Can I help it if you’re distracting?”
Honey laughed. “Stop it, you two, or you’ll embarrass our guest.” She sat herself on her husband’s lap, and Sawyer wrapped his arms around her. “Gabe is a real sweetheart, Elizabeth. We just enjoy teasing him a little.”
Elizabeth could attest to the sweetheart bit. From what she’d found out so far, there didn’t live a finer example of the term lady’s man. She cleared her throat. “So you do remember the event?”
“Sure.” Honey settled comfortably against her husband’s wide chest. To Elizabeth’s amazement, Sawyer Hudson managed to eat that way, as if having his wife on his lap was a common occurrence. He quickly devoured three sandwiches, which was one less than Morgan ate. Misty and Honey each nibbled on a half. Since they were insistent, Elizabeth took a bite of one herself. She hadn’t realized she was hungry until then.
The sunburn had made her so miserable she’d only wanted to find something to do, to keep her mind off it. Her skin felt too tight, itchy and burning. Clothes were a misery—Sawyer Hudson was right about that. But she simply wasn’t used to parading around naked and had decided to take her mind off it by finding out more about Gabe before their trip to the movies.
“Can you tell me about it?” Elizabeth asked after a large drink of icy lemonade. With the cool towels on her shoulders and the uncomfortable shoes off her feet, she felt much better.
“Sure.” Honey looked thoughtful for a moment, then turned to Morgan. “You ended up arresting the driver of that boat, right?”
Morgan growled, his tone so threatening that Elizabeth jumped. “The fool was drunk and could have damn well killed somebody. If it had been up to me, he’d have lost not only his boating license, but his driver’s license, as well. As it turned out, though, he was banned from the lake, got a large fine and spent a week in jail. Hell, that poor woman was so shook up, Sawyer had to give her a sedative.”
Sawyer nodded and his tone, in comparison to Morgan’s was solemn. “She thought one or both of her kids would be hurt. She was almost in shock.” Then he smiled. “When I got there, I found Gabe with a kid in his arms, one wrapped around his leg, and the woman gushing all over him. The look of relief on Gabe’s face when he spotted me was priceless.”
Elizabeth reached for her bag on the floor by her chair and extracted her notebook and pencil. “Can you describe it for me?”
“What?”
“The look on his face.”
Sawyer appeared startled by her request, then shrugged. “Sure.”
IT WAS ONLY fifteen minutes before Gabe rejoined them, his shaggy blond hair still wet and hanging in small ringlets on the back of his neck, his requisite cutoffs clean and dry. Elizabeth had already taken page after page of notes, supplied by all the family members, and she was ecstatic to finally have someone agree with her that Gabriel Kasper’s actions had, in fact, been heroic.
When Gabe saw her notebook out, he glared and stomped over to snag the last sandwich on the platter.
Elizabeth drew in a deep breath as he leaned past her, but all she could smell was soap. When Gabe had entered earlier, the earthy scent of damp male flesh warm from the sunshine had clung to him—an enticing aphrodisiac. That wonderfully potent scent, combined with the sight of him, had made her nearly too breathless to talk. She hadn’t thought she’d see him today. When she’d called the number Bear gave her, Honey had told her Gabe would be working all day. Elizabeth hadn’t realized she meant working around his own home.
She also hadn’t realized they’d all make such a fuss about her sunburn. She felt like an idiot for getting burned in the first place. She, better than anyone, knew how easily the sun affected her. She’d even brought along the sunscreen to apply often, keeping it in her bag. But she’d been sidetracked by Gabe and kissing and the erotic