The Naughty List Bundle - Kylie Adams [259]
She ran to keep up with him as he headed inside. Thankfully it had stopped raining, but the air felt too cool and still too damp. Water dripped from every tree, shrub and building. He felt a bit chilled. Or at least he had moments ago, before he’d noticed that the night air had caused her nipples to tighten.
He wouldn’t look at her there again.
Once inside, he made his way to the waiting room, where he assumed he’d find his uncles. His stride was long, a little too fast, but a small smile curled his mouth as he remembered Gabe relaying the evening’s events. His uncle Jordan in a fight? It sounded absurd, although he’d grown up hearing stories of the few occasions when Jordan had lost it, giving into his fierce temper. It wasn’t something Casey had ever seen, but he’d believed it was possible.
Jordan was just so…intense. Especially about things he really believed in.
Or people he cared about.
Casey rounded the corner to the open waiting area and stopped short at the sight of Jordan with a little boy sound asleep in his lap. There was a chocolate mustache on the kid, and he was snoring softly. Casey grinned. Jordan had a poleaxed expression on his face, as if deep in thought.
Morgan sat on the floor opposite a tiny girl with a glass-topped coffee table between them, playing Go Fish. Casey had stopped so abruptly, Emma bumped into his back. His breath caught as he felt her soft, young body flush against his. Her hands settled low on his hips and she went on tiptoe, her warm lips touching his ear as she whispered, “Sorry.”
Casey ignored her.
“Have I missed anything important?”
Jordan glanced up, then raised one finger to his mouth, cautioning Casey to be quiet. Carefully, his movements very slow, Jordan removed the bundle from his lap and put the boy on the couch. He covered him with his coat. With a wide yawn and a little squirreling around, the kid resettled himself into a rolled-up lump and dozed off again.
Morgan laid his cards down and pushed to his feet. “‘Bout time you got here.” He nodded to the little girl. “Lisa here is a card shark.”
Lisa—long brown hair in disheveled braids—grinned at what she obviously considered a compliment. Morgan tugged on one of those braids with affection. “Maybe she’ll be gentler with you, Casey.”
Casey leaned in the wide door frame. “I dunno. She’s got that ruthless look about her.”
Lisa looked up at him, blinked, and kept on looking. Like a natural-born flirt, she batted her long eyelashes at Casey and gave him a wide, adoring grin. She even sighed.
Morgan turned to Jordan. “Would you look at that? She’s only six and even she’s smitten by him.”
Jordan grunted. “He’s worse than Gabe.”
“Or better.”
Casey laughed out loud, well used to their razzing. “Kids just like me.”
Morgan looked at him from under his brows. “Females just like you, you mean.”
Casey shrugged. It was true, as far as it went. The females did seem to like him. Since he’d first become a teenager, they’d been after him. Not that he had any intentions of getting permanently caught.
Morgan glanced around the waiting room. It looked like chaos with empty foam cups and candy wrappers and kids shoes on the floor. “You okay here now,” he asked Jordan, “or do you want me to stick around?”
Jordan stretched tiredly. “We’re fine. Go on home. You’re starting to get worry lines.”
Case walked the rest of the way into the room, keeping his voice as low as his uncles’. “And here I thought those were laugh lines caused by his sunny disposition.” Morgan swatted at Casey, making him duck. “Gabe told me to tell you that Misty is sound asleep, konked out from the medicine Sawyer gave her, so you don’t have to keep fretting.”
Morgan’s shoulders—wide as an ax handle—softened with relief. “And Amber?”
Thoughts of his little cousin, now nearing the terrible twos, which on her weren’t so terrible, made Casey chuckle. “She wore herself out chasing Gabe in a pillow fight. Last I saw her, she was as zonked as the little