The Naughty List Bundle - Kylie Adams [33]
“Truth would be nice.”
She glared at Sawyer so ferociously, he almost smiled. But not quite.
“I think it wounded his pride or something,” she explained. “But regardless of how he carried on, my father is certain it couldn’t be him.”
“Why?”
“If you’d ever met Alden, you’d know he doesn’t have a physically aggressive bone in his body. He’d hardly indulge in a dangerous chase. He’s ambitious, intelligent, one of my father’s top men. And my father pointed out how concerned Alden is with appearances and that he’d hardly be the type to cause a scene or run the risk of making the news.” She shrugged. “That’s what my father likes most about him.”
Sawyer curled his lip, more angered at her father’s lack of support than anything else. “Alden? He sounds like a preppy.”
“He is a preppy. Very into the corporate image and climbing the higher social ladder, though I didn’t always know that. My father scoffed at the idea that Alden would chase me because regardless of his temper, I wouldn’t be that important to him in his grand scheme of things.”
He watched her face and knew she was holding something back, but what? Sawyer pushed her, hoping to find answers. “Even though you walked out on him?”
“I left, I didn’t walk out.”
“What the hell’s the difference?”
She sighed wearily. “You make it sound like I staged a dramatic exit. It wasn’t like that at all. I found out he didn’t care about me, I packed up my stuff, wrote him a polite note and left.”
Her body was tense, her expression carefully neutral. Sawyer narrowed his gaze. “Why did he ask you to marry him in the first place if he didn’t care about you?”
She closed up on him, her face going blank, and Sawyer knew she still didn’t trust him, didn’t trust any of them. It made him so angry his hands curled into fists. He wasn’t the violent type, but right now, he would relish one of Morgan’s barroom brawls.
Sawyer surged to his feet to pace. He wanted to shake her; he wanted to pull her up against his body, feel her softness and kiss her silly again until she stopped resisting him, until she stopped fighting. He tightened his thighs, trying for an ounce of logic. “How in hell are we supposed to figure this out if you won’t even answer a few simple questions?”
Morgan leaned back and stacked his hands behind his head. Jordan propped his chin on a fist. Gabe lifted one brow.
“You’re not supposed to figure anything out.” Honey drew a deep breath, watching him steadily. “You’re just supposed to let me go.”
6
SAWYER’S DARK EYES glittered with menace, and his powerful body tensed.
Watching him with an arrested expression, Morgan murmured, “Fascinating.”
Jordan, also watching, said, “Shh.”
Honey turned to Gabe, ignoring the other brothers, and especially Sawyer’s astounding reaction to her refusal of help. She couldn’t look at him without hurting, without wishing things could be different. She’d known him almost no time at all, yet she felt as if she’d known him forever. He’d managed, without much effort, to forge a permanent place in her memory. After she was gone, she’d miss him horribly.
Gabe grinned at her. It seemed they all loved to be provoking, but she wasn’t up to another round. All the questions on Alden had shaken her. She’d tried to answer without telling too much, juggling her replies so that Sawyer might be appeased but at the same time wouldn’t learn too much. Alden had been so vicious about her refusal to come back to him, to continue on with the marriage, she didn’t dare involve anyone else in her troubles, especially not Sawyer, until she better understood the full risk, and why it existed in the first place.
She’d been looking blankly at Gabe for some time now, and she cleared her throat. “Does your handyman expertise extend to cars?”
“Sure.”
Jordan kicked him under the table. Honey knew it, but in light of everything else they’d done, it didn’t seem that strange or important.
While Gabe rubbed his shin and glared daggers at Jordan, Sawyer stalked over to her side of the table. With