The Naughty List Bundle - Kylie Adams [39]
Honey shook her head. “Males are so impressed by the weirdest things.”
Sawyer glanced at her. “This wasn’t weird! It was life-altering stuff. Sort of a coming-of-age kinda thing. My mother had always taught us to be good to animals, and Jordan couldn’t bear to see the old dog harassed. The boys were two years older than Jordan, and there were three of them. Morgan and I were on the sidelines, waiting to jump in if we needed to, but being so much older, we couldn’t very well start brawling with twelve-year-olds.”
“Too bad they weren’t older.”
He heard her impudent wit, but pretended she was serious. “Yeah. Neither of us is fond of idiots who abuse animals. We wouldn’t have minded a little retribution of our own. But Jordan held his ground and did a good job of making his point. He ended up with a black eye, a couple dozen bruises, and he needed stitches in his knee. My mother liked to have a fit when she saw him. And Morgan and I got lectured for hours for not stopping the fight. But no one messed with Jordan again after that. And anytime an animal was hurt or sick, someone would tell Jordan. I swear, that man can whisper an animal out of an illness.”
“So that started him on the road to being a vet. What made Morgan decide to be a sheriff?”
Sawyer turned her hand over and laced his fingers with hers. Her hands were small, slender, warm. Along the shore of the lake, a few ducks waddled by then glided effortlessly into the water, barely leaving a ripple. Peonies growing on the other side of the house lent a sweet fragrance to the air, mixing with her own enticing scent.
He was horny as hell, and she wanted to talk about his brothers.
“Morgan is a control freak,” he managed to say around the restriction in his throat.
“I noticed.”
Since she’d been a recipient of his controlling ways, he supposed she had. “He used to get into a lot of scrapes, sort of a natural-born brawler. Give him a reason to tussle and he’d jump on it. He got in trouble a few times at school, and my mother was ready to ground him permanently. Gabe’s dad was a good influence on him.”
Honey started. “Your mother was married three times?”
Sawyer didn’t take offense at her surprise. No one had been more surprised by that third marriage than his mother herself. “Yeah.” He smiled, dredging up fond memories. “I was eight years old when Brett Kasper started hanging around. My mother wanted nothing to do with him, and I’d ask her why, since he was so obviously trying to get in good with her and he was a nice guy and we all liked him—even Morgan. Brett would offer to clean out her gutters, play baseball with us, run to open doors for her. But he was always honest about why he did it. He’d tell us he was wooing our mother and ask for our help.” Sawyer laughed. “We’d all talk about him to her until finally she’d threaten to withhold dessert if we mentioned his name again. I now understand how burned she felt, losing her first husband in the military, divorcing her second husband as a mistake.”
“Because you went through a divorce, too?”
He wouldn’t get into that with her. The divorce hadn’t bothered him that much, unfortunately. It was all the deceit that had changed his life.
Sawyer shrugged. “My mother worked damn hard to keep everything going, raising four sons, working, keeping up the house. My father’s pension helped, even paid for a lot of my college. And we all pitched in, but it wasn’t easy for her.”
“She must be incredible.”
“Brett used to say she was as stubborn as an aged mule and twice as ornery.”
“What a romantic.”
Sawyer laughed. “He didn’t cut her any slack, which is good because my mother is strong and she wouldn’t want a man who couldn’t go toe to toe with her. Brett wanted her and he went after her, even though she was gun-shy and didn’t want to take another chance. Sometimes she was rude as hell to him. But Brett was pushy and he kept hanging around until he finally wore her down.”
Honey gave him a dreamy smile. “Areal happy ending.”
“Yeah.