Buckhorn Beginnings: Sawyer. Lori Foster

“Good idea.”

       Honey looked around the table at all of them as Casey went to the counter to get the brownies. Her face was so expressive, even before she spoke, he knew she was worried. “You know everyone around here?”

       With a short nod, Sawyer confirmed her suspicions. “We know them, and most people in the surrounding areas. Buckhorn only boasts seven hundred people, give or take a couple dozen or so.”

       Suddenly she blurted out, “Have you told anyone about me?” and Sawyer knew she was talking to everyone, not just him. What the hell was she so afraid of?

       Casey dropped a brownie on the side of her plate, but she barely seemed to notice. Her hands were clenched together on the edge of the table while she waited for an answer.

       “Dad told me not to say anything to anyone,” Casey offered, when no one else spoke up. “So far, I’d say no one knows about you.”

       “Why do you care?” Sawyer waited, but he knew she wouldn’t tell him a damn thing. “Is it because you think these people you claim want to hurt you might follow you here?”

       Morgan, still lounging back in his chair, rubbed his chin. “I could run a check on you, you know.”

       She snorted over that. “If you can, then you already have. But you didn’t find anything, did you?”

       He shrugged, disgruntled by her response to what had amounted to a threat. She didn’t threaten easily.

       Jordan leaned forward. “You say someone is after you. Could it be this fiancé of yours?”

       “Ex-fiancé,” Sawyer clarified, then suffered through the resultant snorts and snickers from his demented brothers.

       “I thought so at first. He…well, he wasn’t happy that I broke things off. He was actually pretty nasty about it, if you want the truth.”

       “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.”

      CHAPTER SIX

      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 every pump of her heart, she was aware of him standing so close. She could feel his heat, breathe his scent, unique above and beyond the other brothers, who each pulsed with raw vitality. But her awareness, her female sensitivity, was attuned to Sawyer alone. Her skin flushed as if he’d stroked those large, rough hands down her body, when in fact he’d done no more than stand there, gazing down at her.

       When she refused to meet his gaze, he propped both hands on his hips and loomed over her. “Gabe can fix your car, but you’re not going anywhere until I’m satisfied that it’s safe, which means you’re going to have to quit stalling and explain some things.”

       Honey sighed again and tilted her head back to see him. Sawyer was so tall, even when standing she was barely even with his collarbone. Since she was sitting, he seemed as tall as a mountain. She really was tired of getting the third degree by overpowering men. “Sawyer, how can I explain what I don’t understand myself?”

       “Maybe if you’d just tell us what you do understand, we could come up with something that makes sense.”

       Leave it to a man to think he could understand what a woman couldn’t. Her father had always been the same, so condescending, ready to discount her input on everything. And Alden. She shuddered at her own stupidity in ever agreeing to marry the pompous ass. Now that she’d met Sawyer and seen how caring a man could be…

       With a groan she leaned forward, elbows on the table, and covered her face with her hands.

       She was getting in too deep, making comparisons she shouldn’t make. Morgan was right, he