thrilled with her interest, but in a purely self-satisfying way. They certainly hadn’t been distracted with her as a woman, eyeing her up and down the way Gabriel Kasper had. She wondered if he thought she was stupid, or just naive, considering the way he’d looked at her, like he thought she wouldn’t notice just because he wore sunglasses. Not likely! She’d felt his gaze like a tactile stroke, and it had unnerved her. The average man just didn’t look at her that way, and men like Gabe never gave her a thought.
But then Gabe had dismissed her, and that she was more than used to. Except with the heroes she’d interviewed, the men who wanted their unique stories told.
Damn, Mr. Kasper was an enigma.
“Don’t mind that none, miss. Gabe always gets more’n his share of notice from the fillies.”
Elizabeth snapped her attention to Bear. His name suited him, she thought, as she looked way, way up into his grizzled face. “I beg your pardon?”
He nodded toward the docks, where Gabe and the woman were chatting cozily. Elizabeth curled her lip. It was disgusting for a woman to put on such an absurd display, especially right out in the open like that. And for Gabe to encourage her so… Good grief, he had a responsibility to the community as a role model after all the attention they’d given him.
“Has he acted any different since becoming a town hero?” During her research, Elizabeth had discovered that people heralded for valor quickly adapted to all the fanfare and added interest thrown their way.
Bear chuckled. “Not Gabe. Truth is, folks in these parts have pretty much always looked up to him and his brothers. I don’t think anyone doubted Gabe would do something once he noticed what had happened. Any one of his brothers would have done the same.”
“He mentioned his brothers. Can you tell me something about them?”
“Be glad to!” Bear mopped a tattered bandanna around his face, then stuck it in his back pocket. “The oldest brother, Sawyer, is the town doc, and a damn good one to boot. He takes care of everyone from the newborns to the elders. Got hisself married to Honey, a real sweet little woman, about a year back. And that cut his patient load down considerable like. Seems some of the womenfolk coming to see him weren’t really sick, just ambitious.”
Bear grinned, but Elizabeth shook her head in exasperation.
“Right after Sawyer is Morgan, the sheriff, who generally looks like he just crawled right off a cactus, but he’s as nice as they come as long as you stay on his good side.” He leaned close to whisper, “And folks in these parts definitely stay on his good side.”
“Lovely.” Elizabeth tried to picture these two respectable men related to Gabe, who looked like a beach bum, but she couldn’t quite manage it.
“Morgan up and married Honey’s sister, Misty, just a bit after Sawyer married. He smiles more these days—that is, when she doesn’t have him in a temper. She does seem to enjoy riling that boy.”
It was a sure sign of Bear’s age that he’d call a man older than Gabe a boy.
“Then there’s Jordan, the best damn vet Buckhorn County has to offer. He can sing to an animal, and damned if it won’t sing back! That man can charm a bird out of a tree or lull an ornery mule asleep. He’s still a bachelor.”
Good grief. Elizabeth could do no more than blink. Doctor, sheriff, vet. It was certainly an impressive family. “What does Gabe do for a living?”
Bear scratched beneath his chin, thinking, and then he looked away. “Thing is, Gabe’s the youngest, and he don’t yet know what it is he wants to do. Mostly he’s a handyman, sort of a jack-of-all-trades. That boy can do just about anything with his hands. He’s—”
“He doesn’t have a job?” Elizabeth didn’t mean to sound so shocked, but Rosemary had told her Gabe was twenty-seven years old, and to Elizabeth’s mind, that was plenty old enough to have figured out your life’s ambition.
“Well…”
She shook her head, cutting off whatever lame excuses Bear was prepared to make. “I got the impression from a few things Rosemary said that he worked here.”
A cold, wet hand clamped onto her shoulder, and Elizabeth jumped, then whirled to see Gabe, dripping lake water, standing right behind her. His grin wasn’t pleasant, and she wished that she hadn’t gotten engrossed in what Bear had to say, that she’d kept at least part of her attention on Gabe.
She looked around him, but his newest female companion was nowhere to be found. Which, she supposed, accounted for his presence. Surely if any other woman was available he’d still be ignoring her.
Gabe nodded to Bear, more or less dismissing him, then pulled Elizabeth around and started walking a few feet away. In a voice that only barely bordered on cordial, he said, “Well, Miss Nosy, I do work here, but I’m not employed here. There’s a definite difference. And from now on, I’d appreciate it if you kept your questions to yourself. I don’t much like people prying into my personal life, especially when I already told ’em not to.”
Elizabeth gulped. No amount of forced pleasantness could mask his irritation. She tried to inch away from his hot, controlling grasp, but he wasn’t letting go. So she simply stopped.
Gabe turned to face her. They were once again standing in the bright sun, on a gravel drive that declined down the slight hill, used to launch boats into the lake. The glare off the white gravel was blinding. She had to shield her eyes with one hand while balancing her notepad, pen and purse with the other. Looking directly at him both flustered and annoyed her. He was an incredibly…potent male, no denying that. Standing there in nothing more than wet, worn, faded cutoffs—and those hanging entirely too low on his lean hips—he was a devastatingly masculine sight. A sparse covering of light brown hair, damp from his swim, laid over solid muscles in his chest and down his abdomen, then swirled around his navel. He was deeply tanned, his legs long, his big feet bare. He seemed impervious to the sharp gravel and the hot sun. And as she watched, his arms crossed over his chest.
“You be sure and let me know when you’re done looking so I can finish telling you what I think of your prying ways.”
The heat that washed over her face had nothing to do with the summer sun and everything to do with humiliation.
“I’m sorry. It’s just that you don’t look like the other men.”
He sighed dramatically. “I take it we’re talking about the other supposed heroes?”
“Yes.”
“And how did they look?”
Elizabeth hesitated, wondering how to explain it. She couldn’t just say they had all been fully dressed, because thinking it made her blush more. At the moment, Gabe Kasper looked more naked than not, and even the jean shorts didn’t help, considering they were soaked and clinging to his hard thighs, to his… Don’t go there.
She cleared her throat. “They were all more…serious. They have careers they take great pride in, and they enjoyed telling their stories.”
“But I told you, I don’t have a story to tell.”
“Your friends disagree.”
