To Wear His Ring

by Diana Palmer

  “Can’t we play, too?” Bess asked, clinging to his hand.

  “Sure,” he said. “Just as soon as you can compare birth weight ratios and compute projected weaning weight.”

  Bess made a face. “Oh, Daddy!”

  “I’ll make a rancher out of you one day, young lady,” he said with a grin.

  “Billy’s dad said he was sure glad he had a son instead of girls. Daddy, do you ever wish me and Jenny was boys?” she asked.

  He stopped, dropped to one knee and hugged the child close. “Daddy loves little girls,” he said softly. “And he wouldn’t trade you and Jenny for all the boys in the world. You tell Billy I said that.”

  Bess chuckled. “I will!” She kissed his cheek with a big smack. “I love you, Daddy!”

  “I love you, too, little chick.”

  Jenny, jealous, had to have a hug, too, and they ended up each clinging to a strong, lean hand as they went into the house.

  Kasie watched them, feeling more lost and alone than she had in months. She ached to be part of a family again. Watching Gil with the girls only emphasized what she’d lost.

  She went up onto the porch and up the staircase slowly, her hand smoothing over the silky wood of the banister as she tried once again to come to grips with her loss.

  She was curled up in her easy chair watching an old movie on television when there was a soft knock at the door just before it opened. Bess and Jenny sneaked in wearing their gowns and bathrobes and slippers, peering cautiously down the hall before they closed the door.

  “Hello,” Kasie said with a smile, opening her arms as they clambered up into the big chair with her and cuddled close. “You smell nice.”

  “We had baths,” Bess said. “Miss Parsons said we was covered with chocolate sauce.” She giggled. “We splashed her.”

  “You bad babies,” she chided softly and kissed little cheeks.

  “Could you tell us a story?” they asked.

  “Sure. What would you like to hear?”

  “The one with the bears.”

  “Okay.” She started the story, speaking in all the different parts, while they snuggled close and listened with attention.

  Just to see if they were really listening, she added, “And then the wolf huffed and puffed…”

  “No, Kasie!” Bess interrupted. “That’s the pig story!”

  “Is it?” she exclaimed. “All right, then. Well, the bears came home…”

  “Huffing and puffing?” came a deep, amused query from the doorway. The little girls glanced at him, looking guilty and worried. “Miss Parsons is looking for you two fugitives,” he drawled. “If I were you, I’d get into my beds real fast. She’s glowering.”

  “Goodness! We got to go, Kasie!” Bess said, and she and Jenny scrambled to their feet and ran past their father down the hall, calling good-nights as they went.

  Gil studied Kasie from the doorway. She was wearing her own white gown, with a matching cotton robe this time, and her long hair waved around her shoulders. She looked very young.

  “You weren’t reading from a book. What did you do, memorize the story?” he asked curiously.

  “I guess so,” she confided, smiling. “I’ve told it so many times, I suppose I do have it down pretty well.”

  “Who did you tell it to?” he asked reasonably.

  The smile never faded, but she withdrew behind it. “A little girl who stayed with us sometimes,” she replied.

  “I see.”

  “They came in and asked for a story,” she explained. “I hated telling them to go away…”

  “I haven’t said a word.”

  “You did,” she reminded him worriedly. “I know that Miss Parsons looks after them. I’m not trying to interfere.”

  “I know that. But it’s making things hard for her when they come to you instead,” he said firmly.

  She grimaced. “I can’t hurt their feelings.”

  “I’ll speak to them.” He held up a hand when she started to protest. “I’ll speak to them nicely,” he added. “I won’t make an issue of it.”

  She hesitated. “Okay.”

  “You have your own duties,” he continued. “It isn’t fair to let you take on two jobs, no matter how you feel about it. I don’t pay Miss Parsons to sit and read tax manuals.”

  Her eyes widened. “You’re kidding,” she said, sitting up straight. “She reads tax manuals? What for? Did you ask her?”

  “I did. She says she reads them for pleasure,” he said. “Apparently she didn’t really want to retire from the accounting business, but she was faced with a clerical position or retirement,” he added with a droll smile.

  “Oh, dear.”

  He pushed away from the door facing. “Don’t stay up too late. John needs to get an early start. He’ll be away for a week showing Ebony King on the road.”

  “He’s the new young bull,” Kasie recalled. “He eats corn out of my hand,” she added with a smile. “I never thought of bulls as being gentle.”

  “They’re a real liability if they’re not,” he pointed out. “A bull that size could trample a man with very little difficulty.”

  “I guess he could.” She stood up, with her hands in the pockets of the cotton robe. “I’m sorry about the girls coming in here.”

  “Oh, hell, I don’t mind,” he said on a rough breath. “But it isn’t wise to let them get too attached to you, Kasie. You know it, and you know why.”

  “They think you’re going to marry Pauline,” she blurted out, and then flushed at having been so personal with him.

  “I haven’t thought a lot about remarrying,” he replied quietly. His eyes went over her with a suddenly intent appraisal. “But maybe I should. They’re getting to the age where they’re going to need a woman’s hand in their lives. I love them, but I can’t see things from a female point of view.”

  “You’ve done marvelously with them so far,” she told him. “They’re polite and generous and loving.”

  “So was their mother,” he remarked and for a few seconds, his face was lined with grief before he got it under control. “She loved them.”

  “You said Bess was like her,” she reminded him.

  “Yes,” he said at once. “She had long, wavy blond hair, just that same color. Jenny looks more like me. But Bess is more like me.”

  She smiled. “I’ve noticed. She has a very hard head when she doesn’t want to do something.”

  He shrugged. “Being stubborn isn’t always a bad thing. Persistence is the key to most successes in life.”

  “Yes.” She searched his hard face, seeing the years of work and worry. It was a good, strong face, but it wasn’t handsome.

  He was looking at her, too, and something stirred inside him, a need that he had to work to put down. He moved out the door. “Sleep well, Kasie,” he said curtly.

  “You, too.”

  He closed the door behind him, without looking at her again. She went back to her movie, but with much less enthusiasm.

  Chapter Five

  The week went by slowly, and the girls, to Kasie’s dismay, became her shadows. She worried herself sick trying to keep Gil from noticing, especially after the harsh comments he’d made about her job responsibilities. It didn’t help that she kept remembering the feel of his arm around her at the movie theater, and the warm clasp of his big lean hand in her own. She was afraid to even look at him, because she was afraid her attraction to him might show.

  Saturday came and the house was full of strangers. Kasie found it hard to mix with high society people, so she stuck to Miss Parsons and the girls. Miss Parsons took the opportunity to sneak back inside the house while Kasie watched the girls. Everything went well at first, because Gil was too busy with guests to notice that Miss Parsons was missing. But not for long. Kasie had given the girls a beach ball to play with, which was her one big mistake of the morning.

  It wouldn’t have been so bad if she’d just let the children’s beach ball fly into the swimming pool
in the first place. The problem was that, if she didn’t stop it, Pauline was going to get it in the mouth, which wouldn’t improve the already-bad situation between her and Kasie. Bess and Jenny didn’t like Gil Callister’s secretary. Neither did Kasie, but she loved the little girls and didn’t want them to get into trouble. So she gave in to an impulse, and tried valiantly to divert the ball from its unexpecting target.

  Predictably, she overreached, lost her footing and made an enormous splash as she landed, fully clothed, in the deep end. And, of course, she couldn’t swim…

  Gil looked up from the prospectus he’d been reading when he heard the splash. He connected Kasie’s fall, the beach ball, and his two little blond giggling daughters at once. He shook his head and grimaced. He put aside the prospectus and dived in to save Kasie, Bermuda shorts, Hawaiian shirt and all.

  Her late parents had lived long enough to see the irony of the second name they’d given her. Her middle name was Grace, but she wasn’t graceful. She was all long legs and arms. She wasn’t pretty, but she had a lovely body, and the thin white dress she was wearing became transparent in the water. It was easily noticed that she was wearing only the flimsiest of briefs and a bra that barely covered her pert breasts. Just the thing, she thought miserably, to wear in front of the Callisters’ business partners who were here for a pool party on the big ranch. Feline blond Pauline Raines was laughing her head off at Kasie’s desperate treading of water. Just you wait, lady, she fumed. Next time I’ll give Bess a soccer ball to bean you with and I won’t step in the way…!

  Her head went under as her arms gave out. She took a huge breath as powerful arms encircled and lifted her clear of the deep water. It would have to be Gil who rescued her, she thought miserably. John wasn’t even looking their way. He’d have dived in after her in a minute, she knew, if he’d seen her fall. But while he was nice, and kind, he wasn’t Gil, who was beginning to have a frightening effect on Kasie’s heart. She glanced at Pauline as she spluttered. Kasie wished that she was beautiful like Pauline. She looked the very image of an efficient secretary. Kasie had great typing speed, dictation skills and organizational expertise, but she was only ordinary-looking. Besides, she was a social disaster, and she’d just proved it to Gil and all the guests.

  Gil had been unexpectedly kind to her at the theater when he’d taken her with the girls to see the movie. She still tingled, remembering his hand holding hers. This, however, was much worse. Her breasts were almost bare in the thin blouse, and she felt the hard muscular wall of his chest with wonder and pleasure and a little fear, because she’d never felt such heady sensations in her body before. She wondered if he’d fire her for making a scene at this pool party, to which a lot of very wealthy and prominent cattlemen and their wives had been invited.

  To give him credit, she hadn’t exactly inspired confidence on the job in the past few weeks. Two weeks earlier, she tripped on the front steps and landed in a rosebush at the very feet of a visiting cattleman from Texas who’d almost turned purple trying not to laugh. Then there had been the ice-cream incident last week, which still embarrassed her. Bess had threatened Kasie with a big glop of chocolate ice cream. While Kasie was backing away, laughing helplessly, Gil had come into the house in dirty chaps and boots and shirt with his hat jerked low over one blue eye and his mouth a thin line, with blood streaming from a cut on his forehead. Bess had thrown the ice cream at Kasie, who ducked, just in time for it to hit Gil right in the forehead. While he was wiping it off, Kasie grabbed the spoon from Bess and waited for the explosion as her boss wiped the ice cream away and looked at her. Those blue eyes could cut like diamonds. They actually glittered. But he hadn’t said a word. He’d just looked at her, before he turned and continued down the hall to the staircase that led up to his room.

  Now, here she was half-drowned from a swimming pool accident, having made a spectacle of herself yet again.

  “I wonder if I could get work in Hollywood?” she sputtered as she hung on for dear life. “There must be a market for terminal clumsiness somewhere!”

  Gil raised an eyebrow and gave her a slow, speaking glance before he pulled her close against his chest and turned toward the concrete steps at the far end. He walked up out of the pool, streaming water, and started toward the house. “Don’t struggle, Kasie,” he said at her temple, and his voice sounded odd.

  “Sorry,” she coughed. “You can put me down, now. I’m okay. I can walk.”

  “If I put you down, you’re going to become the entertainment,” he said enigmatically at her ear. He looked over his shoulder. “John, look after the girls until I get back!” he called.

  “Oh, I’ll watch them, Gil!” Pauline interrupted lazily. “Come over here, girls!” she called, without even looking in their direction.

  “John will watch them,” Gil said emphatically and didn’t move until his lean, lanky brother jumped up and went toward his nieces, grinning.

  Gil went up the staircase with Kasie held close to his chest. “Why can’t you swim?” he asked.

  His deep, slow voice made her feel funny. So did the close, almost intimate contact with him. She nibbled on her lower lip, feeling soggy and disheveled and embarrassed. “I’m afraid of the water.”

  “Why?” he persisted.

  She wouldn’t answer him. It would do no good, and she didn’t want to remember. Probably he’d never seen anyone drown. “Sorry I messed up the pool party,” she murmured.

  He shook her gently as they passed the landing and paused at her bedroom door. “Stop apologizing every second word,” he said curtly as he put her down. He held her there with two big, lean hands on her upper arms and studied her intently in the dim light of the wall sconces.

  The feel of all that warm strength against her made her giddy. She’d never been so close to him before. He was ten years older than Kasie, and he had an authority and maturity that must have been apparent even when he’d been her age. She had tried to think of him as Bess and Jenny’s daddy, but after their closeness at the movie theater, it was almost impossible to think of him as anything but a mature, sexy man.

  “I can’t seem to make you understand that the girls are Miss Parsons’ responsibility, not yours!” He saw her faint flush and scowled down at her. “Speaking of Miss Parsons, where in hell is she?”

  She cleared her throat and pushed back a soggy strand of dark hair. “She’s in the office.”

  “Doing what?”

  She shifted, but he didn’t let go of her arms. That unblinking, ferocious blue stare robbed her of a smart retort. “All right,” she said heavily. “She’s doing the withholding on John’s tax readout.” He didn’t speak. She looked up and grimaced. “Well, I’m not up on tax law, and she is.”

  “So you traded duties without permission, is that it?”

  She hesitated. “Yes. I’m sorry. But it’s just for today! You already know that she doesn’t…well, she doesn’t like children very much, really, and I hate taxes…”

  “I know.”

  “I shouldn’t have given them the beach ball. I thought they were going into the shallow part of the pool with it. And then Bess threw it…”

  “Right at Pauline’s expensive new coiffure,” Gil finished for her. He pursed his sensuous lips and searched her face. “You won’t tell on them, of course. You took the blame for the ice cream, too. And when one of Jenny’s toys tripped you on the front steps and you went into the rosebush, you blamed that on clumsiness.”

  “You knew?” she asked, surprised.

  “I’ve been a father for five years,” he mused. “I know all sorts of things.” His pale blue eyes slid very slowly down Kasie’s wet dress and narrowed on what was showing. She had the most delicious body. Every line and curve of it was on view where the thin dress was plastered to her body. Her breasts were perfectly shaped and the nipples were dusky. The feel of her against his chest, even through her wet blouse and his cotton shirt, had almost knocked the breath out of him. It upset him that he was noticing these
things about her. He was beginning to react to them, too. He had to get out of here. She was so young…

  He cursed under his breath. “You’d better change,” he said curtly. He turned on his heel and went toward the staircase.

  “About Miss Parsons…!” she called after him, in one last attempt to ward off retribution.

  “You might as well consider the girls your job from now on,” he said angrily. “I can see that it’s a losing battle to keep you away from them. I’ll give Miss Parsons to John. He won’t enjoy the view as much, but keeping out of prison because we can’t figure out tax forms might sweeten the deal,” he said, without breaking stride. “When you have some spare time, you can continue giving Pauline computer lessons. That includes Monday morning. Mrs. Charters can watch the girls while you work with Pauline.”

  “But I’m not a trained governess. I’m a secretary!” she insisted.

  “Great. You can let Bess dictate letters to you for her dolls.”

  “But…!”

  It was too late. He never argued. He just kept walking. She threw up her hands and went back into her room. She started toward the bathroom to change out of her wet things when she got a look at herself in the mirror. The whole outfit was transparent. She remembered Gil’s intent stare and blushed all the way to her toes. No wonder he’d been looking at her. Everything she had was on view! She wondered how she’d ever be able to look him in the eye again.

  She changed and went back to the pool party, dejected and miserable. It was hard to believe that she’d not even had a mild crush on John when she first went to work for the Callisters. He was handsome, and very sexy, but she just didn’t feel that way about him. Fortunately he’d never felt that way about her, either. John had some secret woman in his past, and now he didn’t get serious about anyone. Kasie had heard that from Mrs. Charters, who was a veritable storehouse of information about it. John didn’t look to Kasie like a man with a broken heart. But maybe he played the field to camouflage it.