Texas Proud and Circle of Gold

by Diana Palmer

  Kasie sat down in the porch swing and rocked it into motion. It was a perfect night, now that the storm had abated. She could hear crickets, or maybe frogs, chirping all around the flowering shrubs that surrounded the front porch. It reminded her, for some reason, of Africa. She vaguely remembered sitting in a porch swing with her mother and Kantor when their father was away working. There were the delicious smells of cooking from the house, and the spicy smells drifting from the harbor nearby, as well as the familiar sound of African workers singing and humming as they worked around the settlement. It was a long time ago, when she still had a family. Now, except for Mama Luke, she was completely alone. It was a cold, empty feeling.

  The screen door suddenly opened and Gil came out onto the porch. His blond hair was still damp, faintly unruly at the edges and tending to curl. He was wearing a blue checked Western shirt with clean jeans and nice boots. He looked just the way a working cowboy should when he was cleaned up, she thought, trying to imagine him a century earlier.

  “Is the mechanic here?” he asked abruptly when he spotted Kasie in the swing.

  “Yes, I sent him on down to the barn.”

  He went down the steps gracefully and stalked to the barn. He was gone about five minutes and when he came out of the barn, so did the mechanic. They shook hands and the mechanic drove off.

  “A fuse,” he murmured, shaking his head as he came up the steps and dropped into the swing at Kasie’s side. “A damned fuse, and the whole panel went down. Imagine that.”

  “Sometimes it’s the little things that give the most trouble,” she murmured, shy with him.

  He put an arm behind her and rocked the swing into motion. “I like the way you smell, Kasie,” he said lazily. “You always remind me of roses.”

  “I’m allergic to perfume,” she confided. “The florals are the only ones I can wear without sneezing my head off.”

  “Where are my babies?” he asked.

  “Mrs. Charters is baking cookies with them in the kitchen,” she said, smiling. “They love to cook. So do I. We’ve all learned a lot from Mrs. Charters.”

  He looked down at her in the darkness. One lean hand went to the braid at the back of her head, and he tugged on it gently. “You’re mysterious,” he murmured. “I don’t really know anything about you.”

  “There’s not much to tell,” she told him. “I’m just ordinary.”

  He shifted, and she felt his powerful thigh against her leg. Her body came alive with fleeting little stabs of pleasure. She could feel her breath catching in her throat as she breathed. He was too close.

  She started to move, but it was too late. His arm curled her into his body, and the warm, hard pressure of his mouth pushed her head back against the swing while he fed hungrily on her lips.

  Part of her wanted to resist, but a stronger part was completely powerless. She reached up and put her arms around his neck and opened her lips for him. She felt him stiffen, hesitate, catch his breath. Then his mouth became rough and demanding, and he dragged her across his legs, folding her close while he kissed her until her mouth was swollen and tender.

  He nibbled her upper lip, fighting to breathe normally. “Don’t let me do this,” he warned.

  “You’re bigger than I am,” she murmured breath-lessly.

  “That’s no excuse at all.”

  Her fingers trailed over his hard mouth and down to his chest where they rested. She stared at the wide curve of his mouth with a kind of wonder that a man like this, good-looking and charming and wealthy, would look twice at a chestnut mouse like Kasie. Perhaps he needed glasses.

  He touched her oval face, tracing its soft lines in a warm, damp darkness that was suddenly like an exotic, faraway place. Kasie felt as if she’d come home. Impulsively, she let her head slide down his arm until it rested in the crook of his elbow. She watched his expression harden, heard his breathing change. His lean fingers moved down her chin and throat until they were at the top button of her shirtwaist dress. They hesitated there.

  She lay looking up at him patiently, curiously, ablaze with unfamiliar longings and delight.

  “Kasie,” he whispered, and his long fingers began to sensually move the top button out of its buttonhole. As it came free, he heard her soft gasp, felt the jerk of her body, and knew that this was new territory for her.

  His hand started to slide gently into the opening he’d made. He watched Kasie, lying so sweetly in his embrace, giving him free license with her innocence, and he shivered with desire.

  But even as he felt the soft warmth of the skin at her collarbone, laughing young voices came drifting out onto the porch as the front door opened.

  Gil moved Kasie back into her own seat abruptly and stood up.

  “Daddy’s home!” Bess cried, and she and Jenny ran to him, to be scooped up and kissed heartily.

  “I’ll, uh, just go and get my pad so that you can dictate that letter you mentioned,” Kasie said as she got up, too.

  “You will not,” Gil said, his voice still a little husky. “Go to bed, Kasie. It can wait. In the morning, you can tutor Pauline on the computer, so that she can take over inputting the cattle records. John won’t be in until late tonight, and he leaves early tomorrow for the cattle show in San Antonio. There’s nothing in the office that can’t wait.”

  She was both disappointed and relieved. It was getting harder to deny Gil anything he wanted. She couldn’t have imagined that she was such a wanton person only a few weeks ago. She didn’t know what to do.

  “Okay, I’ll call it a night,” she said, trying to disguise her nervousness. “Good night, babies,” she told Bess and Jenny with a smile. “Sleep tight.”

  “Will you tell us a story, Kasie?” Bess began.

  “I’ll tell you a story tonight. Kasie needs her rest. All right?” he asked the girls.

  “All right, Daddy,” Jenny murmured, laying her sleepy head on his shoulder.

  They all went upstairs together. Kasie didn’t quite meet his eyes as she went down the hall to her own room. She didn’t sleep very much, either.

  Chapter Six

  Pauline Raines was half an hour late Monday morning. Gil had already gone out to check on some cattle that was being shipped off. John had left before daylight to fly to San Antonio, where the cattle trailer was taking his champion bull, Ebony King, for the cattle show. While the girls took their nap, Kasie helped Miss Parsons with John’s correspondence and fielded the telephone. Now that it was just past roundup, things weren’t quite as hectic, but sales reports were coming in on the culled cattle being shipped, and they weren’t even all on the computer yet. Neither were most of the new calf crop.

  Miss Parsons had gone to the post office when Pauline arrived wearing a neat black suit with a fetching blue scarf. She glared at Kasie as she threw her purse down on the chair.

  “Here I am,” she said irritably. “I don’t usually come in before ten, but Gil said I had to be early, to work on this stupid computer. I don’t see why I need to learn it.”

  “Because you’ll have to put in all the information we’re getting about the new calves and replacement heifers,” Kasie explained patiently. “It’s backing up.”

  “You can do that,” Pauline said haughtily. “You’re John’s secretary.”

  “Not anymore,” she replied calmly. “I’m going to take care of the girls while Miss Parsons takes my place in John’s office. She’s going to handle all the tax work.”

  That piece of information didn’t please Pauline. “You’re a secretary,” she pointed out.

  “That’s what I told Mr. Callister, but it didn’t change his mind,” Kasie replied tersely.

  “So now I’ll have to do all your work while Miss Parsons does taxes? I won’t! Surely you’ll have enough free time to put these records on the computer! Two little girls don’t require much watching. Just put them in front of
the television!”

  Kasie almost bit her tongue right through keeping back a hot reply. “It isn’t going to be hard to use the computer. It will save you hours of paperwork.”

  Pauline gave her a glare. “Debbie always put these things on the computer.”

  “Debbie quit because she couldn’t do two jobs at once,” Kasie said, and was vindicated for the jibe when she saw Pauline’s discomfort. “You really will enjoy the time the computer saves you, once you understand how it works.”

  “I don’t need this job, didn’t anyone tell you?” the older woman asked. “I’m wealthy. I only do it to be near Gil. It gives us more time together, while we’re seeing how compatible we are. Which reminds me, don’t think you’re on to a cushy job looking after those children,” she added haughtily. “Gil and I are going to be looking for a boarding school very soon.”

  “Boarding school?” Kasie exclaimed, horrified.

  “I’ve already checked out several,” Pauline said. “It isn’t good for little girls to become too attached to their fathers. It interferes with Gil’s social life.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  Pauline frowned. “What do you mean, you hadn’t noticed?”

  “Well, Mr. Callister is almost a generation older than I am,” she said deliberately.

  “Oh.” Pauline smiled secretively. “I see.”

  “He’s a very kind man,” Kasie emphasized, “but I don’t think of him in that way,” she added, lying through her teeth.

  Pauline for once seemed speechless.

  “Here, let’s get started,” Kasie said as she turned on the computer, trying to head off trouble. She hoped that comment would keep her out of trouble with Pauline, who obviously considered Gil Callister her personal property. Kasie had enough problems without adding a jealous secretary to them. Even if she did privately think Gil was the sexiest man she’d ever known.

  Pauline seemed determined to make every second of work as hard as humanly possible for Kasie. She insisted on three coffee breaks before noon, and the pressing nature of the information coming in by fax kept Kasie working long after Pauline called it a day at three in the afternoon and went home. If Mrs. Charters hadn’t helped out by letting Bess and Jenny make cookies, Kasie wouldn’t have been able to do as much as she did.

  She’d only just finished the new computer entries when Gil came in, dusty and sweaty and half out of humor. He didn’t say a word. He went to the liquor cabinet and poured himself a scotch and water, and he drank half of it before he even looked at Kasie.

  It took her a minute to realize that he was openly glaring at her.

  “Is something wrong?” she asked uneasily.

  “Pauline called me on the cell phone a few minutes ago. She said you’re making it impossible for her to do her job,” he replied finally.

  Her heart skipped. So that was how the other woman was going to make points—telling lies.

  “I’ve been showing her how to key in this data, and that’s all I’ve done,” Kasie told him quietly. “She hates the computer.”

  “Odd that she’s done so well with it up until now,” he said suspiciously.

  “Debbie did well with it,” Kasie replied bluntly, flushing a little at his angry tenseness. “She was apparently having to put her own work as well as Pauline’s into the computer.”

  He took another sip of the drink. He didn’t look convinced. “That isn’t what Pauline says,” he told her. “And I want to know why you suddenly want my girls in a boarding school, after you’ve spent weeks behind my back and against instructions winning them over, so they’re attached to you.” He added angrily, “I meant it when I said I have no plans to marry. So if that changes your mind about wanting to take care of them, say so and I’ll give you a reference and two weeks severance pay!”

  He really did look ferocious. Kasie’s head was spinning from the accusations. “Excuse me?”

  He finished the drink and put the glass down firmly on the counter below the liquor cabinet. His pale eyes were glittery. “John and I spent six of the worst years of our lives at boarding school,” he added unexpectedly. “I’m not putting my babies in any boarding school.”

  Kasie felt as if she were being attacked by invisible hands. She stood up, her mind reeling from the charges. Pauline had been busy!

  “I haven’t said anything about boarding school,” she defended herself. “Pauline said...”

  He held up a hand. “I know Pauline,” he told her. “I’ve known her most of my life. She doesn’t tell lies.”

  Boy, was he in for a shock a little further on down the road, she thought, but she didn’t say anything else. She was already in too much trouble, and none of it of her own making.

  She didn’t say a word. She just looked at him with big, gray, wounded eyes.

  He moved closer, his mind reeling from Pauline’s comments about Kasie. He didn’t want to believe that Kasie was so two-faced that she’d play up to the girls to get in Gil’s good graces and then want to see them sent off to boarding school. But what did he really know about her, after all? She had no family except an aunt in Billings, or so she said, and except for the information on her application that mentioned secretarial school, nothing about her early education was apparent. She was mysterious. He didn’t like mysteries.

  He stopped just in front of her, his face hard and threatening as he glared down at her.

  “Where were you born?” he asked abruptly.

  The question surprised her. She became flustered. “I, well, I was born in...in Africa.”

  He hadn’t expected that answer, and it showed. “Africa?”

  “Yes. In Sierra Leone,” she added.

  He frowned. “What were your parents doing in Africa?”

  “They worked there.”

  “I see.” He didn’t, but she looked as if she hated talking about it. The mystery only deepened.

  “Maybe you’re right,” she said, unnerved by his unexpected anger and the attack by Pauline, which made her look like a gold digger. “Maybe I’m not the best person to look after the girls. If you like, I’ll hand in my notice...!”

  He had her by both shoulders with a firm grip and the expression on his face made her want to back away.

  “And just for the record, ten years isn’t a generation!” he said through his teeth as he glared down at her. His gaze dropped to her soft, generous mouth and it was like lightning striking. He couldn’t help himself. The memory of her body in his arms on the porch swing took away the last wisp of his willpower. He bent quickly and took that beautiful softness under his hard lips in a fever of hunger, probing insistently at her tight mouth with his tongue.

  Kasie, who’d never been kissed in any intimate way, even by Gil, froze like ice at the skillful, invasive intimacy of his mouth. She couldn’t believe what was happening. Her hands against his chest clenched and she closed her eyes tightly as she strained against his hold.

  Slowly it seemed to get through to him that she was shocked at the insistence. He lifted his demanding mouth and looked at her. This was familiar territory for him. But, it wasn’t for her, and it was apparent. After the way she’d responded to him the night before, he was surprised that she balked at a deep kiss. But, then, he remembered her chaste gowns and her strange attitude about wearing her beautiful hair loose. She wasn’t fighting him. She looked...strange.

  His lean hands loosened, became caressing on her upper arms under the short sleeve of her dress. “I’m sorry. It’s all right,” he breathed as he bent again. “I won’t be rough with you. It’s all right, Kasie...”

  His lips barely brushed hers, tender now instead of demanding. A few seconds of tenderness brought a sigh from her lips. He smiled against her soft mouth as he coaxed it to part. He nibbled the full upper lip, tasting its velvety underside with his tongue, enjoying her reactions to him. He felt her yo
ung body begin to relax into his. She worked for him. She was an employee. He’d just been giving her hell about trying to trap him into marriage. So why was he doing this...? She made a soft sound under her breath and her hands tightened on the hard muscles of his upper arms. His brows began to knit as sensation pulsed through him at her shy response. What did it matter why he was doing it, he asked himself, and threw caution to the winds.

  His arms went around her, gently smoothing her against the muscular length of him, while his mouth dragged a response under its tender pressure. He felt her gasp, felt her shiver, then felt her arms sliding around his waist as she gave in to the explosion of warm sensation that his hungry kiss provoked in her.

  It was like flying, he thought dizzily. He lifted her against him, feeding on the softness of her mouth, the clinging wonder of her arms around him. It had been years since a kiss had been this sweet, this fulfilling. Not since Darlene had he been so hungry for a woman’s mouth. Darlene. Darlene. Kasie was so much like her...

  Only the need to breathe forced him to put her down and lift his head. His turbulent eyes met her dazed ones and he had to fight to catch his breath.

  “Why did you do that?” she asked unsteadily.

  He was scowling. He touched her mouth with a lean forefinger. “I don’t know,” he said honestly. “Do you want me to apologize?” he added quietly.

  “Are you sorry?” she returned.

  “I am not,” he said, every word deliberate as he stared into her eyes.

  That husky statement made her tingle all over with delicious sensations, but he still looked formidable. His lean fingers caught her shoulders and gently moved her away. She looked as devastated as he felt.

  Her eyes searched his quietly. She was shaking inside from the delicious crush of his mouth, so unexpected. “What did you mean, about ten years not being a generation?” she asked suddenly.