by Diana Palmer
She flushed softly. “Really?”
“We should have one or two of our own,” he added quietly. “Boys run in my family, even if Darlene and I were never able to have one. If we had a son or two, it would give Bess and Jenny a chance to be part of a big family.”
Her eyes grew dreamy. “We could teach all of them how to use the computer and love cattle.”
He smiled tenderly. “But first, I think we might get married,” he whispered at her lips. “So that your aunt doesn’t have to be embarrassed when she tells people what you’re doing.”
“We wouldn’t want to embarrass Mama Luke,” she agreed, bubbling over with joy.
“God forbid,” he murmured. He kissed her again, with muted passion. “She can come to the wedding.” He hesitated and his eyes darkened. “I’m not sure about my brother. I could have decked him for kissing you!”
“I still don’t know why he did,” she began.
He chuckled. “He told me. He wanted to see if I was jealous of you. I gave him hell all night until Sims showed up. He laughed all the way back to the ranch. So much for lighting fires under people,” he added with a faint grin. “I’ll let him be best man, I guess, but he’s going to be the only man in church who doesn’t get to kiss the bride!”
She laughed. “What a wicked family I’m marrying into,” she said as she reached up to kiss him. “And speaking of wicked, we have to invite K.C.,” she added shyly.
He froze, lifting his head. “I don’t know about that, Kasie…”
“You’ll like him. Really you will,” she promised, smiling widely.
He grimaced. “I suppose we each have to have at least one handicap,” he muttered. “I have a lunatic brother and you’re best friends with a hit man.”
“He’s not. You’ll like him,” she repeated, and drew his head down to hers again. She kissed him with enthusiasm, enjoying the warm, wise tutoring of his hard mouth. “We should go and tell the babies,” she whispered against his mouth.
“No need,” he murmured.
“Uncle John, look! Daddy’s kissing Kasie!”
“See?” he added with a grin as he lifted his head and indicated the front door. Standing there, grinning also, were John, Bess, Jenny, Mrs. Charters, and Miss Parsons.
The wedding was the social event of Medicine Ridge for the summer. Kasie wore a beautiful white gown with lace and a keyhole neckline, with a Juliet cap and a long veil. She looked, Gil whispered as she joined him at the altar, like an angel.
Her excited eyes approved his neat gray vested suit, which made his hair look even more blond. At either side of them were Bess and Jenny in matching blue dresses, carrying baskets of white roses. Next to them was John, his brother’s best man, fumbling in his pocket for the wedding rings he was responsible for.
As the ceremony progressed, a tall, blond man in the front pew watched with narrowed, wistful eyes as his godchild married the eldest of the Callister heirs. Not bad, K.C. Kantor thought, for a girl who’d barely survived a military uprising even before she was born. He glanced at the woman seated next to him, his eyes sad and quiet, as he contemplated what might have been if he’d met Kasie’s aunt before her heart led her to a life of service in a religious order. They were the best of friends and they corresponded. She would always be family to him. She was the only family he had, or would ever have, except for that sweet young woman at the altar.
“Isn’t she beautiful?” Mama Luke whispered to him.
“A real vision,” he agreed.
She smiled at him with warm affection and turned her attention back to the ceremony.
As the priest pronounced them man and wife, Gil lifted the veil and bent to kiss Kasie. There were sighs all around, until a small hand tugged hard at Kasie’s skirt and a little voice was heard asking plaintively, “Is it over yet, Daddy? I have to go to the bathroom!”
Later, laughing about the small interruption as they gathered in the fellowship hall of the church, Kasie and Gil each cuddled a little girl and fed them cake.
“It was nice of Pauline to apologize for what she did in the Bahamas,” Kasie murmured, recalling the telephone call that had both surprised and pleased her the day before the ceremony.
“She’s really not that bad,” Gil mused. “Just irresponsible and possessive. But I still didn’t want her at the wedding,” he added with a grin. “Just in case.”
“I still wish you’d invited your parents,” Kasie told Gil gently.
“I did,” he replied. “They were on their way to the Bahamas and couldn’t spare the time.” He smiled at her. “Don’t worry the subject, Kasie. Some things can’t be changed. We’re a family, you and me and the girls and John.”
“Yes, we are,” she agreed, and she reached up to kiss him. She glanced around them curiously. Mama Luke intercepted the glance and joined them.
“He left as we were coming in here,” she told Kasie. “K.C. never was one for socializing. I expect he’s headed for the airport by now.”
“It was nice of him to come.”
“It was,” she agreed. She handed a small box to Kasie. “He asked me to give this to you.”
She frowned, pausing to open the box. She drew out a gold necklace with a tiny crystal ball dangling from it. Inside the ball was a tiny seed.
“It’s a mustard seed,” Mama Luke explained. “It’s from a Biblical quote—if you have even that amount of faith, as a mustard seed, nothing is impossible. It’s to remind you that miracles happen.”
Kasie cradled it in her hand and looked up at Gil with her heart in her eyes. “Indeed they do,” she whispered, and all the love she had for her new husband was in her face.
The next night, Kasie and Gil lay tangled in a king-size bed at a rented villa in Nassau, exhausted and deliciously relaxed from their first intimacy.
Kasie moved shyly against him, her face flushed in the aftermath of more physical sensation than she’d ever experienced.
“Stop that,” he murmured drowsily. “I’m useless now. Go to sleep.”
She laughed with pure delight and curled closer. “All right. But don’t forget where we left off.”
He drew her closer. “As if I could!” He bent and kissed her eyes shut. “Kasie, I never dreamed that I could be this happy again.” His eyes opened and looked into hers with fervent possession. “I loved Darlene. A part of me will always love her. But I would die for you,” he added roughly, his eyes blazing with emotion.
Overwhelmed, she buried her face in his throat and shivered. “I would die for you,” she choked. She clung harder. “I love you!”
His mouth found hers, hungry for contact, for the sharing of fierce, exquisite need. He drew her over his relaxed body and held her until the trembling stopped. His breath sighed out heavily at her ear. “Forever, Kasie,” he whispered unsteadily.
She smiled. “Forever.”
They slept, eventually, and as dawn filtered in through the venetian blinds and the sound of the surf grew louder, there was a knock on the door.
Gil opened his eyes, still drowsy. He looked down at Kasie, fast asleep on her stomach, smiling even so. He smiled, too, and tossed the sheet over her before he stepped into his Bermuda shorts and went to answer the door.
The shock when he opened it was blatant. On the doorstep were a silver-haired man in casual slacks and designer shirt, and a silver-haired woman in a neat but casual sundress and overblouse. They were carrying the biggest bouquet of orchids Gil had ever seen in his life.
The man pushed the bouquet toward Gil hesitantly and with a smile that seemed both hesitant and uncertain. “Congratulations,” he said.
“From both of us,” the woman added.
They both stood there, waiting.
As Gil searched for words, there was movement behind him and Kasie came to the door in the flowered cotton muu-muu she’d bought for the trip, her long chestnut hair disheveled, smiling broadly.
“Hello!” she exclaimed, going past Gil to hug the woman and then the man, w
ho both flushed. “I’m so glad you could come!”
Gil stared at her. “What?”
“I phoned them,” she told him, clasping his big hand in hers. “They said they’d like to come over and have lunch with us, and I told them to come today. But I overslept,” she added, and flushed.
“It’s your honeymoon, you should oversleep,” Gil’s mother, Magdalene, said gently. She looked at her son nervously. “We wanted to come to the wedding,” she said. “But we didn’t want to, well, ruin the day for you.”
“That’s right,” Jack Callister agreed gruffly. “We haven’t been good parents. At first we were too irresponsible, and then we were too ashamed. Especially when Douglas took you in and we lost touch.” He shrugged. “It’s too late to start over, of course, but we’d sort of like to, well, to get to know you and John. And the girls, of course. That is, if you, uh, if you…” He shrugged.
Kasie squeezed Gil’s hand, hard.
“I’d like that,” he said obligingly.
Their faces changed. They beamed. For several seconds, they looked like silver-haired children on Christmas morning. And Gil realized with stark shock that they were just that—grown-up children without the first idea of how to be parents. Douglas Callister had kept the boys, and he hadn’t approved of his brother Jack, so he hadn’t encouraged contact. Since the elder Callisters didn’t know how to approach their children directly, they lost touch and then couldn’t find a way to reach them at all.
He looked down at Kasie, and it all made sense. She’d tied the loose ends up. She’d gathered a family back together.
She squeezed Gil’s hand again, looking up at him with radiant delight. “We could get dressed and meet them in the restaurant. After we put these in water,” she added, hugging the bouquet to her heart and sniffing them. “I’ve never had orchids in my life,” she said with a smile. “Thank you!”
Magdalena laughed nervously. “No, Kasie. Thank you.”
“We’ll get dressed and meet you in about fifteen minutes, in the restaurant,” Gil managed to say.
“Great!” Jack said. He took his wife’s hand, and they both smiled, looking ten years younger. “We’ll see you there!”
The door closed and Gil looked down at Kasie with wonder.
“I thought they might like to visit us at the ranch next month, too,” Kasie said, “so they can get to know the babies.”
“You’re amazing,” he said. “Absolutely amazing!”
She fingered the necklace K.C. had given her at the wedding. “I like miracles, don’t you?”
He burst out laughing. He picked her up and swung her around in an arc while she squealed and held on to her bouquet tightly. He put her down gently and kissed her roughly.
“I love you,” he said huskily.
She grinned. “Yes, and see what it gets you when you love people? You get all sorts of nice surprises. In fact,” she added with a mischievous grin, “I have all sorts of surprises in store for you.”
He took a deep breath and looked at her with warm affection. “I can hardly wait.”
She kissed him gently and went to dress. She gave a thought to Gil’s Darlene, and to her own parents, and her lost twin and his family, and hoped that they all knew, somehow, that she and Gil were happy and that they had a bright future with the two little girls and the children they would have together. As she went to the closet to get her dress, her eyes were full of dreams. And so were Gil’s.
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0007-4
CIRCLE OF GOLD
Copyright © 2000 by Diana Palmer
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