To Wear His Ring (11 page)

“I remember,” she replied irritably. “Do you?”

“Stay in the house with the girls until I tell you otherwise. I don’t want any of you on the porch or in the yard until we settle this, one way or another.”

He did think there was danger. She heard it in every word. “I won’t let anything happen to Bess and Jenny. I promise.”

He glared at her. “Can you shoot?”

She shook her head. “But I know how to dial 911.”

“Okay. Keep one of the wireless phones handy, just in case.”

She moved toward him another step, wrapping her arms tight around her body. “Have you got a cell phone?”

He indicated the case on his belt. That was when she noticed an old Colt .45 strapped to his other hip, under the denim shirt he was wearing open over his black T-shirt.

Her breath caught. Until that minute, when she saw the gun, it was a possibility. But guns were violent, chaotic, frightening. She bit her lower lip worriedly.

“I’ll be late. Make sure you lock the doors before you go upstairs. John and I have keys.”

“I will,” she promised. “You be careful.”

He ignored the quiet command. He took one long, last look at her and went on down the steps to his pickup truck, which was parked nearby.

She stood at the top of the steps until he drove away, staring after him worriedly. She wanted to call him back, to beg him to stay inside where he’d be safe from any retribution by that man Sims. But she couldn’t. He wasn’t the sort of man to run from trouble. It wouldn’t do any good to nag him. He was going to do what he needed to do, whether or not it pleased her.

She got the girls ready for bed and tucked them in. She read them a Dr. Seuss book they hadn’t heard yet. When they grew drowsy, she pulled the covers
over them and tiptoed to the door, pausing to flick off the light switch as she went out into the hall.

She left the door cracked and went on down the hall to her own room. She got ready for bed and curled up on her pillows with a worn copy of Tacitus’
The Histories.
“I wonder if you ever imagined that people in the future would still be reading words you wrote almost two thousand years ago,” she murmured as she thumbed through the well-read work. “And nothing really changes, does it, except the clothes and the everyday things. People are the same.”

Her heart wasn’t in the book. She laid it aside and turned off the lights, thinking how it would have been two thousand years ago to watch her husband put on his armor and march off to a war in some foreign country behind one of the Roman generals. That made her think of Gil and she gnawed her lip as she lay in the darkness, waiting for some sound that would tell her he was still all right.

It was two o’clock in the morning before she heard a pickup truck pull up at the bottom of the steps out front. She threw off the covers and ran to the window, peering out through the lacy curtain just in time to see Gil and John climb wearily out of the truck. John had a rifle with the breech open under one arm. He led the way into the house, with Gil following behind.

At least, thank God, they were both still alive, she thought. She went back to bed and pulled the covers up to her chin. Relieved, she slept.

She’d forgotten John’s invitation to the movies, but he hadn’t. And he looked odd, as if he was pondering something wicked, when he waited for her to come down the stairs with the girls.

Kasie was wearing a pretty dark green silk pantsuit with strappy sandals and her hair around her shoulders. She smiled at the little girls in their skirt sets. They looked like a family, and John was touched. He went forward to greet them, pausing to kiss Kasie’s cheek warmly.

Gil, who was working in the office, came into the hall just in time to see his brother kissing Kasie. His eyes splintered with unexpected helpless rage. His fists clenched at his side. She wouldn’t leave the house with him, but here she was dressed to the nines and all eager to jump into a car with his brother.

John glanced at him warily and hid a smile. “We’re off to the movies! Want to come?”

“No,” Gil said abruptly. He avoided looking at Kasie. “I’ve got two more hours of work to finish in the den.”

“Let Miss Parsons do it and come with us,” John persisted.

“I gave Miss Parsons the day off. She’s visiting a friend.”

“Let it wait until tomorrow, then.”

“No chance. Go ahead and enjoy yourselves, but don’t get too comfortable. Watch your back,” he said tersely, and returned into the study. He closed the door firmly behind him.

John, for some ungodly reason, was rubbing his hands together with absolute glee. Kasie gave him a speaking glance, which he ignored as he herded them out into the night.

The movie was one for general audiences, about a famous singer. John didn’t really enjoy it, but Kasie and the girls did. They ate popcorn and giggled at the
funny scenes, and moaned when the heroine was misjudged by the hero and thrown out on her ear.

“That looks familiar, doesn’t it?” John murmured outrageously.

“She should hit him with a brickbat,” Kasie muttered.

“With a head that hard, I don’t know if it would do any good,” he said, and Kasie thought for a minute that it didn’t sound as if he were referring to the movie. “But I have a much better idea, anyway. Wait and see.”

She pondered that enigmatic remark all through the movie. They went home, had dinner and watched TV, but it wasn’t until the girls went up to bed and the study door opened that Kasie began to realize what John was up to. Because he waited until his brother had an unobstructed view of the two of them at the foot of the staircase. And then he bent and kissed Kasie. Passionately.

Kasie was shocked. Gil was infuriated. John winked at Kasie before he turned to face his brother. “Oh, there you are,” he told Gil with a grin. “The movie was great. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow. Sleep well, Kasie,” he added, ruffling the hair at her temple.

“You, too,” she choked. She could barely manage words. John had never touched her before, and she knew that it hadn’t been out of misplaced passion or raging desire that he’d kissed her. He’d obviously done it to irritate his big brother. And it was working! Gil looked as if he wanted to bite somebody.

He moved close to Kasie when John was out of sight up the steps, whipping out a snow-white handkerchief.
He caught her by the nape and wiped off her smeared lipstick.

“You aren’t marrying my brother,” he said through his teeth.

“Excuse me?”

“I said, you aren’t marrying John,” he repeated harshly. “You’re an employee here, and that’s all. I am not going to let my brother become your meal ticket!”

She actually gasped. “Of all the unfounded, unreasonable, outrageous things in the world to say to a woman, that really takes the cake!” she raged.

“I haven’t started yet,” he bit off. He threw the handkerchief down on the hall table and pulled her roughly into his arms. “I’ve never wanted to hit a man so badly in all my life,” he ground out as his mouth went down over hers.

She couldn’t breathe. He didn’t seem to notice, or care. His mouth was warm, hard, insistent. She clung to his shirtfront and let the sensations wash over her like fire. He was insulting her. She shouldn’t let him. She should make him stop. It was just that his mouth was so sweet, so masterful, so ardent. She moaned as the sensations piled up on themselves and left her knees wobbling out from under her.

He caught her closer and lifted her against him, devouring her mouth with his own. She felt her whole body begin to shiver with the strength of the desire he was teaching her to feel. Never in her life had she known such pleasure, but even the hungry force of the kiss still wasn’t enough to ease the ache in her.

Her arms went up and around his neck and she held on as if she might die by letting go. He groaned huskily as his body began to harden. He wanted her. He
wanted to lay her down on the Persian carpet, make passionate love to her. He wanted…

He dragged his mouth from hers and looked down at her with accusation and raging anger.

“I’m mad,” he growled off. “You aren’t supposed to enjoy it.”

“Okay,” she murmured, trying to coax his mouth back down onto hers. She had no will, no pride, no reason left. She only wanted the pleasure to continue. “Come back here. I’ll pretend to hate it.”

“Kasie…”

She found his mouth and groaned hoarsely as he gave in to his own hunger and crushed her against the length of his tall, fit body. It was the most glorious kiss of her entire life. If only it would never end…

But it did, all too soon, and he shot away from her as if he’d tasted poison. His eyes glittered. “If you ever let him kiss you again, I’ll throw both of you out a window!”

She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could manage words, the front doorbell rang.

It was one of the cowboys. Two more head of cattle had been shot, and the gunman was still out near the line cabin. One of the cowboys had him pinned down with rifle fire and needed reinforcements. It took Gil precisely five minutes to call John, load his Winchester and get out the door. He barely took time to caution Kasie about venturing outside until the situation was under control. She didn’t even get a chance to beg him to be careful. She went upstairs, so that she’d be near the girls, but she knew that this was one night she wouldn’t sleep a wink.

K
asie lay awake for the rest of the night. When dawn broke, she still hadn’t heard Gil come into the house. And once she’d thought she heard a shot being fired. Remembering how dangerous the man Sims was supposed to be made her even more uneasy. What if Gil had been shot? How would she live? She couldn’t bear the thought of a world without Gil in it.

She got up and dressed just as Mrs. Charters went into the kitchen to start breakfast. John and Gil were nowhere in sight.

“Have they come in at all?” she asked Mrs. Charters.

“Not yet,” the older woman said, and looked worried. “There were police cars and sheriff’s cars all over the place about two hours ago,” she added. “I saw them from my house.”

“I thought I heard a shot, but I didn’t see anything,” Kasie said, and then she really worried.

“You couldn’t have seen them, it was three miles and more down the road. But I’m sure we’d have heard if anything had happened to Gil or John.”

“Oh, I hope so,” Kasie said fervently.

“I’ll make coffee,” she said. “You can have some in a minute.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Charters. I’m going to go sit on the front porch.”

“You do that, dear.”

The ranch was most beautiful early in the morning, Kasie thought, when dawn broke on the horizon and the cattle and horses started moving around in the pastures. She loved this part of the day, but now it was torment to sit and wonder and not be able to do anything. Had they found Sims? Was he in custody or still at large? And, most frightening of all, was the memory of that single gunshot. Had Gil been hurt?

She nibbled at her fingernails in her nervousness, a habit left over from childhood. There didn’t seem to be a vehicle in the world. The highway was close enough that the sound of moving vehicles could be heard very faintly, but at this hour there was very little traffic. In fact, there was none.

She got up from the porch swing and paced restlessly. What if Gil had been shot? Surely someone would have phoned. John would, she was certain. But what if the wound was serious, so serious that he couldn’t leave his brother’s side even long enough to make a phone call? What if…!

The sound of a truck coming down the long ranch road caught her attention. She ran to the top of the
steps and stood there with her heart pounding like mad. It was one of the ranch’s pickup trucks. She recognized it. Two men were in the cab. They were in a flaming rush. Was it John and one of the hands, come to tell her that Gil was hurt, wounded, dying?

Dust flew as the driver pulled up sharply at the front steps. Both doors flew open. Kasie thought she might faint. John got out of the passenger side, whole and undamaged and grinning. Gil got out on the other side, dusty and worn, with a cut bleeding beside his mouth. But he was all in one piece, not injured, not shot, not…

“Gil!” She screamed his name, blind and deaf and dumb to the rest of the world as she came out of her frozen trance and dashed down the steps, missing the bottom one entirely, to rush right into his arms.

“Kasie…” He couldn’t talk at all, because she was kissing him, blindly, fervently, as if he’d just come back from the dead.

He stopped trying to talk. He kissed her back, his arms enfolding her so closely that her feet dangled while he answered the aching hunger of her mouth.

She was shaking when he lifted his head. His eyes were glittery with feeling as he searched her eyes and saw every single emotion in her. She loved him. She couldn’t have told him any plainer if she’d shouted it.

John just chuckled. “I’ll go drink coffee while you two…talk,” he murmured dryly, bypassing them without a backward glance.

Neither of them heard him or saw him go. They stared at each other with aching tenderness, touching faces, lips, fingertips.

“I’m all right,” he whispered, kissing her again.
“Sims took a shot at us, but he missed. It took two sheriff’s deputies, the bloodhounds and a few ranch hands, but we tracked him down. He’s in jail, nursing his bruises.”

She traced the dried blood on his cheek. “He hit you.”

He shrugged. “I hit him, too.” He smiled outrageously. “So much for pretending that you only work for me, Kasie,” he said with deliberate mischief in his tone.

She touched his dusty hair. “I love you,” she said huskily. Her eyes searched his. “Is it all right?”

“That depends,” he mused, bending to kiss her gently. “We discussed being old-fashioned, remember?”

She flushed. “I wasn’t suggesting…”

He took her soft upper lip in both of his and nibbled it. “This is the last place in the world that you and I could carry on a torrid affair,” he pointed out. “The girls can take off doorknobs if they have the right tools, and Mrs. Charters probably has microphones and hidden cameras in every room. She always knows whatever’s going on around here.” He lifted his head and searched her eyes. “I’m glad you love children, Kasie. I really don’t plan to stop at Bess and Jenny.”

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 necklace, 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 kingsize 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, who 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.