To Wear His Ring: Circle of Gold / Trophy Wives / Dakota Bride

He shook his head. “You really are full of surprises, Kasie.”

“Kasie, what’s this big word?” Bess asked, thrusting the book at her. Kasie took it and sounded the word out phonetically, coaching the little girl in its pronunciation. She took the book back and began to teach the word to Jenny.

“You’re patient,” Gil remarked. “I notice that Miss Parsons doesn’t like taking time to teach them words.”

“Miss Parsons likes numbers.”

“Yes. She does.” He pulled into the theater parking lot, which was full of parents and children. He got everyone out and locked the door, grimacing as they walked past several minivans.

“They’re handy for little kids,” Kasie said wickedly. “Mothers love them, I’m told.”

“I love my kids, but I’m not driving a damned minivan,” he muttered.

She grinned at his expression. The little girls ran to get in line, and struck up a conversation with a child they knew, whose bored mother perked up when she saw Gil approaching.

“Hi, Gil!” she called cheerily. “We’re going to see the dinosaur movie! Is that why you’re here?”

“That’s the one,” he replied, pulling bills out of his wallet. He gave one to each of the little girls, and they bought their own tickets. Gil bought his and Kasie’s as they came to the window. “Hi, Amie,” he called to the little girl with Bess and Jenny, and he smiled. She smiled back. She was as dark as his children were fair, with black eyes and hair like her mother’s.

“We’re going to sit with Amie, Daddy!” Bess said excitedly, waving her ticket and Jenny’s.

“I guess that leaves me with you and…?” the other woman paused deliberately.

“This is Kasie,” Gil said, and took her unexpectedly by the arm, with a bland smile at Amie’s mom. “You’re welcome to join us, of course, Connie.”

The other woman sighed. “No, I guess I’ll sit with the girls. Nice to have seen you,” she added, and moved ahead with the girls, looking bored all over again.

Gil slid his hand down into Kasie’s. She reacted nervously to the unexpected touch, but his fingers clung, warm and strong against her own. He drew her along to the line already forming alongside the velvet ropes as the ticket takers prepared to let people through to the various theaters.

“Humor me,” he said, and it looked as though he were whispering sweet nothings into her ear. “I’m the entrée, in case you haven’t noticed.”

Kasie glanced around and saw a number of women with little children and no man along, and two of them gave him deliberate, wistful glances and smiled.

“Single moms?” she whispered back, having to go on tiptoe.

He caught her around the waist and held her against his hip. “No. Get the picture?”

Her breath caught. “Oh, dear,” she said heavily.

He looked down into her wide eyes. “You’re such a child sometimes,” he said softly. “You don’t see ugliness, do you? You go through life looking for rainbows instead of rain.”

“Habit,” she murmured, fascinated by the pale blue lights in his eyes.

“It’s a rather nice habit,” he replied. The look lasted just a few seconds too long to be polite, and Kasie felt her heart begin to race. But then, the line shifted and diverted him. He moved closer to the ticket-taker, keeping the girls ahead carefully in sight while his arm drew Kasie along with him.

She liked the protectiveness of that muscular arm. He didn’t look like a body-builder, all his movements were lithe and graceful. But he worked at physical labor from dawn until dusk most days. She’d seen him throw calves that had to be doctored. She’d seen him throw bulls, too. He was strong. Involuntarily she relaxed against him. It was delicious, the feeling of security it gave her to be close to him, to the warm strength of him.

The soft movement caught him off guard and sent a jolt of sensation through him that he hadn’t felt in a long time. He looked down at her with curious, turbulent eyes that she didn’t see. She was smiling and waving at the girls, who were darting off down into the theater with the little girl and her mother.

“They like you,” he said.

“I like them.”

He handed their tickets to the uniformed girl, who smiled as she handed back the stubs and pointed the way to the theater that was showing the cartoon movie.

Gil caught Kasie’s hand in his and drew her lazily along with him through the crowd of children and parents until they reached the theater. But instead of going down to the front, he drew Kasie to an isolated double-seat in the very back row and sat down beside her. His arm went over the back of the chair as the theater darkened and the previews began showing.

Kasie was electrified by the shift in their relationship. She felt his lean fingers on her shoulder, bringing her closer, and his cheek rested against her temple. She hadn’t ever been to a movie with a man. There had been a blind double date once, and the boy sat on his own side of the seat and looked nervous until they got home again. This was worlds away from that experience.

“Comfortable?” he asked at her ear, and his voice was like velvet.

“Yes,” she said unsteadily.

His chest rose and fell and he found himself paying a lot more attention to the feel of Kasie’s soft hair against his skin than the movie. She smelled of spring roses. Her hair was soft, and had a faint herbal scent of its own. Twenty-two. She was twenty-two. He was thirty-two, and she’d already said that he was too old for her.

He scowled as he thought about that difference. She needed someone as young as she was, with that same vulnerable, kind, generous spirit. He had two little girls and a high-pressure business that gave him little free time. He was still grieving, in a way, for Darlene, whom he’d loved since grammar school. But there was something about Kasie that made him hungry. It wasn’t desire, although he was aware of heady sensations when she was close to him. No, it was the sort of hunger a man got when he was standing outside in the snow with a wet coat and soaked jeans, looking through the window at a warm, glowing fireplace. He couldn’t really explain the feelings. They made him uneasy.

He noticed that she was still a little stiff. He touched a curl at her ear. “Hey,” he whispered.

She turned her head and looked up at him in the semidarkness.

“I’m not hitting on you,” he whispered into her ear. “Okay?”

She relaxed. “Okay.”

The obvious relief in her voice made him feel guilty and offended. He moved his arm back to the chair and forced himself to watch the movie. He had to remember that Kasie worked for him. It wasn’t fair to use her to ward off other women. But…was it really that?

The dinosaur movie was really well-done, Kasie thought as she became involved in the storyline and the wonder of creatures that looked really alive up there on the screen. It was a bittersweet sort of cartoon, though, and she was sorry for the little girls. Because when it was over, Bess and Jenny came to them crying about the dinosaurs that had died in the film.

“Oh, sweetheart, it was only a movie,” Kasie said at once, and bent to pick up Bess, hugging her close. “Just a movie. Okay?”

“But it was so sad, Kasie,” cried the little girl. “Why do things have to die?”

“I don’t know, baby,” she said softly, and her eyes closed for an instant on a wave of remembered pain. She’d lost so many people she loved.

Gil had Jenny up in his arms, and they walked out of the theater carrying the children. Behind them, other mothers were trying to explain about extinction.

“There, there, baby,” he cooed at Jenny and kissed her wet eyes. “It was only make-believe. Dinosaurs don’t really talk, you know, and they had brains the size of peas.” He shifted her and smiled. “Hey, remember what I told you about chickens, about how they’ll walk right up to a rattlesnake and let it strike them? Well, dinosaurs didn’t even have brains that big.”

“They didn’t?” Bess asked from her secure hold on Kasie.

“They didn’t,” Gil said. “If a meteor had struck them, they’d be standing right in its path waiting for it. And they wouldn’t be discussing it, either.”

Kasie laughed as she looked at Gil, delighted at the way he handled the sticky situation. He was, she thought, a marvelous parent.

“Can we get some ice cream on the way home?” Bess asked then, wiping her tears.

“You bet. We’ll stop by the yogurt place.”