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

“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 onto 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.”