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

Then, of course, there was this handsome stranger who’d comforted her on the flight to keep her from being afraid. He could have done that. He could have held her hand tight in his and kissed her eyes shut while he whispered to her…

He groaned out loud and turned away from the window. She was worming her way not only into his life and his girls’ lives, but into his heart as well. He hadn’t been able to even think about Pauline in any romantic way since Kasie had walked into his living room for the job interview. Up until then, he’d found the gorgeous blonde wonderful company. Now, she was almost an afterthought. He couldn’t imagine why. Kasie wasn’t really pretty. Although, she had a nice figure and a very kisseable mouth and those exquisitely tender eyes…

He jerked up the phone and dialed Pauline’s extension. “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

“Darling, I haven’t finished my makeup. You did say five-thirty,” she reminded him.

“It is five-thirty,” he muttered.

“Give me ten more minutes,” she said. “I’m going to make you notice me tonight, lover,” she teased. “I’m wearing something very risqué!”

“Fine,” he replied, unimpressed. “I’ll see you in ten minutes.”

He hung up on her faint gasp of irritation. He didn’t care if she wore postage stamps, it wasn’t going to cure him of the hunger for Kasie that was tormenting him.

He heard the suite door open and the sound of his children laughing. Strange how often they laughed these days, when they’d been so somber and quiet before. She brought out the best in people. Well, not in himself, he had to admit. She brought out the worst in him, God knew why.

He went out into the big sitting room, still brooding.

“Daddy, you look nice!” Bess said, running to him to be picked up and kissed heartily. “Doesn’t he look nice, Kasie?” she asked.

“Yes,” Kasie said, glancing at him. He was dishy in a tuxedo, she thought miserably, and Pauline probably looked like uptown New York City in whatever she was wearing. Pauline was like a French pastry, while Kasie was more like a stale doughnut. The thought amused her and she smiled.

“Bess, get the menu off the desk and take it in your room. You and Jenny decide what you want to eat,” Gil told them.

“Yes, Daddy,” Bess said at once, scooping up the menu and her sister’s hand as they left the room.

“Don’t let them fill up on sweets,” he cautioned Kasie. His pale eyes narrowed on her body in the discreet, one-piece blue bathing suit she was wearing with sandals and a sheer cover-up in shades of blue. Her hair was down around her shoulders. She looked good enough to eat.

“I won’t,” she promised, moving awkwardly toward the bathroom with the towel she’d been sunbathing on.

“Next time, get a towel from the caretaker down on the beach,” he said after she’d put the towel in the bathroom. “They keep them there for beach use.”

She flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”

He moved toward her. In flats, she was even shorter than usual. He looked down at her with narrow, stormy eyes. The curves of her pretty breasts were revealed in the suit and he thought for one insane instant of bending and putting his mouth right down on that soft pink skin.

“Mr. Callister,” she began, the name almost choking her as his nearness began to have the usual effect on her shaking knees.

His lean hand moved to her throat and touched it lightly, stroking down to her bare shoulder and then back to her collarbone. “You’ve got sand on your skin,” he observed.

“We had a little trouble making a sand castle, so the girls covered me up instead,” she said with an unsteady laugh.

His hand flattened on the warm flesh and he looked into her huge, soft eyes, waiting for a reaction. Her pulse became visible in her throat. His blood began to surge, hot and turbulent, in his veins. His fingers spread out deliberately, so that the touch became intimate.

She wasn’t protesting. She hadn’t moved an inch. She didn’t even seem to be breathing as she looked up into his pale, glittery eyes and waited, spellbound, for whatever came next.

Without saying a word, his fingers slid under the strap that held up her bodice. They inched into the suit and traced exquisite patterns on the soft, bare flesh that had never been exposed to the sun, or to a man’s eyes. He watched her lips part, her eyes dilate with fascination and curiosity.

His hand stilled as he realized what he was doing. The girls were right in the next room, for God’s sake. Was he losing his mind?

He jerked his hand back as if he’d scalded it and his expression became icy. “You’d better change,” he said through his teeth.

She didn’t move. Her eyes were wide, curious, apprehensive. She didn’t understand his actions or his obvious anger.

But he was suspicious of her. He didn’t trust her, and he didn’t like his unchecked response to her. She could be anybody, with any motive in mind. She dressed like a repressed woman, but she never resisted anything physical that he did to her. He began to wonder if she was playing up to him with marriage in mind—or at least some financially beneficial liaison. He knew that she wasn’t wealthy. He was. It put him at a disadvantage when he tried to puzzle out her motives. He knew how treacherous some women could be, and he’d been fooled once in recent months by a woman out for what she could get from him. She’d been kind to the girls, too, and she’d played the innocent with Gil, leading him on until they ended up in her bedroom. Of course, she’d said then, they’d have to get married once they’d been intimate…

He’d left her before the relationship was consummated, and he hadn’t called her again. Not that she’d given up easily. She’d stalked him until he produced an attorney and a warrant, at which point she’d given up the chase.

Now, he was remembering that bad experience and superimposing her image over Kasie’s innocentlooking face. He knew nothing about her. He couldn’t take the risk of believing what he thought he saw in her personality. She could be playing him for a sucker, very easily.

“You don’t hold anything back, do you?” he asked conversationally, and it didn’t show that he’d been affected by her. “Are you like that all the way into the bedroom?” he added softly, so that the girls wouldn’t hear.

Kasie drew in a long breath. “I wouldn’t know,” she said huskily, painfully aware that she’d just made an utter fool of herself. “I’ll get dressed.”

“You might as well, where I’m concerned,” he said pleasantly. “You’re easy on the eyes, Kasie, but in the dark, looks don’t matter much.”

She stared at him with confusion, as if she couldn’t believe she was hearing such a blatant remark from him.

He slid his hands into his pockets and studied her arrogantly from head to toe. “You’d need to be prettier,” he continued, “and with larger…assets,” he said with a deliberate study of her pert breasts. “I’m particular about my lovers these days. It takes a special woman.”

“Which, thank God, I’m not,” she choked, flushing. “I don’t sleep around.”

“Of course not,” he agreed.

She turned away from him with a sick feeling in her stomach. She’d loved his touch. It had been her first experience of passion, and it had been exquisite because it was Gil touching her. But he thought she was offering herself, and he didn’t want her. She should be glad. She wasn’t a loose woman. But it was a deliberate insult, and she wondered what she’d done to make him want to hurt her.

Her reaction made him even angrier, but he didn’t let it show. “Giving up so easily?” he taunted.

She kept her back to him so that he wouldn’t see her face. “We’ve had this conversation once,” she pointed out. “I know that you don’t want to remarry, and I’ve told you that I don’t sleep around. Okay?”

“If I catch you in bed with that hack writer, I’ll fire you on the spot,” he added, viciously.

She turned then and glared at him from wet eyes. “What’s the matter with you?” she asked.

“A sudden awakening of reason,” he said enigmatically. “You look after the girls. That’s your job.”

“I never thought it involved anything else,” she said.

“And it doesn’t,” he agreed. “The fringe benefits don’t include the boss.”

“Some fringe benefit,” she scoffed, regaining her composure. “A conceited, overbearing, arrogant rancher who thinks he’s on every woman’s Christmas list!”

He lifted an eyebrow over eyes with cynical sophistication gleaming in them. “Don’t look for me under your Christmas tree,” he chided.

“Don’t worry, I won’t.” She turned and kept walking before he could say anything worse. Of all the conceited men on earth!

He watched her go with mixed emotions, the strongest of which was desire. She made him ache all over. He checked his watch. Pauline’s ten minutes were up, and he wanted out of this apartment. He called a good-night to the girls and went out without another word to Kasie.