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

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.