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

“The girls will be waiting. Are you really taking them to a movie?” she asked.

“Yes.” One eye narrowed. “I need to take you to one, too. Something X-rated.”

She flushed. “Get out of here and stop trying to corrupt me.”

“You’re overdue.”

“Stop or I’ll have Mama Luke come over and lecture you.”

He frowned. “Mama Luke?”

“My aunt.”

“What an odd name.”

She shrugged. “Our whole family runs to odd names.”

“I noticed.”

She made a face. “I work for you. My private life is my own business.”

“You don’t have a private life,” he said, and smiled tenderly.

“I’m a great reader. I love Plutarch and Tacitus and Arrian.”

“Good God!”

“There’s nothing wrong with ancient history. Things were just as bad then as they are now. All the ancient writers said that the younger generation was headed straight to purgatory and the world was corrupt.”

“Arrian didn’t.”

“Arrian wrote about Alexander the Great,” she reminded him. “Alexander’s world was in fairly good shape, apparently.”

“Arrian wrote about Alexander in the distant past, not his own present.” His eyes became soft with affection as he looked at her. “Why don’t I like you? There isn’t a person in my circle of acquaintances who would even know who Arrian was, much less what he wrote about.”

“I don’t like you much, either,” she shot right back. “But I guess I can stand it if you can.”

“I’ll have to,” he mused. “If I let you walk out, the girls will push me down the staircase and call you back to support them at my funeral.”

She shivered abruptly and wrapped her arms around herself. Funeral. Funeral…

“Kasie!”

Her somber eyes came up. She was barely breathing. “Don’t…joke about things like that.”

“Kasie, I didn’t mean it that way,” he began.

She forced a smile. “Of course not. I have to get dressed.”

He lifted an eyebrow. “You might as well come as you are. I haven’t seen a gown like that since I stayed with my grandmother as a child.” He shook his head. “You’d set a lingerie shop back decades if that style caught on.”

“It’s a perfectly functional gown.”

“Functional. Yes. It’s definitely functional. And about as seductive as chain mail,” he added.

“Good!”

He burst out laughing. “All right, I’m leaving.”

He went out, sparing her a last, amused glance before he closed the door.

Kasie dressed in jeans and a dark T-shirt. She put her long hair in a braid and pulled on sneakers. She felt a twinge of guilt because she’d missed so many Sunday sermons in past months. But she couldn’t reconcile her pain. It needed more time.

The whole family was at the table when she joined them for breakfast. John gave her a warm smile.

“I hear you had visitors last night,” he told Kasie with a mischievous glance at the two little girls, who were wolfing down cereal.

“Yes, I did,” Kasie replied with a worried glance that encompassed both Gil and Miss Parsons.

“You should have called me, Miss Mayfield,” Miss Penny Parsons said curtly and glanced at Kasie with cold dark eyes. “I take care of the children.”

Kasie could have argued that point, but she didn’t dare. “Yes, Miss Parsons,” she said demurely.

Gil finished his scrambled eggs and lifted his coffee cup to his firm lips. He was wearing slacks and a neat yellow sports shirt that emphasized his muscular arms. He looked elegant even in casual wear, Kasie thought, and remembered suddenly the feel of those strong arms around her. She flushed.

He noticed her sudden color and caught her gaze. She couldn’t seem to look away, and he didn’t even try to. For a space of seconds, they were fused in some sort of bond, prisoners of a sensual connection that made Kasie’s full lips part abruptly. His gaze fell to them and lingered with unexpected hunger.

Kasie dropped her fork onto her plate and jumped at the noise. “Sorry!” she said huskily as she fumbled with the fork.

“Didn’t get much sleep last night, did you?” John asked with a smile. “Neither did any of us. About midnight, I thought seriously about giving up cattle ranching and becoming a door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesman.”

“I felt the same way,” Gil confessed. “We’re going to have to put a small line cabin out at the holding pens and keep a man there on stormy nights.”

“As long as I’m not on your list of candidates,” John told his brother.

“I’ll keep that in mind. Bess, don’t play with your food, please,” he added to the little girl, who was finished with her cereal and was now smearing eggs around the rim of her plate.

“I don’t like eggs, Daddy,” she muttered. “Do I gotta eat ‘em?”

“Of course you do, young lady!” Miss Parsons said curtly. “Every last morsel.”

Bess looked tortured.

“Miss Parsons, could you ask Mrs. Charters to see me before she plans the supper menu, please?” Gil asked.

Miss Parsons got up. “I will. Eat those eggs, Bess.”

She left. Gil gave his oldest daughter a sign by placing his forefinger across his mouth. He lifted Bess’s plate, scraped the eggs onto his, and finished them off before Miss Parsons returned.