Circle Of Gold

He still didn’t speak.

She searched his cold eyes. “I’m sorry that I’ve gone behind your back to spend time with them. It’s not what you think. I mean, I’m not trying to worm my way into your family, even if Pauline does think so. The girls…remind me…of my own little niece.” Her voice almost broke but she controlled it quickly.

“Does she live far away?” he asked abruptly.

Her eyes darkened. “Very…far away…now,” she managed. She forced a smile. “I miss her.”

She had to turn away then, or lose control of her wild emotions.

“You can stay for the time being,” he said finally, reluctantly. “It will work out.”

“That’s what my aunt always says,” she murmured as she opened the door.

“I didn’t know you had family. Your parents are dead, aren’t they?”

“They died years ago, when I was little. My aunt was in charge of us until we started school.”

“Us?”

She couldn’t say it, she couldn’t, she couldn’t. “I ha…have a twin brother,” she corrected quickly.

She lifted her head, praying for strength. “Good night, Mr. Callister.”

She heard the silence of his disapproval, but she was too upset to care. She went up the staircase with no hesitation at all, straight to her room. She locked the door and lay down on the covers, crying silently so that no one would hear.

There was a violent storm that night. The lightning lit up the whole sky. Kasie heard engines starting up and men’s voices yelling. The animals must be unsettled. She’d read that cattle didn’t like lightning.

She got up to look out the window, and then she heard the urgent knocking at her door.

She went to it, still in her neat thick white cotton gown that concealed the soft lines of her body. Her hair was loose down her back, disheveled, and she was barely awake.

She opened the door, and looked down. There were Bess and Jenny with tears streaming down their faces. Bess was clutching a small teddy bear, and Jenny had her blanket.

“Oh, my babies, what’s wrong?” she asked softly, going down on her knees to pull them close and cuddle them.

“The sky’s making an awful noise, Kasie, and we’re scared,” Bess said.

She threw caution to the winds. She was already in so much trouble, surely a little more wouldn’t matter.

“Do you want to climb in with me?” she asked softly.

“Can we?” Bess asked.

“Of course. Come on.”

They climbed into bed with her and under the covers, Jenny on one side and Bess on the other.

“Want a story,” Jenny murmured.

“Me, too,” Bess seconded.

“Okay. How about the three bears?”

“No, Kasie, that’s scary,” Bess said. “How about the mouse and the lion?”

“Aren’t you scared of lions?” she asked the girls.

“We like lions,” Bess told her contentedly, cuddling closer. “Daddy took us to the zoo and we saw lions and tigers and polar bears!”

“The lion it is, then.”

And she proceeded to tell them drowsily about the mouse who took out the thorn in the lion’s paw and made a friend for life. By the time she finished, they were both asleep. She kissed their pretty little sleeping faces and folded them close to her as the lightning flashed and the thunder rolled. She wondered just before she fell asleep how much trouble she’d be in if their father came home and found them with her, after she’d just promised not to play with them. If only, she thought, Gilbert Callister would get a thorn in his paw and she could pull it out and make friends with him….

It was almost two in the morning when Gil and John got back from the holding pens. There had been a stampede, and two hundred head of cattle broke through their fences and spilled out into the pasture that fronted on a highway. The brothers and every hand on the place were occupied for three hours working in the violent storm to round them up and get them back into the right pasture and fix the fence. It helped that the lightning finally stopped, and in its wake came a nice steady rain. But everyone was soaked by the time they finished, and eager for a warm, dry bed.

Gil stripped off his wet clothes and took a shower, wrapping a long burgundy silk robe around his tall body before he went to check on the girls. He opened the door to the big room they shared and his heart skipped a beat when he realized they were missing.

Where in hell was Miss Parsons and where were his children? He went along to her room and almost knocked at the door, when he realized suddenly where the girls were most likely to be.

With his lips making a thin line, he went along the corridor barefoot to Kasie’s room. Without knocking, he opened the door and walked in. Sure enough, curled up as close as they could get to her, were Bess and Jenny.

He started to wake them up and insist that they go back to bed, when he saw the way they looked.

It had been a long time since he’d seen their little faces so content. Without a mother—despite the housekeeper and Miss Parsons—they were sad so much of the time. But when they were around Kasie, they changed. They smiled. They laughed. They played. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen them so happy. Was it fair to deny them Kasie’s company just because he didn’t like her? On the other hand, was it wise to let them get so attached to her when she might quit or he might fire her?

The question worried him. As he pondered the situation, Kasie moved and the cover fell away from her sleeping form. He moved closer to the bed in the dim light from the security lights outside, and abruptly he realized that she was wearing the sort of gown a dowager might. It was strictly for utility, plain and white, with no ruffles or lace or even a fancy border. He scowled. Kasie was twenty-two. Was it normal for a woman her age to be so repressed that she covered herself from head to toe even in sleep?

She moved again, restlessly, and a single word broke from her lips as the nightmare came again.

“Kantor,” she whispered. “Kantor!”

Chapter 3

Without thinking, Gil reached down and shook Kasie’s shoulder. “Wake up, Kasie!” he said firmly.

Her eyes opened on a rush of breath. There was horror in them for a few seconds until she came awake and realized that her boss was standing over her. She blinked away the sleepiness and pulled herself up on an elbow. Her beautiful thick chestnut hair swirled around her shoulders below the high neck of the gown as she stared at him.

“You were having a nightmare,” he said curtly. “Who’s Kantor?”

She hesitated for a few seconds. “My brother,” she said finally. “My twin.” She noticed that he was wearing a long robe and apparently nothing under it. Thick dark blond hair was visible in the deep vee of the neckline. She averted her eyes almost in panic. It embarrassed her to have him see her in her nightgown; almost as much as to see him in a robe.

“Why do you have nightmares about him?” he asked gently.

“We had an argument,” she said. She pushed back her hair. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

His eyes narrowed. Apparently it was a painful subject. He let it drop. His eyes went to the girls and not without misgiving. “Why are they in here with you?”

“The storm woke them up. They got scared and came to me,” she said defensively. “I didn’t go get them.”

He was studying them quietly. His expression was hard, grave, wounded.

“I’m sure they went to look for you first,” she began defensively.

His eyes glittered down into hers. “We’ve had this conversation before. Miss Parsons is supposed to be their governness,” he emphasized.

“Miss Parsons is probably snoring her head off,” she said curtly. “She sleeps like the dead. Bess had a fever week before last, and she didn’t even get up when I woke her and told her about it. She said that a fever never hurt anybody!”

“That was when she had strep and I took her to the doctor,” he recalled. “Miss Parsons said she was sick. I assumed that she’d been up in the night with her.”

“Dream on.”

He glared at her. “I’ll excuse it this time,” he said, ignoring the reference he didn’t like to Miss Parsons and her treatment of Bess. He’d have something to say to the woman about that. “Next time, come and find me if you can’t wake Miss Parsons.”

She just stared back, silent.

“Did you hear me, Kasie?” he demanded softly.

“All right.” She glanced from one side of her to the other. “Do you want to wake them up and carry them back to their own beds?”

He looked furious. “If I do, we’ll all be awake the rest of the night. We had cattle get out, and we got soaked trying to get them back in. I’m worn-out. I want to go to sleep.”

“Nobody here is stopping you,” she murmured.

His pale eyes narrowed. “I should have let you go when you offered to resign,” he said caustically.

“There’s still time,” she pointed out, growing more angry by the minute.

He cursed under his breath, glared at her again and walked out.

The next morning, Kasie woke to soft pummeling little hands and laughing voices.

“Get up, Kasie, get up! Daddy’s taking us to the movies today!”

She yawned and curled up. “Not me,” she murmured sleepily. “Go get breakfast, babies. Mrs. Charters will feed you.”

“You got to come, too!” Bess said.

“I want to sleep,” she murmured.

“Daddy, she won’t get up!” Bess wailed.

“Oh, yes, she will.”

Kasie barely had time to register the deep voice before the covers were torn away and she was lifted bodily out of the bed in a pair of very strong arms.

Shocked, she stared straight into pale blue eyes and felt as if she’d been electrified.

“I’ll wake her up,” Gil told the girls. “Go down and eat your breakfast.”

“Okay, Daddy!”

The girls left gleefully, laughing as they went to the staircase.

“You look like a nun in that gown,” Gil remarked as he studied his light burden, aware of her sudden stillness. Her face was very close. He searched it quietly. “And you’ve got freckles, Kasie, just across the bridge of your nose.”

“Put…put me down,” she said, unnerved by the proximity. She didn’t like the sensations it caused to feel his chest right against her bare breasts.

“Why?” he asked. He gazed into her eyes. “You hardly weigh anything.” His eyes narrowed as he studied her face thoroughly. “You have big eyes,” he murmured. “With little flecks of blue in them. Your face looks more round than oval, especially with your hair down. Your mouth is—” he searched for a word, more touched than he wanted to be by its vulnerability “—full and soft. Half-asleep you don’t come across as a fighter. But you are, aren’t you?”

Her hands were resting lightly around his neck and she stared at him disconcertedly while she wondered what John or Miss Parsons would say if they walked in unexpectedly to find them in this position.

“You should put me down,” she said huskily.

“Don’t you like being carried?” he murmured absently.

She shivered as she remembered the last time she’d been carried, by an orderly in the hospital…

She pushed at him. “Please.”

He set her back down, scowling curiously at the odd pastiness of her complexion. “You’re mysterious, Kasie.”

“Not really. I’m just sleepy.” She folded her arms over her breasts and flushed. “Could you leave, please, and let me get dressed?”

He watched her curiously. “Why don’t you date? And don’t hand me any bull about stinking cowboys.”

She was reluctant to tell him anything about herself. She was a private person. Her aunt, Mama Luke, always said that people shouldn’t worry others with their personal problems. She didn’t.

“I don’t want to get married, ever.”

He really scowled then. “Why?”

She thought of her parents and then of Kantor, and her eyes closed on the pain. “Love hurts too much.”

He didn’t speak. For an instant, he felt the pain that seemed to rack her delicate features, and he understood it, all too well.

“You loved someone who died,” he recalled.

She nodded and her eyes met his. “And so did you.”

For an instant, his hard face was completely unguarded. He was vulnerable, mortal, wounded. “Yes.”

“It doesn’t pass away, like they say, does it?” she asked softly.

“Not for a long time.”

He moved a step closer, and this time she didn’t back up. Her eyes lifted to his. He slid his big, lean hand into the thick waves of her chestnut hair and enjoyed its silkiness. “Why don’t you wear your hair down, like this?”

“It’s sinful,” she whispered.

“What?”

“When you dress and wear your hair in a way that’s meant to tempt men, to try to seduce them, it’s sinful,” she repeated.

His lips fell open. He didn’t know how to answer that. He’d never had a woman, especially a modern woman, say such a thing to him.

“Do you think sex is a sin?” he asked.

“Outside of marriage, it is,” she replied simply.

“You don’t move with the times, do you?” he asked on an expulsion of breath.

“No,” she replied.

He started smiling and couldn’t stop. “Oh, boy.”

“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.”

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