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

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.

      When he got back in, at two in the morning, he paused long enough to open Kasie’s door and look in.

      She was wearing another of those concealing cotton gowns, with the covers thrown off. Jenny was curled up against one shoulder and Bess was curled into the other. They were all three asleep.

      Gil ground his teeth together just looking at the picture they made together. His girls and Kasie. They looked more like mother and daughters. The thought hurt him. He closed the door with a little jerk and went back into his own room. Despite Pauline’s alluring gown and her spirited conversation, he had been morose all evening.

      Pauline had noticed, and knew the reason. She was, she told herself, going to get rid of the competition. It only needed the right set of circumstances.

      Fate provided them only two days later. Kasie and Gil were barely speaking now. She avoided him, and he did the same to her. If the girls noticed, they kept their thoughts to themselves. Impulsively Kasie phoned Zeke at his hotel and asked if he’d like to come over and have lunch with her at the hotel, since she couldn’t leave the girls.

      He agreed with flattering immediacy, and showed up just as Kasie was drying off the girls.

      “Surely you aren’t going to take them to lunch with you?” Pauline asked, laughing up at Zeke, who attracted her at once. “I’ll watch them while you eat.”

      “Please can’t we stay and play in the pool?” Bess asked Kasie. “Miss Raines will watch us, she said so.”

      “Please,” Jenny added with a forlorn look.

      “You’ll be right inside, won’t you?” Pauline asked cunningly. “Go ahead and enjoy your lunch. I’m not going anywhere.”

      For an instant, Kasie recalled that Gil didn’t trust Pauline with the girls. But it was only for a few minutes and, as Pauline had said, they were going to be just inside the nearby restaurant that overlooked the pool.

      “Well, all right then, if you really don’t mind,” she told Pauline. “Thank you.”

      “It’s my pleasure. Have fun now,” Pauline told her. “And don’t worry. Gil’s not going to be back for at least a half hour. He’s at the bank.”

      Kasie brooded over it even while she and Zeke ate a delicious seafood salad. They were seated at a window overlooking the swimming pool, but a row of hedges and hibiscus obscured the view so that only the deep end of the pool could be seen from their table.

      “Stop worrying,” Zeke told her with a grin. “Honestly, you act as if they were your own kids. You’re just the governess.”

      “They’re my responsibility,” she pointed out. “If anything happened to them…”

      “Your friend is going to watch them. Now stop arguing and let me tell you about this new hotel and casino they’re opening over on Paradise Island.”

      “Okay,”