Read To Wear His Ring for Free Online

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.