LITMIR.BIZ

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right. I’ll tell the others they can leave.” He got to his feet, elegant and lithe, moving with a grace that was unequaled in Kasie’s circle of acquaintances. He opened the office door, thanked the other young women for coming and told them that the position had been filled. There was a shuffle of feet, some murmuring, and the front door closed.

      “Come on, Kasie,” Gil said. “I’ll introduce you to…”

      “Daddy!” came a wail from the end of the hall. A little girl with disheveled long blond hair came running and threw herself at Gil, sobbing.

      He picked her up, and his whole demeanor changed. “What is it, baby?” he asked in the most tender tone Kasie had ever heard. “What’s wrong?”

      “Me and Jenny was playing with our dollies on the deck and that bad dog came up on the porch and he tried to bite us!”

      “Where’s Jenny?” he demanded, immediately threatening.

      A sobbing little voice answered him as the younger girl came toddling down the hall rubbing her eyes with dirty little fists. She reached up to Gil, and he picked her up, too, oblivious to her soiled dress and hands.

      “Nothing’s going to hurt my babies. Did the dog bite either of you?” Gil demanded.

      “No, Daddy,” Bess said.

      “Bad doggie!” Jenny sobbed. “Make him go away!”

      “Of course I will!” Gil said roughly, kissing little cheeks with a tenderness that made Kasie’s heart ache.

      A door opened and John Callister came down the hall, looking very unlike the friendly man Kasie knew from the drugstore. His pale eyes were glittering in his lean, dark face, and he looked murderous.

      “Are they all right?” he asked Gil, pausing to touch the girls’ hair. “It was that mangy cur that Fred Sims insisted on bringing with him when he hired on. I got between it and the girls and it tried to bite me, too. I called Sims up to the house and told him to get rid of it and he won’t, so he’s fired.”

      “Here.” Gil handed his girls to his brother and started down the hall with quick, measured steps.

      John stared after him. “Maybe Sims will make it to his truck before Gil gets him,” he murmured. “But I wouldn’t bet on it. Are my babies all right?” he asked, kissing their little damp cheeks as the girls clung to either shoulder.

      “Bad old doggie,” Bess sobbed. “Our Missie never bites people!”

      “Missie’s a toy collie,” John explained to a silent Kasie with a smile. “She lives indoors. Nothing like that vicious dog Sims keeps. We’ve had trouble from it before, but Sims was so good with horses that we put up with it. Not anymore. We can’t let it endanger the girls.”

      “If it would come right up on the porch and try to bite them, it doesn’t need to be around children,” Kasie agreed.

      The girls looked at her curiously.

      “Who are you?” Bess asked.

      “I’m Kasie,” she replied with a smile. “Who are you?”

      “I’m Bess,” the child replied. “That’s Jenny. She’s just four,” she added, indicating the smaller child, whose hair was medium-length and more light brown than blond.

      “I’m very glad to meet you both,” Kasie said, smiling warmly. “I’m going to be Mr. Callister’s secretary,” she added with an apologetic glance at John. “Sorry.”

      “Why are you sorry?” John asked amusedly. “I only flog secretaries during full moons.”

      Her eyes crinkled with merriment and she grinned.

      “Gil won’t let me hire secretaries because I have such a bad track record,” John confessed. “The last one turned out to be a jewel thief. You, uh, don’t like jewels?” he added deliberately.

      She chuckled. “Only costume jewelry. And unless you wear it, we shouldn’t have a problem.”

      There was a commotion outside and John grimaced. “He’ll come back in bleeding, as usual,” he muttered. “I just glare at people. Gil hits.” He gave Kasie a wicked grin. “Sometimes he hits me, too.”

      The girls giggled. “Oh, Uncle Johnny,” Bess teased, “Daddy never hits you! He won’t even hit us. He says little children shouldn’t be hitted.”

      “Hit,” Kasie corrected absently.

      “Hit,” Bess parroted, and grinned. “You’re nice.”

      “You’re nice, too, precious,” Kasie said, reaching out to smooth back the disheveled hair. “You’ve got tangles.”

      “Can you make my hair like yours?” Bess asked, eyeing Kasie’s braid. “And tie it with a pink ribbon?”

      The opening of the back door stopped the conversation dead. Gil came back in with his shirt and jeans dusty and a cut at the corner of his mouth. As he came closer, wiping away the blood, his bruised and lacerated knuckles became visible.

      “So much for that little problem,” he said with cold satisfaction. His eyes were still glittery with temper until he looked at the little girls. The anger drained out of him and he smiled. “Dirty chicks,” he chided. “Go get Miss Parsons to clean you up.”

      John put them down and Bess looked up at her father accusingly. “Miss Parsons don’t like little kids.”

      “Go on. If she gives you any trouble, come tell me,” Gil told the girls.

      “Okay, Daddy!”

      Bess took Jenny’s hand and, with a shy grin at Kasie, she drew the other child with her up the winding staircase.

      “They like Kasie already,” John commented. “Bess said…”

      “Miss Parsons takes care of the kids,” Gil said shortly. “Show Kasie the way we keep records. She’s a computer whiz in addition to her dictation skills. She should be able to get all those herd records onto diskettes for you. Then we can get rid of the paper clutter before we end up buried in it.”

      “Okay,” John said. He hesitated. “Sims get off okay?”

      “Sure,” Gil said easily. “No problem.” He wiped the blood away from his mouth with a wicked look at his brother before he turned and went up the staircase after the children.

      John just shook his head. “Never mind. Come on, Kasie. Let’s get you started.”

      Kasie moved into the house that weekend. Most of her parents’ things, and her own, were at Mama Luke’s, about ten miles away in Billings, Montana, to whom she’d come for refuge after losing her family. She had only the bare necessities of clothing and personal items; it barely filled one small suitcase. When she walked into the ranch house with it, Gil was on the porch with one of his men. He gave her a curious appraisal, dismissing the man.

      “Where’s the rest of your stuff?” he asked, glancing past her at the small, white used car she drove, which she’d parked beside the big garage. “In the trunk?”

      “This is all the stuff I have,” she said.

      He looked stunned. “Surely you have furniture…?”

      “My other things are at my aunt’s house. But I don’t have much stuff of my own.”

      He stepped aside to let her go inside, his face curious and his eyes intent on her. He didn’t say a word, but he watched her even more closely from then on.

      The first week on the job, she lost a file that Gil needed for a meeting he was flying to in the family Piper plane. It was an elegant aircraft, twin-engine and comfortable. Gil and John could both fly it and did, frequently, trucking the livestock they were showing from one state to the next with employees. Kasie wished she could go with

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