The Men of Medicine Ridge - Diana Palmer [102]
“Yes,” Kasie said, glancing at him. He was dishy in a tuxedo, she thought miserably, and Pauline probably looked like uptown New York City in whatever she was wearing. Pauline was like a French pastry, while Kasie was more like a stale doughnut. The thought amused her and she smiled.
“Bess, get the menu off the desk and take it in your room. You and Jenny decide what you want to eat,” Gil told them.
“Yes, Daddy,” Bess said at once, scooping up the menu and her sister’s hand as they left the room.
“Don’t let them fill up on sweets,” he cautioned Kasie. His pale eyes narrowed on her body in the discreet, one-piece blue bathing suit she was wearing with sandals and a sheer cover-up in shades of blue. Her hair was down around her shoulders. She looked good enough to eat.
“I won’t,” she promised, moving awkwardly toward the bathroom with the towel she’d been sunbathing on.
“Next time, get a towel from the caretaker down on the beach,” he said after she’d put the towel in the bathroom. “They keep them there for beach use.”
She flushed. “Sorry. I didn’t know.”
He moved toward her. In flats, she was even shorter than usual. He looked down at her with narrow, stormy eyes. The curves of her pretty breasts were revealed in the suit and he thought for one insane instant of bending and putting his mouth right down on that soft pink skin.
“Mr. Callister,” she began, the name almost choking her as his nearness began to have the usual effect on her shaking knees.
His lean hand moved to her throat and touched it lightly, stroking down to her bare shoulder and then back to her collarbone. “You’ve got sand on your skin,” he observed.
“We had a little trouble making a sand castle, so the girls covered me up instead,” she said with an unsteady laugh.
His hand flattened on the warm flesh and he looked into her huge, soft eyes, waiting for a reaction. Her pulse became visible in her throat. His blood began to surge, hot and turbulent, in his veins. His fingers spread out deliberately, so that the touch became intimate.
She wasn’t protesting. She hadn’t moved an inch. She didn’t even seem to be breathing as she looked up into his pale, glittery eyes and waited, spellbound, for whatever came next.
Without saying a word, his fingers slid under the strap that held up her bodice. They inched into the suit and traced exquisite patterns on the soft, bare 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 innocent-looking face. He knew nothing