The Men of Medicine Ridge - Diana Palmer [125]
“It was nice of him to come.”
“It was,” she agreed. She handed a small box to Kasie. “He asked me to give this to you.”
She frowned, pausing to open the box. She drew out a gold necklace with a tiny crystal ball dangling from it. Inside the ball was a tiny seed.
“It’s a mustard seed,” Mama Luke explained. “It’s from a Biblical quote—if you have even that amount of faith, as a mustard seed, nothing is impossible. It’s to remind you that miracles happen.”
Kasie cradled it in her hand and looked up at Gil with her heart in her eyes. “Indeed they do,” she whispered, and all the love she had for her new husband was in her face.
The next night, Kasie and Gil lay tangled in a king-size bed at a rented villa in Nassau, exhausted and deliciously relaxed from their first intimacy.
Kasie moved shyly against him, her face flushed in the aftermath of more physical sensation than she’d ever experienced.
“Stop that,” he murmured drowsily. “I’m useless now. Go to sleep.”
She laughed with pure delight and curled closer. “All right. But don’t forget where we left off.”
He drew her closer. “As if I could!” He bent and kissed her eyes shut. “Kasie, I never dreamed that I could be this happy again.” His eyes opened and looked into hers with fervent possession. “I loved Darlene. A part of me will always love her. But I would die for you,” he added roughly, his eyes blazing with emotion.
Overwhelmed, she buried her face in his throat and shivered. “I would die for you,” she choked. She clung harder. “I love you!”
His mouth found hers, hungry for contact, for the sharing of fierce, exquisite need. He drew her over his relaxed body and held her until the trembling stopped. His breath sighed out heavily at her ear. “Forever, Kasie,” he whispered unsteadily.
She smiled. “Forever.”
They slept, eventually, and as dawn filtered in through the venetian blinds and the sound of the surf grew louder, there was a knock on the door.
Gil opened his eyes, still drowsy. He looked down at Kasie, fast asleep on her stomach, smiling even so. He smiled, too, and tossed the sheet over her before he stepped into his Bermuda shorts and went to answer the door.
The shock when he opened it was blatant. On the doorstep were a silver-haired man in casual slacks and designer shirt, and a silver-haired woman in a neat but casual sundress and overblouse. They were carrying the biggest bouquet of orchids Gil had ever seen in his life.
The man pushed the bouquet toward Gil hesitantly and with a smile that seemed both hesitant and uncertain. “Congratulations,” he said.
“From both of us,” the woman added.
They both stood there, waiting.
As Gil searched for words, there was movement behind him and Kasie came to the door in the flowered cotton muu-muu she’d bought for the trip, her long chestnut hair disheveled, smiling broadly.
“Hello!” she exclaimed, going past Gil to hug the woman and then the man, who both flushed. “I’m so glad you could come!”
Gil stared at her. “What?”
“I phoned them,” she told him, clasping his big hand in hers. “They said they’d like to come over and have lunch with us, and I told them to come today. But I overslept,” she added, and flushed.
“It’s your honeymoon, you should oversleep,” Gil’s mother, Magdalene, said gently. She looked at her son nervously. “We wanted to come to the wedding,” she said. “But we didn’t want to, well, ruin the day for you.”
“That’s right,” Jack Callister agreed gruffly. “We haven’t been good parents. At first we were too irresponsible, and then we were too ashamed. Especially when Douglas took you in and we lost touch.” He shrugged. “It’s too late to start over, of course, but we’d sort of like to, well, to get to know you and John. And the girls, of course. That is, if you, uh, if you…” He shrugged.
Kasie squeezed Gil’s hand, hard.
“I’d like that,” he said obligingly.
Their faces changed. They beamed. For several seconds, they looked like silver-haired children on Christmas morning. And Gil