The Men of Medicine Ridge - Diana Palmer [84]
He noticed that she was still a little stiff. He touched a curl at her ear. “Hey,” he whispered.
She turned her head and looked up at him in the semidarkness.
“I’m not hitting on you,” he whispered into her ear. “Okay?”
She relaxed. “Okay.”
The obvious relief in her voice made him feel guilty and offended. He moved his arm back to the chair and forced himself to watch the movie. He had to remember that Kasie worked for him. It wasn’t fair to use her to ward off other women. But…was it really that?
The dinosaur movie was really well-done, Kasie thought as she became involved in the storyline and the wonder of creatures that looked really alive up there on the screen. It was a bittersweet sort of cartoon, though, and she was sorry for the little girls. Because when it was over, Bess and Jenny came to them crying about the dinosaurs that had died in the film.
“Oh, sweetheart, it was only a movie,” Kasie said at once, and bent to pick up Bess, hugging her close. “Just a movie. Okay?”
“But it was so sad, Kasie,” cried the little girl. “Why do things have to die?”
“I don’t know, baby,” she said softly, and her eyes closed for an instant on a wave of remembered pain. She’d lost so many people she loved.
Gil had Jenny up in his arms, and they walked out of the theater carrying the children. Behind them, other mothers were trying to explain about extinction.
“There, there, baby,” he cooed at Jenny and kissed her wet eyes. “It was only make-believe. Dinosaurs don’t really talk, you know, and they had brains the size of peas.” He shifted her and smiled. “Hey, remember what I told you about chickens, about how they’ll walk right up to a rattlesnake and let it strike them? Well, dinosaurs didn’t even have brains that big.”
“They didn’t?” Bess asked from her secure hold on Kasie.
“They didn’t,” Gil said. “If a meteor had struck them, they’d be standing right in its path waiting for it. And they wouldn’t be discussing it, either.”
Kasie laughed as she looked at Gil, delighted at the way he handled the sticky situation. He was, she thought, a marvelous parent.
“Can we get some ice cream on the way home?” Bess asked then, wiping her tears.
“You bet. We’ll stop by the yogurt place.”
“Thanks, Daddy!” Bess cried.
“You’re the nicest daddy,” Jenny murmured against his throat.
“You really are, you know,” Kasie agreed as they strapped the little girls into the back seat.
His eyes met hers across the children. “I’m a veteran daddy,” he told her dryly.
“Is that what it is?” Kasie chuckled.
“You get better with practice, or so they tell me. Do you like frozen yogurt? I get them that instead of ice cream. It’s healthy stuff.”
“I like it, too,” Kasie said as she got into the front seat beside him.
“We’ll get some to take home for Mrs. Charters and Miss Parsons,” he added, “so that we don’t get blamed for ruining their appetites for supper.”
“Now that’s superior thinking,” Kasie had to admit.
He started the engine and eased them out of the crowded parking lot.
The yogurt shop was a few miles from home. They stopped and got the treat in carryout cups, because Gil was expecting a phone call from a buyer out of state.
“I don’t like to work on Sundays,” he remarked as they drove home. “But sometimes it’s unavoidable.”
“Do you ever take the girls to church?”
He hesitated. “Well…no.”
She was watching him with those big, soft gray eyes, in which there wasn’t condemnation or censure. It was almost as if she knew that his faith had suffered since the death of his wife. No, for longer than that. It had suffered since childhood, when his parents had…
“I haven’t gone for several months, myself,” Kasie remarked quietly. She twisted her purse slowly in her hands. “If I…start back, I could take them with me, if you didn’t mind.”
“I don’t mind,” he replied.
Her eyes softened and she smiled at him.
He tore his