Texas Proud and Circle of Gold (Long, Tall Texans #52) - Diana Palmer Page 0,133

So do the girls. I’ll do whatever it takes. An apology, a raise in salary, a paid vacation to Tahiti...”

She shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind coming back,” she said. “I do miss the girls, terribly. But...”

“But, what?”

She met his level gaze. “You don’t trust me,” she said simply, and her eyes were sad. “At first you thought I was trying to get to you through the girls, and then you thought I wanted them out of the way. In Nassau, you thought I left them alone for selfish reasons, so that I could go on a lunch date.” She smiled sadly. “You have a bad opinion of me as a governess. What if I mess up again? Maybe it would be better if we just left things the way they are.”

The remark went through him like hot lead. He hadn’t trusted Kasie because she was so mysterious about her past. Now that he knew the truth about her, knew of the tragedies she’d suffered in her young life, lack of trust was no longer going to be a problem. But how did he tell her that? And, worse, how did he make up for the accusations he’d made? Perhaps he could tell her the truth.

“The girls’ last governess was almost too good to be true,” he began. “She charmed the girls, and me, until we’d have believed anything she told us. It was all an act. She had marriage in mind, and she actually threatened me with my own children. She said they were so attached to her that if I didn’t marry her, she’d leave and they’d hate me.”

She blinked. “That sounds as if she was a little unbalanced.”

He nodded, his eyes cold with remembered bitterness. “Yes, she was. She left in the middle of the night, and the next morning the girls were delighted to find her gone.”

He shook his head. “She was unstable, and I’d left the kids in her hands. It was such a blot on my judgment that I didn’t trust it anymore. Especially when you came along, with your mysterious past and your secrets. I thought you were playing up to me because I was rich.”

It hurt that he’d thought so little of her. “I see.”

“Do you? I hope so,” he replied heavily, and with a smile. “Because if I go back to Medicine Ridge without you, I wouldn’t give two cents for my neck. John’s furious with me. He’s got company. Miss Parsons glares at me constantly. Mrs. Charters won’t serve me anything that isn’t burned. The girls are the worst, though,” he mused. “They ignore me completely. I feel like the ogre in that story you read them at bedtime.”

“Poor ogre,” she said quietly.

He began to smile. He loved the softness of her voice when she spoke. For the first time since his arrival, he was beginning to think he had a chance. “Feeling sorry for me?” he asked gently. “Good. If I wear on your conscience, maybe you’ll feel sorry enough to come home with me.”

She frowned. “What did Mama Luke tell you?” she asked suddenly.

“Things you should have told me,” he replied, his tone faintly acidic. “She told me everything, in fact, except why you don’t like the water.”

She stared down into the fishpond, idly watching the small goldfish swim in and out of the vegetation. “When I was five, just before my parents were...killed,” she said, sickened by the memory, “one of my friends at the mission in Africa got swept into the river. I saw her drown.”

“You’ve had a lot of tragedy in your young life,” he said softly. He moved a step closer to her, and another, stopping when he was close enough to lift a lean hand and smooth his fingers down her soft cheek. “I’ve had my own share of it. Suppose we forget the past few weeks, and start over. Can you?”

Her eyes were troubled. “I don’t know if it’s wise,” she said after a minute. “Letting the girls get attached to me again, I mean.”

His fingers traced her wide, soft mouth. “It’s too late to stop that from happening. They miss you terribly. So do I,” he added surprisingly. He tilted her chin up and bent, brushing his lips tenderly over her mouth. His heavy eyebrows drew together at the delight that shafted through him from the contact. “When I think of you, I think of butterflies and rainbows,” he whispered against her mouth. “I hated the world until you came to work for