“And it doesn’t,” he agreed. “The fringe benefits don’t include the boss.”
“Some fringe benefit,” she scoffed, regaining her composure. “A conceited, overbearing, arrogant rancher who thinks he’s on every woman’s Christmas list!”
He lifted an eyebrow over eyes with cynical sophistication gleaming in them. “Don’t look for me under your Christmas tree,” he chided.
“Don’t worry, I won’t.” She turned and kept walking before he could say anything worse. Of all the conceited men on earth!
He watched her go with mixed emotions, the strongest of which was desire. She made him ache all over. He checked his watch. Pauline’s ten minutes were up, and he wanted out of this apartment. He called a good-night to the girls and went out without another word to Kasie.
When he got back in, at two in the morning, he paused long enough to open Kasie’s door and look in.
She was wearing another of those concealing cotton gowns, with the covers thrown off. Jenny was curled up against one shoulder and Bess was curled into the other. They were all three asleep.
Gil ground his teeth together just looking at the picture they made together. His girls and Kasie. They looked more like mother and daughters. The thought hurt him. He closed the door with a little jerk and went back into his own room. Despite Pauline’s alluring gown and her spirited conversation, he had been morose all evening.
Pauline had noticed, and knew the reason. She was, she told herself, going to get rid of the competition. It only needed the right set of circumstances.
Fate provided them only two days later. Kasie and Gil were barely speaking now. She avoided him, and he did the same to her. If the girls noticed, they kept their thoughts to themselves. Impulsively Kasie phoned Zeke at his hotel and asked if he’d like to come over and have lunch with her at the hotel, since she couldn’t leave the girls.
He agreed with flattering immediacy, and showed up just as Kasie was drying off the girls.
“Surely you aren’t going to take them to lunch with you?” Pauline asked, laughing up at Zeke, who attracted her at once. “I’ll watch them while you eat.”
“Please can’t we stay and play in the pool?” Bess asked Kasie. “Miss Raines will watch us, she said so.”
“Please,” Jenny added with a forlorn look.
“You’ll be right inside, won’t you?” Pauline asked cunningly. “Go ahead and enjoy your lunch. I’m not going anywhere.”
For an instant, Kasie recalled that Gil didn’t trust Pauline with the girls. But it was only for a few minutes and, as Pauline had said, they were going to be just inside the nearby restaurant that overlooked the pool.
“Well, all right then, if you really don’t mind,” she told Pauline. “Thank you.”
“It’s my pleasure. Have fun now,” Pauline told her. “And don’t worry. Gil’s not going to be back for at least a half hour. He’s at the bank.”
Kasie brooded over it even while she and Zeke ate a delicious seafood salad. They were seated at a window overlooking the swimming pool, but a row of hedges and hibiscus obscured the view so that only the deep end of the pool could be seen from their table.
“Stop worrying,” Zeke told her with a grin. “Honestly, you act as if they were your own kids. You’re just the governess.”
“They’re my responsibility,” she pointed out. “If anything happened to them…”
“Your friend is going to watch them. Now stop arguing and let me tell you about this new hotel and casino they’re opening over on Paradise Island.”
“Okay,” she relented, smiling. “I’ll stop brooding.”
Outside by the pool, Pauline had noticed that Kasie and her companion couldn’t see beyond the hedges. She smiled coldly as she looked at the little girls. Jenny was sitting on the steps of the wading pool, playing with one of her dolls in the water.
Closer to Pauline, Bess was staring down at the swimming pool where the water was about six feet deep—far too deep for her to swim in.
“I wish I could dive,” she told Pauline.
“But it’s easy,” Pauline told her, making instant plans. “Just put your arms out in front of you like this,” she demonstrated, “and jump in. Really, it’s simple.”
“Are you sure?” Bess asked, thrilled that an adult might actually teach her how to dive!
“Of course! I’m right here. How dangerous can it be? Go ahead. You can do it.”
Of course she could, Bess thought, laughing with delight. She put her arms in the position Pauline had demonstrated and shifted her position to dive in. There wasn’t anybody else around the pool to notice if she did it wrong. She’d show her daddy when he came back. Wouldn’t he be surprised?
She moved again, just as Pauline suddenly turned around. Her leg accidentally caught one of Bess’s. Pauline fell and so did Bess, but Bess’s head hit the pavement as she went down. The momentum kept her going, and she rolled into the pool, unconscious.
“Oh, damn!” Pauline groaned. She got to her feet and looked into the pool, aware that Jenny was screaming. “Do shut up!” she told the child. “I’ll have to get someone…”
But even as she spoke, Gil came around the corner of the hotel, oblivious to what had just happened.
“Daddy!” Jenny screamed. “Bess falled in the swimmy pool!”
Gil didn’t even break stride. He broke into a run and dived in the second he was close enough. He went to the bottom, scooped up his little girl and swam back up with all the speed he could muster. Out of breath, he coughed as he lifted Bess onto the tiles by the pool and climbed out himself. He turned the child over and rubbed her back, aware that she was still breathing by some miracle. She coughed and water began to dribble out of her mouth, and then to gush out of it as she regained consciousness.
“Call an ambulance,” he shot at Pauline.
“Oh, dear, oh, dear,” she murmured, biting her nails.
“Call a damned ambulance!” he raged.
One of the pool boys saw what was going on and told Gil he’d phone from inside the hotel.
“Where’s Kasie?” Gil asked Pauline with hateful eyes as Jenny threw herself against him to be comforted. Bess was still coughing up water.
There it was. The opportunity. Pauline drew in a quick breath. “That man came by to take her to lunch. You know, the man she met on the plane. She begged me to watch the girls so they’d have time to talk.”
Gil didn’t say anything, but his eyes were very expressive. “Where is she?”
“I really don’t know,” Pauline lied, wide-eyed. “She didn’t say where they were going. She was clinging to him like
