King of the Mountain (13 page)

She supposed she should be glad that they were finished before they were started. This way she wouldn’t have to worry about the rumors when the bargaining talks resumed.

Ben wanted to put his fist through the nearest wall. He was fresh out of patience and frustrated as hell. He was spoiling for a real knock-down, drag-out fight with Kitty. But he’d meant what he’d told her the night of the accident. He never had hit a woman and he never would. So he resorted to his old ace in the hole.

“I own that mine,” he reminded her arrogantly.

“You don’t own me,” she shot back savagely.

Unperturbed, he went on. “I’m ordering you to stay out of camp until the all clear is sounded.”

“And if I don’t?”

“I’ll fire you.”

“I’ll file a grievance,” she lashed out blindly.

He threw down a dark gauntlet of his own. “You do that, and I’ll see to it that you never work in any mine, anywhere, again.”

Kitty reeled from the shock that he had threatened
her livelihood, but stood her ground. She didn’t have to grovel before any man, even the coal baron.

“I’ll just have to take my chances, then.” She spun on her heel and felt her way along the wall to get her coat.

Ben grabbed a suede jacket from the closet. It was all he could do not to lock her in there for her own damn good. But when push came to shove, he let her go.

They left his house in separate cars, the Cadillac fishtailing down the hill and the Blazer following close behind.

No alarm had been sounded, but the explosion had been felt for miles around. Cars crammed the roads—normally deserted at this time of night—but Ben and Kitty had enough of a head start that they led the way up the mountain.

He took the twisting curves with the skill of a Formula One racer; she stayed right on his tail, spinning the wheel back and forth.

The rain had made everything wet but had washed nothing clean, and massive walls of black shale hung above the winding road like threats.

When they reached the mining camp, Kitty slammed her Blazer into park next to Ben’s Cadillac, and then they jumped out of their respective cars and ran to help.

It was a horrifying sight.

A blanket of dense black smoke covered the camp. It rolled out of the mine’s mouth, stinging
her eyes and searing her throat. Miners lay strewn around the site, exposed to the elements like so many spent matches, groaning and calling for help. Paramedics administered oxygen and first aid while firefighters sprayed foam on the stubborn flames. Aftershocks continued to rock the ground.

Ben felt a chill bone-deep, thinking the explosion could have happened on the day shift, just a few hours earlier, and then Kitty might have been one of those bodies. It made him twice as determined to get her out of the mine—tonight

The sheriff walked away from the group of paramedics working on the rescued miners when he saw Ben.

“How bad is it?” Ben asked, fearing the worst.

“Nobody killed.”

“Thank God,” Kitty said.

It did, indeed, seem like a miracle, considering the force of the explosion and the flammability of coal dust.

Ben gave a sigh of relief. “What about injuries?”

“Like I said, they all got out.” The beetle-browed sheriff waved the work roster, which had already been checked and rechecked. “But they’re all suffering from smoke inhalation and varying degrees of burns.”

“Get them to the hospital and see that they get the best medical treatment available,” Ben ordered. Then, espying the night watchman coming out of
the company trailer, he demanded, “What the hell happened down there?”

“Near as I can gather, a gas pocket exploded.” The night watchman shook his head in horror as he looked at the injured miners. “Only thing that saved them was they were all in a tunnel by the mantrap, listening to a safety lecture, when it happened.”

The irony didn’t escape Ben.

Even with the paramedics and the volunteer fire department rolling out every piece of equipment at their disposal, there still weren’t enough blankets or helping hands to go around.

Ben saw Kitty take off her coat and give it to a pair of rescue workers to make a pallet. Following her example, he whipped off his jacket and thrust it at a passing paramedic. “Use this however you need it.”

That done, he rolled up his sleeves and went to work.

Despite his burns, Kitty recognized the miner who was lying on her coat. A lean, taciturn man, he’d worked the day shift with her for a while.

She knelt beside him and asked softly, “How’re you doing, Elliot?”

“Better than I thought I was going to be doing an hour ago,” he said, then wheezed.

Kitty smiled at his brave attempt at humor. “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”

Elliot closed his eyes. “If you see my wife, tell
her to stop adding up my life insurance benefits and start planning what she’s going to serve me for supper tomorrow night.”

She didn’t tell him he’d probably be eating hospital food for a while; she simply promised, “Will do.”

Kitty stayed with Elliot until the paramedics came, then searched for his wife. She found her with a group of families clenched like cold fists near the entrance gates.

A sparrow of a woman in a buffalo plaid hunting jacket that obviously belonged to her husband, Elliot’s wife wept with relief when she heard he was going to be all right.

“I’ll swan,” the woman said when she recovered her composure, “I don’t know which I’ll lay on him first when he gets home—a kiss or a steak.”

“Serve him supper in bed,” someone behind her suggested, “That way he can have a little of each.”

Light laughter rippled through the crowd before the other families besieged Kitty for word of this miner or that. Someone handed her a pencil and paper so she could write down the names that were being shouted at her, and she promised to check on each and every one before plunging back into the melee.

She saw Ben in passing, but he was surrounded by the editor from the local paper and a television reporter and camera crew filming live from the scene. He didn’t see her, which was just as well,
she decided, remembering that her job was on the line.

That next hour Kitty stayed so busy doing what she could to make sure the injured miners were comfortable and relaying messages to anxious families, she didn’t have time to worry about whether or not she’d be coming back to the mine on Monday.

Only when the last ambulance had pulled away, the television lights had gone out, and she’d said good-bye to the paramedics, did she stop for a breather.

She’d swallowed so much smoke that her throat felt like a cat had gotten a paw down it and scratched. Her hands and her dress were filthy, and she couldn’t imagine how her hair and face must look. She’d given up her coat for lost, her coffee was cold, and her doughnut might have been made of compressed sawdust as far as her singed taste buds were concerned.

In spite of it all, she was glad she’d followed her instincts. To have stayed behind as Ben had ordered would have gone against both nature and nurture on her part.

The family pride was intact.

But at what price to Kitty?

She’d waited her whole life, it seemed, for a man who was strong enough to be gentle. A man who didn’t have to build up his own ego by destroying hers. A man who wouldn’t brutally use her and then blithely lose her.

Why, she wondered now, bowing her head and closing her eyes to the mining disaster in momentary anguish, did that man have to be the coal baron?

“Are you all right?” Ben’s voice was raspy from all the acrid smoke he, too, had swallowed.

She brought her head up. “Yes.” For a second she was content just to look at him. Like her, he was smoke-grimed. His white shirt was ruined and the hair on his forearms was singed from helping the firefighters, but otherwise he appeared unharmed.

His very presence was enough to warm her, but his expression chilled her straight through. “We need to talk.”

She nodded and tossed her paper cup into the trash can, wanting to get this over with as quickly and as painlessly as possible.

“Mom!” Jessie broke through the thinning crowd at the entrance gate and ran to embrace her.

Kitty wrapped startled arms around her daughter and hugged her tight. “What are you doing here?”

“She tried to call your house after the explosion.” Carol, with her own three children in tow, came rushing up behind Jessie. “When no one answered, nothing would do but that I bring her up here.”

“I was afraid you’d gone in to work overtime after the game.” Jessie’s voice was muffled against the front of Kitty’s corduroy dress.

Carol smiled apologetically. “I told her you hadn’t mentioned anything about going back to work, but you know how kids are.…”

Kitty remembered the numerous vigils she’d kept with her mother and brothers and sisters: the rewarding ones, where her father had been hoisted out of the mine and had come striding across the camp, his coal-blackened face breaking into a broad white grin when he found his wife and children waiting near the fence; and the fatal one seven years ago, just before she herself had gone to work at the mine, where the company representative had come with the bad news, and later, a death benefits check that couldn’t begin to assuage the grief.

“Yes,” she said now, hugging Jessie even harder, “I know how kids are.”

Ben had watched the emotions parading across her face with an ominous emotion. Coal had written the epitaph of many a man in Cooperville, leaving untold numbers of children without fathers to guide them. With the mines having opened their ranks to women, it was only a matter of time until female names were carved in stone. He’d roast in hell before Jessie Reardon became one of those motherless children.

Carol’s two boys rubbed their eyes. She ruffled their sleepy heads and turned them toward the rapidly emptying parking lot, saying over her shoulder, “Come on, Jamie, we’ll wait for Jessie in the car.”

“I’m glad you’re all right.” Jamie flashed her shy smile from Kitty to Ben before running to catch up with her mother and brothers.

Jessie stayed in her mother’s arms a moment longer, then pulled out of the embrace and tipped her head in puzzlement. “Mom, your dress is buttoned crooked.”

Kitty wouldn’t have looked at Ben then to save her life. She felt the tattletale buttons, all of them over her breasts, and fumbled for an explanation.

Ben didn’t miss a beat. “They probably came undone when you helped the paramedics lift that man into the ambulance.”

“Right.” Kitty had never lied to Jessie before, and she hated to start now. But she felt it was best. “I was so busy, I must have rebuttoned them wrong.”

To the adults’ relief, Jessie seemed to buy it. But after giving them both a good-bye hug and drifting back to a safe distance, she suddenly grinned from ear to ear. “I’m not exactly a
child
, you know.”

Point made, she spun and scampered toward the parking lot.

Kitty considered going after Jessie and telling her the truth before she got her hopes any higher and her heart broken again. But there’d be plenty of time for explanations and recriminations tomorrow.

For now …

She finally risked looking at Ben and saw her own regret mirrored in his silvery eyes.

“Come here.” That was all he said, but that was all the prompting she needed to find shelter in the sanctuary of his arms this one last time.

His shirt smelled of smoke, but she burrowed against it anyway; his jaw rasped against her fingertips like a fine grade of sandpaper, but she read his face as if to memorize it; his kiss—seasoned by her one tear—tasted of good-bye, but she folded her arms around his neck and welcomed it gladly.

His mouth covered hers, fierce and gentle, both at the same time. She felt crushed yet cradled. Safe from harm yet assaulted. And she cherished each and every sensation.

Through their kiss the knowledge seared that she could have been in that mine. That she could have been one of the injured. Or, given the hazardous nature of her job …

An emptiness deep inside her yawned wide, yearning to be filled. Her lips parted and his tongue made one sweet, piercing stab. The masculine claim it symbolized made her womanhood ache for what might have been.

Reflexively, her hungry body arched against him. Her response drove him a little mad, and his broad hands opened wide over her back, pressing her as close to him as possible. He had no gentleness now, and she wanted none from him.

They remained locked in each other’s arms for
timeless seconds, the fervency mounting, until he lifted his head and cupped her face with his hands. A brittle breeze exploded into action, fluttering her silky black hair as he stared down into her blue eyes.

“I ought to throttle you for disobeying me.” He gazed at her mouth, now full and red and moist from their kiss.

“I couldn’t stay away.” She swallowed the sting in her throat. “You knew that when you ordered me not to come.”

His hands dropped to her narrow shoulders and squeezed before he let her go. “Can’t blame a guy for trying.”

“I guess not.”

“File a claim with the insurance company for the loss of your coat,” he instructed her gruffly.

“I will.” She drew herself up ramrod straight, wanting him to remember her as strong in the face of defeat.

They’d almost made it. His tenderness had won her trust; her smile had calmed his restless soul. His confidence in her skill as miner, woman, and mother had restored her self-esteem; her spirit had given him reason to come home. They’d hurdled over all the other obstacles in their path, but there was still the past. And this one seemed insurmountable.

“We could have been so good together,” Ben said in a gravelly voice.

“Very good.”

“How are you fixed for money?”

“I’ll have enough coming from the pension fund to tide me over until I get another job.”

“You know where I am if you need anything,” he reminded her.

She nodded and replied thickly, “I really appreciate that.”

“I have to give you a chance to quit.” He stared her straight in the eye as he said it.