King of the Mountain (6 page)

“Is that how you really think of me?” He was surprised to find that her opinion of him mattered so much. But this was the second time in less than forty-eight hours that she’d made such a remark, and it stuck in his craw.

Kitty was saved from having to answer by the arrival of Ben’s rather unorthodox breakfast. She gave a mild shudder at the combination of greasy food and creamy milk shake while he dug in as if he were starved.

“That’s not a very healthy way to start the day.” She attributed her concern to twelve years of monitoring every bite Jessie put in her mouth—nothing more, nothing less.

He shrugged and spread a liberal helping of strawberry jam on his toast. “I didn’t have dinner last night, so this is actually two meals in one.”

She lowered her gaze as he crunched into the
toast. “I figured after all the work you did yesterday, you’d go home and fix yourself a feast.”

He swallowed and reached for the fountain glass that was full to the brim with thick chocolate milk shake. “It’s no fun to eat alone.”

For some reason the idea of him rattling around that big old house all by himself rent her heart. It didn’t make a lick of sense. He had more money than all the miners in his employ put together. Still, it saddened her.

She took a sip of her coffee, trying to erase the image and puzzling over her own reaction. Why should it bother her that he was alone? He could
hire
company if he really wanted it. And why should she worry about his horrible eating habits? He was her enemy, wasn’t he?

“I’m not, you know.”

Kitty gave a start, wondering if he’d somehow read her mind. Ridiculous, of course. She set her cup back in the saucer and met his gaze squarely across the table. “Not what?”

“A playboy.” Ben pushed his empty plate away and narrowed his eyes, watching the telltale color suffuse her cheeks as she digested his statement.

“If you say so.”

The glib note in her voice only added to his frustration. She’d gotten under his skin with her disparaging cracks about his character, and he was determined to set her straight.

“Pay me whenever you’re ready.” The waitress laid their ticket facedown on the table.

Kitty glanced at the clock on the wall and scooted to the edge of the booth. “It’s getting late.”

“We still have ten minutes.” Ben’s comment brought her to a halt. “Five to get to work and five to talk.”

“Talk about what?”

“About why you’re so damned eager to believe the worst about me.”

She started to protest, then sighed heavily and slid back into the booth. “Habit, I suppose.”

“Habit?” If she’d jumped on top of the table and started stripping off her clothes, he couldn’t have been more astonished.

“Face it, your family’s name wasn’t exactly revered in my family’s home.”

“You mean I stayed up half the night trying to figure out why you hate me, and all it amounts to is a
habit
?”

“I didn’t say I hate you.” She felt slightly ashamed.

He pounced on that opening, small as it was. “Well then, what do you think of me?”

“I’ve never really thought about you as a person,” she admitted with a shrug. “I’ve always just thought of you as the coal baron.”

“That’s not fair,” he said with a dangerous scowl.

“Why not?”

“Because I’m trying to improve conditions for the miners.”

“Yes, but—”

“And I’ve been working nonstop for five years to
bring a power plant to Cooperville that will create jobs for anyone who wants to work.”

She squirmed uncomfortably as he knocked the props of her preconceived notions out from under her. “There’s still the threat of that pay cut, though.”

He nodded empathetically. “I hate the thought of that myself, but the reduced demand for steam coal these past few years has hurt the entire industry.”

“Our five minutes is up,” she said curtly.

He glanced at the wall clock. “So it is.”

Kitty slid from the booth and started out of the café while Ben paid their waitress. She could certainly see why he was considered such a shrewd negotiator, but she couldn’t afford to see the situation from his point of view. A few more minutes at that table, she silently conceded, and he’d have had her begging to take a pay cut!

Tomorrow morning, she decided as she climbed into the Blazer, he could either have a bowl of cold cereal before she picked him up, or he could go hungry. But even as she prepared to deliver her news, she couldn’t stop thinking about him eating his breakfast alone.

“Let ’er roll!” Ben shouted to be heard above the roar of the continuous miner, a steel-snouted monster that chewed up eight tons of coal every six minutes and spit it out onto the central conveyer.
It was Friday, his fourth and final day on the job. In the past week he’d had a touch of it all.

A thin beam of light down the dark tunnel bobbed in response as another crew member switched on the belt.

Glittering nuggets of “peacock,” named for its iridescence, rode the conveyer toward the waiting electric cars that would carry it to the aboveground processing plant. There the coal would be cleaned, washed and dried, then sorted into separate piles to accommodate different consumers’ needs.

Ben had the self-contained processing plant installed when he took over the company reins. It made for a more efficient operation and fewer of the emissions that contributed to acid rain. And he had plans on the drawing board right now for a nonpolluting coke-fired power plant that would transmit electricity from the mine’s front door.

He knew his mine engineering backward and forward. But as he’d explained to Kitty Tuesday morning, he needed to know how it felt to do the actual work in order to negotiate with the miners. And that meant getting down and dirty.

“Overflow!” the machine operator shouted.

Ben automatically picked up his shovel and joined the other workers, feeding the overflow of shattered coal into the mouth of the continuous miner, and he realized he felt more at home than he’d ever felt in his life.

Nothing in his education or previous experience had prepared him for this alien place. The
cool dry air had the faintly acrid bite of coal; the lamp on his helmet punched only a dim, shifting circle in the intense blackness; and the timbers that shored up the tunnel ceiling dangled pale, snaky fungus that brushed against his face.

As a rule, the seven-man crews worked in silence. That didn’t mean they didn’t communicate, though. A nod of the head or the raising of a gloved hand was as good as—and in some ways more profound than—the small talk that passed for conversation in most of the places he frequented aboveground.

Ben returned the nods he received now, thinking it was a far cry from the way he was greeted his first day on the job.

It had proven just as difficult as Kitty had predicted it might. Strong and proud and innately suspicious, the miners hadn’t exactly rolled out the red carpet when she’d introduced him. But they hadn’t turned their backs on him, either.

“I know that some of you don’t trust my motives for coming down here,” he’d allowed. “And given the fact we’re in the middle of contract talks, I can’t say that I blame you.”

“Then what are you doing down here?”

Ben had recognized the miner who’d spoken from his schooldays. It wasn’t the first time the other man had challenged him. He’d hoped, however, they could settle their differences more peacefully than they had in the past.

“I’m here to learn.”

The miner’s gaze clashed defiantly, resentfully, with Ben’s. “What can a bunch of coal diggers teach an engineer?”

He’d checked his irritation at the loaded question and presented his case in a calm, congenial voice. At the same time he’d been careful not to look at Kitty any more often than he’d looked at the other miners, so as not to put her in an awkward position with her coworkers.

“I’m hoping you’ll learn something from me too,” he’d said in summary.

“Like what?”

“I’m not my father.”

The miner’s eyes had gone murky then, and Ben had guessed he was remembering another time when a similar scene had ended with the two of them slugging it out on the school playground.

A ventilating fan had blown a fresh breeze between them, and Ben had found himself wondering if it were an omen.

“In that case,” the miner had finally announced on behalf of everyone else who’d gathered around, “we’re glad to have you here.”

Ben had accepted the other man’s outstretched hand, relieved to know he was willing to let boyish bygones be boyish bygones.

Since then, he’d done his damnedest to keep the welcome mat in place. And after four days of robbing pillars, running the ravenous machines that gobbled at the mountains’ wealth, and eating
lunch from a pail instead of a plate, he knew he’d allayed the worst of the miners’ suspicions. In turn, he’d developed a deep and abiding respect for the men and women who’d built his family’s fortune through the years by sweat of brow and strength of back.

“Ready or not—” the blasting foreman warned from the next tunnel over. No sooner had he spoken than the muffled thud of an explosion rode the wet subterranean wind back to where Ben was working.

“Here we come!” Kitty said when limestone had been spread over the deadly coal dust to keep it from accidentally igniting. Jackhammers in hand, her crew moved in to drive steel expansion bolts into the exposed slate, anchoring it to the more solid layers above.

Ben didn’t break the rhythm of his swing, but he was prepared to drop his shovel at the first sign of trouble. The mine face was the point of greatest danger. Newly bared roof could collapse without warning, and the thought of Kitty being buried under a ton of rock and rubble aroused protective instincts he hadn’t even known he possessed.

He’d met a lot of women in his thirty-nine years—he’d even come close to marrying a few of them—but he’d never met a woman like Kitty Reardon.

She was sunshine and shadow rolled into one enticing package. Her smile captivated him; her frown cut him to the quick; and depending on
her mood, her eyes could start a fire in his belly or stop him cold.

They’d practically lived in each other’s pockets these past four days, riding to and from the mine together, but he hadn’t laid a hand on her since that morning in his kitchen. The truth was, he didn’t trust himself to take it slow and easy with her. And if he’d ever met a woman who needed the kid-glove treatment, it was—

“All yours,” Kitty informed the crew waiting to put the pillars in as she came out of the newly blown tunnel.

Ben relaxed his tensed muscles and fed another shovelful of coal into the continuous miner’s gaping maw.

“That’s some kind of woman,” the man on his right said as Kitty retreated in a swirl of dust and dancing light.

Ben ignored the remark, trying to keep trouble at bay, and turned back to the overflow pile.

A just-between-us-guys elbow jabbed him in the rib cage. “Wonder if her skin’s as white below the neck as it is above.”

Ben froze in mid-swing, fighting the urge to clobber the other miner with his shovel. He’d wondered the very same thing himself, having seen her only in the coveralls, but hearing it phrased so crudely provoked his killer instinct.

Luckily for the leering miner, the noon whistle blew.

Ben exchanged his shovel for his lunch box and
went in search of Kitty. Even though they hadn’t stopped for breakfast again, they always ate together at noon.

He’d forgotten to tell her on the way to work this morning that his Cadillac was ready. The mechanic was going to bring it to the mine so Ben could inspect the repairs before he drove it home in the evening.

The first place he looked for her was in a cavern cut into the tunnel’s side that served as a lunchroom. Nine miners sat there, their headlamps creating a pool of warmth in the gray gloom.

No Kitty, he noticed as one by one the men’s blackened faces swung toward him.

The talk died down, and for just a moment he felt like the outsider he really was. The miners’ faces—watchful and impersonal—were embedded with coal dust.

“C’mon in, Coop.” The miner with whom he’d finally made peace waved him in, and all the others shifted to make room for him at the slab of rock that served as their table.

He experienced a warm sense of belonging now, hearing the nickname the miners had dubbed him with his second day on the job. Solidarity might be a thing of the past in some places, he thought, but it was alive and well in Cooperville.

“Thanks.” He sat down and, opening his lunch pail, took out his sandwich and thermos of coffee.

“So,” one of the miners said, picking up the thread of the conversation that had been momentarily
dropped when Ben came in, “you really think Louisville is gonna go all the way this year?”

“They’ve got the best basketball team that ever took a court,” another miner answered around a bite of his sandwich.

“Put your money where your mouth is.” A third miner dug into his pocket for a dollar to start the betting pool.

Ben anted up along with everyone else, but his mind wasn’t on the action. He was thinking of heavenly blue eyes and of the shadows that occasionally dimmed their sparkle—dark shadows that made him suspect they’d witnessed the worst kind of hell a woman could endure.

“There’s gonna be an Elvis impersonator at Old King Coal’s week from tonight,” Dottie Curtis said as she lifted a magnifying mirror from her lunch pail.

Kitty unscrewed the lid on her thermos and poured hot coffee into her cup. “The girls’ first basketball game starts at seven-thirty that night.”

Carol Brooks took a quick, quiet bite of her sandwich.

“The impersonator doesn’t go on until nine.” Dottie had enough stuff in her lunch pail to stock a cosmetics counter. She lined it up beside the mirror in the order she planned to use it. “That means you could drop Jessie off at home after the game and still be there in time for his opening number.”

“I think I’ll pass.” Kitty would rather have a root canal than walk into a bar by herself. “But thanks for the invitation.”

Carol took a sip of her coffee.

The three women, friends for more years than they cared to count, usually ate lunch with the men. But the tunnel they’d blasted that morning had given them a rare opportunity to escape the androgynous world of mining and engage in some girl talk.