King of the Mountain (8 page)

“It’s worth it,” he admitted, his gaze skimming down the black jeans that cupped her shapely bottom, “just to see you dressed in something besides those damn coveralls.”

She snagged the bean pot she was reaching for, then straightened and returned the compliment. “Frankly, you look better out of uniform, yourself.”

Better
was an understatement, she decided on closer inspection. Even a Donegal tweed crew neck and casual cords, he was the best-dressed man she’d ever laid eyes on. Not to mention the best-looking …

The fall sun shone down on the top of his head, mingling the black and the gray into a silvery mixture. His face bore the rugged hallmarks of power, and after a week in the mine his nonchalant tan made her realize that that perfect bronze just came naturally.

Her eyes drifted to the stem of the maple leaf he was twirling hypnotically between his large thumb
and long forefinger, and senses that had lain dormant for seven years sprang to life deep inside her.

Autumn had never been her favorite season: The leaves falling and the fields browning had always made her sad. Autumn always reminded her of endings, not beginnings. So it was strange that she should experience this rebirth of feeling in the dying of the year.

“Need some help?” he asked.

Kitty snapped out of her trance and shook her head fiercely, both in answer to Ben’s quiet question and to deny the sensations rioting inside her. She tore her eyes away from the twisting leaf and put the empty bowl in the cooler, then closed the lid.

“All done,” she announced.

“Great.” He stood, looking so windblown and sun-baked that her mouth went dry.

She moistened her lips with a nervous tongue. “What do you want to do now?”

The slow heat that permeated his pewter eyes told her she shouldn’t have asked. Everything inside her stilled as emotion arced between them like an electric current.

Girlish laughter coming from the creek bank broke the charged silence.

“Thanks for letting Jessie invite Jamie today.” Kitty gratefully seized the chance to change the subject. “They’re having a ball with those cane fishing poles you brought.”

“I figured she’d have more fun with a friend along.” Ben smiled his wonderful smile, and she felt as if she’d just been dipped in melted butter. “Us too.”

“Well then,” she said briskly, trying to maintain her slipping control, “let’s do something fun.”

“Like what?” He reached for her hand and laced his fingers through hers, drawing her closer by heart-stopping degrees.

“Like—” She pulled out of his grasp before he could pull her into his arms. “Go for a walk.”

A walk wasn’t exactly what he’d had in mind. But renewing his determination to go slow and easy with her, he settled for what he could get.

They headed in the opposite direction from the creek.

“It’s hard to believe this used to be a spoil bank,” Kitty said as they climbed the clover-covered slope that had resembled a moonscape in her youth.

Ben looked at the land critically. He couldn’t begin to guess how much money the company had sunk into its reclamation efforts these past twenty-five years. “I’m surprised you remember that.”

“I grew up in a company house not a stone’s throw from here. On rainy days we used the spoil bank for a mud slide.” She smiled, thinking of how simple life was back then.

“We bulldozed those houses years ago.” He frowned, wondering how those old eyesores had stood as long as they had. “As I recall, they didn’t even have running water.”

Now she wrinkled her nose at him. “We had all the water we could run ’n’ fetch.”

His laughter boomed to the hills and back; hers rang out as crystal clear as the weather.

“You’re something, Kitty Reardon, you really are.”

So are you, Ben Cooper
, she thought.
So are you.

Leaves crunched underfoot as they approached the old strip mine area that had been returned to woods. Squirrels scampered from oak tree to hickory, gathering their winter’s store of nuts. Autumn sunlight wove its way through the bared branches to the forest’s carpeted floor.

“I haven’t been back here in years.” Kitty was awed by the transformation. “It’s beautiful!”

A wry grin twisted Ben’s sensual mouth. “Just goes to show you what time, nature, and a million dollars can do.”

She made a tsking sound. “This from the man who buys Blazers at the drop of a hat?”

“More like at the drop off a mountain,” he reminded her dryly.

They lapsed into a thoughtful silence as they wandered deeper into the woods, pausing to watch a whitetail buck munching on acorns before it caught their scent and bolted away.

When he reached up and plucked a lone scarlet leaf from a tree branch, she allowed herself a brief survey of his lean, powerful build. Her gaze ranged from a set of shoulders that threatened the seams of his sweater to the narrowness of his hips, then moved down those long athletic legs.

A squirrel scolded her from on high.

Ben turned and—not for the first time—caught her staring at him with hungry blue eyes. Slowly then, ever so slowly, he backed her up against the trunk of the tree and raised the hand that held the leaf.

A crow cried its plaintive alarm.

Kitty didn’t cringe, but she did keep a careful watch on the hand coming toward her. The striated bark scraped her back through her sweater as memories surged up from the past and walloped her in the chest.

In a gesture more tender than any she’d ever known, he slid the stem of the scarlet leaf behind her ear. Then he braced his palms on the tree trunk and lowered his gaze to her trembling lips only seconds before he lowered his head.

She realized he was going to kiss her and went stiff as a board. “Ben—”

“Don’t be afraid, Kitty,” he whispered against her open lips, then closed his mouth over hers.

If he’d forced her, she’d have fought him—a conditioned reflex on her part. But he seduced her with brushing and teasing and feathering rather than plundering. The tangy scent of his bay rum enveloped her senses, and in the dim recesses of her mind she realized she was her own worst enemy.

She kept her arms at her sides and curled her fingers into small fists of resistance, battling a sudden need to reach around his neck and find
out if his hair was as thick and springy as it looked.

How long could she hold out against that masterful mouth and tempting tongue? Heaven help her, how long could she hold out against herself?

Ben knew the exact moment when he’d broken through her guard and touched off a response. Her jaw lost some of the tension that had prevented his invasion. She raised her arms, bringing the heat and the hardness of him home to her, then half sobbed against his mouth at this betraying weakness.

His tongue took its natural course, delving into her silken depths, and she knew a treasured feeling she’d never experienced before. She felt her knees weaken as the kiss became a microcosm of the whole sexual act, and she slid her fingers into his hair, seeking a grip on her sanity.

Like a crisp slap to her satiny cheek, the autumn breeze brought her back to her senses.

She tore her mouth from his and turned her head away, whispering brokenly, “Ben—”

His lips found the vulnerable pulse point below her ear. “I want you, Kitty.”

“No!” She gasped as his flicking tongue set off another series of explosions inside her.

“Yes.” He groaned, his voice and lips like velvet as he sought the vulnerable hollow of her throat.

Frantic now, she moved her hands from his neck to his chest, holding him at bay as best she could. “Stop it!”

It finally penetrated his passion-fogged mind that he’d gone too far, that she wasn’t ready for this. He did a slow pushup, feeling the rough scrape of bark against his palms, and looked down at the desperate expression on her face.

“What’s wrong?”

She closed her eyes, her long lashes black fans against her pale skin, and shook her head.

He studied her as clinically as possible under the circumstances, experience telling him that a woman didn’t run hot one minute and cold the next without a damn good reason. But what in the …?

A half-dozen possibilities struck him at once. He discarded most of them as quickly as they came to mind. The one that remained seemed almost too heinous to consider. But consider it he did.

He had no proof, but that didn’t keep him from demanding, “Who was it, Kitty?”

Her eyes flew open and he knew he was right on target.

“Your father?” It happened in the best of families.

She looked shocked at the very idea. “Of course not!”

“One of the miners?”

“No!”

“Your ex-husband?”

She drew in a shuddering breath and ducked under his arm. “I’ve got to go check on the girls.”

He reached to bring her back where she belonged. “Wait—”

She broke into a run, her pounding footsteps shattering the stillness as she dodged between the trees and cut toward the creek bank.

Ben stared at the ground and counted to ten, giving both his ardor and his anger time to cool. Then he shoved his fists into his pockets and followed her out of the woods, wondering where they went from here.

Patience, he reminded himself when he spotted Kitty helping the girls clean the fish they’d caught. That was the key. He started down the slope he’d successfully reclaimed to lend them a hand. If patience would do the trick, he’d be patient. He’d be patient if it killed him—and it damned well might.

Kitty fried the fish; Ben made his “famous” jalapeño corn bread; Jessie and Jamie set the table.

It was Jessie’s idea that he stay for dinner. He’d supplied the fishing poles, she’d pointed out in the forthright manner of a twelve-year-old, so it was only fair that he get to eat his share of the catch.

One pleading look Kitty could have handled. But when Ben had bent his knees to bring his face down on a level with her daughter’s, she’d felt anew the tug at her heartstrings at the thought of him going home to that empty house on the hill. And she’d known she was outnumbered.

“Get a whiff of this,” he said, passing the warn pan of pepper-studded corn bread under her nose

“Whew!” She fanned at the jalapeño steam rising toward her face. “Brings tears to my eyes jus to smell it.”

“Wait’ll you taste it.”

“Is that a threat or a promise?”

He set the pan on a wire rack, his smiling eyes turning somber and his commanding presence shrinking the walls of her U-shaped kitchen.

She retreated a step, but there was nowhere to go. The sink caught her in the small of her back and his broad shoulders effectively blocked the doorway.

“I’d never threaten you, Kitty,” he said quietly. “And that’s a promise.”

Catfish fillets sizzled in the expectant silence.

She cleared her throat and took a deep breath, trying her darnedest to say she believed him. But so many times in the past her credulity had been stretched to the snapping point that she couldn’t bring herself to voice the words he waited to hear.

“The table’s set.”

“The water glasses are full.”

Jessie’s and Jamie’s timely announcements from the dining room broke the tension in the kitchen.

Kitty turned away from those steely silver eyes and spoke to the iron skillet on the stove. “I’ll take up the fish.”

Ben studied her in profile—her hair falling like a black curtain across her face as she slid the spatula
under the fillets, her breasts thrown into sharp relief against the white wall when she opened the cupboard over the stove for a plate to put them on—then reached for a butcher knife. “I’ll cut the corn bread.”

Dinner was like a family affair, with Ben and Kitty facing each other across the table and Jessie and Jamie flanking them on either side. Appetites took precedence over conversation, at least during the first round. But as stomachs filled, the talk began to flow.

“This coleslaw is delicious,” Ben said as he spooned a second helping onto his plate.

“Jessie made it,” Kitty said proudly.

“From Mom’s recipe.”

Ben winked at the daughter, but his words were meant for the mother. “She’ll have to share it with me.”

The furnace cycled on in the sudden silence.

“May I have some more corn bread?” Jamie asked politely.

Kitty grabbed the serving plate and all but shoved it at the poor girl.

Jamie took a square, then just sat there as if she didn’t know what to do with the rest of it.

“Your mother tells me you play basketball,” Ben said to Jessie, smoothly relieving the bewildered Jamie of the serving plate.

Jessie took a deep drink of her milk, leaving a thin mustache of white around her drooping mouth. “I used to.”

“Hey,” Ben said, “the Cougars need all the help they can get.”

Jamie perked up. “How’d you know the team’s name?”

“I went to Cooperville Junior High too.”

That was news to Kitty. “I thought you went to a private school up north.”

A grimness settled over his features. “I left to go to high school and didn’t come back until I’d finished college.”

“Eight years,” Jessie calculated aloud.

“Then I went to Vietnam.”

“You sure were gone a long time,” Jessie observed.

His eyes went opaque. “Not long enough, according to some.”

Kitty felt her heart going out to him and didn’t know why. Geographically they’d grown up in the same place, but the realms of their upbringings were worlds apart. She’d been reared in poverty but with plenty of love; he’d been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, yet made it sound as if that precious metal had been terribly tarnished.

Jessie thumped her fist on the table now, making the dishes rattle. “Well, I’m glad you’re back.”

Ben smiled and reached over to waggle her tip-tilted nose. “So am I, darlin’, so am I.”

“May I be excused?” Jamie asked softly.

“You certainly may,” Kitty said, then looked in her daughter’s direction.

But Jessie had eyes only for Ben. “Did you play basketball for the Cougars?”

“Sure did.” Finished eating, he laid his knife and fork diagonally across his plate.