King of the Mountain

by Fran Baker

  Without another word he came back to the sofa, removed her glass from her hand, and set it beside his. Then he reached behind her to turn off the lamp.

  They were plunged into darkness, save for the moon and the stars that seemed within touching distance of the glass wall as he drew her to her feet.

  He slid his arms around her slender waist; she raised her hands to his broad shoulders. Their bodies meshed as if made for each other as they swayed in smooth, sensuous harmony. She could feel the strong drum of his heartbeat against hers as Elvis Presley began singing, “Wise men say … only fools rush in …”

  The romantic words wove a spell around them, while the moon and the stars added their own splash of magic.

  Kitty’s head fell back when Ben’s hands slipped lower to fit his masculine hardness to her feminine softness. Through the giving folds of her skirt, she was vibrantly conscious of his strong thighs and the bulge between them that created an ache the likes of which she’d never known. Of their own volition, her hands crept up around his neck as Elvis poured out her naked emotions with his “I can’t help … falling in love with you.”

  The song ended but they stayed as they were, their breath merging and their memories emptying of all but this burning desire that fused them together.

  Ben’s silver eyes outshone the stars as he searched deep into hers for any sign of resistance. Patience had never been easy for him, but finding his own need echoed on her pale face, he realized it did have its rewards. Then damning all thought, he lowered his head and took possession of her sweet mouth.

  The feel and the smell of him opened the floodgates, and Kitty swam toward his kiss. She pressed her breasts to his hard chest and parted her petal-soft lips as his tongue probed, demanding entry. She tasted the wine they’d drunk together, excitingly warmed, its bouquet enhanced by the cologne that was singularly his.

  She moaned a protest when his mouth broke from hers, then sighed her consent as his lips trailed a fiery path across her cheek and down the sensitive tendon of her neck.

  “Ivory,” he whispered against the throat she bared for his attentions. “Warm, living ivory.”

  Kitty felt no pain when Ben nipped softly at her tender skin. She felt only the pleasure of the hot kiss that immediately followed.

  “Silk,” he murmured, sliding his hands up her back to thread his fingers through her hair. “Raw black silk.”

  She felt no trepidation when he cradled her head in his palms and looked deeply into her eyes. When she saw the expression stamped on his starlit face she felt only trust.

  Wordlessly, then, Ben lowered her down on the sofa’s bed of suede and partially covered her with his own body, then slanted his mouth across hers. Little crackles of excitement surged up her spine when he deepened the kiss.

  The firefly dance of her tongue with his—shy at first, then emboldened beyond his wildest dreams—damn near sent him over the edge.

  “I want to see you,” he half groaned, levering himself up and penetrating her eyes with his.

  Kitty was unmindful of the buttons on the front of her dress having been undone until he moved the red corduroy aside. Her single thought as he unhooked the fastener of her bra and peeled away the veil-sheer cups was that she hoped he was pleased with her.

  “Beautiful.” He breathed his awe, and she reveled in his moonlit gaze roaming over her milk-white skin and his hoarsely whispered “I want to taste you.”

  His mouth became hungry then, and his hands weren’t far behind, palming her creamy flesh for a love feast that brought her nipples to aching hardness and suffused her body with a liquid heaviness.

  She’d never known kisses could be so adoring and yet so hedonistic, that lips could suck so ardently without causing pain, or that teeth could be so gentle or a tongue so nimble.

  She found that her hands had cravings of their own, and reached for the placket of his shirt. The first button slipped easily through its hole. All the others followed.

  Tears gathered in her eyes as her fingers went roaming. His masculine perfection—meaty muscle, nailhead nipples, crisp curls—made her want to weep. A strange excitement quivered through her when she laid her hand on his flat stomach and felt his breath quickening.

  “Don’t stop there, darlin’ …” His voice was like velvet tearing as he carried her hand down below his waist and laid it, open, on the pulsing heat pushing against the tense material. “Feel what you do to me.”

  A whirling dervish of desire spiraled through her when she discovered the full urgency of his arousal.

  “I want you,” he whispered against her moist lips.

  I love you, her heart and soul and body cried.

  He lowered himself over her until they were chest to breast, hair-rough skin to smooth. Trapped between the soft sofa and the supple heat of him, she felt a liberating love that opened her senses to the fullest.

  They kissed, their mouths meshing as surely as their bodies did. His hands slid down her body, taking their time while giving their own special pleasure. She raised her arms and wound them around his neck, holding him closer to her heart.

  “Come upstairs to bed with me, Kitty.” His long fingers forged an erotic trail up her silky inner thigh, promising pleasures untold.

  She felt an involuntary tightening inside her, but she forced herself to relax. This was Ben—Ben, who’d never hurt her … who’d shown her that love could heal.

  He took her silence to mean yes, and easing up, offered her his hand. She placed hers in his palm and rose off the sofa willingly. They headed for the stairs.

  The hall floor rocked under their feet.

  “It’s a little early for the earth to move,” he said wryly, then whipped his head back toward the rattling sun room windows. “What the hell?”

  The telephone rang.

  Kitty stood as if rooted to the spot while Ben stormed to the kitchen with his shirttails flapping to answer it. She felt another small aftershock and knew before he slammed down the receiver and stalked back to her what he was going to say.

  “There’s been an explosion at the mine.”

  Ten

  “I’m going,” Kitty announced.

  “It’s too dangerous. There could still be a secondary explosion.”

  “I don’t care.” Her concern was people, not peril.

  “I do.” His voice was deathly calm in the darkness.

  No light shone in that great hall at the bottom of the stairs. They stood on opposite sides of it now, the ghosts of the past coming to life in the inky blackness between them.

  So much history …

  It was here in this very house that his grandfather had entertained the state police chief who’d eventually given the order to drop bombs on the striking rednecks.

  It was here that her grandfather had come, hat in hand, to bitterly sign the yellow dog contract that barred him from further union activity. It had been much later when the New Deal legislation had given the miners the right to hold elections.

  It was here that his father had welcomed the company doctor who’d pronounced there was no such thing as black lung. For years afterward the disease was known only as “miner’s asthma,” which implied weakness of the lungs rather than industrial disease.

  It was here that her father had brought the list of disabled miners and miner’s widows to be compensated after the laws were finally passed.

  Too much history!

  Kitty fastened her bra over breasts that still bore the faint scrape of Ben’s beard stubble, then fumbled with the buttons of her dress, hoping she’d gotten them all in the right holes. “I’m going.”

  “You don’t belong there.” He stuffed his shirttails back into the waistband of his slacks, wishing he could shake some sense into her.

  “I belong there more than you do,” she countered unfairly.

  “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  Her pupils had dilated enough that she could make out his white shirt in the blackness. “Those p
eople are my friends, my coworkers, my brothers and sisters in solidarity.”

  “And I’m the coal baron,” he said with a sudden, deadly insight that made her sick at heart. “Also known as Simon Legree—the big, bad slave driver.”

  “You said that,” she replied quietly. “I didn’t.”

  They stood so close and felt so far apart; close to a century of bad blood between them.

  Something warm and vital shrank into a tiny knot inside Kitty, but she drew on the determination that had gotten her this far in life and faced him squarely.

  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 brutall
y 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.”