King of the Mountain

by Fran Baker

  “There’s no guarantee it’ll work, of course,” Carol qualified.

  “But at least he’s trying.”

  “His counselor suggested that the kids and I sign up for some therapy too.”

  “That probably is best.” Kitty had an awful thought. “You’re not going to drop the restraining order, are you?”

  Carol shook her head emphatically. “That’s the only leverage I have.”

  Kitty nodded her encouragement. “Good thinking.”

  “I can’t thank you enough for your support,” Carol said earnestly.

  “You’d do the same for me.”

  “Still …”

  Carol shifted uncomfortably on the sofa and Kitty looked at her in curiosity, wondering what else she might have on her mind.

  “Kitty …?”

  “Yes?”

  “About Ben.”

  Kitty froze. “What about him?”

  Carol bit her lip, then let it out in a rush. “Remember when we were Jessie and Jamie’s age and we used to talk about the kind of man we wanted to marry, and how he was going to love us and we were going to love him, and how we were going to live happily ever after—”

  “Dumb girls,” Kitty muttered in fond remembrance.

  “Deserving girls,” Carol corrected her friend softly.

  “That we were.” Kitty felt the sting of tears in her eyes.

  “Go for it, Kitty.” Carol leaned toward her now quite beseechingly. “For me, and for every other woman whose girlhood dreams have been shattered.”

  “Oh, Carol—”

  “I’ll keep Jessie tonight.”

  Kitty swallowed her pride and gave voice to her worst fear. “What if he doesn’t love me?”

  Carol looked her squarely in the eye. “What else have you got to lose by finding out?”

  What else, indeed, Kitty wondered. She’d crawled over broken glass to get this far. Why not go the rest of the way? She nodded decisively and stood. “It won’t take me a minute to pack Jessie’s overnight bag.”

  They almost passed each other on the road.

  But halfway between the mansion on the hill and the row house in the hollow, Ben recognized the Blazer and slammed on his brakes.

  Kitty would have known that sleek black Cadillac anywhere. Her heart pounded with happiness as her foot found the brake pedal.

  They backed up until their windows were perfectly aligned, then rolled them down.

  Ben stuck his head out and gazed at her as if he couldn’t believe she was really there. “Your house or mine?”

  “Yours.” The miner’s kid dimpled a mischievous smile at the coal baron. “I’m dying to get a look at your library.”

  Twelve

  He held her gently, his beautiful wounded bird, and she held nothing back.

  Strong arms helped her over the worst part—the degrading secrets and the terrible desperation that she’d never shared with anyone before. Caressing hands stroked the delicate face and delectable body that had once known only cruelty. And loving lips sipped at the tears that coursed unchecked down her cheeks, absorbing as well as assuaging her pain.

  When the storm passed, they shared a silent moment of peace and unity and perfect understanding.

  “Thank you for not asking me why I didn’t leave him sooner,” she whispered against his shirtfront then.

  “You loved him.” His benign tone of voice belied the acid that burned in his veins. Part of him was jealous that she had loved someone else, and part of him was furious that that someone else had used her for a punching bag.

  “And I was ashamed.”

  “Ashamed of what?”

  She made herself smaller in his arms, if that was possible. “That my husband placed so little value on me as a person.”

  His hand stroked her hair, but his mind went briefly back in time to another woman whose husband had totally discounted her worth. “It wasn’t your fault that he was too damn dumb to recognize a good thing when he had it.”

  “I know that now,” she admitted. “But when someone you love keeps telling you that you’re stupid and ugly and … and worse, pretty soon you’re brainwashed into believing that you really are that awful.”

  “Then believe this,” he declared fiercely. “You’re smart, beautiful, talented, and self-reliant, and you mean more to me than life itself.”

  Fresh tears threatened as she realized what he was saying, but she blinked to keep them at bay. “I believe you.”

  “I love you, Kitty.” He poured his heart and soul into the words that had been so long in coming, and by finally giving voice to his feelings, he found that he was free of the past.

  “I love you, Ben.” She lifted her head from the broad shoulder and saw in his somber expression and gray eyes a promise.

  Ben had stopped her at the front door when they first got home, scooped her into his arms and carried her to the sun room. He’d lowered himself to the suede sofa and, holding her on his lap with her head tucked under his chin, he’d let her talk. And when she was all talked out, he’d let her cry. Her tears had run out before his patience had.

  Kitty had never felt safer or more vulnerable as a woman than when she’d bared her soul to this wonderful man. Now she felt as if she’d found the end of the rainbow, or something equally miraculous.

  Their mouths met with the reverence of a vow, and their tongues imitated the act their bodies ached to share. When the kiss ended and Ben lifted his head, Kitty’s heart leapt for joy. In his eyes was all the love and tenderness she had ever dreamed of seeing there.

  He smoothed back her soft black hair, still damp from her shower, and said in a husky voice, “Let’s go upstairs and make some better memories.”

  “For both of us.” She sensed the void inside him, those moments in his boyhood when he’d needed love and gone lacking, and wanted to fill it to overflowing.

  Kitty wrapped her arms around his neck and clung as if she’d never let him go. Ben came to his feet and effortlessly carried her down the hall and up the stairs.

  He didn’t stop until they’d reached his bedroom, and she thrilled to his flexing muscles as he let her feet slide slowly to the floor.

  Decorated in navy and burgundy with touches of silver that glittered in the firelight, the room was fit for a king. A comforter was turned back invitingly on the massive four-poster that faced the fireplace. Through a connecting door Kitty caught a glimpse of a lavish bathroom with mirrored walls, marble floors, and an enormous whirlpool tub.

  “I feel like a peasant.” She laughed self-consciously as she looked down at her blue jeans.

  He tipped her chin up with his finger, his eyes turning dark with passion. “I can fix that.”

  “You can?”

  “Mmh-mmh.”

  “How?”

  He reached for the top button of her shirt, slipped it through the hole, and proceeded to show her. By the time he unclipped her bra and gazed down on the pearllike gleam of exposed flesh, every part of her was crying out for his attention, his touches, his kisses.

  But first …

  She returned the favor he’d done her, freeing his shirt buttons with fingers that tingled in anticipation of that crinkly tangle of hair and solid wall of muscle. Impatience got the better of him when she grazed her nails down his chest, and he drew her into his arms.

  Warm skin touched warm skin, full breasts flattened against brawny chest, hungry mouth met hungry mouth.

  And suddenly it wasn’t enough.

  Two shirts fell to the floor, two pairs of jeans formed a lover’s knot atop them. Her bra and lacy panties sandwiched his briefs; his loafers dwarfed her tennis shoes.

  Kitty was keenly aware of Ben’s velvety gaze on the skin she bared. Her pulse raced wildly; it mattered so much that she please him. She held her breath and raised her head. The volcanic passion in his eyes dissolved her doubts.

  “I knew you were beautiful, but I didn’t know you were perfect,” he said huskily.

  Her heart
did a wild dance when he reached to claim her and took her with him, back onto the soft, clean sheets. She landed atop him, but he rolled her over and knelt between her slender legs, then bent to kiss her breasts.

  A streak of liquid lightning shot straight to her belly when his tongue and tender teeth brought her nipples to full alert. She dug her fingers into his hair and gasped his name.

  His hands moved gently over her body then, setting off small explosions deep inside her as they swept down the gentle curve of her waist and rounded her hips before starting back up.

  When his palms slipped up her inner thighs she instinctively flexed her knees and his fingers found her raven curls at their juncture … the moist cleft between them.

  Just when she thought she couldn’t stand another moment of this sweet torture, he raised up and lowered himself into the sleek, satiny harbor that awaited him.

  She could feel every warm and vital inch of his body as he pressed her down on the bed. Against the closed lids of her eyes she could see the picture they made—one body lean and hard and bronze, the other slender and soft and pale.

  “I love you,” she whispered, letting her eyes drift open when he entered her.

  “You’re so small—so blessedly, beautifully small.”

  “It’s been a long time.” Since before her divorce, in fact.

  Concern for her took precedence over his pleasure. “Am I hurting you?”

  “No.” She closed the walls of her body around him like a miserly fist, using muscles she hadn’t known she had. “No.”

  “I love you, Kitty.”

  “I love you, Ben.”

  Their mouths fused and their fingers laced.

  He rocked her slowly at first, prolonging the tempest that raged inside her. She lifted her hips in reception to each thrust, riding the swells of excitement as they built and burned.

  Free of the past, they soared further and higher and faster then either had ever been before. She went over the edge first, pulling him with her and drowning in a pleasure so piercing she cried his name at the moment of climax.

  And a passion born of blood and tempered by tragedy finally came of age.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you.”

  They couldn’t say it enough, couldn’t hear it too often.

  Lying face-to-face and heart-to-heart in the languid aftermath, they smiled into each other’s eyes. Firelight bathed them in beauty, turning the pale cones of her breasts into glowing coral and gilding the wiry hair on his chest.

  Ben kissed the tip of her nose. “I remember the first time I got a good look at you—”

  “Yuck!” Kitty made a moue at the thought of how awful she must have looked. “I was covered with coal dust—”

  “And wearing that red neckerchief.”

  “You thought I was going to a costume party.”

  Grinning now, he trailed his hand down her naked side, from beneath her arm to her waist. “Lady Godiva, I presume?”

  Her fingers followed the satiny stripe of hair that bisected his stomach. Smiling impishly, she gave the silk and the steel of him a gentle squeeze. “Happy Halloween.”

  They laughed together, discovered together that laughter could be erotic.

  His expression turned serious then. “I knew the instant I saw you that there was a beautiful woman under all that dirt. I just didn’t realize how beautiful.”

  “I was attracted to you from the git-go too,” she recalled, her blue eye pensive. “I tried to tell myself I couldn’t trust that feeling, but …”

  Ben looked down into her face. A little afraid of his own emotions, he cradled her head in the hollow of his shoulder and stroked her hair with a gentle hand. No one would ever hurt her again.

  Kitty closed her eyes and rested against him, absorbing the comfort he offered. She’d needed his strength and his protection all her adult life. Working her arms around his warm sides, she spread her palms on his naked back and basked in her newfound security.

  He looped his leg over hers and tipped her head back. “Will you marry me, Kitty Reardon?”

  She nodded, her eyes filling with tears of happiness. “I’d be honored, Ben Cooper.”

  “Let’s do it here.”

  “Here?”

  “We’ll invite everyone we know and love.…” It struck him that she wasn’t exactly jumping in with both feet, and he eyed her uncertainly. “Unless you’d rather do it in a church?”

  She shook her head and framed his jaws with both hands. “Given all that’s gone before, I think this would be the perfect place to hold our wedding.”

  “I’ll close the mine for the day.”

  “A paid holiday for the miners.”

  He nipped her bottom lip in loving punishment. “We’ll negotiate the fine points later.”

  She tweaked a clump of his coarse chest hair. “I’ll have a proposal for you within the week.”

  “But in the meantime …” Holding her eyes with the molten force of his own, he lowered his mouth to hers.

  “Mmm,” she whispered against his marauding lips, “I like your management style.”

  “A labor of love,” he assured her, and he kissed her again.

  Her head returned to his shoulder when he released her.

  “This big old house can get mighty lonely at times,” he mused as his warm palm caressed her back, sending shivers around her ribs to the tips of her breasts.

  Behind his words she sensed a vulnerability that touched her heart. “We’ll fill it with so much laughter and so many children, you’ll probably wish it were twice this big.”

  There was no gold as precious as the vision of the future she’d just given him.

  He could see tennis shoes piled by the front door and schoolbooks scattered on the dining room table. Hear the bouncing of a basketball out on the driveway and the pounding of small feet running to greet him at the end of the day. Smell baby powder in the stately halls and brownies baking in the kitchen.

  And all the boyhood years, the lonely years, were truly a thing of the past.

  “How do you think Jessie will like having brothers and sisters?” Ben asked now.

  “She’ll love them.” Kitty smiled with certainty. “As long as we don’t ask her to baby-sit too often, of course.”

  “Of course.” He chuckled as he kissed her mouth softly. “But, you know, we’re not getting any younger.”

  “That’s true.” She let the knee he’d trapped earlier glide up the inside of his leg and felt the evidence of his growing desire. “So we don’t want to waste any time, do we?”

  “Certainly not.” He rolled her to the back and looked down on her from above, the heat of him barely grazing the heart of her. “And since it might take some practice …”

  “Lots of practice—” She gave a start and gripped his forearms as electric sparks rippled through her limbs, sparkling and sizzling to the tips of her fingers and toes.

  “And since there’s no time like the present …” He slipped his hands under her hips and plunged into her heated depths, sharing the sensation to its fullest.

  Their lips bonded, their tongues mated, their bodies moved in harmonious measures. He stroked; she shuddered. She trembled; he thrust. He groaned; she gasped.

  And the long-silent halls of the mansion on the hill echoed with their expressions of love.

  “Benjamin Reardon Cooper.”

  “And if it’s a girl?”

  “Benjaminia?”

  She chuckled tiredly against him. “How about Clementine?”

  “ ‘No, my darlin’, no, my darlin’…’ ” he sang softly into the silk of her hair.

  It had been an emotional night.

  Now, with their bodies sated and the fire burning low, they were indulging in the sweet nothings and sleepy thoughts that bound them as tightly as vows.

  “I don’t know anything about being a father.” The admission came from the deepest part of his soul.

  She laid a reassuring hand on his th
udding heart. “Everything you need to know is right here.”

  His hand joined hers. “Then Jessie is already mine.”

  She swallowed back the tears in her throat. “I love you.”

  He kissed her forehead. “And I love you.”

  They nestled closer under the comforter.

  “What will your relatives think?” Her words were simply spoken, but he sensed the lingering insecurity behind them.

  “That I’m the luckiest guy in the world.”

  She sighed contentedly.

  He gave her a squeeze. “What will your relatives think?”

  “That you’re the luckiest guy in the world.”

  A log hissed its last on the fire.

  “I love you, Kitty Reardon.”

  “I love you, Ben Cooper.”

  The hurting was over.

  And the healing began.

  Epilogue

  Paper valentines of pink and red and purple decorated the gym, the Booster Club was selling candy hearts faster than popcorn, and Ben proudly joined the other fathers on the floor waiting to receive their roses.

  Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with the other men—most of whom would be working with him instead of for him in the near future—he was, in every sense, at peace.

  He’d reached an agreement with the union that was unprecedented in the industry. The miners had overwhelmingly approved a three-year contract that would base their wage partly on incentives and partly on future stock in the new power plant.

  Even though the miners’ hourly wage would remain unchanged through the duration of the contract, they stood to gain more than they ever could have bargained for when the power plant went on line. Other owners were beginning to examine the incentive program, and it was being touted as the wave of the future with regard to labor relations.

  His personal life couldn’t be better, either, he thought as he zeroed in on the spot where Kitty was sitting. Not only had he married a woman who never ceased to amaze and delight him—not to mention turn him on—but he’d gotten a humdinger of a daughter in the process. He really loved Jessie, and he only hoped that any children born of his blood instead of his heart proved half as joyful.