Aspen Gold

by Janet Dailey

He finished the chorus and held the last note, bringing the song to an end. She opened her eyes when she heard his footsteps cross the pine floor.

  “More coffee?”

  She held out her mug. “Lighter on the whiskey this time.”

  “Can’t hold your liquor?” he taunted gently.

  “Not tonight. The day’s been too long-too full.”

  “I know the feeling.” He took her mug and headed for the kitchen.

  Kit turned her head toward the fire. It had faded to a few flames flickering here and there among the glowing embers. Bannon came back within moments carrying the refilled mugs. He set Kit’s on the table beside her chair. She glanced at the steam billowing off the coffee’s surface and left it sit there to cool.

  Leaving his mug on the mantelpiece, Bannon poked the fire to life and threw on another log from the wood box. He remained by the hearth, watching the leap of flames. A soft, inadvertent sigh of contentment slipped from Kit, drawing his glance.

  “Tired?”

  She shook her head. “Actually I feel two things-safe and secure. It’s this house,” she decided and let her eyes drift over the room’s tall, log-beamed ceiling, “It’s so solid and sturdy, nothing penetrates it. Not howling winter winds, not the rain, not the world’s turmoils, nothing. They all pass by and this big old log house just stands here.” A smile pulled at one corner of her mouth. “I suppose you think I’m being overly romantic.”

  “No.” His gaze made the same slow journey over the sturdy log structure. “This ranch has survived a lot of storms and a lot of trouble. A good many people have lived out their whole lives on Stone Creek. That feeling is soaked into the house.”

  “It’s soaking into me, too,” she mused. “Here, in this house, nothing in the outside world seems very important anymore.”

  Bannon saw the tension that had gripped her earlier was gone. The languor of fatigue now showed itself in her heavy lids and the higher color of her cheeks. She sat purely relaxed in the chair, her body graceful and careless, the glow of her spirit shining in her eyes-unsettling him.

  “Maybe that’s why I liked coming here so much,” she said thoughtfully. “Even when I was a young girl, I think I knew things weren’t right between my parents. I must have sensed the invisible friction between them. Or maybe it was my mother’s cold silences that made me uncomfortable at home. I’m not sure anymore. But this house became my haven. In some strange way, it gave me the stability I needed to balance my father’s laughter and my mother’s silence, and my own confusion and guilt.”

  He eyed her curiously. “It’s odd to hear someone from Hollywood talk about stability.”

  Kit pushed the footstool back and stood up “I’m not from Hollywood; I’m from right here–Aspen, Colorado. But living in L.A. makes it all the more necessary.” She slipped the tips of her fingers inside the hip pockets of her jeans and wandered over to the hearth.

  “What’s gives you that stability now?”

  “I’m not sure I have one,” she admitted in a deliberately careless voice, realizing it had always been here, it had always been Stone Creek. “Maybe that’s my problem.” She shrugged as if it didn’t matter.

  She glanced sideways at him, meeting his slanted gaze. Again Kit felt caught by the strong undercurrent of things long ago said and done. She saw him draw back from it, then turn his head and lift it slightly.

  Following the new track of his glance, she noticed the framed photograph, of his late wife, sitting on the mantelpiece only inches from his fingers. Years ago, she’d conceded Diana was very beautiful, possessed of a dark allure that men dreamed about. Kit tried desperately to hate the face in the photograph, but there was a vulnerable quality in it that made it impossible.

  “You think about her a lot, don’t you?” Kit broached the subject they had never discussed in all this time. Bannon didn’t like it; she sensed that immediately.

  “I think about a lot of things.” He pulled his hand from the mantel and stood a little straighter, a little stiffer.

  “You think of her,” she persisted stubbornly. “At night. When you’re tired. When you’re lonely.”

  “Kit.” Impatience riddled his voice.

  Ignoring it, she regarded him critically, for a moment separating her own feelings and striving for objectivity. He was a solid man, strong and physically alive, a man in his prime. He had a man’s thoughts and a man’s desires. The memory of his late wife, as clear as it might be to him and as near as it might be, wasn’t enough. A pale shadow couldn’t satisfy him.

  “You should get married, Bannon.”

  He looked at her, surprise and anger in his expression. “I think that’s my business.” He clipped out the words, making it plain he didn’t regard it as a subject for discussion.

  “When has that ever stopped me from giving you my opinion?” They both knew the answer was “never.” “You know I’m speaking the truth. Laura is getting to the age where she’ll want a mother to talk to as she grows up.” Kit recalled too well how many times she’d gone to her own mother with questions-and been given pamphlets to read. Facts hadn’t helped her to understand her feelings.

  “I know that,” he said in the same brusque tone.

  “Then do something about it,” she insisted, then flicked a hand at Diana’s picture. “That door is closed. You’ve got to stop watching it as if someday it’ll open again. You’ve got to stop looking back. For a man like you, Bannon, an old lavender-and-lace memory is wrong.” She believed it and she said it in a strong, even voice.

  “Stop it, Kit.” His temper flared as he swung to her, catching her by the arms. “Stop rummaging through me like this.”

  The contact was a mistake. Bannon knew it the instant he felt the firmness of her flesh beneath his hands. He saw in her eyes that she knew it, too. But it was too late. He felt that old pressure drawing him to her lips.

  This time he surrendered to it, pulling her into his arms and bringing his mouth down to cover hers. The roughness of his need turned him half-angry as he sought to bury both the pain and the regret of the past.

  Kit strained into it, needing it, her heart catching at the discovery that nothing had changed. It was there-the same wild sweetness, the same immense shock, the same feeling of a deep need satisfied. There was a feeling in her of richness, of fullness, of happiness.

  He pulled away. For an instant, his callused hand cupped her cheek with almost loving gentleness. His dark eyes raced over her face with a look in them that had Kit swaying back. He checked the movement, then stepped back and turned away, but not before Kit had glimpsed the shadow that had passed over his face-that pale shadow of Diana.

  For an instant, everything inside her went still, the pain sharp and intense. The sting of tears was at the back of her eyes. She kept them there. Pride was a shallow thing, but it was all she had.

  “Kit-” Bannon began in a voice that was much too serious and much too loaded.

  “Let’s just say our trip down memory lane went a little farther than either of us wanted and leave it at that, Bannon,” Kit suggested calmly but firmly. “It’s time I went home. Good night.”

  She grabbed up her jacket and headed for the door. Halfway to it, she stopped and swore, then gave up and laughed dryly at her foolish theatrics. “So much for a dramatic exit.” Turning she looked at Bannon. “Can I beg a lift? I forgot, my transportation is broken down in your corral.”

  As the humor of it touched him, too, the troubled light left his eyes and a slow smile touched his mouth. “Give me a minute to let Laura know where I’m going.”

  “Sure. I’ll be outside.”

  As Bannon climbed the stairs to his daughter’s room, Kit shrugged into her jacket and pulled on her stocking cap and gloves. She stepped out into the night’s sharp cold, almost welcoming its chilling blast, and crossed the porch to wait at the top of the steps.

  The moon hung halfway up the sky, the yellow of its rising gone and its face turned to scarred white ice. It was a wint
er moon. Gazing at it, Kit murmured softly to herself, “It seems we’re both haunted by ghosts from the past, Bannon. The only difference is-yours is dead and mine is living.”

  The front door opened behind her, the sound sending Kit down the steps before Bannon could join her. The drive from Stone Creek to Silverwood was a short one, but she had a feeling it would seem very long tonight.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  On Red Mountain, the living-room lights in Sondra Hudson’s slope-side home flicked off one by one. The English domestic, Emily Boggs, switched off the last lamp and paused to admire the glitter of Aspen’s lights now clearly visible beyond the room’s sweep of glass. A smug, self-satisfied smile briefly curved her lips and smoothed the fine age lines at the edges of them when she thought how impressed-how envious-her sister from Cornwall would be when she came to visit in January.

  Touching the gilded back of a Hepplewhite chair, Emily Boggs decided that she and her sister would sit here, sip their sherry, and nibble on some delectable morsels from her employer’s well-stocked kitchen while they watched the torch parade and fireworks spill over the mountain across the valley. Her smile strengthened with an awareness that there were very definite advantages to being a live-in domestic other than the handsome salary she was paid, especially when one had a craving for rich surroundings and neither the brains nor the beauty to acquire them oneself. There were also responsibilities, she recalled with a sigh and turned.

  Her sensible, soft-soled shoes made almost no sound as she crossed the living room’s black marble floor, the rubbing swish of legs encased in support hose whispering through the silence, accompanied by the faint rustle of her polyester uniform. She passed into the hallway and followed it to the master suite.

  The door stood open, light bathing every corner of the black, red, and gold room. Emily Boggs paused in the opening her lips thinning at the sight of her employer ensconced in the center of the queen-sized bed, papers and drawings spread all over the red and gold satin spread. With that absolutely gorgeous glass-and-marble-walled study just down the hall, she would never understand why her employer invariably brought her work to the bedroom. Beds were for sleeping or sharing with a man, not for using as a worktable. Although she didn’t know why that surprised her. Her employer practically lived in the bedroom. The rest of the house could slide down the mountain for all the time she spent in it-unless she was having a party or her young niece came or Bannon was here.

  Bannon. Within months after coming to work for Sondra Hudson, Emily Boggs had realized that the woman was out to get her dead sister’s husband for her own. In all the seven years Emily had worked for her, that had never changed. If anything, failure to get him beyond her bed to the altar had made Sondra more determined to have him.

  Something about that always reminded Emily of her baby brother, who had gotten hooked on heroin years ago. The doctors had given him another drug to get him off it. It hadn’t worked. Nothing would satisfy him but the heroin. That addiction had finally killed Teddy.

  The remembrance of his death automatically had Emily offering up a silent prayer for his poor soul. Then she shifted slightly and waited for her employer to look up from the notes she was making, never doubting for a moment that Sondra Hudson knew she was there. In any case, she wasn’t about to invite the sharp slash of the woman’s tongue by disturbing her concentration. She’d made that mistake once before, and learned from it.

  In the best British tradition, Emily Boggs stood rigidly in place and silently regarded her employer, sitting in the middle of the bed, all sleek and elegant in her black satin kimono and silver blond hair.

  “What is it you want, Miss Boggs?” Sondra Hudson looked up, but not at her. Instead she directed her gaze at the black lacquer-and-brass armoire that housed an entertainment center. Belatedly, Emily noticed the television was on although no sound came from it.

  “Would you like me to take your tray away now, mum?” she inquired, thickening the accent that had helped her get fifty dollars more per week than was standard in Aspen.

  “Yes.” Sondra continued to scrutinize the stunning mountain and autumn images on the screen.

  Advancing into the room, Emily crossed to the Oriental chest that served as a nightstand. Atop it was the meal she’d prepared nearly two hours earlier. Inroads had been made on the Italian shrimp salad with oranges and herbed orzo, but the chocolate-walnut torte had only one bite taken from it. She stared at the rich dessert, recalling the delicious taste of it she’d had earlier when she’d cleaned off the knife and licked the crumbs from her fingers.

  “Shall I leave the torte? You’ve barely touched it, mum.”

  “I don’t want it.”

  “Yes, mum.” Emily Boggs picked up the tray, already thinking that a cup of tea would go nicely with the torte, She certainly wasn’t about to throw it away.

  “CeeCee Hunt will be by around ten tomorrow morning,” Sondra informed her without taking her eyes from the screen. “He needs to recheck some measurements in the living room. Something to do with ceiling clearance for some decoration he has in mind for the Halloween party. He might bring someone with him. I’m not sure, but let them in.”

  “As you wish, mum.” She crossed silently to the door, tray in hand, then paused. “Will you require anything else this evening?”

  “Some coffee.”

  Emily suppressed a sigh. “The Colombian blend or-”

  “That will be fine.”

  As the housekeeper departed, the television screen flickered and went to a fuzzy gray, signaling the end of the tape. Sondra picked up the VCR’s remote control, stopped the tape and pressed the rewind button, then glanced through her notes. A few minor edits and the tape would be ready for Lassiter to view. She glanced down at the land plans and the accompanying sketches for the proposed development she called Silverwood. Nothing really major there either. The financial projections for the development were already finished. Which meant she should have everything ready to present to Lassiter by the end of the week.

  There was no way he could reject this property, not once he saw the profit figures. The thought of the way his eyes would dilate when he saw the numbers had Sondra lying back against the bed’s gilded headboard and raising her hands above her bead in a feline stretch, a throaty little laugh of anticipation bubbling out. It was going to be sweet, the sweetest sight she’d ever seen. She caught up one of the embroidered throw pillows and hugged its feathery plumpness over her stomach.

  The soft burr of the telephone intruded on her extremely satisfying reverie. Sighing, she reached out a hand and plucked the receiver from its cradle without shifting from her reclining position

  “Hello?” She nestled the receiver against her ear.

  “Sondra. It’s Warren.”

  “Warren-” She started to mention that she’d just reviewed the videotape, but he cut her off.

  “Has your boyfriend told you what he’s up to?”

  “Bannon?” She frowned in bewilderment. “What are you talking about?”

  “He’s been burning up the telephone lines this past week, calling every major environmental group and foundation in the country, and pitching them on the idea of buying the Masters ranch.”

  “What?” Sondra sat up, still clutching the pillow.

  “He didn’t mention that to you, did he?”

  “No.” But it sounded exactly like something be would do. “Not that it matters. All those groups move with the speed of an arthritic snail, and few of them could come even close to meeting the asking price. I’ll have it sold long before he gets a ‘maybe’ out of any of them.”

  “You’re re probably right.”

  “I know I am.” But why hadn’t Bannon mentioned any of this? Why hadn’t he asked her to help? That bothered her a great deal more than his actions. “Is that all you wanted, Warren?”

  “Then I’ll see you in the morning.” She broke the connection, then immediately listened for a dial tone and called Bannon at the ranch. />
  After the fourth ring, Laura answered. “Stone Creek Ranch.”

  Sondra stilled an initial surge of irritation and sad pleasantly, “Laura, I thought you’d be in bed by now. Haven’t you finished your schoolwork yet?”

  “I’ve just got a couple more pages to read in my history book.”

  “Well, I won’t keep you from it. Let me speak to your father.”

  “He isn’t here.”

  “He isn’t?”

  “No. He left to take her home.” Laura stressed the word with whiny sarcasm.

  Sondra knew intuitively whom she meant. “Kit Masters was there tonight? What did she want?”

  “Who knows?” she grumbled. “I went up to my room. But I heard her ask him to play the piano for her. ‘Something soft and soothing,’ she said.”

  “Did he?” Her mouth was fixed in a taut curve, her fingers curling even deeper into the pillow on her lap.

  “Yeah, a lot of dreamy Beethoven stuff. It was sickening.”

  “I can imagine,” Sondra responded with a distasteful murmur.

  “Did you want me to leave a note for Dad to call you when he gets home?”

  “No. I’ll-I’ll talk to him tomorrow.”

  “He’ll be sorry he missed you.”

  “Good night, Laura,” she said in a very tightly controlled voice and hung up.

  Leaving her own tea to steep in its pot, Emily Boggs carried the small serving tray with its porcelain coffeepot and attendant cup and saucer arranged on top. When she passed the gilded mirror in the hall, she glimpsed a telltale torte crumb near the corner of her mouth and quickly licked away the evidence of the bite she’d snitched before exiting the kitchen.

  Before she reached the master suite, Sondra stalked out of it, her long legs slicing out from the fold of the black kimono.

  “Clean up that mess,” she snapped as she went past.

  “What mess is that, mum?” Emily asked with some confusion.

  When she failed to get a reply, she stepped into the bedroom and froze, her mouth dropping open. Feathers. Soft downy feathers were everywhere, but the biggest fluffy mound was on the bed-next to an embroidered pillow cover that looked as if it had been ripped apart.