by Janet Dailey
She lost her breath at his heart-tugging words. Then his mouth covered hers with drugging insistency. And there was no need for words. Words were a hindrance when there was a much more basic form of communication–one that was infinitely more satisfying.
After a time, he kissed her hair. “I think the stove went out.”
“I think you’re right.” She snuggled more closely against him, ignoring the chill.
He chuckled, his chest rumbling with the sound. “Come on. We’d better get dressed and start back.”
Kit sighed because she knew he was right, and reluctantly sat up. Without the heat of his body, the room’s fall chill danced over her skin. She needed no second urging to don her clothes.
Sondra swung the midnight blue Range Rover into the ranch yard. As Aspen-chic as the vehicle was, she loathed driving it. She much preferred the sleek luxury of her Mercedes. But the weather and the roads in the mountains dictated otherwise in the winter.
Pulling up in front of the massive log house, she stole a glance at the dashboard clock. Her timing should be perfect. Laura wouldn’t be home from school for another hour at least. Old Tom could be a problem, but he usually made himself scarce whenever she came.
She stepped out of the Range Rover and paused to scan the ranch yard. All was quiet, no sign of activity. She spotted Bannon’s pickup, confirming the information she’d obtained from Agnes that he was spending the day at the ranch.
Salt crystals crunched underfoot as she climbed the stone steps to the porch. Her glance ran over the stout logs, weathered to a dark color over time. She could well understand why Diana had loathed this house. There was only so much rustic anyone could stand day after day.
Not bothering to knock, Sondra walked in. “Hello? Anyone home?” she called in a mild, questioning voice.
The thud of feet hitting the floor drew her glance to a corner of the living room as Old Tom levered himself out of a leather chair that looked as old and faded as he did.
“Sondra.” He rubbed his face like a man just waking, up and crossed the room at a stiff-jointed walk. “I didn’t hear you knock.”
“I’m sorry if I disturbed you, Tom. I came to see Bannon.”
“He isn’t here.”
“His truck is here. Is he with the cattle?” She half turned back toward the door. “It’s important I talk to him.”
“Nope. He and Kit went skiing.”
She went still, the light flaring of her nostrils the only hint of the rage that swept through her at the mere mention of that name. Slowly, she turned back. “Kit Masters?” Her voice dripped ice.
“Yup. If you ask me, it’s about time those two got back together again.” He hooked his thumbs in the waistband of his pants. If he’d been wearing suspenders he would have snapped them, so blatant was the delight he took in telling her that.
Kit and Bannon. Back together. No. He was lying. She didn’t believe him. Old Tom hated her. He’d always hated her. He’d say anything to hurt her. Two could play at that game.
“You said you needed to see Bannon about something important?”
“Yes. He’s been talking to me about selling the ranch,” she replied smoothly and nearly smiled when she saw the mottling in his face.
“That’s a lie!”
“Why? Because he hasn’t said anything to you about it?” she mocked.
“Bannon would never sell Stone Creek,” he stated emphatically.
“Not while you’re alive, he won’t,” Sondra said with sudden and absolute conviction. “You’re the only thing that’s stopping him. You and all your talk about your precious land. You’ve bound him and gagged him with it until he’s sick of it.”
“That’s not true,” he shouted. “Bannon loves this land as much as I do.”
“You don’t believe that, do you?” She lashed out, not bothering to hide the contempt she felt. “You stupid old man. He hates this place. He hates this drafty old house. He always has.” The sight of his face growing redder and redder spurred her on. “He can hardly wait until you’re dead and gone so he can sell it and move into town. He wants to practice law, not chase a bunch of stupid cattle around. That’s what he’s always wanted.”
“You scheming, two-faced little-” He broke it off, his voice vibrating like the rest of him. “Out! Get out of my house!”
“Yes, you’d like that, wouldn’t you, Old Tom? You’d like it even better if I got out of Bannon’s life, wouldn’t you? You’ve always hated me. You’ve tried over and over to poison Bannon against me. But it hasn’t worked, has it? It will never work. Because it’s you he hates. You and this ranch, this stupid land!”
“Out! Out of my house, I tell you!” Purpling, he took a threatening step toward her and thrust out a big hand, pointing to the door, shaking like a giant timber. “Get out of my house before I throw you out! I-” He gasped suddenly, his mouth and his eyes opening wide as he staggered, clutching a hand to his chest.
She saw the glazing of pain in his eyes and moved in. “Can’t your heart take the truth? Is it giving out, Old Tom? Are you finally going to die? We’ve been waiting for it. Waiting so we can sell this place.”
He staggered away from her, the sound of his breathing a horrible rasp. She realized he was trying to get to the phone. She made it to the table ahead of him and snatched it out of his reach. His legs buckled out from under him and he crumbled to the floor.
Sondra sat down in a chair and watched him until there was no more movement. One minute. Five minutes. She didn’t know.
At last she went over to him and crouched down, touching his neck and feeling for a pulse. Nothing. She smiled.
The front door opened. Whirling to face it, she stood up, briefly panicking. But it wasn’t Bannon. It was one of the ranch hands. He stood motionless for an instant, staring at Sondra and the body of Old Tom on the floor beside her.
“I found him lying on the floor,” she said hurriedly. “I think he’s had a head attack. I can’t find a pulse.”
“Hank!” The cowboy shouted at somebody outside, then swiftly crossed to the old man. “Call an ambulance,” he told Sondra.
She went to the phone and dialed the emergency number. As it rang the first time, the second cowboy burst into the house.
“Get your rifle and signal Bannon,” the first one ordered. “It’s Old Tom.”
“Shit,” the man cursed as he wheeled and went back out.
Sondra watched the first cowboy open Old Tom’s shut and start CPR. A voice came on the line. “Yes, this is Sondra Hudson. I’m at Stone Creek Ranch. The Bannon place. It’s Tom Bannon. We think he’s had a heart attack. We found him lying on the floor. Send an ambulance right away.”
He was dead. She was sure he was dead.
A rifle cracked once, twice, three times, the loud report of it reverberating across the mountain valley.
The rifle shots, then later the wail of an ambulance siren-a thousand thoughts raced through Bannon’s mind as he slithered and twisted through the trees, making a mad dash for home, with Kit right behind him. But only one surfaced when he glimpsed the ambulance parked at the house, not by the barns or corrals. His father.
When he broke out of the trees onto the level ground of the valley floor, Hank Gibbs roared out with the stock truck to meet him. Bannon threw their skis and poles in the back, pushed Kit into the cab, and climbed in after her.
“It’s Old Tom, Bannon.” Hank took off without waiting for him to get the door shut.
“What happened? How bad is it?” He hated the question; he hated saying it, he didn’t want to hear the answer. He’d always known this day would come. His father was old; he couldn’t live forever. He thought he’d prepared himself for this. He hadn’t. You can’t prepare for death, not your own or your loved ones’.
“It’s bad. Your sister-in-law found him on the living-room floor. Somebody said there wasn’t no pulse. When I saw you coming and left to get you, them ambulance guys had zapped him, but…I don’t know.”
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br /> Jaws clenched tight in silent protest, Bannon said nothing.
The truck pulled into the yard. Bannon was out of it before it came to a full stop. Sondra rushed toward him.
“Bannon. Thank God, you’re here-”
He brushed past her, not really seeing or hearing her. His eyes were on the front door. Then Hec Rawlins was in his path, blocking him.
“They’re bringing him out, Bannon.” The front door opened, confirming his statement. He saw the ambulance medics in jacket-covered whites, the gurney, a body on it.
“Is…is he alive?” He had to push the question out.
The affirming nod was hesitant. “They want to get him to the hospital where the doctors can work on him.” Hec paused, then added, “That old man’s tough, Bannon. As tough as they come. If anyone can make it, he can.”
They had the gurney down the steps. As they rolled it quickly toward the ambulance, Bannon fell in beside it, keeping pace, his gaze riveted on his father’s face, seeing the closed eyes, the strange pallor beneath that seared and weathered skin, the slack muscles, the oxygen mask over the nose and mouth-the shell.
“Dad.” It was a choked sound, barely audible.
When they reached the ambulance, Bannon stepped back, out of the way. A hand pressed on his arm, demanding his attention.
“Ride with me, Bannon,” Sondra urged. “We’ll be at the hospital when they get there.”
He shook his head. “I’m riding with Dad.”
“Then I’ll meet you there.”
“No.” He turned, some rational part of his mind finally working again, forcing back all the feelings that crowded him. “Laura. Pick Laura up from school. Take her home with you. I’ll call as soon as I know anything.”
“But you’ll need someone with you,” she protested.
“Laura will need you more.”
“I’ll bring her to the hospit-”
“No, I don’t want to put her through that. Take her home. You got that?” he demanded harshly.
She drew her head back, her expression stiff. “Yes. I’ll take her home.”
They had his father loaded in the ambulance. Bannon scrambled in after them.
“Sorry,” the medic said to someone behind him. “There’s only room for one.”
Thinking it was Sondra, Bannon looked back and saw Kit.
“I’ll bring the truck,” she told him as the ambulance doors closed.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Agitated, anxious, Sondra paced from the telephone in the darkened living room to the expanse of glass that gave her a view of the driveway of her Red Mountain house. Darkness. Nothing but darkness. No flash of headlights to indicate a vehicle traveling over the twisting, climbing road to her house. There was only the sprawl of Aspen’s lights and the enamel black of the sky overhead aglitter with stars.
Where was he? Why didn’t Bannon come?
Arms crossed, fingers digging into her flesh, she pivoted and walked back to the phone, staring at it, willing it to ring. Silence. She turned sharply and stopped.
Three hours. It had been three hours since Bannon had called. To tell her what? That there had been no change, no improvement, and-no, his father hadn’t regained consciousness.
But what if he did? What if he talked? What if he told Bannon the things she’d said? If she was there, she could convince Bannon not to listen to his crazy ramblings, she could convince him he had her mixed up with Diana.
But Kit was there instead. She’d make Bannon believe anything that stupid old man said. She had to be stopped. That old bastard had to die before he ruined everything.
“Emily. Emily!” She swept through the darkened room toward the kitchen and the maid’s quarters beyond it.
Sondra reached the kitchen as the Englishwoman walked out of her room, hurriedly tying the sash to her house robe. “Yes, mum. What is it?”
“I’m going to the hospital. Laura is in her room asleep. Listen for her in case she wakes up.”
“Yes, mum.”
As Sondra turned to leave, the phone rang. She grabbed the kitchen extension before it could ring a second time. “Hello?” she said expectantly, a tension knotting through her nerves.
“It’s Bannon.”
Fractionally, she tightened her grip on the receiver. “Your father?”
“He passed away ten minutes ago.” The flat, emotionless tone of his voice made her pause.
“Did he-was he able to say anything at all to you?” “No, nothing.”
She closed her eyes briefly in relief. “I’m sorry, Bannon.”
“How’s Laura?”
“She’s in bed asleep right now. Do you want me to--”
“Don’t wake her. Let her sleep. I’ll tell her in the morning.”
“That’s probably best.”
“I’ll see you in the morning, then.”
“Aren’t you coming over? I can make some fresh coffee and-“
“No, I…not tonight. Thanks for looking after Laura for me, Sondra. It helps knowing she’s with you.”
“If there’s anything you need, anything I can do, call.”
“Thanks.”
Sondra hung up. The tiniest glint of satisfaction in her eyes. From behind her, Emily Boggs asked, “The elder Mr. Bannon, is he-”
“He’s dead.” Dead, and out of the way at last.
The stillness of the house hit him the minute Bannon walked in. It stopped him and held him motionless for a long second. Slowly, he reached up and slid his hat off, lowering it to his side.
“I’ll hang that up for you,” Kit said quietly as she slipped the hat from the grip of his unresisting fingers.
He peeled off the ski jacket as if it might lighten the weight pressing down on him. She took that from him as well and hung it on a wall peg while he walked slowly to the table where his father had been found. He looked at the floor, then lifted his gaze to the timbered balcony and the bedroom doors leading off from it.
It hurt to breathe. Bannon caught himself listening for sounds-any sound that would indicate there was life in this house, not merely the hollow echoes of it. Its silence seemed to say more emphatically than the doctor’s words that his father would never again clump down those stairs, never rear back his head and expound at length about the land, the mountains. He combed a hand through his hair, trying to rake out the knowledge that clawed at his throat and his mind.
Without saying a word, Kit moved past him to the fireplace. Kneeling on the stone hearth, she gathered kindling from the box and set about building a fire. Soon the crackle of flames curling over split logs broke the crushing silence. Bannon gravitated toward the light and the heat.
Kit watched him, his expression closed in and hard, only the stark despair in his eyes revealing any hint of the awful tension inside. She wanted to absorb some of it, draw it from him into herself. But she knew he wasn’t ready to be comforted yet. He was still trying to reject the truth, still trying to deal with the helpless anger, still trying to accept this sudden hole he found in his life. She remembered that feeling of unreality she’d gone through when she learned of her father’s death. So she waited.
Slowly, Bannon lowered himself into a chair in front of the fireplace and stared into the flames. A faint noise, part of the creakings and groanings of an old house, broke his absorption. He lifted his head, listening for a taut second, then closing his eyes as a sigh broke from him.
“I keep expecting him to walk in, grumping about something,” he admitted, meeting her gaze, finally acknowledging her presence.
“I know.” She shifted to sit on her knees by his chair, smoothing a hand over the top of his and covering it.
“He’s dead.” He rubbed a hand across his mouth. “I keep telling myself that, but I look at his chair and think to myself that he’s only left the room, that he’ll be back. His presence is that strong.”
“It always will be.”
His hand reached out to touch her cheek. “I can’t believe he’s gone, Kit.�
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“He isn’t gone, Bannon. He’s here.” She leaned closer and placed a hand over his, heart. “He’s right here where he’ll always be-in your heart. Can’t you feel his big hands squeezing it to tell you it’s so?”
In the next second, Bannon gathered her up and pulled her over the arm of the chair, crushing her hard against him. He buried his face in her hair, the sweet, clean smell of it striking deeply into him. The shadow of death seemed all around him, but here was life. He held on to it tightly.
“Kiss me,” he demanded in a voice that was both desperate and fierce. “Make me feel alive, Kit.”
His mouth roughly covered hers, pain, urgency, and the need for life all tangled up in the harshness of it.
Long after the need was satisfied, Kit held him in her arms, tears in her eyes and on her cheeks. His were dry. He was Old Tom Bannon’s son; he cried his tears on the inside.
The glare of the morning sun bounced off the polarized lenses of the sunglasses John Travis wore. He ran up the steps to Kit’s house and crossed to the front door. He knocked twice and waited, listening for footsteps inside. He tried again, this time pounding hard enough to rattle the glass panes in the door. Still there was no sound of anyone stirring.
Impatiently, he swept his glance over the ranch yard, his unease growing. Damn it, her Jeep was here. Where the hell was she?
He hadn’t realized how far the ranch house sat back from the highway, how isolated it was. Kit was so damned trusting she’d open her door to a total stranger. She probably didn’t even lock her damned doors.
On that thought, he tried the front door. It swung open with a turn of the knob and a push. He walked in, half expecting to see the place ransacked. It wasn’t.
“Kit!” He shouted her name and crossed to the stairs.
Five minutes later he was back in the living room. He’d checked every room in the house. There was no sign of her, and no sign of a struggle. Yet her clothes were in the closet and her makeup was strewn over the bathroom counter.
