Free Aspen Gold by Janet Dailey Page A

her through the raveling smoke as she took a bite of French fry and closed her eyes.
    "Mmmm, ambrosia," she murmured and proceeded to chew it slowly as if savoring the taste of it. She consumed the next bite with the same slow relish. Until that moment, he hadn't guessed such sensual enjoyment could be derived from a French fry. She paused to lick the salt from her fingers and look at the view. "I like the quiet up here. The stillness. Just the sound of the wind in the brush--and sometimes the bark of a coyote. It always reminds me of home."
    "When was the last time you were back?"
    "Six months ago," she said, her tone changing. "For my father's funeral."
    "I'm sorry." Oddly, he meant it, though he hardly knew her.
    "Thanks." She sent him a small smile, then toyed with the fries in the giant cardboard pouch. "I think you would have liked my dad.
    Everybody did. He had this beautiful laugh--not loud, but full of genuine warmth that filled up your heart with the joy of life. He was always finding reasons to laugh, too. Nothing ever got him down, or kept him there. He was something, my dad."
    He heard the affection in her voice and glanced at his coffee. "Is your mother still alive?"
    She nodded. "She's here in Los Angeles." In a hospital, in a chronic-care ward, a victim of multiple sclerosis, but Kit didn't tell him that. It was her problem and her responsibility, something personal and private. "My parents divorced when I was sixteen."
    "Is that when you came out here?"
    "No. I stayed with Father. I didn't come out here until after college." She lifted her shoulders as if to shrug off the subject. "So, tell me--did you ever suffer pangs of homesickness when you first came to Hollywood?"
    He blew out a stream of smoke. "For which home?"
    "That's right--you were a military brat," Kit remembered. "I read that in a magazine somewhere."
    "My father was a career Marine. About every two years, he was assigned to a new post."

    Unlike Kit, he didn't have any good memories of his boyhood or his parents. He'd hated that life--always fighting the military caste system, always fighting to be accepted in a new school, always fighting the strict discipline his father imposed and his insistence that John always had to be the best at everything.
    "Are your parents still alive?" She carried another fry to her mouth.
    "Yes. My father put in his thirty years with the Marines, took his military pension, and went to work for a defense contractor. He's still hauling my mother all over the country and she's still complaining."
    "Still, they must be very proud of you."
    "Hardly." He smiled without humor. "My father doesn't think acting is the kind of work a man should do. He wanted me to join the Marines.
    Follow in his footsteps. I didn't. I guess you could say I'm the black sheep of the family."
    Kit eyed the burnished light in his hair and shook her head. "You're no black sheep. A golden ram, maybe, but not a black sheep."
    He laughed warmly. It was the first time she'd heard him laugh other than in films. She liked it. "I'll take that as a compliment," he said.
    "It was meant as one." She munched another fry. "Are you sure you don't want some? There are only a few left."
    "I wouldn't want to deprive you." His smile teased.
    "I love the taste of foods," she admitted with an engaging frankness. "Any kind of food.
    French fries, hot dogs at the ballpark, thick juicy steaks, caramel apples--
    especially the sticky, gooey ones, caviar--
    osetra's my favorite."
    He raised an eyebrow. "Not beluga?"
    "It's good, but I like the way the osetra eggs
    "pop" when you press them against the roof of your mouth. As a rule, beluga caviar won't do that."

    "Watching you finish off the last of the fries, I never would have guessed you were a connoisseur of caviar." Why? He wasn't sure. This woman had been surprising him every step of the way.
    She laughed. "Another one of my many talents. Speaking of which"--she paused and stuffed the paper napkins and empty pouch