Free King of the Mountain by Fran Baker Page A

a response. Her jaw lost some of the tension that had prevented his invasion. She raised her arms, bringing the heat and the hardness of him home to her, then half sobbed against his mouth at this betraying weakness.
    His tongue took its natural course, delving into her silken depths, and she knew a treasured feeling she’d never experienced before. She felt her knees weaken as the kiss became a microcosm of the whole sexual act, and she slid her fingers into his hair, seeking a grip on her sanity.
    Like a crisp slap to her satiny cheek, the autumn breeze brought her back to her senses.
    She tore her mouth from his and turned her head away, whispering brokenly, “Ben—”
    His lips found the vulnerable pulse point below her ear. “I want you, Kitty.”
    “No!” She gasped as his flicking tongue set off another series of explosions inside her.
    “Yes.” He groaned, his voice and lips like velvet as he sought the vulnerable hollow of her throat.
    Frantic now, she moved her hands from his neck to his chest, holding him at bay as best she could. “Stop it!”
    It finally penetrated his passion-fogged mind that he’d gone too far, that she wasn’t ready for this. He did a slow pushup, feeling the rough scrape of bark against his palms, and looked down at the desperate expression on her face.
    “What’s wrong?”
    She closed her eyes, her long lashes black fans against her pale skin, and shook her head.
    He studied her as clinically as possible under the circumstances, experience telling him that a woman didn’t run hot one minute and cold the next without a damn good reason. But what in the …?
    A half-dozen possibilities struck him at once. He discarded most of them as quickly as they came to mind. The one that remained seemed almost too heinous to consider. But consider it he did.
    He had no proof, but that didn’t keep him from demanding, “Who was it, Kitty?”
    Her eyes flew open and he knew he was right on target.
    “Your father?” It happened in the best of families.
    She looked shocked at the very idea. “Of course not!”
    “One of the miners?”
    “No!”
    “Your ex-husband?”
    She drew in a shuddering breath and ducked under his arm. “I’ve got to go check on the girls.”
    He reached to bring her back where she belonged. “Wait—”
    She broke into a run, her pounding footsteps shattering the stillness as she dodged between the trees and cut toward the creek bank.
    Ben stared at the ground and counted to ten, giving both his ardor and his anger time to cool. Then he shoved his fists into his pockets and followed her out of the woods, wondering where they went from here.
    Patience, he reminded himself when he spotted Kitty helping the girls clean the fish they’d caught. That was the key. He started down the slope he’d successfully reclaimed to lend them a hand. If patience would do the trick, he’d be patient. He’d be patient if it killed him—and it damned well might.
    Kitty fried the fish; Ben made his “famous” jalapeño corn bread; Jessie and Jamie set the table.
    It was Jessie’s idea that he stay for dinner. He’d supplied the fishing poles, she’d pointed out in the forthright manner of a twelve-year-old, so it was only fair that he get to eat his share of the catch.
    One pleading look Kitty could have handled. But when Ben had bent his knees to bring his face down on a level with her daughter’s, she’d felt anew the tug at her heartstrings at the thought of him going home to that empty house on the hill. And she’d known she was outnumbered.
    “Get a whiff of this,” he said, passing the warn pan of pepper-studded corn bread under her nose
    “Whew!” She fanned at the jalapeño steam rising toward her face. “Brings tears to my eyes jus to smell it.”
    “Wait’ll you taste it.”
    “Is that a threat or a promise?”
    He set the pan on a wire rack, his smiling eyes turning somber and his commanding presence shrinking the walls of her U-shaped kitchen.
    She