by Janet Dailey
Under the circumstances, Kit wasn’t surprised she had blanked out his technical explanation about the machinations of inheritance tax laws. Understanding such things herself hadn’t been high on her list of priorities at the time-not when she had so many other, more pressing, concerns on her mind.
“So, what happens if I sell the ranch?”
“If you sell it within a certain period of time, you’re liable for the estate tax on the difference. Without checking, I can’t say if that’s one year or two. Why? You told me you wanted to keep the ranch.” The statement bordered on a challenge.
“I know I did. But I had no idea it was worth so much. Ten million dollars is a lot of money, Bannon.”
He flipped the cigar into the night. “Nobody pays that much money for land unless they’re confident they can make it back twice over.” His voice turned cool. “They won’t do that by ranching, Kit.”
“No.” She recognized that.
Bannon had never made a secret of his opposition to more development in the Roaring Fork Valley and the Elk Mountain Range. That opposition would be even stronger if it occurred on land adjoining Stone Creek Ranch. She understood that, and, to an extent, she agreed with him. Which made her own decision that much harder.
Door hinges squeaked a warning as Old Tom stepped onto the porch. “Bannon.” His voice searched the shadows. “I heard voices. Are you talking to yourself out here?”
Welcoming the interruption, Kit pushed out of the rocker. “No. He’s talking to me,” she said cheerfully.
“Kit.” He peered at her face in surprise, then noticed the chestnut standing hip-locked at the bottom of the steps, and scowled. “A girl like you has got no business ramming around thew mountains at night alone.”
She laughed and planted a kiss on his cheek, feeling the rasp of a day’s growth of whiskers. “You said the same thing to me when I was sixteen.”
“Sixteen or sixty, it would still be the truth,” he grumbled in an effort to disguise his pleasure at her kiss.
But his comment caused Kit a sharp twinge of sadness. She wouldn’t be ramming around these mountains at night when she was sixty. There was no chance of it, not once she sold the ranch. Yet, there had been a time when she thought
she’d grow old and happy in these very mountains.
“How come you two are sitting out here? Don’t you know it’s cold? Come on inside.” He waved them both toward the door. “The coffee’s hot and Sadie baked a chocolate cake. It’s a little on the dry side but a scoop of ice cream’ll fix that.”
Kit glanced at the log ranch house that had been like a second home to her when she was growing up. Going in would just stir up more old memories, and that didn’t seem wise.
“I’d better not,” she said with a faint shake of her head. “I left Paula at the house by herself. If I’m gone much longer, she might start wondering if something happened to me.”
“And she’d be right to worry, too. Ride home with her, Bannon,” he ordered, just as he had all those years ago.
Kit protested automatically. “It isn’t necessary. I-”
“Give up, Kit,” Bannon said, his long shape making a black silhouette in the shadows. “It’s an argument you won’t win.” She closed her mouth, knowing he was right. “Give me a minute to catch up the buckskin.”
“Sure.” She watched him go down the steps and head for the corral, striding with an easy, masculine gait.
“Might as well go give him a hand,” Old Tom said. “That’s what you always used to do.”
“I know.” But she took her time crossing to the barn, leading the chestnut. When she reached it, Bannon was cinching the saddle on the black-maned buckskin.
“Ready?” He threw her a took.
“Ready.” Kit nodded.
They mounted and cantered out of the yard into the night, riding abreast along the wide dirt track of a ranch road and following it all the way up to the summer pastures. In silence, they crossed the dun yellow surface of the high meadows, lit by the pale light of a sickle moon.
At a far corner of the meadow, they struck the game trail and traveled single file along the narrow, steepening path. The strike of iron-shod hooves on rock and the clatter of stones rang across the night’s stillness. Then they passed into the cathedral-like silence of the pines, where all was hushed and muted.
Beyond the pines, the trail turned and rose sharply into a rocky defile. As both horses labored to make the climb, the chestnut slipped and scrambled to regain solid footing. Bannon turned in the saddle to check on the others.
“Okay?”
“Yes.”
“We’ll rest where the trail widens up here.”
“Right.”
After another hundred yards, they broke out of the rocks and the ground leveled out for a short stretch. Bannon pulled the buckskin in and swung out of the saddle, catching the chestnut’s reins as Kit dismounted.
“I forgot how rough the climb is coming back.” She hooked the stirrup over the saddle horn and loosened the cinch strap, watching while Bannon ran an exploring hand down the chestnut’s front legs.
“It’s a hard climb for any horse at any age.” He straightened and gave the gelding a pat, dropping the reins to let the ends trail the ground. “But you’re okay, aren’t you, Dance?”
Kit followed when Bannon moved away from the horses. “Just the same, I’m glad it’s not much farther.” They had stopped in the shadow of the ridge top. Silverwood lay on the other side of it.
“No, it’s not much farther,” he agreed idly and paused, facing the rugged body of land they’d just traveled over.
His shoulders made a black cut against the night; the brim of his hat shadowed much of his face. Standing there, he reminded her of the land itself. He had its same rugged and enduring qualities, its deep silences and harsh beauty.
Then he turned, his gaze seeking hers, the moonlight touching his face, burned by wind and sun and marked by fine lines radiating out from the corners of his eyes-lines left by a lifetime of gazing into long distances and bright sunlight undimmed by city smog. His smile was a slash of white.
“This is the way it should be, Kit. A lot of riding. A little fun. Something to remember when it’s all over.”
“Yes,” she said faintly, then again with gathering conviction. “Yes, it is.”
He swung away, throwing a glance at the horses. “We might as well rest ourselves, too.” He crossed to a gnarled tree and settled himself at the base of it, then patted the ground. “Sit down.”
Kit toed a rock out of the way, then dropped down near him, and folded her legs beneath her. She trailed a gloved hand over the ground, then lifted some of the loose earth and let it sift through her fingers.
“No explanation, no apologies. That’s the way you’ve always been,” she remarked idly, thinking out loud.
“What else can anybody do?”
“Nothing, I suppose,” She shrugged. “But I imagine it makes it hard for people to understand you sometimes.”
“You never had any trouble figuring me out,” Bannon recalled.
“Ah, but I have a special gift that way. I know you through and through,” she declared, silently laughing with him, influenced by that undercurrent that had always buoyed them when they were together.
Shifting position, she stretched fully out on the ground and pillowed her head with her hands, staring at the starflung sky. “Nothing ever changes, Bannon. Not the mountains or the moonlight. Not the things I want, or you want.”
“What do you want?” He eyed her curiously.
She turned her head, so close to him that he could see the blue flakes of color in her eyes-and the dance of laughter in them.
“Bannon,” she said with mock reproval. “Never ask a woman’s age, and never ask her what she wants.”
Grinning he looked up at the sky. “I know what I want. A slice of apple pie with a big chunk of cheddar cheese melted on top of it.”
She sat up and caught back a
laugh. “Bannon, do you remember that night we drove to Basalt in the rain? We stopped at that bar and ate pizza and played poker until the place closed and the owner threw us out. Lord, it was dark in the mountains that night.
“What ever happened to that blue dress?”
“You still remember it?” she murmured in a wondering tone, then wrapped her arms around her upraised knees and lowered her chin onto them. “It’s packed away somewhere along with all the other things I outgrew and put away to forget-and never quite forgot.” Turning her head slightly, she glanced at him. “Would you want to go back to those times, Bannon?”
He picked up a rock and idly rolled it in his hands. “No,” he said after a time. “I guess not.”
She thought about that a moment, then sighed. “I guess I wouldn’t either. We’d do the same things, make the same mistakes. Nothing changes.”
With a touch of humor, Kit turned to smile at him, but the look on his face and in his eyes sent the smile away. There wasn’t any haunting sadness in his eyes, no lurking shadows of regret; they were clear and dark-shining with wanting, just as they once had been when he looked at her.
Held by that look, she suddenly knew they were remembering the same things. She felt touched by those memories, touched and dangerously stilled by them. The old closeness came back, the old, reckless, wild feelings came back to shake her. For one long, heady moment of time, she was fully alive to the things his nearness had always done to her.
As the past rushed up, Bannon saw Kit as he had once seen her-a girl pushing him back with a pert and saucy reproach even as her eyes pulled him to her. He saw the dusting of freckles across her nose, the curve of her eyebrows, the smooth texture of her skin, faintly golden from the sun-and the reflection of himself in her pupils.
Rising swiftly, she stepped away from him, then turned back and lifted her chin. As her expression tightened against that flare of excitement, she pushed her hands behind her back-just as she had done in the old days when she’d been afraid of what was to come. An action he remembered so well.
“I think,” she said, a little shakily, “it’s time to go, Bannon.”
“Right.” He rolled to his feet and went to the horses, re-tightening the cinches.
He held the reins of the chestnut while Kit mounted. Once astride the buckskin, Bannon reined it toward the trail over the ridge. They set out on it again, single file with Bannon in the lead.
The porch light was burning, throwing its bright track past the steps when they rode out of the aspen grove. “Somebody’s still leaving a light on for you,,” Bannon observed.
“Paula.” Kit smiled. “I asked her to.”
They rode past the house straight to the corral. Kit didn’t object when Bannon stepped up to unsaddle the gelding. Somehow she couldn’t seem to break the old routines, the old patterns. A sigh slipped from her. She wasn’t sure where it came from, or even what it meant. She unbuckled the bridle and slid it off the chestnut as Bannon dragged the saddle from the horse’s back.
She handed the bridle to him and waited in the corral while he carried the tack into the barn. Absently she stroked the buckskin’s nose and lifted her gaze to the sparkle of stars in the sky. One fell, a brief white scratch in the indigo sky.
She heard Bannon’s soft footsteps in the dirt, signaling his return. “It’s a beautiful night. Hear the coyote?” She caught its faraway bark.
Bannon paused beside her. “He smells winter. So do I.” He slanted a brief smile in her direction, then took up the buckskin’s reins and started toward the house. Kit fell in step beside him. “Of course, winter doesn’t mean the same thing to him as it does to me.”
“No. To a rancher in the high country, winter means hauling bay, chopping ice, half-frozen feet, and numb legs,” Kit recalled, then remembered something else that she thought she’d forgotten. “The only four seasons a rancher knows are before haying, during haying, after haying, and winter.”
“You’ve got it.” They had reached the house and Bannon stopped. He fiddled with the reins for an instant, his glance bouncing off of her. “I’ll be going now.” He moved to the buckskin’s side and stepped a boot into the stirrup.
Kit watched him swing aboard, conscious of the awkwardness, the tension that had sprung between them. She lifted her chin a little higher and smiled. “Tell Old Tom I made it home safely again.”
“I will.” He touched a finger to his hat brim and touched a heel to the buckskin.
She stayed there a minute, watching him ride off into the trees, then turned and climbed the steps to the front door.
In the living room, Paula lazed on the sofa, plump pillows supporting her back, an open book propped on her knees. She looked up when Kit walked in, a flicker of surprise crossing her face.
“You are back. I thought I heard you ride out again.”
“That was Bannon.” Kit killed the porch light, then started pulling off her gloves.
Paula gave her one of her wise, faintly amused looks. “Oh,” she said, managing to put a wealth of meaning in that single sound.
“Oh?” Kit replied with deliberate lightness as she tucked her gloves in the pockets of her fringed jacket and wandered into the living room. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means”-Paula closed the book and swung her legs off the sofa to sit up-“I saw the way you two looked at each other when you were dancing the other night. You’ll never convince me that at some time he wasn’t more than just a neighbor and an old friend.”
“He was,” Kit admitted easily. “In fact, I always believed we’d get married after he finished law school and I graduated from college. We were never actually engaged,” she added in quick qualification. “It was just something that was understood.” Or so she thought.
“Then you broke up,” Paula guessed.
“Not really.” With her jacket half unbuttoned, Kit sank down on the ottoman in front of her father’s chair, folding her legs beneath her to sit Indian-style. She looked down and idly toyed with the fringe on her sleeve. It had been years since she’d talked about Bannon. Suddenly she felt the need to. “If we had, maybe it wouldn’t have hurt so much when he married someone else.”
“You mean he married someone else and you didn’t find out about it until afterward?” The redhead frowned in surprise. “Was she someone he met in college, or what?”
Kit shook her head. “No. He met Diana here in Aspen during the winter carnival. I wasn’t here. I’d flown to California to spend my winter break with my mother. We’d argued about that. Bannon wanted me to come home and be with him for part of it, but-I hadn’t been with Mother for Christmas in five years and it didn’t seem right to go all the way out there for only a few days. It wasn’t a serious quarrel. He wasn’t angry. Neither was I. It was just a disagreement. A silly, meaningless disagreement.” She breathed in deeply and let it out in a sigh. “After I got back, I had a couple letters from him. Short ones that didn’t say much. But I knew the class load he was carrying plus holding down a full-time job at the same time. Then Dad wrote me the first of March to tell me Bannon was married.”
“Did he have to? Was she pregnant?”
“No. Bannon’s daughter wasn’t born until ten months later,” she said. “She could have been mine. And that hurt, too.” She paused and smiled ruefully, sadly. “If I could have found someone-anyone-that I really liked back then, I would have married him to hurt Bannon as much as he hurt me. That’s how bad it was, how bad I felt.” Her mouth curved in a sober, knowing line as she met Paula’s gaze. “Bannon knows how much he hurt me. That’s one of the things you see in his eyes when he looks at me.”
“I suppose it is,” Paula murmured thoughtfully.
Uncurling her legs, Kit rose from the ottoman, impelled into movement by a strange restlessness, a vague feeling of confusion and melancholy. She paused in front of the fireplace and buried her hands in the pockets of her jacket, fingers curling around the gloves.
“It’s funny”-s
he stared at the blackened hearth-“but all I ever wanted was to marry Bannon and have babies, do some acting in the local theater here, then-later on-teach drama after the kids were in school.” She glanced back at Paula. “I never thought about an acting career, or Hollywood. That wasn’t part of my dreams for the future. Now look at me.”
Paula nodded. “Life takes funny turns sometimes.”
“You can say that again.” Kit smiled and tried to shake off this crazy mood. “Anyway, all that with Bannon is in the past. I’ve finally gotten over him.”
“Oh, Kit, don’t you know about first love?” Paula chided. “You may grow out of it, but you never get over it.”
The words struck true, leaving Kit without a response.
Bannon and his buckskin cruised through the stand of pines that grew on Silverwood property. Bannon could almost feel the alien qualities of the soil come up through the legs of his horse-and knew the moment they crossed onto Stone Creek Ranch even though there was no fence to mark the boundary. The quality of home soil was that real to him. He’d been born on it and raised on it. No matter the distance he traveled from it, the primitive pull of Stone Creek land was there.
He crested the ridge and sent his mount down the trail on the other side. Where it widened before the rocky defile, he reined the buckskin in briefly and glanced at the ground at the base of the tree, replaying the scene with Kit in his mind. One powerful flash, like heat, had touched them both, disturbing them in a manner they had both recognized. He relived it-as he had relived so many others like it with Kit.
Swinging away from the sight, he heeled the buckskin into the rocks and remembered those days when he and Kit had been young, headstrong, and totally absorbed in each other. Yet, in the space of two months, he’d married Diana and changed the course of his life.