Aspen Gold (36 page)

For an instant, she was speechless, astounded that he could draw that conclusion from such a flimsy set of circumstances. "John has business in L.a. I have interviews scheduled here."

"You could have done them out there."

"Not all of them. Some were local." She knew she was dangerously close to losing her temper, and struggled to control it. "Can we move on?"

"Did you know Travis met with Kathleen Turner on this trip?"

"And?" She didn't bother to keep the ice out of her voice.

"She wants your part in the film."

"Is that supposed to surprise me, Mr.

Phillips?" she countered. "The role of Eden is a dream part. There isn't an actress around who wouldn't kill to get it."

"What did you do to get it?" His implication was obvious.

"Really, Mr. Phillips, the casting-couch angle is as old as the hills," she said in disgust.

"The same thing has been said about prostitution."

"And both subjects have lost their shock value." Little alarm bells started going off in her head. "What publication did you say you were writing this for?"

"I didn't say."

"As a matter of fact, I don't think you actually said you scheduled this interview through Maury. Did you?"

"No."

"What publication is buying this story, Mr.

Phillips? Or should I start naming off various tabloids?"

"The National Informer has expressed interest in the piece," he admitted.

"Providing you can come up with a sensational angle. Right?"

"I wouldn't say that." He smiled a little too smoothly.

"But you don't deny it either. This interview is over, Mr. Phillips." She switched off the tape recorder and pushed out of the chair. "Please leave."

"You're not being very cooperative."

"That's your interpretation." She picked up the tape recorder and carried it with her to the door.

Turning, she pulled the door open and held out the recorder.

"The National Informer has an enormous circulation. You can reach an awful lot of people who've never heard of you." He made slow work out of putting his tablet and pen away and getting up. "You should think about that."

"I have--every time I've read some story in a tabloid that's full of twisted facts, quotes used out of context, and innuendos presented as facts. Sadly, too many people believe what they read." She swung the door a little wider.

"Good-bye, Mr. Phillips."

"I always heard you were very easy to work with, Miss Masters." He strolled toward the door. "One little taste of success and you start getting temperamental."

She ignored his baiting. "Your recorder."

He took it, gave her a long considering look, and walked out. Kit closed the door with painstaking quietness. She heard his car start up and discovered that her jaw was clenched so tightly it hurt. She swung away and recrossed the room. He had gotten to her. Why had she let him? Maybe because she had this ugly feeling all this was just a taste of what was ahead.

She stared at the cluttered gun cabinet and the piles on the floor around it. For once it didn't work to tell herself to concentrate on something else. The little devils of discontent wouldn't leave her alone. She curled up in her father's chair and hugged her knees to her chest. She was still there when Paula came down two hours later, dressed for her dinner date with Chip in a bottle green evening suit of silk velvet.

"That interview certainly didn't take long." Paula clipped a faux jewel-studded drop earring to her lobe as she wandered into the living room.

"No, it didn't." Kit saw no point in going into detail.

Her glance flicked to the mess around the gun cabinet. "You haven't made much progress."

"I've been thinking."

She sent Kit a droll look and sank gracefully onto the sofa. "Careful. Too much thinking can lead a person to a bad end." She crossed a leg, silk whispering against silk.

"Maybe I've already come to a bad end,"

Kit replied with rare cynicism.

"Ah, but sin can be such a comfort once you get to know it, Kit," Paula declared. When her jesting remark failed to elicit a smile, her eyes sharpened on Kit. "What's bothering you?"

Her shoulders lifted and fell. "Things."

"That covers a rather broad spectrum."

A surge of restless energy carried Kit out of the chair and over to the fireplace. "It's just that--when I was simply another actress on a soap, things were different. I was Kit Masters.

I could do what I pleased, say what I pleased, act as I pleased without my every word and action being scrutinized or criticized. I was a normal person. Now, people treat me like I'm not."

"Didn't you see that coming?" Paula asked gently.

"No," she said with a quick, agitated shake of her head. "I was so busy working, chasing parts I wanted that I never gave it a thought. Overnight I've become Kit Masters, a possible star, and everything's changed--everyone's changed. It's like they're suddenly all ready to believe the worst about me."

"Are you by any chance thinking of John Travis?" Paula asked in a faint, dry drawl.

Kit swung away from the fireplace and released a humorless breath. "And all the talk that I got the part only because I'm sleeping with him, you mean? Truthfully I expected that kind of mudslinging in Hollywood. I expected the pettiness, the jealousy, the viciousness. I think I even understood. Maybe that's why it never bothered me. I knew mud washes off; it doesn't scar."

"Then what is it?"

"It's the way other people have changed toward me.

Strangers and people I've known nearly all my life. They believe that I have changed, that I think I'm too good for them now, that I couldn't possibly enjoy doing the same things anymore, that I've somehow become morally corrupt--"

She stopped, not wholly satisfied with what she'd said. "It isn't that they believe it. It's that they want to believe all those things about me."

"And that surprises you?"

"From them, yes," Kit replied with unusual sharpness.

"It shouldn't." Paula smiled. "What makes you think your friends are any different from the people you know in Hollywood? What makes you think strangers are any different? Egos, jealousy, resentment--such things are hardly unique to Hollywood, Kit."

"I suppose not," Kit agreed hesitantly.

"It's human nature to root for someone on their way up, then try to tear them down once they get there. It isn't that they resent your success.

It's that your success reminds them of their failure. You've made it and they haven't. They can't stand the thought that it might mean you're better than they are. Out of self-defense, they have to believe that you did something illegal, unethical, or immoral to get there. It's nothing personal." She paused. "I'm not saying it's right or fair. It's reality."

"I still don't like it." With arms tightly crossed, she walked to the window and stared at the dusk purpling the sky.

"No one does. But you can't let it matter.

You can't let yourself care what they say."

Paula's response was abruptly impatient.

"If you're going to succeed--if you're going to be a star--you have to believe in yourself totally. You have to be selfish, at times even cruel and calculating, or they will tear you down. It's all part of the price of fame."

"But that's not me. That's not who I am."

"Poor Kit," Paula murmured in an amused tone. "It's hard to see innocence get its first shock. But you'll become hardened to it."

"Should I?"

"We won't go into that." Headlights flashed over the windows as a car pulled into the ranch yard.

"That must be Chip." Rising, Paula slung a coat over her shoulders and crossed to the door.

She paused with it partway open and glanced fondly at Kit. "Don't sit and brood over this tonight.

You can't change it."

A fire crackled in the massive

fireplace of river stone, its cheery light almost lost in the cavernous living room of the log ranch house. Bannon stood in front of the fire, watching yellow flames crawl over the bark of a new log, one booted foot on the raised hearth, a hand braced on the mantel. The faint, soft scratch of pen on paper told him Laura was still busy with her homework. There was a stir of movement in the big chair, followed by the click of teeth biting down on a pipe stem, then the drag of it being removed.

"The Gregorys are selling out, then." Old Tom tapped the dead ash out of the bowl.

"House, business, everything," Bannon confirmed. "His wife's tired of the fight, tired of being chained to the clothing store because they can't find any help. And, she doesn't think it will ever change."

"It's the old story," his father grunted. "The strong think they're strong and the weak think they're weak. They beat themselves by thinking so."

"I guess."

"I figure Silverwood will be the next to change hands." Old Tom scraped at the black char in his pipe with the wooden end of a match.

"Be sad to see that."

Laura piped up. "I think it's horrible."

"Makes you mad, does it?" Old Tom eyed the girl seated at the small pine desk he'd built three decades ago for his son to use.

"Yes."

"Don't see the mountains getting mad, do you?"

"Of course not. Mountains don't get angry, Gramps," she said with a trace of disgust at such a foolish question.

"That's right. The mountains don't get angry or struggle or cry. If man does, it's of his own making and his own foolishness. This land knows that nothing man destroys will remain destroyed. Beside every fallen tree that man cuts, you'll find seedlings to replace it. Walk down any street and you'll find grass growing in the cracks. Man builds his houses, his towns, and his roads over it, and the land lets him, but the fertility is still there, underneath it all. When man steps aside, the land will reclaim what he left and erase all marks of it. Look at that old mine shaft and the brush taking over its tailings, covering up the tracks the miners left. That's the power of the land.

Remember that."

"Gramps, you don't know a lot about pollution, do you?" She gave him a pitying look. "Acid rain has killed whole forests.

Our entire environment is threatened by toxic wastes--"

He stopped her. "But the land will come back.

Maybe not in your lifetime or even your grandchildren's, but the day will come. Man can destroy man, but he can't kill the land. When the last human has disappeared from the face of it, the land will still be here. The power of the land is endless, its fertility indestructible." He paused to suck on his empty pipe, testing its draw. "All this talk about ozone layers, polluting the water and the air, it isn't about man's fear of what he's doing to the land, but what he's doing to himself. Man doesn't want to protect the land; he wants to protect his own existence. Man knows, somewhere deep down inside, that the land will take care of itself just fine."

Bannon studied the thoughtful frown Laura wore, wondering how much she had absorbed of that.

Abruptly she shrugged and turned back to her homework. "Just the same, I think it's awful Silverwood is being sold. Aunt Sondra says someone will probably build a resort on it with ski runs and shops and restaurants and big homes." She wagged her pen, tapping the end of it against a cheek. "Buffy thinks that will be great.

Maybe she's right. It would be close enough I could ride over on the weekends and Buffy and I could go skiing. She wants me to get a hot pink ski suit like hers so we'd match. She's got boots and everything to go with it. It's really sharp."

The wistfulness, the hint of envy in her voice had Bannon turning back to the fire. Things.

Clothes. Boots. Skis. Weekends spent playing. How could he tell her not to want the things her friends had? How could he make her understand that possessions weren't important, that they couldn't take the place of the things that made life worthwhile--like the bone-deep satisfaction of a day's work done well, the pleasure of shared laughter, and the enveloping warmth of love. They were needs of the spirit money could never fulfill. Without that fulfillment there was only loneliness. He knew that.

"I think I'll call it a night." The pipe clattered to its resting place in the rack.

A second later, Old Tom heaved himself out of the chair. "This old body of mine seems to need more rest than it used to."

Laura glanced up, sending him a quick smile.

"Good night, Gramps."

"Good night, chickapea." He called her by the nickname he always used in moments of deep fondness. His route to the stairs took him by the fireplace. He paused next

to Bannon and lay a big, mottled hand on his shoulder, drawing his side-glance. "You can't fool me, boy," he said quietly. "It ain't the Gregorys selling out that's got your head down.

It's knowing that when Silverwood's sold, the last tie is cut."

His eyes, soft and sad with understanding, held Bannon's gaze for an instant longer, then Old Tom drew his hand back and continued to the stairs.

Kit's name hadn't been spoken, but it hadn't needed to be. Bannon listened to his father's footsteps on the stairs and gazed at the flickering yellow flames.

For a moment he remembered the scene on the ridge and a little of that tumult came back to him.

Her features and her mannerisms were clearly before him--the infectious warmth of her smile, the vivid blue color of her eyes in anger, the pride that strengthened her voice. She had an outward beauty and an outward grace, but more than that, Kit was rich in the way a woman should be rich, at times laughing and reckless, at times showing him the dark mysterious glow of a softer mood.

Remembering these things, Bannon felt an old rankling hunger that he knew would never grow less and never be satisfied. He stared at the fire, his head bowed and his eyes fixed on the past, so vivid yet so everlastingly over.

From the second floor came the faint creak of bedsprings, then the dull thud of boots landing on the wood floor. After more vague stirrings, there was only the soft hiss of the fire and the occasional rustling of notebook paper from the desk area.

Bannon never changed his stance or broke his absorption in the flames. The clump of footsteps on the porch came to him distantly.