Aspen Gold

A Novel

by

Janet Dailey

Volume I of Three Volumes

Pages i-vii and 1-234

This braille title was originally produced for and is made available with the cooperation and permission of The Library of Congress.

Produced in braille by Braille International, Inc., 3142 S.e. Jay Street, Stuart,

Florida 34997 Telephone number

(800(336-3142

This braille edition contains the entire text of the print edition.

Copyright 1991 by Janet Dailey

All rights reserved.

BOOK JACKET INFORMATION

In Aspen Gold, the breathtaking terrain of Aspen, Colorado--once a frontier town, now a playground for the wealthy and powerful--serves as the backdrop for the enthralling story of a beautiful "urbane cowgirl" who must decide between a glamorous career and the handsome man she has secretly loved all her life.

Blond, outgoing Kit Masters, born and brought up on an Aspen ranch, is both country girl and city girl: her beloved father taught her to ride and hunt, while her mother took her to ballet and music lessons, theater and concerts. As a young woman, Kit left Aspen to pursue an acting career in Hollywood. She also left behind handsome rancher-lawyer Tom Bannon, who grew up on the ranch next door, the man Kit thought she would marry--and who broke her heart by marrying someone else.

Now, after years of bit parts, Kit has been offered her first really big break: the lead role in a movie opposite famous actor-producer--

and ladies' man--John Travis.

By coincidence, the movie will be filming in Aspen.

Except for her father's funeral, Kit has not been back to Aspen--or seen Tom Bannon--

in many years. Upon her return, she inevitably meets Bannon again, and they rediscover their romance. Both of them, however, are haunted by the past: Kit by the pain he caused her, Bannon by the memory of his dead wife. In addition, John Travis has begun to pursue Kit, ardently.

Kit has managed to remain unspoiled by her newfound success and her surroundings: beneath her sunny facade, she is a woman with a strong sense of family, loyalty, and integrity, with deep ties to the land where she grew up and that she still considers her home. Now she faces several difficult and dangerous decisions guaranteed to test the values she holds so dear. What will Kit choose to pursue--fame or love? If fame, is she willing to pay the price it demands? And if love, which man does she truly love? How will she provide for the future--

by holding on to the land that is the bedrock of her family, or by responding to the pleas of environmentalists and developers for the good of larger numbers? And what of the threat that the diabolical Sondra Hudson holds over both Kit and the men in her life? Can she really wreck the happiness Kit sees within her grasp?

With Aspen Gold, Janet Dailey has created her most lively and absorbing story, a novel that captures perfectly the values of the nineties, the romance of a particular magical place, and the passions of a love that lasts a lifetime.

Janet Dailey is one of America's best-selling female novelists. She and her husband, Bill, live in the Ozark Mountain country of Branson, Missouri.

Janet Dailey stays in touch with her readers through her annual newsletter. If you would like to be on her mailing list, please send your name and address to:

HCRBLED

Box 2197

Branson, Missouri 65616

NOVELS BY JANET DAILEY

Touch the Wind

The Rogue

Ride the Thunder

Night Way

This Calder Sky

This Calder Range

Stands a Calder Man

Calder Born, Calder Bred

Silver Wings, Santiago Blue

The Pride of Hannah Wade

The Glory Game

The Great Alone

Heiress

Rivals

Masquerade

Aspen Gold

The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.

ASPEN GOLD

A Learjet streaked across the crisp autumn air, its nose tipped down in a slow but steady angle of descent. Below, the Rockies loomed, mighty upthrusts of granite bristling with spruce. It was a wild land, an ageless land, harsh and beautiful by turns. Its unbridled grandeur was limitless, constantly challenging the strong and mocking the weak--and always indifferent to man's attempts to tame it.

Here, where great herds of elk once grazed the high mountain meadow, five hundred head of crossbred Hereford and Black Angus cattle trailed across the autumn yellow grass, flanked by a half dozen riders. On the right, a river of aspen gold tumbled down the stony breast of a mountain slope, crashed through a black-green wall of pine, and spilled its bright yellow flood onto the meadow.

Sunlight glinted on the jet's polished surface. Old Tom Bannon caught the flash of metal and threw back his head, directing his gaze skyward, away from the cattle being driven to the winter pasture near the headquarters of Stone Creek Ranch.

The ancient Stetson hat on his head was brown and weather-beaten like the eighty-two-year-old face it shaded. The big hands folded across the saddle horn were speckled with liver spots, and age had fleshed up his big-boned frame and shot his hair with gray.

His widely spaced and deep-set eyes looked out from beneath shaggy brows and searched the flawless October sky for the source of the light flash that had jarred him from his silent reminiscences of past autumn cattle drives. The sight of the sleek aircraft hurtling up the valley like a white arrow flying low--too low--brought his hard, square jaw together.

"Will you look at that blasted fool?" Old Tom flung a hand in the direction of the plane, directing the sharp-edged words at his son and namesake, Tom Bannon. "What in thunderation is going through his head to be flying that low? It's a damned fool stunt, that's what it is."

Following the line of his father's outstretched arm, Tom Bannon spotted the private jet. At thirty-six, he was a younger and leaner version of his father, with a face like the mountains, full of crags and hard surfaces, a face that wasn't handsome, yet one any woman would look at twice. Those who knew him well never called him Young Tom, or even Tom; he was simply Bannon. He'd been that from the first moment his father had set eyes on him and proclaimed, "He's a Bannon, right enough."

"What d'ya bet it's one of those idiots from Hollywood taking a scenic tour before landing in Aspen?" Old Tom challenged.

When Bannon saw the insignia of Olympic Pictures painted on the plane's white fuselage, he had an idea who was on board, but he didn't waste time on speculation. Instead his glance sliced to the cattle bunched in front of the open gate as the droning whine of the jet's engines began to make itself heard.

"Ned! Hank!" he shouted to the two riders on the flanks. "Push 'em through the gate!"

He spared one look to the rear of the herd, locating his nine-year-old daughter, Laura.

She trailed behind, her head bobbing from side to side, her slim shoulders dipping and swaying, her fingers snapping to the beat of the rock music coming over her headset. Oblivious to everything but the song, she hadn't heard his shouted order.

Bannon whistled a shrill command to the two cow dogs trotting alongside her pinto. Like twin streaks, they shot after the herd, harrying them from the rear while Bannon pushed at the balking leaders, reluctant to leave the summer range.

Ignoring their bawls of protest, he rode his buckskin against them, urging them forward with his voice and the slap of a coiled lariat against his thigh.

From the knoll, Old Tom watched as the first of the cows went through, stiff-legged and suspicious, heads lowered in distrust. But one look at the plane speeding through the sky and Old Tom knew they'd never get the rest of the herd through. The plane was so close he could see the pilot's dark aviator glasses and the faces pressed close to the cabin's porthole windows.

He yelled anyway: "Don't let 'em break. Don't let 'em break!"

The jet thundered by, a scant three hundred feet above the mountain's shoulder and the herd. The noise of its engines caught up with them, breaking across the cattle in a roar that vibrated the air and the ground. The aging red roan beneath Old Tom--a horse that never turned a hair at the blast of a thirty-ought-six between its ears--sank into a crouch, then spun in a half circle, joining the cattle that wheeled as one and bolted back across the meadow, their tufted tails raised high in panic.

For Old Tom, the sight of the stampeding herd and the racing riders was a patch from his youth, when half-wild cattle had run on the ranch.

Caught up by the memory, he suddenly felt young again himself and spurred the roan after the herd.

Far ahead, Old Tom spotted his

granddaughter sawing on the reins, regaining control of her frightened pinto. He took an instant pride in her skill. From her earliest talking days, he'd taught her to ride like that--loose and straight in the saddle yet always balanced, prepared for any sudden moves by her mount.

Then he saw the wall of aspens beyond, and she was forgotten. If the cattle made it into that dense timber, they'd scatter like leaves in the wind. It would take a day--maybe two--to gather them up again.

"Keep 'em in the meadow!" he shouted.

"Don't let 'em get in those trees!"

But the fading rumble of the jet's engines and the loud drum of cloven and shod hooves drowned out his call. Then Old Tom saw that the warning had been needless. Bannon had seen the same thing, and had the buckskin stretched out flat, streaking to catch the leaders and turn them before they reached the timber.

Old Tom watched. There'd been a time when he and the old roan could have made a race of it, but no more. No more.

Inside the jet's lushly appointed cabin, Kit Masters sat on her knees, her shoes kicked off, her long legs tucked beneath her as she leaned across the back of the pewter velvet sofa to look out the window. A hand slid across her back, then settled with familiar ease on the rounded jut of a hipbone. Kit smiled, recognizing the touch of that hand. She glanced back, automatically tucking the loose tumble of honey blond hair behind an ear as John Travis folded his six-foot-two-inch frame onto the plump sofa cushion, angling his body toward hers.

He flashed her one of his trademark smiles--quick, crooked, and wicked--a smile that changed his face from merely sexy to dangerously charming.

"The pilot said we should be flying over your place shortly. Anything look familiar to you yet?" John Travis briefly peered out the window, the downward tip of his head bringing into view the sun-lightened streaks in his darkly gold hair.

"Nearly everything." Idly Kit studied his lean and faintly aristocratic face. It was a strong face, handsome with well-defined bones and a dimpled chin, a face made even more unique by its combination of charm and blatant sex appeal.

A combination that had proved to be irresistible to the world at large ever since John Travis had burst onto the Hollywood scene fifteen years ago, soaring to almost instant stardom.

Looking at him, Kit was struck again by the illusory feeling that she'd known John Travis all her life, when, in fact, she'd met him for the first time just six short weeks before, at a party she'd attended only days before auditioning for the female lead in his new, yet-to-be-filmed movie, White Lies.

A role she'd ultimately won, with the shooting scheduled to begin in a matter of weeks.

Kit turned back to the window, smiling when she recalled the crazy roller-coaster ride her life had taken these last six weeks--a ride full of heart-stopping speed and surprises.

She'd loved every minute of it. Yet at the same time, she looked forward to the chance to finally catch her breath.

"If it's all so familiar to you, tell me where we are." John Travis arched a challenging look her way, a faintly ironic color to his blue-gray eyes.

"We're flying over Stone Creek," Kit replied easily, suppressing a slight twinge of pain, her nerves tensing at the sight of it.

"Stone Creek?" He peered out the window again.

"I don't see any creek down there."

Her soft laugh drew a glance from Chip Freeman, the director and screenplay author of White Lies. But the instant his myopic eyes, aided by bottle-thick glasses, registered the blur of granite and gold mountains beyond the plane's windows, he turned back to the padded black-leather bar trimmed with chrome. The quick bobbing of his Adam's apple betrayed the fact he was a white-knuckle flier of the highest order.

Kit's agent, the stout and stubby Maury Rose, gave no indication that he'd heard her as he continued his nonstop hustling of publicist Yvonne Davis, determined to get Kit the lion's share of media attention at the charity dinner J.d. Lassiter, the billionaire owner of Olympic Pictures, was giving that evening.

Paula Grant was the Learjet's one remaining passenger, a veteran soap actress who possessed that exotic combination of flaming red hair, porcelain skin, and green eyes--a hard and sleek kind of beauty that matched the bitchy characters she portrayed so well. She listened with only half an ear to the byplay between Kit and John Travis as she gazed out the window, intent on the mountain scenery, her deep leather cabin chair swiveled in a conversational mode toward the sofa.