Книга - Sutton’s Way

Sutton's Way
Diana Palmer


Wyoming rancher and single father Quinn Sutton is raising a child he knows isn't his own. All the love left in his guarded heart goes to the boy. But when a beautiful city woman is stranded nearby in a blizzard, he rescues her and brings her to Ricochet Ranch.Amanda Callaway has her own secrets and plans to keep her distance. If only she weren't falling for her unlikely hero…









Sutton’s Way

Diana Palmer





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Contents


Cover (#u86792918-bf9e-559b-a2b9-525ff87d4fb8)

Title Page (#u84c14025-c9a4-5190-80e6-930c9e035042)

Chapter One (#u1c5a3463-e8cb-59ad-9bb2-5bae4240cc36)

Chapter Two (#u591136b0-a623-5383-ae37-f36a3b0513cf)

Chapter Three (#udfa695cc-9337-575f-93a5-1840f366a41e)

Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)




Chapter One (#ulink_e4722f10-32a6-5988-84cc-c31bdb68074a)


The noise outside the cabin was there again, and Amanda shifted restlessly with the novel in her lap, curled up in a big armchair by the open fireplace in an Indian rug. Until now, the cabin had been paradise. There was three feet of new snow outside, she had all the supplies she needed to get her through the next few wintery weeks of Wyoming weather, and there wasn’t a telephone in the place. Best of all, there wasn’t a neighbor.

Well, there was, actually. But nobody in their right mind would refer to that man on the mountain as a neighbor. Amanda had only seen him once and once was enough.

She’d met him, if their head-on encounter could be referred to as a meeting, on a snowy Saturday last week. Quinn Sutton’s majestic ranch house overlooked this cabin nestled against the mountainside. He’d been out in the snow on a horse-drawn sled that contained huge square bales of hay, and he was heaving them like feather pillows to a small herd of red-and-white cattle. The sight had touched Amanda, because it indicated concern. The tall, wiry rancher out in a blizzard feeding his starving cattle. She’d even smiled at the tender picture it made.

And then she’d stopped her four-wheel-drive vehicle and stuck her blond head out the window to ask directions to the Blalock Durning place, which was the cabin one of her aunt’s friends was loaning her. And the tender picture dissolved into stark hostility.

The tall rancher turned toward her with the coldest black eyes and the hardest face she’d ever seen in her life. He had a day’s growth of stubble, but the stubble didn’t begin to cover up the frank homeliness of his lean face. He had amazingly high cheekbones, a broad forehead and a jutting chin, and he looked as if someone had taken a straight razor to one side of his face, which had a wide scratch. None of that bothered Amanda because Hank Shoeman and the other three men who made music with her group were even uglier than Quinn Sutton. But at least Hank and the boys could smile. This man looked as if he invented the black scowl.

“I said,” she’d repeated with growing nervousness, “can you tell me how to get to Blalock Durning’s cabin?”

Above the sheepskin coat, under the battered gray ranch hat, Quinn Sutton’s tanned face didn’t move a muscle. “Follow the road, turn left at the lodgepoles,” he’d said tersely, his voice as deep as a rumble of thunder.

“Lodgepoles?” she’d faltered. “You mean Indian lodgepoles? What do they look like?”

“Lady,” he said with exaggerated patience, “a lodgepole is a pine tree. It’s tall and piney, and there are a stand of them at the next fork in the road.”

“You don’t need to be rude, Mr…?”

“Sutton,” he said tersely. “Quinn Sutton.”

“Nice to meet you,” she murmured politely. “I’m Amanda.” She wondered if anyone might accidentally recognize her here in the back of beyond, and on the off chance, she gave her mother’s maiden name instead of her own last name. “Amanda Corrie,” she added untruthfully. “I’m going to stay in the cabin for a few weeks.”

“This isn’t the tourist season,” he’d said without the slightest pretense at friendliness. His black eyes cut her like swords.

“Good, because I’m not a tourist,” she said.

“Don’t look to me for help if you run out of wood or start hearing things in the dark,” he added coldly. “Somebody will tell you eventually that I have no use whatsoever for women.”

While she was thinking up a reply to that, a young boy of about twelve had come running up behind the sled.

“Dad!” he called, amazingly enough to Quinn Sutton. “There’s a cow in calf down in the next pasture. I think it’s a breech!”

“Okay, son, hop on,” he told the boy, and his voice had become fleetingly soft, almost tender. He looked back at Amanda, though, and the softness left him. “Keep your door locked at night,” he’d said. “Unless you’re expecting Durning to join you,” he added with a mocking smile.

She’d stared at him from eyes as black as his own and started to tell him that she didn’t even know Mr. Durning, who was her aunt’s friend, not hers. But she bit her tongue. It wouldn’t do to give this man an opening. “I’ll do that little thing,” she agreed. She glanced at the boy, who was eyeing her curiously from his perch on the sled. “And it seems that you do have at least one use for women,” she added with a vacant smile. “My condolences to your wife, Mr. Sutton.”

She’d rolled up the window before he could speak and she’d whipped the four-wheel-drive down the road with little regard for safety, sliding all over the place on the slick and rutted country road.

She glared into the flames, consigning Quinn Sutton to them with all her angry heart. She hoped and prayed that there wouldn’t ever be an accident or a reason she’d have to seek out his company. She’d rather have asked help from a passing timber wolf. His son hadn’t seemed at all like him, she recalled. Sutton was as dangerous looking as a timber wolf, with a face like the side of a bombed mountain and eyes that were coal-black and cruel. In the sheepskin coat he’d been wearing with that raunchy Stetson that day, he’d looked like one of the old mountain men might have back in Wyoming’s early days. He’d given Amanda some bad moments and she’d hated him after that uncomfortable confrontation. But the boy had been kind. He was redheaded and blue-eyed, nothing like his father, not a bit of resemblance.

She knew the rancher’s name only because her aunt had mentioned him, and cautioned Amanda about going near the Sutton ranch. The ranch was called Ricochet, and Amanda had immediately thought of a bullet going awry. Probably one of Sutton’s ancestors had thrown some lead now and again. Mr. Sutton looked a lot more like a bandit than he did a rancher, with his face unshaven, that wide, awful scrape on his cheek and his crooked nose. It was an unforgettable face all around, especially those eyes….

She pulled the Indian rug closer and gave the book in her slender hand a careless glance. She wasn’t really in the mood to read. Memories kept tearing her heart. She leaned her blond head back against the chair and her dark eyes studied the flames with idle appreciation of their beauty.

The nightmare of the past few weeks had finally caught up with her. She’d stood onstage, with the lights beating down on her long blond hair and outlining the beige leather dress that was her trademark, and her voice had simply refused to cooperate. The shock of being unable to produce a single note had caused her to faint, to the shock and horror of the audience.

She came to in a hospital, where she’d been given what seemed to be every test known to medical science. But nothing would produce her singing voice, even though she could talk. It was, the doctor told her, purely a psychological problem, caused by the trauma of what had happened. She needed rest.

So Hank, who was the leader of the group, had called her Aunt Bess and convinced her to arrange for Amanda to get away from it all. Her aunt’s rich boyfriend had this holiday cabin in Wyoming’s Grand Teton Mountains and was more than willing to let Amanda recuperate there. Amanda had protested, but Hank and the boys and her aunt had insisted. So here she was, in the middle of winter, in several feet of snow, with no television, no telephone and facilities that barely worked. Roughing it, the big, bearded bandleader had told her, would do her good.

She smiled when she remembered how caring and kind the guys had been. Her group was called Desperado, and her leather costume was its trademark. The four men who made up the rest of it were fine musicians, but they looked like the Hell’s Angels on stage in denim and leather with thick black beards and mustaches and untrimmed hair. They were really pussycats under that rough exterior, but nobody had ever been game enough to try to find out if they were.

Hank and Deke and Jack and Johnson had been trying to get work at a Virginia night spot when they’d run into Amanda Corrie Callaway, who was also trying to get work there. The club needed a singer and a band, so it was a match made in heaven, although Amanda with her sheltered upbringing had been a little afraid of her new backup band. They, on the other hand, had been nervous around her because she was such a far cry from the usual singers they’d worked with. The shy, introverted young blonde made them self-conscious about their appearance. But their first performance together had been a phenomenal hit, and they’d been together four years now.

They were famous, now. Desperado had been on the music videos for two years, they’d done television shows and magazine interviews, and they were recognized everywhere they went. Especially Amanda, who went by the stage name of Mandy Callaway. It wasn’t a bad life, and it was making them rich. But there wasn’t much rest or time for a personal life. None of the group was married except Hank, and he was already getting a divorce. It was hard for a homebound spouse to accept the frequent absences that road tours required.

She still shivered from the look Quinn Sutton had given her, and now she was worried about her Aunt Bess, though the woman was more liberal minded and should know the score. But Sutton had convinced Amanda that she wasn’t the first woman to be at Blalock’s cabin. She should have told that arrogant rancher what her real relationship with Blalock Durning was, but he probably wouldn’t have believed her.

Of course, she could have put him in touch with Jerry and proved it. Jerry Allen, their road manager, was one of the best in the business. He’d kept them from starving during the beginning, and they had an expert crew of electricians and carpenters who made up the rest of the retinue. It took a huge bus to carry the people and equipment, appropriately called the “Outlaw Express.”

Amanda had pleaded with Jerry to give them a few weeks rest after the tragedy that had cost her her nerve, but he’d refused. Get back on the horse, he’d advised. And she’d tried. But the memories were just too horrible.

So finally he’d agreed to Hank’s suggestion and she was officially on hiatus, as were the other members of the group, for a month. Maybe in that length of time she could come to grips with it, face it.

It had been a week and she felt better already. Or she would, if those strange noises outside the cabin would just stop! She had horrible visions of wolves breaking in and eating her.

“Hello?”

The small voice startled her. It sounded like a boy’s. She got up, clutching the fire poker in her hand and went to the front door. “Who’s there?” she called out tersely.

“It’s just me. Elliot,” he said. “Elliot Sutton.”

She let out a breath between her teeth. Oh, no, she thought miserably, what was he doing here? His father would come looking for him, and she couldn’t bear to have that…that savage anywhere around!

“What do you want?” she groaned.

“I brought you something.”

It would be discourteous to refuse the gift, she guessed, especially since he’d apparently come through several feet of snow to bring it. Which brought to mind a really interesting question: where was his father?

She opened the door. He grinned at her from under a thick cap that covered his red hair.

“Hi,” he said. “I thought you might like to have some roasted peanuts. I did them myself. They’re nice on a cold night.”

Her eyes went past him to a sled hitched to a sturdy draft horse. “Did you come in that?” she asked, recognizing the sled he and his father had been riding the day she’d met them.

“Sure,” he said. “That’s how we get around in winter, what with the snow and all. We take hay out to the livestock on it. You remember, you saw us. Well, we usually take hay out on it, that is. When Dad’s not laid up,” he added pointedly, and his blue eyes said more than his voice did.

She knew she was going to regret asking the question before she opened her mouth. She didn’t want to ask. But no young boy came to a stranger’s house in the middle of a snowy night just to deliver a bag of roasted peanuts.

“What’s wrong?” she asked with resigned perception.

He blinked. “What?”

“I said, what’s wrong?” She made her tone gentler. He couldn’t help it that his father was a savage, and he was worried under that false grin. “Come on, you might as well tell me.”

He bit his lower lip and looked down at his snow-covered boots. “It’s my dad,” he said. “He’s bad sick and he won’t let me get the doctor.”

So there it was. She knew she shouldn’t have asked. “Can’t your mother do something?” she asked hopefully.

“My mom ran off with Mr. Jackson from the livestock association when I was just a little feller,” he replied, registering Amanda’s shocked expression. “She and Dad got divorced and she died some years ago, but Dad doesn’t talk about her. Will you come, miss?”

“I’m not a doctor,” she said, hesitating.

“Oh, sure, I know that,” he agreed eagerly, “but you’re a girl. And girls know how to take care of sick folks, don’t they?” The confidence slid away and he looked like what he was—a terrified little boy with nobody to turn to. “Please, lady,” he added. “I’m scared. He’s hot and shaking all over and—!”

“I’ll get my boots on,” she said. She gathered them from beside the fireplace and tugged them on, and then she went for a coat and stuffed her long blond hair under a stocking cap. “Do you have cough syrup, aspirins, throat lozenges—that sort of thing?”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said eagerly, then sighed. “Dad won’t take them, but we have them.”

“Is he suicidal?” Amanda asked angrily as she went out the door behind him and locked the cabin before she climbed on the sled with the boy.

“Well sometimes things get to him,” he ventured. “But he doesn’t ever get sick, and he won’t admit that he is. But he’s out of his head and I’m scared. He’s all I got.”

“We’ll take care of him,” she promised, and hoped she could deliver on the promise. “Let’s go.”

“Do you know Mr. Durning well?” he asked as he called to the draft horse and started him back down the road and up the mountain toward the Sutton house.

“He’s sort of a friend of a relative of mine,” she said evasively. The sled ride was fun, and she was enjoying the cold wind and snow in her face, the delicious mountain air. “I’m only staying at the cabin for a few weeks. Just time to…get over something.”

“Have you been sick, too?” he asked curiously.

“In a way,” she said noncommittally.

The sled went jerkily up the road, around the steep hill. She held on tight and hoped the big draft horse had steady feet. It was a harrowing ride at the last, and then they were up, and the huge redwood ranch house came into sight, blazing with light from its long, wide front porch to the gabled roof.

“It’s a beautiful house,” Amanda said.

“My dad added on to it for my mom, before they married,” he told her. He shrugged. “I don’t remember much about her, except she was redheaded. Dad sure hates women.” He glanced at her apologetically. “He’s not going to like me bringing you….”

“I can take care of myself,” she returned, and smiled reassuringly. “Let’s go see how bad it is.”

“I’ll get Harry to put up the horse and sled,” he said, yelling toward the lighted barn until a grizzled old man appeared. After a brief introduction to Amanda, Harry left and took the horse away.

“Harry’s been here since Dad was a boy,” Elliot told her as he led her down a bare-wood hall and up a steep staircase to the second storey of the house. “He does most everything, even cooks for the men.” He paused outside a closed door, and gave Amanda a worried look. “He’ll yell for sure.”

“Let’s get it over with, then.”

She let Elliot open the door and look in first, to make sure his father had something on.

“He’s still in his jeans,” he told her, smiling as she blushed. “It’s okay.”

She cleared her throat. So much for pretended sophistication, she thought, and here she was twenty-four years old. She avoided Elliot’s grin and walked into the room.

Quinn Sutton was sprawled on his stomach, his bare muscular arms stretched toward the headboard. His back gleamed with sweat, and his thick, black hair was damp with moisture. Since it wasn’t hot in the room, Amanda decided that he must have a high fever. He was moaning and talking unintelligibly.

“Elliot, can you get me a basin and some hot water?” she asked. She took off her coat and rolled up the sleeves of her cotton blouse.

“Sure thing,” Elliot told her, and rushed out of the room.

“Mr. Sutton, can you hear me?” Amanda asked softly. She sat down beside him on the bed, and lightly touched his bare shoulder. He was hot, all right—burning up. “Mr. Sutton,” she called again.

“No,” he moaned. “No, you can’t do it…!”

“Mr. Sutton…”

He rolled over and his black eyes opened, glazed with fever, but Amanda barely noticed. Her eyes were on the rest of him, male perfection from shoulder to narrow hips. He was darkly tanned, too, and thick, black hair wedged from his chest down his flat stomach to the wide belt at his hips. Amanda, who was remarkably innocent not only for her age, but for her profession as well, stared like a star-struck girl. He was beautiful, she thought, amazed at the elegant lines of his body, at the ripple of muscle and the smooth, glistening skin.

“What the hell do you want?” he rasped.

So much for hero worship, she thought dryly. She lifted her eyes back to his. “Elliot was worried,” she said quietly. “He came and got me. Please don’t fuss at him. You’re raging with fever.”

“Damn the fever, get out,” he said in a tone that might have stopped a charging wolf.

“I can’t do that,” she said. She turned her head toward the door where Elliot appeared with a basin full of hot water and a towel and washcloth over one arm.

“Here you are, lady,” he said. “Hi, Dad,” he added with a wan smile at his furious father. “You can beat me when you’re able again.”

“Don’t think I won’t,” Quinn growled.

“There, there, you’re just feverish and sick, Mr. Sutton,” Amanda soothed.

“Get Harry and have him throw her off my land,” Quinn told Elliot in a furious voice.

“How about some aspirin, Elliot, and something for him to drink? A small whiskey and something hot—”

“I don’t drink whiskey,” Quinn said harshly.

“He has a glass of wine now and then,” Elliot ventured.

“Wine, then.” She soaked the cloth in the basin. “And you might turn up the heat. We don’t want him to catch a chill when I sponge him down.”

“You damned well aren’t sponging me down!” Quinn raged.

She ignored him. “Go and get those things, please, Elliot, and the cough syrup, too.”

“You bet, lady!” he said grinning.

“My name is Amanda,” she said absently.

“Amanda,” the boy repeated, and went back downstairs.

“God help you when I get back on my feet,” Quinn said with fury. He laid back on the pillow, shivering when she touched him with the cloth. “Don’t…!”

“I could fry an egg on you. I have to get the fever down. Elliot said you were delirious.”

“Elliot’s delirious to let you in here,” he shuddered. Her fingers accidentally brushed his flat stomach and he arched, shivering. “For God’s sake, don’t,” he groaned.

“Does your stomach hurt?” she asked, concerned. “I’m sorry.” She soaked the cloth again and rubbed it against his shoulders, his arms, his face.

His black eyes opened. He was breathing roughly, and his face was taut. The fever, she imagined. She brushed back her long hair, and wished she’d tied it up. It kept flowing down onto his damp chest.

“Damn you,” he growled.

“Damn you, too, Mr. Sutton.” She smiled sweetly. She finished bathing his face and put the cloth and basin aside. “Do you have a long-sleeved shirt?”

“Get out!”

Elliot came back with the medicine and a small glass of wine. “Harry’s making hot chocolate,” he said with a smile. “He’ll bring it up. Here’s the other stuff.”

“Good,” she said. “Does your father have a pajama jacket or something long-sleeved?”

“Sure!”

“Traitor,” Quinn groaned at his son.

“Here you go.” Elliot handed her a flannel top, which she proceeded to put on the protesting and very angry Mr. Sutton.

“I hate you,” Quinn snapped at her with his last ounce of venom.

“I hate you, too,” she agreed. She had to reach around him to get the jacket on, and it brought her into much too close proximity to him. She could feel the hair on his chest rubbing against her soft cheek, she could feel her own hair smoothing over his bare shoulder and chest. Odd, that shivery feeling she got from contact with him. She ignored it forcibly and got his other arm into the pajama jacket. She fastened it, trying to keep her fingers from touching his chest any more than necessary because the feel of that pelt of hair disturbed her. He shivered violently at the touch of her hands and her long, silky hair, and she assumed it was because of his fever.

“Are you finished?” Quinn asked harshly.

“Almost.” She pulled the covers over him, found the electric-blanket control and turned it on. Then she ladled cough syrup into him, gave him aspirin and had him take a sip of wine, hoping that she wasn’t overdosing him in the process. But the caffeine in the hot chocolate would probably counteract the wine and keep it from doing any damage in combination with the medicine. A sip of wine wasn’t likely to be that dangerous anyway, and it might help the sore throat she was sure he had.

“Here’s the cocoa,” Harry said, joining them with a tray of mugs filled with hot chocolate and topped with whipped cream.

“That looks delicious. Thank you so much,” Amanda said, and smiled shyly at the old man.

He grinned back. “Nice to be appreciated.” He glared at Quinn. “Nobody else ever says so much as a thank-you!”

“It’s hard to thank a man for food poisoning,” Quinn rejoined weakly.

“He ain’t going to die,” Harry said as he left. “He’s too damned mean.”

“That’s a fact,” Quinn said and closed his eyes.

He was asleep almost instantly. Amanda drew up a chair and sat down beside him. He’d still need looking after, and presumably the boy went to school. It was past the Christmas holidays.

“You go to school, don’t you?” she asked Elliot.

He nodded. “I ride the horse out to catch the bus and then turn him loose. He comes to the barn by himself. You’re staying?”

“I’d better, I guess,” she said. “I’ll sit with him. He may get worse in the night. He’s got to see a doctor tomorrow. Is there one around here?”

“There’s Dr. James in town, in Holman that is,” he said. “He’ll come out if Dad’s bad enough. He has a cancer patient down the road and he comes to check on her every few days. He could stop by then.”

“We’ll see how your father is feeling. You’d better get to bed,” she said and smiled at him.

“Thank you for coming, Miss…Amanda,” Elliot said. He sighed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared.”

“It’s okay,” she said. “I didn’t mind. Good night, Elliot.”

He smiled at her. “Good night.”

He went out and closed the door. Amanda sat back in her chair and looked at the sleeping face of the wild man. He seemed vulnerable like this, with his black eyes closed. He had the thickest lashes she’d ever seen, and his eyebrows were thick and well shaped above his deep-set eyes. His mouth was rather thin, but it was perfectly shaped, and the full lower lip was sensuous. She liked that jutting chin, with its hint of stubbornness. His nose was formidable and straight, and he wasn’t that bad looking…asleep. Perhaps it was the coldness of his eyes that made him seem so much rougher when he was awake. Not that he looked that unintimidating even now. He had so many coarse edges….

She waited a few minutes and touched his forehead. It was a little cooler, thank God, so maybe he was going to be better by morning. She went into the bathroom and washed her face and went back to sit by him. Somewhere in the night, she fell asleep with her blond head pillowed on the big arm of the chair. Voices woke her.

“Has she been there all night, Harry?” Quinn was asking.

“Looks like. Poor little critter, she’s worn out.”

“I’ll shoot Elliot!”

“Now, boss, that’s no way to treat the kid. He got scared, and I didn’t know what to do. Women know things about illness. Why, my mama could doctor people and she never had no medical training. She used herbs and things.”

Amanda blinked, feeling eyes on her. She found Quinn Sutton gazing steadily at her from a sitting position on the bed.

“How do you feel?” she asked without lifting her sleepy head.

“Like hell,” he replied. “But I’m a bit better.”

“Would you like some breakfast, ma’am?” Harry asked with a smile. “And some coffee?”

“Coffee. Heavenly. But no breakfast, thanks, I won’t impose,” she said drowsily, yawning and stretching uninhibitedly as she sat up, her full breasts beautifully outlined against the cotton blouse in the process.

Quinn felt his body tautening again, as it had the night before so unexpectedly and painfully when her hands had touched him. He could still feel them, and the brush of her long, silky soft hair against his skin. She smelled of gardenias and the whole outdoors, and he hated her more than ever because he’d been briefly vulnerable.

“Why did you come with Elliot?” Quinn asked her when Harry had gone.

She pushed back her disheveled hair and tried not to think how bad she must look without makeup and with her hair uncombed. She usually kept it in a tight braid on top of her head when she wasn’t performing. It made her feel vulnerable to have its unusual length on display for a man like Quinn Sutton.

“Your son is only twelve,” she answered him belatedly. “That’s too much responsibility for a kid,” she added. “I know. I had my dad to look after at that age, and no mother. My dad drank,” she added with a bitter smile. “Excessively. When he drank he got into trouble. I can remember knowing how to call a bail bondsman at the age of thirteen. I never dated, I never took friends home with me. When I was eighteen, I ran away from home. I don’t even know if he’s still alive, and I don’t care.”

“That’s one problem Elliot won’t ever have,” he replied quietly. “Tough girl, aren’t you?” he added, and his black eyes were frankly curious.

She hadn’t meant to tell him so much. It embarrassed her, so she gave him her most belligerent glare. “Tough enough, thanks,” she said. She got out of the chair. “If you’re well enough to argue, you ought to be able to take care of yourself. But if that fever goes up again, you’ll need to see the doctor.”

“I’ll decide that,” he said tersely. “Go home.”

“Thanks, I’ll do that little thing.” She got her coat and put it on without taking time to button it. She pushed her hair up under the stocking cap, aware of his eyes on her the whole time.

“You don’t fit the image of a typical hanger-on,” he said unexpectedly.

She glanced at him, blinking with surprise. “I beg your pardon?”

“A hanger-on,” he repeated. He lifted his chin and studied her with mocking thoroughness. “You’re Durning’s latest lover, I gather. Well, if it’s money you’re after, he’s the perfect choice. A pretty little tramp could go far with him…Damn!”

She stood over him with the remains of his cup of hot chocolate all over his chest, shivering with rage.

“I’m sorry,” she said curtly. “That was a despicable thing to do to a sick man, but what you said to me was inexcusable.”

She turned and went to the door, ignoring his muffled curses as he threw off the cover and sat up.

“I’d cuss, too,” she said agreeably as she glanced back at him one last time, her eyes running helplessly over the broad expanse of hair-roughened skin. “All that sticky hot chocolate in that thicket on your chest,” she mused. “It will probably take steam cleaning to remove it. Too bad you can’t attract a ‘hanger-on’ to help you bathe it out. But, then, you aren’t as rich as Mr. Durning, are you?” And she walked out, her nose in the air. As she went toward the stairs, she imagined that she heard laughter. But of course, that couldn’t have been possible.




Chapter Two (#ulink_4ead4316-9f24-5922-9695-b6a9ab825b72)


Amanda regretted the hot-chocolate incident once she was back in the cabin, even though Quinn Sutton had deserved every drop of it. How dare he call her such a name!

Amanda was old-fashioned in her ideas. A real country girl from Mississippi who’d had no example to follow except a liberated aunt and an alcoholic parent, and she was like neither of them. She hardly even dated these days. Her working gear wasn’t the kind of clothing that told men how conventional her ideals were. They saw the glitter and sexy outfit and figured that Amanda, or just “Mandy” as she was known onstage, lived like her alter ego looked. There were times when she rued the day she’d ever signed on with Desperado, but she was too famous and making too much money to quit now.

She put her hair in its usual braid and kept it there for the rest of the week, wondering from time to time about Quinn Sutton and whether or not he’d survived his illness. Not that she cared, she kept telling herself. It didn’t matter to her if he turned up his toes.

There was no phone in the cabin, and no piano. She couldn’t play solitaire, she didn’t have a television. There was only the radio and the cassette player for company, and Mr. Durning’s taste in music was really extreme. He liked opera and nothing else. She’d have died for some soft rock, or just an instrument to practice on. She could play drums as well as the synthesizer and piano, and she wound up in the kitchen banging on the counter with two stainless-steel knives out of sheer boredom.

When the electricity went haywire in the wake of two inches of freezing rain on Sunday night, it was almost a relief. She sat in the darkness laughing. She was trapped in a house without heat, without light, and the only thing she knew about fireplaces was that they required wood. The logs that were cut outside were frozen solid under the sleet and there were none in the house. There wasn’t even a pack of matches.

She wrapped up in her coat and shivered, hating the solitude and the weather and feeling the nightmares coming back in the icy night. She didn’t want to think about the reason her voice had quit on her, but if she spent enough time alone, she was surely going to go crazy reliving that night onstage.

Lost in thought, in nightmarish memories of screams and her own loss of consciousness, she didn’t hear the first knock on the door until it came again.

“Miss Corrie!” a familiar angry voice shouted above the wind.

She got up, feeling her way to the door. “Keep your shirt on,” she muttered as she threw it open.

Quinn Sutton glared down at her. “Get whatever you’ll need for a couple of days and come on. The power’s out. If you stay here you’ll freeze to death. It’s going below zero tonight. My ranch has an extra generator, so we’ve still got the power going.”

She glared back. “I’d rather freeze to death than go anywhere with you, thanks just the same.”

He took a slow breath. “Look, your morals are your own business. I just thought—”

She slammed the door in his face and turned, just in time to have him kick in the door and come after her.

“I said you’re coming with me, lady,” he said shortly. He bent and picked her up bodily and started out the door. “And to hell with what you’ll need for a couple of days.”

“Mr….Sutton!” she gasped, stunned by the unexpected contact with his hard, fit body as he carried her easily out the door and closed it behind them.

“Hold on,” he said tautly and without looking at her. “The snow’s pretty heavy right through this drift.”

In fact, it was almost waist deep. She hadn’t been outside in two days, so she hadn’t noticed how high it had gotten. Her hands clung to the old sheepskin coat he was wearing. It smelled of leather and tobacco and whatever soap he used, and the furry collar was warm against her cold cheek. He made her feel small and helpless, and she wasn’t sure she liked it.

“I don’t like your tactics,” she said through her teeth as the wind howled around them and sleet bit into her face like tiny nails.

“They get results. Hop on.” He put her up on the sled, climbed beside her, grasped the reins and turned the horse back toward the mountain.

She wanted to protest, to tell him to take his offer and go to hell. But it was bitterly cold and she was shivering too badly to argue. He was right, and that was the hell of it. She could freeze to death in that cabin easily enough, and nobody would have found her until spring came or until her aunt persuaded Mr. Durning to come and see about her.

“I don’t want to impose,” she said curtly.

“We’re past that now,” he replied. “It’s either this or bury you.”

“I’m sure I know which you’d prefer,” she muttered, huddling in her heavy coat.

“Do you?” he asked, turning his head. In the daylight glare of snow and sleet, she saw an odd twinkle in his black eyes. “Try digging a hole out there.”

She gave him a speaking glance and resigned herself to going with him.

He drove the sled right into the barn and left her to wander through the aisle, looking at the horses and the two new calves in the various stalls while he dealt with unhitching and stalling the horse.

“What’s wrong with these little things?” she asked, her hands in her pockets and her ears freezing as she nodded toward the two calves.

“Their mamas starved out in the pasture,” he said quietly. “I couldn’t get to them in time.”

He sounded as if that mattered to him. She looked up at his dark face, seeing new character in it. “I didn’t think a cow or two would matter,” she said absently.

“I lost everything I had a few months back,” he said matter-of-factly. “I’m trying to pull out of bankruptcy, and right now it’s a toss-up as to whether I’ll even come close. Every cow counts.” He looked down at her. “But it isn’t just the money. It disturbs me to see anything die from lack of attention. Even a cow.”

“Or a mere woman?” she said with a faint smile. “Don’t worry, I know you don’t want me here. I’m…grateful to you for coming to my rescue. Most of the firewood was frozen and Mr. Durning apparently doesn’t smoke, because there weren’t a lot of matches around.”

He scowled faintly. “No, Durning doesn’t smoke. Didn’t you know?”

She shrugged. “I never had reason to ask,” she said, without telling him that it was her aunt, not herself, who would know about Mr. Durning’s habits. Let him enjoy his disgusting opinion of her.

“Elliot said you’d been sick.”

She lifted a face carefully kept blank. “Sort of,” she replied.

“Didn’t Durning care enough to come with you?”

“Mr. Sutton, my personal life is none of your business,” she said firmly. “You can think whatever you want to about me. I don’t care. But for what it’s worth, I hate men probably as much as you hate women, so you won’t have to hold me off with a stick.”

His face went hard at the remark, but he didn’t say anything. He searched her eyes for one long moment and then turned toward the house, gesturing her to follow.

Elliot was overjoyed with their new house guest. Quinn Sutton had a television and all sorts of tapes, and there was, surprisingly enough, a brand-new keyboard on a living-room table.

She touched it lovingly, and Elliot grinned at her. “Like it?” he asked proudly. “Dad gave it to me for Christmas. It’s not an expensive one, you know, but it’s nice to practice on. Listen.”

He turned it on and flipped switches, and gave a pretty decent rendition of a tune by Genesis.

Amanda, who was formally taught in piano, smiled at his efforts. “Very good,” she praised. “But try a B-flat instead of a B at the end of that last measure and see if it doesn’t give you a better sound.”

Elliot cocked his head. “I play by ear,” he faltered.

“Sorry.” She reached over and touched the key she wanted. “That one.” She fingered the whole chord. “You have a very good ear.”

“But I can’t read music,” he sighed. His blue eyes searched her face. “You can, can’t you?”

She nodded, smiling wistfully. “I used to long for piano lessons. I took them in spurts and then begged a…friend to let me use her piano to practice on. It took me a long time to learn just the basics, but I do all right.”

“All right” meant that she and the boys had won a Grammy award for their last album and it had been one of her own songs that had headlined it. But she couldn’t tell Elliot that. She was convinced that Quinn Sutton would have thrown her out the front door if he’d known what she did for a living. He didn’t seem like a rock fan, and once he got a look at her stage costume and her group, he’d probably accuse her of a lot worse than being his neighbor’s live-in lover. She shivered. Well, at least she didn’t like Quinn Sutton, and that was a good thing. She might get out of here without having him find out who she really was, but just in case, it wouldn’t do to let herself become interested in him.

“I don’t suppose you’d consider teaching me how to read music?” Elliot asked. “For something to do, you know, since we’re going to be snowed in for a while, the way it looks.”

“Sure, I’ll teach you,” she murmured, smiling at him. “If you dad doesn’t mind,” she added with a quick glance at the doorway.

Quinn Sutton was standing there, in jeans and red-checked flannel shirt with a cup of black coffee in one hand, watching them.

“None of that rock stuff,” he said shortly. “That’s a bad influence on kids.”

“Bad influence?” Amanda was almost shocked, despite the fact that she’d gauged his tastes very well.

“Those raucous lyrics and suggestive costumes, and satanism,” he muttered. “I confiscated his tapes and put them away. It’s indecent.”

“Some of it is, yes,” she agreed quietly. “But you can’t lump it all into one category, Mr. Sutton. And these days, a lot of the groups are even encouraging chastity and going to war on drug use…”

“You don’t really believe that bull, do you?” he asked coldly.

“It’s true, Dad,” Elliot piped up.

“You can shut up,” he told his son. He turned. “I’ve got a lot of paperwork to get through. Don’t turn that thing on high, will you? Harry will show you to your room when you’re ready to bed down, Miss Corrie,” he added, and looked as if he’d like to have shown her to a room underwater. “Or Elliot can.”

“Thanks again,” she said, but she didn’t look up. He made her feel totally inadequate and guilty. In a small way, it was like going back to that night…

“Don’t stay up past nine, Elliot,” Quinn told his son.

“Okay, Dad.”

Amanda looked after the tall man with her jaw hanging loose. “What did he say?” she asked.

“He said not to stay up past nine,” Elliot replied. “We all go to bed at nine,” he added with a grin at her expression. “There, there, you’ll get used to it. Ranch life, you know. Here, now, what was that about a B-flat? What’s a B-flat?”

She was obviously expected to go to bed with the chickens and probably get up with them, too. Absently she picked up the keyboard and began to explain the basics of music to Elliot.

“Did he really hide all your tapes?” she asked curiously.

“Yes, he did,” Elliot chuckled, glancing toward the stairs. “But I know where he hid them.” He studied her with pursed lips. “You know, you look awfully familiar somehow.”

Amanda managed to keep a calm expression on her face, despite her twinge of fear. Her picture, along with that of the men in the group, was on all their albums and tapes. God forbid that Elliot should be a fan and have one of them, but they were popular with young people his age. “They say we all have a counterpart, don’t they?” she asked and smiled. “Maybe you saw somebody who looked like me. Here, this is how you run a C scale….”

She successfully changed the subject and Elliot didn’t bring it up again. They went upstairs a half hour later, and she breathed a sigh of relief. Since the autocratic Mr. Sutton hadn’t given her time to pack, she wound up sleeping in her clothes under the spotless white sheets. She only hoped that she wasn’t going to have the nightmares here. She couldn’t bear the thought of having Quinn Sutton ask her about them. He’d probably say that she’d gotten just what she deserved.

But the nightmares didn’t come. She slept with delicious abandon and didn’t dream at all. She woke up the next morning oddly refreshed just as the sun was coming up, even before Elliot knocked on her door to tell her that Harry had breakfast ready downstairs.

She combed out her hair and rebraided it, wrapping it around the crown of her head and pinning it there as she’d had it last night. She tidied herself after she’d washed up, and went downstairs with a lively step.

Quinn Sutton and Elliot were already making great inroads into huge, fluffy pancakes smothered in syrup when she joined them.

Harry brought in a fresh pot of coffee and grinned at her. “How about some hotcakes and sausage?” he asked.

“Just a hotcake and a sausage, please,” she said and grinned back. “I’m not much of a breakfast person.”

“You’ll learn if you stay in these mountains long,” Quinn said, sparing her a speaking glance. “You need more meat on those bones. Fix her three, Harry.”

“Now, listen…” she began.

“No, you listen,” Quinn said imperturbably, sipping black coffee. “My house, my rules.”

She sighed. It was just like old-times at the orphanage, during one of her father’s binges when she’d had to live with Mrs. Brim’s rules. “Yes, sir,” she said absently.

He glared at her. “I’m thirty-four, and you aren’t young enough to call me ‘sir.’”

She lifted startled dark eyes to his. “I’m twenty-four,” she said. “Are you really just thirty-four?” She flushed even as she said it. He did look so much older, but she hadn’t meant to say anything. “I’m sorry. That sounded terrible.”

“I look older than I am,” he said easily. “I’ve got a friend down in Texas who thought I was in my late thirties, and he’s known me for years. No need to apologize.” He didn’t add that he had a lot of mileage on him, thanks to his ex-wife. “You look younger than twenty-four,” he did add.

He pushed away his empty plate and sipped coffee, staring at her through the steam rising from it. He was wearing a blue-checked flannel shirt this morning, buttoned up to his throat, with jeans that were well fitting but not overly tight. He didn’t dress like the men in Amanda’s world, but then, the men she knew weren’t the same breed as this Teton man.

“Amanda taught me all about scales last night,” Elliot said excitedly. “She really knows music.”

“How did you manage to learn?” Quinn asked her, and she saw in his eyes that he was remembering what she’d told him about her alcoholic father.

She lifted her eyes from her plate. “During my dad’s binges, I stayed at the local orphanage. There was a lady there who played for her church. She taught me.”

“No sisters or brothers?” he asked quietly.

She shook her head. “Nobody in the world, except an aunt.” She lifted her coffee cup. “She’s an artist, and she’s been living with her latest lover—”

“You’d better get to school, son,” Quinn interrupted tersely, nodding at Elliot.

“I sure had, or I’ll be late. See you!”

He grabbed his books and his coat and was gone in a flash, and Harry gathered the plates with a smile and vanished into the kitchen.

“Don’t talk about things like that around Elliot,” Quinn said shortly. “He understands more than you think. I don’t want him corrupted.”

“Don’t you realize that most twelve-year-old boys know more about life than grown-ups these days?” she asked with a faint smile.

“In your world, maybe. Not in mine.”

She could have told him that she was discussing the way things were, not the way she preferred them, but she knew it would be useless. He was so certain that she was wildly liberated. She sighed. “Maybe so,” she murmured.

“I’m old-fashioned,” he added. His dark eyes narrowed on her face. “I don’t want Elliot exposed to the liberated outlook of the so-called modern world until he’s old enough to understand that he has a choice. I don’t like a society that ridicules honor and fidelity and innocence. So I fight back in the only way I can. I go to church on Sunday, Miss Corrie,” he mused, smiling at her curious expression. “Elliot goes, too. You might not know it from watching television or going to movies, but there are still a few people in America who also go to church on Sunday, who work hard all week and find their relaxation in ways that don’t involve drugs, booze or casual sex. How’s that for a shocking revelation?”

“Nobody ever accused Hollywood of portraying real life,” she replied with a smile. “But if you want my honest opinion, I’m pretty sick of gratuitous sex, filthy language and graphic violence in the newer movies. In fact, I’m so sick of it that I’ve gone back to watching the old-time movies from the 1940s.” She laughed at his expression. “Let me tell you, these old movies had real handicaps—the actors all had to keep their clothes on and they couldn’t swear. The writers were equally limited, so they created some of the most gripping dramas ever produced. I love them. And best of all, you can even watch them with kids.”

He pursed his lips, his dark eyes holding hers. “I like George Brent, George Sanders, Humphrey Bogart, Bette Davis and Cary Grant best,” he confessed. “Yes, I watch them, too.”

“I’m not really all that modern myself,” she confessed, toying with the tablecloth. “I live in the city, but not in the fast lane.” She put down her coffee cup. “I can understand why you feel the way you do, about taking Elliot to church and all. Elliot told me a little about his mother…”

He closed up like a plant. “I don’t talk to outsiders about my personal life,” he said without apology and got up, towering over her. “If you’d like to watch television or listen to music, you’re welcome. I’ve got work to do.”

“Can I help?” she asked.

His heavy eyebrows lifted. “This isn’t the city.”

“I know how to cut open a bale of hay,” she said. “The orphanage was on a big farm. I grew up doing chores. I can even milk a cow.”

“You won’t milk the kind of cows I keep,” he returned. His dark eyes narrowed. “You can feed those calves in the barn, if you like. Harry can show you where the bottle is.”

Which meant that he wasn’t going to waste his time on her. She nodded, trying not to feel like an unwanted guest. Just for a few minutes she’d managed to get under that hard reserve. Maybe that was good enough for a start. “Okay.”

His black eyes glanced over her hair. “You haven’t worn it down since the night Elliot brought you here,” he said absently.

“I don’t ever wear it down at home, as a rule,” she said quietly. “It…gets in my way.” It got recognized, too, she thought, which was why she didn’t dare let it loose around Elliot too often.

His eyes narrowed for an instant before he turned and shouldered into his jacket.

“Don’t leave the perimeter of the yard,” he said as he stuck his weather-beaten Stetson on his dark, thick hair. “This is wild country. We have bears and wolves, and a neighbor who still sets traps.”

“I know my limitations, thanks,” she said. “Do you have help, besides yourself?”

He turned, thrusting his big, lean hands into work gloves. “Yes, I have four cowboys who work around the place. They’re all married.”

She blushed. “Thank you for your sterling assessment of my character.”

“You may like old movies,” he said with a penetrating stare. “But no woman with your kind of looks is a virgin at twenty-four,” he said quietly, mindful of Harry’s sharp ears. “And I’m a backcountry man, but I’ve been married and I’m not stupid about women. You won’t play me for a fool.”

She wondered what he’d say if he knew the whole truth about her. But it didn’t make her smile to reflect on that. She lowered her eyes to the thick white mug. “Think what you like, Mr. Sutton. You will anyway.”

“Damned straight.”

He walked out without looking back, and Amanda felt a vicious chill even before he opened the door and went out into the cold white yard.

She waited for Harry to finish his chores and then went with him to the barn, where the little calves were curled up in their stalls of hay.

“They’re only days old,” Harry said, smiling as he brought the enormous bottles they were fed from. In fact, the nipples were stretched across the top of buckets and filled with warm mash and milk. “But they’ll grow. Sit down, now. You may get a bit dirty…”

“Clothes wash,” Amanda said easily, smiling. But this outfit was all she had. She was going to have to get the elusive Mr. Sutton to take her back to the cabin to get more clothes, or she’d be washing out her things in the sink tonight.

She knelt down in a clean patch of hay and coaxed the calf to take the nipple into its mouth. Once it got a taste of the warm liquid, it wasn’t difficult to get it to drink. Amanda loved the feel of its silky red-and-white coat under her fingers as she stroked it. The animal was a Hereford, and its big eyes were pink rimmed and soulful. The calf watched her while it nursed.

“Poor little thing,” she murmured softly, rubbing between its eyes. “Poor little orphan.”

“They’re tough critters, for all that,” Harry said as he fed the other calf. “Like the boss.”

“How did he lose everything, if you don’t mind me asking?”

He glanced at her and read the sincerity in her expression. “I don’t guess he’d mind if I told you. He was accused of selling contaminated beef.”

“Contaminated…how?”

“It’s a long story. The herd came to us from down in the Southwest. They had measles. Not,” he added when he saw her puzzled expression, “the kind humans get. Cattle don’t break out in spots, but they do develop cysts in the muscle tissue and if it’s bad enough, it means that the carcasses have to be destroyed.” He shrugged. “You can’t spot it, because there are no definite symptoms, and you can’t treat it because there isn’t a drug that cures it. These cattle had it and contaminated the rest of our herd. It was like the end of the world. Quinn had sold the beef cattle to the packing-plant operator. When the meat was ordered destroyed, he came back on Quinn to recover his money, but Quinn had already spent it to buy new cattle. We went to court…Anyway, to make a long story short, they cleared Quinn of any criminal charges and gave him the opportunity to make restitution. In turn, he sued the people who sold him the contaminated herd in the first place.” He smiled ruefully. “We just about broke even, but it meant starting over from scratch. That was last year. Things are still rough, but Quinn’s a tough customer and he’s got a good business head. He’ll get through it. I’d bet on him.”

Amanda pondered that, thinking that Quinn’s recent life had been as difficult as her own. At least he had Elliot. That must have been a comfort to him. She said as much to Harry.

He gave her a strange look. “Well, yes, Elliot’s special to him,” he said, as if there were things she didn’t know. Probably there were.

“Will these little guys make it?” she asked when the calf had finished his bottle.

“I think so,” Harry said. “Here, give me that bottle and I’ll take care of it for you.”

She sighed, petting the calf gently. She liked farms and ranches. They were so real, compared to the artificial life she’d known since she was old enough to leave home. She loved her work and she’d always enjoyed performing, but it seemed sometimes as if she lived in another world. Values were nebulous, if they even existed, in the world where she worked. Old-fashioned ideas like morality, honor, chastity were laughed at or ignored. Amanda kept hers to herself, just as she kept her privacy intact. She didn’t discuss her inner feelings with anyone. Probably her friends and associates would have died laughing if they’d known just how many hang-ups she had, and how distant her outlook on life was from theirs.

“Here’s another one,” Quinn said from the front of the barn.

Amanda turned her head, surprised to see him because he’d ridden out minutes ago. He was carrying another small calf, but this one looked worse than the younger ones did.

“He’s very thin,” she commented.

“He’s got scours.” He laid the calf down next to her. “Harry, fix another bottle.”

“Coming up, boss.”

Amanda touched the wiry little head with its rough hide. “He’s not in good shape,” she murmured quietly.

Quinn saw the concern on her face and was surprised by it. He shouldn’t have been, he reasoned. Why would she have come with Elliot in the middle of the night to nurse a man she didn’t even like, if she wasn’t a kind woman?

“He probably won’t make it,” he agreed, his dark eyes searching hers. “He’d been out there by himself for a long time. It’s a big property, and he’s a very small calf,” he defended when she gave him a meaningful look. “It wouldn’t be the first time we missed one, I’m sorry to say.”

“I know.” She looked up as Harry produced a third bottle, and her hand reached for it just as Quinn’s did. She released it, feeling odd little tingles at the brief contact with his lean, sure hand.

“Here goes,” he murmured curtly. He reached under the calf’s chin and pulled its mouth up to slide the nipple in. The calf could barely nurse, but after a minute it seemed to rally and then it fed hungrily.

“Thank goodness,” Amanda murmured. She smiled at Quinn, and his eyes flashed as they met hers, searching, dark, full of secrets. They narrowed and then abruptly fell to her soft mouth, where they lingered with a kind of questioning irritation, as if he wanted very much to kiss her and hated himself for it. Her heart leaped at the knowledge. She seemed to have a new, built-in insight about this stand~ offish man, and she didn’t understand either it or her attitude toward him. He was domineering and hardheaded and unpredictable and she should have disliked him. But she sensed a sensitivity in him that touched her heart. She wanted to get to know him.

“I can do this,” he said curtly. “Why don’t you go inside?”

She was getting to him, she thought with fascination. He was interested in her, but he didn’t want to be. She watched the way he avoided looking directly at her again, the angry glance of his eyes.

Well, it certainly wouldn’t do any good to make him furious at her, especially when she was going to be his unwanted houseguest for several more days, from the look of the weather.

“Okay,” she said, giving in. She got to her feet slowly. “I’ll see if I can find something to do.”

“Harry might like some company while he works in the kitchen. Wouldn’t you, Harry?” he added, giving the older man a look that said he’d damned sure better like some company.

“Of course I would, boss,” Harry agreed instantly.

Amanda pushed her hands into her pockets with a last glance at the calves. She smiled down at them. “Can I help feed them while I’m here?” she asked gently.

“If you want to,” Quinn said readily, but without looking up.

“Thanks.” She hesitated, but he made her feel shy and tongue-tied. She turned away nervously and walked back to the house.

Since Harry had the kitchen well in hand, she volunteered to iron some of Quinn’s cotton shirts. Harry had the ironing board set up, but not the iron, so she went into the closet and produced one. It looked old, but maybe it would do, except that it seemed to have a lot of something caked on it.

She’d just started to plug it in when Harry came into the room and gasped.

“Not that one!” he exclaimed, gently taking it away from her. “That’s Quinn’s!”

She opened her mouth to make a remark, when Harry started chuckling.

“It’s for his skis,” he explained patiently.

She nodded. “Right. He irons his skis. I can see that.”

“He does. Don’t you know anything about skiing?”

“Well, you get behind a speedboat with them on…”

“Not waterskiing. Snow skiing,” he emphasized.

She shrugged. “I come from southern Mississippi.” She grinned at him. “We don’t do much business in snow, you see.”

“Sorry. Well, Quinn was an Olympic contender in giant slalom when he was in his late teens and early twenties. He would have made the team, but he got married and Elliot was on the way, so he gave it up. He still gets in plenty of practice,” he added, shuddering. “On old Ironside peak, too. Nobody, but nobody, skis it except Quinn and a couple of other experts from Larry’s Lodge over in Jackson Hole.”

“I haven’t seen that one on a map…” she began, because she’d done plenty of map reading before she came here.

“Oh, that isn’t its official name, it’s what Quinn calls it.” He grinned. “Anyway, Quinn uses this iron to put wax on the bottom of his skis. Don’t feel bad, I didn’t know any better, either, at first, and I waxed a couple of shirts. Here’s the right iron.”

He handed it to her, and she plugged it in and got started. The elusive Mr. Sutton had hidden qualities, it seemed. She’d watched the winter Olympics every four years on television, and downhill skiing fascinated her. But it seemed to Amanda that giant slalom called for a kind of reckless skill and speed that would require ruthlessness and single-minded determination. Considering that, it wasn’t at all surprising to her that Quinn Sutton had been good at it.




Chapter Three (#ulink_65a9a484-fe31-584c-92b4-f7cfaa5a23b0)


Amanda helped Harry do dishes and start a load of clothes in the washer. But when she took them out of the dryer, she discovered that several of Quinn’s shirts were missing buttons and had loose seams.

Harry produced a needle and some thread, and Amanda set to work mending them. It gave her something to do while she watched a years-old police drama on television.

Quinn came in with Elliot a few hours later.

“Boy, the snow’s bad,” Elliot remarked as he rubbed his hands in front of the fire Harry had lit in the big stone fireplace. “Dad had to bring the sled out to get me, because the bus couldn’t get off the main highway.”

“Speaking of the sled,” Amanda said, glancing at Quinn, “I’ve got to have a few things from the cabin. I’m really sorry, but I’m limited to what I’m wearing….”

“I’ll run you down right now, before I go out again.”

She put the mending aside. “I’ll get my coat.”

“Elliot, you can come, too. Put your coat back on,” Quinn said unexpectedly, ignoring his son’s surprised glance.

Amanda didn’t look at him, but she understood why he wanted Elliot along. She made Quinn nervous. He was attracted to her and he was going to fight it to the bitter end. She wondered why he considered her such a threat.

He paused to pick up the shirt she’d been working on, and his expression got even harder as he glared at her. “You don’t need to do that kind of thing,” he said curtly.

“I’ve got to earn my keep somehow.” She sighed. “I can feed the calves and help with the housework, at least. I’m not used to sitting around doing nothing,” she added. “It makes me nervous.”

He hesitated. An odd look rippled over his face as he studied the neat stitches in his shirtsleeve where the rip had been. He held it for a minute before he laid it gently back on the sofa. He didn’t look at Amanda as he led the way out the door.

It didn’t take her long to get her things together. Elliot wandered around the cabin. “There are knives all over the counter,” he remarked. “Want me to put them in the sink?”

“Go ahead. I was using them for drumsticks,” she called as she closed her suitcase.

“They don’t look like they’d taste very good.” Elliot chuckled.

She came out of the bedroom and gave him an amused glance. “Not that kind of drumsticks, you turkey. Here.” She put down the suitcase and took the blunt stainless-steel knives from him. She glanced around to make sure Quinn hadn’t come into the house and then she broke into an impromptu drum routine that made Elliot grin even more.

“Say, you’re pretty good,” he said.

She bowed. “Just one of my minor talents,” she said. “But I’m better with a keyboard. Ready to go?”

“Whenever you are.”

She started to pick up her suitcase, but Elliot reached down and got it before she could, a big grin on his freckled face. She wondered again why he looked so little like his father. She knew that his mother had been a redhead, too, but it was odd that he didn’t resemble Quinn in any way at all.

Quinn was waiting on the sled, his expression unreadable, impatiently smoking his cigarette. He let them get on and turned the draft horse back toward his own house. It was snowing lightly and the wind was blowing, not fiercely but with a nip in it. Amanda sighed, lifting her face to the snow, not caring that her hood had fallen back to reveal the coiled softness of her blond hair. She felt alive out here as she never had in the city, or even back East. There was something about the wilderness that made her feel at peace with herself for the first time since the tragedy that had sent her retreating here.

“Enjoying yourself?” Quinn asked unexpectedly.

“More than I can tell you,” she replied. “It’s like no other place on earth.”

He nodded. His dark eyes slid over her face, her cheeks flushed with cold and excitement, and they lingered there for one long moment before he forced his gaze back to the trail. Amanda saw that look and it brought a sense of foreboding. He seemed almost angry.

In fact, he was. Before the day was out, it was pretty apparent that he’d withdrawn somewhere inside himself and had no intention of coming out again. He barely said two words to Amanda before bedtime.

“He’s gone broody,” Elliot mused before he and Amanda called it a night. “He doesn’t do it often, and not for a long time, but when he’s got something on his mind, it’s best not to get on his nerves.”

“Oh, I’ll do my best,” Amanda promised, and crossed her heart.

But that apparently didn’t do much good, in her case, because he glared at her over breakfast the next morning and over lunch, and by the time she finished mending a window curtain in the kitchen and helped Harry bake a cake for dessert, she was feeling like a very unwelcome guest.

She went out to feed the calves, the nicest of her daily chores, just before Quinn was due home for supper. Elliot had lessons and he was holed up in his room trying to get them done in time for a science-fiction movie he wanted to watch after supper. Quinn insisted that homework came first.

She fed two of the three calves and Harry volunteered to feed the third, the little one that Quinn had brought home with scours, while she cut the cake and laid the table. She was just finishing the place settings when she heard the sled draw up outside the door.





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