The Winter Man

by Diana Palmer

  Quinn had to bite hard to keep from laughing. He turned and went out of the kitchen as if he were being chased.

  After supper, Amanda volunteered to wash dishes, but Harry shooed her off. Quinn apparently did book work every night, because he went into his study and closed the door, leaving Elliot with Amanda for company. They’d watched the science-fiction movie Elliot had been so eager to see and now they were working on the keyboard.

  “I think I’ve got the hang of C major,” Elliot announced, and ran the scale, complete with turned under thumb on the key of F.

  “Very good,” she enthused. “Okay, let’s go on to G major.”

  She taught him the scale and watched him play it, her mind on Quinn Sutton’s antagonism.

  “Something bothering you?” Elliot asked suspiciously.

  She shrugged. “Your dad doesn’t want me here.”

  “He hates women,” he said. “You knew that, didn’t you?”

  “Yes. But why?”

  He shook his head. “It’s because of my mother. She did something really terrible to him, and he never talks about her. He never has. I’ve got one picture of her, in my room.”

  “I guess you look like her,” she said speculatively.

  He handed her the keyboard. “I’ve got red hair and freckles like she had,” he confessed. “I’m just sorry that I…well, that I don’t look anything like Dad. I’m glad he cares about me, though, in spite of everything. Isn’t it great that he likes me?”

  What an odd way to talk about his father, Amanda thought as she studied him. She wanted to say something else, to ask about that wording, but it was too soon. She hid her curiosity in humor.

  “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy,’” she intoned deeply.

  He chuckled. “Hamlet,” he said. “Shakespeare. We did that in English class last month.”

  “Culture in the high country.” She applauded. “Very good, Elliot.”

  “I like rock culture best,” he said in a stage whisper. “Play something.”

  She glanced toward Quinn’s closed study door with a grimace. “Something soft.”

  “No!” he protested, and grinned. “Come on, give him hell.”

  “Elliot!” she chided.

  “He needs shaking up, I tell you, he’s going to die an old maid. He gets all funny and red when unmarried ladies talk to him at church, and just look at how grumpy he’s been since you’ve been around. We’ve got to save him, Amanda,” he said solemnly.

  She sighed. “Okay. It’s your funeral.” She flicked switches, turning on the auto rhythm, the auto chords, and moved the volume to maximum. With a mischievous glance at Elliot, she swung into one of the newest rock songs, by a rival group, instantly recognizable by the reggae rhythm and sweet harmony.

  “Good God!” came a muffled roar from the study. Amanda cut off the keyboard and handed it to Elliot.

  “No!” Elliot gasped.

  But it was too late. His father came out of the study and saw Elliot holding the keyboard and started smoldering.

  “It was her!” Elliot accused, pointing his finger at her.

  She peered at Quinn over her drawn-up knees. “Would I play a keyboard that loud in your house, after you warned me not to?” she asked in her best meek voice.

  Quinn’s eyes narrowed. They went back to Elliot.

  “She’s lying,” Elliot said. “Just like the guy in those truck commercials on TV…!”

  “Keep it down,” Quinn said without cracking a smile. “Or I’ll give that thing the decent burial it really needs. And no more damned rock music in my house! That thing has earphones. Use them!”

  “Yes, sir,” Elliot groaned.

  Amanda saluted him. “We hear and obey, excellency!” she said with a deplorable Spanish accent. “Your wish is our command. We live only to serve…!”

  The slamming of the study door cut her off. She burst into laughter while Elliot hit her with a sofa cushion.

  “You animal,” he accused mirthfully. “Lying to Dad, accusing me of doing something I never did! How could you?”

  “Temporary insanity,” she gasped for breath. “I couldn’t help myself.”

  “We’re both going to die,” he assured her. “He’ll lie awake all night thinking of ways to get even and when we least expect it, pow!”

  “He’s welcome. Here. Run that G major scale again.”

  He let her turn the keyboard back on, but he was careful to move the volume switch down as far as it would go.

  It was almost nine when Quinn came out of the study and turned out the light.

  “Time for bed,” he said.

  Amanda had wanted to watch a movie that was coming on, but she knew better than to ask. Presumably they did occasionally watch television at night. She’d have to ask one of these days.

  “Good night, Dad. Amanda,” Elliot said, grinning as he went upstairs with a bound.

  “Did you do your homework?” Quinn called up after him.

  “Almost.”

  “What the hell does that mean?” he demanded.

  “It means I’ll do it first thing in the morning! ’Night, Dad!”

  A door closed.

  Quinn glared at Amanda. “That won’t do,” he said tersely. “His homework comes first. Music is a nice hobby, but it’s not going to make a living for him.”

  Why not, she almost retorted, it makes a six-figure annual income for me, but she kept her mouth shut.

  “I’ll make sure he’s done his homework before I offer to show him anything else on the keyboard. Okay?”

  He sighed angrily. “All right. Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

  She put her hands over her chest and gasped, her eyes wide and astonished. “Together? Mr. Sutton, really!”

  His dark eyes narrowed in a veiled threat. “Hell will freeze over before I wind up in bed with you,” he said icily. “I told you, I don’t want used goods.”

  “Your loss,” she sighed, ignoring the impulse to lay a lamp across his thick skull. “Experience is a valuable commodity in my world.” She deliberately smoothed her hands down her waist and over her hips, her eyes faintly coquettish as she watched him watching her movements. “And I’m very experienced,” she drawled. In music, she was.

  His jaw tautened. “Yes, it does show,” he said. “Kindly keep your attitudes to yourself. I don’t want my son corrupted.”

  “If you really meant that, you’d let him watch movies and listen to rock music and trust him to make up his own mind about things.”

  “He’s only twelve.”

  “You aren’t preparing him to live in the real world,” she protested.

  “This,” he said, “is the real world for him. Not some fancy apartment in a city where women like you lounge around in bars picking up men.”

  “Now you wait just a minute,” she said. “I don’t lounge around in bars to pick up men.” She shifted her stance. “I hang out in zoos and flash elderly men in my trench coat.”

  He threw up his hands. “I give up.”

  “Good! Your room or mine?”

  He whirled, his dark eyes flashing. Her smile was purely provocative and she was deliberately baiting him, he could sense it. His jaw tautened and he wanted to pick her up and shake her for the effect her teasing was having on him.

  “Okay, I quit,” Amanda said, because she could see that he’d reached the limits of his control and she wasn’t quite brave enough to test the other side of it. “Good night. Sweet dreams.”

  He didn’t answer her. He followed her up the stairs and watched her go into her room and close the door. After a minute, he went into his own room and locked the door. He laughed mirthlessly at his own rash action, but he hoped she could hear the bolt being thrown.

  She could. It shocked her, until she realized that he’d done it deliberately, probably trying to hurt her. She laid back on her bed with a long sigh. She didn’t know what to do about Mr. Sutton. He was beginning to get to
her in a very real way. She had to keep her perspective. This was only temporary. It would help to keep it in mind.

  Quinn was thinking the same thing. But when he turned out the light and closed his eyes, he kept feeling Amanda’s loosened hair brushing down his chest, over his flat stomach, his loins. He shuddered and woke up sweating in the middle of the night. It was the worst and longest night of his life.

  * * *

  The next morning, Quinn glared at Amanda across the breakfast table after Elliot had left for school.

  “Leave my shirts alone,” he said curtly. “If you find any more tears, Harry can mend them.”

  Her eyebrows lifted. “I don’t have germs,” she pointed out. “I couldn’t contaminate them just by stitching them up.”

  “Leave them alone,” he said harshly.

  “Okay. Suit yourself.” She sighed. “I’ll just busy myself making lacy pillows for your bed.”

  He said something expressive and obscene; her lips fell open and she gaped at him. She’d never heard him use language like that.

  It seemed to bother him that he had. He put down his fork, left his eggs and went out the door as if leopards were stalking him.

  Amanda stirred her eggs around on the plate, feeling vaguely guilty that she’d given him such a hard time that he’d gone without half his breakfast. She didn’t know why she needled him. It seemed to be a new habit, maybe to keep him at bay, to keep him from noticing how attracted she was to him.

  “I’m going out to feed the calves, Harry,” she said after a minute.

  “Dress warm. It’s snowing again,” he called from upstairs.

  “Okay.”

  She put on her coat and hat and wandered out to the barn through the path Quinn had made in the deep snow. She’d never again grumble at little two- and three-foot drifts in the city, she promised herself. Now that she knew what real snow was, she felt guilty for all her past complaints.

  The barn was warmer than the great outdoors. She pushed snowflakes out of her eyes and face and went to fix the bottles as Harry had shown her, but Quinn was already there and had it done.

  “No need to follow me around trying to get my attention,” Amanda murmured with a wicked smile. “I’ve already noticed how sexy and handsome you are.”

  He drew in a furious breath, but just as he was about to speak she moved closer and put her fingers against his cold mouth.

  “You’ll break my heart if you use ungentlemanly language, Mr. Sutton,” she told him firmly. “I’ll just feed the calves and admire you from afar, if you don’t mind. It seems safer than trying to throw myself at you.”

  He looked torn between shaking her and kissing her. She stood very still where he towered above her, even bigger than usual in that thick shepherd’s coat and his tall, gray Stetson. He looked down at her quietly, his narrowed eyes lingering on her flushed cheeks and her soft, parted mouth.

  Her hands were resting against the coat, and his were on her arms, pulling. She could hardly breathe as she realized that he’d actually touched her voluntarily. He jerked her face up under his, and she could see anger and something like bitterness in the dark eyes that held hers until she blushed.

  “Just what are you after, city girl?” he asked coldly.

  “A smile, a kind word and, dare I say it, a round of hearty laughter?” she essayed with wide eyes, trying not to let him see how powerfully he affected her.

  His dark eyes fell to her mouth. “Is that right? And nothing more?”

  Her breath came jerkily through her lips. “I…have to feed the calves.”

  His eyes narrowed. “Yes, you do.” His fingers on her arms contracted, so that she could feel them even through the sleeves of her coat. “Be careful what you offer me,” he said in a voice as light and cold as the snow outside the barn. “I’ve been without a woman for one hell of a long time, and I’m alone up here. If you’re not what you’re making yourself out to be, you could be letting yourself in for some trouble.”

  She stared up at him only half comprehending what he was saying. As his meaning began to filter into her consciousness, her cheeks heated and her breath caught in her throat.

  “You…make it sound like a threat,” she breathed.

  “It is a threat, Amanda,” he replied, using her name for the first time. “You could start something you might not want to finish with me, even with Elliot and Harry around.”

  She bit her lower lip nervously. She hadn’t considered that. He looked more mature and formidable than he ever had before, and she could feel the banked-down fires in him kindling even as he held her.

  “Okay,” she said after a minute.

  He let her go and moved away from her to get the bottles. He handed them to her with a long, speculative look. “It’s all right,” she muttered, embarrassed. “I won’t attack you while your back is turned. I almost never rape men.”

  He lifted an eyebrow, but he didn’t smile. “You crazed female sex maniac,” he murmured.

  “Goody Two-Shoes,” she shot back.

  A corner of his mouth actually turned up. “You’ve got that one right,” he agreed. “Stay close to the house while it’s snowing like this. We wouldn’t want to lose you.”

  “I’ll just bet we wouldn’t,” she muttered and stuck her tongue out at his retreating back.

  She knelt down to feed the calves, still shaken by her confrontation with Quinn. He was an enigma. She was almost certain that he’d been joking with her at the end of the exchange, but it was hard to tell from his poker face. He didn’t look like a man who’d laughed often or enough.

  The littlest calf wasn’t responding as well as he had earlier. She cuddled him and coaxed him to drink, but he did it without any spirit. She laid him back down with a sigh. He didn’t look good at all. She worried about him for the rest of the evening, and she didn’t argue when the television was cut off at nine o’clock. She went straight to bed, with Quinn and Elliot giving her odd looks.

  Amanda was subdued at the breakfast table, more so when Quinn started watching her with dark, accusing eyes. She knew she’d deliberately needled him for the past two days, and now she was sorry. He’d hinted that her behavior was about to start something, and she was anxious not to make things any worse than they already were.

  The problem was that she was attracted to him. The more she saw of him, the more she liked him. He was different from the superficial, materialistic men in her own world. He was hardheaded and stubborn. He had values, and he spoke out for them. He lived by a rigid code of ethics, and honor was a word that had great meaning for him. Under all that, he was sensitive and caring. Amanda couldn’t help the way she was beginning to feel about him. She only wished that she hadn’t started off on the wrong foot with him.

  She set out to win him over, acting more like her real self. She was polite and courteous and caring, but without the rough edges she’d had in the beginning. She still did the mending, despite his grumbling, and she made cushions for the sofa out of some cloth Harry had put away. But all her domestic actions only made things worse. Quinn glared at her openly now, and his lack of politeness raised even Harry’s eyebrows.

  Amanda had a sneaking hunch that it was attraction to her that was making him so ill humored. He didn’t act at all like an experienced man, despite his marriage, and the way he looked at her was intense. If she could bring him out into the open, she thought, it might ease the tension a little.

  She did her chores, including feeding the calves, worrying even more about the littlest one because he wasn’t responding as well today as he had the day before. When Elliot came home, she refused to help him with the keyboard until he did his homework. With a rueful smile and a knowing glance at his dad, he went up to his room to get it over with.

  Meanwhile, Harry went out to get more firewood and Amanda was left in the living room with Quinn watching an early newscast.

  The news was, as usual, all bad. Quinn put out his cigarette half angrily, his dark eyes lingering on Amanda�
�s soft face.

  “Don’t you miss the city?” he asked.

  She smiled. “Sure. I miss the excitement and my friends. But it’s nice here, too.” She moved toward the big armchair he was sitting in, nervously contemplating her next move. “You don’t mind all that much, do you? Having me around, I mean?”

  He glared up at her. He was wearing a blue-checked flannel shirt, buttoned up to the throat, and the hard muscles of his chest strained against it. He looked twice as big as usual, his dark hair unruly on his broad forehead as he stared up into her eyes.

  “I’m getting used to you, I guess,” he said stiffly. “Just don’t get too comfortable.”

  “You really don’t want me here, do you?” she asked quietly.

  He sighed angrily. “I don’t like women,” he muttered.

  “I know.” She sat down on the arm of his chair, facing him. “Why not?” she asked gently.

  His body went taut at the proximity. She was too close. Too female. The scent of her got into his nostrils and made him shift restlessly in the chair. “It’s none of your damned business why not,” he said evasively. “Will you get up from there?”

  She warmed at the tone of his voice. So she did disturb him! Amanda smiled gently as she leaned forward. “Are you sure you want me to?” she asked and suddenly threw caution to the wind and slid down into his lap, putting her soft mouth hungrily on his.

  He stiffened. He jerked. His big hands bit into her arms so hard they bruised. But for just one long, sweet moment, his hard mouth gave in to hers and he gave her back the kiss, his lips rough and warm, the pressure bruising, and he groaned as if all his dreams had come true at once.

  He tasted of smoke for the brief second that he allowed the kiss. Then he was all bristling indignation and cold fury. He slammed to his feet, taking her with him, and literally threw her away, so hard that she fell against and onto the sofa.

  “Damn you,” he ground out. His fists clenched at his sides. His big body vibrated with outrage. “You cheap little tart!”

  She lay trembling, frightened of the violence in his now white face and blazing dark eyes. “I’m not,” she defended feebly.