by Diana Palmer
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—”
“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 w
ere.
“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.
