Sutton's Way

“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.

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