The Winter Man (21 page)

“How did you get to the age you are without winding up in someone's bed?” Quinn asked then. He'd wondered
at her shyness with him and then at the way she blushed all the time. He didn't know much about women, but he wanted to know everything about her.

Amanda wrapped her arms around herself and shrugged. When he lit his cigarette and still stood there waiting for an answer, she gave in and replied. “I couldn't give up control,” she said simply. “All my life I'd been dominated and pushed around by my father. Giving in to a man seemed like throwing away my rights as a person. Especially giving in to a man in bed,” she stammered, averting her gaze. “I don't think there's anyplace in the world where a man is more the master than in a bedroom, despite all the liberation and freedom of modern life.”

“And you think that women should dominate there.”

She looked up. “Well, not dominate.” She hesitated. “But a woman shouldn't be used just because she's a woman.”

His thin mouth curled slightly. “Neither should a man.”

“I wasn't using you,” she shot back.

“Did I accuse you?” he returned innocently.

She swallowed. “No, I guess not.” She folded her arms over her breasts, wincing because the tips were hard and unexpectedly tender.

“That hardness means you feel desire,” he said, grinning when she gaped and then glared at him. She made him feel about ten feet tall. “I read this book about sex,” he continued. “It didn't make much sense to me at the time, but it's beginning to.”

“I am not available as a living model for sex education!”

He shrugged. “Suit yourself. But it's a hell of a loss to my education.”

“You don't need educating,” she muttered. “You were married.”

He nodded. “Sure I was.” He pursed his lips and let his eyes run lazily over her body. “Except that she never wanted me, before or after I married her.”

Amanda's lips parted. “Oh, Quinn,” she said softly. “I'm sorry.”

“So was I, at the time.” He shook his head. “I used to wonder at first why she pulled back every time I kissed her. I guess she was suffering it until she could get me to put the ring on her finger. Up until then, I thought it was her scruples that kept me at arm's length. But she never had many morals.” He stared at Amanda curiously, surprised at how easy it was to tell her things he'd never shared with another human being. “After I found out what she really was, I couldn't have cared less about sharing her bed.”

“No, I don't suppose so,” she agreed.

He lifted the cigarette to his lips and his eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Elliot's almost thirteen,” he said. “He's been my whole life. I've taken care of him and done for him. He knows there's no blood tie between us, but I love him and he loves me. In all the important ways, I'm his father and he's my son.”

“He loves you very much,” she said with a smile. “He talks about you all the time.”

“He's a good boy.” He moved a little closer, noticing how she tensed when he came close. He liked that reaction a lot. It told him that she was aware of him, but shy and reticent. “You don't have men,” he said softly. “Well, I don't have women.”

“Not for…a few months?” she stammered, because she couldn't imagine that he was telling the truth.

He shrugged his powerful shoulders. “Well, not for a bit longer than that. Not much opportunity up here. And I can't go off and leave Elliot while I tomcat around town. It's been a bit longer than thirteen years.”

“A bit?”

He looked down at her with a curious, mocking smile. “When I was a boy, I didn't know how to get girls. I was big and clumsy and shy, so it was the other boys who scored.” He took another draw, a slightly jerky one, from his cigarette. “I still have the same problem around most women. It's not so much hatred as a lack of ability, and shyness. I don't know how to come on to a woman,” he confessed with a faint smile.

Amanda felt as if the sun had just come out. She smiled back. “Don't you, really?” she asked softly. “I thought it was just that you found me lacking, or that I wasn't woman enough to interest you.”

He could have laughed out loud at that assumption. “Is
that why you called me Goody Two-Shoes?” he asked pleasantly.

She laughed softly. “Well, that was sort of sour grapes.” She lowered her eyes to his chest. “It hurt my feelings that you thought I didn't have any morals, when I'd never made one single move toward any other man in my whole life.”

He felt warm all over from that shy confession. It took down the final brick in his wall of reserve. She wasn't like any woman he'd ever known. “I'm glad to know that. But you and I have more in common than a lack of technique,” he said, hesitating.

“We do?” she asked. Her soft eyes held his. “What do you mean?”

He turned and deliberately put out his cigarette in the ashtray on the table beside them. He straightened and looked down at her speculatively for a few seconds before he went for broke. “Well, what I mean, Amanda,” he replied finally, “is that you aren't the only virgin on the place.”

“I
didn't hear that,” Amanda said, because she knew she hadn't. Quinn Sutton couldn't have told her that he was a virgin.

“Yes, you did,” he replied. “And it's not all that far-fetched. Old McNaber down the hill's never had a woman, and he's in his seventies. There are all sorts of reasons why men don't get experience. Morals, scruples, isolation, or even plain shyness. Just like women,” he added with a meaningful look at Amanda. “I couldn't go to bed with somebody just to say I'd had sex. I'd have to care about her, want her, and I'd want her to care about me. There are idealistic people all over the world who never find that particular combination, so they stay celibate. And really, I think that people
who sleep around indiscriminately are in the minority even in these liberated times. Only a fool takes that sort of risk with the health dangers what they are.”

“Yes, I know.” She watched him with fascinated eyes. “Haven't you ever…wanted to?” she asked.

“Well, that's the problem, you see,” he replied, his dark eyes steady on her face.

“What is?”

“I have…wanted to. With you.”

She leaned back against the counter, just to make sure she didn't fall down. “With me?”

“That first night you came here, when I was so sick, and your hair drifted down over my naked chest. I shivered, and you thought it was with fever,” he mused. “It was a fever, all right, but it didn't have anything to do with the virus.”

Her fingers clenched the counter. She'd wondered about his violent reaction at the time, but it seemed so unlikely that a cold man like Quinn Sutton would feel that way about a woman. He was human, she thought absently, watching him.

“That's why I've given you such a hard time,” he confessed with narrowed, quiet eyes. “I don't know how to handle desire. I can't throw you over my shoulder and carry you upstairs, not with Elliot and Harry around, even if you were the kind of woman I thought at first you were. The fact that you're as innocent as I am only makes it more complicated.”

She looked at him with new understanding, as
fascinated by him as he seemed to be by her. He wasn't that bad looking, she mused. And he was terribly strong, and sexy in an earthy kind of way. She especially liked his eyes. They were much more expressive than that poker face.

“Fortunately for you, I'm kind of shy, too,” she murmured.

“Except when you're asking men to take their clothes off,” Quinn said, nodding.

Harry froze in the doorway with one foot lifted while Amanda gaped at him and turned red.

“Put your foot down and get busy,” Quinn muttered irritably. “Why were you standing there?”

“I was getting educated.” Harry chuckled. “I didn't know Amanda asked people to take their clothes off!”

“Only me,” Quinn said, defending her. “And just my shirt. She's not a bad girl.”

“Will you stop!” Amanda buried her face in her hands. “Go away!”

“I can't. I live here,” Quinn pointed out. “Did I smell brandy on your breath?” he asked suddenly.

Harry grimaced even as Amanda's eyes widened. “Well, yes you do,” he confessed. “She was upset and crying and all…”

“How much did you give her?” Quinn persisted. “Only a few drops,” Harry promised. “In her coffee, to calm her.”

“Harry, how could you!” Amanda laughed. The coffee had tasted funny, but she'd been too upset to wonder why.

“Sorry,” Harry murmured dryly. “But it seemed the thing to do.”

“It backfired,” Quinn murmured and actually smiled.

“You stop that!” Amanda told him. She sat down at the table. “I'm not tipsy. Harry, I'll peel those apples for the pie if I can have a knife.”

“Let me get out of the room first, if you please,” Quinn said, glancing at her dryly. “I saw her measuring my back for a place to put it.”

“I almost never stab men with knives,” she promised impishly.

He chuckled. He reached for his hat and slanted it over his brow, buttoning his old shepherd's coat because it was snowing outside again.

Amanda looked past him, the reason for all the upset coming back now as she calmed down. Her expression became sad.

“If you stay busy, you won't think about it so much,” Quinn said quietly. “It's part of life, you know.”

“I know.” She managed a smile. “I'm fine. Despite Harry,” she added with a chuckle, watching Harry squirm before he grinned back.

Quinn's dark eyes met hers warmly for longer than he meant, so that she blushed. He tore his eyes away finally, and went outside.

Harry didn't say anything, but his smile was speculative.

Elliot came home from school and persuaded Amanda
to get out the keyboard and give him some more pointers. He admitted that he'd been bragging about her to his classmates and that she was a professional musician.

“Where do you play, Amanda?” Elliot asked curiously, and he stared at her with open puzzlement. “You look so familiar somehow.”

She sat very still on the sofa and tried to stay calm. Elliot had already told her that he liked rock music and she knew Quinn had hidden his tapes. If there was a tape in his collection by Desperado, it would have her picture on the cover along with that of her group.

“Do I really look familiar?” she asked with a smile. “Maybe I just have that kind of face.”

“Have you played with orchestras?” he persisted.

“No. Just by myself, sort of. In nightclubs,” she improvised. Well, she had once sung in a nightclub, to fill in for a friend. “Mostly I do backup. You know, I play with groups for people who make tapes and records.”

“Wow!” he exclaimed. “I guess you know a lot of famous singers and musicians?”

“A few,” she agreed.

“Where do you work?”

“In New York City, in Nashville,” she told him. “All over. Wherever I can find work.”

He ran his fingers up and down the keyboard. “How did you ever wind up here?”

“I needed a rest,” she said. “My aunt is…a friend of
Mr. Durning. She asked him if I could borrow the cabin, and he said it was all right. I had to get away from work for a while.”

“This doesn't bother you, does it? Teaching me to play, I mean?” he asked and looked concerned.

“No, Elliot, it doesn't bother me. I'm enjoying it.” She ran a scale and taught it to him, then showed him the cadences of the chords that went with it.

“It's so complicated,” he moaned.

“Of course it is. Music is an art form, and it's complex. But once you learn these basics, you can do anything with a chord. For instance…”

She played a tonic chord, then made an impromptu song from its subdominant and seventh chords and the second inversion of them. Elliot watched, fascinated.

“I guess you've studied for years,” he said with a sigh.

“Yes, I have, and I'm still learning,” she said. “But I love it more than anything. Music has been my whole life.”

“No wonder you're so good at it.”

She smiled. “Thanks, Elliot.”

“Well, I'd better get my chores done before supper,” he said, sighing. He handed Amanda the keyboard. “See you later.”

She nodded. He went out. Harry was feeding the two calves that were still alive, so presumably he'd tell Elliot about the one that had died. Amanda hadn't had the heart to talk about it.

Her fingers ran over the keyboard lovingly and she
began to play a song that her group had recorded two years back, a sad, dreamy ballad about hopeless love that had won them a Grammy. She sang it softly, her pure, sweet voice haunting in the silence of the room as she tried to sing for the first time in weeks.

“Elliot, for Pete's sake, turn that radio down, I'm on the telephone!” came a pleading voice from the back of the house.