LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

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