LITMIR.BIZ

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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—”

      “You’d better get to school, son,” Quinn interrupted tersely, nodding at Elliot.

      “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.

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