Until now, the cabin had been paradise. There was three feet of new snow outside, she had all the supplies she needed to get her through the next few wintery weeks of Wyoming weather, and there wasn’t a telephone in the place. Best of all, there wasn’t a neighbor. Well, there was, actually. But nobody in their right mind would refer to that man on the mountain as a neighbor. Amanda had only seen him once and once was enough. She’d met him, if their head-on encounter could be referred to as a meeting, on a snowy Saturday last week. Quinn Sutton’s majestic ranch house overlooked this cabin nestled against the mountainside. He’d been out in the snow on a horse-drawn sled that contained huge square bales of hay, and he was heaving them like feather pillows to a small herd of red-and-white cattle. The sight had touched Amanda, because it indicated concern. The tall, wiry rancher out in a blizzard feeding his starving cattle. She’d even smiled at the tender picture it made. And then she’d stopped her four-wheel-drive vehicle and stuck her blond head out the window to ask directions to the Blalock Durning place, which was the cabin one of her aunt’s friends was loaning her.
