Mountain Man by Diana Palmer

Author:Diana Palmer [Palmer, Diana]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781459294752
Publisher: HQN Books
Published: 2016-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

When Nicole woke up the next morning, it was to an odd kind of silence. Although she was used to that particular stillness in winter, it was unfamiliar in autumn. But usually it meant snow.

She threw off the covers and ran to the window. Sure enough, the lacy white flakes were coming down like cotton out of the clouds, gently blanketing the trees and the grass. She sighed, vividly remembering last night and the newness of what she’d shared with Winthrop. Like a daydreaming child, she propped her elbows on the windowsill, put her face in her hands and mused about how it would be if she and Winthrop had been snowed in together, just the two of them.

Her daydreams were rudely shattered by the loud noise of an approaching vehicle—a four-wheel-drive vehicle, at that.

A huge Cherokee wagon came into view with Winthrop at the wheel, and several passengers. They must be the hunting party, she guessed. The group didn’t look too bad. There was a willowy redhead dressed from head to toe in white fur, followed by two older men, one in a wool plaid coat, the other in leather. And there was one more passenger, a big, white-headed man with an imposing nose, wearing tweeds….

Nicky came away from the window feeling sick. She’d go back to Chicago alone, right now. She’d pack her things and get out while she could. The memories came back hauntingly. The loud arguments, the fights that never seemed to end. Her father apologizing halfheartedly for his latest infidelity, her mother’s mocking laughter. She put her hands against her eyes, feeling all over again like the little girl who used to run into the kitchen and hide her face against Lalla’s ample bosom and cry her eyes out until the argument ended.

“Nicky!” came Gerald’s voice outside the door. “Nicky, come down! Guess who one of our visitors is? It’s your father!”

Along with that horror came a new one. She hadn’t told Winthrop who her father was, or that she’d renounced her inheritance. What was he going to think?

“I’ll be right down,” Nicky called back.

She got dressed in a daze, pulling on her gray slacks and white sweater, the ones Mary had miraculously cleaned. She’d been wearing them the day she’d helped Winthrop deliver the colt. Perhaps that memory, if her clothing triggered it, would make the next hours easier.

She ran a brush through her hair and smoothed on some lipstick. She looked pale and haunted, but that couldn’t be helped. Why did it have to be her father? she wondered miserably. Of all the sportsmen in the world, why him? She’d suspected it, of course, when Winthrop had mentioned that he’d been to Kentucky and knew Rockhampton Farms. Since her father was a well-known sportsman, it wasn’t farfetched to imagine that he might enjoy hunting in Montana.

There were voices in the living room when she went downstairs, but the only face she saw immediately was Winthrop’s. The tender lover of last night might have been a dream.

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