had reached the gossip mill, but it clearly had. And he wasn’t ready to answer. Mostly because he didn’t have a damn clue what to say.
There’d been speculation that he’d be out of Crooked Water and back on the ropes before the seasons changed. But he hadn’t. Not this season, anyway. He was still grieving his dad’s passing, for Pete’s sake. More than that, his mom needed him. None of that mattered. People around here were fascinated that he’d left home and made something of himself. And since Jeff, the guy who’d bought Quinn’s former business, had referred this climber to Quinn—the first client of his new climbing business—he had expected folks would discover he was going up the mountain again. Next, word would get out he was opening up shop as a full-time guide. Managing that news would be...difficult, at best, seeing as he hadn’t discussed it with his new ranching partner.
His mom.
Fighting the urge to pull his shoulders up around his ears and growl, he instead met Art’s curious gaze with his level one. “I never really quit.”
Sam Tolbert, the region’s large animal veterinarian, picked up his tea glass and tipped it in Quinn’s direction. “Heard you agreed to take some climber up Trono del Cielo next week.”
Trono del Cielo. The Throne of Heaven.
Quinn arched a brow as he slid lower in the hardbacked diner chair. “Gone a handful of years and the only thing to have changed around here is the gossip mill’s efficiency.”
This, this, was what he hated about small towns. You couldn’t switch toilet paper brands without someone noticing and “mentioning” it to someone else.
“Rumors come and go, Doc. Hang around long enough and time will let you know what’s true.” Grabbing his hat, he stood, slapped it on his head and searched Amy out in the small crowd. “Make that a to-go order, would you?” He needed to get out of here. The levee of polite restraint had been publicly breached. People would ask what they wanted to know, pose question after question that he didn’t want to answer. He wasn’t prepared for that and was pretty sure he wouldn’t live to see the day he was.
“Hank was just plating it. I’ll wrap it, instead.”
“Thanks.” Quinn tipped his chin, first toward Art and then Doc as he passed their table. “You boys mind yourselves. And don’t you go flirting too much with Miss Amy here without your wife’s express consent, Art.”
The older men chuckled, and Art nodded at the young woman. “Too much respect for Miss Amy to put her through the missus’s jealous rage.”
Amy snorted. “Betty would probably send me spousal support if I’d take your sorry ass off her hands.”
Everyone in the bar laughed, louder this time, and Quinn relaxed as he felt the interest in him shift away. “What do I owe you?”
“Nine and a quarter,” Amy said, smile wide. “Plus the tip you would’ve left, of course.”
“Wouldn’t have it any other way.” Quinn handed her several bills and took the sack of food she offered him. “Thanks for this.”
“Sure. You want your drink to go?”
“Nah. I’ll pop over to the mercantile and grab something. I have a list of things to pick up before I head home, anyway. Thanks, though.”
He turned for the door, and a question he hadn’t been prepared for hit him in the back.
“You coming to the barn dance at the Hendersons’ place Friday night?” Doc Tolbert asked. “Bring Elaine if you do. She’d probably enjoy a night out.”
Everyone paused and waited for him to answer.
Quinn shot the vet a quick, steady look. “You want Mom to go, you ask her directly. Not me.”
Several people chuckled, but the humor was strained.
“I’m asking you as a matter of courtesy,” the vet responded, level and calm.
“She’s a grown woman who knows her own mind.” The words sounded tinny in his head, sort of far away. Denial at its best. No way was Sam asking after Elaine as anything but friends. Sure, his mom was a widow, but that didn’t make her single. As in datable. Not now, and maybe not ever.
Definitely not in Quinn’s eyes.
TAYLOR SANG ALONG with the radio and Toby Keith as he professed why he should’ve been a cowboy. Pulling into town, Taylor reached up and turned the radio off. Nothing in the online ad for the little cabin she’d booked had prepared her for the reality of arriving in Crooked Water, New Mexico.
Not even close.
Slowing to the posted speed limit of thirty-five miles per hour, she had plenty of time to assess the town. All of it. The sign outside the tiny village advertised a population number someone had taped over with duct tape and, using stencils and spray paint, modified to 207. There was a post office housed in a glass-faced stucco building that couldn’t be more than twenty-five feet square.
Beside it sat a brick-bodied bar and grill with a neon sign over the front door that buzzed loud enough she could hear it.
Directly across the street was a mercantile-cum-grocer with touristy knickknacks set in the plate glass window. Sale ads were hand drawn with permanent marker on fluorescent paper and peppered the remaining window space.
And a block farther down, set apart from what seemed to be the heart of the town, a small white chapel faced off with a windowless drive-thru liquor store.
Parking in front of the Muddy Waters Bar and Grill, she hopped down from her truck and strolled across the street. Somewhere nearby, Quinn Monroe waited. She wasn’t slated to meet him until the day after tomorrow, but she’d wanted some time to settle into her little cabin at the ranch.
That’s a load of crap and you know it, her subconscious snarked. You wanted to scope the climb and afford yourself plenty of time to skulk out of town if it looked too tough. At least have the good grace to wait for the bartender to hand you that first double shot of whiskey before you start lying to yourself.
Man, if her inner voice grew any more compassionate, she’d have to think about finding a way to suffocate the witch.
She pushed through one of the large doors to the mercantile and stopped, door still half open. Generic canned chili—a lot of generic canned chili—had been built into a pyramid display right inside the entry. A large sign proclaimed “BOGO! Get it before it’s gone!”
“How much chili can a community of barely two hundred people eat?” she asked quietly, still frozen halfway through the doorway.
“Oh, you’d be surprised,” a tiny, bespectacled man answered from a stool behind an ancient register.
He was so diminutive in a wizened way that it took her a second to realize he’d stood. Shuffling around the end of the worn pine counter with its aluminum flashing and green glass candy jars, he couldn’t have topped out at more than five foot three inches.
“Get
