Page 44 of The Cowboy's Christmas
Chapter Nine
If he wasgoing to move out of the Graff, Quinn needed to head to town earlier than usual, so after chores, he told Savannah he’d be back in a couple of hours and offered to pick up any groceries they needed. Savannah took full advantage and went to the kitchen to get Deke’s list.
While she was gone, Quinn went into his new digs and considered what he might need besides food.
“I have extra dishes, blankets and sheets,” Savannah said from behind him. When he turned, she handed him the list, which he folded and put in his shirt pocket.
“I called Jim. He has no need of me as long as I’m back on January 5.” He gave her a curious look. “He asked how you were doing. Do you two know each other?”
“No. We used to live in Isabella, Idaho. My dad was on the Fair Board, and he contracted stock for the rodeo. Jim remembered him.”
“You aren’t a Marietta native?”
“Sadly, no. I moved here in eighth grade, which isn’t the best time to start making new friends, but Dad was offered a nice position with the city, and I didn’t have a lot of choice in the matter.” She smiled at him. “But the story has a happy ending. I love Marietta and I feel like a native.”
“I think moving here in middle school makes you pretty close to a native.” He folded his arms over his chest, recognizing the move as self-protective, but leaving his arms where they were as he offered up a bit of his own childhood. “I moved a lot as a kid.”
“You know what it’s like to be the new kid.”
“Eight times I’ve known what it was like.”
“Wow.” Her eyes widened. “While your brothers grew up in one place.”
“With my dad.”
He managed to keep the bitter note out of his voice, but he felt himself mentally pulling back, as he always did when he talked about his past. This time he stopped the process, going so far as to drop his arms. Maybe he’d been in the habit of stepping back for too long. Maybe he needed to come up with a different strategy.
“I wouldn’t have liked that.” Savannah leaned against the counter. “I had a hard enough time moving once. Not knowing the ins and outs of the social hierarchies is awful.” She met his gaze then, her expression openly curious, as if she noticed his struggle to not look defensive. She smiled a little and said, “I won’t ask any more questions.”
“I don’t mind.”
“I think you do.”
Quinn rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, then gave her a look. “A little.”
“Lack of practice answering personal questions, I imagine.”
“There’s that.”
She cocked her head to one side, studying him as if seeing something she hadn’t noticed before—a facet of his personality that interested her. “Obviously you and your mom moved a lot.”
“Town to town, ranch to ranch. Sometimes she worked other jobs, but she liked cooking and working on ranches.”
“It hurt having your brothers get to stay in one place, with two parents.”
“I didn’t put a name to it at the time, but yeah. There was some jealousy.”
“Which is why you aren’t pushing for a relationship with Austin and Ty?”
“No.”
“Then—”
“All right. I don’t like personal questions.” He gave her a reasonable look, but there was an edge to his voice as he said, “I haven’t been pushing you to talk about your husband.”
“I will,” she said simply.
“Okay.” Bluff called, he went with it, even though Savannah’s face had lost some of its color. “Tell me about him.”
