Autumn Lover (6 page)

“Besides,” Penny said, ignoring the questions. “You’re like your mother in more than looks. You don’t belong out here. You belong in a castle somewhere, with people waiting on you hand and foot.”

Elyssa gave Penny a startled look, then laughed out loud.

“Whatever gave you that idea?” Elyssa asked.

“Something Bill said.”

“Bill knows me better than that.”

“Not when you’re wearing silk. You look so much like your mother it’s…heartbreaking.”

“Rubbish,” Elyssa said emphatically. “I’ve seen pictures of Mother. I’ve seen myself in the mirror. You would have to be blind drunk to think we looked alike.”

The instant the words were out of Elyssa’s mouth, she regretted them. Penny was even more upset by Bill’s turn to the bottle than Elyssa was.

“Blazes,” Elyssa said. “Why are men so stupid?”

The outer door to the kitchen closed softly.

“Are you talking about any man in particular?” Hunter asked.

Elyssa made a startled sound and spun toward him.

“Don’t you believe in knocking?” she asked.

“I did, but nobody noticed. Too busy talking about the sins of men, I guess.”

In the cozy ranch kitchen with its golden lantern light and delicious smells, Hunter looked startlingly male. The width of his shoulders brushed against the door-frame. He was so tall that he had to duck beneath the lintel, even though he was carrying his hat in his hand. His hair was clean, thick, black as a starless night.

Hunter’s gunmetal eyes took in Elyssa’s clothes with a glance that said he knew she had dressed for him. The look reminded Elyssa of the searing moment when she had been closer to Hunter than to any man in her life, ever.

And how much she had liked it.

Despite the pounding of Elyssa’s heart and the sudden, vivid color of her cheeks, her voice was cool and controlled when she turned to introduce Hunter.

“Penny, this is Hunter, the new foreman,” Elyssa said. “Don’t bother calling him mister. He doesn’t believe in formality. Hunter, meet Miss Penelope Miller.”

“A pleasure, Miss Miller,” Hunter said, bowing very slightly, his voice gentle.

Penny smiled suddenly and dropped a small curtsy.

“Please call me Penny,” she said. “Everyone else does.”

“For a smile like that, and a cup of coffee, I’ll call you the Queen of Sheba.”

Penny laughed out loud, delighted.

“I’ll hold you to it,” she said. “Welcome to the Ladder S.”

Elyssa stared, unable to believe that the polite, soft-spoken, gently teasing man in her kitchen was the same rude gunfighter who had called her a flirt and all but caressed her breasts in the silence of the barn.

And I let him
.

I can’t forget that part of it. I let him
!

Unhappily Elyssa looked from Penny to Hunter. He was taking a cup of coffee from Penny, smiling at her over the rim, and complimenting her on the strength of the brew.

For all that Hunter noticed Elyssa, she might as well have been a grease stain on the floor.

Is this what Penny meant
? Elyssa asked herself.
Is this how she felt when some idiot male couldn’t see past Mother to her
?

Elyssa looked again at Penny, seeing her in a different way. At thirty, Penny was as fresh and appealing as a daisy. She had an honest face, a generous mouth, and
faint lines of life and laughter around her wide brown eyes.

Most of all, in any man’s book, Penny had passed beyond the age of girlhood. She was a woman who had grown strong on the frontier of a wild land.

Elyssa thought of Hunter’s cutting words—
If I marry again, it will be to a woman, not to a spoiled little girl who doesn’t know her own mind
.

The thought that Hunter might just have found his woman was a chill moving beneath Elyssa’s skin. Even as she told herself that she shouldn’t begrudge Penny whatever happiness she could find, the nasty taste of envy soured Elyssa’s tongue.

In that instant she understood just how deeply she was attracted to Hunter. Thinking of him with another woman was like having the ground cut out from beneath her feet, leaving her with no support.

My God
.

Is this what it was like for my mother, this sudden, overwhelming desire for just one other person on earth
?

Is this why an English aristocrat left her solid gold luxury and disgraced her family and abandoned her country…all for a man who was only slightly less wild than the land he loved
?

In the end, though, Mother got the man she loved
.

Am I going to be like Penny, an old maid who wants only the man who didn’t want her
?

“What do you think?” Penny asked.

With an effort, Elyssa focused on the other woman.

“About what?” Elyssa asked.

Penny smiled. “Wool-gathering about ballrooms and carriages again?”

The faintly scornful look Hunter gave Elyssa put the world right back under her feet. She straightened her spine and returned the cool look.

“You think more about England than I do,” Elyssa
said crisply to Penny. “My thoughts are about problems closer to home.”

“Hunter suggested that we bake enough bread for several weeks,” Penny said.

“It will go moldy.”

“Better moldy bread than none,” Hunter said succinctly. “I’ll hunt antelope and deer every chance I get. Can you jerk meat?”

“Of course,” Elyssa said. “I can hunt, too.”

Hunter’s black eyebrows rose, but he said nothing.

“But the men prefer to eat beef,” Elyssa said.

“We can’t spare any more steers until we know how many you have,” Hunter said bluntly. “In any case, you should have enough rations on hand to withstand a siege.”

“We aren’t going to war.”

“Yet,” Hunter said in a clipped voice. “But we will, Sassy. Bet on it. I put Mickey to work making some water barrels. Seems he was apprenticed to a cooper before he ran away from Boston.”

Elyssa barely heard. She was still hearing Hunter’s certainty that it would come down to a range war in order to hang on to the Ladder S.

Ever since Mac had been murdered by the Culpepper gang, she had been afraid of just that.

“You should have given that spotted stud to the army,” Hunter added, seeing Elyssa’s dismay. “Then they might have worried about protecting the Ladder S as well as the immigrant trains.”

“The stud wasn’t all the captain wanted,” Elyssa said.

Hunter’s eyes narrowed. “You?”

“Yes.”

Hunter shrugged. “So you should have given him a little of what you were giving Mickey. There’s plenty to go around. Ask any ‘working’ girl.”

Elyssa’s temper flared.

“All I ever gave Mickey was orders,” she said hotly.

“Uh-huh,” Hunter said.

His expression said he didn’t believe her.

“Miss Penny,” Hunter said, his voice polite once again, “would you show me to an empty bedroom? Sassy said I was supposed to sleep in the big house.”

Taken aback by Hunter’s attitude toward Elyssa, Penny just looked at the younger woman questioningly.

“I told him to sleep inside because I didn’t want him shot to death like the last foreman,” Elyssa explained without looking away from Hunter. “Now, however, the idea has a positively wondrous allure.”

Penny looked startled and amused at the same instant.

“Put him in one of the empty rooms upstairs,” Elyssa said ungraciously. “The stairway creaks so much that no one can sneak up on him no matter how loud he snores.”

“I don’t snore,” Hunter said.

“Father used to say the same thing. But you know how it is when a man gets older, don’t you, Hunter?”

Hunter’s eyes narrowed.

Penny was horrified.

“Sassy,” Penny said, using Elyssa’s childhood nickname, “shame on you. You know how touchy men are about their age. Besides, Hunter is younger than Bill, and Bill is ten years younger than your father.”

“Any man who thinks I’m a little girl must be old enough to snore,” Elyssa said sweetly.

“I see,” Penny said, hiding her smile. “Well, you’ll have a chance to find out. I’m putting him in the room next to yours.”

Uneasiness and something else streaked through Elyssa.

“My parents’ room?” she asked. “Why?”

“It has the only bed big enough to hold him,” Penny said matter-of-factly.

Elyssa opened her mouth to argue, then shrugged.

“If you snore,” she said to Hunter, “that big bed is going straight to the nursery at the far end of the house. You’ll love the rainbows and butterflies Mother painted on the walls.”

An odd look went over Hunter’s face, a shadow of agony that touched Elyssa despite her anger with him. She wondered if he had lost children as well as his wife to the war. It would certainly explain the pain she had sensed beneath his ruthlessly controlled surface.

“Never mind about the nursery,” Elyssa said quietly. “If your presence bothers me, I’ll sleep downstairs with Penny.”

The fact that Elyssa somehow had sensed his grief nettled Hunter. He didn’t like being transparent to a girl like her.

“I’ll survive,” Hunter said curtly. “I don’t need special treatment from the local flirt.”

Penny’s breath went out with an audible rush. The antagonism between Elyssa and Hunter was strong enough to touch.

And so was the desire.

The sound of men’s voices carrying across the yard came as a relief to Elyssa. She began putting thick coffee mugs and crockery plates on the long table that ran down one side of the kitchen. In other times, Mac and Bill and John, Gloria and Penny and Elyssa, had sat there, talking about the land or the cattle or the turning of the seasons.

“Better hurry getting settled in,” Elyssa said without looking at Hunter. “The last man to the breakfast table has to clean the stables.”

The back door of the kitchen opened as she spoke. Mickey, Lefty, and Gimp crowded in, elbowing to be the first to sit at the long table.

Elyssa gave Hunter a sideways look. Then she smiled.

“Oh, dear,” she said. “I guess you’re last. After breakfast, I’ll be glad to show you where the manure fork is.”

Hunter didn’t doubt it.

H
unter handled a manure rake the same way he did everything else—cleanly, quickly, and with no extra motions. He also did the job without resentment, a fact that the two oldest ranch hands noted and approved.

Cupid, the marmalade barn cat, watched from a nearby manger. Five black and orange kittens nursed hungrily, undisturbed by the commotion. Cupid’s wide yellow eyes probed the shadows for tiny movements. Though quite full at the moment, the cat was a predator to the marrow of her delicate bones.

As Gimp walked unevenly down the center aisle, seemingly intent on getting a bit of grain for the horses in the corral, Hunter glanced up from his work. Gimp nodded to him and hitched along a little faster.

Lefty was walking next to his friend. Both cowhands were in their fifties. Both were gray-haired, and their faces were weathered by sun and storm. Their clothes were the same, faded and frayed. Their boots wore the marks of long use in stirrups. Spurs jingled softly at their heels.

Each man showed the unmistakable signs of a lifetime spent around large, unpredictable animals. The cowhands moved stiffly on legs bowed from saddles. Their
hands were thickened by calluses, and scarred from burns left by ropes and branding irons.

Both men were short one finger. It was the cost of learning never to put your hand between a lariat and the saddle horn when a thousand pounds of angry steer is on the other end of the rope.

Except for Gimp’s stiff leg, there wasn’t a nickel’s worth of difference in the two men’s appearance.

“Just getting some grain for my best horse, ramrod,” Gimp explained.

“Got a stiff bridle here, and the saddle soap is in the back cupboard,” Lefty offered.

Hunter knew the two men were more interested in sizing up the new ramrod than they were in saddle soap or grain. So was Elyssa, who was watching him from the corner of her eye while she groomed Leopard.

Leopard watched Hunter, too, but without real interest.

“Do what you have to,” Hunter said, “but I want those ten head of cattle I saw up in the piñons brought in closer before sunset.”

“Yessir,” Gimp said.

“We’ll jump right to it,” Lefty agreed.

Bugle Boy put his head over the stall door and watched the two strange men with pricked ears and calm eyes.

The cowhands passed quite close to Bugle Boy’s stall door, because Leopard’s stall was directly across the aisle. The men gave the spotted stud a wide berth.

Hunter’s horse neither shied nor laid his ears back at the strangers walking close by.

“Nice stud hoss you have there,” Gimp said admiringly.

“Big, but easygoing, like,” Lefty said, glancing across the aisle. “Not like some other studs I could mention.”

Leopard was standing in the center of his large stall, watching the men. His ears weren’t back, but there was an elemental alertness about him that spoke volumes to men who knew horses.

“If you and all the other hands hadn’t roped, thrown, spurred, and repeatedly tried to break Leopard’s spirit while I was in England,” Elyssa said, “he wouldn’t watch you like a cat at a mousehole now. He has good reason not to trust men.”

“Huh,” was all Lefty said.

“Huh,” echoed Gimp.

“Huh yourselves,” she retorted. “You just don’t like admitting there’s more than one way to break a horse. Quirts and spurs don’t work on an animal like Leopard.”

“Yes, ma’am,” both men said.

There was no real heat on either side of the disagreement. The subject had been aired thoroughly since Elyssa had come back to the Ladder S and confounded the men by riding the savage stallion with little fuss and no danger.

Leopard’s unfailing gentleness with Elyssa still surprised the old cowhands, who were fond of predicting dire results from the stallion no man had been able to stay on top of. It galled their pride that a slender girl could do what tough, experienced men had failed repeatedly to do—ride the spotted stud that had a fearsome reputation as a man killer.

Uneasily Gimp looked over the stall at the big horse and the fragile-looking girl. Wearing the green silk dress, a blacksmith’s leather apron, and leather gloves, Elyssa was bending over Leopard’s left rear hoof, cleaning it with a blunt steel pick. Flashes of scarlet petticoat burned like fire in the dim light of the stall.

Gimp shook his head and muttered beneath his breath about foolish girls and man-killing studs.

“Huh,” was all Elyssa said.

Hiding a smile, Hunter bent over the manure rake and forked the last dirty straw into a wheelbarrow. He had worked with men like Gimp and Lefty before, old bachelors who complained about everyone and everything, including the friends they had known since they were knee-high to a short horse.

Hunter knew the complaints weren’t serious. They were just the cowhands’ way of being alive.

“S’pose you want me to shoe that spotted devil again,” Gimp muttered.

“How did you guess?” Elyssa asked, straightening.

“Combing cows out of them mountains is hard on shoes, and you’ll be doing a bunch of it.”

“Shoeing Leopard won’t be necessary,” Hunter said clearly. “She won’t be taking him out of sight of the house.”

“I can trim and file his hooves for you,” Elyssa said, ignoring Hunter. “I’m just no hand with a hammer.”

Bugle Boy’s stall door opened and shut with emphasis. Hunter strode across the aisle.

Gimp and Lefty looked at one another and went back down the aisle with surprising speed. They had learned during breakfast that the little boss and the new ramrod didn’t see eye to eye on a whole lot of subjects, especially if it involved Elyssa showing the Ladder S to Hunter from the back of a horse.

“Let me know who wins,” Gimp said just before he vanished into the yard.

Elyssa gave the empty doorway a disgusted look. Quickly she peeled off the leather apron, traded the hoof-pick for a brush, and led Leopard into the paddock. The stud wore neither bridle nor halter nor rope. She controlled him with no more than a tug on his mane and a low-voiced command.

“Running away?” Hunter challenged from the aisle outside Leopard’s stall.

“Leopard likes to be outdoors while I groom him.” Elyssa smiled slightly. “Do feel free to join us.”

To Elyssa’s surprise, Hunter opened the stall door and walked through it into the paddock.

Leopard turned his head and flattened his ears in blunt warning.

“Easy, boy,” Hunter said soothingly. “I’m not planning to hurt one hair of your spotted hide.”

Elyssa almost didn’t recognize Hunter’s voice. Instead of the abrupt, abrasive tone she was accustomed to hearing from him, he was using the same beguiling voice that he had used with Penny.

I could get used to that voice
, Elyssa thought.
It’s like being stroked with a black velvet glove
.

The thought made her tremble slightly, secretly.

Leopard stamped and flicked his ears.

“Gently, Leopard,” Elyssa said in a low voice. “It’s all right. Not a rope or a blindfold in sight. I’m here, boy. No one is going to hurt you.”

For the space of several slow breaths, Leopard measured Hunter with feral eyes. Then the stud blew through his nostrils, shifted position so that he could keep an eye on Hunter without turning his head, and slowly relaxed his ears.

Elyssa’s voice crooned praise, joined by Hunter’s much deeper voice. Leopard’s ears flicked as he listened. After a few minutes he blew again, stamped one foot, and nudged Elyssa to get on with the grooming.

“You do love being petted, don’t you?” she said. “Well, I love petting you, so we’re even.”

Still singing Leopard’s praises, Elyssa began brushing the tall horse.

Though Hunter said nothing, he was impressed by Elyssa’s ability to get past the stud’s wariness.

After several minutes passed, it became clear to Hunter that Leopard was far more interested in being
groomed than in stomping anyone. Slowly Hunter moved his right hand away from his gun belt.

“How did you get him to trust you?” Hunter asked.

“It started when he was born,” Elyssa said, brushing Leopard’s glossy hide. “Mother’s prize Arabian mare was bred by a mustang stallion that had escaped from the Shoshone.”

“So that’s where Leopard got his spots,” Hunter said. “The Shoshone trade with the Nez Percé, who are the best horse breeders this side of Ireland. Their Appaloosas are famous among plainsmen.”

“That’s what Bill said. Mother was too distraught to listen when she discovered what had happened.”

“Because the foal wouldn’t be purebred?”

“Partly. But mostly because the mare was too old to be in foal. She died when Leopard was born.”

Hunter whistled softly. “Did you get another mare to accept him?”

“No. Leopard was born out of season. There were no other mares nursing foals.”

Silently Hunter looked at the big stud. If Leopard had gone through a tough time as a foal, it didn’t show now. The horse was big, well made, obviously powerful.

“What did your mother do?” Hunter asked.

“She was going to shoot the foal rather than watch it starve, but I begged her to let me try to save him.”

With a remembering kind of smile, Elyssa brushed the stud’s broad, shiny barrel. Leopard gave a sigh that was almost a groan and half-closed his eyes, obviously relishing the feel of the brush.

“I washed Leopard down with a warm, slightly rough rag, acting like it was his mother’s tongue,” Elyssa said. “Then I helped him stand, and helped him up when he fell, and rubbed him all over with that rag and talked to him all through the day and night.”

With an intensity Hunter could barely shield, he
watched the expressions chase across Elyssa’s face—sadness for the dead mare, pleasure in the foal, amusement at his attempts to stand, and above all, love for the dangerous stud who was standing half-asleep beneath her gentle hands.

Belinda never liked animals
, Hunter realized.
Not like this. Belinda chose a horse for its color and a cat because it matched her trousseau. I thought it was amusing, then
.

Judas Priest, but I was stupid
.

Still am
.

Otherwise I wouldn’t be getting hard just watching a flirt groom a horse
.

“What did you feed him?” Hunter asked, his voice almost rough. “Sugar mash?”

“We had a cow that was fresh, because my mother loved butter and cheese. Penny and I rigged a bottle of sorts. At first, Leopard wouldn’t have anything to do with it.”

The stud shifted his weight. He turned his head and lipped at a strand of long, pale hair that had escaped from Elyssa’s hastily made chignon.

Without breaking the easy rhythm of the grooming, she tucked the hair back out of reach.

Leopard stretched his neck and pulled the chignon apart with his agile lips.

Laughing, scolding Leopard gently, Elyssa balanced the brush on his spotted buttocks, swept up her hair in both hands, and knotted it at the back of her neck once more.

Hunter let out a slow, hidden breath. He tried to ignore the sudden heavy running of his blood. It would be a long time forgetting the sight of all that silky, flaxen hair tumbling wild and free down Elyssa’s sea-green dress.

And her hands, so quick and graceful.

What would it be like to have those hands all over me
? Hunter thought.

Then, savagely,
I’m a fool for even thinking about it
.

“That’s how I got Leopard to drink,” Elyssa said, picking up the brush once more.

Hunter made an encouraging sound. He didn’t trust himself to speak. He knew his voice would be too deep, too husky, rough with the force of the desire pouring through his body.

“I dipped a strand of hair in milk and tickled his lips with it,” Elyssa explained. “After a while, he got the idea and started sucking on the hair.”

Hunter looked at the big stud and tried to imagine him as a feeble colt. It was impossible.

“Within a few days I had him on a proper nipple,” Elyssa said, “but he never forgot. He loves to lip my hair, as though he expects milk and honey every time.”

Hunter said nothing. He was too busy thinking what it would feel like to pull apart the loose knot of the chignon and bury his face in Elyssa’s clean, sweet-scented hair.

And then he would reach beneath the silk to find even softer, sweeter flesh.

Elyssa would let me, just like she let me in the barn
.

God, I’ve never had a woman respond like that, all in a rush, her breathing as sudden and ragged as mine
.

Night after night, she would be a wildfire burning for me, hot and unrestrained. I would be the same for her, burning her all the way to her hungry, sensual soul
.

A hidden shudder of desire went through Hunter as he thought about it…the girl and the night and the fire.

In one way, at least, Elyssa is different from Belinda. Belinda was calculating. Elyssa is too reckless to be wise
.

Sex would be good with her. So damned good. Maybe even worth marrying for
.

Hunter heard his own thoughts and went cold.

Haven’t I learned yet
? he asked himself scathingly.
Did Ted and little Em die for nothing
?

Shocked and angered by his own unruly sexuality, Hunter faced again the consequences of having chosen the wrong girl as a wife, just because she made his blood run hot and wild.

How can I even think of shackling myself to another Belinda
? he asked himself.
A sexy little girl in woman’s clothing
.

A girl who traded the lives of her kids for a fast poke from the neighbor while her husband was fighting a war a thousand miles away
.

Too young. Too spoiled
.

Too weak
.

But I married her, and my kids paid for my stupidity
.

There was no arguing with that icy reality.

Yet still Hunter wanted Elyssa with a force that left him shaken.

It made Hunter furious—with himself, with the situation, and most of all with the girl who wore a silk dress in a stable and gave him sideways glances from hungry, sea-green eyes.