Only 05 - Autumn Lover

around for?” Hunter snarled. “The trail is getting cold.”
    Case whistled soundlessly through his teeth.
    “Have you said all your good-byes?” Case asked.
    “Yes.”
    “Then you’re a damned fool. That’s a fine woman you’re leaving behind.”
    Hunter bared his teeth.
    “Woman?” Hunter repeated sardonically. “She’s a girl who doesn’t know her own mind from one hour to the next.”
    Just lovers.
    “Horseshit,” Case said matter-of-factly. “She’s a woman grieving for her man.”
    “She’ll get over her tears.”
    “Sassy wasn’t crying. She was grieving. If you don’t know the difference, go upstairs and look at her face.”
    Hunter closed his eyes. They opened an instant later, cold and gray as the winter that follows autumn.
    “Damn you, Case,” Hunter said through clenched teeth. “Let it go.”
    “Just as soon as you do and not one moment before. If you take on Ab Culpepper the way you are now, we’ll both be dead by first snowfall. So tell me again, brother. Why are you leaving the woman who loves you?”
    “ She said we were just lovers. ”
    Case’s left eyebrow lifted in a black, skeptical arch. “Was that before or after you told her you loved her?” Case asked.
    “I never said any such thing.”
    “Well, that explains it,” Case said agreeably, turning away. “I’m going out to talk to my horse. Its butt has more sense than you do.”
    Hunter glared after his brother, but even anger couldn’t keep him from remembering Elyssa speaking of love.
    And his own silence answering her.
    Or even worse, his words.
    Weren’t you listening to me? Did I ever talk about anything but lust between us?
    Elyssa had finally listened to him. Now she, too, was talking only about lust.
    Just lovers.
    Motionless, Hunter confronted what he had done to her, what she had described to him so calmly.
    There is no room for the future in your mind and heart. Only the past.
    Autumn lover. I’ll remember you each year when leaves turn to fire.
    For a time there was only silence in the house. Then Hunter turned and strode up the stairs to the second floor. With every step, he told himself that Case was wrong.
    He had to be.
    Otherwise it didn’t bear thinking about.
    Hunter reached the door to Elyssa’s bedroom and hesitated, not knowing what to say.
    Silence grew around Hunter. No sound came through the door. The quiet was unnerving. It was as though the room beyond was utterly empty.
    Hunter knocked.
    No one answered.
    When Hunter’s third knock was ignored, he tried the door. It opened soundlessly.
    Elyssa was sitting on the bed in a room whose only illumination came from the rifle slits in the shutter. Her back was to the door and her arms were wrapped around herself as though to hold warmth inside.
    Slowly Hunter walked to the bed. Elyssa neither turned nor spoke when the floor creaked beneath his weight. Hunter hesitated, then walked around the bed until he could see Elyssa’s face.
    His breath came in hard and stayed until it ached.
    Elyssa no longer looked like a girl. Anguish lined her face, drained color from her skin, took life from her eyes, made her whole body rigid. Motionless, barelybreathing, she simply endured each breath as it came, and with it the agony of being alive.
    Case had been right. Elyssa was a woman grieving for the loss of the man she loved.
    With a throttled sound of pain, Hunter sank onto the bed next to Elyssa. He lifted her onto his lap and stroked her face with fingers that trembled.
    “It wasn’t you I didn’t trust,” Hunter said in a raw voice. “It was me. I chose wrong and my children paid.”
    A shudder went through Elyssa. She turned and focused on Hunter. The anguish in her eyes made him flinch.
    “Then I saw you,” Hunter said in a low voice. “I wanted you until it hurt to breathe.”
    “Wanting isn’t—”
    “Enough,” Hunter interrupted. “Yes. I know that as well as you do. Better. Belinda taught me.”
    Elyssa closed her eyes, unable to bear the memories in Hunter’s.
    “Then you taught me something far more important,” Hunter said. “Love.”
    “Just—” Elyssa’s voice broke.
    “Just love,” Hunter said softly. “Your love for me. My love for you. The love we will have for our children.”
    “Hunter—” Her voice broke again.
    “I love you, Elyssa.”
    Hunter said it again as he kissed her, then he said it again and again.
    The truth of Hunter’s love swept over Elyssa like sunrise. With a broken sound she