Only 05 - Autumn Lover

have changed his reaction.
    Little miss .
    The thought irritated Elyssa even more. It increased the reckless temptation to bait Hunter into something other than male aloofness.
    She had gotten rather good at that kind of baiting during her years in England. It had been her revenge for being treated as little more than a downstairs maid with a come-hither smile.
    “For your information, Hunter,” Elyssa said distinctly, “I’m no more a little girl than you’re a little boy. I’m twenty.”
    “You look more like fifteen.”
    “The last foreman I hired was shot to death in the bunkhouse three weeks ago,” Elyssa added gently.
    Hunter showed no reaction.
    “That’s when Mac went for help,” Elyssa said.
    “Did he get any?”
    “We heard a lot of shots. Mac didn’t come back, but his horse did. There was blood on the saddle. Still want the job?”
    Hunter nodded as though the fate of other men had nothing to do with him.
    “I take back what I said about brains,” Elyssa said.
    Hunter gave her a cool black glance.
    “The house might not be any safer for you than the bunkhouse was for the last ramrod,” she said, speaking slowly, as though to an idiot.
    “I understand.”
    “Do you? You don’t look like a man expecting to die.”
    “I’m not.”
    Belatedly the border collies caught a strange scent and started barking. Three of the dogs dashed up from behind the house. Two others raced out from the dark ribbon of willows along the creek beyond the barn.
    “Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, hush!” Elyssa commanded.“Comet and Donner, that goes for you, too!”
    All five dogs stopped barking.
    Hunter looked at the rangy, long-haired, black-and-white animals seething around the two people.
    “They don’t look much like reindeer to me,” he said.
    “What? Oh.” Elyssa smiled, remembering. “A few years ago, there was a litter born just before Christmas.”
    “Where’s Dasher and Cupid?”
    “A hawk got Dasher when he was barely five weeks old. We already had a cat named Cupid, so we moved on to Vixen.”
    The dogs circled Hunter and his horse, sniffing. Then they looked at Elyssa. She waved her hand. The dogs trotted off in whatever direction they had come from.
    “They might bark at you a few more times,” Elyssa said, “but they won’t attack anything except four-legged predators. They’re cattle dogs, not guard dogs.”
    “From what I’ve heard, the dogs can’t have much cattle work left on the Ladder S,” Hunter said dryly.
    Elyssa didn’t argue. The raiders had been systematically stripping her ranch of livestock.
    In another month she would be bankrupt.
    Hunter is right , she thought unhappily. I need a ramrod who can handle a gun .
    “Do you have anything but meadow hay for my horse?” Hunter asked. “Bugle Boy has come a long way on grass.”
    “Of course. Follow me.”
    Elyssa stepped off the porch.
    “No need,” Hunter said. “I take directions well.”
    “Somehow I suspect you give directions a lot better than you take them.”
    Black eyebrows lifted again.
    “Are you always this sassy?” Hunter asked.
    “Of course,” Elyssa retorted. “Uncle Bill has calledme Sassy since I was old enough to crawl onto his lap and tweak his beard.”
    Hunter watched while Elyssa stepped past him into the darkness. She paused to speak softly to his horse along the way. The clean, subtly female scent of her caressed Hunter’s nostrils, shortening his breath until he could barely force air into his lungs.
    Like sunlight on a meadow , Hunter thought hungrily. Clean and sweet and hot .
    Hot most of all .
    With narrowed black eyes, Hunter looked at the girl who was even now walking away from him.
    In the moonlight Elyssa’s hips swayed delicately against the fragile silk skirts of a dress that had been stylish in England two years ago. The layers of cloth lifted on even the smallest puff of wind, revealing the pale glow of stockings beneath.
    Hunter forced himself to breathe deeply despite the vital tightening of his body at the sight of her slender calves caressed by delicate cloth and moonlight.
    Cool off, soldier , he told himself curtly. She’s just another empty young flirt, like Belinda. All big eyes and girlish sighs and a soft pink tongue sliding along her full lower lip .
    I should have known better than to take the bait the first time Belinda offered it, but I didn’t .
    I damn well know better now .
    And it was my kids who paid the price of my learning .
    Bleakly Hunter