Only 05 - Autumn Lover

“Where are you?”
    “Get back to the house,” Hunter ordered. “You’ll catch your death of cold in this rain.”
    A few moments later Elyssa appeared at the edge of the garden. She leaped from furrow to furrow with the grace of a deer, running toward the lantern light. She burst into the yellow circle around the lantern.
    “Damn it, Sassy…!”
    Elyssa ignored Hunter’s protests.
    “Are you certain you’re all right?” she demandedbreathlessly. “There were so many shots.”
    Even as Elyssa asked, she looked Hunter over carefully. In the lantern glow, each ridge and swell of muscle was etched in golden light and emphasized by black velvet shadows. Hair as dark as night reflected fugitive sparks of light with every breath Hunter took.
    Elyssa forgot to breathe. She had never thought to put the words “man” and “beauty” in the same sentence. But after looking at Hunter, she understood what had driven Michelangelo to create David .
    Hunter looked like that. Intelligent. Powerful. Beautiful.
    And very male.
    The intense approval Hunter saw in Elyssa’s eyes as she looked at his body made his breath shorten. Suddenly he was very much aware of the fact that he was half-naked, bathed in lantern light, his skin sleeked by rain.
    And if she kept looking at him like that, he was going to embarrass himself in front of the men.
    “I’m fine,” Hunter said coldly.
    “I heard shots,” Elyssa said.
    The huskiness of her voice set blood to beating visibly in Hunter’s neck.
    “He wasn’t shooting at me,” Hunter said.
    “Who was he shooting at, then? Is everyone all right?”
    Hunter didn’t answer. He didn’t like to think about the ice that had condensed in his gut when he realized that Elyssa was the intruder’s target.
    “Hunter?”
    “Everyone’s fine.”
    “Who was he shooting at?” Elyssa persisted.
    “You,” Hunter said roughly.
    Elyssa’s eyes widened. Her breath came in with a swift, broken sound.
    “Maybe he thought she was one of the hands,” Morgan offered.
    Hunter looked at Elyssa. She was slender as an aspen, her pale hair was whipping in the wind, and she was wearing a long silk wrapper. The wrapper was tied around her waist, emphasizing the feminine curves of her body. Wind lifted the wrapper’s hem, revealing and then concealing the creamy curve of Elyssa’s calves.
    Raindrops had made dark marks on the silk. Wet silk clung to her breasts. Her nipples were gathered against the cold and the rain.
    “The shooter would have to be blind to mistake Sassy for a man,” Hunter said huskily.
    “Amen,” Sonny said reverently from the darkness just beyond the reach of lantern light.
    “I’ll second that,” said another voice.
    “Same here,” came a third voice.
    “Me too.”
    “Yo.”
    “Amen, Lord. A- men .”
    Hunter’s expression became fierce. Coldly he glared at the men who had gathered at the edge of the lantern light to agree with him that Elyssa looked very female indeed.
    “Quit standing around with your bare faces flapping in the rain,” Hunter snarled.
    The men jumped.
    “Mickey, get the manure cart,” Hunter said. “The rest of you men start shoveling salt. Move!”
    A chorus of yessirs and a flurry of shovels answered Hunter.
    “I’ll leave the lantern for you, suh,” Morgan said.
    Hunter nodded curtly.
    Men dispersed into the darkness. Lanterns blossomed like exotic flowers throughout the garden. The cowhands, who under most circumstances despised all workthat couldn’t be done from horseback, shoveled dirt and salt without a single complaint.
    No man was foolish enough to take on Hunter when he had that look in his eye.
    Not even Mickey.
    Belatedly Elyssa understood what Hunter had said.
    “Salt?” she asked. “What salt?”
    “The salt that son of a bitch left in the garden furrows,” Hunter said.
    Elyssa made a low sound, as though she had been struck. She tried to breathe, but couldn’t. For the first time she looked away from Hunter to the ground.
    Ragged lines of white looked back at Elyssa from furrows on both sides of the one where she stood.
    “Salt?” she whispered.
    Hunter nodded. Then, realizing that Elyssa hadn’t seen the gesture, he spoke aloud.
    “Yes,” he said. “Salt.”
    “Are you c-certain?”
    The trembling in Elyssa’s voice went into Hunter like a knife. He looked at the fingers of his left hand, wishing that he had been wrong.
    Tiny white crystals winked back at him in the lantern light. He lifted his