Read Online Only 05 - Autumn Lover by authors_sort - Free Book Online

past.”
    “What are you talking about? What is in the past that so bothers Bill?”
    Bacon hissed wildly as it hit the frying pan. With a muttered word, Penny wrapped her apron around the heavy iron handle and moved the pan to a cooler part of the stove.
    “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, andfaint 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