Autumn Lover

Nevada
Autumn 1868

"I hear you need a ramrod who can handle a gun."

The voice out of the darkness startled Elyssa Sutton. She hoped her face didn't show the lightning stroke of fear that went through her.

The stranger had come out of nowhere, without warning, soundless as a shadow.

She looked toward the man who stood at the edge of the ranch house porch. He was a dark silhouette just beyond the golden lantern light pouring through the windows. Beneath the brim of his hat, his eyes were like clear black crystal, as emotionless as his expression.

A winter storm would look warm by comparison to this man's eyes, Elyssa thought uneasily, biting her lower lip.

On the heels of that thought came another.

Yet he's compelling, in a dangerous kind of way. Almost handsome.

Next to him other men would seem like boys.

Elyssa frowned. She had never particularly noticed men. They were simply wastrel sons of titled Britons, or sailors, or soldiers, or cowhands or wranglers or cooks.

Or raiders.

In the months since Elyssa had returned to America against her uncle's wishes, she had encountered more than a few renegade white men. The Ladder S was a remote ranch in the Ruby Mountains. It drew prospectors, Spanish treasure hunters, wagon trains of hopeful settlers on the way to Oregon ' and the renegades who preyed on all of them.

The Culpeppers were the worst of a bad lot of raiders.