style="font-size:15px;"> When daylight filtered through the open window, Autumn Weaver slipped out of bed, dressed hurriedly and walked quietly down the stairs of her family’s Victorian farm home. She laid a restraining hand on the head of Spots, her border collie, when he rushed to greet her as she stepped out on the back porch. The white barn, housing her father’s prize-winning Belgian horses, was barely visible through the layer of dense fog hovering over Indian Creek Farm in central Ohio.
Autumn hurried into the barn, stroking the long faces of the huge draft horses as she made her way slowly to the tack room. She heard Nathan walking around in his upstairs apartment, and she waited breathlessly until his footsteps came nearer. Nathan picked up a couple of halters before he saw her standing in the doorway.
“What are you doing here?” he demanded.
“I wanted to see you.”
He brushed by her into the main passageway of the large barn. She stopped him by placing a hand on his arm.
“After your date with Dr. Lowe last night, I didn’t think you’d want to see me again,” Nathan said harshly.
“I didn’t have a date with him. Mother invited him to dinner. I didn’t even know he was coming.”
He turned to face her. “It doesn’t matter anyway, Autumn. You know there can’t ever be anything between us. If I can work here until the end of the month, I’ll have enough money to enroll for the fall semester at the university. I’ll leave then, and until that time, we’ll have to stay away from each other.”
“I thought you liked me, Nathan?”
He avoided her beseeching eyes. “That has nothing to do with it. Your father has made it plain that his daughters are off-limits to his hired hands. I don’t blame him. In his place, I’d feel the same way.”
“But we’ve had so much fun this summer.”
“Fun we had to steal when your parents were gone. It just won’t work, Autumn. Go ahead and date Dr. Lowe. He’d make a good husband for you.”
“How can I date him when it’s you I want?”
Her quivering lips, and the blue eyes filling with tears melted Nathan’s defenses, and his determination to avoid her disappeared as though it had never been. Even as he prayed for the strength to leave her, Nathan drew Autumn close and covered her shapely mouth with his. Autumn put her arms around his neck and snuggled into his embrace. When he released her lips, she dropped her head to his shoulder with a sigh of contentment.
“I shouldn’t have done that, Autumn, but I’m only human. I couldn’t resist you any longer.”
“Then you love me?” Autumn asked. Before he could answer, she felt a strong hand jerking backward on her shoulder. She looked up into the angry face of her father, Landon Weaver, who swung his fist and hit Nathan on the jaw.
Nathan grabbed a barn pillar to break his fall.
“Pack your things and get off this property,” Landon shouted. “I’ll figure out what I owe you and send it to your uncle’s farm. Don’t ever let me see your face around here again. I told you to stay away from my daughter.”
“Tell her to stay away from me. I didn’t ask her to come here this morning,” Nathan protested. “This hasn’t happened before.”
“That’s a likely story,” Landon said. “My daughters don’t pursue farmhands.”
Nathan faced Autumn, and she was touched by the distress in his voice.
“Tell him! Tell him I’ve never kissed you before.”
Autumn looked from Nathan’s bruised face and troubled gray eyes to the father she loved more than any other person in the world. As long as she could remember, she’d tagged her father’s heels until she knew as much about the Belgian horses and the farm operation as Landon himself knew. Always before, Landon had given her everything she wanted, but from the belligerent gleam in his eyes, she knew he wouldn’t let her have Nathan.
She looked again at Nathan, whom she adored with all the fervor of an eighteen-year-old’s first love. She’d only known Nathan Holland a few months. Could she choose him over her father? Without considering the far-reaching consequence of her action, Autumn took one last look at Nathan and walked out of the barn without saying a word in his defense.
Chapter One
Blinded by the sudden onslaught of water across the windshield, Autumn braked sharply when an eighteen-wheeler passed her. She flipped the wipers to the highest speed and straightened in the car seat. Numb from hunching over the steering wheel for hours, she considered asking Trina to drive, but it was too risky to stop and change drivers on the interstate. Besides, Trina was asleep, and she was wide awake. Thoughts of the past had kept her wakeful since they’d passed Indianapolis.
When Autumn Weaver left Ohio eight years ago, she hadn’t intended to return to Greensboro. She couldn’t imagine why she’d allowed Ray Wheeler to talk her into taking over his veterinary practice for two months. Was it possible that she hoped for reconciliation with her family? To ask forgiveness for her misguided decisions? To atone for the way she’d disillusioned and disappointed her parents and had caused Nathan Holland to lose his job at Indian Creek Farm?
More than once since she and her closest friend, Trina, had left Wisconsin, Autumn had been tempted to telephone Ray and tell him she’d changed her mind. The bitter incidents that had caused her to leave home had dominated her thoughts for years, but Autumn realized that sometime she would have to deal with the past. Perhaps that time had come.
When she caught herself nodding off, Autumn reached a hand and touched Trina lightly on the shoulder. Trina was a sound sleeper, and when she didn’t stir, Autumn shook her gently.
Trina stretched. “Are we there yet?”
“Not for another two or three hours. I should have telephoned Ray that we’d be late, but by that time, he would already have left for the airport.”
“What time is it?” Trina asked, riffling in her purse for her glasses.
“Midnight.”
“Maybe we ought to stop for the night. There should be a motel at the next exit.”
“Do you have enough money for a motel bill?” Autumn asked.
Yawning widely, Trina said, “I’ve got a hundred dollars.”
“I have about half that much, and I don’t want to spend it on a motel when there’s a free bed waiting for us in Greensboro. We’d better go on.”
“Do you want me to drive?”
“I’ll be all right if you’ll stay awake and talk to me. Otherwise, I might fall asleep and run off the road.”
Trina ran a pick through her short brown hair and took a swig from a water bottle. She handed Autumn a granola bar. “Eat this, and it’ll perk you up.” She glanced at her six-year-old niece curled up on the back seat of Autumn’s old car. “Dolly is sound asleep.”
Trina inserted a tape in the player
