Anne McAllister - Blood Brothers

Neither had the coffee.

The editorials were as pompous and as unrelated to village concerns as they’d ever been. And there were no new local advertisers even though he’d told Beatrice to call every shop in town.

Gabe was ready to tear his hair. So much for the voice of authority. So much for being lord and master.

It might work for Randall, but it damn sure didn’t work for him.

Of course Randall’s reputation for hard work and smart decisions preceded him. They knew they could trust him.

Gabe had no reputation. He was, he realized as he sat behind his desk, like a new foreman, untried, untested. Untrusted.

And just like that new straw boss, he’d have to prove himself. That was the problem here. He’d been trying to be Randall when he should have been himself.

He stood up. He flung everything he could find into his briefcase-God, a briefcase! What had he become?-and announced that he was going home.

“Home?” Beatrice looked up, startled. “To America?”

Percy was triumphant. “So much for cowboy ways,” he muttered as Gabe headed toward the door.

Gabe stopped and turned back. “I’m going to Mrs. Crossman’s to map out our route. I’ll be here on Monday bright and early,” he said, his gaze moving from one mystified face to the next and finally settling on Percy. A slow smile spread across Gabe’s. “Get ready to cowboy up.”

There was supposed to be a ghost at Stanton Abbey. A Presence, with a capital P. A monk fretting about how he and his brethren were tossed out on their ears by Henry VIII. Freddie had never met him. She wasn’t inclined to believe in the presence of something not there.

Until Gabe McBride moved into her house.

Then, even when he wasn’t there physically-even when she knew he was well and truly out of the house, down at the Gazette or over at the pub-somehow he was still there.

Of course he was, she thought irritably. Charlie and Emma never stopped talking about him. They lived and breathed Gabe McBride.

“Gabe can do this…Gabe thinks that…Do you think Gabe would like to…Gabe’s teaching me to rope…Gabe’s teaching me to ride…God bless Mummy and Granny and Gran’pa and Gabe.”

Was it any wonder, Freddie thought, that she couldn’t get him out of her mind?

She blamed Charlie and Emma and Gabe himself, but she knew the fault was at least partly hers. There was some fatal flaw deep inside her that worked like a magnet, drawing her toward unsuitable men.

It might have helped if she’d been able to go out to work everyday. She could have distracted herself.

But as caretaker, she spent the day on the grounds and in the abbey where every time she turned around generations of Stantons, many of whom had the same dark hair and deep blue eyes as Gabe McBride, stared down at her. It was like being surrounded with two-dimensional versions of a man already inhabiting her head.

And then at night she went home to the real thing.

He was becoming like a member of the family, just as he preferred. The children were thrilled. Freddie was not. He was too handsome, too active, too…too… male.

He made her want things she knew she shouldn’t want.

He made the kids want things they shouldn’t want either-like adventure, excitement, danger. Risks.

“A little adventure never hurt anyone,” Gabe said. “They’re entirely too sheltered. They need a little excitement.”

Storytelling, Freddie thought. That was excitement enough. Gabe and the children disagreed.

When Freddie woke up Saturday morning, the house was extraordinarily quiet.

For a few minutes she thought that they’d all had a long lie-in. Then she realized that, while Gabe was grown up enough to appreciate the value of a late weekend morning, Charlie and Emma would never waste a Saturday morning on sleep!

Something was seriously amiss.

Freddie bolted out of bed, grabbed her dressing gown and ran to check the bedrooms. As she’d feared, both children were gone. She clattered down the stairs. Cereal bowls were rinsed and stacked on the counter. The table was wiped clean-except for a note.

“We’ve gone to be cowboys,” Charlie had written, “in Bolts’ field.”

Cowboys? In Bolts’ field?

Josiah Bolt raised sheep! No, surely not.

But half an hour later when she finally reached the stone wall bounding Bolts’ field, Gabe was showing Charlie how to lay a lasso over the head of a very bewildered sheep.

“You don’t rope sheep!” Freddie exclaimed, clambering over the stile.

Gabe just looked up and grinned at her. “I do.”

“Josiah will go round the bend! He’s not the easiest neighbor to get along with in the first place,” Freddie railed. “I know him! He’ll say you’re endangering the quality of the wool!”

Gabe broke out laughing.

“Trust me. He will,” Freddie said. “And it can’t be good for the sheep in any case. I mean, they’re not meant to be roped. And Stantons have always been in the forefront of agricultural responsibility. Quite looked up to, they are, and-”

Gabe shoved his hat back on his head. “You made your point. We won’t rope.”

Both children looked at him, crestfallen, then at Freddie, accusing.

“We won’t rope sheep, ” Gabe amended. “We’ll find us something else to rope,” he promised the children. “Maybe we can borrow a cow.” He looked at Freddie. “Who keeps cows?”

“Well, the earl, of course. He has prize Herefords.”

“Not them,” Gabe said. “Earl’d have my hide. We need a retired cow.”

Within hours he had Stella.

Stella. She was big and brown and mud-caked and Mrs. Peek, who just happened to drop by, knew that Mr. Ware was selling her because her milk production was down.

“He don’t want to. ’Er’s a member of the family, like,” Mrs. Peek said. “But he’s a businessman for all that. And you know ’er’ll be for the knacker’s yard if he don’t sell ’er.”

“The knacker?” Charlie and Emma were horrified.

“We’ll have her,” Gabe said.

Mr. Ware delivered her to the dower house that afternoon. Gabe put her in the small barn.

“We don’t keep cows,” Freddie objected.

“Now you do.”

And apparently she did. The children were overjoyed. Gabe seemed as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. He was whistling as he brought Stella a barrow full of hay.

“Making her comfortable,” Freddie said sardonically.

“Hey, you’re the one who was carrying on about agricultural responsibility.”

“So I was.” She watched as Gabe forked the hay into the stall. “Who’s going to milk her?”

He blinked. Then something that might have been a flush peeked above the collar of his jacket. He scratched his ear. He chewed his lip. He looked around a little desperately.

“You’re a cowboy,” Freddie reminded him.

“I’ve never milked a cow.”

“Never?” She was amazed.

“Cowboys don’t!”

Freddie smiled. “They do now.”

She had to give Gabe credit.

He was obviously not keen on milking cows, but when she said, “If you can teach Charlie and Emma to rope, I guess I can teach you to milk a cow,” he cocked his head and looked at her, a small smile playing around his mouth.

“Guess so. If you’ll show me how.”

Freddie, who hadn’t milked a cow since she was twelve years old and spending the summer holidays at her grandparents’ small farm in Somerset, said blithely, “Of course.”

It would serve him right for her to be the one in control for a change.

Moments later, seated at Stella’s side with Gabe crouched next to her, his fingers beneath hers as she attempted to show him the right way to pull the teat, she had serious second thoughts.