Anne McAllister - Blood Brothers

She’d never thought of milking a cow as foreplay. Suddenly she did.

She tried to tell herself it was ridiculous, that Gabe certainly wasn’t thinking sexual thoughts while they were thus engaged.

But there was something excruciatingly intimate about their proximity, about what they were doing.

Their hands were touching. So were their thighs. His head was so close her hair brushed his cheek-and his brushed hers. She could hear the soft intake of his breath, could feel it on her lips when he turned his head to grin at her as the first stream of milk from the cow’s teat hit the bucket.

His mouth was that close…and moving closer.

“Never mind!” She practically leaped to her feet, knocking him sideways and almost tipping over the tin pail. “You’re right. Cowboys don’t milk cows. I’ll do it myself!”

He laughed up at her from where he sat on the straw. “You sure, Fred?”

Her cheeks were burning. “Yes, Gabriel,” she drawled. “I’m sure.”

The Gabriel bit was supposed to put him in his place. To annoy him the way being called “Fred” annoyed her.

But he just grinned. “My mother named me after the angel.”

“Your mother named you after seven other Stantons,” Freddie retorted. “I see them hanging in the abbey every single day. Glowering down at me.”

Gabe’s grin widened. “And you think of me.”

“I do not!”

“Liar.” His voice was soft and teasing and set all the hairs on the back of her neck to standing at attention.

She couldn’t argue because Charlie and Emma suddenly barreled into the barn.

“Is she milked? Can we start ropin’ now?” Charlie asked.

“Not yet,” Gabe said. “She needs a little cooling off time.”

His gaze met Freddie’s. She blushed. Then she picked up the pail and started toward the house. “I’m going to fix dinner,” she said, trying to sound casual and indifferent. “You three can play cowboy for another hour.”

“Not without Stella,” Charlie said glumly.

“There’s nothing to do if we can’t rope Stella,” Emma added.

“Take Mr… take Gabe up to the abbey,” Freddie suggested. “Maybe you can rope the ghost.”

They often took B &B guests to the abbey. Regaling visitors with the tale of the Stanton Abbey ghost was always good fun. And whom better to tell than the man whose ancestors had usurped the ghost’s home?

“What ghost? What are you talking about?” Gabe looked both wary and baffled, as if afraid Freddie was having him on.

“Didn’t you ever hear about the ghost?” she asked.

“Randall used to make up stories about one,” Gabe said. “I never believed him.”

“Perhaps you should have,” she said with a twinkle in her eye. “Charlie will tell you all about it,” she promised.

Charlie needed no further urging. “It’s a monk,” she heard him telling Gabe. “Almost seven feet tall and carrying his head under his arm-”

“Charlie!” she admonished.

“Sorry.” He grinned at Gabe. “He’s still got his head. But he goes howling through the abbey on moonless nights, ’cause he’s unhappy that Henry VIII threw out the monks and…”

They wandered out of earshot, off in the direction of the abbey, and Freddie breathed a sigh of relief.

“He might have kissed me,” she told Stella, still trembling just slightly from her narrow escape.

Stella, her mouth full of unchewed hay, looked back with bovine indifference.

Dinner was ready and the table was set. The door banged open, and Gabe and the children stamped into the kitchen.

“We’re gonna stay at the abbey!” Charlie yelled.

“An’ see the ghost!” Emma shouted.

“An’ write a story about it,” Charlie went on.

“Tonight,” Emma finished.

Freddie stared at them-then at the man standing behind them. “I beg your pardon?”

“We’re going to spend the night in the abbey,” Gabe said. “Check out this seven-foot tall headless monk. Write him up for posterity-in the Gazette. ”

That was what Freddie thought she’d heard.

“I really don’t think…” she began, then her voice faded as she realized all three of them were holding their breath. Charlie’s and Emma’s looks beseeched her.

“We won’t be scared, Mum,” Charlie said stoutly. “Promise.”

“Course not,” Emma added, then chewed on her lip. Freddie saw her daughter’s fingers edge out to grip Gabe’s strong thigh. His hand slid down to cover Emma’s smaller one.

“Charlie’s always wanted to,” Gabe said. “He said you promised he could when he found an adult willing to do it.” His clear blue eyes challenged her. “I’m adult,” he told her quite unnecessarily. “And I’m willing.”

Freddie swallowed. Her fingers knotted.

“If you’re worried, come along.”

“Come along? You mean, spend the night…” Again her voice faded, this time from breathlessness.

Gabe nodded. “Spend the night,” he affirmed. “With me.” He winked at her.

Heat crawled up Freddie’s neck and face.

“And us, too,” Emma put in, blissfully unaware of the adult subtext.

“She knows we’re going to be there,” Charlie said scornfully. “What do you say, Mum? Will you come?”

All three of the looked at her again, breath bated, eyes sparkling-the children’s with enthusiasm, Gabe’s with something…something else.

She shouldn’t.

But she had, in fact, told Charlie he could do it in the company of a willing adult. And now, heaven help her, he had one.

And Emma wanted to go, too. She could hardly expect Gabe McBride to deal with both of them. They were her children, after all.

It was only for one night. The abbey was huge. There was nothing to say they had to be, all of them, in one room.

“All right,” she said at last, to the sound of an incredible exhalation of pent-up apprehension. “Yes.”

If Earl could see them now, Gabe thought with a hint of a grin as he folded his arms behind his head and looked around the dimly lit master bedroom of Stanton Abbey.

There they were, all four of them, piled-amid sleeping bags, flashlights, empty cups of Horlicks and the remains of two packets of chocolate biscuits-in the ancient sumptuous bed that had held generations of lordly Stantons for the past umpteen hundred years.

Earl would have a fit.

Freddie had had a fit on his behalf.

“We can’t stay there!” she’d protested when Gabe had led them into the bedroom.

“You said this is where he appears.”

“I know, but-”

“So how can we see him if we’re not there?” And ignoring her protests, he’d herded them all in and begun to spread sleeping bags on the bed.

“We’re really going to stay here?” Charlie’s eyes had gone wide and round at the sight of the huge high bed with its heavy brocade curtains and canopy.

“All n-night?” Emma wanted to know. She’d looked nervously from Gabe to her mother, swallowing hard.

“Not-” Freddie began.

“-all night,” Gabe finished. “Only until we see the ghost. Unless-” he grinned at the children “-you fall asleep.”

They’d stared at him, astonished. As if! they seemed to say.

Now it was barely midnight, and both of them were already zonked.

Of course it had taken a lot of energy to jump at every creak and rattle, to shiver at the sound of an owl overhead, to gasp, “What was that?” at the drafts that blew in around the window frames and moved like a spiritual presence through the room.

No wonder they were tired.

As close as they’d come to seeing the Stanton Abbey ghost was a mouse that had scuttled from one side of the room to the other. Emma’s shrieks had scared the mouse almost as much as it had scared them.