Anne McAllister: Blood Brothers

He’d never asked for repayment. He’d never so much as hinted.

But Freddie knew she owed him. The earl felt guilty about the death of her husband, Mark, though she had assured him over and over it was Mark who’d made the decision to sail the earl’s boat home that night; it was Mark who had taken the foolish risk; no one-least of all Lord Stanton-had commanded him to.

But the earl didn’t see it that way.

“He was working for me,” he said. “I take care of my own.”

The feudal blood in Lord Stanton’s veins ran deep. It didn’t matter that Freddie was earning a living, albeit meager, as a renovator and could make ends meet. She and her children were, he informed her, his responsibility. He would see to their welfare. Next thing she knew he arranged for them to move from their little flat in Camden to the Stanton Abbey dower house.

“I don’t know anyone in Devon!” she’d protested.

“You’ll meet them.”

“My business-”

“Will thrive. You renovate. Renovate the abbey.”

“My children-”

“Can go to school in fresh air and have acres and acres to play in.”

For every argument she had, the earl had had an answer. No one ever said no to the earl. Certainly Freddie never managed to.

So she was very grateful now that he hadn’t asked her to put up his grandson!

She didn’t know how she could have refused.

She only knew she would have had to!

Gabe McBride set off all the bells and whistles of attraction that Freddie was certain had well and truly died with Mark. It had been four years since Mark’s death, and she hadn’t once looked at another man.

But she had looked at Gabe McBride today.

Then she’d have handed him a key and sent him on his way. She wished she could have sent him clear back to America!

The feelings were all too familiar. The attraction all too strong. It was the same thing she’d felt for Mark.

And the very last thing she needed.

A cowboy, for heaven’s sake!

She’d already proved her susceptibility to one handsome devil-may-care man-Mark had been wild and dashing and reckless. It didn’t take much imagination to see that Gabe McBride, however much blue Stanton blood ran in his veins, was another red-blooded, risk-taking man.

She’d read his belt buckle, hadn’t she? It had proclaimed him a Salinas bull-riding champion.

Freddie wasn’t sure exactly what being a bull-riding champion was, but she was pretty sure it wasn’t anything safe.

No, sorry. No matter how much she owed the earl, she wasn’t offering hospitality to the likes of Gabe McBride.

Not a chance.

Gabe had always thought himself hale and hearty-resilient, capable of withstanding great extremes of weather. He was, after all, Montana born-and-bred.

He damn near froze his ass off in one night in Stanton Abbey!

“Get a good night’s sleep,” Earl had told him cheerfully when Gabe had rung before bedtime.

Sleep? Gabe doubted he slept a wink. He spent the whole day reacquainting himself with the Abbey and all night prowling the cupboards, looking for more blankets, piling them on, trying to sleep, shivering, then rising to go look for more.

He understood the meaning of “rising damp” now. It was what got you up to go find more covers.

Central heating had come along a good six hundred years after the abbey, and though it did its best, it couldn’t rise to the occasion. The pipes hissed and moaned. They sputtered and rattled. Gabe turned it off again.

After all, he wasn’t a sissy. He could cope.

He considered starting a blaze in a fireplace. But the fire-places were big enough to roast an ox in. Gabe reckoned he’d have to move right in with the wood to get the benefit of any warmth. In the end, he piled on every piece of clothing he’d brought, buried himself beneath every blanket he could find, and huddled next to the stove for the night.

He was sure Earl would call it bracing.

He called it ridiculous. But he didn’t seriously consider other options until he drove past the cozy warmth of the dower house on his way to the Gazette office in the morning.

All of the dower house chimneys appeared to be working. He remembered the kitchen had been cheerful, not echoing, the parlor welcoming, not forbidding, and the occupant…well, he’d been thinking about her all night.

He cast a longing glance over his shoulder as he drove past-and noticed a discreet little sign at the end of the dower house drive.

B &B FULL BREAKFAST £15. DINNER AT EXTRA COST.

He smiled. “Well, now why didn’t she mention that?”

Fixing the BuckworthyGazette would best be accomplished, Gabe had decided by lunchtime, if he simply lobbed a bomb into the building, blew up the whole place.

Unfortunately that solution was out of the question.

“I say we set fire to it, throw ’em out on their ears, and start over,” he told Earl when the old man rang up later that afternoon. “The place is falling down around their ears, and they don’t give a rat’s ass. There’s not a computer in the building. The printing press looks like it came over on the Mayflower-”

“We didn’t go on the Mayflower,” Earl reminded him. “We’re still here.”

“And they’re still probably using the same damn one! I swear I saw a pen with a quill. I’m surprised there’s a telephone.”

“There wasn’t,” Earl said cheerfully, “last time I was there.”

“When was that?” Gabe wanted to know. “Last week?”

“Tut-tut,” Earl admonished. “Sarcasm won’t get you anywhere with these people. They are fixtures-”

“You can say that again.” Made of stone, if Gabe’s first impression was accurate.

They had all assembled in the main room when he arrived-two reporters, a receptionist-cum-tea-lady, the printer and the office manager all lined up in a row and bowed and scraped and tugged their forelocks when he’d come in.

He’d been appalled, but, taking a page from Randall’s book, had very firmly told them that things were about to change, that they were going to make a profitable paper out of the Gazette and he was going to tell them exactly how to do it.

“Yes, Mr. McBride.”

“Quite so, Mr. McBride.”

“Whatever you say, Mr. McBride.”

“We need a computer,” he told the office manager, Percy Pomfret-Mumphrey, a man as pompous and fussy as his name.

“A computer?” Percy squeaked.

“Software,” Gabe went on relentlessly. “We’ll need a database. A spreadsheet. We’ll want to enter the subscription list. The advertisers. We can look into offset printing,” he told John the printer. “And we need an answering machine,” he told Beatrice the receptionist who let the phone ring fifteen times-he’d counted-while she poured everyone a cup of tea.

“Offset printing?” John the printer wrinkled his nose.

“An answering machine?” Beatrice didn’t look as if she’d ever heard of one.

“Oh my, no.” Percy spoke for them all. “We can’t.”

“Why not?”

Percy gave a simple shrug of his shoulders. “We’ve never done it that way before.”

Famous last words.

“They’re completely resistant to change,” Gabe complained to Earl. “If it hasn’t been done that way, it won’t be done that way, can’t be done that way!”

An answer phone, Beatrice had told him, would hurt people’s feelings. “They’ll think we don’t want to speak to them.”

“You think they don’t get that idea when you don’t answer the blasted phone now?”

“They know I’m busy. They’ll ring back.”

To do offset printing would offend the Fuge brothers, John the printer had said. The Fuge brothers came every Wednesday and helped with the typesetting. “They’ll think they aren’t needed,” John told Gabe. “We wouldn’t want that.”