Roz Fox - Someone to Watch Over Me

She opened her eyes and raised them ever so slightly. If Gabe thought he’d been stabbed through the heart when they’d first met, seeing the pain-filled expression in her dark eyes this time was far worse. Her pain had risen to the surface and was stark and immediate.

Moments later, he realized her fingers were flexing almost madly in the woolly coat of the lamb she’d been trying to feed. The limp body of a now-dead lamb.

“Oh, Isabella,” Gabe murmured as he tried to remove the lifeless animal from her arms. “It’s not your fault. You did your best to save him.”

She snatched her hands back so fast, Gabe was left grasping air. Still without words, Isabella cradled the creature to her breast and began a distraught keening. It was a tortured, gut-wrenching sound. Gabe didn’t know how in God’s name to help her.

Instinct said that someone who hurt this badly needed holding. Considering the distance she always maintained between them, Gabe didn’t know if he should be the one to offer comfort. But right now there was no one else.

He wrapped her and the lamb in a gentle embrace. And he rocked her from side to side, crooning nonsensical words close to her ear, just loud enough for her to hear him over the sound of her distress.

She shivered violently, yet he knew it was warm enough in the barn to have dried his wet clothing. Clearly, Isabella’s coldness came from deep inside her. From the very depths of her soul.

Dear Reader,

As has so often been the case with the books I write, Gabe and Isabella’s story began with a news article I cut out a few years ago and stored in my files. Some articles cry out for a happy ending. If there can be happiness (and there should!) for good people who have bad things happen to them, then it should come in the form of a love like Gabe Poston’s. (You may remember meeting him in Wide Open Spaces.)

I selected Isabella Navarro to be the recipient of a tragedy no woman should ever have to endure. To ease her heavy burden, I gave her Gabe’s love; for good measure, I tossed in a large, loving family—part of a tight-knit Basque farming community in eastern Oregon.

Everyone should have the privilege of attending a Basque wedding. There’s lots of great food and wine, dancing and laughter, and it goes on for days. The memories have stayed with me. Yet even with such delightful events to offset Isabella’s sadness, I discovered this wasn’t an easy story to write. So I hope you’ll think I’ve done right by her and also by Gabe. I finally felt comfortable leaving them in each other’s care.

Sincerely,

Roz Denny Fox

P.S. I enjoy hearing from readers. You can get in touch with me at P.O. Box 17480-101, Tucson, AZ 85731 or via e-mail (rdfox@worldnet.att.net).

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

EPILOGUE

AS WEDDING RECEPTIONS WENT, Gabe Poston rated Colt and Summer Quinn’s better than most. Held outside on a large covered patio, this gathering at least didn’t leave him feeling strangled for air. But after a gazillion introductions to people he’d probably never see again, Gabe was still desperate to escape for a while.

He carried his dirty plate into the kitchen, where caterers were too busy keeping food platters generously filled to care that one guest had slipped out the back door of the Forked Lightning Ranch house.

Hands tucked deep into his suit pants pockets, Gabe set out along a winding graveled road that led past a series of fenced pastures. He paused at a point where two fences intersected and propped the toe of one spit-polished black dress shoe onto the bottom rail. Preoccupied with his thoughts, it took him a while to appreciate the solitude and the scenery. A distant, purple mountain range, whose peaks were dusted gold in the warm spring sun, eventually had the calming effect he’d been seeking.

To better appreciate the panorama spread before him, Gabe removed the wire-rimmed glasses he needed only for reading. When, he wondered, pocketing his glasses, had he started craving seclusion?

And why? He used to want people around.

But apparently he hadn’t been totally successful in leaving the party behind. Raucous voices and high-pitched laughter reached him on a sighing breeze. Or had he sighed—again? Gabe had caught himself doing a lot of that in the past few weeks.

As if anyone gave a damn. Certainly not the livestock munching contentedly on the lush green grass. Gabe’s personal strife had no effect on Colt’s new crop of Morgan horses. They frolicked across the pasture and on the other side of the fence Summer’s curly-coated Belted Galloway calves did the same.

Lucky beasts. They lived the good life.

Ha! Most people would say Gabe Poston lived the good life.

Out here, communing with nature, he was able to admit that his odd melancholy could have something to do with turning thirty-eight yesterday, rather than the fact that Colt had opted out of SOS to marry the woman of his dreams.

No, Gabe didn’t begrudge Colt his happiness.

Breaking off a piece of tall grass, Gabe stuck it between his teeth. His fortieth birthday breathing down his neck wouldn’t bother him at all if Colt’s marriage was the only sign of the old gang breaking up. But two other members of the original “fearless foursome,” who’d forged ties in the Marine Corps, announced that they were also cutting loose from SOS, the land conservation agency where Gabe had found them all lucrative jobs. Save Open Spaces had provided Marc Kenyon, Reggie Mossberger and Gabe with a much-needed haven after a private rescue operation went bad. One that ended with Colt’s capture by South American rebels.

Gabe knew that incident had hit him harder than it did Marc or Reggie. After all, it’d been his bright idea to leave the Corps and sell their services in the private sector. The money offered to liberate kidnapped corporate travelers promised to make them millionaires. Shoot, it had made them millionaires. Except for Colt. He’d sunk every last cent into a horse ranch that his first wife had sold out from under him during the time he was held captive.

What a debacle that was. Although…back then they’d all feared Colt was a goner. None more than Gabe. Life sure could change in the blink of an eye. But Colt had escaped, and now he’d found real love with Summer.

Money didn’t seem so important to any of them now. Not like it did when they were young and thought cash was a cure-all for everything.

Personally, Gabe had invested enough to let him do just about anything a man might dream of doing. If only he had a clue as to what that might be…

Maybe that was what bugged him. His buddies had their lives mapped out. Not so long ago, they’d all been footloose and loving it. Now, three of the four had announced plans to abandon SOS. According to Marc, they’d gone into nesting mode.

What the hell was nesting mode?

Oh, Gabe knew, but he didn’t really understand it.

Tossing aside the piece of grass, he rested his chin on fists propped on the top rail. The view out here sparked an odd longing inside him and he acknowledged an emptiness he hadn’t stopped to examine in years.