“Mr. McBride,” Freddie tried to correct.
Gabe raised his brows at her. “I told you. Friends use first names.”
And Gabe and her children were obviously friends. While Freddie had been trying determinedly to steer clear of him, Charlie and Emma had been doing their best to get close.
They were, Freddie told herself, just starved for some masculine attention. But a bull rider’s?
She could have wished for more discernment. A British “cowboy”-and all that that entailed-seemed almost preferable.
“It’s nearly ten o’clock!”
“Please, Mum,” Charlie’s eyes were alight with an enthusiasm she’d begun to fear she would never see again. He had been six when Mark died-old enough to remember, to long for the adventures they had shared, to miss his father dreadfully.
“I’ll make it short,” Gabe promised. “You wouldn’t want me to leave ’em hanging overnight, would you, Fred?”
And that was another thing! Fred!
He’d started calling her that the day after he arrived and had made the children giggle. Fred!
No one had ever dared call her Fred! Not even Mark-who was the most reckless person she’d ever known.
But Gabe did.
And now he just grinned at her, challenging her. His blue eyes were laughing, teasing her. It had been so long since anyone had teased her.
Freddie resisted the grin, she resisted the teasing in his eyes. But she couldn’t resist the story. She pressed her lips together. “All right. But make it quick.”
“Eight seconds,” Gabe promised solemnly. He patted the bed where he sat between Charlie and Emma. “Sit down, Fred. Get your daily dose of American culture.”
“I have laundry to fold.”
“You should hear, Mummy,” Emma said. “It’s scary!” She gave a little shiver and bounced next to Gabe, her expression gleeful.
“Eight seconds,” Gabe promised again. “Frederica.”
It was an olive branch. Of sorts.
Reluctantly Freddie sat.
It took longer than eight seconds. That was, apparently, how long a bull rider-the very words bull rider still made her shudder-had to stay on top of this bovine hurricane to make a qualified ride.
Qualified for what? Freddie wondered. The nuthouse?
In any case, it took five minutes at least for Gabe to embroider every one of those eight seconds, to describe every twist and turn, every dip and buck. His words permitted Freddie to envision every nasty moment from the instant the gate opened until he landed feet first in the dust and sprinted to climb over the fence while the bull tried to hook him from behind.
“But you made it. Didn’t you?” Emma asked him breathlessly when he stopped.
“Course he did,” Charlie said. “He’s here, isn’t he?”
Gabe put an arm around Emma’s small shoulders. “I’m still here, sweetheart.”
The gentle way he looked at her daughter made Freddie’s heart squeeze tight. Or maybe it was hearing the endearment. Sweetheart. She hoped Emma didn’t read too much into it.
Gabe was, after all, just passing through. He was here to sort out the Gazette, that was all. He had a life back in Montana. He wasn’t going to stay.
Freddie stood abruptly. “Very nice. Very well told. Excellent story,” she said briskly. “Come along now,” she said to the children.
“But-” Charlie began, ready to angle for another tale.
Gabe stood up, too. “You heard your mother. Time to hit the hay.”
The phrase made Emma giggle. “Like a cow?”
Gabe ruffled her hair. “Like a cowboy. Or a cowgirl.”
“Are there cowgirls?” Emma’s eyes were big again.
“You bet. There’s one back home-” He smiled as if he was remembering someone special “-called Claire.”
His girlfriend? Freddie wondered. Was Claire eagerly waiting for Gabe to come back? Probably. She imagined American women were equally susceptible to his charm, even if they didn’t find him as exotic as she did.
Emma didn’t care about those things. “Can I be a cowgirl?”
Gabe nodded. “You go hit the hay now, and you’ve got a good start.”
Emma allowed herself to be herded toward her bedroom, but she hung onto his hand, talking as they went. “What else do cowgirls do?”
“Everything cowboys do,” Gabe replied with a grin. “Only they think they do it better.”
Emma giggled. “Will you teach me?”
“Emma!” Freddie protested. “Mr. McBride-Gabe-has work to do. It’s been very kind of him just to tell you stories.”
“He could show me other stuff,” Emma said stubbornly.
“Like roping.” Charlie followed them out of his bedroom. “I’d like to know how to rope. And brand. And-”
“No branding,” Gabe said, “But I’ll teach you to rope.”
“We don’t have a rope!” Freddie felt like the little boy with his thumb in the dike.
Gabe didn’t even seem to hear. “And maybe we could find a horse or two and go riding.”
“Enough!” Freddie raised her voice. “Bedtime.” She glared at him. “Eight seconds. You promised.”
He opened his mouth. Their eyes met. He closed his mouth. He nodded, then looked sternly from one child to the other.
“Hit the hay now,” he said gently. “Both of you. Cowboys-and cowgirls-do what the boss tells ’em to.”
Unfortunately there were no cowboys or cowgirls working for the Gazette.
So Gabe did it all. He called the local electrician to update the wiring. He ordered three computers and all the relevant software. He bought coffee.
And then he waited expectantly, as no doubt Randall would have done, for the Gazette employees to see which way their leader had pointed and hop to and get things done.
After a week-and-a-half, the lights were brighter. There were power points-the British not only didn’t understand him when he talked, they had different words for everything, even electrical outlets!-galore, but the computers sat on the desks unbooted and the software still hadn’t been opened.
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.”
Three
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 h
e 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.
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 i
ndifferent. “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.
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