Blood Brothers

Percy drew himself up to his full five feet seven. “You cannot threaten me, Mr. McBride. Nor can you fire me.”

Gabe lifted a brow. “No?”

“No.” Percy went into his own office where he opened a desk drawer and pulled out some papers. “It’s a condition of the sale. It guarantees my employment.”

Gabe skimmed them rapidly. It was there in black and white: if someone came to oversee the running of the Gazette, Percy Pomfret-Mumphrey was to be retained.

“Why the hell didn’t you tell me I was getting Percy the Albatross hung around my neck?” he groused at Earl later.

“Ah, met Percy, have you?” Earl chuckled. “Well, I’m sure you can handle him. What did you say, two weeks and you’d have it all shaped up?”

“Two months,” Gabe said through gritted teeth. He banged down the phone.

Save the Buckworthy Gazette in two months? Two millennia, more like!

He shut the door on them all and pored over recent editions of the Gazette, determined to get a feel for the newspaper. He had to start somewhere, and the end product seemed like the best place to figure out where things had gone wrong.

It was just like rebuilding a herd, actually. You looked at the beef and figured out why things weren’t turning out the way you wanted them to. Then you set to work changing it. But you couldn’t do that unless you knew your animals and the lay of the land.

At ten to five Beatrice told him there was a call for him. Earl? Again?

“What now?” he barked into the phone.

“Gabe? How’s it going, then?” It was Randall, not Earl. A nervous, worried Randall, from the sound of him. “Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right! What do you think?” Gabe might have groused at Earl less than an hour before, but he damned well wasn’t going to complain to Randall.

One word from him and his duty-driven cousin would be on the next plane home.

“I just…thought you might need a little moral support.”

“Well, I don’t. I’m fine. No problem,” he lied through his teeth.

“Really?” Randall sounded dubious, but cautiously pleased.

“Nothing to worry about,” Gabe said. “A child could do it.” A child with access to explosives. “How are things at your end?”

“Fine,” Randall said quickly and with excessive cheer. “Couldn’t be better.”

So Mr. Competent wasn’t having any problems? Gabe felt oddly nettled. And more determined than ever to prove himself here. He rubbed a hand against the back of his neck. “Well, go find something to do. Cut wood. Feed the cattle. Sit in front of a roaring fire. Relax, damn it. And stop calling me up!”

“I was only checking,” Randall said. “I’m…glad everything’s going so well.”

“It is,” Gabe said firmly. “Don’t call me again. Goodbye.”

It was six o’clock, cold and damp and well past dark by the time he left the office. He made three trips to his car, lugging every piece of business correspondence he could find, all the ledgers and the last five years’ worth of past papers to read. Then he got in and headed back toward the abbey.

He had no intention of going to the abbey, of course. He turned in at the dower house. It sat warm and welcoming on the hill, its windows cheerfully lit behind the trees. It was the one good thing in his life at the moment.

And in it was Freddie Crossman.

Freddie of the tumbling hair and the flowered nightgown. Freddie of the hip-hugging jeans and laughing eyes. He parked round the back, got out of the car and tapped on the kitchen door.

He could see her through the curtains behind the panes of glass. She didn’t look surprised, just concerned as she opened the door. He turned on his best Montana cowboy grin. “Saw your sign. B&B. Full breakfast. Fifteen pounds. Sounds good to me.”

Freddie’s eyes got huge. She started to shut the door. “Oh, but—”

“You’re not full.” He was positive about that.

“No, but—”

“I like rabbits,” he assured her. He tried to look boyishly charming. “And kids.” He could see two now peeking from around the corner of the dining room door. “And,” he added honestly, “I like you, Freddie Crossman.”

“Oh, dear.” Her hand went to her breast, as if it might protect her.

Now that he’d seen her again—beautiful and bright and tempting in spite of herself—Gabe could have told her: nothing would.

She let him in.

What else could she do?

Freddie had told herself all day long that she’d exaggerated her awareness of him, that she’d been overwrought by the elusive bunny yesterday and that was why the hairs on the back of her neck had stood at attention, that was why his soft Montana accent tantalized her, that was why she’d felt the same sort of zing somewhere in the region of her heart that she’d felt when she’d first met Mark. It wouldn’t last, she’d assured herself.

She was wrong.

Gabe McBride had every bit the same disastrous effect on her equilibrium and good sense tonight that he’d had earlier. She was a damn fool for opening her door to him.

But she had no choice.

She owed it to his grandfather. And even if she hadn’t, how could she tell her children, to whom she preached hospitality, that she couldn’t extend it here because Gabe McBride made her hormones dance?

Charlie and Emma were avidly curious about their guest.

Freddie introduced them, then sent Charlie to get Gabe’s things out of his car, while she showed him to one of the guest rooms in the converted attic. Emma followed, obviously entranced by this pied piper in cowboy boots and blue jeans.

“Why’s he wearing those?” Freddie heard her whisper to Charlie when they came back down. She was looking at Gabe’s boots.

“’Cause he’s a cowboy,” Charlie said.

Gabe must have overheard because he looked up at the boy and grinned. Charlie grinned back.

Freddie dished Gabe up a plate of the supper they’d just finished eating.

“Are you sure you’ve got enough?” he asked. “I can go down to the pub.”

“There’s plenty.” She motioned for him to take a seat. Both children came and stood, watching him eat. She tried, with jerks of her head and shooing movements with her hands, to get them to leave. They didn’t budge.

“Are you really a cowboy?” Emma asked. From the slightly worried look on her face, Freddie knew she was remembering Mrs. Peek proclaim a pair of renegade incompetent rob-you-blind plumbers as “cowboys” just last week.