Blood Brothers Read online

  Blood Brothers

  Anne Mcallister

  Lucy Gordon

  An omnibus of novels

  Double trouble. That was what you got when cousins Gabe McBride, a Montana cowboy, and Randall Stanton, a British lord, traded places! What Gabe and Randall got was the challenge of their lives! Anything Randall could do, Gabe could do better-but tackling centuries of tradition proved tougher than he thought. Almost as tough as convincing a beautiful widowed mother, Frederica Crossman, that he was a risk worth taking. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Randall knew anything Gabe could do, he could do, too. He was resourceful, competent, clever. He could handle everything-except gorgeous, feisty Claire Stevens. When Randall and Gabe took on a challenge, they never quit. but to win Claire and Freddie, they'd need all their lordly pluck and cowboy try!

  Anne McAllister, Lucy Gordon

  Blood Brothers

  © 2000

  Dear Reader,

  This Fourth of July, join in the fireworks of Silhouette’s 20th anniversary year by reading all six powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire!

  July’s MAN OF THE MONTH is a Bachelor Doctor by Barbara Boswell. Sparks ignite when a dedicated doctor discovers his passion for his loyal nurse!

  With Midnight Fantasy, beloved author Ann Major launches an exciting new promotion in Desire called BODY & SOUL. Our BODY & SOUL books are among the most sensuous and emotionally intense you’ll ever read. Every woman wants to be loved…BODY & SOUL, and in these books you’ll find a heady combination of breathtaking love and tumultuous desire.

  Amy J. Fetzer continues her popular WIFE, INC. miniseries with Wife for Hire. Enjoy Ride a Wild Heart, the first sexy installment of Peggy Moreland’s miniseries TEXAS GROOMS. This month, Desire offers you a terrific two-books-in-one value-Blood Brothers by Anne McAllister and Lucy Gordon. A British lord and an American cowboy are look-alike cousins who switch lives temporarily…and lose their hearts for good in this romance equivalent of a doubleheader. And don’t miss the debut of Kristi Gold, with her moving love story Cowboy for Keeps-it’s a keeper!

  So make your summer sizzle-treat yourself to all six of these sultry Desire romances!

  Happy Reading!

  Joan Marlow Golan

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

  Dear Reader,

  Two years ago on a cold damp night in Bath, England, the two of us were sitting in a restaurant talking-as writers are wont to do-about what if…

  What if we wrote a book together…what if we each had a hero…what if one was British and the other American…?

  Of course, one what if led to another, and when Anne went home to America and Lucy went home to Northampton, we e-mailed each other more what ifs…and Gabe and Randall-and their crusty grandfather, the earl-were born.

  What we’ve written is a book about two men who look alike but think differently, cousins from opposite sides of the Atlantic, cast adrift in each other’s world, floundering until two feisty, loving women take them in hand.

  We wrote the Prologue and Epilogue jointly. Individually, Anne wrote about Gabe and Frederica (and counted on Lucy for advice on “darkest” Devon) and Lucy wrote about Randall and Claire (and depended on Anne to get her unscathed through a Montana winter).

  Working together was a fresh and fun experience. We had a great time. We hope you do, too.

  *

  In darkest Devon…

  GABE

  Prologue

  As Gabe McBride’s plane touched down in England he didn’t have a clue that he was about to have a meeting with Destiny.

  His cousin, Lord Randall Stanton, waiting for him outside Customs, didn’t look like Destiny. Randall looked, as he always had, like an English version of Gabe: same tall figure and broad shoulders, same dark hair and eyes, and lean, handsome features that had a strong family likeness. Their differences lay less in looks than mannerisms.

  Randall carried his head with the proud air of an English toffee.

  “You’d know he was a lord, just looking at him,” Gabe thought with an inward grin.

  His own “air” suggested something entirely different. Generally it was one part horse, one part leather, one part bull rope rosin and several parts substances that polite society didn’t talk about. At the moment he’d done his best to scrub all that away. No sense walking into the drawing room smelling like a barn.

  Drawing room! Now there was a term he didn’t use often. Didn’t reckon he’d said it aloud since the last time he was here-and that had been fifteen years ago. The very notion made him smile, a drawing room was such a far cry from the homely lived-in clutter of the Montana ranch he called home-when he was home.

  Usually he wasn’t.

  Usually he was going down the road from rodeo to rodeo. He’d be doing it now if it hadn’t been for getting hung up on that little spinning bull at the National Finals in Vegas last month.

  “Shoulder separation,” the doc had said. “Again.” He’d looked at Gabe over the top of his glasses. “How many is that?”

  “Five,” Gabe had admitted.

  He didn’t like to think about it even now. Didn’t like to think about the surgery that had become inevitable, the months of recovery that would follow, the enforced idleness. A guy could get into trouble if he didn’t have something to keep him busy. A guy could meet a girl like Tracy…

  Even now his mouth curved instinctively at the thought of Tracy. He’d known she was trouble from the moment he saw her, but that was how he liked ’em. Trouble, and sassy and all woman. She’d lured him into her bed, with no resistance from him, and had cost him a fortune in gee-gaws, which was fine.

  It was her uptight brother with the shotgun who hadn’t been fine. Nor had the lively conversation they’d had in which the words “marriage”, “honest woman” and “decent thing” had occurred with alarming frequency.

  Gabe, who had been taught from the cradle never to badmouth a woman, didn’t say that the words “honest” and “decent” were not exactly terms he would have used to describe Tracy. He’d just done his damnedest to assure the shotgun-toting brother that Tracy wouldn’t want to tie herself to a no-account bull rider with no more morals than a monkey. And then he’d promised to hightail it out of the country so she could find herself a “respectable” man.

  Gabe wished all the respectable men in the good ol’ U.S. of A. the best of luck. He was off to visit his kin on the other side of the world.

  That would keep him out of harm’s-and Tracy’s-way, and besides, it had the added benefit of pleasing his mother who couldn’t go because she was just recovering from the flu and Martha, his sister, who was spending the semester abroad in Brazil.

  In fact, Gabe was rather looking forward to a brief vacation visiting his English relatives-especially his mother’s father, Earl Stanton, who was about to celebrate the fact that, in Randall’s words, “Someone let the old devil live to be eighty, without strangling him.”

  But Destiny? Who needed it?

  When you were young, healthy and in your prime, when there were always more ladies besides Tracy eager for your company, and you had enough money to indulge yourself, you made your own Destiny.

  Which went to show how wrong a man could be!

  Lord Randall Stanton broke into a grin at the sight of his scapegrace cousin loping out of the Customs Hall, and let out a yell that sat oddly with his elegant tailoring. It was met by an answering yell from Gabe, and for a moment the two young men pounded each other like schoolboys.

  “It’s good to see you,” Randall said. “Even if it did take a scandal to get you here.”

  “Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Gabe declared innocently. “The old man’s eigh tieth-family duty, etc., etc., etc.-”

  Randall just grinned. “Your mother called Grandpa just as I was leaving. Your secrets aren’t secrets any more.”

  Gabe groaned. “Can’t trust ’em to keep their mouths shut, can you?”

  “I’m sure Aunt Elaine is the soul of discretion. Usually. Wait until we’re in the car, and you can tell all,” Randall said.

  Like hell he would. He and Randall might have shared a thousand secrets as boys, but when it came to women, Gabe drew the line. He followed Randall out to the parking garage, and whistled at the sight of Randall’s silver-colored Rolls-Royce.

  “Does this come from the ancient family fortunes, or did Stanton Publications pay for it?”

  “Stanton Publications,” Randall told him. “All the family estates do is soak up money. It’s the firm that makes it.” He settled behind the wheel and looked avidly at his cousin. “Come on. Give. All I know is, it’s something to do with a floozie called Tracy.”

  Gabe cocked his head. “Do I detect a little envy in your voice, cuz?”

  Randall scowled, then shifted his gaze to focus intently on fitting the key into the ignition. “Of course not.”

  “It’s not a crime, you know. Every red-blooded male ought to meet a Tracy or two.”

  “Or twelve or twenty,” Randall said drily. “Or have you had more than that?”

  “Wouldn’t you like to know?” Gabe grinned as he leaned back against the leather seat and flexed his shoulders. “You should have a few floozies in your life, bud. It would make you a better human being.”

  “Like you, I suppose?” Randall snorted.

  Gabe shrugged negligently. “All work and no play makes Randall a dull boy.”

  “Better than all play and no work,” Randall said firmly.

  One of Gabe’s dark brows lifted. “Just a little testy, are we?” he asked as Randall negotiated the narrow lanes of the parking garage.

  “You’d be testy too if you had Earl breathing down your neck every minute of every day.”

  They called Cedric Stanton “Grandfather” to his face; they called him “the earl” when speaking about him to acquaintances; but they called him “Earl” behind his back because one summer in Montana when they were boys, an old camp cook had actually thought it was the old man’s name and kept yelling, “Hey, Earl! Come an’ get it, Earl!”

  Now Gabe grinned. “Hey, that’s Earl. Just tell him to buzz off.”

  Randall gave a short sharp laugh. “I’d as soon tell a pit bull to play nice.”

  “So buzz off yourself. I don’t see any chain around your neck. Invisible leash, is it?”

  Randall almost unconsciously tugged at his collar. “Feels like it sometimes.” He didn’t say anything else, just concentrated on the road. Morning traffic around Heathrow was a good excuse for silence. But in fact, he had to admit Gabe had touched a raw nerve.

  The death of Randall’s parents in a car crash when he was eight had made him heir to the earldom and all its rights and responsibilities. His fearsome grandfather had left him in no doubt that he expected both sides of the equation to be kept up. Randall had learned estate management so that he could run the ancient family domains. He’d loved that part of his life. But it hadn’t been profitable. At least not profitable enough. He’d also needed the skills to run the publishing empire by which the Stantons stayed one step ahead of the game.

  He enjoyed that work, too, but he hadn’t bargained for it eating away so much of his life. He’d bowed his head to the burdens, but sometimes a voice whispered in his ear that there was more to life than this; that it would be great to toss his cap over the windmill and forget the duties for awhile.

  And when he was with his charming, light-hearted, devil-may-care cousin, the whisper threatened to become a roar.

  Now his hands tightened on the steering wheel, so slightly that only the sharp-eyed Gabe could have noticed.

  “So when do we hear of your engagement?” Gabe asked him.

  Randall’s head jerked around. “What engagement?”

  “To Lady Honoria, or Lady Serena or Lady Melanie Wicks-Havering, or whoever. Time you did your duty to the House of Stanton, my lad.”

  “Stop sounding like Earl,” Randall said in a harassed voice.

  Gabe laughed. “So you’ve evaded the pack so far? But how long can the fox stay ahead? Tally Hoooo!” Gabe’s imitation of a hunting cry was excruciating.

  “If I had my hands free I’d ram something down your gullet,” Randall muttered. “We can’t all flit from flower to flower with no thought for tomorrow.”

  “Like I said, the ol’ green-eyed monster seems to have bit you but good.”

  “Go to hell, McBride!”

  “Oh, I reckon I will,” Gabe said cheerfully, and settled back as if satisfied that he’d done his bit for international relations.

  Earl was looking older.

  Of course Gabe had seen him last three years ago when the old man had come to Montana for a month’s visit. Then he’d seemed spry and ageless, his thick shock of white hair framing a relatively unlined face, his bright blue eyes brimming with enthusiasm and his every word outlining some new plan-mostly, Gabe remembered, ones that involved work for Randall.

  But now he saw lines in the old man’s face. He saw a faint tremble in Earl’s fingers when, at the eightieth birthday bash, the old man had raised his glass at his grandsons’ toast to “eighty more years as adventure-filled as the last eighty.”

  He saw that some day Earl wouldn’t be around anymore.

  But he also saw that it was just possible that Randall would die first-of overwork.

  Gabe had been in England two days, and while he’d spent a fair amount of time with the earl, he’d barely seen his cousin after Randall had dropped him off at Stanton House in Belgravia and had left.

  “Got to be in Glasgow for a meeting,” Randall said apologetically. “Catch you later.”

  But he hadn’t. Since Gabe’s arrival, Randall had been variously in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff and Penzance. The most Gabe heard from him was a phone call or another apologetic message. He barely even made it to Earl’s birthday bash.

  He rang to say he’d be a bit late, and when he finally blew in, he stayed long enough for the toast and a piece of cake, and then he excused himself to make calls about a buyout.

  Gabe, on the other hand, had a wonderful time. He discussed horseflesh with a couple of his grandfather’s cronies, wrapped himself around a fantastic meal. He danced with all the pretty ladies-of whom there were plenty-and flirted with the prettiest of the lot-a stunning blonde called Natasha, who looked at him with big violet eyes and said, “You’re not much like your cousin, are you?”

  “Nope,” Gabe replied cheerfully. “Thank God.”

  When the party finally ended, Randall still hadn’t returned. He was probably off somewhere making more money for Stanton Publishing or stopping the cash from flowing out of the Stanton ancestral coffers.

  Gabe glanced at his watch. “Have you ever considered giving him a day off?” He and the earl were in the library, cozily ensconced in deep leather chairs, quaffing the best single malt scotch Gabe had ever tasted, and Gabe thought the old man looked mellow enough to allow him to consider broaching the subject.

  “Day off?” Earl snorted. “Day off? Nobody ever gave me a day off! Earls don’t get days off.”

  Gabe smiled thinly. Poor old Randall. “Reckon I’m glad I’m just a lowly commoner then.” He raised his glass in toast. “To the rabble. Long may we loaf.”

  Earl made a harrumphing sound. “You needn’t be so almighty proud of it, my lad. Most men, by your age, have something to show for their lives.”

  “You, for instance?” Gabe knew damned well the old man had been a wastrel in his salad days. It had taken a very determined Lady Cornelia Abercrombie-Jones to take Cedric David Phillip Stanton in hand, get a marriage proposal out of him and put an end to his frivolous ways.

  “We aren’t talking about me,” Earl said huffily.

  “You’re not,” Gabe agreed, “because you know it will undercut your case. I don’t care that you were a hellion. In fact, I’m all for it, as you know.” He grinned. “I just think you ought to allow Randall a shot at a little hell-raising-before you croak and make sure he never gets a day off.”

  “You think I’m about to stick my spoon in the wall?”

  “Does that mean die? No, probably not. But someday you’re going to. And if Randall hasn’t lived, who can tell what he might do with the Stanton legacy, with all those ‘burdens’ and ‘responsibilities’ you keep loading on him. He might just throw it all away!”

  Earl’s face turned bright red. “Randall would never-!”

  “How do you know? Have you ever let him out past ten o’clock? Except on business?”

  Gabe never heard the answer to that question because the next moment the library door opened and Randall returned. A satisfied smile lit his often sober face. “We’ve done it. We’ve got the Gazette!”

  “Another Gazette?” Gabe groaned. “How many Gazettes, Echoes, Advertisers, Recorders and whatever else does that make?”

  Stanton Publishing specialized in local newspapers, and owned eighty, all over the country.

  “This is the Buckworthy Gazette,” Randall said triumphantly. “We’ve been after it for years.”

  “Ah.” Gabe nodded in comprehension. The family seat was situated near the little town of Buckworthy, right down south in the county of Devon. It had always galled the Stantons that they couldn’t get their hands on the paper for their own locality. Now, at long last, Randall had triumphed.

  Earl, of course, was over the moon. He leapt from his chair, rejuvenated, and slapped his grandson on the back, hollering his delight. “About time! Another few months and it would have gone right down the drain. Now you can turn it around, make it shine.” He glanced at his watch. “If you leave early enough tomorrow you can be down there by midday. It’s a Thursday paper. You’ll be in time to have some input on this week’s issue. No time like the present to begin putting things to rights. Sales haven’t been what they should be. You can start up an advertising campaign, too. And some sort of weekly contest. The one you did in Thrush-by-the-Marsh worked like a charm. Something like that!” Earl rubbed his hands together in glee.