Blood Brothers Read online

  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.”

  “Whose feelings would the computer hurt?” Gabe had asked.

  “No one,” Percy said. “But we haven’t the electricity to handle it. Blow a fuse, we would. Shut everything down. Wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

  “It wouldn’t take any more juice than an electric typewriter,” Gabe argued, then realized that they were all staring at him. He looked around. There were no electric typewriters, only manuals.

  “We’re traditional here, you know,” Percy said. “We’ve a history to uphold. The Buckworthy Gazette is An Institution. The journalistic equivalent of Stanton Abbey, if you will!”

  Well, that Gabe could certainly agree with. There was a hell of a lot of rising damp in the employ of the Buckworthy Gazette, too.

  What would Randall do?

  He could, of course, ask. But he wasn’t about to call Randall and admit ignorance.

  “Well, things are going to change. I want all of you in my office for a meeting at three to discuss how we can turn this paper around.”

  They all stared. Then they began to shake their heads.

  “Something wrong with three?” Gabe inquired with deadly calm.

  “We always have tea at three,” Beatrice said. Everyone nodded.

  Gabe sucked in a breath. “Bring the pot. I’ll have coffee. Black.”

  “We don’t have coffee.”

  “Then that’s the first thing we’ll change.”

  The day went downhill from there.

  They didn’t have meetings on Tuesdays, Percy informed him.

  “Well, we’re having one today,” Gabe said. “And if you don’t want to come, I suggest you start cleaning out your desk.”

  There was a collective gasp.

  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 w
as 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.

  “Not that kind of cowboy,” Freddie hastened to explain.

  “How many kinds are there?” Gabe lifted a curious brow. He was tucking into the shepherd’s pie like he hadn’t had a square meal in weeks.

  “The television kind and the kind that screw things up,” Charlie informed him.

  Both brows shot up now.

  “That’s what a cowboy is…over here,” Freddie explained.

  “Not a compliment.”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “We’ll have to work on that. You know about real cowboys, don’t you?” he asked Charlie.

  Her son nodded emphatically. “Seen ’em on television. D’you shoot Indians?”

  “No, I work with them.”

  “Can you yodel and play the guitar?” Emma asked.

  Gabe laughed. “I can see I got here in the nick of time,” he said to Freddie. “The Gazette is only half my job. I have to stay-to correct your children’s misconceptions about cowboys.”

  The dower house beat the abbey by a mile. The rooms were warm, the meals were good, the bed was soft.

  And even if he hadn’t managed to share it with Freddie Crossman-yet-he still enjoyed the pleasure of her company.

  Sort of. Actually he didn’t get to spend much time with Freddie.

  She was always busy when he was around-cooking, serving, cleaning, washing up. She barely sat still.

  Good thing he liked to watch her move. He liked listening to her soft accent, too. It reminded him oddly-or maybe not so oddly-of home. His mother, after all, was British. Her accent was not that unlike Freddie’s.

  But that was the only way she reminded him of his mother. And the feelings she evoked in him had nothing to do with her maternal qualities at all.

  She was, though, clearly a good mother. Charlie and Emma were polite and well-behaved, but not at all like little robots. They were eager and inquisitive, and they followed him around like young pups.

  He liked Charlie and Emma enormously. He enjoyed listening to Charlie try to explain cricket to him, and was always eager to be “taste tester” when Emma helped her mother make scones or a cake. He loved telling them stories of cowboying and rodeoing. It was a kick to watch their eyes get big and their jaws hang open. He gloried in wrestling on the parlor floor with Charlie and delighted in getting down on his hands and knees and letting Emma have horse rides on his back while Charlie pretended he was much too old to want to do anything like that.

  Partly he liked it because it was fun. But mostly he liked it because it was guaranteed to get a rise out of their mother.

  “Charlie, don’t pester,” she would say.

  “Emma, leave Mr. McBride alone now.”

  “They’re fine. We’re all fine,” Gabe protested. “Come on in. Sit down.” He patted the space on the sofa next to him. He knew she wanted to listen to his stories, too. He knew she was interested in them-in him.

  Gabe McBride had been attracting women like honey did bees since he was twelve years old. He recognized the signs-even in a woman like Freddie who was determined not to show it.

  “How come you’re stiff-arming me?” he asked her the third night he was there. He and Charlie and Emma had become fast friends by then, but Freddie still kept her distance. He’d done his best. He’d been funny and charming and he’d played with her children. No hardship there. He liked them. He’d taken them out to eat last night over Freddie’s protests. He’d gone to Emma’s school program this afternoon because Emma had invited him even though Freddie had tried to act like he wasn’t there.

  Now he tracked her down after the children were in bed. She was in the parlor, patching a pair of Charlie’s trousers, and she looked up warily. He came across the room and dropped onto the sofa beside the chair where she sat.

  “Stiff-arming?”

  “Acting like a prig.”

  “Prig!” Freddie sputtered, her cheeks reddening.

  Gabe grinned and stretched his arms over his head, easing tired muscles. It never ceased to amaze him how much more tired he got at a desk job than when he rode the range all day. “See. You admit it.”

  “I never! I don’t! I’m not a prig!”

  “Then you’re giving a damn good imitation of one. Loosen up a little. Let go. You’re beautiful when you smile.”

  She scowled at him, her cheeks reddening.

  “See? Like that.” He grinned and was rewarded by a twitch at the corners of her mouth. “And let the kids play with me.”

  “I don’t want them bothering you. You’re a paying guest and-”

  “And in the interests of good hospitality, you shouldn’t be making me feel like one,” Gabe said flatly. “You should be making me feel at home.”

  “I’m trying, but-”

  “Very trying,” he agreed. “Come on. One more smile,” he urged. “It won’t kill you. I’ll pay extra for it.”

  Freddie laughed reluctantly. And her laugh made the exhaustion of the day go away. It made Percy’s pomposity and Beatrice’s worries and John’s disapproving silence fade into insignificance.

  Gabe smiled, too. “That’s better,” he said softly. Then he reached out a hand and, with one finger, touched hers.

  She jerked hers away, of course.

  “Okay,” he said. “We’ll stick with smiles. For now.”

  He didn’t touch her again. He’d made the connection. That was what mattered.

  “You’ve taken a boarder, I hear.” Mrs. Peek regarded Freddie over the top of her teacup.

  It was four days since Gabe McBride had taken over their lives, and Freddie was sure that the news had reached Mrs. Peek within hours of the event. But the rain and sleet had been relentless until now. This morning it was no more than a fine drizzle. Mrs. Peek never let a fine drizzle slow her down.

  Freddie concentrated on paring an apple for a pie. “He’s gone a great deal of the time. So it’s really no bother.”

  “Of course it isn’t,” Mrs. Peek cackled. “Never a bother having a han’sum fellow put his feet under your table. Better yet in your bed.” When Freddie spun around to protest, Mrs. Peek said, “Time you married again, m’dear.”

  “I’m not interested in marrying again.”

  “Bah. Fine young gels need husbands. No sense pining away. Us never pined.”

  When she wasn’t having a fling with Lord Stanton, Mrs. Peek had been marrying all and sundry. She’d been widowed at least four times-the last as the result of the death of Thomas Peek last winter.

  “Seize your chances, m’dear. A good man doesn’t turn up on your doorstep everyday.”

  The “good man” being, of course, Gabe McBride.

  Freddie supposed he was good. By some accounts anyway. He was certainly working hard at the Gazette. And anyone who drove Percy crazy-which the village grapevine assured her he was doing-couldn’t be all bad.

  But more than he was a good man, he was a dangerous one. At least when it came to Freddie’s peace of mind.

  She hadn’t got a good night’s sleep since he’d arrived. She was too conscious of his footsteps above her head when she went to sleep at night, too aware of him whenever they sat across the table at mealtimes, and last night she’d almost jum
ped out of her skin when he’d deliberately reached out and touched her hand!

  What did he think he was doing?

  Don’t be daft, Freddie, she admonished herself. It was clear what he was doing: he was coming on to her.

  Flirting with her. Looking at her as if it was only a matter of time until there would be more between them than the fifteen pounds a night he was paying for his room.

  She resisted even thinking in terms of “bed-and-breakfast” where Gabe McBride was concerned.

  The “bed” part seemed far too intimate.

  “Be good for the little tackers to have a man around, too,” Mrs. Peek went on, unaware of the turmoil going on in Freddie’s mind. “Likes ’em, I can tell.”

  And they adored him. The children were enthralled to have a real-live Montana cowboy living in their house. Once Emma had adjusted her definition of “cowboy,” she’d been as enchanted as Charlie. Freddie tried to stop them bothering him, but he brushed off her concern.

  He let Charlie clump around the house in his cowboy boots and wear his belt hitched tight enough so that it circled her son’s narrow waist and proclaimed him the Salinas Champion Bull Rider.

  To her dismay, he told both slack-jawed children exactly what a champion bull rider did. Last night she’d come upon all three of them, sitting on the bed in Charlie’s room, long after both children should have been asleep.

  “It’s like ridin’ a whirlwind,” she heard him tell them. “Hangin’ onto a hurricane. You know what a hurricane is, Em?”

  As Freddie came to stand in the doorway, ready to lower the boom, she saw her daughter’s eyes grow round and fill with excitement. “It’s a storm,” Emma said eagerly. “A big, big storm.”

  “Right. Well, you just imagine havin’ that storm gathered right up underneath you. A ton of the meanest damn-er, darn-cow you’ve ever seen, just itchin’ to run you through with one of his horns. An’ he’s lookin’ at you, pawin’ an’ blowin’, snortin’ snot-”

  “Bedtime,” Freddie cut in.

  “Not yet, Mum!” Charlie protested.

  “We can’t,” Emma begged. “We have to hear what happened. Truly! Please, Gabe, tell us!”