“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.
“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