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 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.