He knew that Gabe would leave. Gabe had never made it a secret that his time in Buckworthy was limited. So Charlie couldn’t be crushed when it actually happened.
And he would always have the memories later on.
That’s what Freddie told herself anyway. She hoped it would be enough.
And not just for Charlie.
“That’s enough for tonight,” she said briskly after they’d spent most of another evening poring over the pictures. “It’s past bedtime.”
“But we’ve got all the rodeo pictures to look at!” Charlie protested.
“Please, Mummy,” Emma beseeched. “I wanta see Gabe ridin’ a bull!”
“You’ve seen Gabe ride a bull on the video.” She had, too. Until she’d closed her eyes in stark terror.
“But-”
Gabe pushed back his chair and set Emma on her feet. “Real cowboys follow orders. Move it.”
And they did. All it took was one word from Gabe and they scampered off.
“They were going to do what I told them to,” Freddie muttered.
“I know.” Gabe smiled at her. “I just wanted to hurry ’em along a little.” The way he was looking at her, smiling at her, sent a shiver of awareness up her spine.
“Why?” she asked warily.
“Because of this.” And he reached out, drew her gently into his arms and kissed her.
It was a hungry kiss, a deep kiss, a kiss that told Freddie that Gabe had been thinking about it for a good long time-probably as long as she had. And it felt so warm, so wonderful, so right, that she was returning it before she had a chance to think.
It had been so long. She had been so lonely.
She hadn’t realized until Gabe arrived how lonely her life had become. There were the children, of course. They loved her, and she them. They challenged her, and she tried to keep up with them.
But until Gabe there had been no man. No one to meet Freddie face-to- face, toe-to-toe, one-to-one.
She’d thought she didn’t care, had believed she hadn’t had time to miss it.
She was wrong.
The touch of him, the heat of him, the strength of him-all of it-told her she’d been very, very wrong.
And when he sat back down and took her with him, brought her down on his lap and still never stopped kissing her, she went right with him, as hungry as he was, as desperate as he was.
His fingers tugged her shirttails from her trousers. His hands slid up beneath, caressing her heated skin. She murmured against his lips, felt his tongue press for entrance, and opened up for him. Against her bottom she could feel the press of his need for her, hard and insistent. She shifted, turning in his arms, rubbing against him through wool and denim.
He groaned.
“Mummy! I left my-oh!” It was Emma. Halfway down the stairs, eyes popping out of her head, face as red as a beet-as red as her mother’s face.
Freddie leapt out of Gabe’s arms, shoving away so hard she almost knocked his chair over. With one hand she tried to smooth her hair. With the other she stabbed ineffectually at her shirttails, trying to tuck them back in.
“You what, Em?” she croaked. Oh, heavens, her voice didn’t even work!
“L-left my m-maths book down here.” Still Emma hesitated on the steps, tipping from one foot to the other, her eyes going from her mother to Gabe and back again. She looked as if she might burst.
“Come get it then. Put it in your book bag or you’ll forget it in the morning.” Freddie gave up on the shirt. She tried to sound brisk and set about scraping the photos into a pile, as if she had been cleaning and the heightened color in her face was merely from exertion. She couldn’t look at Gabe.
Emma did. She studied both of them as she came slowly down the steps, and Freddie knew she wasn’t fooled. Her eyes sparkled. She pressed her lips together to keep from smiling as she got the book from the sideboard and, with one last look, scurried back upstairs again.
“Charlie!” Freddie heard her whisper loudly. “Guess what!”
It was Freddie’s turn to groan.
Gabe laughed.
“It isn’t funny!” she said, stricken.
“Well, not in some respects,” he agreed, adjusting his jeans carefully and wincing as he did so. “But, hey, it happens.”
“Well, it won’t happen again.” She didn’t look at him. She moved quickly, putting the photos into the folders Lord Stanton had sent them in. Then she stacked them in neat piles. Her hands shook.
Gabe came up behind her and she felt his breath on her neck. Her fingers curled into tight fists. “We’ll be more careful,” he agreed, dropping a kiss on the nape of her neck and slipping his hands around her waist.
Freddie darted out of his embrace. She shook her head and spun around and wrapped her arms across her breasts. “No. We can’t.”
“What do you mean, we can’t? Can’t what?”
“Can’t…that.” Freddie couldn’t say it. Wouldn’t let herself say it! She shook her head again, angry at herself for having let things get that far. “We can’t,” she repeated.
“Can’t…kiss?” He sounded somewhere between amused and incredulous.
She steeled herself against him. “That’s right.”
“Can’t…touch?”
“No.”
He cocked his head. “Why not?”
As if she could give him a logical reason! “Because…because…it won’t do!”
“Oh for God’s sake! Don’t do that ‘lady of the manor’ act. ‘It won’t do,”’ he mocked theatrically. “Why the hell not? You want me. I want you!”
Fortunately, before Freddie could blurt out, “Yes,” she managed a split second’s thought.
“Our bodies,” she began with the precision of a governess splitting hairs, “are not the sum of us. While our bodies might wish closer contact, our minds, our hearts, our souls…feel otherwise.”
“Mine doesn’t.” Gabe looked straight at her with his clear blue gaze.
Freddie turned away. She hugged herself tighter. “Well, mine does.”
