“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 jumped 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.