Always a McBride

by Linda Turner

  Spying her in the doorway, Taylor turned to her with a smile, his brown eyes twinkling. “Here’s Phoebe now. Phoebe, this is Lawrence Cooper and his bride, Doris. They just got married this morning in Albuquerque.”

  Doris Cooper grinned. “I know, dear. Isn’t it outrageous, two old-timers like us getting married? But it was better that than living in sin. Our children would have had a stroke!”

  Liking her immediately, Phoebe had to laugh. “I think it’s wonderful. How long have you two known each other?”

  “Since I was an MP in the Second World War,” Lawrence said with a boyish flash of dimples. “She was a WAC who stole my heart, then got shipped to England. I hadn’t seen her in fifty years, then suddenly she tracked me down on the Internet two months ago, after her husband died. We’ve been together ever since.”

  “Our kids wanted to send us on a cruise,” Doris confided, “but we didn’t care about all that. We just wanted to go somewhere quiet where we could just relax and enjoy each other.” Glancing around at the parlor, which Myrtle had decorated so beautifully with exquisite antiques, she smiled. “This is perfect. It reminds me of my grandmother’s house.”

  “It is my grandmother’s house,” Phoebe told her. “She’s on a cross-country trip right now, but she’ll be pleased that you like it. Can I show you to your room? I gave you the suite overlooking the garden. It gets the morning sun.”

  “Oh, that would be lovely,” Doris said. “I love waking up with the sun. How early is breakfast served, dear? Can we have coffee in our room?”

  “Of course,” Phoebe said easily as she led the way to the stairs. “I’m usually up by five-thirty. All of our pastries and bread are made from scratch each morning, so I have to get an early start. The first rolls are usually ready by seven, but I start the coffee the minute I come downstairs. I can send some up to your room if you’d like. Just call me on the house phone when you wake up.”

  Following with the luggage as Phoebe and the Coopers made their way upstairs, Taylor couldn’t help but marvel at the way Phoebe treated the older couple. She was as comfortable with them as if she’d known them their entire lives, rather than a matter of moments, so consequently they were completely at ease. Lawrence shared a joke with her, Doris asked if she could trade recipes with her, and by the time they reached their room, Phoebe knew the names and ages of all their grandchildren.

  Amazed, Taylor had to smile when she invited the older couple to join her and Taylor for dinner and they eagerly accepted. How had she known that they would want company for dinner? They were on their honeymoon, for heaven’s sake! But they did seem to enjoy meeting and talking to people, and they must have recognized a kindred spirit in Phoebe. How could they not? She was a natural.

  The Winstons, however, were a completely different kettle of fish. Phoebe had hardly settled the Coopers in their suite when the other couple arrived. Young and obviously very much in love, Peter and Heather Winston were quiet and private, but Phoebe was still able to draw them out as she showed them to their room. “I was going to put you in the bridal suite on the second floor, but I really think you’ll enjoy the third-floor suite more. You’ll have the entire floor to yourself, and you’ll also have a great view of the mountains. You’re going to have to climb two flights of stairs, though. If that’s a problem, the second-floor suite is just as nice.”

  The decision was theirs. The bride and groom exchanged a silent look, and suddenly, hot color was rising in their cheeks. “This third floor will be fine,” Peter Winston said huskily.

  Carrying up their luggage, Taylor liked to think that he was an astute man, but he had to admit that it had never crossed his mind that the young newlyweds might be worried about their privacy—after all, the old Victorian house was huge. Still, the Winstons were young—they looked as if they were barely out of high school—and this was their first night together as man and wife. Phoebe had not only sensed that they were nervous about spending their wedding night right down the hall from a house full of strangers, but she’d also tactfully found a way to make them more comfortable without stating the obvious.

  “If you need anything, just let me know,” she added as Taylor set their luggage just inside the door of their suite. “And champagne and dinner will be served at seven, compliments of the inn. If you’d like, you can have it on the balcony outside your room. It’s no trouble to send it up to you—there’s a dumbwaiter in the hall right outside your room. When you’re finished, you can set your tray of dishes back in the dumbwaiter and send it back down to the kitchen.”

  “Oh, that sounds great!” Heather said. “I’ve never been in a house with a dumbwaiter.”

  “Then why don’t I send everything up a little before seven?” Phoebe suggested with a smile. “A buzzer will sound in the hall when it reaches your floor.”

  Just that easily, Phoebe offered the young couple complete privacy. Watching her, seeing the smiles on her guests’ faces, Taylor found himself incredibly proud of her. Just a week ago, that would have scared the hell out of him. Always a cautious man, he’d never allowed himself to get involved enough in a woman’s life to feel anything other than desire and liking for her. For no other reason than that, he should have taken a step back from Phoebe and immediately put their relationship back on a less personal level. But the more he got to know her, the more she fascinated him. Considering that, the last thing he could do now was step back.

  So, when she went back downstairs to begin the meal for all the newlyweds, he didn’t retreat to his room as he normally would have. Instead, he lit the candles in the front parlor and dining-room, then built a fire in the dining room fireplace. It might have been the middle of June, but the nights were cool, and considering the newlyweds in the house, the evening seemed to call for the romance of a fire.

  “Oh, that’s nice!” Phoebe said with a pleased smile when she stepped into the dining room carrying a tray of hors d’oeuvres and found the room aglow with candlelight. “Doris is going to love it.”

  “She seems like an easy touch when it comes to romance. Does your grandmother have any music? It’s a good night for a little Frank Sinatra.”

  “According to my grandmother, it’s always a good night for a little Frankie,” she retorted with a grin. “The music cabinet in the front parlor is filled with his albums. Take your pick.”

  Taylor had never considered himself a romantic—he’d never felt the need to give a woman hearts and flowers and candlelight—but he found himself enjoying the idea of setting the stage for Doris’s wedding night. Poor Lawrence wasn’t going to know what hit him.

  Grinning at the thought, he found a Sinatra album he instinctively knew Doris would love and immediately started the phonograph. Within minutes, the familiar strains of Frank Sinatra drifted through the downstairs. Almost immediately, Doris and Lawrence appeared in the doorway of the front parlor. Her blue eyes sparkling with delight, Doris grinned at Taylor, who she caught in the act of adjusting the volume. “Don’t touch that dial, young man! Us old folks don’t hear as well as we used to.”

  “Old folks, my eye,” Taylor retorted, his brown eyes glinting with humor. “You won’t be old when you’re ninety, Mrs. Cooper.”

  “That’s Doris to you,” she replied sweetly. “How did you know I liked Frank Sinatra?”

  “All the best people do,” he said simply, grinning. “And just for the record, I wasn’t turning it down. I was turning it up.”

  “A wise man,” Lawrence said with a wink. “She can turn nasty when anyone gets between her and Frank Sinatra.”

  “My grandmother’s the same way,” Phoebe said from the dining room as she stepped from the kitchen with an ice bucket and a bottle of chilled champagne. “Come to think of it, I’m pretty fond of Old Blue Eyes, myself. There’s just something about the way he sings a love song. Speaking of which—”

  “What?” Taylor teased. “Love songs?”

  “Love,” she corrected him, offering champagne to the newlyweds, then T
aylor. “I think it’s time for a toast.” With a smile at the Coopers, she held up her glass. “To love…”

  “And marriage,” Taylor added, raising his glass.

  “And Viagra,” Lawrence said with a wicked smile.

  “Lawrence!”

  “What?” he asked with pretended innocence when his wife tried to frown reprovingly. “I bought stock in the company. I hope it goes up.”

  For a moment, no one said a word. Then Doris’s eyes met those of her new husband and she giggled. “Me, too.”

  Phoebe couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed so much…or enjoyed an evening more. When she came downstairs the next morning at five-thirty to start the coffee cakes and pastries that Myrtle had taught her to make when she was just a child, she was still grinning over the stories Doris and Lawrence had told over dinner. If she ever got married, she hoped she was lucky enough to have the same type of relationship the Coopers shared. They were made for each other.

  “Good morning.”

  Lost in her thoughts as she gathered the ingredients she would need for the morning baking, she jumped, her heart in her throat, and whirled to find Taylor standing in the kitchen doorway. “Oh! You startled me! I didn’t think anyone else was awake. Did you want some coffee? It’ll just take a minute—”

  “No, I’ll do it,” he said, and stepped toward the pantry at the same time she did.

  Phoebe couldn’t have said who bumped into whom, but suddenly, Taylor’s hands were on her arms, holding her just inches away from him, and her body was humming with need. Her heart pounding, she only had to look into his eyes to know that he felt it, too, that same, familiar need that haunted her dreams and made her ache for him whenever he stepped into her thoughts.

  “I’ll make the coffee,” he said huskily. “You concentrate on your baking. I’ll help with the rest of the meal. What do you need done? Is it too early to cook the bacon? Or were you going to serve sausage? What’s on the menu?”

  Phoebe couldn’t have been more surprised if he’d stood on his hands and done a back flip right there in her grandmother’s kitchen. “You know how to cook?”

  “Watch it, sweetheart,” he said with a grin. “That remark was more than a little bit sexist. Of course I can cook. My mother believed that a man should know how to cook and clean and take care of himself. I may not be a gourmet, but I can handle bacon and eggs, and I make a damn good hollandaise.”

  Surprised, she arched a brow at him. “Your mother taught you to make hollandaise?”

  “Actually, I worked in a restaurant when I was in college,” he admitted with a wry grin. “So what would you like me to do? Bacon and eggs? Hollandaise? Or my specialty…cinnamon toast?”

  “All of the above,” she replied, flashing her dimples at him, “but you need to hold off on the eggs and toast until the newlyweds buzz for their coffee. In the meantime, you could squeeze some fresh orange juice for me, if you wouldn’t mind. The oranges are in the refrigerator.”

  “No problem,” he said easily. “But first, I’ll start the coffee.”

  He strode over to the pantry as if he’d lived there all his life, and, within minutes, he had the coffee perking in the coffeemaker and fresh juice squeezed. Without having to ask what needed to be done next, he washed strawberries and grapes for a fresh fruit platter, then cored a pineapple with the skill of a sous chef.

  Busy with her pastries, Phoebe tried to concentrate on her own work, but he made that nearly impossible. There was just something so sexy about a man who knew his way around the kitchen. She’d never seen him so relaxed before. He hummed “Strangers in the Night” under his breath, and every time he came within touching distance of her, he seemed to brush up against her.

  Her blood heating, she told herself the first time it was just an accident, but it happened a second time, then a third. Looking up from the pastry dough she was rolling out, she wasn’t surprised to find him watching her with dark eyes that glinted with amusement. He was flirting with her, she realized, and started to smile. Cocking her head at him, she lifted a delicately arched brow. “What are you doing?”

  “Nothing,” he said innocently, only to dip a finger in the bowl of flour on the kitchen island, then playfully draw a smudge down her nose. “What did you think I was doing?”

  “Oh, nothing,” she replied with a shrug, then slipped around him to retrieve a loaf pan from the cabinet behind him. As she returned to her work station at the kitchen island, she trailed her fingers down the back of his neck and grinned when he caught his breath. He wasn’t the only one who could flirt.

  She was a witch, Taylor thought, swallowing a silent groan. A beautiful, tempting, sensuous witch. Over the course of the next few hours, she took his own game and turned it back on him, teasing and flirting with him until he was so hot for her, he could hardly string two sentences together without help. And he loved it. She made him want her with just a smile. And during breakfast, when her foot played with his under the table and she smiled at him with mischief in her eyes, all he wanted to do was sweep her up in his arms and carry her upstairs to his room.

  There was, however, no time for loving. Once both newlywed couples had had breakfast and the dishes were done, she had a busy day running her grandmother’s antique store. Locals, as well as tourists on their way to Aspen stopped in to browse and buy, and the old-fashioned cash register rang on and off throughout the late morning and early afternoon.

  Taylor knew he should have kept up his pretense of doing research and made himself scarce for the day, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave Phoebe. He was enjoying her company too much. She visited with tourists as if they were old friends, greeted locals with true affection, and invited them all into the shop as though she was inviting guests into her home. She even set out a platter of homemade cookies for anyone who might be hungry!

  Amused and delighted with her lack of pretension, Taylor volunteered to carry out the customer’s purchases to their cars, just like a proud husband helping his wife. That’s when he knew he was in trouble.

  When had he got so caught up in her life that he forgot his own? he wondered with a scowl. He was in Liberty Hill for one reason and one reason only—to make the McBrides pay for what Gus had done to his mother—and lately, he had even begun to question the wisdom of that. Everything had seemed so clear when he’d first arrived in town, but now, he didn’t know what to do. And that annoyed the hell out of him. He was a decisive man, or at least, he always had been in the past. He still felt that his brothers and sisters needed to know what kind of man their father had been, but he was beginning to wonder if telling them would really serve any purpose. They were going to believe what they wanted to believe, regardless of what he said, and he couldn’t blame them for that. They’d known Gus all of their lives growing up—he was their father. The odds were better than good that they’d known him better than even his mother had.

  Disturbed, troubled, he needed some time to think, to decide what he wanted to do, and he couldn’t do that helping Phoebe with her grandmother’s antique store. “I’ve got some errands to do,” he told her gruffly after carrying out a set of Windsor chairs for a woman. “Can you get someone to carry out the heavier objects if I’m gone for a few hours?”

  “Of course,” she assured him. “Is everything okay? You look…upset.”

  “I’m fine,” he assured her. “I’ve just got some things to take care of. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

  Not giving her a chance to ask questions he wasn’t prepared to answer, he made a quick exit and headed for his car. A few minutes later, he found himself taking the road from town that led to his father’s ranch, and he couldn’t even say why. He just knew he had to go there.

  Chapter 9

  The ranch was deserted; there wasn’t a McBride anywhere in sight. Normally, Taylor wouldn’t have felt comfortable trespassing on someone else’s property without at least getting their permission first, but Joe and Zeke had made it clear on a numbe
r of occasions that he was welcome to look around as much as he liked. Without even thinking about it, he headed straight for the family cemetery.

  Nestled under the trees, high on a hill overlooking the homestead, it was just as he’d remembered it…quiet, peaceful, ageless. In the valley below, the house that had been home to countless McBrides was a testament to the survival of the family, but here on the hillside, time was measured not in years, but in the graves.

  Surrounded by silence, Taylor stood under the old pine tree that hovered protectively over his father’s grave and waited for the old bitterness and anger to twist in his gut, just as it always did whenever he thought of Gus McBride. This time, however, he was stunned to discover that the only emotion he felt was regret. Regret that he’d never had a chance to know the man his brothers and sisters called Dad. Regret that he’d never shared a holiday with him or a birthday. Regret that Gus McBride had died without ever knowing that his eldest son existed—because everything would have been different if he had.

  Pain squeezed his heart at the thought of what might have been. Before he’d come to Liberty Hill, he’d have sworn that nothing could ever change his opinion of Gus McBride. As far as he was concerned, he was a deadbeat father and the biggest loser in the world. He had to be—otherwise, he would have come for him and his mother and taken them out of the nightmare of poverty they’d lived in for all of Taylor’s childhood.

  His brothers and sisters, however, had shown him that Gus had been nothing like the monster he’d thought he was. He’d been loving and giving and had always been there for his wife and children. After hearing the stories of what a good man he’d been, Taylor was forced to come to only one conclusion. The only reason Gus hadn’t been there for him was because he hadn’t known of his existence. How could he hate him for that when his mother was the one who’d chosen not to tell him she was pregnant?