R Is for Rebel Read Free

the better part of the workweek in town, but Bronte had set up a small satellite office of her advertising agency at Dunlear for the ever more frequent stays that stretched into the week. Abigail spent most of her days riding, working on the grounds of the estate, and adoring her new nephew, Wolf.
    Almost since the first moment she’d met him, she felt that the two of them had been born under the same mischievous star. She had never connected with a baby before—she’d always thought they were wailing, complaining bundles that offered little in return for their constant demands—but this particular monster held her in his thrall. Max constantly joked that, between Bronte and Abby’s endless attentions, his son’s nanny was the highest paid person on the planet in terms of actual hours spent doing her job: to wit, zero hours.
    Abigail and Wolf bonded immediately the weekend of his christening last May. Abby had arrived at Dunlear late (as usual) in the midst of a blustery spring storm, her wild appearance the perfect reflection of the internal tumult from her recent breakup with her long-term girlfriend, Tulliver St. John, better known to all as the lovely Tully.
    Come to think of it, she met both of the new men in her life that night, there in the warm drawing room: the baby, Lord Heyworth, heir to the dukedom, better known as Wolf, and the impossibly tall, sandy-haired, broad-shouldered American businessman, Eliot Cranbrook.
    At the time, Wolf had given her a long, glassy, drooly look, as if to say: Yes, I am the new best thing around here. Take it or leave it.
    Eliot had given Abby a long approving look, as if to say: I’ll take it.
    She had loved them both instantly.
    Abby tended to love things with an all-encompassing immediacy and a complete absence of ambiguity. Her mother claimed she lacked discernment. Abby preferred to think that she lived her life completely open to all of its possibilities. She didn’t waste her time worrying about imaginary consequences to things that might never happen. She didn’t allow the (usually cruel) thoughts of others to cloud her own optimism or dictate her behavior.
    She loved baby Wolf’s honest egomania: he was the new best thing, after all.
    She loved Eliot’s open humor, how he exuded confidence without a hint of arrogance. He was just as likely to laugh at himself as he was to poke fun at others. Abby had come to think of him as solid .
    As a teenager, it had never occurred to Abby to categorically dismiss the idea of being with a man. Far from it: she was nothing if not open-minded. She just had never wanted a man the way she had wanted Tully. Then, after all their years together, Abby had simply stopped looking at men that way and foolishly assumed that was the end of that. Some part of her mind rationalized: Abby loves only Tully, ergo Abby loves only women.
    Such a pity when we discover our core belief is as solid as spun sugar.
    When the possibility of a physical attachment to Eliot started crossing her mind, Abby kept dismissing it as postbreakup nerves or shallow curiosity of “the other” or something equally dismissible.
    Except lately.
    Lately, the possibility seemed to be crossing her mind like the running commentary at the bottom of the BBC News. Unavoidable. “This just in: Eliot Cranbrook has entered the drawing room wearing perfectly faded blue jeans, a long-sleeved black T-shirt, and a pair of mirrored sunglasses that make him look like Daniel Craig on a very good day… Breaking now: Riding bareback behind Eliot Cranbrook on horseback now illegal in four counties… Alert the media: Eliot Cranbrook smells like saddle soap and fresh-baked bread and autumn.”
    Worse than the physical pull—which, let’s not mince words, was quite lovely—Abby’s feelings for Eliot were becoming rather menacing , and that was just not on. She was a lover of life, pure and simple. She didn’t go in for