Free Gabriel's Bride by Amy Lillard

small prayer to help him keep his temper. He’d worked long and hard on the wheat hybrid and to see it ruined in one morning. . . . He bounded off the porch just as Rachel came barreling out of the house. She held dog leashes in one hand, and it took Gabriel several long seconds to figure out what she intended to do with them.
    Then he could only stare as she clipped the leashes to the fancy collars the goats had around their necks, and pretty as you please, she led the goats out of the wheat.
    Gabriel sucked in a deep breath as she came near, leading the goats behind as one would a stray horse.
    She opened her mouth to speak, but he was one ahead of her. “What were your goats doing in my wheat field?”
    “Wheat field?”
    “ Jah. Now answer.”
    She pressed her lips together. Her brown eyes were as hard as root beer candy. “I have never seen such a small planting. Nor do wheat fields require fencing around them.”
    “It’s my field, and I will do with it as I please.”
    She lifted her pointy chin in the air, a small muscle in her jaw jumping. “I thought it was a pen.”
    “You thought wrong.”
    “Then I must apologize.”
    She didn’t look like she wanted to apologize. She looked more like she wanted to dump a soup pot full of gruel on his head and leave him in the sun to dry.
    “I didn’t see another place to put them.”
    “They’ll be fine in the main pasture.”
    A look of horror flashed across her features. “ Nay . My goats cannot be kept with the other animals. They have to be milked twice a day. Fed premium hay and organic food in order to produce quality milk for the cheese.”
    She was pulling his leg. But the serious tilt of her jaw stated otherwise.
    “Samuel, go on into the house and get you something to eat.” He said the words without taking his eyes off his housekeeper.
    “Jah, Dat,” Samuel said before running to the porch and disappearing inside.
    “It seems we have a misunderstanding.” Rachel Yoder’s words had lost their previous edge. Her breathing had returned to normal, though her cheeks still held a bright pink flush that seemed to make her eyes appear even more bottomless than before. If that were even possible.
    “ Jah , it does.”
    She looked back over to the patch of wheat now mowed nearly to the ground by her ravenous goats. She bit her lip and looked back at him, apology flooding her features. “I didn’t know the grass was special.”
    “Three years’ worth of work,” he said. “My own blend of red and gold wheat.”
    “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “I didn’t know.”
    At her quiet tone, Gabriel felt his anger subsiding. They should have talked more about this from the beginning. Too late for that now. “I think we should sit down and set some guidelines for our arrangement.”
    She nodded.
    Who knew hiring a live-in housekeeper would require so much effort? “Will your goats be okay on their leashes for a time?”
    “For a little while, jah .”
    “Then let’s go inside,” he said, with a nod toward the house. “We can discuss our plans over a good meal.”
    She nodded, then tied the goats to the hitching post. With a jaunty air, she stuck her nose toward the sky, turned around, and marched back into the house.

    “Where’s the food?”
    Rachel turned to Gabriel.
    He stared at the table now freshly cleared and cleaned.
    Surely he hadn’t expected her to . . . She stood a little straighter. “I usually have sandwiches for the noon meal. Jah ?” She nodded toward Samuel who sat at his place at the table swinging his legs and waiting on one of them to feed him. He was such a sweetheart, and Rachel felt a warm rush of affection every time she was near the youngster.
    “Sandwiches?” Gabriel repeated the word with such disbelief that she had to bite back the urge to explain to him what a sandwich was.
    Instead, she nodded slowly. “Peanut butter with strawberry jelly is one of my favorites.”
    He just stared and suddenly she got the