His Family

Killian stood, apparently satisfied. “I figured you had,” he said. “I just wanted to hear it for certain. Things have been a little weird for all of us lately.”

Weird. To be sure.

“Mom says you may have to go back to London.” Campbell followed Killian to the door, hating the way his half brother hovered but somehow needing him to stay a minute longer.

Killian stopped in the doorway. “Yeah. Customer Relations has asked me to come back. They’re dealing with a disgruntled customer who represents about forty percent of our sales in Europe. I’m leaving day after tomorrow. I hate to miss the last couple of days you’re home, but I have to be there.”

Campbell understood that. “Sure. You taking Cordie?”

Killian smiled, revealing a tender vulnerability Campbell wasn’t used to seeing in his face. “I don’t want her out of my sight before she delivers.”

“Good thinking. Well, what about if I take you and Sawyer to dinner tomorrow night? Fulio’s?”

“I think Mom’s planning a family thing at home the night before I leave.”

News of that plan had leaked when he’d overheard his mother on the phone. “Yeah. But I was thinking the three of us should get out together before I go.”

“Ah…sure. Sounds good to me. I know Sawyer’s free because the girls at Abbott’s West are having a baby shower for Cordie.” Cordie had worked as the buyer for the women’s wear department of the Abbott’s West store. “Mom, Sophie and Kezia are all going.”

“Perfect timing. Should we include Daniel?”

“Sure.”

“Brian, too?”

“Why not?” Brian was Killian and Sawyer’s newly discovered half brother, the result of Susannah Stewart Abbott’s affair with Corbin Girard, their married neighbor and the man behind the November Corporation, the arch business enemy of Abbott Mills.

Killian studied Campbell one last time. “You’re sure you’re okay about leaving? No plan suffers from rethinking it.”

This one would, Campbell thought. He nodded. “I’m good. So, six o’clock tomorrow we’ll head out, okay?”

“Okay. You want me to tell Sawyer and Daniel?”

“Sure. That’d help.”

“All right.” Killian pointed to the still-incomplete stack of boxes. “You shipping all this or are you driving down?”

“Driving. I’m shipping some of it. Don’t worry, okay? I’ve got everything under control.”

“Right.” Killian slapped him on the shoulder. “Later.”

There was something strangely unnerving about standing alone amid the disassembled pieces of his business life in the house where he’d spent the past thirty-one years. While this was exactly what he wanted—a life apart from the family so that he could see where he fit—now that it came to it, he felt the pull of its comfort and security as he never had before.

Though he loved and respected his half brothers, he’d always been jealous that they’d come first, that they’d been part of his father’s life before he had, and that his mother, who was their stepmother, loved them every bit as much as she loved him.

Whenever Chloe had wanted better behavior from him, she’d talk about Killian’s fine qualities, Sawyer’s good nature. But Campbell had been born—as Chloe claimed—with his grandfather’s seriousness and tendency to do what he wanted without consultation. That wasn’t a good quality, she’d said, for success in family relationships.

Rather than strive to be more like his older siblings, he’d taken pride in being as unlike them as possible. Their father had died when he was in high school. He’d tried to quit school, tried to run off to the city, but Killian, with Sawyer’s support, had dragged him back and made him stay. That episode had both deepened his respect and increased his resentment.

He was so confused about his relationship with his brothers that it was his senior year in college before he forgave them for taking over his life. He’d become a team player as far as anything that involved the family went, but his resistance to whatever his brothers wanted him to do or be had become habit. He loved them, but he wasn’t staying. On some level that he couldn’t quite explain or even really understand, he didn’t belong here.

Weird, he thought as he continued to pack, that he could see China staying more than he could see himself doing so.

THE BRIDAL DEPARTMENT of Abbott’s West on Manhattan’s Upper West Side was another place China would have never expected to find herself just a month ago. The new buyer for the department was obviously eager to help Cordie—the boss’s wife—and Sophie find the perfect dress. Tina Bishop was a leggy blonde with very short hair that complemented her fine-featured face and big blue eyes. These eyes studied Sophie, then the other three. She disappeared into the back of the store.

She came back with three dresses wrapped in plastic sleeves draped carefully across her arms. She hung them on a hook near the mirrors as China and her companions crowded closer.

“You should show off that waistline,” Tina advised, pulling the wrapper off the first to reveal an ivory affair with a beaded bodice, long sleeves and a billowy floor-length chiffon skirt.

Sophie grimaced. “It’s lovely,” she said apologetically, “but I was thinking of something much less…fussy. This is a second wedding for me and I’m hardly a girl any—”

“What?” Cordie swatted Sophie’s arm. “Have you been in the hospital’s drug cabinet?” Sophie was an ER nurse at Losthampton Hospital. “You’re not getting married in a gray suit, and that’s final.”

Sophie swatted her back. “That wasn’t my intention. I just don’t think lots of chiffon and heavy beading is called for. I’m hardly—”

“If you say you’re hardly a girl,” Chloe interrupted, “I’ll be forced to swat you, too.”

Tina caught China’s eye and grinned as the Abbott women squabbled. “In effect,” Tina said, “this is their store, so I have little choice but to let them duke it out. Do you know what style she had in mind for you bridesmaids? What color?”

China shook her head, even as she felt the stirrings of an idea. “I imagine you carry Lauren Llewellyn?”

Tina visibly warmed at the mention of the designer’s name. “She deals exclusively with the Abbott stores in the city.”

China drew the buyer slightly away from the still-quarreling group. “I’m a personal shopper in Los Angeles, and I recently helped a wedding planner in Belmont Shores find the dresses for the bride and her party from Lauren Llewellyn’s fall collection. It was very thirties. The Gatsby Girls, I think she called it. Are you familiar…?”

Tina was nodding before China could even finish. “You’re right. But there was no wedding dress, as I recall.”

“No, but there was an ivory tea-length dress with a wide, ruffled…”

Tina snapped her fingers and disappeared.

Chloe, Cordie and Sophie stopped arguing and turned to China in alarm.

“What happened?” Cordie asked. “Where did she go?”

China sat on a powder-blue banquette that faced the mirrors. “To call the police, I think. Something about it being store policy when patrons come to blows and it’s pretty clear there’s not going to be a sale involved…”

Three flushed faces frowned at her.

She smiled. “Okay, she went to get another dress. Perhaps if we all sit down and behave ourselves, she’ll show it to us.”

They collected around China on the long sofa, Cordie frowning at her teasingly. “You sound just like an Abbott.”

China laughed. It wasn’t really funny, but she had to get over the sadness of it. “Well, now that I know I’m not one, I can push you around without fear of retribution.”

Chloe leaned toward her with mock seriousness. “You must always fear me, ma chère. And you are family whether you want to be or not. Just like Campbell.”

Tina was back in a few minutes with the very dress China had in mind. A rich ivory chiffon, it had a draped neckline and split flutter sleeves. Sophie gasped as Tina held up the hanger and splayed the tea-length, asymmetrical hem of the skirt over her other arm.

“It’s perfect,” Sophie breathed.

“Llewellyn is the finest ready-to-wear designer working today,” Tina said. “Before you try it on, would you like to see what she has in mind for your bridesmaids?”

“She?” Sophie asked, then turned to Tina as she gestured at China. “How did you know about this dress, China?”

“I’m a personal shopper at home,” she replied, then explained about the Belmont Shores wedding. “The bride had the wedding planner at her wits’ end. She was a friend of mine, and I happened to remember seeing the dresses in Llewellyn’s fall collection.”

Tina put the ivory dress on the hook, then returned with a dress of similar cut, with the same neckline and sleeves, but with a diagonal ruffle that ran from hip to knee and matched the asymmetrical hem. It was also chiffon.

“It’s perfect!” Cordie said, touching the ruffle. “What colors does it come in?”

“We have it in jade, persimmon, dusk and dawn. Dusk is a sort of purply-blue, and dawn is pink to dark lavender. If you want the two in different colors, I’d say dusk and dawn. Dusk for Cordie. It’ll be perfect with your hair.”

“Go!” Chloe ordered. “Go try them on while Tina helps me find something for the mother of the bride.”

“Mom,” Cordie said, “you’re the mother of the groom.”

Chloe shrugged. “Her mother isn’t here, so I am mother of the entire wedding. Go!”

Cordie, Sophie and China disappeared obediently into the fitting rooms with the dresses Tina brought them.

China shucked her Long Island whites and pulled the filmy fabric on over her head. She cursed Kezia’s good cooking when she had to wriggle through the snug-fitting lining of the bodice. She avoided the mirror as she tugged the also-snug skirt down over her hips and let the bias-cut folds of fabric fall to just above her ankles.

She could plead for a looser style, she thought, which would probably be better for Cordie, anyway. Or some kind of filmy tunic to cover…

She turned to the mirror, wincing against what she was going to see…then decided quickly her reflection wasn’t bad at all. She didn’t have Sophie’s ethereal good looks, maybe, or Cordie’s ebullience, which made her look good in anything.

But apparently all the physical labor she’d done in the orchard had countered the extra calories she’d consumed at the table. The fabric clung to her breasts, her rib cage, her waist and her hips, and—if she sucked in her breath—was even flattering. The skirt rippled around her slender ankles as she kicked off her comfortable slip-ons and stood on tiptoe to see where the hem-line would fall when she wore heels.

“How do you look?” Sophie’s voice shouted over the tops of the roofless dressing rooms. “I’m quite gorgeous!”

“Me, too!” Cordie said from the room in between. “Well, except for my belly.”

“Pregnant bellies are gorgeous,” Sophie called, sounding euphoric. “You won’t believe how perfect this dress is!”

“I’m sure it’s because you’re in it. China?”

“Yeah?”

“Are you gorgeous?”

“Ah…well, passable, anyway. But I’m going to need control-top panty hose.”

Cordie giggled. “I wish that could help me.”

“I’m coming out,” Sophie said. “Meet you at the mirrors.”

Her fitting-room door opened and closed, and China remained rooted to the spot, still looking at her reflection in amazement. She was the same woman she’d been when she arrived at Shepherd’s Knoll, but the experience of almost having and then losing a wonderful prize showed in her face. She didn’t look sad, precisely, just a little…misplaced. Uncertain. Longing. Fortunately, when she walked out of the fitting room and toward the mirrors, the fabric floating around her legs, Cordie and Sophie didn’t see any of that.

“You look beautiful!” Cordie said, walking around her, then looking over her shoulder in the mirror. “Wow. I can’t believe how right you were about these dresses. Look at Sophie!”

Sophie did a turn in front of the three-way, a small dancing army in ruffly ivory reflected back at them. The cut was perfect for her graceful slenderness, and she glowed with the confidence of wearing a garment she knew made the most of her figure and her personality. She spun away from the mirror to face them, her eyes aglow.

“You can’t leave Shepherd’s Knoll,” she said to China. “You have to do my clothes shopping all the time.”

Cordie went to the mirror, turned sideways and held a hand under her round little stomach. She wasn’t very big yet, but big enough that her curves played havoc with the straight lines of the dress, yet were somewhat camouflaged by the diagonal ruffle. She wound up her long red ponytail and held it to the back of her head.

“Helps the line a little, don’t you think?”

Sophie and China flanked her, Sophie doing the same with her long hair. “I think we could go on the road with a sister act,” Sophie said.

“Except that we aren’t sisters and we can’t sing,” China said.

“Sisters-in-law are close enough.” Cordie put an arm around Sophie’s shoulders. “You’re the one putting a damper on everything. If you’d marry Campbell, we could have very profitable careers.”

“Campbell and I hate each other,” China said, knowing even as the words came out of her mouth that that was now mysteriously untrue. At least, not true to the degree it had once been. “And who needs a profitable career when you’re an Abbott?”

Sophie’s reflection raised an eyebrow at hers. “What about our emotional need to perform? To watch the curtain rise, hear the audience applaud?”

“That wouldn’t happen. We can’t sing.”

“How do we know?” Sophie persisted. “What if our three dissonant voices came together to make the perfect sound? We’ll never know, will we, because you’re selfishly leaving us.”

“Not until her sister arrives,” Cordie reminded the bride-to-be. “There’s still time to change her mind. Does your sister sing, China?”

The silliness went on.

Then Chloe came out of the fitting room in a skirt similar in style to theirs but with a more tailored jacket, the irregular length of its hem its only concession to the thirties style. The color was somewhere between China’s pink lavender and Cordie’s purply blue. It was sensational with her gray hair and fair complexion.

She slipped in under China’s arm to become part of the chorus-girl lineup. Playfully, she pointed her toe and showed some leg.

“That’s it!” Sophie said. “Even if we can’t sing, we can dance!”

“Oh, I’d be graceful,” Cordie said dryly, and broke away.

Chloe groaned. “I suffer from arthritis.”

“I suffer from two left feet.” China followed her cohorts toward the dressing room.

Sophie sighed and fell into line behind them. “It’s tough being a visionary when you’re among a bunch of dullards,” she complained.

Chapter Four

“I don’t understand what just happened,” Sawyer said, turning to Campbell in mystification. He, Campbell and Killian sat across from Cordie, Sophie and China at the game table in one of the family rooms. “What do you mean, queens are wild? I’ve never heard of queens being wild in rummy. I have three aces.”

“They’re not worth anything in ‘millionaire rummy,’” China replied, gathering up their cards. She was dealer.

Campbell watched her serious expression, waiting for it to crack. So far, through the “deuces double the value of tens” rule, the “highest score gets a fifty-point penalty” rule, and the “first one to get a royal flush wins” rule, it was flawless. “I’ve never heard of millionaire rummy before tonight,” he said.

“Me, neither,” his brothers chorused.

China gazed at each of them in innocent disbelief, her eyes landing barely a second on him. “And each of you a millionaire. Go figure.”

“Queens Are Wild is our stage name,” Sophie said, as she stood up to reach the coffee carafe in the middle of the table and began topping up everyone’s cup.

“Stage name?” Sawyer gaped.

She nodded. “We’re going on the road as a song-and-dance team.”

Killian said to Cordie with exaggerated gentleness, “Sweetheart, you can’t sing.”

She shrugged that off as she held out her cup. “Our dancing will cover that. Show a little leg and the crowd will go wild. No one will hear our sour notes over the cheering.”

Sawyer turned to Killian, his expression half amused, half worried. He turned back to the women. “What happened out there today?”

“Don’t you see it?” Killian asked, taking a sip from his cup. “They went dress shopping and discovered they have chemistry. They’re intending to take over the world with it, starting with a simple card game.”

“Ah. Well, that’ll have to wait until Sophie and I return from Vermont, and Killian and Cordie are finished in London. Unless China chooses to strike out on her own, just to warm up your potential audience.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” Sophie sounded discouraged. “She’s convinced that talent is all-important. And as she keeps reminding us, she’s not a sister.”

“But neither are you and Cordie.”

“We’re sisters-in-law. Or will be. Close enough.”

“Well, there you go.” Killian took Campbell’s cup and held it up for Cordie to refill. “You have to marry China to save their musical careers. Then she’ll be a sister, and she can still perform while Cordie and Sophie are away.”

“And that helps you and Sawyer and me how?” Campbell asked.

Killian handed back his cup. “They become stars, support us in the manner to which we are accustomed, and the three of us kick back and…I don’t know, race Brian’s boats, or Sawyer can teach us to do stunts on motorcycles. We can have fun for a change.”

Killian had spun out the whole scenario simply to carry on the joke, but Campbell thought it was interesting to hear his workaholic brother talk about having fun. His refusal to allow himself to enjoy anything—a legacy of the guilt all the brothers shared over Abby’s kidnapping—had been part of the reason for his initial breakup with Cordie. Their reconciliation and the pending arrival of their babies had helped him loosen up, lighten up.

China, on the other hand, had pushed back her chair, taken the empty cookie plate into the kitchen and returned with it full again. She reached over Sawyer to put it in the middle of the table.

“Thanks, China.” Sawyer patted her hand. “I think she’d make a great sister-in-law,” he said, glancing at the other two women. “It didn’t occur to either of you to refill the cookie plate.”

“If she married me,” Campbell teased, watching her face for a change of expression, “she’d be moving with me to Flamingo Gables, and that wouldn’t help your quest for cookies, anyway. Or the whole sister-act plan. She’d be a thousand miles away.”

“If I married you,” China corrected, no betrayal of discomfort in her eyes, though there was a little color in her cheeks, “you’d be coming with me to Canada’s far north to find my family.”

For one quick moment, unconnected with the here and now, he speculated on what it would be like to follow her to the Canadian north. He got a mental image of moose and bear, pine trees, snow-covered hills and a snug log cabin with a fire going inside. There was furniture upholstered in plaid wool, a big bed covered with a thick quilt—and the two of them in it. Her search wasn’t going well and she was crying just as she had the night she’d opened the report from the lab. But now she was naked in his arms, pressed to him for comfort, arms wrapped around him. He could feel the soft inside of her leg hitched over his thigh, her pearled breasts against his chest. The image was very real and it shook him to the bone.

“Campbell? Cam!” Killian’s voice.

Campbell came back to the moment to find everyone around the table watching him in concern. Had he said something? he wondered. Groaned? He looked across the table at China and saw that she was as perplexed as the rest of them. Odd, considering how real those images had been, that she didn’t remember inhabiting them.

“Yeah?” he asked.

“I said that I spoke to Brian about checking in at the house every couple of days while we’re all away,” Killian repeated patiently. “And being available to Winfield if he needs him.”

“Why would your butler-cum-security-force need Brian?” Sophie asked.

“Sometimes when he’s worried about Mom’s safety and does or doesn’t want her to do something, he needs support from one of us to get her cooperation.”

“And you’ll all be available to come right back,” China asked, “if Janet suddenly calls?”

Killian nodded. “We’re just an overnight flight away.”

“And we’ll be close enough to drive home in a few hours,” Sawyer said.

“What about you, Campbell?” China challenged with a smile. Mentally, he had to put clothes back on her. The tips of her breasts were driving him crazy. “How are you going to get away when you’ll be so new on the job?”

He pushed away from the table, returning her polite smile. “My employer’s prepared. I explained when I accepted the job that there was a family complication. Of course, at the time I thought it was you.”

As the words left his mouth, he realized that he’d called her a complication. His hope that no one had noticed was dashed when Killian gave him a raised eyebrow. China, however, took it with a lift of her chin and a go-to-hell glance. “I always thought you were the complicated one,” she said.

He stood and pushed his chair in. “If you’ll all excuse me, I’ve got to pay some bills tonight so the household accounts are all caught up when I leave. And don’t forget tomorrow night.”

Sawyer’s brow furrowed. “Tomorrow night?”

Killian groaned. “Sorry, Cam. I forgot to tell him. And I’m supposed to be the smart one.”

Campbell snorted and addressed Sawyer. “I’m taking you, Killian, Brian and Daniel to dinner at Fulio’s while the ladies are at Cordie’s baby shower.”

Sawyer put a hand to his heart in a dramatic portrayal of an attack. “What? You mean you’re choosing to be with us? Even treating us?”

“Only because I won’t have to see you for some time afterward. Six o’clock. Be ready.”

“Ah…wait. I’m happy to have Daniel with us, but I thought he was driving the girls to the shower. I’m not wild about the idea of them trying to get around in the city.”

“I’m driving,” China said. “I fight the freeways in L.A. I assure you we’ll be safe.”

“But you know L.A.,” Sawyer argued. “You don’t know New York.”

“The shower’s not in the city,” Cordie put in. “It’s in Westbury on the west end of the island. And I’ll be navigating.”

“Oh, God!” Killian exclaimed. “They’ll be in Nebraska by morning. We need a plan B.”

Cordie walked around the table to pummel him. Laughing, he pulled her into his lap. “All right, all right,” he said, holding her fists in one hand. “I’m just remembering the time you were supposed to navigate us to the Dawsons’ open house and we ended up in a creek.”

“We’ll let China use the tractor,” Campbell proposed with a straight face. “She drives it quite well, and can mow down anything in her path.”

“Does it have global positioning?” Sawyer asked.

Campbell excused himself again and left the room, the laughter still going on. The coziness was beginning to get to him. Life with his brothers had been one thing when Killian had been a workaholic and Sawyer had been determined to kill himself. He’d been able to hold his practical, no-nonsense approach to life up against their baggage and feel somewhat superior.

He couldn’t do that anymore.

And it had been easy to plan to leave when the house had been always quiet. In those days, Killian seldom came home from the city, even on weekends, and though Sawyer was home, he kept to himself a lot, working on the foundation’s projects and other charitable community functions. Chloe had a busy social life and came and went all the time. The staff was like family, but they were all good employees and worked hard.

So Campbell had spent a lot of time alone, and he’d thought he’d liked it that way—though he’d been determined to spend it alone someplace else. But now that the house was full of women, children, laughter and plans, he felt as though the place had a grip on him and didn’t want to let go.