His Wife

Sophie’s eyes brimmed with tears, and Sawyer was very grateful that Chloe had drummed into all her sons the old-fashioned notion that gentlemen carried handkerchiefs, if not for themselves, for the ladies they took to sad movies or sandy benches at the beach.

He handed her a white square of linen with a gray monogram. As she turned to accept it, a tear spilled over.

“The test?” the chief asked Eddie.

“Yeah. Our dad yelled a lot. And when my bike broke, Mom fixed it. When Emma got lost, Mom went to find her. When Gracie got in trouble at school—”

Sophie put a hand on his knee. “He understands, Eddie.”

“Who’s Gracie?” the chief enquired.

“She’s our big sister,” Eddie said. “She’s ten. She’s grumpy ’cause she doesn’t have any boobs yet. She stayed to watch a Jennifer Lopez special with Kayla Spoonby across the road.” Apparently thinking her whereabouts required explanation, he added, “We don’t have cable.”

The chief nodded gravely. “I see. So, telling Sawyer…Mr. Abbott…that you were kidnapped was part of the test?”

“Yeah. ’Cause one time I heard Mom talking to Grandma Berry and she said she never wanted to get married again unless she could find someone who’d rescue the children. That’s me and Emma and Gracie. And rescue means save, right? So we had to see if he thought we were in trouble he’d save us.”

The chief opened his mouth to respond, and obviously had no idea what to say. The boy had clearly misinterpreted what he’d heard, but cleverly created his own solution to what he perceived to be the problem.

Sophie groaned and put Sawyer’s handkerchief to her eyes for a moment. Then she lowered it and took Eddie’s hand.

“I meant…rescue you from not having a dad. From having to go to ball games with me instead of a dad. From Emma having no one to carry her on his shoulders, and from Gracie having no one to tell her she’s pretty.”

Eddie obviously didn’t get that, either. “But, she’s ugly,” he said seriously.

Sophie laughed, which was a good thing. Even the chief seemed relieved. Sawyer wanted to take Sophie and her children away to Shepherd’s Knoll, wrap them in fleece and shut out the world.

Of course, he knew that wasn’t healthy. But he had to do something.

“Okay.” The chief cleared his throat, then did it again. “Well. Now I understand what you were thinking when you scared your mother that way, but the next time you get an idea like that, I want you to promise me you’ll think twice. You know what that means?”

“Think twice,” Eddie repeated, considering. “Think about it two times so…so if there’re bad parts in the idea, you’ll see them.”

“Exactly,” the chief praised. “’Cause I’m sure your mom worries about you all the time. Moms usually do. And there’s enough real stuff to worry about without making things up that just scare people. Understand?”

“Yeah,” Eddie said.

Weston focused on Emma. “Do you understand, Emmaline?”

She nodded. “We don’t want to scare Mommy.”

“That’s right. Okay.” The chief stood and shook hands all around. “I’ll get an officer to take you back to your car.”

“We had walked to the market,” she said. “But if someone could take us home…”

“I’ll do that.” Sawyer shook the chief’s hand.

“Mr. Abbott, maybe it’d be better…” She began to object to his plan, but the children skipped after him as he’d thought they might as he walked out of the chief’s office, through the police station and down the steps to the parking lot. Sophie had little choice but to follow them.

He opened the back door of his deep-plum-colored PT Cruiser for Eddie and Emma and then scrambled in. They pulled on seat belts as he held the passenger door for Sophie.

“What if we all go out for pizza or burgers?” Sawyer suggested as he pulled out of the lot. “It’s after seven. Kind of late for you to start cooking.”

The children began a chorus of, “Please, Mommy! Can we? Please?” which he’d have caved to had he been in charge. But she was obviously made of stronger stuff.

“Thank you, but we have to go home,” she said firmly. “Gracie’s at the neighbor’s, and—”

“Can’t we just pick her up and take her along?”

Sophie shook her head. “No, but thank you.”

Eddie and Emma whined a little louder. “We never get to do anything fun! We never get to go out to eat! We never—”

“You know the rule about whining,” she interrupted.

Sophie was determined to get out of this without a further commitment or connection of any kind to Sawyer Abbott. As sweet and charming as he was, she wanted never to see him again. Ever.

“Which way home?” he asked as they reached the road that ran through Losthampton.

Funny, she thought. She’d been asking herself that question for years. When everything had gone bad with Bill, she’d sort of run in place for a long time, trying to find the road back to the way things had been before he’d fallen in with bad cops and become someone different from the man she’d married. She’d been lost in a nightmare for so long that when she finally escaped, she still felt as though she was getting nowhere.

The move from Boston to Losthampton had been intended to help her break free, to put Gracie in a new place, where the old memories would fade in the light of new experiences.

But Gracie was having as much trouble forgetting as Sophie was, so it felt as though they were still stuck in place.

Only Eddie and Emma provided the occasional breath of fresh air with their irrepressible good humor and direct approach to life. If she could just get through to them that their daddy search was hopeless.

She wondered idly if an uncle would appease them.

“Sophie,” Sawyer prompted. “Which way?”

She was a little surprised to hear her name on his lips. There was something nice about hearing it quietly spoken rather than shouted at full volume with a threat in it.

Something inside her made her want to lean toward him, tell him how nice it would be to have pizza or burgers and feel certain that the need wouldn’t erupt into an ugly event with the children crying and her wondering what on earth had happened to her life.

But life with Bill had changed her, and she had nothing left to give a man—even over pizza. So she just had to live with that, focus on her children and not mess up anyone else’s life.

“We live on Blueberry Road,” she said finally. “That old cottage right at the end.”

“Oh, yeah.” He turned in that direction. “I heard somebody’d moved into that place.” He smiled apologetically. “Small-town rumor mill, you know. It’s been vacant a long time.”

“Yes. I cleaned up the living room and the kids slept there for two months until I could make their bedrooms livable. Now I’m slowly working on the rest of it.”

“Nothing like an old house,” he said. “Ours has been around since the mid-1800s. Belonged to my mother’s family.”

“Was your mother a native New Yorker?”

“She was from an old Texas family, actually. They used to summer here. Her great-grandfather built the place and called it Bluebonnet Knoll after the flowers from home. When she left with the chauffeur, she signed the place over to my father—to assuage her guilt, I suppose.”

Sophie could imagine running away, but from circumstances, not from the kids.

“How old were you?”

“Ah…three. Killian was five. Then my father married a designer who worked for one of his clothing companies, and they had two children together.”

“Is Killian the brother you’re meeting after you drop us off?”

“No, he and his wife are in Europe on a second honeymoon. I’m meeting Brian Girard. My mother was pregnant with him when she left.”

“So he was the chauffeur’s…?”

“No. His father is the owner of the neighboring estate.”

“Good heavens!” She put a hand over her mouth to stop a smile. “I’m sorry. I know it isn’t funny. It is your life, after all. But it sounds like a soap opera during Sweeps Week when they pull out all the stops to get the biggest audience share.”

He didn’t bother to hold back his smile. “There’s more,” he said. “Our little sister was kidnapped at fourteen months and we never saw her again. But about two weeks ago, a young woman appeared on our doorstep, who thinks she might be her.”

“You’re kidding!”

“I’m not. She’s dark-haired like Campbell—that’s my younger brother—and she and he squabble like real siblings, so I wouldn’t be at all surprised if she is.”

“Well…aren’t you going to find out for sure?” she asked. “A DNA test would do it, wouldn’t it?”

He nodded. “I think it will. But my stepmother’s in France, looking after her dying aunt right now, and we don’t want to do anything to upset her. So we haven’t told her China is here, and we haven’t gone for testing. China’s in agreement. She’s living at Shepherd’s Knoll with us and helping Campbell run the estate.”

“I thought it was Bluebonnet Knoll.”

“My father changed the name when my mother left. Our ancestors raised sheep in Massachusetts before starting a mill, so Dad wanted the place to reflect his heritage rather than hers.”

“How interesting,” she said, “to be able to follow your ancestry so far back. All I know is that my grandparents farmed in Nebraska, lost everything in a drought and moved back to Vermont, where my great-grandfather was and the family’s been there ever since.”

He smiled. “What brought you here?”

“I spent ten years in Boston after I got married. We vacationed here one summer and I loved it.”

She’d been telling everyone simply that she was a widow starting over. But he knew it wasn’t that simple. Still—she didn’t want him to know much more.

“Fresh start,” she said, relieved as he turned onto Blueberry Road.

“Is there anything I can do?” he asked, glancing at her as he led the car down the long, straight road. “I mean…if you need anything for you or the children, I have connections everywhere.”

He didn’t appear to be boasting. “It’s kind of you to offer,” she replied, “but we’re doing fine.”

“I’m not doing fine,” Emma said petulantly. “My cookies are still at the market.”

Sophie groaned. “The groceries.” She wondered if her cart had been set aside for her, or if everything had been put back. She hadn’t had time to pay before the police had taken her and her children away.

“Well, you’ll have to be happy with fruit for a snack tonight,” she said. “We’ll go back to the store tomorrow. And if you don’t tell some stranger a made-up story about being kidnapped, maybe we won’t have to go to jail and can actually take our groceries home.”

“He’s not a stranger,” Eddie corrected. “He’s The One.”

Embarrassed by her children’s insistence that they’d chosen the second son of the prominent and wealthy Abbotts to be their father, Sophie closed her eyes, completely out of excuses for their behavior.

“I could use that as billing for my next stunt,” Sawyer laughed. “Sawyer Abbott—The One!” He gave the line dramatic flair as he turned into the driveway of her ramshackle but charming old house. The white paint was peeling and one gray shutter hung, but she was in love with the wide front porch and the window boxes, in which she’d planted yellow and purple pansies. The sight of them always cheered her.

She took a deep breath and faced Sawyer, prepared to thank him, then dismiss him.

But he was already out of the car, helping the children out of the back, looking over the house and the overgrown lawn. Eddie and Emma pranced along on either side of him, talking nonstop.

“Who’s that?”

Gracie stood near the car door as Sophie let herself out. Beside her was Kayla Spoonby, her best friend. Kayla’s father was the hospital administrator, and her mother, a schoolteacher.

Sophie recounted the story of the afternoon’s adventures for Gracie and Kayla.

Gracie watched Sawyer Abbott with suspicion and hostility. “They’re such dweebs. We don’t need a dad.”

“It’s nice to have a dad,” Kayla disputed. She was a short, plump redhead with a sparkling personality. Gracie was tall and slender, with her father’s blond good looks but Sophie’s shyness. “And Sawyer’s really cool. He’s a friend of my dad’s. Hi, Sawyer!” she called, running around the car to greet him.

He opened his right arm for her, Eddie permanently attached to his left. Emma, obviously feeling left out, began to do cartwheels for attention.

Gracie stayed well out of the way, though Kayla called her over to introduce her. She gave Sawyer a half wave but took a step back when he started toward her.

He stopped, returned the wave, then braced himself as Emma cartwheeled right into him. She and Eddie tried to pull him toward the house. He resisted.

“Thank you so much,” Sophie said hurriedly, peeling her children off him. “It was very kind of you not to be angry at them for ruining your evening. What do you say, Eddie?”

“That he’s The One!” Eddie replied.

She should have known better than to be nonspecific. “What do you say to Mr. Abbott?”

“You’re the—” he began.

“Eddie!”

Eddie held out his narrow hand. “Thank you,” he said dutifully.

“And…” she prompted.

“And…I’m sorry?” He turned to her questioningly.

She nodded approval.

“I think,” Eddie went on, “that it’d be really nice if we asked him to stay for dinner.”

“Well, if we had something nice to feed him,” she replied, relieved to have an excuse not to, “we’d do that, but our groceries are still at the store.”

“Maybe he isn’t fussy,” Emma said, still holding his hand. She squinted up at him. “We have egg sandwiches when we don’t have other stuff. Do you like that?”

Sophie would have countered with another excuse for why he couldn’t stay, but Sawyer mercifully handled that for her. He got down on one knee, still holding each child’s hand. “I really appreciate the invitation,” he said with apparent sincerity, “but I promised to meet my brother for dinner and I’m already a little late. I’d really like it, though, if you invited me again sometime.”

“How ’bout tomorrow?” Eddie offered quickly.

Sawyer smiled up at Sophie. “Maybe we should let your mom pick the time. She can call me when it would be convenient. Okay?”

“She won’t do it,” Emma said with a condemning glance at Sophie. “She’ll say ‘someday,’ but she’ll forget.”

Sawyer grinned at that stain on her character, then said, “Well, I’ll just count on you two to remind her, okay?”

“Okay.” Eddie shook his hand and Emma strangled him with a hug.

“Now, make sure you don’t scare your mom anymore by disappearing on her,” he said, looking at each of them solemnly. “And don’t fib about her kidnapping you, even if you think you have a good reason. Lies are never good, okay?”

They nodded in unison.

Sawyer straightened, waved at Gracie again, wished Sophie good luck and went to his car.

Sophie felt a surge of relief as he drove away, then, when he was out of sight, a strange disappointment. He was the kind of man who could make her long for one in her life again. But she had too much against her now to know how to be happy with one. Bill had finally managed to convince her that it couldn’t be done.

Gracie came to stand beside her as she stared at the empty road. It, too, could be a metaphor for her life.

“You don’t like him, do you?” Gracie asked.

Sophie didn’t even want to focus on that question sufficiently to answer it.

“He was very kind to us,” she replied. “Most people would have been angry, but he brought us home, instead.”

“He runs his family’s foundation,” Kayla said knowledgeably. “So, he kinda works for charities. He’s nice all the time.”

“Nobody’s nice all the time,” Gracie argued, turning toward the house.

Kayla patted Sophie’s arm in a very sisterly way. Sophie often wondered how much of their personal history Gracie had shared with her best friend. “Once she knows how nice he really is,” she said authoritatively, “she’ll see that even though he’s a man, he’s not the way her dad was, and she’ll get to like him, also.” Then she grinned winningly at Sophie. “So you can fall in love if you want to. It’s going to be okay.”

Chapter Three

Brian’s General Store and Boat Rental was a six-hundred-square-foot building typical of East Coast waterfront construction circa 1880. Its bright green board-and-batten front had faded to a comfortable mossy color. The natural-wood window boxes that graced the four-over-four windows were devoid of flowers at the moment. When Brian had bought the building, he’d removed the dead stalks that had been all that was left of the previous flowers, and hadn’t found time yet to replace them.

Two benches, flanked by pots of flowers, stood on the porch on either side of an old carved front door. Sawyer remembered the cigar-store Indian that had stood there, a beautiful wooden carving that had fascinated the local children and tourists. But in the interest of political correctness, he’d been donated to the museum and replaced by a wooden fisherman in full Gloucester gear.

Sawyer climbed the wide steps and let himself into the store, ignoring the Closed sign. He knew Brian had left the door open for him.

Inside, the goods were arranged on shelves as old as the building. In the middle of the floor was a potbellied stove with chairs pulled up to it. The former owner had used it to display sale merchandise, but Brian planned to use it for its intended purpose come winter.

Blue-and-white café curtains graced the windows and provided privacy for the small cubicle that served as a fitting room at the back. Near it in two old wooden wardrobes were a few items of clothing—Losthampton T-shirts and sweatshirts, a few light jackets for those who visited unprepared for the sometimes cool nights. In the open drawers at the bottom was an assortment of the usual souvenirs—spoons, mugs, pencil cases. The same blue-and-white fabric also concealed a small office-cum-stockroom at the back.

Brian walked out from behind it as Sawyer rapped on the old wooden counter, also original to the store. A yardstick was nailed against the edge on the clerk’s side from the days when yard goods were sold.

Sawyer had loved this store as a child, and couldn’t quite believe that the brother he hadn’t even known about in those days now owned it.

“Hey!” Brian greeted him, holding the curtain aside for him to join him in the back. “You get paroled?”

Brian was lean and long-legged, with the same dark blond hair and blue eyes Sawyer had, but with an angular line to chin and cheekbone that reminded Sawyer of Killian.

Sawyer knew there’d be jokes on the subject of his “scrape” with the law for some time to come. “They decided I was innocent after all. You ready?”

“Yeah. But are you sure you still feel like doing this?”

“Yes. But if you have other things to do, say so.”

Because of an ongoing feud between their families over the years, Sawyer had been conditioned to think of Brian as an enemy. His new status as brother and friend was welcome but disorienting. Brian, too, seemed wary of it sometimes.

“I don’t have anything else to do,” Brian insisted. “It’s just that it sounds like you’ve had a rough couple of hours and I don’t want you to feel obligated….”

Sawyer drew an exasperated breath. Brian was beginning to remind him of Campbell and his conviction that he didn’t belong in the Abbott family because he was from their father’s second marriage. Considering that Sawyer and Killian both loved Chloe, Campbell’s mother, and she was still very much the matriarch of their household, he had trouble figuring out where Cam’s lack of confidence in his position came from.

“I don’t feel obligated because you’re my brother,” Sawyer said with impatience, “but I do want to make up for lost time. We spent most of our lives fighting with each other, and that seems like a terrible injustice to me.”

Brian looked momentarily startled, then said gravely, “I thought you’d feel obligated because I saved your life at great risk to my own, and I didn’t want that. But if you want to feel obligated because you’re my brother and you owe me a lifetime of doing things for me, taking the blame for me, helping me with difficult tasks, that’s all right, too.”

Sawyer stared at him, just beginning to understand that Brian had what was proving to be a very Abbott sense of humor, even though their connection was on their mother’s side of the family.

“You have me confused with Killian,” Sawyer said finally. “I never did any of those things for Campbell, and I’m not doing them for you. But if you want help painting a few of the rental boats, I’m willing to do that in exchange for the fried clams you promised.”

“You won’t even help me with my rent now that my father’s disowned me?”

“I happen to know you got this place for a song, and that you inherited your grandmother’s house free and clear.”

Brian blinked at Sawyer’s bald refusal. “What about my wounded sense of self-worth?”

“We’re all dealing with that one. You’ll just have to keep up.”

“You won’t even help me find a woman now that Killian has the only one I ever cared about?”

Brian was acquainted with Cordelia, Killian’s wife, since college, before she knew Killian. Because Brian’s family had always been in competition, businesswise, with the Abbotts, the children had grown up enemies. Brian had enjoyed flirting with Cordie to hurt Killian and civilities had been strained—until they’d learned Brian and the Abbotts were related.

“Ah. I may be willing to help you there. I do seem to have something that makes them flock to me.”

“It’s money,” Brian said, digging his keys out of his pocket.

“I thought it was charm and wit.”

“I’m sorry. It’s not. Come on, we’ll take my car to Yvonne’s.” Yvonne made the best fried clams in the Hamptons.

Sawyer climbed into Brian’s new black pickup. He’d traded in his Porsche for it as a sign of dedication to his new life. “Younger brothers,” he said, “are supposed to be respectful and blinded by hero worship.”

Brian grinned at him as he slid in behind the wheel. “You should have explained that to me before I agreed to this whole brother thing.” They roared away.

It was almost midnight by the time Sawyer got home. They’d put a coat of paint on three of the small boats Brian had acquired with the rental part of the business, then had a beer on the front porch before going their separate ways.

Sawyer had enjoyed Brian’s company, and was surprised by how connected he felt to him despite the lifetime spent at odds. And though he made light of it, he knew Brian had come to his rescue without hesitation that day on the water when Sawyer’s waterskiing stunt had gone wrong, and he would always feel indebted for that.

As Sawyer walked into the house, it was clear that someone was quarreling with someone else. One of the raised voices coming from the living room was male, the other female.

Winfield greeted Sawyer at the door. He was sort of a butler-bodyguard Campbell had hired last year, convinced their security was lax. Winfield was built like a tank, had a voice like a grinding motor and possessed a gentle nature completely at odds with his appearance.

“They’re at it again,” he said, closing the door.

“What are they fighting about?”

“Not sure. Anything and everything.”

“I’ll go see what I can do.”

Sawyer would have just let them have at it as Killian had advised when it was obvious, the day of China’s arrival at Shepherd’s Knoll, that the two were not going to get along. But if she was Abigail, and they’d been without her all this time, it was criminal that warfare should ensue when she’d finally been restored to them.

And if she wasn’t Abigail, then he was still in sympathy with her.

Campbell had voted against letting her stay until Chloe came home, convinced she was lying for purposes of her own, but Sawyer and Killian had outvoted him. That had happened a lot in his life because of their different personalities rather than their different mothers, but all Campbell knew was that he often lost to his elder brothers. This time, it seemed, he didn’t mind taking his frustrations out on China.