His Family

She held the door open, putting her wrist to the back of her forehead as he walked past her and inside. “I’m feeling faint,” she went on. “Everything’s beginning to blur. The whole—”

He stood the ladder up and leaned it into its spot in the corner, then took the shears from his belt and placed them on the tool bench. She’d followed him inside. “Put a sock in it, China. Your work’s been good, but your mouth and your attitude have been a big problem for me.”

“Probably because you have the same mouth, the same attitude.”

They looked into each other’s eyes under the harsh fluorescent light, the smells of herbal supplements, natural pesticides and the oil that kept the equipment running permeating the air. She had that sense again of being somewhere that would have been so foreign to her just a month ago.

As this man would have been. Though dressed for physical labor, Campbell had the Abbott breeding and grace so apparent in Killian’s and Sawyer’s good manners and kindness. Until now she’d found it less visible in Campbell, because she’d always been focused on how difficult he was and how angry he made her, but though they’d exchanged little barbs this morning, some subtle change was taking place in the way they dealt with each other.

His treatment of her didn’t offend her quite so much now that she knew he wasn’t her brother, and he seemed a little more inclined to pull his punches—maybe for the same reason.

“If there’s a brother in your real life,” he speculated, taking her elbow in an unconscious gesture and pushing her ahead of him toward the door, “he may be harder to get along with than I’ve been.”

While he padlocked the door, she walked out into the sunshine, aware of a persistent prickling on her arm. She rubbed at it. “I don’t know if that’s possible,” she teased. “In any case, I’ll be well prepared.”

“Something bite you?” he asked, indicating the arm she chafed.

“I don’t know.” She twisted her arm awkwardly to look at it. “It just sort of…”

“Let me see.” He took hold of her arm and leaned down to study it more closely. “There’re spiders in the shed. Not that they’d mistake you for something sweet.”

“Ha-ha.” The artificial laugh came out breathy and surprised, instead of as the taunting response she’d intended. And as the air left her lungs, she understood the reason for the new tingle on her arm.

His touch!

The tingle ran from her shoulder to her elbow now as his fingertips traced a path there, looking for the source of the problem. Then it trickled down her wrist as he explored further.

“I don’t see anything,” he said finally, running his thumb over the back of her elbow one last time.

The tingle followed the path of his thumb. Against every ounce of willpower she tried to muster, heat rose from her throat and crept into her cheeks.

She saw him take note, watched his eyes linger on her blushing face, his expression changing from momentary confusion to something she didn’t even want to analyze.

She snatched her arm away. “I must have scraped it on the door,” she said quickly. I…I’ve got to get back to the house. I promised I’d go wedding-dress shopping with the girls and I have to shower.”

He opened his mouth to speak, but she didn’t wait to hear. She ran for the house and into the kitchen, where Sophie and Cordie still sat.

“Oh, good!” she said breathlessly. “You haven’t left yet.”

Cordie studied her worriedly. “What’s the matter? What happened?”

“Nothing. Can I change my mind and come with you?”

Sophie nodded. “We’re still waiting for Chloe. She’s having trouble finding a comfortable pair of shoes.”

Thank goodness. China abhorred the thought of being left alone here alone with Campbell.

“I can be showered and dressed in twenty minutes,” she promised.

Cordie smiled. “Take thirty. We might still be waiting for Chloe.”

China took thirty, but the tingle would not wash off no matter how hard she scrubbed. Campbell’s touch was invisibly tattooed on her arm. She didn’t want to think about what that might mean.

Well, she told herself practically as she pulled on white slacks and a white cotton blouse. It could mean whatever she wanted it to mean. She was in charge of her own destiny. Reaction to a man’s touch did not have to mean attraction. The touch of any polite and presentable man might have done that to her. It was a physical response, nothing more.

She repeated that to herself as she brushed her unruly hair and pinned it into a neat knot at the back of her head. But her cheeks filled with color again as she remembered the moment.

She put both hands to her eyes and groaned. No. Please, no. She could not be attracted to Campbell Abbott.

She’d thought he was her brother, and she’d disliked him intensely. Now that she was almost free to leave here, she wanted nothing to get in her way.

But that, she remembered, was what he did best.

Chapter Three

Campbell transferred the contents of his desk into a box—a box, he noticed, that looked a lot like the one with which China had arrived on their doorstep.

He fell into his desk chair, wishing that thought hadn’t occurred to him. It reminded him of the terrible tension of the whole month she’d been here and the possible reason for it that was just beginning to surface.

He kept packing, refusing to let the idea form. No, no no. He was reporting to Flamingo Gables next Friday as he’d promised, and nothing or no one was going to stop him.

It was his chance—finally—to live life on his own terms and he wasn’t going to give up that chance because a woman had blushed when he’d touched her. A woman he’d thought until last night might be his sister. A woman who disliked him.

That was it. They were all victims of the emotional riot of the DNA report, the anticipation of it and the disappointment with the results of it. China Grant wasn’t attracted to him. She was so upset she barely knew her own name right now.

And he wasn’t attracted to her. She was too mouthy, too opinionated, too quick to say what she thought regardless of the consequences.

While he might have admired those qualities in any other woman, they were too much like his own bad habits to allow for coexistence within the same family. Of course, now they weren’t in the same family.

“Hey.” Killian walked into his office with several more empty boxes. He looked around at the stacks of things on the floor and asked in mild concern, “Is this progress or chaos?”

“I guess life is always a little of both,” Campbell replied, emptying the stationery in the last desk drawer into the box. He folded the flaps and wrote “Office” on the lid.

Killian came to sit on the edge of his desk. “That’s pretty philosophical for you. You usually just storm ahead without giving things too much thought.”

“Thinking complicates things.” Campbell carried the box to the wall near the door where others were stacked. “It’s best to go with gut instinct.”

Killian watched him walk to a pile of books and pick out a sturdy box to put them in. “What’s the matter?” Killian asked in the neutral voice that meant he was trying to sound interested, not like an authority figure. “There seems to be a new desperation in your eagerness to leave.”

Campbell looked up at him with deliberate innocence. “No. You’re just being paternal again. Reading things into the situation that aren’t there.”

“Okay.” Killian raised both hands in a backing-off gesture. “We’ll just presume that you know what you’re doing.”

“Let’s.”

“If it’s not challenging your autonomy too much, can you reassure me that you have a plan in place for the apple harvest since you won’t be here?”

Campbell stopped packing to go back to the desk, guilt plaguing him that Killian even had to ask the question. Campbell was the estate manager, after all. If the manager had been anyone else, he’d have had to present a plan in writing long before he was ready to leave.