His Family

“Of course I do,” he assured him quietly. “Robby Thompson from Lake Grove—he always heads up the harvest hiring—has been involved with me enough times to handle it himself. He’s good with the workers and he has a good sense of when work’s done quickly and well. And I’ve left him a step-by-step, just in case.”

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.”