“I just don’t want you to think you can make excuses for reneging on a deal.”

China stopped with a forkful of omelet halfway to her mouth. “What deal? We haven’t made a deal.”

Campbell appeared unconcerned by her denial. “It wasn’t written and signed, but there damn well is a deal going on here, and you know it. Had we been alone when you woke up this morning, we’d be in bed now and not giving a damn about breakfast.”

He spoke with complete honesty, and while she admired that, she couldn’t quite match it. She put the bite of omelet in her mouth to buy time.

“It would have been a mistake,” she said finally.

Campbell leaned even closer to China. “When you get your courage back,” he said, his voice very quiet, “I’ll show you that making love with me would never be a mistake.”

Dear Reader,

Campbell Abbott is a man trying to find his own identity. His eldest brother, Killian, is a brilliant businessman, and Sawyer, his second brother, is a courageous daredevil. Campbell is the product of their father’s second marriage, and has always felt inferior because his dreams are smaller than those of his brothers.

China Grant has just discovered that she isn’t who she thought she was. Though she loves the Abbotts and they want to take her in as part of their family, she has a desperate need to unearth her real past before she can plan her future.

Campbell and China are making a common mistake. They think that love, like most other things in life, requires a solid foundation on which to build. I’ve tried to prove with this book that that isn’t true. Love can come to life on the smallest invitation, grow in conditions that would support nothing else we know of, and flourish when everything else is dying. It can live when the bottom’s fallen out of the world and there’s nothing to hold on to. It depends upon nothing for its survival but the willingness that it be there—or maybe the determination.

I hope you enjoy Campbell and China’s adventures on the road to that discovery.

My best wishes!

Muriel Jensen

P.O. Box 1168

Astoria, Oregon 97103

His Family

Muriel Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Books by Muriel Jensen

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

882—DADDY TO BE DETERMINED

953—JACKPOT BABY *

965—THAT SUMMER IN MAINE

1020—HIS BABY **

1030—HIS WIFE **

1066—HIS FAMILY **

THE ABBOTTS—A GENEALOGY

Thomas and Abigail Abbott: arrived on the Mayflower; raised sheep outside Plymouth

William and Deborah Abbott: built a woolen mill in the early nineteenth century

Jacob and Beatrice Abbott: ran the mill and fell behind the competition when they failed to modernize

James and Eliza Abbott: Jacob’s eldest son and grandfather of Killian, Sawyer and Campbell Abbott; married a cotton heiress from Virginia

Nathan Abbott and Susannah Stewart Abbott: parents of Killian and Sawyer; Nathan diversified to boost the business and married Susannah, the daughter of a Texas oilman who owned Bluebonnet Knoll

Nathan Abbott and Chloe Marceau: parents of Campbell and Abigail; renamed Bluebonnet Knoll and made it Shepherd’s Knoll

Killian Abbott: now the CEO of Abbott Mills; married to Cordelia Magnolia Hyatt

Sawyer Abbott: Killian’s brother by blood; a daredevil

Campbell Abbott: half brother to Killian and Sawyer; manages the Abbott estate on Long Island

China Grant: thinks she might be the missing Abigail

Sophie Foster: mother of Gracie, Eddie and Emma Foster; the woman with whom Sawyer Abbott falls in love

Brian Girard: half brother to Killian and Sawyer

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter One

Campbell Abbott put an arm around China Grant’s shoulders and walked her away from the fairground picnic table and into the trees. She was sobbing and he didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t good with women. Well, he was, but not when they were crying.

“I was so sure!” she said in a fractured voice.

He squeezed her shoulders. “I know. I’m sorry.”

She sobbed, sniffed, then speculated, “I don’t suppose DNA tests are ever wrong?”

“I’m certain that’s possible,” he replied, “but I’m also certain they were particularly careful with this case. Everyone on Long Island is aware that the Abbotts’ little girl was kidnapped as a toddler. The possibility that you might be her, returned after twenty-five years, had everyone hoping the test would be positive.”

“Except you.” It surprised him that she spoke without rancor. In the month since she’d turned up at Shepherd’s Knoll looking for her family, he’d done his best to make things difficult for her. In the beginning he’d simply doubted her claims, certain any enterprising young woman could buy a toddler’s blue corduroy rompers at a used-clothing store and claim she was an Abbott Mills heiress because she had an outfit similar to what the child was wearing when she’d been taken. As he’d told his older brothers repeatedly, Abbott Mills had made thousands, possibly millions, of those corduroy rompers.

Campbell had wanted her to submit to a DNA test then and there. If she was Abigail, he was her full sibling and therefore would be a match.

But Chloe, his mother, had been in Paris at the time, caring for a sick aunt, and Killian, his oldest half brother, hadn’t wanted to upset her further. He’d suggested they wait until Chloe returned home.

Sawyer, his other half brother, had agreed. Accustomed to being outvoted by them most of his life, Campbell had accepted his fate when Killian further suggested that China stay on to help Campbell manage the Abbott estate until Chloe came home. Killian was CEO of Abbott Mills, and Sawyer headed the Abbott Mills Foundation.

Killian and Sawyer were the products of their father’s first marriage to a Texas oil heiress. Campbell and the missing Abigail were born to his second wife, Chloe, a former designer for Abbott Mills.

When Chloe had come back from Paris two weeks ago, the test had been taken immediately. While everyone had been preparing for the hospital fund-raiser that had just taken place that afternoon and evening, China had been at the house alone when the results had arrived by courier. So she’d brought the sealed envelope with her and opened it just moments ago, when the family had been all together at the picnic table after the fund-raiser.

They’d all expected a very different result. That China couldn’t be related to the Abbotts had been an unhappy surprise. His mother was heartbroken, his siblings saddened, the other women in their family upset. Even Campbell felt…well, ambivalent about it.

The late-July evening was warm and redolent of fair-ground food and salt water. He could even smell the ripening apples at Shepherd’s Knoll. For reasons he couldn’t explain, his senses were sharpened tonight.

China took several steps away from him and he was able to study her without the suspicion and confusion that usually permeated his thoughts when it had seemed she was his sister. He noted the trim body in the short denim skirt and yellow T-shirt, the cloud of dark hair.

She turned to him, her dark eyes shiny with tears, the soft line of her mouth uncertain. “I’m sure this validates all your suspicions that I’m just a moneygrubbing opportunist.”

He’d once believed that. He couldn’t imagine that Abby would turn up after all this time and relieve the anguish that was at the heart of all their lives.

He’d been only five when she was taken, but he bore as much pain and guilt as everyone in the family did. He remembered clearly that his fourteen-month-old sister had toddled into his room that afternoon, fascinated by the fleet of large yellow trucks that were his pride and joy. He’d occasionally let her play with them, but that particular day he’d been banned from a football game Killian and Sawyer were playing in the backyard with their friends. They’d said he was too small and might be hurt.

Feelings injured, he’d passed on his annoyance to Abby, wresting one of his trucks from her and inadvertently bruising her arm when he yanked it away. His mother had come and carried her out of his room. His last memory of her was of her weeping face over his mother’s shoulder. The image of it had haunted him for years.

He wondered now if that had been partially responsible for his animosity toward China—a sort of transference of guilt.

“No, of course it doesn’t,” he said. “I’d come to the point where I was convinced you knew what you were talking about. The evidence was there.”

Her face crumpled and she turned away, leaning a shoulder against the slender gray trunk of a birch tree. “Instead, it appears you were right. Abbott Mills must have made a million of those rompers.”

Curiously, even after the convincing proof of a scientific test, he still felt connected to her. He walked around the tree and offered her his handkerchief. “There’s still the matter of the newspaper clippings. Why would those have been saved, if they weren’t somehow related to you?”

China had been adopted by a California couple through their doctor, who’d also found them a second child. The girls had been raised together, and when their widowed father died just a few months before, they’d been cleaning out the house for sale and found boxes with their names on them in the attic.

“I don’t understand,” she said, dabbing at her eyes, then her nose. She sniffed and tossed her head back. “I thought I had the truth, but I was wrong. I should go home.”

“You realize you’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”

“Thank you, but now that we all know I’m not Abigail, there’s little point in my being here. It was all right when we weren’t sure, but now that we are…”

“Who’s going to look after the estate?” he asked, sure his mother would be upset if she left. The entire family had grown attached to China. “I’m supposed to report to work at Flamingo Gables in a week. The family’s getting used to counting on you.”

He saw her draw a breath and straighten away from the tree. She was firming her resolve. “I have my own business in California. My own…my own…life, such as it is.”

She looked suddenly bereft, and he was surprised to find that he couldn’t stand it. He had a way to shake her out of it. “Shopping,” he said. “It’s not as though you provide food or shelter for the needy. You go shopping for the rich. They can do without you for a while.”

She bristled with indignation. “I’ve told you repeatedly that I work for the busy, not the rich, and aiding them to save money on things they require may even help them give to food banks and shelters for the needy!”

“Sure. My point is, you shouldn’t make a decision without thinking it through.”

“I’m going home,” she said firmly, and started back through the trees the way they’d come.

He’d been wondering how to bring up a detail to all this that apparently hadn’t occurred to her. As she hurried away from him, he felt certain it was time to just say it. “What about your sister?” he asked, following her.

“What about her?”

“Have you ever considered that she could be connected to us?”

“What?” She stopped in her tracks, holding back the tensile branch of a vine maple to frown at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Haven’t you thought that…maybe…your box is really hers?”

She appeared shocked by that suggestion, then her eyes lost focus as she thought it over.

“You said your boxes were the same,” he prodded.

“Yes,” she said.

“Exactly the same?”

“Exactly.” She still didn’t seem to see his point. “But my name was on mine, and her name…”

“Yes, but what if somewhere along the line, the lids got switched?” Her eyes widened as she considered that possibility. “And what’s in her box is really yours, and what’s in the box with your name on it is really hers?”

Her brow furrowed as she came to see that as a possibility.

“It could have happened any number of ways,” he went on, subtly reeling her in. “Did you ever move when you were growing up?”

“Twice,” she replied. “Friends of my father’s helped us.”

“Could have happened then. The boxes fell over, and the lids got mixed up. Or maybe one of your parents adding something to the boxes inadvertently did it.”

She stared into his eyes with a sort of horrified awe. “That’s…grasping at straws.”

“Is it?” He held the branch for her when her fingers grew lax and a branch was about to scratch her face. “You were convinced by the old clippings that they must have been intended for you. But since the test proved that wrong, then the other possibility doesn’t seem that far off, does it?” He let that sink in for a minute. “If the clippings weren’t for you, then who else is there?”

CHINA WOULD HAVE liked to push him onto the fragrant grass. Since the day she’d first set eyes on him, he’d stood determinedly in her way. He didn’t believe she was his little sister returned; didn’t believe she wanted no money, just family; blocked at every turn her attempts to be friends with him. Even now, when all she wanted to do was leave, he put up another roadblock.

She didn’t want to stay another minute, was embarrassed and disappointed that she’d turned everyone’s life upside down quite needlessly, as it turned out. But what if he was right? What if, somehow, the lids of the boxes had gotten mixed up and her adopted sister, Janet, was their flesh-and-blood sister?

She met Campbell Abbott’s dark gaze. He stood there like the locked gate he’d been since she’d arrived—an inch or two shorter than his brothers, but broader in the shoulders, and more inclined to seriousness than they were. He’d prevented her from ever feeling completely welcome, and now he wanted to prevent her from leaving!

She turned away, headed for the parking lot. “I’ll call her and tell her to get in touch with you,” she shouted back at him.

He caught her arm at the edge of the parking lot and turned her to him. “You can’t do that,” he said with surprising gentleness. “You can’t just take off on Mom. We all have to talk this out. Come to a solution. And if your sister is our sister, you can’t expect to be able to stay out of it.”

She could expect to, but of course it wouldn’t happen.

Janet was prettier, smarter, loved by everyone for her unfailing good humor and quick wit. China had never resented her for it, only envied her. China was basically shy, but inclined to speak her mind if the situation warranted. The courage she’d required to present herself to the Abbotts as possibly their daughter/sister returned had been huge.

Her grief that she wasn’t theirs was softened somewhat now by the suggestion that Janet might be Abigail. China and Janet had squabbled as children but come to appreciate each other as they grew older. Though Janet had the brains and the boys, China had the domestic skills that kept their home going after their mother died.

They now loved and respected each other, and the last time they’d been together, before each had set off to solve the mystery of her cardboard box, they’d vowed that whatever came of their searches, they would be sisters forever.

“China.” Campbell spoke quietly as his family hurried toward them en masse. “You can’t leave them yet. Please.”

There was something to be said for having reality thrust upon you. It seemed to alter time. Just fifteen minutes ago, she’d been sure she was Abigail Abbott and the report she was about to open would prove it.

Now it seemed as though that moment had been aeons ago. She was not an Abbott. She was still China Grant, the same woman she’d always been. The heady excitement of discovery had been doused, but there was something comforting about familiarity.

Chloe threw her arms around her and held her closely. “You must not leave,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “We’re all agreed. You may not be my daughter, but you’ve become an important part of the family.”

Chloe leaned back to look into China’s eyes, her own sweet and pleading. China opened her mouth to reply, but Chloe interrupted. “Yes, I know you have a life of your own. A small business you must keep track of. But we need you, too. Killian tells me you’ve done a wonderful job helping run the estate, and if Campbell chooses to leave us to conquer new horizons, then you must stay and help us until we find someone to replace him, oui?”

China would have loved nothing more than to make a little niche for herself with the warm and wild Abbotts, but it didn’t seem fair to the real Abigail. Especially if that was Janet. But maybe she did have to stay long enough to help them determine if indeed she was.

“I’ll stay until I can find my sister, Janet, for you,” she said.

When that met with a confused expression from the rest of the family now pressed around them, Campbell explained his theory about the boxes.

Killian and Sawyer, both with the fair good looks of their father’s first wife, frowned at each other, then at Campbell. “You really think this possible?” Killian asked.

Campbell made a noncommittal gesture. “Seems that way to me. How else would you explain that China has everything in that box that would relate her to us, but she isn’t Abby? Yet she has a sister the same age, adopted at about the same time, who’s gone off on her own quest with a box identical except for the contents?”

Sawyer raised an eyebrow. “He might have a point,” he said to Killian. “You don’t think he’s smarter than us, after all, do you?”

“Never happened,” Killian grinned. “Well, how do we find your sister, China?”

China tried to remember the town in Canada’s north mentioned on the birth certificate in Janet’s box. That was where Janet had intended to begin her search. “Somewhere in the Northwest Territories. I can’t remember the town, but she’s staying at an inn there—I have the name and number written down in my book at the house. I’ll call tonight.”

China was suddenly flanked by Cordie, Killian’s pregnant wife, and Sophie, who was engaged to marry Sawyer. They led her toward the Abbotts’ limousine, with Sophie’s daughters—Gracie, 10, and Emma, 5—dancing along ahead of them. Sophie’s seven-year-old son, Eddie, hung back with the men. “You have to stay for the wedding,” Sophie said. “We’re thinking about Labor Day.”

“Oh, I…” China tried to formulate an excuse, certain she could locate Janet, stay just long enough for the DNA test, then find a graceful way to leave.

“I need you for a bridesmaid.” Sophie, who’d grabbed China’s hand, tightened her grip.

“And you won’t want to leave without seeing my babies.” That was Cordie. Her babies weren’t due for another four months.

China let them talk, smiling cooperatively at all their suggestions of what she must do, privately making plans to be gone within two and a half weeks at the most. Three days to get Janet here from wherever she was and tested, then two weeks for the results of the test.

Daniel, the Abbotts’ chauffeur, opened the door of the long black Lincoln and the women piled inside, along with Daniel’s wife Kezia, the Abbotts’ cook and housekeeper. Killian lifted Tante Bijou out of her wheelchair and into the other side, while Sawyer folded the chair and put it in the trunk.

Chloe, tucked into the facing seat with China, wrapped an arm around her and patted her shoulder. “All will be well,” she promised with the determined smile China had grown used to since Chloe had been home. “Trust me on this.”

“I’ll call Janet right away,” China promised.

“I mean,” Chloe corrected, “that all will be well with you.”

China smiled and nodded politely, knowing Chloe wanted her to feel a part of their family. While she appreciated that, she’d just received irrefutable proof that she wasn’t. It would be hard to explain to anyone how bereft she felt.

It wasn’t as though she’d had an unhappy childhood. The Grants had been loving and kind to her and Janet. She didn’t remember specifically being told she was adopted; it was as though she’d always known. Her father had told her over and over that she and her sister were special because they’d been “chosen.”

Still, she’d felt the need to know where she’d come from. Her mother had always said that she knew nothing about their natural families, only that the doctor through which they’d adopted the girls said China’s mother had been a single woman dying of cancer, and Janet’s mother, also single, had been killed in an automobile accident.

They’d always accepted that, and neither had ever instituted a search for their biological parents for fear of upsetting their adoptive parents. Then they’d discovered the boxes in the attic and realized that what they’d been told wasn’t true.

It suddenly occurred to China that if Campbell’s theory was correct, the truth about her life was somewhere in Janet’s box. Somewhere in northern Canada.

IN HER BEDROOM overlooking the back lawn, part of the apple orchard and the small house where Daniel and Kezia lived, China sat at the antique desk, trying to decipher her sister’s handwriting. She’d received a forwarded letter from Janet just a week ago. It was brief and to the point.

I’m staying at the Little Creek House Hotel near Fort Providence. I’ve finally tracked the godmother’s name on the birth certificate to this town. Very thinly populated. Have learned she went to live with her son, but no one I’ve talked to so far knows where that is. Got my work cut out for me, I guess. Hope you’re having better luck. Love, Jan.

She’d included the telephone number of the hotel.

A cheerful masculine voice answered. “Little Creek.”

“Hello. May I speak to Janet Grant, please?” China asked.

“I’m afraid she’s away for several days,” the man replied. “May I take a message?”

“Away?” China repeated.

“Yes. She’s hired a guide and gone to Jasper’s Camp. It’s several days by foot. I’m afraid there’s no cell phone reception there.” He again offered to take a message.

“Ah…yes. Would you ask her to phone her sister, please?” She gave him her cell-phone number, as well as the number there at Shepherd’s Knoll on the chance Janet had misplaced them.

“Yes, of course. As soon as she returns. Guaranteed to be a few days, at least.”

“Thank you.”

China groaned as she hung up the phone. She had a terrible feeling this was not going to happen quickly. She couldn’t imagine where Jasper’s Camp was, but if Janet had had to hire a guide to go there…

She tried to imagine her beautiful stockbroker sister going anywhere that required three days on foot, and grew worried. She also felt great pangs of guilt. Janet had no idea she was probably tracking down China’s roots, and that her own might very well be right here in Losthampton.

China prepared to go downstairs where she could hear the Abbotts talking over wine and popcorn, and tell them that she really wasn’t sure where Janet was but that she’d left a message.

More waiting. She hoped they would take it better than she was able to, as she wondered who her family were.

Chapter Two

“I do not see how you can make plans to leave forever when we may have found your sister after twenty-five years and I’ve been home just two weeks.” Chloe Abbott marched across her bedroom, the dark blue lace coat of a peignoir set billowing after her. She gave Campbell an injured, accusing look over her shoulder. “It’s thoughtless, inconsiderate and…and neither of your brothers would ever do that to me.”

Campbell, leaning against one of two decorative columns at the foot of her bed, let it all roll off him. Chloe had been trying to turn him into Killian or Sawyer his entire life, and he’d been resisting just as long.

“I presume you’re referring to China’s sister, Janet,” Campbell said as she made a selection out of her closet and tossed it on the bed. She paused to look up at him.

“I am,” she replied, then walked farther into the wardrobe where her shoes were. She could be in there for hours.

“China said she had to leave a message. Janet could be out of touch for days, maybe longer if she’s found someone who is part of her family or someone who knows them. I promised Flamingo Gables I’d be there in a week. I’m going to spend the next few days packing and taking care of things. If and when Janet turns up, I’ll get time off.”

Chloe emerged a little rumpled, a pair of white pumps in her hand, her expression still severe. “There will be other estate-management jobs.”

“I want this one,” he said patiently. “It’s a smaller house so there’s less staff to manage, but it has more grounds. They market citrus fruit and flowers and that’s a challenge I’d enjoy.”

She threw the shoes on the floor and marched over to face him, a full head shorter than he was. But he’d stood toe-to-toe with her enough times to respect her power and, reluctantly, her wisdom.

“Why must your whole life be all about finding more?”

He hated that she didn’t get this. “It’s not about finding more. It’s about finding something different.”

“Something that isn’t Abbott.” It clearly pained her to say the words.

He struggled to edit them correctly. “Something that hasn’t already been done better by Killian and Sawyer,” he said calmly. “I love them, I love you, I love this place, but I struggle every day to find myself in all this. Killian’s smarter, Sawyer’s braver, and I don’t resent them or need to compete with them, I just need to get out from behind them.”

“If they stand in front of you,” Chloe said, gesticulating so that the blue silk flew, “it is only to protect you. To help you.”

“I know that. But I no longer need protection or help. I have to do this.”

“And what about me?” she demanded, her expression changing, with a theatrical little sniff, from demanding matriarch to beleaguered victim. “I’m just an old woman trying to hold a volatile family together. And now there’s some problem with a customer and Killian may have to go back to England. Sophie wants to take Sawyer to Vermont….”

Campbell stifled a laugh, but withholding a smile over her performance was too much to ask. “Maman,” he said, taking hold of her shoulders, “you will never be old, and the rest of you Abbotts are so tightly knit nothing will ever drive you apart. You can wear that pout all you want, but you’ll never convince anyone, certainly not me, that you’re just a poor little widow woman.”

She punched him in the arm. “You would leave China at a time when she struggles to know who she is?”

He wondered if his mother had heard anything he’d said. “She doesn’t like me. When she finds Janet, they can exchange boxes, and she might—”

Chloe’s eyes darkened. “When she read the disappointing news,” she pointed out, “she ran into your arms.”

He remembered that moment. Had, in fact, thought about it much of the night and didn’t know what to make of it.

“I was nearby.”

“She ignored me and Cordie, who were right beside her, to get to you.”

That was true. She had. When he didn’t know what to say to that, his mother took advantage of his silence and went on, “Killian and Sawyer tell me that though the two of you quarreled all the time, you managed to work well together. Like true siblings.”

“Mom, the test just proved that we’re not brother and sister. And just as she has to find her identity, I have to find mine.”

“You know you’re an Abbott.”

“I know my name, Mother. I know my parents and the whole line of my ancestry back to Thomas and Abigail who came over on the Mayflower. What I don’t know is what I’m capable of. Someone’s always trying to protect me from it, or do it for me.”

“That isn’t true! You think you haven’t contributed to a project unless you’ve done it entirely on your own. You’re just like your grandfather Marceau, who tilled fifty acres in Provence all by himself for forty years and finally died of a heart attack.”

Campbell frowned at her. “But he did it for forty years.”

“Slowly. Had he been willing to pay a little help, he’d have had more time to spend with your grandmother, more time to spend with his children.”

“Perhaps he loved all of you very much, but felt compelled to work the soil.”

The blue silk flew up again as she expressed her exasperation. “Very well. I’m through trying to persuade you. You’ll do as you wish just as you’ve always done. But mark my words—the day will come when what you want will have to come second, and with no experience at putting yourself second, you might not know what to do and lose everything.”

“Everything?” His eyebrows rose.

“A woman. Love.”

“I have a lot to do before I get serious about a woman.”

She smiled at him and shook her head at the same time, negating whatever happy message had been in the smile. “In some ways, you are the most talented of my children. Killian is brilliant in business, and Sawyer can make money dance. But you know so much about so many things, and yet you know so little about yourself.”

“That’s why I’m going away,” he said emphatically, thrilled to finally be able to make his point.

She sighed and shook her head again, as though he was a particularly thickheaded child. “You don’t even know where to find yourself.”

That cryptic message delivered, she shooed him toward the door. “Go. Cordie and Sophie and I are going shopping for wedding dresses.” At the door, she caught his arm. “You will find time to come home for your brother’s wedding?”

He remembered Sophie saying something about Labor Day nuptials. “I will.”

“Good. If all goes well, Abigail will be home for it, too. Perhaps you can stay long enough to apologize for not letting her play with your dump truck.” She pushed him out into the hall and closed the door on him.

He let his forehead fall against it. This family was hopeless. They loved you with a loyalty that was ferocious, but if you didn’t adhere completely to the family line, you were badgered until you came “to your senses.”

He headed for the stairs, intending to grab something to eat in the kitchen and head for the orchard. Maybe the physical labor of apple-picking would help clear his head.

He found Cordie and Sophie at the table in the kitchen poring over a baby-furniture catalog. Kezia stood behind them. All three looked up expectantly as he walked in.

Dressed for shopping in the city, his brothers’ ladies were quite a picture. There had always been women around the house, but with Cordie and Sophie, Shepherd’s Knoll had a whole new atmosphere, one that included feminine giggling, too-loud rhythm and blues on the sound system, and more trails of perfume.

“Did she talk you into staying?” Sophie asked hopefully.

“He has to go,” Cordie replied before he could, the words intended to convey support for his stand on self-discovery. But he knew she wanted him to stay as much as Killian did. “He needs more scope than we provide,” she went on with a graceful wave of her hand. “Life on a bigger canvas, more depth and drama…”

He crossed to the table, caught the hand with which she gestured and kissed her knuckles. “There is no more drama anywhere, Cordelia,” he said, “than that which you provide.” She’d been a model, done marketing for her father’s furniture-manufacturing company, and buying for Abbott Mills. She was red-haired and unflaggingly cheerful, and had driven Killian to distraction.

But now, with twins on the way, she and Killian were ecstatically happy.

“Why are you looking at baby furniture?” he asked, going to the refrigerator. “I thought you were wedding-dress shopping.”

“We’re going to do both.”

He wondered why China wasn’t with them. The women had done a lot together since Cordie and Killian had come home from Europe, where they’d had a second honeymoon and checked on the Abbott Mills London office.

“We invited China,” Sophie said, “but she insisted she had work to do.”

“I think she’s going to try to keep her distance until her sister comes.” Cordie weighed in with that opinion. “She thinks because she isn’t an Abbott, she’s lost the right to hang around with us. You could explain to her that that isn’t true.”

He turned away from the open refrigerator. “Why don’t you explain it to her? You’re the ones she isn’t hanging around with.”

“Whose arms did she run into when she learned she wasn’t an Abbott?” Cordie asked significantly.

He turned back to the refrigerator. “I was closest.”

“No, you weren’t.”

“What are you looking for?” Kezia came to peer over his shoulder. “I can make you bacon and eggs, an omelet, French toast.”

“I was looking for the leftover peach pie from last night.”

“For breakfast?”

“Peach is a fruit,” he said, spotting the pie in the back on the bottom shelf and reaching in for it. “Crust is flour and water and butter. It’s just like having toast, only better-tasting.”

Kezia made a sound that suggested pain. “Please let me make you something nourishing.”

“This’ll be great.” He took the fairly large slice left on the pie tin, wrapped one end in a paper towel and took off for the orchard with a parting wave for the women, encouraging them to have fun.

He heard Cordie say feelingly, “That’s one bad Abbott.”

FROM BETWEEN the apple-laden branches of the Duchess, China saw Campbell striding toward the orchard. The Duchess was a large, old tree, part of a group of vintage trees at the end of the orchard. They were the legacy of a colonist who’d owned the property just after the American Revolution. According to local lore, he’d visited his friend, Thomas Jefferson, and brought home thirty-five Esopus Spitzenburg apple trees because he’d so enjoyed the fruit at Jefferson’s table.

Twenty-six of the trees had survived thanks to the tireless efforts of the Abbotts.

The family’s larger, commercial orchard was populated with Northern Spy apples, but family and friends preferred the “Spitz” for its crisp, sweet taste.

She’d come out this morning to continue to thin the developing crop so that the remaining fruit would have the chance to develop more fully, a process she’d been helping Campbell with for several days. Because of the age of the trees, he preferred to do the work himself, rather than leave it to the occasional staff that helped with the big orchard.

It amazed her to think that just a month ago she hadn’t even thought about apples having a history, and now she was blown away by the notion that Thomas Jefferson has probably touched this tree.

It saddened her to know that her days here were numbered, but she’d awakened today, determined to make the most of whatever time she had left at Shepherd’s Knoll. She’d also resolved to stop fighting with Campbell. She’d thought about it most of the sleepless night, and couldn’t imagine why she’d run into his arms last night after reading the DNA lab report. She could still see everyone’s shocked faces. Curiously, Campbell had been the only one who hadn’t seemed surprised.

She didn’t like him. He didn’t like her. Possibly he was willing to offer comfort because he was relieved she wasn’t his sister; he felt he could afford to be generous.

But what had prompted her to go to him? Some need to resolve things with him, maybe, because she knew her little fantasy of being an Abbott was over?

It didn’t really matter, she thought, working the shears carefully. She was going to be polite and productive, and pretty soon she would hear from Janet, tell her to come to Losthampton on the next available flight, and then when she was sure Janet was Abigail Abbott, she, China, would be free to go.

She didn’t want to infringe upon Janet’s right to assume her real life, nor on the Abbotts’ hospitality. They might try to talk her into staying, and Janet would probably remind her of their vow that they were sisters no matter what and that gave China some right to be here, but she wouldn’t stay. For she was part of whatever life Janet was discovering at this very moment somewhere in the northern Canadian wilderness. Poor shopping there, she imagined.

Campbell, in jeans and a dark blue T-shirt, came to stand under the Duchess. She smiled pleasantly at him to implement her new plan. Unfortunately she wasn’t watching what she was doing and dropped a small, hard-culled apple on his head. Or she would have if he hadn’t dodged it.

“You don’t have to do this today,” he said, steadying the ladder as she reached for a cull.

“This is your last chance to have someone else help you with the picking,” she said. “You should take advantage of it.”

“I’m leaving before you are. In a few days this is going to be someone else’s responsibility.”

She glanced down at him in surprise. “You’re leaving before Janet comes?”

“I had promised to report for work at the end of the week. And right now, you’re not sure where your sister is. I’ll come back to meet her when she arrives.”

“Who’s going to replace you?”

“Everyone’s hoping you are.”

Distracted again, she chipped her fingernail with the shears.

“It wouldn’t be fair,” she said. “This is another woman’s life. Maybe Janet’s.”

“Don’t we all live in each other’s lives?”

It was interesting, she thought, that though they didn’t get along at all, he was able to pinpoint the one thing in all this she was having difficulty letting go. When she’d set out on this journey to find out if she was Abigail Abbott, it was because she’d wanted to find the life that was really hers. True, she’d loved her adopted parents, and Janet couldn’t be more her sister than if they’d been born twins. But since she’d been aware of what adoption meant, she’d felt a burning desire, if not a desperate need, to know about her past. She couldn’t explain it.

And whoever had given her life had bequeathed her a possessiveness and a single-mindedness that often made her difficult to live with.

“Come down from there,” he said, tugging at her pant leg, “before you cut off your finger.”

Even she thought stopping was a good idea. She handed down the shears. “You’re right about living in each other’s lives,” she said when she had reached solid ground. She helped him fold the ladder. “But aren’t you the one who has to leave here to find the place where you belong? And you were born to Chloe. Your brothers are your blood. What is it you need to know?”

He laughed lightly, self-effacingly. “I guess I’m proof that blood isn’t always what it’s all about. It’s about feeling that you fit in, that you do your share, that your contributions are valuable and significant.” He grinned now, his expression ripe with all the unpleasant words that had passed between them since her arrival. “Much as it pains me to admit it,” he conceded grudgingly, “your time spent here has been all that.”

She couldn’t believe her ears, and made a production of slapping a hand against the side of her head as though something obstructed her hearing. “You didn’t just say I’ve worked hard and well?” she asked in a theatrically shocked voice as they picked up opposite ends of the ladder and carried it to the toolshed. “Because I don’t think I could survive a compliment from you. I’ve been so changed by all your criticisms and complaints that I survive on them. A kind word would—”

“Give it a rest,” he advised, pointing to the shed’s closed door. “Would you open it, please?”

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.

“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.”

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.

“Uncle Cam!”

That, too, was something new. He turned to see Sophie’s two youngest racing toward him from the family room down the hall where they’d gone to watch movies after dinner. Their older sister, Gracie, was staying the night at a friend’s.

“What’s going on?” he asked, leaning down to catch them in his arms.

“We’re going to have a wedding!” Emma said, dark eyes bright at the prospect. “And we’re all going to wear pretty dresses and flowers!”

“Oh, no!” he exclaimed. “I don’t have a pretty dress!”

She giggled and tugged on his hand. “You’re not gonna wear a dress, silly! Just the ladies wear dresses. You have to wear a special suit.”

“A tux.” Eddie made a face. “Me, too. I’m going to carry the rings. I hate tuxes.”

Eddie was lively and imaginative, and Campbell thought he’d make a great Abbott. “Why?”

“Because I’ll look stupid.”

“I don’t think you will, but if it’s any comfort, all of us guys will be wearing tuxes, so you won’t be alone.”

“When are you going away?” Emma asked.

“Saturday,” he replied.

“Sawyer says we’re going to come and see you.”

“That would be very nice.”

“And Grandma Chloe’s gonna have a big party for you before you go. And we get to come. On Friday.”

“Right.”

“It’s too bad,” Eddie said gravely, “that China isn’t Abigail. We really like her.” Since their mother’s involvement with Sawyer, the children knew all about the family’s search for their missing member, understood why China had come to visit.

Campbell nodded, suddenly a little short of breath, out of words. He had to think, clear his throat. “Yes. We all like her. But it could be that the adopted sister she grew up with might be Abigail. Do you know what ‘adopted’ is?”

“It’s when you don’t have a mom and dad,” Emma put in knowledgeably, “and somebody else’s mom and dad let you live with them.”

“You have to go to court to be adopted,” Eddie said. “And the judge makes your name the same as the new mom and dad’s name. One time when we went to court, there was this kid there who was getting adopted. I remember wishing we could get adopted by another dad, only, Mom could come with us. But the court doesn’t ever do that.”

“Because moms don’t get adopted by dads,” Emma explained to Eddie, pleased to know something he didn’t. “They have to marry them. Like Mom and Sawyer and the wedding.”

Eddie rolled his eyes. “I know that. I just meant, that day we were in court, it seemed like it would be a really good idea if it worked that way.”

Sophie had had an abusive husband, and the children had seen and experienced things that shouldn’t be part of any child’s memories.

“Well, it’s a good thing that didn’t happen,” Campbell told him, “because if you’d been given to someone else, you wouldn’t be my niece and nephew.”

Winfield suddenly flew out of the family room where the children had been watching movies. Then he spotted them with Campbell and put a hand to his heart in relief. “Thank goodness,” he said in his gravelly voice as he came toward them. “I dozed off during the third viewing of Nemo. Party breaking up?”

Campbell had hired Winfield a little more than a year ago, concerned about the family’s safety. A butler trained in self-defense and security was suddenly a popular new hybrid among household staff. Winfield was Campbell’s height but showed the results of years of weight training as a professional boxer. He had thin blond hair, light blue eyes and a nose that had been broken several times. He was flawlessly courteous to household members and guests of Shepherd’s Knoll.

Winfield worked hard at keeping the house safe, though his skills hadn’t really been tested. A good result of the very fact that he was there, Campbell thought.

“No, I have a few things to do tonight,” Campbell replied, “so I had to excuse myself.” He ruffled Eddie’s hair and kissed Emma’s. “I guess I’ll see you at the party.”

“Come on, kids.” Winfield led the children back to the family room. “Campbell has work to do. Let’s go raid the kitchen.”

There were cheers of approval, and they ran toward the kitchen ahead of the butler.

Campbell changed into comfortable clothes and went down the back stairs to his office off the kitchen. He could hear Winfield and the children rummaging in the cupboards, talking about crackers and peanut butter and Kezia’s lemonade.

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