Читать книгу His Family - Muriel Jensen - Страница 10

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.