His Wedding
Autore
Muriel Jensen
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Chapter One
“He’ll listen to you. You’re the one who should talk Brian into being Campbell’s best man,” Killian cajoled.
Janet Grant Abbott was sitting across from her brother Killian at the breakfast table on the deck off their family mansion, the August-morning breeze fluttering the linen tablecloth. Their brothers, Sawyer and Campbell, sat at opposite ends. All the women in the house were sleeping in after a family party celebrating Janet’s permanent move to Losthampton had continued to the wee hours. Janet, though, had just rediscovered her brothers after a lifetime apart from them and was still fascinated that they had one another. She’d heard them talk last night about having breakfast together and had gotten up to join them.
As the eldest Abbott son, Killian was CEO of Abbott Mills, a conglomerate of corporations encompassing the production, manufacture and sale of their and other designs. He’d also acquired several unrelated holdings in an experimental foray into other areas.
Janet looked from one brother to another in confusion. “Why should Brian have to be talked into it? He’s our brother…sort of.”
Campbell, the youngest of the three men, shook his head. “I like to think of him that way, but technically, he’s not. He’s their half brother,” he said, pointing to Killian and Sawyer, “but no real relation to you and me.”
There was a visible difference in the coloring of the Abbott progeny. Killian and Sawyer were fair haired and blue eyed, an inheritance from their mother’s Scottish heritage. Campbell and Janet had their French mother’s dark hair and eyes. Otherwise, they had emotional characteristics in common, and a stubbornness that marked all four.
“Well, sure. Technically,” she allowed. “But I’ve noticed that doesn’t seem to matter around here. And he’s your good friend, anyway. That should…”
Campbell was already shaking his head. He was responsible for managing the estate and the apple orchard, and was as quarrelsome as he could be charming. “I asked him while you and China were in L.A., and he made some excuse about this being the busiest time at the store and he had to be there because he was getting estimates to add on a coffee shop, or something. But I don’t think that’s really it.”
Sawyer pushed away his empty plate. “We’ve invited him into the family, but apparently, he prefers to stay carefully on the fringe. Maybe he’s afraid of intruding.” Sawyer headed the Abbott Mills Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the family’s many holdings. He was a daredevil by nature and conducted every phase of his life like an extreme sport. At thirty-five, he was four years older than Campbell and two years younger than Killian.
Janet had come to adore her brothers in the five weeks since she’d rediscovered them, but she did not want to have to talk Brian Girard into anything. She found him interesting and attractive, but he seemed to have little use for her. It was embarrassing.
They saw each other at family get-togethers, and while she managed to be polite, there was always a certain testiness to his behavior that had started the day she’d first arrived at Shepherd’s Knoll, looking for China. She had accidentally run him over with a Vespa, though she’d apologized for that.
“Why can’t Mom talk to him?” she’d asked with a pleading look around the table. “She and Brian are crazy about each other.”
“She stays out of disagreements among her children.” Killian smilingly shot down that suggestion. “If he really were her son, maybe she could bully him into doing it. But she can’t. It’s up to you, Janby. We’re counting on you to make him change his mind.”
He would have to call her Janby. It was what the family had created out of Janet, the name her adopted family had given her, and Abby, the name given her at birth. For the first few days after the DNA test had proven she was the Abbotts’ daughter, kidnapped from her bedroom at fourteen months, everyone had stumbled over her name. She’d arrived as Janet Grant, but she’d become Abigail Abbott. The composite name charmed her.
“He likes to talk to you,” Sawyer added.
“No, he doesn’t,” she denied. “It only seems that way to you because you can’t hear what we’re talking about. Usually, we’re disagreeing about something, or he’s pointing out my mistakes. He doesn’t like me.”
And that was the real source of their antagonism—at least, on her part. She liked Brian, had been attracted to him from the first time she’d seen him. Unfortunately, that was after she’d run him over with the Vespa.
She’d hoped that had been the cause of his antagonism and that he’d get over it. But they’d been in each other’s company half-a-dozen times since then, at one family function or another, and he showed absolutely no interest in her except to take the opposite position on whatever she talked about, or to illustrate how wrong she was about everything whenever he could.
“That’s ridiculous,” Campbell said, disputing her. “Everyone likes you.”
“Come on,” Killian coaxed. “Cordie and I are standing up for Sawyer and Sophie. If you and Brian are witnesses for Campbell and China, it’ll be the perfect family thing. And though Mom’s staying out of it, we know she’d love it, too. Help us do this.”
Even Janet knew she was defeated. Killian, Sawyer and Campbell were the world’s most perfect brothers. They’d welcomed her home, done everything they could to make her comfortable, protected her from the press, explained to her with the clinical detachment of people accustomed to wealth that Killian had opened various bank accounts in her name—checking, savings, a healthy IRA, a trust fund, all of which amounted to a sum so staggering to the simple woman she’d been so far that she’d been unable to speak. And their father had put a block of Abbott Mills stock in her name when she was born, as he’d done for each of her brothers. Killian had added to it over the years as he’d added to their own—in faith that she’d be returned to them one day.
And here she was. She loved them for their faith, not their wealth, and she didn’t see that she could deny them anything.
“Fine,” she said, afraid she might fail but determined to try. “I’ll see what I can do.”
She made her way to the estate’s vast garage and climbed astride the Vespa, determined to get Brian into a tuxedo for the wedding—whatever it took. As she sped down the lane and up the road that bordered the orchard, leaving the fanciful yellow Victorian mansion behind, the air was sweet with the promise of apples and tangy with the ever-present bite of the salty ocean that encompassed Long Island, New York, on this late-summer morning.
The sun warm on her back, she turned onto the road that led to Brian’s General Store and Boat Rental, knowing he’d be open, since it was almost nine o’clock. She enjoyed the smooth ride, going over in her mind various ways to approach Brian about taking part in the wedding.
She considered making an effort to charm him, but she usually did that and he failed to notice.
She could attempt to approach him with subtlety, but he was a very direct man and probably wouldn’t even get the point.
Heaping guilt on him seemed like her only option when she caught sight of a battered blue Trans Am turning off a side road and falling in line behind her. She recognized the car immediately. Souped-up and poorly kept, it belonged to Buzz Merriman, reporter-photographer for the Meteor, a tabloid determined to make something unsavory out of her return to Losthampton.
Killian had explained to her that the Abbott policy toward the press was to treat them respectfully without revealing family secrets. He insisted the reporters were just doing their jobs and could be useful to the foundation’s efforts if the family had their goodwill.
That might work with the reporter from the Lost-hampton Leader, with the one who’d been sent from the New York Mirror and the many radio and television reporters who’d been following her since she’d first come to Shepherd’s Knoll five weeks ago. But she was sure that didn’t hold for Merriman. For one thing, he had no goodwill to cultivate. His stories on Janet always focused on where she’d been and what she’d done in the least flattering way possible rather than on the facts behind her restoration to the family.
His last piece suggested that she and China, though raised by an adoptive family as sisters, would now be at odds because Janet had been discovered to be little Abigail returned when everyone had first thought China was the long-missing heiress. China’s engagement to Campbell, the reporter wrote, was a creative way for China to get the Abbott name.
Janet might have forgiven him for hurting her, but causing her sister pain was unpardonable.
If the Vespa had been any match for the Trans Am, she’d have done a quick turn and taken Merriman on in a game of chicken then and there, but she saw evasion as the wiser move.
She sped down another side road, knowing that the narrow strip ended at the high bank of sand at the back of a waterfront inn, and was pleased to see him follow. Just before the expanse of beach, she took a left through a thin grove of trees. The Vespa swerved in and out of the spindly trunks as she heard the Trans Am’s brakes screechingly applied.
She chanced a glance over her shoulder just to see the car rock from the force of Merriman’s abrupt stop. She enjoyed her success a moment too long, though, and turned back in time to get a pine bough in the face, a pine cone down her shirt and a vicious bump to her backside as she rode over the exposed roots of several trees.
She braked breathlessly at the edge of the grove, the back of Brian’s shop visible just ahead of her. It was a beautiful scene, with the rustic little shop in the foreground, a pier jutting out into the water, all his small rental boats tied to it.
But she wasn’t in the mood to enjoy it. This was a fool’s errand and she was arriving to fulfill it in a bad mood from evading Buzz and taking a beating on her ride through the woods.
She caught sight of Brian, tall and loose limbed, striding along the pier, his blond hair catching the sun. There was a natural arrogance in his bearing that was both appealing and annoying. She just didn’t understand him.
She decided that if charm and subtlety were out in dealing with him, attitude would have to do.
BRIAN SAT on the top step on the porch at the front of his shop, drinking a cup of coffee while reading the Losthampton Leader. He growled to himself over the front-page article about Janet’s move to Losthampton.
Long-lost Heiress Home Again, the caption read under a photo of Janet that must have been taken on her return from Los Angeles two days ago, after she and China had gone back to close up their apartments and make the permanent move to Shepherd’s Knoll.
From the small plane visible some distance behind her, the setting was obviously the airport. Her hair was short and fluffy, her bright eyes squinting against the sun. Her face claimed most of the frame; China was relegated to one small corner of the shot.
At a glance, she looked like any other young woman on a casual afternoon. It was the second look that made the reader realize she was someone special. Then her good breeding showed in the tilt of her head and the set of her shoulders. The wit and intellect in her eyes exalted a simple prettiness to fascinating beauty, and the strength in the line of her mouth made one want to root for her without even knowing if she needed support.
The article revealed all the known details of her kidnap, the family’s position in the world of business, her brothers’ accomplishments, then her own history as a successful stockbroker. She was quoted as saying she hadn’t known where her interest in business and the stockmarket had come from in a family of cheerful, middle-class Americans who never had anything to invest, until she discovered she was an Abbott.
He read with interest one of her friends’ remarks about Janet’s broken engagement three years earlier to a minor-league rock star, a month before the wedding.
It went on to reveal that her adopted sister had come to Losthampton—thinking she might be the missing Abigail, but that a DNA test had proved she wasn’t. And that had brought Janet onto the scene.
He was just about to give the reporter credit for a job not too badly done, when he got to the part about himself:
“Brian Girard, the illegitimate son of Susannah Stewart Abbott, Nathan Abbott’s first wife and mother of the two oldest Abbott sons, and Corbin Girard, the Abbotts’ neighbor and longtime business rival, has been welcomed into the bosom of the family.” It continued in praise of the family’s generosity, considering that Corbin Girard was responsible for setting a fire to their home and vandalizing Brian’s business. It explained in detail that Brian had been legally disowned for defecting to the Abbott camp by giving them information that stopped them from making a business deal they would have regretted. He had no idea how they’d gotten that information, unless one of the family had told them.
Brian threw the paper into the trash and strode, coffee cup in hand, down his dock. The two dozen boats he’d worked so hard to repair and refresh bobbed at the ends of their lines, a testament to his determination to start over at something he enjoyed.
The repainted and refinished shop was stocked with the old standbys people came in for day after day, as well as a few new gourmet products, a line of sophisticated souvenirs, and shirts and hats with his logo on them—a rowboat with a grocery bag in the bow, visible proof of his spirit to survive in the face of his father’s continued hatred.
He could fight all the roadblocks in his path, he thought, looking out at the sun rising to embroider the water with light, but how could he fight the truth? No matter what he did, he would always be the son of a woman who’d thrown away her husband and her two other sons like outdated material, and of a man who’d rejected him since the day he was born and who had no concept of purpose but to make more money than the next man and prevent him from catching up by whatever means it took.
The sorry fact was that Brian couldn’t fight it. He could do his best to be honest and honorable, but that would never inspire a newspaper article. Every time his name came up, it would be as the son of his reprehensible parents.
He didn’t know what to do about it.
“You’re an idiot,” he told himself firmly, “if you allow yourself to be hurt by what you can’t change and by what you had no control over in the first place.”
Right. He got that part. But what about all the other people connected to him—like the Abbotts—who would have to hear or listen to the old scandal dragged up again as the true meat of the story whenever they did something newsworthy?
He’d been giving that a lot of thought and hoping for a solution other than the obvious: move out of their light. He was a smart man; it would come to him.
Meanwhile, the brief lull between his early-rising customers and the late-stirring sack rats would be over soon and he had things to do. As he walked along the dock, checking his little fleet, he noticed a loose knot on the line securing a square-stern canoe. He’d just gotten down to tighten it when a movement to his left made him turn. Janet was standing nearby, in a white shirt knotted at her waist and white shorts. She smelled of something floral that permeated even the smell of salt water and diesel. She was slightly disheveled, and that seemed at odds with the royal bearing of her squared shoulders.
He caught a glimpse of tanned and shapely limbs before he concentrated on making sure the line was fast.
“Good morning,” he said.
“Hi,” she replied in a purposeful tone. “Do you have a few minutes to talk?”
Finally certain the line was secure, he straightened and saw uncharacteristic confusion in her eyes, backed by a small spark of anger.
“Yes, I do.” He put his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts, wondering what was going on. “What do you want to talk about?”
She studied him a moment, as though reluctant to bring up whatever she’d come to discuss. Then she made an impatient gesture with one hand that widened the space between the bottom of her shirt and the top of her shorts, distracting him again.
“My sister’s wedding,” she finally blurted.
Oh, no. She was an emissary from Campbell. Or China. He refocused on her face.
“You’re here to talk me into being best man,” he guessed, starting back toward the shop.
She fell into step beside him. “Yes. I know your decision is none of my business, but Campbell and China are very disappointed, and that is my concern. You have to reconsider.”
“Campbell has dozens of friends.”
“He wants you.”
Yeah. Brian liked him, too, but here was that ugly truth again that would only darken an otherwise beautiful day.
“Did you see yourself in the paper this morning?” he asked, taking her arm to steer her around a forgotten bait bucket as she watched a seagull soar overhead.
“Thank you. No. Why? What did it say?” She gently disengaged her arm and said grimly, “I doubt the readership finds me as interesting as all those overeager reporters think I am.”
Brian took issue with that. “I’m sure the locals find you very interesting. Many of them remember when you were kidnapped, and they grieved with your family. Everyone around here loves the Abbotts. And here you are, back in their lives, beautiful and smart. They consider it’s good justice that you’re home again.”
“Good justice,” she repeated. They’d reached the store and she stopped to lean an arm on the newel post. “I do know I’m very lucky. But that’s not the same as being special. I’m thrilled to be home among such wonderful people, but I hate this living-in-a-fishbowl stuff. That tabloid reporter from the Meteor even followed me here this morning! I’m sure the front page of the next issue will have a photo of the back of me on the Vespa, with the headline Heiress Runs Away.”
Brian couldn’t imagine what would be bad about a photo of the back of her—whatever the headline. His guess was that her good looks and lively personality were going to keep her in the public eye for a long time.
“So…I’m sorry, I got distracted by my dislike of press coverage,” she said. “Did you have a point to make about the article?”
“Yes.” He leaned an elbow on the opposite post. “It talked about your broken engagement a month before your wedding, and I was mentioned in the ending paragraphs. Happy news always seems to require dredging up every bad moment in the past.”
“True.” She shrugged philosophically. She wasn’t getting the point.
“Well, the press will surely give the Abbotts’ double wedding front-page coverage. All that happy news. “‘The grooms were handsome,’” he pretended to quote, “‘the brides were radiant, the mother-of-the-grooms was so happy to have her daughter back serving as her brother and adopted sister’s maid of honor,’ yada yada. If I’m best man, it’ll end with ‘Brian Girard, best man, is the son of the first Mrs. Abbott, who ran off with the chauffeur after being impregnated by the neighbor and Nathan Abbott’s arch ene—’”
“I know, I know.” She nodded to cut him off.
“Then you can see why I don’t want to do that to them.”
“Forgive me,” she said, “but I can’t. That’ll probably end the story whether you’re at the wedding or not. And your refusal to be with them hurts them far more than any old sticks-and-stones reporting ever would.”
“Easy for you to say,” he argued. “It’s not your wedding.”
That accusation seemed to inflate her bad mood. “It’s my sister’s wedding. And it’s as important to me as mine would be. You said they brought up my broken engagement and the very newsworthy way it happened. Well, you don’t see me going into a decline over it.”
“Whoa!” He got a little indignant himself. “I’d hardly describe my reaction as a decline. And you’ve been cranky since you got here, over the photographer who followed you. So don’t go casting aspersions on me. My reasons for wanting to stay away are in consideration of the Abbotts!”
“Well, they want you there,” she said, then started off toward the Vespa she’d run him over with when she’d first arrived in Losthampton. It leaned against the No Vehicles Allowed sign. She stopped to turn to him and add, “At this point, I have little purpose at Shepherd’s Knoll but to try to contribute to the well-being of my family, who suffered so much while I was gone. And considering the way they’ve welcomed you into the bosom of the family, I’d think you’d feel the same. So I’m going to tell them you’ve changed your mind, and that you’ll be happy to be best man.” With a toss of her head, she strode off toward the bike.
He hurried to intercept her. “You may be able to order people around in L.A., Miss Grant Abbott, but this is my place. You don’t dictate what happens here.”
“We’re talking about my only sister’s wedding,” she retorted, yanking back out of his reach. “And you’re not going to…aagh!”
Whatever he was not going to do was drowned in salt water when she fell backward into the inlet.
