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“You’re not going to measure up?” he said in disbelief. “That’s ridiculous. You always behave as though—”
She interrupted with a swipe of her cookie in the air. “It’s an act. I’m just afraid that one day I’m going to do something embarrassing to them.”
“Get a grip, Janet,” he said. “They’re not royalty. They’re just wealthy people who are socially well connected.”
She gave him a dry look. “If I may quote you, ‘Easy for you to say.’ You grew up in their world. Your parents had the same standard of living, the same social connections. You know how to behave among all this—” She raised a finger to stop him when he would have interrupted her. “Yes, you have that scandalous background.” She enunciated the word with a dramatic waggle of her eyebrows. “But people deal so much more on perception than they do fact. All people notice is that you behave like a gentleman, that you’re well-spoken and well educated. Columbia, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. I went to Columbia.”
“I went to Las Manzanas Community College and Columbia River College.”
“Doesn’t education depend on the thirst for knowledge in the student, rather than on where he goes to school?”
“I don’t imagine my brothers’ Ivy League educated friends would believe that.”
He studied her with a frown. “I think you have some reverse snobbery at work here.”
She smiled innocently. “Why? You’re convinced everyone’s going to judge the Abbotts by the unfortunate circumstances of your birth.”
He continued to frown, and she couldn’t decide if he was out of arguments or out of patience. She considered it a good time to make her point.
“I’ve been asked to be Campbell and China’s maid of honor,” she said, sipping her coffee, “and I don’t have the luxury of refusing them. China’s my only sister and I’m hers.” She paused on the chance he wanted to comment. He didn’t.
“So friends and family are coming from far and wide to this wedding of the year, and I have to be part of the party and take my chances that I won’t do or say something inappropriate among all those people and with all the press bound to be there. Word is the New York Times is sending someone.”
She bit into her cookie, avoiding his eyes. Was she overdoing it? She couldn’t tell. And for a usually straightforward man, he was a master at hiding what he was thinking when he wanted to.
She ate the last bite of her cookie, chewed and swallowed, buying time.
“But if you were best man,” she added, putting her cup down and dusting off her hands, “I’d feel less intimidated. You can help me during the Mass. I wasn’t raised Catholic and I’m not familiar with the ritual, but you are, right?”
“My mother took me to church when I was a child, but I haven’t been in a long time. I don’t think your brothers have, either.”
“At least you have some experience. I won’t know whether to stand or sit or kneel, but you’ll be beside me. You can give me a high sign. You can provide moral support during the reception, and I can deflect the reporters away from you. We’ll help each other.”
HER ARGUMENTS WERE very transparent. The Mass could be confusing to the uninitiated, and it was true that the congregation sat behind the wedding party, so it wasn’t possible to follow their lead in sitting, standing, kneeling unless you turned around to see what they were doing—and that would be just the faux pas she seemed so worried about.
But Sophie, Sawyer’s fiancée, knew the ritual; she sang in the choir at St. Paul’s. Following her lead would be easy enough.
And he couldn’t remember ever seeing Janet make a misstep despite her insistence that Abbott society was unfamiliar to her.
He could only deduce that she was laying it on a little thick because she was determined that her sister and her brother have the wedding they wanted, and that included him.
And, though he disliked admitting this to himself, he found it hard to refuse the appeal in her wide brown eyes. Even knowing it was as much performance as sincere emotion, he was going to let it reel him in. Undoubtedly, he would hate himself for this later.
“All right,” he said.
She blinked at him. “You mean…you’ll do it?”
“Yes.”
“But…why?”
“Because you’re so persuasive.” And, he added silently to himself, I’m a self-indulgent idiot.
He rested one hand on his knee and she closed both hers over it as she beamed at him. “Thank you, Brian.” Her gratitude did sound heartfelt, and her hands on his knee, even over his hand, had a very pleasant effect on his body. “They’ll be so happy.”
“Well, that’s what we want.”
The bell rang over the front door. “Excuse me,” he said, getting to his feet. “Customer.”
Another came in before he was finished with the first, and before he knew it, the place was suddenly hopping.
When he turned to see if everyone had been helped, he found Janet trying to reach something on a top shelf for an older woman who watched her in concern. Brian recognized the woman as a three-or-four-times-a-week customer for most of August and September.
Janet’s body was stretched to its utmost, her heels off the floor, her calves and her bottom in the shorts tight with her effort. He could have watched her in that pose for a while, but he hurried to lend a hand.
“What are you after, Mrs. Lindell?” he asked.
She pointed to the back of the shelf. “That bottle of hair gel.”
He caught it off the shelf and handed it to Janet. She gave it to the woman, who already had a helmet of hair that looked as though it wouldn’t move in a class five hurricane. It was carved into a curled and flipped style he remembered his mother wearing twenty-five years ago.
“Is that the right brand?” Janet asked helpfully.
“That’s it exactly!” The woman gave Janet a ten-dollar bill. “I was sure you were out of it! You wouldn’t believe what a sailboat can do to a hairdo.” To Brian she said, “I’m glad to see you’ve gotten yourself another assistant. She’s more attentive than that boy you just hired. The last time I was here, he was so engrossed in an argument he was having with a girl he didn’t even notice me.”
“I’m sorry.” That was unwelcome news. Joe Fanelli was young, but he’d been so eager for the job. Part of the reason Brian had hired him was that his grandfather owned and operated Fulio’s, the best restaurant in Lost-hampton, known for its attention to detail and customer service. Joe had worked for him after school and during summers, and Brian was sure Fulio insisted on a work ethic at least as strong as his own.
Janet passed him the ten and the three of them went to the cash register. He made the woman change and put her purchase in a bag. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. “I promise that won’t happen to you again.”
“Thank you.” She took her change and chatted on about the dearth of cheerful and dependable retail help while she opened her wallet, dropped the change into the right compartment, then closed it and moved several things around in her purse so that she could put the wallet back in.
Then she picked up the bag and patted Janet’s cheek with her free hand. “You’ll go far, sweetie. The consumer likes a convenient place to shop and a helpful staff. My husband owns four delicatessens. I know what I’m talking about.”
She winked at Brian. “Bye, now.”
Brian watched her walk away, hoping he wouldn’t have to fire Joe Fanelli.
“I think I know what Joe’s problem is,” Janet said, leaning a hip against his counter.
That surprised him. “I wasn’t aware you knew him?”
“I don’t. But I heard the ladies at the beauty shop talking about him when I had my hair trimmed just before I left for L.A.”
“And?”
“And,” she said gravely, “his girlfriend is pregnant. That’s why he’s put off college for a year. Her parents are furious at both of them. His parents are angry at him. Even the girlfriend wants him to go to school. She’s insisting she’ll get a job and raise the baby and wait for him to graduate. He wants to get married and assume his responsibilities.”
Brian leaned against the other side of the register. “You ladies really discuss things in depth over hair trimmings.”
“Having your hair or your nails done inspires confidences. It’s a fact.” She looked worried. “Are you going to fire him? He needs the job.”
“I understand that. But I’d like to stay in business, and that won’t happen with customers being ignored. I’ll talk to him. Then if he doesn’t shape up, I’ll fire him.”
She nodded approval. “Very fair. Well, now that I’ve argued with you, fallen in the inlet, had coffee, made a sale for you and acted as Joe Fanelli’s union advisor, my work here is done. Can I have a plastic bag for my wet clothes?”
He reached under the counter for one and handed it to her. “I’ll close up for a few minutes and drive you home.”
“No!” She put a hand to his chest. His heartbeat reacted to her touch. She must have felt it, because she dropped her hand immediately, then cleared her throat. “I’m perfectly capable of riding the Vespa home.”
“Not a good idea after your dunking,” he said, moving her aside when she stood in his path. “And I appreciate your lending a hand when I got busy. Thank you.” He went to the door, changed the Will Be Back sign to read In Fifteen Minutes, then ushered her out ahead of him and locked the door.
“This is silly!” she argued, hurrying to keep up with him as he steered the Vespa toward his truck, then lifted it into the back.
“I…” she started to say, but he opened the passenger door and lifted her into the truck.
She growled and she pulled out the seat belt.
“As a general rule,” he said, before closing her door, “socially correct women never growl. You might bear that in mind.”
He had her home in five minutes, unloaded the Vespa and placed it for her in a corner of the garage. Behind her at a small distance, the beautiful yellow-and-white mansion that was her family’s home was perched on a knoll, with a view of the vast lawn and the apple orchard. The house had a central cupola and porches at the front and back that exemplified the cozy style at the heart of everything Abbott. Janet seemed to fit in well.
The construction going on at the west end of the house reminded Brian again of the potential for scandal in his very name. His father had almost destroyed Chloe’s addition. She’d wanted to enlarge the sun porch on the first level, add a room for Brian on the second level so that he could stay with them during holidays and other family occasions and expand the third floor so that when Sawyer and Sophie were married, there would be lots of room for her three children. Now Sawyer and Sophie were living at Sophie’s place, nearer the hospital where she was a nurse, but Chloe had visions of having the entire family together in Shepherd’s Knoll for holidays and long, lazy weekends, even though they all lived nearby.
His father had cruelly, vengefully set fire to the addition though it was obvious that both China and Chloe’s wheelchair-bound Tante Bijou were inside. The building had gone up quickly, and had it not been for China’s courage and quick thinking, and the fact that Campbell and Winfield, who handled the estate’s security, had arrived home at the right moment, both women might be dead. He shuddered at the thought.
“Thank you,” Janet said. “Can you come over tomorrow?”
He had to pull himself out of his grim thoughts. Had he really agreed to be in this wedding? “Ah…why?”
“Because Abbott’s West is sending someone from the men’s department to measure all of you for tuxes.” Abbott’s West was the retail flagship store in Manhattan.
He groaned. Yes, he had agreed. He’d done it for Janet, as much as for the family.
She widened her eyes at him teasingly. “If it’s socially incorrect for women to growl, are socially correct men allowed to groan?”
She made him smile, but it seemed wisest not to answer. He knew this was going to get worse before it got better. “What time tomorrow?”
“Ten. And you’d better go easy on Joe Fanelli. You’re going to need him a lot between now and the wedding.” She patted his shoulder. “Thanks for the cookie and the coffee.”
He sighed and smiled. “I don’t regret that. But I’m starting to wonder if fishing you out of the water was the wisest thing I could have done.”
“I guess only time will tell. See you tomorrow.”
She headed for the house. He climbed into the truck to spare himself the view of her neat little backside as she walked away.
But there it was, beautifully framed in his rearview mirror.
Chapter Three
Janet congratulated herself on having handled the best-man issue well. Except for the falling-into-the-water part.
“You made him change his mind?” China asked in pleased surprise as Janet walked through the kitchen, heading for the stairs. China, in grubby jeans and shirt, looked as though she’d just come from the orchard, where she’d been working with Campbell since she’d arrived.
Janet and China were both average height and slender, with dark hair and eyes. But China had long hair, while Janet favored a short style that required a minimum of care. Cheerful smiles and carefully tended good looks lent them a similarity in appearance that had made it easy for them to pass as natural sisters. But close friends of Bob and Peggy Grant of Paloma, California, their adoptive parents, knew the girls had come to their home separately.
China’s eyes went over Janet’s shorts, T-shirt and lank hair. “How did your hair get wet? And you bought a new outfit?”
Janet explained about her impromptu dip, then the discussion that followed over coffee and cookies. She left out her insistence that she needed Brian’s help to negotiate the murky waters of social correctness.
China took her arm as they went up the stairs. “He thought we’d be upset if the papers brought up his past?” she asked, incredulous as Janet explained his reluctance to be in the wedding. “It isn’t his fault. And Susannah’s part of this family’s past whether Brian’s involved or not.”
“I know. But he cares a lot about the family, and doesn’t want you to suffer or be embarrassed on his account.”
“Wait till I get a hold of him,” China threatened.
“Easy,” Janet cautioned. “He’s doing what you asked. I wouldn’t scold him if I were you.”
“True. But make sure Campbell doesn’t hear that reason.”
“I won’t tell if you don’t.”
China stopped her at the top of the stairs. “Jan, thanks for doing this. Are you all right? I can’t believe you fell in the water!”
Janet had been hoping her sister would focus more on her heroic accomplishment of getting Brian to agree, rather than her klutzy backward step.
“I’m fine,” she assured her. “And Brian’s going to be here at ten tomorrow morning for the tux fittings.”
China gave her a quick hug. “You are a genius!”
“How many times have I told you that?” Janet teased. “So, how are things in the orchard? Is the Duchess ready for harvest?
The Duchess was the largest tree in the vintage section of the apple orchard. The trees in that area had been a gift from Thomas Jefferson to the early owners of the property. Campbell watched over the entire orchard with great care but devoted particular attention to the old trees.
China had spent almost a month working with him while waiting for Chloe to come home from Paris so that China could take the DNA test to prove she was Abigail Abbott. Killian and Sawyer had been convinced of her honesty, but Campbell had suspected that she was lying.
Killian’s decision that China work on the estate with Campbell in the interim had been intended to help them get acquainted, but they’d disliked each other and warred continually.
Then the DNA test had proved that she wasn’t an Abbott. China had come to Shepherd’s Knoll in the first place because of a box she’d found in the attic of their adoptive father’s home after he’d died. The sisters had been cleaning out the house to put it on the market and found two cardboard storage boxes hidden in the eaves. One had China’s name on the lid and the other Janet’s.
China’s had contained clippings of the Abbott toddler’s kidnap, a pair of rompers made by Abbott Mills and a homemade rag doll.
Janet’s had held a birth certificate and several other things that had led her on a search to Canada while China had come to Losthampton.
When it became clear that China wasn’t Abby, everyone wondered why her box had been filled with clippings about Abby’s abduction. Then Campbell suggested that perhaps the lids of the boxes had been accidentally switched at some point, during one of the times the Grant family had moved, and that the contents might actually be clues to Janet’s family.
China had sent for Janet and her DNA test had proved that Abigail Abbott was finally home. It also allowed the antagonism that had existed between Campbell and China to turn to attraction, since they weren’t related after all and, eventually, to love. Janet was thrilled to have found her family but envied the look in her sister’s eyes.
