His Baby

She scoffed at that notion inelegantly by blowing air between her lips. “Escaping it, my aunt Fanny! You thrive on the crunch, Abbott! You love facing down the enemy and making him flinch. The November Corporation is never going to launch a successful takeover and you know it. Abbott Mills is too strong. Brian probably set up that whole hotel-room scenario to rattle you, and you fell for it because you wanted a reason to send me away. I was helping you forget business once in a while and that terrified you because it meant you had to be a real human being instead of a hard drive, a digital modem and a collection of sophisticated circuitry.”

Apparently unimpressed with her assessment of his personal makeup, he put a hand to his chest and asked calmly, “Well, if you’re so offended by this machine, why did you apply for and accept a job here?”

“Because while I am offended by what you’ve turned yourself into,” she replied candidly, “I know the man you really are inside. And I want that man back.”

He stared at her for a moment in silent disbelief. Then his gaze hardened. “I’m divorcing you,” he said finally.

“I have to sign the papers,” she reminded him.

He accepted that with a nod. “If you refuse, that won’t hold it up forever. Eventually, the divorce will be allowed, and that’ll be that.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “But until that happens, I can live in hope that you’ll wake up one morning and remember what life was like when you let yourself be happy. What it was like when we were together.”

Clearly surprised and angered by her stand, he opened his mouth to offer an argument, then seemed to change his mind. He turned and stalked away.

KILLIAN HEARD Cordie following him as he headed for the elevators. She ran around in front of him and walked backward as he kept going.

“Am I fired?” she asked. “You didn’t say. Because I have scores of appointments with suppliers over the next few weeks and several critical shows scheduled for—”

Yes! he wanted to shout as she went on. But that little union troublemaker, Hunter, was pretending to sort through a rack of shorts while clearly tipping an ear in their direction. He didn’t need November to hear rumblings among the employees of an unfair firing.

Jack’s Soprano interpretation of termination would have been simpler than this, he acknowledged to himself grimly.

“No,” he replied, pushing the Down button. “But I’ll be going over your performance with a microscope. And I’ll take advantage of the first excuse I can find to fire you.” The elevator bell dinged and the doors parted. He stepped onto the car and turned to her with an air of dismissal. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going down.”

She looked into his eyes with a gleam in hers as the doors began to close. “Yes,” she said. “You are.”

Chapter Two

In the back seat of a Lincoln limousine, Killian took one last look at Abbott’s market quotes, checked the status of his personal portfolio as well as Chloe’s investments, then closed his laptop and put it aside with disciplined determination. He had to clear his mind this weekend. He could usually work sixteen-hour days for months at a time, but he hadn’t taken a full weekend off since before the Cordie-Brian debacle and he was due.

He could forget about business for forty-eight hours. Chloe was spending the weekend in the city, his brother Sawyer had left yesterday for New Hampshire on a chore for the Abbott Mills Foundation and Campbell had left a message saying he was going to Florida to check out a position at Flamingo Gables, the summer home of the Elliott Prathers.

Great. He really didn’t need his estate manager to quit at this point in time, but he knew his younger brother had issues with Shepherd’s Knoll and no amount of reasoning with Campbell seemed to change his mind. Even Chloe’s pleadings had been to no avail. So all Killian could do was let him go and hope that distance made Campbell’s heart grow fonder of his half brothers and the headache that was Shepherd’s Knoll, their family home.

“Finished for the day, Mr. Abbott?” Daniel Chambers asked from the front seat. He was African American, in his early sixties and wearing a dark business suit. Killian’s father had hired him decades ago.

Initially, Nathan Abbott had refused to hire him because he’d refused to wear a uniform. Nathan had driven himself to town the morning after the interview and had an accident on the Long Island Expressway while trying to talk to his secretary on the car phone. He’d hired Daniel that afternoon.

“Yes,” Killian replied, stretching out his legs. “You’re not going to ask for investment advice again, are you?”

Daniel laughed. “Linus Larrabee gave Fairchild advice in Sabrina and the chauffeur had millions by the end of the movie.”

“True. But it was the senior Mr. Larrabee who gave him advice, and Fairchild had a beautiful daughter for Linus to fall in love with.”

“You’re a married man!”

“Not anymore.”

“Come on, Mr. Abbott. You’re going to love Miss Cordie till the day you die. Only trouble is, you don’t know how to live with her.”

“God wouldn’t know how to live with her. I don’t need that kind of trouble.”

Daniel didn’t reply. That meant he disagreed. Killian felt alarmed at how little stock the family and staff put in Cordie’s adultery. “You’re supposed to humor me, Daniel,” Killian teased. “Tell me I’m right, that women are generally no damn good—except for your Kezia, of course—and that nobody needs the kind of trouble they bring.”

“Man’s character is honed by trouble, Mr. Abbott,” Daniel philosophized with a bright smile in the rearview mirror. “Your mother running off made a hardworking man out of your father. Otherwise, the way he was goin’, he’d have gambled away your inheritance.”

“But she proved the women-are-no-damn-good theory.”

“Yep. Every once in a while there’s one. Still, she’s responsible for you and Mr. Sawyer bein’ here, and that’s no small thing. You make money like nobody’s ever seen and Mr. Sawyer makes sure all the extra gets spread around, doing good work.”

That might have been an oversimplification of the situation, but Killian liked the sound of it.

“Thank you, Daniel. By the way, you can have the weekend off. I’m not going back to town until Monday morning.” Daniel lived with Kezia in what had once been the guest house.

“You sure about that, Mr. Abbott?”

“I’m sure.”

Killian loved Shepherd’s Knoll. He didn’t spend nearly enough time here now that Abbott Mills had holdings overseas, but he got the same feeling of security and history he used to get as a child when his father turned onto the long, poplar-lined driveway that led to the house.

On Sunday-afternoon drives around Long Island, Nathan Abbott used to tell Killian and Sawyer about Thomas and Abigail Abbott, who’d come over on the Mayflower and raised sheep outside of Plymouth. Over the generations, the frugal, clever Abbotts had prospered, and William Abbott had started a woolenmill early in the nineteenth century.

Jacob Abbott, Killian and Sawyer’s great-grandfather, had continued to run the mill, but he’d fallen behind the competition when he’d failed to install new and more sophisticated machinery, considering it frivolous. His losses were considerable by the time he’d realized the error of his ways, but by then he didn’t have the capital to purchase new equipment.

So James Abbott, Jacob’s eldest son, had been encouraged to marry a cotton heiress from Virginia. New equipment and the new bride’s knowledge of business had improved the Abbott fortunes considerably.

With the advent of synthetics in the middle of the twentieth century, Nathan, now in control of the company, had diversified. He’d married Susannah Stewart, the daughter of a Texas oil baron, and they’d moved to her family’s summer home in Losthampton, New York, situated in the small cleft of an inlet on the south coast of Long Island between East Hampton and Southhampton.

When Nathan and Susannah Abbott had moved into her family’s palatial home, it had been known as Bluebonnet Knoll because of the Stewarts’ Texas connection. But when Susannah had run off with the chauffeur, giving Nathan the house to assuage her guilt over leaving her children, Nathan had changed the name, wanting it to reflect his family’s business rather than hers.

Killian remembered his mother. Instead of warm, fuzzy recollections of a loving woman, he had strong, clear memories of a light-haired goddess always in gowns and sparkling jewelry, waving to him from across the room. She’d seldom come into the nursery, simply blown kisses from the doorway.

He’d harbored the hope that someday when he was big enough and smart enough, she’d come and talk to him, possibly even hold him. But that had never happened.

One day his father had called Sawyer and him into his study and told them their mother was gone and a new woman was coming into their lives. She was French, he’d said, and a designer for one of the clothing companies Abbott’s owned.

Killian remembered clearly the shock and distress he’d felt at having to accept that the goddess would never get to know him, never hold him, that she was lost to him forever. He’d been five.

Someone had to pay, so he’d made the new woman, named Chloe, the culprit. He’d told her straight off that he didn’t want anything to do with her, didn’t want her in his house and didn’t want her touching his brother.

Sawyer, though, even at three a man with a mind of his own, adored her instantly. Killian had resisted heroically, but had finally lost the battle to hate her when she’d walked into the nursery with his father about a week after her arrival and asked, “Is there a reason the children must be confined to this floor while we are home?”

His father had thought a moment. “Susannah liked it this way. She said it kept them out of her hair when her friends came around.”

Chloe had shrugged. “Well, as I have no friends yet and…” She’d patted a very short haircut. “As I have no hair for them to get into, I don’t see why they can’t have the run of the house. Except for your office, of course, when you are working at home. The staff tell me they are very good children and usually behave themselves well.” She’d put a hand to Killian’s face and one to Sawyer’s. It had been warm and smooth and had smelled of lilacs. “And you will continue to behave for me, n’est-ce pas?”

A whole new world had opened up. Although Susannah had never come back and Killian, ever her champion, had sat by his window every night before going to bed and watched for her, during the day he’d loved being with Chloe as much as Sawyer had. She took them everywhere—shopping, to church, to visit the friends she eventually made, to the beach. He’d maintained a locked-up corner of his heart for Susannah, but he’d let Chloe in and allowed himself be happy again.