His Family. Muriel Jensen
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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