Muriel Jensen - His Wedding

Janet didn’t know whether to be pleased or angry. She started to speak, then drew back and collected her thoughts. She put her food down and firmed her chin.

He prepared himself for her reaction.

“Okay, you want to be straight with each other?”

Not necessarily. He just wanted her to understand—

“I’m attracted to you,” she said, interrupting his conversation with himself. “You’re kind, smart, funny and comfortingly sane…when you’re not being weird about embarrassing the family.”

“But you’re a poor judge of character, remember?” he said brutally. “You were left at the altar—”

“Would you do that to me?” she asked ingenuously.

“No, I wouldn’t, because you’d never get me anywhere near an altar.”

She took another clam and studied it, then looked up at him.

“Are you a betting man?”

Dear Reader,

With this fourth book in THE ABBOTTS series, the family has become very real to me. I’ve explored their minds and hearts and know them as well as I know my own family. I fully expect to round a corner in Astoria and bump into the whole crowd, vacationing here for the Lewis and Clark Bicentennial.

While they’re here, I’d love to be in Losthampton, sunning on the deck at Shepherd’s Knoll, or having coffee on the porch at Brian’s General Store and Boat Rental. Join me there one last time to witness the solution to the mystery of Abby’s kidnapping, and to be on hand as Brian discovers love at last.

Best wishes,

Muriel

P.O. Box 1168

Astoria, Oregon 97103

THE ABBOTTS

His Wedding

Muriel Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To the gang at Jarvis, Redwine and Chaloux:

Steven, Mark, Alice, Toni, Trish and Walt.

Thank you for the pleasure of your company.

Work shouldn’t be this much fun.

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

866—FATHER FOUND

882—DADDY TO BE DETERMINED

953—JACKPOT BABY*

965—THAT SUMMER IN MAINE

1020—HIS BABY**

1030—HIS WIFE**

1066—HIS FAMILY**

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

“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.