Killian gave him a pitying look. “Tell me you don’t really believe that.”
Jack sighed. “I’m not sure, sir. There seems to be a cunning charm among American women that’s outside my sheltered experience.”
“Yeah.” Killian put an arm around Jack’s shoulders and led him toward the door. “Mine, too. On second thought, it isn’t fair to ask you to handle this. I’ll take care of it myself.”
“But, it’s my responsi—”
“No.” Killian cut him off firmly. “Cordie is my responsibility. I’ll handle her.”
Now Jack gave him a pitying look.
CORDELIA MAGNOLIA HYATT Abbott wielded the nozzle of a clothing steamer in the back room of the women’s wear department of the Abbott chain’s flagship store on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, just a few blocks from the Abbott Building. She was surrounded by tops and pants in tangerine, limeade, sunshine and summer blue. The playful garments in cotton-candy colors had been shipped tightly packed and now required touching up before they could be put out on the sales floor.
This was her last chore in what had been a long day of unpacking and tagging new stock, and she couldn’t wait to get home to her apartment and put her feet up. She should stop by the gym first and fit in a workout, but she wasn’t up to it today. A wedge of sausage lasagna, raw veggies and dip from Rocco’s Deli were much more appealing. Fattening, but appealing.
Perspiring from the steamer, she reached into the pocket of her protective smock for a tissue, then dabbed at her forehead and around her half glasses. With the one hand, she finished work on the last blue shirt.
Then she heard sounds of arrival beyond the curtain that separated the stockroom from the sales floor.
“Hi, Mr. Abbott!” That voice belonged to twenty-year-old Candy in the junior department, who thought their boss was a “major babe.”
“Mr. Abbott! Hello!” Eleanor, in formal wear and now an assistant manager. She’d been with the company since Killian’s father, Nathan Abbott, had run it, and she considered Killian “a dear.”
“Hey, Mr. Abbott. How’s it going?” Hunter, who’d been union shop steward at her previous job, had admitted to Cordie that she’d been disappointed to learn that Abbott Mills didn’t have a union. Until she’d been around long enough to realize the company didn’t need one. But she felt the need to watch out for any infractions of a labor-management nature. She thought Killian was “a model of modern administration.”
To Cordie, he was all those things, as well as the beat of her heart, the breath in her lungs and the absolute love of her life. Unfortunately, he had issues that also made him a complete doofus where she was concerned. She’d let him drive her away three months ago, but she’d had time to rethink her reaction and plan strategy in the seven weeks she’d spent in her father’s hunting lodge in Scotland.
So when Killian swept the curtain aside and invaded the stockroom, she faced him with a new resolve, born of her realization that even though he was completely wrong about her in every way possible, she loved him utterly and she was not going to let him ruin their lives as he was determined to do.
Actually, she was convinced it was his own life he was bent on destroying, but since hers was so woven into his, it would be ruined, too.
“Killy.” She glanced at him with a friendly smile as she went on with her steaming. Secretly, she wished she weren’t perspiring and wearing a messy smock. She’d wanted to be wearing a ball gown at a party when he saw her again, and looking gorgeous. But that had been a silly, self-indulgent thought. “What a nice surprise. What brings you to Abbott’s West?”
She had to keep steaming, keep pretending that her heartbeat wasn’t choking her and her hands weren’t shaking. This plot to get him back had to work.
She’d hoped to find that the time spent without her had changed him. She was sad and a little hurt to see that it hadn’t. He didn’t appear tired or depressed, and there was no evidence of regret in the Paul Newman–blue of his eyes. Annoyance was clearly visible there, not regret.
His wavy light brown hair was brushed away from a high forehead in the same old way, strands of blond springing up despite the designer gel she’d bought him to try to keep his hair in order.
His features were also the same: a slash of eyebrows darker than his hair over those dramatic eyes; a strong, straight nose; square teeth in a mouth that at the moment was thin-lipped and tight, but that she knew could be warm and clever; a nicely shaped chin in a square jaw that matched the line of his broad, square shoulders.
He was very tall and very fit, and if she stepped up to him her cheek would rest against his chin.
But he’d hate that right now, and she’d had all the rejection she could stand for a while. That she’d applied for and charmed her way into this job meant she was willing to open herself up to rejection again—but not this minute.
“What do you think you’re doing?” Killian demanded as he took several steps into the room. He wore one of the dozen Armani suits that filled his wardrobe, this one gray and quietly elegant.
She pretended surprise at the question and held up the steamer nozzle. “Working,” she replied. “You require that of employees, as I recall.”
He yanked the nozzle out of her hand and leaned down to turn off the machine before draping the hose over it. When he straightened, the last puff of steam lingered between them like mist in the last scene of a love story. But she guessed their story wasn’t going to have a happy ending. At least not yet.
“I don’t want you working for me,” he said, folding his arms as he frowned down at her. “I can’t believe you had the nerve to do this.”
She, too, folded her arms, and regarded him with the same disdain he focused on her. “Well, you should have thought of that before you hired me.”
“I didn’t! A new employee who didn’t know we’d been involved hired you.”
She arched an eyebrow, proud of her cool demeanor. “Involved? We were married, Killian. That goes a step further than involvement.”
He leaned his weight on one hip and mimicked her raised eyebrow. “Really. But not far enough to prevent you from sleeping with another man while you were supposed to be on a business trip. And not just any man, but a lifelong business rival.”
She struggled for an even tone. This was the point where she could lose it. “I didn’t sleep with him.”
“You were in bed and he was leaning over you. You have a history.”
“I told you…”
“That he’d let himself in. I remember. But you were in his room.”
“I explained that, as well.”
“Yes. Your room didn’t lock and his did. You’d returned from a late dinner with others who’d come to Paris for the show, and you couldn’t make the desk clerk understand the problem. So Brian switched rooms with you. That’s lame enough to sound like damning evidence to me.”
She drew a breath, prepared to advance the plan to save her marriage. Getting down and dirty. “That’s because you want to believe the worst of me,” she said, inclining her upper body toward his to make her point. “You were happy with me, Killian, and on some level I don’t understand and you probably don’t, either, happy doesn’t work for you. You’ve chosen against it. You work night and day and offer up on the altar of your sister’s disappearance whatever part of you might once have been fun.”
He took a step toward her, his eyes darkening. “Don’t speculate on what you don’t understand,” he threatened.
“Then