His Baby. Muriel Jensen

it was. Everyone was affected. I think all the boys carry scars from the ordeal. Chloe dedicated herself to her remaining children, but sometimes I see a terrible sadness in her eyes. And Mr. Nathan put on a good front, but Abby was his little girl and he never got over losing her. He died with her name on his lips.”

      Cordie groaned and put a hand over her eyes as tears welled. What an old and deeply rooted pain for Killian—for all the family. Killian, though, was her primary concern, and wanting to remove his guilt so she could put her love there, instead, would be no easy task.

      She wondered now if her initial approach had been wrong. He was so serious-minded, such a workaholic, that when she’d married him, she’d tried to joke him out of his grave nature, lure him away from work once in a while in the hope that his having a personal life would help him loosen up, open up. But in the end he’d resented her for it.

      This time, she had to find another way. Take things more seriously, so that he didn’t mistake her for a lightweight. Work as much as he did so that he’d know she wanted success for Abbott Mills as much as he did.

      She groaned again and laid a forearm across her eyes, propping her feet on the coffee table. That would be a big job. She generally found life amusing, so she was always joking, pulling pranks. She liked sound and color and gravitated toward those things. That was why she loved fashion and concerts and parties.

      Of course, all she had to do was reconsider the status of her relationship with Killian—that put a genuine pall over everything. Working a lot would give her less time to think.

      She carried her untouched tray into the kitchen, covered the lasagna with plastic wrap, put it in the refrigerator and left the salad out to pick at.

      She should call her parents and let them know how she was. They’d been worried about her when she’d gone to Scotland, and finally flown out from Texas to check on her. They’d been horrified to find her pale and thin and holed up in the lodge like a recluse.

      “He isn’t worth it,” her mother had said firmly. Judith and Gregory Hyatt had loved Killian, though they’d known him only briefly. But Judith had always been her only child’s staunchest support system, and though Cordie had been caught in another man’s bed, Judith was sure the problem couldn’t be with Cordie and therefore Killian had to have misunderstood.

      When Cordie had told her parents she was going back to New York to apply for the position of buyer that had miraculously opened up at Abbott Mills, her father had thought her crazy. “Cord, he’s furious with you. He’s divorcing you. Why give him the chance to deny your application or use it as an excuse to dump all over you again?”

      Cordie had shaken her head. “He won’t even know about the job until it’s time for the quarterly personnel report. The hope is that I’ll be so entrenched by the time he notices I’m on board that my immediate superiors will support me.”

      “She loves him, darling,” her mother had tried to explain to her father.

      He didn’t get it. “You said this divorce was all his fault.”

      “It is.”

      “Then why does she love him?”

      “Because…the separation is his fault, but the problems he has that are making him do it aren’t.”

      Her father, the CEO of one of the country’s finest furniture makers and a millionaire in his own right, though not in the Abbott class, stared dumbly at his wife.

      Her mother patted his chest. “It’s love, dear. You just don’t understand those things. Trust Cordie. She’s always known what she’s doing.”

      While she appreciated her mother’s confidence in her, she now hoped it wasn’t misplaced.

      Suddenly, taking a shower and going to bed had it all over eating and spending an evening watching television.

      Loving Killian Abbott was exhausting.