Wrong Wedding

by Noelle Adams

  Wrong Wedding

  Convenient Marriages, Book Four

  Noelle Adams

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  About Wrong Wedding

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from Third Life

  About Noelle Adams

  About Wrong Wedding

  SUMMER AGREES TO A marriage-of-convenience with her best friend, Carter Wilson, in order to save the family business. But things don't go the way they're supposed to, and she ends up stuck with his obnoxious older brother instead.

  Now she's married to Lincoln, a man she doesn't even like. Everything about the marriage is wrong—except the way he makes her feel.

  One

  ON THE AFTERNOON OF her best friend’s father’s funeral, Summer Cray wished she was feeling better.

  She was exhausted from a particularly busy time at work and from weeks of supporting Carter as he dealt with his father’s diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, which had led up to his death two months later. She had a headache, and putting on a polite, sympathetic face for the funeral of a man she’d intensely disliked was the last thing she wanted to be doing. But Carter Wilson had been her best friend since they’d been in preschool. He’d sat next to her at their craft table and told her that her finger painting was the best in the class, which had meant the world to an orphaned girl as painfully shy as she’d been.

  Carter’s relationship with his father was conflicted, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t grieving the loss. A conflicted relationship didn’t mean grief was lessened. Sometimes it just made it even harder.

  So despite the pounding of her head—from either tension or dehydration or both—Summer kept a composed expression and exerted the effort to make comforting small talk with the Wilsons’ large extended family who had come in for the funeral. Carter was pale, and he was having trouble talking—like he was still recovering from a blow—so she rarely left his side.

  The family was mingling in the large reception rooms of the Wilson mansion in Green Valley, North Carolina. A variety of snacks were being served, but most of the thirty or so people present were more interested in the drinks than the food. The memorial service was scheduled for one o’clock, followed by the graveside service.

  It was going to be a long day, and it had barely started.

  Carter was only a few months older than Summer. He’d just turned thirty-two. He was tall and fit and had movie-star good looks. It was impossible to look at him and not feel instinctive pleasure at the way his face and body were put together. There were shadows under his brown eyes today, however, and his high cheekbones seemed to be cut sharper than usual. They’d just been chatting with a distant cousin who lived in California, but as the man wandered away, Summer turned to Carter.

  “You doing okay?”

  He tugged at his hair in a restless gesture that wasn’t at all like him. “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “Do you need a break? You don’t need to be on the whole time, you know.”

  “But I do. Otherwise Mom will have to do everything, and she’s had a hard enough time as it is.”

  As far as Summer could see, Mrs. Wilson was doing better than Carter was. The woman was a master socializer, and she was clearly in her element right now—basking in even more attention than she normally received. She’d always been one of the queens of Green Valley, a small town outside Charlotte with a disproportionately high percentage of wealthy people because it had been developed forty years ago around an exclusive country club and marina on the large boating lake. Even as the Wilson fortune dwindled with the decline of the family hotel business, Mrs. Wilson’s central position in the town social life never wavered.

  But Summer wasn’t about to argue with Carter at a time like this. “Okay. I’m going to run to the bathroom real quick. I’ll be back soon.”

  “Sure.” He smiled at her. The sweet, Carter-like smile she’d known and loved all her life. Then he leaned over and brushed a kiss on her cheek.

  She blinked at the unexpected gesture. “What was that for?”

  “For everything.”

  She gave him a trembling smile before she left the room. When she’d reached the nearest bathroom and saw it was occupied, she kept going, heading toward another bathroom farther down the hall. She peed and washed her hands and stared at herself in the mirror for a minute.

  She looked just as pale and haggard as Carter did. She had ash-blond hair and big brown eyes and clear skin that was naturally rosy. She had a fit, curvy body and an appearance often described as wholesome—like she should have been a Midwestern farm girl instead of the only heir to a fortune made a hundred years ago when her great-grandfather established a global candy empire with a brand that remained a household name.

  Summer wasn’t any sort of beauty queen, but she was used to seeing a pleasant reflection in the mirror. She smiled automatically to smooth out her face, tucking back a few strands of hair that had escaped from her low bun. She found a couple of stray ibuprofens in her purse and swallowed them, hoping they would lessen the headache.

  She wanted to go home. Go to bed. Turn out the lights and pull the blankets up over her head. She was in no mood to celebrate the life of a man who’d been nothing but greedy and selfish and manipulative and heartless to his family, bullying his free-spirited wife into compliance and taking advantage of both his sons.

  But she couldn’t. Carter needed her. He’d always been like family to her when she had no one else. Her parents had died when she was an infant when their private plane had crashed, and she’d been raised by a well-intentioned but distant grandmother who’d always been convinced Summer wasn’t strong enough to handle the fortune she’d inherit. For many, many years, Carter had been the most important person in her life. The only one who knew, loved, and trusted her for real. So she squared her shoulders, took a few deep breaths, and left the bathroom.

  She was passing the library a few doors down when motion in the room caught her attention, so she paused to look in.

  Her heart gave a weird little jump when she saw the person in the room was Lincoln Wilson, Carter’s older brother.

  Lincoln was three years older than her and Carter, so she’d never spent much time with him. She’d known him mostly from Carter’s complaints about him and from a lot of sarcastic, mocking comments he’d aimed at her whenever she was in his presence. He’d had a huge blowup with his family when he was in college—unsurprising given the way Arthur Wilson had treated them—and after that, Lincoln had broken ties completely. He didn’t work for Wilson Hotels the way Carter did. He didn’t attend family functions or make an effort to stay close to his younger brother. And he didn’t even have the good sense to move away and start up life in a new city where he could have been anonymous.

  Instead, he was a bartender at one of the two high-end bars in Green Valley, serving expensive drinks and making smart-ass comments to his former friends and classmates. Summer saw him there occasionally and tried very hard to ignore the obnoxious smirk he always aimed at her.

  At the moment, Lincoln was standing by himself in front of an oil portrait of his father. His back was to the door. His b
lack T-shirt was made of a thick, soft material and lay perfectly against his broad shoulders and straight back, and his dark trousers were well tailored, but the outfit was completely inappropriate for the occasion. Every other man present was wearing a suit.

  She hadn’t had a conversation longer than two minutes with Lincoln for years. He knew her favorite drinks at his bar and would often predict her order before she made it. He’d occasionally say something taunting about whichever man happened to be her date, and he’d comment laughingly whenever she had on a new outfit or did something different with her hair. Last year, she’d been on a first date with a real asshole. Lincoln must have overheard, and he’d come around the bar, grabbed the man by the back of his shirt, and propelled him out of the building without a single word, leaving Summer torn between relief that she hadn’t had to end the date herself (since she hated confrontation) and annoyance at Lincoln’s presumptuous intrusion in her business.

  Since they weren’t friends or even polite acquaintances, she was about to duck out of the library unseen when he said without turning around, “Are you going to say hi to your best friend’s big brother, or are you just going to stand there, fluttering like a nervous butterfly?”

  She gulped. He hadn’t even turned his head. She had no idea how he’d known she was there.

  “You didn’t look like you wanted a greeting.” Her voice was much cooler than she used with anyone else. He’d been infuriating her since she was eight years old, and he’d given her a long, unwanted lecture on how she was kicking a soccer ball wrong. “And I wasn’t doing anything remotely resembling fluttering.”

  He turned his head in her direction with a flash of a smile. His typical dry, arrogant smile. Not a real one. “I could feel your fluttering from all the way across the room.”

  Summer was a friendly, even-tempered person. Most people liked her. No one got into arguments or fights with her. She was quiet and tended toward shyness, but she genuinely cared about other people, and she liked for other people to like her back. The only bad feeling she ever provoked in others was the occasional resentment or envy of the family fortune she’d inherited, which was a completely understandable reaction as far as she was concerned. She didn’t deserve to be given so much money—not when everyone else had to work for everything they got. She’d spent her life trying to make up for what felt like an injustice by being intentionally generous and empathetic.

  She almost never felt so angry she wanted to snap her teeth at someone else, but she did right now. And she didn’t have the mental energy to control it the way she normally would. “Maybe what you’ve inaccurately identified as fluttering is normal human feelings of sympathy and concern. How would you know since human feeling is utterly foreign to you?”

  “So you’re saying you were lurking in the doorway of the room because you felt sorry for me?” Lincoln had the same handsome features as Carter, but his hair was a darker brown, his eyebrows thicker, and his eyes a startling shade of green. While Carter’s handsomeness came across as safe and solid and steady, Lincoln’s came across as dangerous.

  Sexy, but dangerous.

  Summer didn’t want to see either one in this man, and the fact that she did—that her skin had flushed and her heartbeat had accelerated with an involuntary surge of the attraction she always felt around him—made her angrier than ever. She stepped farther into the room, closer to him. “No, I don’t feel sorry for you. The sympathy and concern I’m feeling are not aimed at you.”

  He’d turned all the way around now, and he gave a soft huff of ironic amusement. “Oh, I know. They’re all reserved for my brother. Poor put-upon saint that he is.”

  “You have no reason to talk about him that way. He’s never done anything to you. If you’re mad at your father, then fine. He definitely deserved it. But Carter doesn’t. He’s having a hard time, and a brother with any sort of heart would try to be there for him instead of skulking in corners and making rude comments to people who are trying to help.”

  Lincoln moved closer to her. Way too close. Only a few inches away. He had a habit of invading personal space that way. Summer knew it was an intimidation tactic, and she had to fight not to shy back from him and let him score a victory.

  He murmured, “Whatever gave you the impression that I have a heart?”

  “Nothing. Nothing gave me that impression. Anyone who’s looking for a heart in you is going to be woefully disappointed.”

  “We clearly understand each other.” He smiled again, the corner of his lips turning up. Way too sexily. She could see dark bristles on his jaw and down his neck. She could see the thick fringe of dark lashes contrasting with the vivid color of his eyes.

  Her heart was pounding. Throbbing. In her chest. In her ears. In her headache.

  “We don’t understand each other at all. I’ll never understand someone who can treat his family the way you treat Carter. He’s tried to reach out to you over and over again, and you give him nothing but a cold shoulder.”

  “Well, you treat him well enough for both of us, so I feel sure he’s in good hands.” There was a bitter edge to his tone, but it was light. Casually dismissive. As if she were nothing.

  Summer couldn’t remember ever hating another person—not even Carter’s father—as much as she hated Lincoln right now. She was shaking with it. She couldn’t form a single word through the tightness of her throat.

  Lincoln arched his thick eyebrows. “Nothing? I was hoping for a cold, self-righteous comeback. Only appropriate for a villain like me.”

  Her hands tightened at her sides. Her mind was an angry whirl of feeling, but she couldn’t think of a single thing to say to express it. She had friends who could always come up with the perfect, clever thing to say—no matter the state of their emotions—but she’d never been like that.

  When she was in her normal, composed state of mind, she could converse like an intelligent, articulate human being. But when she was upset, her mind went infuriatingly blank.

  Lincoln let out a soft huff of dry amusement. “All right then. Maybe you’ll have more to say about your upcoming nuptials. I hear congratulations are in order.”

  She was so surprised her whole body jerked. Like she’d suddenly run into a brick wall. “Carter told you?”

  “He did. Some remnant of brotherly feeling, I guess.”

  “Or maybe he wanted to make sure you didn’t do anything to sabotage it.”

  “Could be.” He was giving her that mocking smile, and she wanted to scratch it right off his face. “Or maybe he knew I’d try to talk him out of the lunatic plan.”

  “It’s not a lunatic plan. It’s a practical strategy for dealing with a problem. It changes nothing.”

  “Are you serious? You’ll be married to Carter. He isn’t in love with you, but you’re going to let him marry you anyway so you can hand him your inheritance and let him toss it into the black hole that’s Wilson Hotels.” He was still standing too close to her. Way too close. Despite his cool, arrogant manner, he was shuddering with reined-in energy. She didn’t know what it was, but she could see it in him now.

  It was making her shudder too. She rubbed her aching head and snapped, “I’m not handing him my inheritance. I’m investing a very small portion of it in a company Carter has spent years working to grow. We’ll be married for a few months until the acquisition goes through. It’s all set up and in the works. Once it’s done, we’ll get divorced. It changes nothing.”

  For almost a century, Wilson Hotels had been known for their old-fashioned luxury and personalized service. Unfortunately, that kind of luxury came with a very high price tag, and the company hadn’t earned a profit for decades. In the past twenty years, they’d had to close more than half their properties. Carter had been pouring himself into saving the company and had made a deal with a regional midpriced hotel chain to acquire their properties and fold them into the Wilson brand, branching out into a price range that had a better chance of success in today’s world. It was a good
plan. A wise acquisition. But his father had outright rejected it. So after Carter had learned of his father’s diagnosis, he’d come up with one last-ditch strategy for saving the Wilson family company.

  Summer had a huge inheritance and was more than willing to invest in Carter’s plans for the business, but she was hampered by an unreasonable trust fund that severely limited the ways in which she could use her fortune until she was thirty-five years old. But she’d found one loophole in the fine print of the trust.

  All she had to do was marry Carter. Then when he got control of the company after his father’s death, she’d be able to invest in it and Carter would be able to salvage his family’s legacy.

  She loved and believed in Carter. She didn’t care if marrying as a business arrangement was a weird thing to do. The truth was, in a town as wealthy and insular as Green Valley, marriages had been made and broken for far stranger reasons.

  Lincoln evidently thought differently. He shook his head slowly. “Both of you are out of your minds. I can kind of understand Carter. He’s desperate and still trying to prove something to our dad even though the bastard is dead and soon to be buried. He doesn’t know you’re in love with him. But you... you know better than this.”

  She gasped and took a clumsy step backward. She didn’t care if it proved he’d scored a point. She had to get some distance. “I’m not in love with Carter!”

  “Of course you are. At least you think you are. He’s been the prince in all your daydreams since you were a kid.”

  “We’re friends! We’ve always just been friends.”

  “I know that. But that doesn’t stop you from wanting more.” His expression was its normal indifference, but his voice had a bitter edge that she didn’t understand. “Are you really going to stand there and tell me you don’t? That you’re not indulging in ridiculous fantasies about this practical marriage finally opening his eyes and showing him that his fated soul mate has been right beside him all the time? I’ve seen the movies and heard all the sappy songs too. And I’m telling you right now that it’s never going to happen. Carter loves you, but he’s never going to love you like that.”