On the Verge of I Do

by Heidi Betts

  Wedding, interrupted

  It’s hard for events planner Kara Kincaid to be planning her sister’s wedding to the man Kara’s had a crush on since childhood. Even harder when said sister calls the whole thing off. Hardest still is when the jilted groom shows Kara some very personal attention, threatening to destroy her relationship with her family—and Kara ends up in his bed anyway.

  After a just-friends engagement that just didn’t work, hotel magnate Eli Houghton thinks he’s finally found the right woman. His new plan: convince Kara there’s no hidden agenda, and that the magic words are I do....

  Everything inside Kara went stock-still as soon as their lips touched.

  The kiss was warm and soft and tasted of sweet tea, with a hint of the Scotch Eli had consumed earlier. It was everything she’d ever imagined and more. It started out being slow and tentative, just a brush of lips on lips. Then, as though a match had been struck, it was so much more.

  In all the years she’d dreamed of kissing him, her fantasies had never been like this. It was real and raw and made her feel as though her entire being was going up in flames.

  The man of her girlhood dreams—oh, who was she kidding? Her girlhood and womanly dreams—had just kissed her half senseless. And all she could feel was horrendous guilt over the fact that he was her sister’s only very recent ex-fiancé.

  Dear Reader,

  I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed writing On the Verge of I Do for the Dynasties: The Kincaids series, and I have to take a moment to thank Senior Editor Stacy Boyd and Associate Editor Charles Griemsman (with a shout-out to Assistant Editor Shana Smith) for once again trusting me to take part in such a wonderful continuity.

  Kara and Eli’s story is right up my alley, and I absolutely loved spending time with them in Charleston, South Carolina, and the surrounding area—albeit vicariously. Any mistakes you may notice concerning this beautiful city are entirely my own, of course, but working on this story certainly gave me a great excuse to watch tons of Southern-set television shows and movies in the name of “research.” (Join me on my blog—HeidiBetts.com/WIPSandChains—if you’d like to see a list of my personal favorites and share some of your own!)

  Until then...

  Happy reading, y’all!

  Heidi

  HeidiBetts.com

  Heidi Betts

  On the Verge of I Do

  Books by Heidi Betts

  Harlequin Desire

  Her Little Secret, His Hidden Heir #2092

  On the Verge of I Do #2150

  Silhouette Desire

  Bought by a Millionaire #1638

  Blame it on the Blackout #1662

  When the Lights Go Down #1686

  Seven-Year Seduction #1709

  Mr. and Mistress #1723

  Bedded Then Wed #1761

  Blackmailed into Bed #1779

  Fortune’s Forbidden Woman #1801

  Christmas in His Royal Bed #1833

  Inheriting His Secret Christmas Baby #2055

  *Other titles by this author are available in ebook format.

  HEIDI BETTS

  An avid romance reader since junior high, national bestselling author Heidi Betts knew early on that she wanted to write these wonderful stories of love and adventure. It wasn’t until her freshman year of college, however, when she spent the entire night before finals reading a romance novel instead of studying, that she decided to take the road less traveled and follow her dream.

  Soon after Heidi joined Romance Writers of America, her writing began to garner attention, including placing in the esteemed Golden Heart competition three years in a row. The recipient of numerous awards and stellar reviews, Heidi’s books combine believable characters with compelling plotlines, and are consistently described as “delightful,” “sizzling” and “wonderfully witty.”

  For news, fun and information about upcoming books, be sure to visit Heidi online at HeidiBetts.com.

  With thanks to JoAnn Ross and Geremy Kephart for all the great Charleston and Hilton Head information you provided. I may not have used it all, but you helped me with this story more than you can know, and I really, really appreciate it!

  * * *

  Don’t miss a single book in this series!

  Dynasties: The Kincaids

  New money. New passions. Old secrets.

  Sex, Lies and the Southern Belle by Kathie DeNosky

  What Happens in Charleston… by Rachel Bailey

  Behind Boardroom Doors by Jennifer Lewis

  On the Verge of I Do by Heidi Betts

  One Dance with the Sheikh by Tessa Radley

  A Very Private Merger by Day Leclaire

  Special thanks and acknowledgment to Heidi Betts

  for her contribution to the

  Dynasties: The Kincaids miniseries.

  Contents

  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

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  The Kincaids: Jack And Nikki Part IV

  One

  “This is a lot of work. I don’t know how you do it on a daily basis.”

  Kara Kincaid chuckled as she turned another page of the catering catalog spread open on the glossy surface of the low black lacquer coffee table in front of them.

  “And I don’t know how you keep half a dozen luxury hotels and resorts up and running. I’d rather pore over guest lists and seven-course menus any day than try to keep all of that afloat,” she told her older sister’s fiancé.

  Eli Houghton was tall and handsome and mouth-wateringly well-built. With chocolate-brown eyes and wind-blown, coffee-brown hair, the man could make a woman’s heart skip a beat without even trying. When he did try…well, that was enough to stop a woman’s heart from beating entirely.

  “You’re selling yourself short, darlin’,” he told her, flashing a smile that made her own internal organs do things she didn’t think her personal physician would approve of. “We may have different talents, but we’ve both managed to build successful businesses for ourselves.”

  “Except that Houghton Hotels and Resorts is worth millions of dollars, and I run Prestige Events out of my home office.”

  They were sitting on a black leather sofa in Eli’s impressive ninth-floor office, but ordinarily they would be having this meeting in the small ground-floor library-turned-workplace of her meticulously restored circa 1806 French Quarter row house on Queen Street.

  She loved the quaint, three-bedroom/three-bath home, which was more than enough space for a single gal like herself. But she did sometimes worry that running her business out of her home gave the wrong impression to potential clients. Not for the first time, she realized that she should probably give some serious consideration to renting an office elsewhere.

  Possibly even an entire building where she could host tastings, put up displays and store reusable decorations so she wouldn’t have to rent them from vendors. She might hire an assistant—or even employees, plural, one day—to help her, since she’d been running things pretty much single-handedly so far.

  She didn’t regret the hard work. Prestige Events was, after all, her baby. The business she’d started on her own, stepping away from her family’s interests in shipping and real estate to do it. But it might be nice, just once, to not have to be responsible for everything, for everyone else. Or at the very least, to hav
e a handful of workers on staff that she could turn to when two arms, two legs, two ears and one mouth just didn’t seem to be enough to get the job done on time.

  “Give it time, sugar,” Eli said in a voice as smooth as Kentucky bourbon, drawing her attention back to their conversation. “Keep doing what you’re doing, and I’d be willing to bet that in a few years you’ll be planning the wedding of one of the Obama girls.”

  Oh, her sister was a lucky, lucky woman. It was a good thing Kara was sitting down. The man oozed charm, and his softly spoken encouragement had her bones melting like butter on a biscuit.

  Clearing her throat, she took a deep breath and straightened her spine. This was not the time to be going all weak-kneed over a man. Not the time or the man.

  Eli was Laurel’s fiancé, for Pete’s sake. In less than a month, the two would be married.

  Yes, Kara found Eli attractive. She’d be willing to bet she was no different than any other red-blooded woman in South Carolina—or heck, the entire Eastern seaboard—in that regard.

  Yes, she’d sort of had a crush on him from the time they were teenagers. Again, that was no great surprise. Every girl in school had had her eye on the football player.

  Well, almost every girl, anyway. Kara couldn’t remember Laurel ever showing more than a passing interest in him while they were growing up. They’d always been friends—all of them, the entire Kincaid brood and the lone boy who lived with the Youngs on the neighboring estate—but it wasn’t until much more recently that the two of them had decided to get engaged.

  And Kara was happy for them, truly she was. It just wasn’t easy to plan a wedding for her sister and the man for whom she’d spent the past ten years carrying a moderately flickering torch.

  But she was doing her best. And her best required putting aside any inner turmoil she might be feeling to pull off what could arguably be considered the Wedding of the Year within Charleston’s high society circles. The fact that it was her sister’s wedding only raised the stakes, made the event that much more important to Kara, both personally and professionally.

  Reaching past the catering brochure, she scooped up her glasses and slid them onto her nose. She didn’t really need them, but she always felt more sure-footed with them on, and she could certainly use a little added confidence—not to mention an added barrier between herself and Eli—right now.

  “Once you and Laurel decide which proteins you want for the reception, it will be a lot easier to narrow down your choices. And that will actually be the fun part, since you’ll be taste-testing samples before we plan the final menu.”

  Eli leaned back against the sofa, spreading his arms across the buttery-soft leather and crossing his legs to rest an ankle on the opposite knee. “We should probably leave that up to Laurel. I’d hate for us to have our first fight at the wedding reception just because I told you to order fried chicken instead of crab tarts.”

  Kara checked her watch. Her sister was already twenty minutes late. They’d purposely agreed to meet at Eli’s office so his workday wouldn’t be turned upside down, but Laurel’s tardiness made it look as though that’s exactly what was going to happen.

  “She should be here any minute,” Kara told him.

  With a solemn nod, he said, “I’m sure she will be.”

  He sounded so certain…and so patient. More patient than Kara suspected she would be, if she were in his shoes.

  The truth was, in all her time as an event coordinator, all the times she’d dealt with giddy, nervous, and even monstrously spoiled and demanding brides, she’d never put together a wedding for a woman as distracted and seemingly disinterested as her own sister.

  Granted, there was a lot going on with their family at the moment. Bad enough that their father had been brutally murdered late one night in his office by someone who had tried to make it look like a suicide… . Bad enough that they’d discovered only after his death that he’d been leading a double life—and had another adult son with another woman… . But now their own mother, Reginald’s rightful widow, had been accused of killing her own husband.

  Kara didn’t care what secrets her father had been keeping or how hurt her mother might have been when she’d discovered his betrayal. Elizabeth Winthrop Kincaid would never have raised a hand against him. Her mama could barely squish a spider, let alone shoot her husband of nearly forty years in the head.

  No, it was an absolute impossibility. And every single one of the Kincaid siblings felt the same; they were one-hundred-percent behind their mother. But tell that to the prosecutors who had accused Elizabeth of murder. Luckily, new information had surfaced about a mysterious man seen entering Reginald’s office building the night of the murder, which was enough to get Elizabeth out on bail—for now.

  So it was no wonder, really, that Laurel—the oldest Kincaid daughter—had more on her mind than just her upcoming nuptials.

  Still, it struck Kara as slightly odd that her sister didn’t already have a clear vision of her perfect wedding day. Most women did. Most girls did, starting around the age of eight.

  Kara had never met a bride who didn’t already have wedding colors firmly in mind. Who didn’t already have an idea of the type of wedding dress she wanted to wear. (Laurel would be wearing a very traditional 1920s vintage gown in vanilla rather than white lace, but only because Kara had pushed and prodded and dragged her to fittings, essentially demanding her sister make a decision before time ran out.) Who showed up late for each and every scheduled meeting, be it about picking flowers or setting dates for the bachelorette party, rehearsal dinner, and ceremony itself.

  She wondered if Eli had noticed his fiancée’s peculiar—at least in Kara’s opinion—behavior, and if he found it as perplexing as she was beginning to.

  From the looks of him, he either hadn’t, or Laurel’s frequent delays didn’t bother him. He seemed totally at ease, even dressed for business, as he was now, in a charcoal suit and pomegranate-red tie.

  He also didn’t seem the least concerned with how much this wedding was going to cost. Traditionally, the bride’s family footed the bill, and the Kincaids could certainly afford to host the celebration. But given the family’s current troubling state of affairs and ongoing legal predicament, Eli had told the Kincaids not to worry about it and ordered Kara in no uncertain terms to be sure that all the bills associated with the upcoming nuptials were sent directly to him.

  It was a gesture that hadn’t surprised Kara. Eli had always been kind and generous and understanding. Growing up in the foster care system, he knew what it was like to have nothing, to go without. But even now that he’d made such a success of himself, he didn’t pinch pennies or hoard his millions like a miser.

  She only hoped he was still feeling as benevolent once he caught a glimpse of the invoices that were headed his way. The tally was already hovering around the six-figure mark in deposits alone.

  As the seconds ticked past, marked by the heavy tock tock tock of the antique grandfather clock standing sentinel against the far wall, Kara began to wonder what else she could discuss with Eli that would be wedding-related and not a repeat of previous exchanges. She could probably go back to the beginning of the catering brochure and explain the myriad choices again, in greater detail, but she knew Eli would see that for exactly what it was—a stall tactic.

  And then she didn’t need to stall, because the office door swung open and Laurel walked in. The epitome of feminine business chic, she was wearing a sage-green skirt and a matching tailored suit jacket the same color as her eyes over a white blouse. On her feet were stylish but practical taupe pumps, and her long, dark auburn hair hung around her shoulders and down her back with just a touch of curl at the ends.

  Like their mother, Laurel was a true beauty. She could stop traffic with just a look, and had always had her choice of handsome and attentive beaux. Though until Eli, she’d never seemed willing to settle on any of them.

  “Sorry I’m late,” she murmured, not making eye contact with eit
her Kara or her fiancé as she slipped a pair of oversize sunglasses into her designer handbag.

  Eli, who had gotten up the minute she’d entered, went to her and gave her a quick peck on the cheek. “Don’t worry, your sister has been keeping me plenty entertained. Apparently, we have more than three hundred different choices when it comes to entrées, each of which Kara was more than happy to describe in detail.”

  He turned back to Kara with a smile. “Details I’m sure she’ll be regaling you with next.”

  He didn’t seem the least bit put out at the prospect of hearing her catering spiel all over again, which prompted her to return his smile.

  The corners of Laurel’s mouth lifted in response, but her eyes were flat, her expression tense. Her fingers clutched the strap of her purse so tightly her knuckles were white.

  “Can we talk?” she asked Eli in a low voice. Then to Kara, she said, “I’m sorry, but can we do this another time? I really need to speak with Eli.”

  “Of course,” Kara replied, getting quickly to her feet to gather her things.

  Folders under her arm and portfolio in hand, she started for the door, but paused before the couple. Eli still looked completely at ease, but tension radiated from Laurel in waves, and Kara tried without words, sister to sister, to convey her concern and ask if everything was all right, if there was anything she could do.

  “Call me when you’re ready to reschedule,” she told them simply, offering Eli a short nod and brushing her hand encouragingly down her sister’s arm as she continued on her way.

  Closing the door behind her with a soft click, she hoped everything was all right and knew she would be calling her sister to find out what was going on as soon as she got home.

  * * *

  From the look on Laurel’s face, and the fact that she’d sent her sister away, Eli knew something was wrong. He just hoped it was nothing too awful. Laurel and the rest of the Kincaid family had had a hell of a year already; he honestly wasn’t sure she—or they—could take much more.