by Heidi Betts
It had been a week since she’d driven back to Charleston, angry and alone and well over the speed limit. She hadn’t told anyone she was back in town, not even her family.
Never mind that she’d originally felt guilty about leaving for even one short weekend…and then a whole week…given everything going on with the investigation of her father’s murder and her mother being suspected of the crime. When it came to running home with her heart broken and her tail tucked between her legs, she’d been too distracted and miserable to think of anything—or anybody—but herself.
She was wallowing and acting pathetic, and she knew it. She’d been chastising herself for days, annoyed that she’d let a man reduce her to such a state.
And she was just about to shake off her melancholy…really, she was.
But if it was Eli knocking, seeing him again was sure to set her back and cause her to remain housebound for another month, at least. She’d already avoided a dozen of his calls and refused to play back any of the messages he might have left.
The knocking persisted, but didn’t turn to full-out pounding, which made her think maybe it wasn’t Eli. And then she heard the faint sound of a woman’s voice she thought might be her sister’s.
Abandoning her tea and the towel on the kitchen island, she made her way less than enthusiastically toward the front of the house. Family was better than Eli at this point, but not by much. She honestly didn’t know if she could face them after what she’d done…what had been done to her…and the secrets she was harboring.
At the door, she peeked through the peephole and nearly groaned, letting her head fall against the cool wooden panel. Of all the family members who might have dropped by when she was still feeling like algae at the bottom of an abandoned swimming pool, it had to be Laurel. It just had to be Laurel.
“Kara,” she heard her sister call out from the other side of the door. “I know you’re in there. Open up—please. We’re really starting to get concerned about you.”
Kara’s heart squeezed and she sniffed back a wave of emotion. Family—her family, at any rate—was always there for her. Always worrying about her, watching out for her, ready to leap to her aid or defense, if necessary. The least she could do was let them know she was all right.
Taking a deep breath, she straightened her spine and unlocked the door, opening it to a wall of bright sunshine and one very agitated older sister.
“Thank God,” Laurel huffed, pushing past her into the house. “I was about to call the police or ask one of your burly neighbors to break down the door.”
“I don’t have any burly neighbors,” Kara murmured.
Laurel was dressed for work in a taupe suit with chocolate-brown edging and a brown clutch purse that matched her heels. Even as upset as she obviously was, she looked completely poised and pulled together.
A sharp contrast to Kara’s current state of dress, that was for sure. She’d been in pajamas or ballet pants and tank tops since returning from Seabrook Island, and since it was early yet—hey, it wasn’t quite noon—she was still wearing the cotton shorts and camisole she’d slept in the night before.
Laying her purse on the hallway credenza, Laurel sighed and asked, “Are you okay?”
It took some doing, but Kara managed to hold back a ragged sob, nodding silently instead.
“Eli has been calling. Everybody. He said something happened at the resort and he’s worried about you.” She paused, giving Kara a chance to fill in the blanks. When she didn’t, Laurel said, “Do you want to talk about it?”
“I really don’t,” Kara told her, not surprised when her voice cracked slightly. Swallowing hard, she cleared her throat and added, “Not right now.”
Another beat passed, and then, like the wonderful sister she was, Laurel let it drop. With a cheery smile Kara knew was solely for her benefit, her sister put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to one side.
“Okay,” she said, “you can fill me in later. Right now, you need to go upstairs and get changed. We’re going out to lunch.”
“We are?”
“Yes, ma’am. You’ve been holed up in here long enough. I don’t know what’s going on, and you don’t have to tell me until you’re ready, but there have been some new developments with Daddy’s case that I thought you might like to hear about.”
Kara’s shoulders went back and she suddenly stood a couple inches taller. “What developments?”
Laurel grinned. “If you want to find out, you’ll have to stop moping, get dressed and come with me.”
“I haven’t been moping,” Kara protested, sounding petulant, even to her own ears. “I’ve been working. Quietly and alone.” Often in the dark. But she had gotten some work done since getting back, in between bouts of feeling sorry for herself.
Laurel raised a disbelieving brow, and Kara sighed in defeat.
“Fine. Give me twenty minutes,” she told her, heading for the stairs. “There’s a cup of hot tea in the kitchen. Help yourself, if you want it.”
* * *
They ended up seated at one of the outdoor tables of a local bakery-slash-coffee shop within walking distance of Kara’s house, rather than driving to a sit-down restaurant. Partly because Kara was too eager to hear the latest about the investigation, and partly because she’d been doing almost nothing but eating since her return from Seabrook Island.
While Laurel picked at a giant cranberry-orange-nut muffin, Kara kept her hands wrapped around the oversize ceramic cup of her low-fat cinnamon dolce latte that she hadn’t yet bothered to taste. For the first time all week, she wasn’t interested in food, only information.
“All right, all right—stop with the torture. Tell me what’s going on.”
Wiping her hands on her napkin, Laurel finished chewing and swallowed quickly.
“You know Cutter Reynolds, right?” she began.
“Of course.” Cutter was an old friend of the family. Kara couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t known him, and he’d been acquainted with her parents even longer.
Laurel leaned in conspiratorially, even though no other patrons were sitting close enough to overhear or even care what they were talking about. “He and Mama have been having an affair.”
Kara’s mouth fell open, and she jerked back in shock.
“Mmm-hmm. Apparently, it’s been going on for a while.”
“Oh, my stars.”
“And garters. I know.”
“I can’t believe it,” Kara said, still feeling as though she’d been run over by a giant paddlewheel boat.
Although she didn’t know why she was so surprised. If she’d learned anything in the past few months, it was that not everything was as it seemed…and that her family—her parents, especially—were exceptionally adept at keeping secrets. Big ones.
Her father spending years living a double life and carrying on with a second family.
A half brother, and what amounted to a step-brother, she’d known nothing about.
And now her mother’s extramarital affair with a man Kara had always thought of as an uncle of sorts.
“None of us could,” Laurel said. “Although, considering how Daddy was carrying on for so long, I don’t suppose we should hold it against her. It sounds like she really loves him, and she swears they never got involved until after she discovered Daddy had another family.”
Kara nodded. She wasn’t surprised. Her mother was a true Southern lady, in every sense of the word. She might have strayed, but not until after she learned her husband had been unfaithful. Otherwise, Elizabeth Kincaid would have gone down with the ship, remaining true through thick and thin.
“Mama told everybody she was taking Daddy dinner that night. Later, though, she had to admit that the real reason she was at Daddy’s office the day he died—” a fact that had moved Elizabeth to the top of the police’s list of suspects “—was to tell him she wanted a divorce so she could marry Cutter. But at the time Daddy was actually…you know…”
Laurel
trailed off, caught up suddenly in the emotion and remembrance of having a loved one murdered. Emotions and memories Kara shared. Regardless of their ages, they had lost their father—in a violent and gruesome manner—which made them all feel like small, frightened children inside.
As though it had been choreographed, they swallowed past the lumps in their throats.
“I know,” Kara whispered, reaching out to take Laurel’s hand. They squeezed each other’s fingers.
“When it happened, Mama was with Cutter,” Laurel told her in a low voice.
“So Cutter is Mama’s alibi.”
Laurel nodded enthusiastically. “And that’s not all. Nikki Thomas—you know, the investigator we hired to find out whether Jack Sinclair is doing anything to undermine the company—heard from some of her police contacts that surveillance cameras from a parking lot near Daddy’s office picked up Jack’s Aston Martin. It was parked there when Daddy was shot.”
Kara’s eyes went wide. “I thought he had an alibi.”
“He does…or did, anyway. Several of his employees swear he was at his office all evening the night Daddy was killed. But this…well, video doesn’t lie. This definitely casts doubt on that and points away from Mama as the murderer.”
“That’s incredible.” Kara released her sister’s hand and slumped back in her chair. “I can’t believe I leave town for a couple of days and the whole world goes topsy-turvy. But at least it went topsy-turvy in a good way for a change,” she added.
“You were gone more than just a couple of days,” Laurel pointed out, raising a curious brow. “And then you locked yourself inside the house for a week after you got back, refusing to answer the phone or talk to anyone.”
Kara winced. It was true, and as they said, the truth hurt. “I know, I’m sorry. I just…needed to be alone for a while.”
Laurel took another small bite of her muffin and washed it down with a sip of espresso. “Are you ready to talk about it yet? Because I’m ready to listen.”
Her sister’s soft tone, filled with concern and support, brought tears to Kara’s eyes. Blinking them back, she said, “Can I ask you a question?”
Laurel chuckled. “That is a question,” she teased. “But of course you can. You can ask me anything, you know that.”
Taking a deep breath, Kara steeled herself, then met her sister’s warm, moss-green gaze, so much like her own.
“Are you still in love with Eli? I mean, I know you called off the wedding, but do you regret that decision? Do you still have feelings for him?”
Laurel studied her for long, tension-filled moments.
“I never loved him enough,” her sister said finally. “That’s why I called things off. I care about him, as a friend. Despite everything, I hope we’ll still be close. That we can still laugh together at Sunday dinners and run into each other at functions without any awkward, uncomfortable moments. But no, the way you mean…I don’t still love him.”
Kara held her sister’s gaze—and her breath—for several more seconds. Then she looked away, unsure whether to be relieved or more confused.
“You do, though, don’t you?”
Kara’s head snapped up at Laurel’s soft question. Her sister was watching her much the way their mother used to when she knew one of them had done something wrong, but was giving them the chance to confess before she doled out a punishment for both the crime and the lie.
“It’s all right, you know. If you have feelings for Eli, I’ll give you my blessing. Happily. You don’t have to worry that you’ll be stepping on my recently engaged-to-be-wed-to-him toes.”
Kara had been doing so well. So far, she’d managed to keep all of her breakdowns private, bursting into tears only when she was alone and sure no one else would see.
But her sister’s words, so heartfelt and sincere, put another crack in the dam of her emotions. And apparently, all it needed was one more crack to crumble completely, flooding her with every drop of guilt, anger, sadness and fear she’d been working so hard to hold back.
With a ragged sob, she broke down, covering her face with her hands as tears streamed down her face.
“Oh, sweetie.”
Laurel’s chair scraped the ground as she stood up and dragged it to Kara’s side. Wrapping her arms around Kara, she hugged her close, stroking her hair and whispering for her to hush.
“It’s okay, sweetie. Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad.”
Of course, that just made Kara cry harder, because it was that bad. Kara was a terrible, horrible person, sneaking around behind her sister’s back to have an affair with her sister’s ex-fiancé.
Meanwhile, Laurel was practically a saint. Handling her broken engagement like a trouper, giving her blessing to her sister who’d lied and tried to steal her old beau out from under her.
And now Saint Laurel was comforting her, absolving her of guilt and trying to make her feel better. It was enough to make a low-down dirty snake like herself want to slither out onto a dry, hot highway and let traffic run over her until she was flat and dead. It was no less than she deserved.
After Kara had soaked the front of Laurel’s beautiful suit jacket for about ten minutes, and given herself a nasty case of bloodshot eyes, swollen nose and raw throat, her sister patted her back one last time before grasping her shoulders and pushing her upright. Tucking loose strands of hair behind her ears and away from her face, Laurel wiped her cheeks with a napkin, then sat back and fixed her with a stern, determined glare.
“There. Now that you’ve gotten that out of your system, tell me everything.”
So Kara did. She went all the way back to the beginning, admitting to the crush she’d had on Eli since girlhood.
To which Laurel said, “Oh, honey.”
Kara expressed how hard it had been to watch the relationship between Laurel and Eli develop.
“Oh, honey.”
That she’d pushed her own feelings aside, struggling to be truly happy for them and doing everything she could in her capacity as an event coordinator to give them the best wedding possible. But that after Laurel had called things off and Eli had come to her for help—both with his own business and the dissolution of the wedding plans—she’d let herself get swept up, carried away…let herself pretend and believe and almost…almost…
Fresh tears spilled down her cheeks, and Laurel pulled her close a second time.
“Oh, honey,” she murmured again, stroking her hair like a mother comforting a distressed child. “You poor thing. Why didn’t you say something—years ago? I never would have started seeing Eli if I’d known you had feelings for him.”
Kara shook her head, which was still buried in her sister’s neck. “He never showed any interest in me, and I didn’t want to ruin it for you, if you were in love with him.”
Instead of giving her another encouraging tsk or comforting pat on the back, Laurel laughed. Startled, Kara sat up, holding her breath and blinking her wet lashes.
“You know I love you,” Laurel said, “and I would never want to do or say anything to cause you pain, but sweetie…you’ve got to stop worrying about everyone else and worry about yourself for a change.”
With a sigh, Laurel reached for another napkin and started dabbing at Kara’s newly damp cheeks. “You are a wonderful sister. A dedicated daughter. Nobody could ever, ever accuse you of being selfish or not being there for your family when they needed you. But you don’t have to be a martyr for us. You don’t have to give up your own happiness for someone else’s, or spend your life being miserable because you don’t want to rock the boat.”
“I’m not miserable,” Kara said in a tiny, quiet voice that certainly sounded miserable. At least, she hadn’t thought she was. She might not have been deliriously happy, twirling around on a mountaintop like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music, but miserable was a bit of a stretch.
“You’re sitting here, crying into your latte,” Laurel pointed out. “Your hair is a mess, your makeup looks as though it was applied
by Picasso and when I arrived at your house this morning, you were still in your pajamas. If I’m not mistaken, the same ones you’d been wearing for a couple of days.”
Laurel raised a brow. “This, to me, does not scream personal contentment.”
Oh, my god, it was true. She was a mess. She was miserable.
Hadn’t Eli said nearly the same thing to her back on Seabrook Island? Not the miserable part, but the part about always putting others first, not spending enough time looking out for herself.
That made two people who knew her pretty darn well telling her the exact same thing.
So maybe she should listen.
“Does Eli feel the same about you?” Laurel asked.
Her eyes stung and her throat began to close at the mere mention of him, at the flood of memories from their time together. But she wouldn’t start crying again. She needed to buck up and face this head-on, even if it meant reassessing her life and the way she dealt with others—especially her family.
Taking a deep breath, she was completely honest. “I don’t know. He said he did, but then the things Diane said… What if they’re true? What if he was only seducing me because he failed with you, and he really is after the Kincaid name and fortune?”
Laurel frowned, mouth turned down and brows forming a sharp V over her wrinkled nose. “I don’t believe that, and neither do you. We’ve known Eli for years. He’s one of the best men I’ve ever met,” she said with conviction. “Not only is he a millionaire in his own right, he’s noble and honorable. He doesn’t need our money, and probably wouldn’t take it if we offered it to him on a silver serving tray. He’s proud of who he is and what he’s accomplished.”
She paused only long enough to pick up her cup and take a quick swallow of her now tepid espresso. “As for wanting to ride our coattails or marry into the Kincaid family to better himself…” She gave an unladylike snort. “If anything, I’d expect him to avoid the very possibility like the plague, knowing how vicious the rumor mill can be with that kind of fodder. The fact that he’d date either one of us is clearly a sign of the opposite—that he doesn’t care about our name or social prominence, and is perfectly comfortable and confident with who he is.”