One Dance with the Sheikh Read online

  All Work…All Play

  A spontaneous, passion-filled Vegas romp with a sheikh is out of the ordinary for sensible Laurel Kincaid. She’s walked the straight-and-narrow her entire life and has wound up with more stress and conflict than she can handle. Indulging in a jaunt with irresistible Rakin Whitcomb Abdellah is a delicious escape. So delicious that she says “I do” to a short-term marriage of convenience so he can claim his inheritance. But being husband and wife behind closed doors is more tantalizing than either of them expected, and suddenly the rules of their temporary marriage feel very inconvenient….

  “You Are Now Man And Wife.”

  Man and wife.

  Laurel’s sense of disbelief grew more acute.

  A month ago she’d been contemplating marrying Eli, now she was married to a man she hadn’t met until only a few days ago.

  The soulful strains of “O Sole Mio” wound their way around Laurel’s heart and tugged tight. For an instant she wished this had been a real romance—the wedding of her heart.

  But it wasn’t.

  It was a convenient arrangement—for both of them. Yet Laurel knew there was more than that to what was passing between them. Rakin had promised her experiences she’d never had…and he was delivering on that. And somewhere in the change, she hoped to find herself. Someone who didn’t live to please others, someone who took joy in her own life: the Laurel Kincaid she’d never allowed herself to be.

  Dear Reader,

  One Dance with the Sheikh will be on the shelves in May, yet I’m writing this letter to you as Christmas fast approaches. Decorations are up in the malls and Christmas trees decked with colored lights are appearing in homes. It’s the season for friends and family.

  Dynasties series like The Kincaids are always special. They’re about bonds. Family. Friendship. Love. Often sad and bad things happen—in this case a father has been murdered. There are misunderstandings and betrayals—turbulent and troubled times—yet couples still manage to fall in love, the family grows closer and the generations will continue.

  There are good times. There are tough times. Just like in real life.

  I’ve just finished re-reading a Christmas story written by my friend Sandra Hyatt, in whose memory this story is dedicated, where she said, “Whatever your religious persuasion it never hurts to stop and count your blessings and the gifts in your life.”

  That’s what I’m determined to do this Christmas—and not only this Christmas…I’m going to spend all of 2012 counting my blessings and the gifts in my life.

  So, even though Christmas will be long past by the time you pick up One Dance with the Sheikh, I do hope you will join me in thinking about the blessings and gifts in your life—sometimes amidst turbulent and troubled times.

  And I’ll be right there with you.

  Please visit my website at www.tessaradley.com or friend me on Facebook.

  With love,

  Tessa Radley

  Tessa

  Radley

  One Dance

  with the Sheikh

  Books by Tessa Radley

  Harlequin Desire

  Reclaiming His Pregnant Widow #2091

  One Dance with the Sheikh #2156

  Silhouette Desire

  Black Widow Bride #1794

  Rich Man’s Revenge #1806

  *The Kyriakos Virgin Bride #1822

  *The Apollonides Mistress Scandal #1829

  *The Desert Bride of Al Sayed #1835

  Pride & a Pregnancy Secret #1849

  &Mistaken Mistress #1901

  &Spaniard’s Seduction #1907

  &Pregnancy Proposal #1914

  &The Untamed Sheik #1933

  Billion-Dollar Baby Bargain #1961

  Millionaire under the Mistletoe #1985

  Falling for His Proper Mistress #2030

  Saved by the Sheikh! #2045

  The Boss’s Baby Affair #2067

  *Billionaire Heirs

  &The Saxon Brides

  Other titles by this author available in ebook format.

  TESSA RADLEY

  loves traveling, reading and watching the world around her. As a teen Tessa wanted to be an intrepid foreign correspondent. But after completing a bachelor of arts degree and marrying her sweetheart, she became fascinated by law and ended up studying further and practicing as an attorney in a city firm.

  A six-month break spent traveling through Australia with her family rewoke the yen to write. And life as a writer suits her perfectly—traveling and reading count as research, and as for analyzing the world…well, she can think “what if?” all day long. When she’s not reading, traveling or thinking about writing, she’s spending time with her husband, her two sons or her zany and wonderful friends. You can contact Tessa through her website, www.tessaradley.com.

  In Loving Memory of Sandra Hyatt

  Wise Woman, Best Friend and Awesome Writer!

  * * *

  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 Tessa Radley 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

  Epilogue

  The Kincaids: Jack And Nikki

  One

  Who was she?

  Dark red hair hung down her back, and as she shifted, the color changed like tongues of fire. Her tall, slender body was encased in a shimmering silvery grey gown that clung to her like moonlight on a dark night.

  Rakin Whitcomb Abdellah had arrived at the giant white gazebo in the garden in front of the house where the guests were gathered in time to see the bride and groom link hands in front of the celebrant. It had surprised him that it had taken the usually responsible Eli only a matter of weeks to set aside the caution of a lifetime and to fall head over heels in love with his bride. But what had astonished Rakin more was the fact that Eli was marrying a Kincaid at all—since, less than a month ago, Kara’s own sister had jilted Eli. Yet, once his gaze settled on the wedding group, it was the maid of honor with her glorious hair and eye-catching beauty who captured Rakin’s attention as she moved forward to take the bouquet of red roses from the bride.

  This could only be Laurel Kincaid, the woman who’d jilted his best friend Eli less than a month before their wedding day.

  The woman who Eli had suggested could be the solution to all Rakin’s problems.

  A child, no more than three or four years old, strutted forward bearing a fat cush
ion. Rakin squinted and made out the two rings perched on top. Laurel stepped forward and held out a hand to guide him, but he tugged away, clearly reluctant to stand beside two flower girls. Instead he barreled his way between Eli and his bride Kara Kincaid, eliciting both chuckles and sighs as he stole hearts.

  The maid of honor was scanning the guests.

  Above the bouquet of red roses, her eyes were green. The brightest emerald Rakin had ever seen. Unexpectedly, her gaze landed on him. Time stopped. The murmurs around him, the sound of Kara saying her vows, the heady fragrance of the Southern blooms all faded from Rakin’s consciousness. There was only…her.

  Then she glanced away.

  And the tension that had gripped him slowly eased.

  Eli had warned him that his ex-fiancée was a beauty, yet Rakin hadn’t been prepared for his body’s reaction to her as their eyes had locked. Lust. Becoming romantically entangled with her was not an option. For starters, she was a Charleston Kincaid—not some nymphet with pleasure on her mind. And, if he took Eli’s advice, the proposal he intended to put to her had everything to do with business, and nothing to do with pleasure.

  Despite the gorgeous green-eyed, auburn-haired wrapping, Laurel Kincaid had Do Not Touch written all over her.

  Yet even so, Rakin could scarcely wait for the ceremony to end, for the moment when he congratulated the newlyweds—and Eli introduced him to the maid of honor. Then he would decide whether she would fit in with his plans.

  * * *

  The rich scent of jasmine and gardenia announced that summer had arrived in the South.

  Her sister’s wedding was being held at the Kincaid family home, a two-and-a-half story elaborately embellished federal mansion where Laurel had grown up. The imposing facade flanked by decorative balconies, each with a pagoda roof, had always been home to Laurel and her siblings.

  But at the moment she was less concerned with the details of the wedding venue than the identity of one tall dark and handsome stranger. Laurel had a pretty good idea of the identities of all the guests at her sister’s wedding; after all, Kara had originally run all the guests’ names past her when this was supposed to have been her own wedding.

  And the stranger with the dark, exotic good looks hadn’t been on it.

  So where did Kara know him from? And why had her sister never mentioned him before?

  If she didn’t quit shooting surreptitious glances at the man her sisters would have her married off to him in an instant. And she wasn’t interested in him; she simply wanted to know who he was.

  Laurel averted her gaze and watched as Eli took Kara’s hands in his, the gold of their newly donned wedding rings glinting in the late afternoon sun. Unexpectedly her throat tightened.

  Oh, no. She wasn’t going to cry!

  She’d never been the type to gush tears at weddings. … She always smiled and said the right thing at the right time. So why was she suddenly feeling like this? This wedding was a joyous occasion, not a time to shed tears.

  And heaven knew what interpretation people would put on it if she did start to cry. She scanned the enormous number of guests all dressed up and smiling. Laurel could think of at least one or two who would put the worst possible slant on it. Then the damage would be done, and rumors would be rife around the city that she was heartbroken about Kara marrying Eli—after she had broken off her own engagement to him.

  Laurel was utterly delighted for them both. She was relieved she wasn’t marrying Eli.

  But no one would believe that if she started to weep.

  Get a grip.

  Her eyes fell onto her mother.

  Now there was reason to cry. Elizabeth Kincaid was a legendary Southern beauty. Everyone said she’d have been crowned Miss South Carolina, if she’d ever entered—but soft-spoken, eternally elegant Elizabeth had too much class to enter beauty pageants. Instead, after her family had fallen on hard times, she’d married Reginald Kincaid and become one of the most accomplished hostesses in Charleston and brought cachet to the nouveau riche Kincaid name.

  She was smiling as she watched Kara and Eli tie the knot.

  Yet the mother of the bride almost hadn’t made it to the wedding. She’d been arrested for killing her husband. The police had believed they’d had enough evidence to make a case. In the past months, in the very darkest moments, Laurel had worried that her mother might actually be convicted of her father’s murder.

  But her mother had been cleared.

  And now suspicion for her father’s death rested on the brooding half brother Laurel and her siblings had learned about at her father’s funeral. Laurel would never forget that day—or the shock that her father had been living a secret double life for decades.

  Now Jack Sinclair sat beside his mother, Angela Sinclair. Her father’s mistress—and life-long love.

  On Angela’s other side sat her other son. The Sinclairs had been invited here today because Elizabeth Kincaid believed in always doing the Right Thing—even when it cost her dearly. The contrast between the half brothers was stark. Alan had none of Jack’s dark moodiness. Blond and light, he was like the sun bursting through his half brother’s dark thunder cloud.

  Laurel decided she was becoming fanciful.

  “You may kiss the bride,” the celebrant was saying.

  Eli bent forward, a head taller than his bride, and Laurel found herself looking away to give the couple a moment of privacy. Of course, she looked straight into a pair of dark eyes.

  * * *

  The generously proportioned bedrooms that Laurel, Kara and Lily had once occupied on the second floor of the historic federal mansion had been transformed into an impromptu bridal dressing-room wing for the wedding day. Pausing just inside the doorway of Kara’s childhood room, Laurel took in the leftover feminine paraphernalia scattered around the room.

  Open shoe boxes spilled tissue paper over the carpet. A posy abandoned by one of the flower girls lay on the bed. The fine lace veil that Kara had worn for the ceremony was already carefully draped over a chair back. On the dresser, between cut-glass perfume bottles, were four sparkling tulip glasses, and a bottle of champagne chilled in an ice bucket beside the dresser. A good way to calm the bride’s nerves while she freshened up, Laurel decided.

  Amidst the mayhem, Kara stood in front of a cheval mirror examining the hem of her wedding dress critically. “I haven’t torn a hole in the hem, have I, Laurel?”

  Moving forward, Laurel squinted at the delicately scalloped edge that Kara was holding up. “Not that I can see.”

  “Thank heavens.” Relief filled her younger sister’s voice as she let the beautiful white fabric drop. “I thought I might have put a heel through it when I came back down the aisle.”

  “Relax. It’s all fine.” Laurel scanned her sister’s face. Kara’s skin glowed, needing no added artifice. The shimmer of eye shadow accentuated her green eyes, but her lips had lost the gloss they’d worn before the ceremony. Laurel’s mouth quirked up. “You make a beautiful bride, Mrs. Houghton—even without touching up the gloss that your groom kissed off.”

  It was true. Kara’s radiance had given her the kind of beauty that came from inner happiness. Taking care not to crush the delicate wedding dress, Laurel gave her sister a tentative hug. But Kara had no such scruples and flung her arms around Laurel.

  “Thank you, oh, thank you, for jilting Eli!”

  Laurel looked into eyes almost the same green as her own, eyes they’d inherited from their mother. “Believe me, if I’d married your groom it would have been the biggest mistake of both our lives.”

  It had been one thing to drift into an engagement with Eli, but once the time to plan the wedding had arrived, Laurel had been distressed to discover her heart wasn’t in it.

  Instead of daydreaming about wedded bliss, she�
�d found herself dwelling on how static her life had become.

  How predictable.

  How boring.

  And what it would take to get a life. To her discomfort, writing out lists of wedding guests who’d accepted their invitations to the big day had not even featured.

  That was when Laurel had created the How to Get a Life List.

  Jilt Eli. Item No. 1 on the List, as she’d started thinking of it, had looked so stark, so cruel when she’d stared at the two words topping the otherwise blank piece of paper, that she hadn’t known if she was capable of breaking off her engagement to Eli.

  His feelings would be hurt. Her family would be devastated. But writing it down had brought such a sense of catharsis that Laurel had known she’d had no other choice.

  She and Eli were simply not meant to be.

  To spare his feelings, she’d told him she couldn’t marry him until the upheaval in her life—her father’s murder, the shocking discovery of his other family and the anguish of her mother’s arrest—had settled down. But the overwhelming relief in Eli’s eyes brought home the knowledge that she wasn’t the only one who wanted out.

  Almost a month had passed since she’d jilted Eli. Today her ex-fiancé was celebrating the happiness he’d found—with her sister. Eli had gotten himself a life.

  However, until putting on Item No. 2—red-lipstick—this morning during the final preparations, she had done nothing more about tackling the rest of the List. Breaking the strictures of a lifetime was proving to be daunting. Despite the List which she carried in her purse as a constant prod to action.

  That had to change, she had to start living. Really living.

  Like that electric moment during the ceremony when she’d met a pair of dark eyes and she’d been jolted by a surge of energy. That had been living.

  Extricating herself from her sister’s arms, Laurel lifted the bottle of champagne from the ice bucket and filled two of the flutes, then passed one to Kara.

  She raised her glass in a toast. “Be happy.”