Tempted by the Tycoon's Proposal

A covered walkway had been erected to shelter guests from the ferry dock as they loaded into the van that would shuttle them to the lodge. Amber and MacKenzie joined the group. A waiter was there to greet everyone with a tray of champagne in flutes. Continuing to observe the scene from afar, Kento could hear MacKenzie’s shrill giggle.

There was a banner hung to welcome their party. It read, Christy and Lucas. Forever Begins Now.

Kento knew that transportation from the harbor to the lodge had been prearranged. But he’d booked his own, guessing that he wouldn’t want to be part of the festivities until he’d settled in. He waited for the van full of wedding guests to leave. A second, empty van pulled into position for the arrivals from the next ferry. The waiter set more flutes on his tray and filled them with bubbly.

Only then, in the solitude, did Kento make his way up the gangplank and slip into the black limo that awaited him.

* * *

“Did you hear? Harris Denby drained her bank accounts before he vanished.”

Erin Barclay entered the lounge adjacent to the lobby of the upscale Locklear Lodge on Willminson Island, where her cousin Christy was marrying longtime boyfriend Lucas. Erin had arrived just in time to overhear a group of wedding guests talking about her.

“Where did his parents finally track him down?”

“Partying in Greece with some European actresses.”

“He just left Erin? Without a word?”

She turned away from their view so that she could listen in without yet being spotted.

“What kind of man does that?”

“The kind who lives off his trust fund with nothing expected of him and too much time on his hands. Apparently, his o

wn family’s wealth wasn’t enough. He went after Barclay wealth.”

“The passed-down-from-generations, too-much-to-even-count kind of money.” A few high-pitched giggles erupted. “Our favorite kind of people.”

Bridesmaids and daddy’s little rich girls Amber Dutton and MacKenzie VanBurton seemed to know an awful lot about her. They were friends of Christy’s that Erin had socialized with a few times over the years. The two stood in a cluster with the three groomsmen, who listened dutifully to the girls as they all sipped something warm-looking from heavy brown mugs.

Was this how the weekend was going to go? Erin wondered, with gossip swirling about her being freshly dumped by Harris T. Denby III? Who had left her at the town house they’d shared in Spokane, where her parents had created a job for her at one of their offices there. Harris had simply disappeared in the middle of one night. Once he was located and word got out, the media that followed high society jumped on the story and, thereby, made sure that everyone Erin knew had heard about it.

“Christy said she never trusted Harris from the beginning,” MacKenzie prattled on.

“Not from the start,” Amber echoed.

Erin knew that Christy must have been defending her by telling them that she had never liked Harris. If only she had heeded that warning!

Subtly peering around the lounge, she was still trying to avoid being noticed just yet. The lodge was as rustic glam as she’d remembered when she accompanied Christy and Aunt Olivia to tour it as a possible wedding venue. Everything was done in the finest materials. A fire in the huge stone hearth gave the room a comfortable warmth and smell. Thick rugs covered large areas of the tiled floor. Overstuffed leather furniture and tree-trunk tables were arranged into clusters. Paintings of nature, featuring flora and fauna native to the area, decorated the walls. A buffet table held a selection of coffees and teas as well as small sandwiches, fruit and cookies, all artfully displayed on raised platters.

Erin was hungry. She hadn’t eaten since before she left the town house in Spokane to head to the airport for her short flight to Seattle. But she wasn’t sure she was ready to face the bridesmaid firing squad and their potential interrogation. As the quintet still had their backs to her, she was able to continue listening for the two words she knew she’d hear. They came immediately.

“You know she used to date Kento Yamamoto?” One of the men spoke the only name that had ever made Erin’s heartbeat sputter. Of all the things she was likely to have to face this weekend, seeing Kento again was the scariest.

Amber exclaimed, “We know! He gave us a ride here on his boat.”

“On his boat.”

“He’s a major player in the software sector, isn’t he?” another other man in the group asked.

“Major.”

“He’s so gorgeous,” MacKenzie threw in.

He was at that. Erin knew that the seven years they’d been apart looked good on him because she’d seen articles in magazines about the young, unmarried billionaire. From the photos she could see that nothing had changed about him being six foot three with hair that was too long for a businessman. Nor the dark, probing eyes and slim hips. Although she’d noticed that his face had matured from that of university student to twenty-eight-year-old CEO.

“And he’s megarich,” Amber continued to blab.