The Wedding Pact Box Set - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,240

you okay, darling? I know that had to be humiliating.”

She cringed. “You have no idea.”

His face softened. “I meant what I said, Blair. I still want to marry you. I love you enough to overlook all of this.”

She shook her head. “I just don’t see how you can feel that way.”

“I’m not like you.”

“Thank God for that, right?” she asked dryly.

He placed a kiss on her mouth. “We’ll go through with the wedding to save your job. Then we’ll sort everything else out later. Okay?”

“That’s right, we’re going to save my job.” It was all she had left. Her gaze narrowed. “I want you to propose to me again.”

His eyes widened. “What?”

“I’ve heard another man’s proposal and accepted it since last night, Neil. You need to propose again.”

“Okay . . .” He took her hand in his. “Blair Hansen, you are perfect for me. Will you marry me?”

She smiled and took her hand from his. “I’ll see you at the wedding.” Then she turned and started for the door.

“But you don’t have your car. Don’t you want me to take you home?”

She looked back at him. “No. I have so much to do to prepare for the wedding. I want everything to be perfect.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Garrett Lowry was a desperate man. He’d spent an hour repeatedly calling and texting Blair until Megan finally answered and told him that Blair had never picked up her purse. She still didn’t have her phone.

The rest of the day was spent trying to get the contract for Neil put together, emailing documents back and forth between a law school friend who was a practicing estate law attorney in Missouri. But his heart was in his throat when he asked Nana to meet him in the hotel bar.

He sat at a table, nervously tapping his pen on the file sitting in front of him on the bistro table. As he watched her approach, hobbling toward him with her cane, he realized Neil might get his inheritance sooner than Garrett would like, and not just because he didn’t want his cousin to have possession. She was walking slower than ever. She had more wrinkles, and her eyes were deeper set than usual. She looked older than her years, and it scared him.

When she neared the table, he stood to help her with her seat, and she waved him off. “The day I can’t sit my ass in a chair is the day I’m checking into Sunnybrook Retirement Home.”

“I already told you I wouldn’t let that happen, Nana.”

She eased herself onto the chair and looked up at him as he sat across from her. “What are you going to do about it? Put me in your fancy California apartment?”

He shrugged. “I could move in with you.”

She laughed. “Claiming your inheritance before my body’s even cold.”

His eyes flew open. “No, Nana! I—”

She laughed again. “Relax, boy. I’m teasing ya. That’s not your style.” She shifted around in her chair, leaning her hand on her cane. “But from the way you look, I presume there’s still a wedding today.”

He sighed. “It’s a long story, but basically Neil tricked Blair into thinking I was about to sleep with another woman after she and I . . . had already gotten back together. She went to break things off with Neil, and he sent his girlfriend to my hotel room. She started stripping . . .”

“And Blair showed up?”

“Yeah, with Neil.”

“Aww . . . and he made sure to paint you as the devil incarnate.”

He didn’t respond. The answer was obvious.

“So did you invite me here to lick your wounds for ya? ’Cause you know that’s not my style.”

“No, Nana.” He swallowed. Jesus, this was hard. “I want to ask you for a favor.”

“Go on.”

“Neil is willing to be bought off.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“He’s agreed not to marry Blair if I’ll give him something in return.”

Sadness filled her eyes. “So you give him my land in exchange for canceling the wedding.”

He nodded, part of him dying inside.

“I thought that girl had some sense in her head. Why can’t she just tell him no?”

“She doesn’t know he’s been cheating on her.”

“Well, why not?”

“Uh . . .” he stammered. “It would hurt her. Badly. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her.”

“The girl I met at that spectacle of a wedding shower was no wilting flower. She’s made of sterner stuff. She’s not going to fall to pieces if she finds out, so what were you thinking?”

She was right. God, he was an