The Wedding Pact Box Set - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,9

forward and held out his hand. “I’m Megan’s father, Bart Vandemeer. Nice to finally meet the man who’s marrying my little girl. It’s Jay, isn’t it?”

Josh gaped at the man, at a loss for words. For once in his life he hadn’t bothered to come up with an intricate plan before jumping into a situation. He’d asked for fate to intervene, and the very man he needed to talk to had been dropped right in front of him.

For once in his life, he was going to just go for it.

He shifted Megan on his shoulder and awkwardly held out his hand for a shake, still speechless. These people obviously had no idea he wasn’t Megan’s real fiancé. How wrong would it be if he used that to his advantage? After all, he’d be helping Megan, too. She was in no condition to deal with her family at the moment. “Josh, actually.”

Bart Vandemeer looked confused. “Megan told us your name was Jay.”

“Oh . . . Jay is my nickname. You can call me Jay or Josh, but I usually go by Josh.”

“What?” Nicole Vandemeer shrieked, her voice raising a full octave. “All the materials for the wedding list your name as Jay.”

Josh struggled to keep from grimacing. “Jay is fine. It really doesn’t matter.”

“I don’t know why Megan doesn’t tell me these things,” the woman grumbled. An elderly woman grinned like a Cheshire cat behind her, as if finding the whole exchange amusing.

Megan’s father ignored his wife. “Well, Josh. Welcome to Kansas City.” The older man beamed. “We look forward to getting to know you better.”

Bart Vandemeer had no idea how much Josh was looking forward to getting to know him, too.

Chapter Four

When Megan woke, she was pretty sure the pounding in her head was about to split it wide open. This was worse than the New Year’s Eve party, when she’d gotten so drunk on tequila shooters she stood up on the coffee table and serenaded her then-boyfriend with “My Heart Will Go On” . . . only to break up with him an hour later when she found him kissing Lisa Menendez at midnight with enough tongue to contradict his protests that it was a friendly peck.

Now that she thought about it, cheating boyfriends had been a constant in her dating life. She knew the topic deserved closer inspection, but there was no way she could psychoanalyze herself until she’d taken an ibuprofen.

It took her a second to orient herself. She was lying on her stomach, her cheek pressed against something soft and wet. When she finally pried her eyes open, she was surprised to find herself in her old bedroom. Her vision was blurry until it focused on a familiar bulletin board attached to a lavender wall. She’d hung the board up the summer before her freshman year of high school, ready to capture her high school memories with her two best friends, Blair and Libby. The three of them were together in plenty of the photos—at football games, class trips, and sleepovers. But there were also individual shots of Libby in her cheerleader uniform and Blair in her business suit, ready for a debate match. The familiar pang of regret and inferiority flooded her.

Megan had never found her place in high school. Part of the problem was her mom’s unrelenting quest to make her into some kind of mini-me. Her mother never seemed to tire of coercing her to go on day-long shopping trips. When Megan reached high school, she finally announced that enough was enough. She would rather stand naked in history class reciting the United States Constitution than go on another torture session with her mother. Her mother had done exactly what she’d always done in response to Megan’s protests: she ignored them. But one Saturday morning, mother and daughter were locked in a standoff over Nicole’s meticulously planned day at the Country Club Plaza when Megan’s father exercised one of his rare interventions. He told her mother that she’d had fourteen years to try to sway Megan to the dark side and failed. Then he advised Megan she had five minutes to get everything she needed for an overnight camping trip with him and her brother Kevin.

Camping hadn’t figured into her plans for the weekend. What she really wanted was to go spend the afternoon with Libby. But an inmate on death row didn’t protest when his reprieve meant moving to maximum security instead of freedom, so Megan had done as he’d suggested.

And to