Oh, Keep Your Shirt On - Michelle Pennington Page 0,42

aggravated glare. I didn’t know if she was madder about us coming in at the last second or the fact that he now had his arm around me. But it wasn’t his mom that caught my eye. It was the gorgeous girl walking next to her who stopped to stare at me like she’d just been struck by lightning.

“That’s Victoria,” I said, mumbling in shock.

“What? Oh, yeah. I’ve always called her Tori. Dang. Don’t tell me you know her.”

Know her? This was the worst—literally the worst—situation fate could have dealt me. “Damien, your ex-girlfriend is my stepsister.”

Chapter Sixteen

It was the first time I’d ever seen Damien at a loss for words.

Unable to stand the shock on Victoria’s face a second longer, I turned my back toward her and threw a desperate look up at Damien. “I can’t do this. We have to leave. Or I have to leave. You can stay. I can’t stay.”

Damien gripped both of my arms. “Not on your life. I kept my end of the deal. You’re going to keep yours. We just need to think.”

“What we need is an escape plan. Look, I don’t even know her that well. I’ve seen her, like, three times total, and one of those was at our parents’ wedding.” Then a new horror swept through me. “Holy cow. She’s going to know I’m wearing an old bridesmaid’s dress.”

I didn’t care about styles or clothes or any of that crap normally, but this was not cool. “I’d rather run around naked.”

“What?” Damien’s eyebrows were halfway to his hairline.

“I didn’t mean to say that out loud.” I glanced over my shoulder and saw that Victoria’s shock had now turned into a death glare. It sent a shiver down my spine. “Dang. Everything in me is screaming that I should run away and save myself, but I don’t think I can just abandon you to that fate.”

Damien snapped his fingers, his eyes widening. “You’re the witchy cockroach.”

“What?” I asked, loud enough for the sweet old lady wearing pearls and white gloves standing in front of me in the aisle to jump and clasp her chest.

“That’s how Tori described her stepsister to me.” He laughed softly and mused thoughtfully, “What a crazy world. To think I’d…”

“Damien, we’re all waiting for you,” his mom called out from the center aisle.

He motioned to the elderly couple slowly inching their way through the row in front of us. “We’ll be right there.”

But apparently his mom didn’t want to wait to lecture him. “Why were you late? What if you’d missed Isabella’s wedding?”

“I’m sure no one would have noticed but you. And I didn’t anyway.”

While Damien tried to calm his mother, I kept my eyes down at the floor to make sure I didn’t step on the heel of the old lady’s blue leather penny loafers. But really, I was just avoiding Victoria’s death glare.

Apparently, walking about six inches at a time with slow, slow steps had tickled Damien’s sense of humor. By the time we were finally able to stand in front of his family, he had a devilish gleam in his eyes I didn’t trust one little bit.

His mom sighed in relief, as if the strain of holding onto her temper was more than she could bear. “If you had gotten here thirty minutes early, like I asked you to, you wouldn’t have gotten stuck back there.”

He smiled. “Yes. I would have been stuck sitting with all of you. Saved myself there, didn’t I?”

“Damien. Don’t be rude. Poor Tori must have felt awkward sitting with us without you there.”

He glanced at Victoria. “I promise she would have felt more awkward if I had been.” Then he looked up at the rest of his family, who all stood around watching. They might as well have been kicked back with a bucket of popcorn from the way they were obviously enjoying the show. “Hey, everyone, this is my girlfriend, Krista Bennett. I know you’ve all been anxious to find out if she’s real or not.”

A handsome man who didn’t resemble Damien much except for the gleam of humor and warmth in his eyes stretched his hand out to me. “I’m Patrick Little Damien’s dad, and I, for one, am happy to meet you, Krista. My wife’s been talking so much about you, and it’s good to put a face to her ravings.”

Despite myself, I felt a traitorous urge to chuckle. “Were you expecting a long, crooked nose with a hairy wart on it?”

He laughed. “No. I know