The Wedding Pact Box Set - Denise Grover Swank Page 0,1

was spend every moment on board battling nausea. She pulled a bottle of water out of her bag, shook two pills from the travel-size container, and swallowed them, hoping they worked in time.

She stood behind a businessman with a bad comb-over, who looked to be a good twenty years older than her.

He glanced over his shoulder and grinned as he eyed her up and down. “Have you considered your retirement needs?”

Her eyebrows rose. “Retirement?”

“What are you, thirty-two? Thirty-four?”

Megan shot him a glare. “Twenty-nine.”

His grin widened as he moved forward with the line. “It’s never too early to start. Maybe we can chat about it on the plane if we’re sitting next to each other.”

The way her life was going lately, it seemed almost inevitable.

But thankfully, he sat in the front row and she was in seat 3D. She stuffed her purse under the seat and looked out the window, remembering when she and Jay had bought the plane tickets to fly to Kansas City to their wedding. That should have been her first clue that Jay was an asshole she shouldn’t marry. He’d insisted that they each pay for their own ticket.

“Can I get you something, Ms. Vandemeer?”

Megan turned to look at the pretty flight attendant who was smiling down at her. She was perfect, from the top of her blond head to the tips of her fashionable yet practical shoes. To the untrained observer, her smile appeared friendly, but Megan had spent eighteen years under the tutelage of her impossibly perfect mother—long enough for her to know a fake smile when she saw one. And the reminder of her mother was nearly enough to send her over the edge. “Uh . . . a mimosa?”

The attendant nodded. “Coming right up.”

Other passengers filed past Megan, and after a while she realized that the only open first class seat was next to hers. Maybe Jay had forgotten to cancel his ticket, too. Though that didn’t seem likely. Jay was a penny-pinching snob. But what else had she expected from an investment banker? His idea of a wild night was moving her 401K into high-risk mutual funds. Creepy financial planner dude was a year too late.

The flight attendant brought her the drink, and Megan sipped it faster than intended, trying to quell her nerves. The knots in her shoulders were just loosening up when one of the attendants started to shut the cabin door. The woman stopped mid-action, holding the door open to let one last passenger on board. He stood in the front of the aisle, his gaze taking in the empty seat next to hers.

Megan wasn’t the only woman to notice him, even if her attention was less pointed than the others’. At least six feet tall, he had to stoop slightly to keep from bumping his head on the ceiling. The blond flight attendant who’d brought Megan’s drink gave him a sideways glance of appreciation, even if he didn’t notice. Then again, Megan was sure a guy like him, who epitomized the words tall, dark, and handsome, was used to women staring. Jay certainly had been.

The attendant rested her hand lightly on the man’s arm and looked up at him through heavily mascaraed eyelashes, saying something softly so that she had to lean into him to be heard. Looking slightly irritated, he showed her his ticket, and she pointed to the empty seat.

Megan had a neighbor.

He stuffed his overnight bag in the overhead bin and sat next to her, buckling his seatbelt. He was, without a doubt, a better option than the financial planner, but maybe not by much. She guessed him to be close to her age, and he didn’t have the typical laid-back Seattle vibe. He bore a resemblance to Jay, though his thick, wavy dark brown hair wasn’t trimmed as closely as her ex-fiancé’s always was. But his looks didn’t concern her. What did concern her was the determined gleam in his dark brown eyes and the way his jaw was perpetually clenched, as if he were steeling himself against something unpleasant. He looked like he was determined to complete a mission, at any cost.

Momentary fear mingled with the inebriated fog in her head. “Are you a terrorist?” she asked before she could stop herself.

“What?” he asked, his eyes wide as he turned to her in horror.

She shook her head, the movement making her dizzy. “Sorry. You just had a crazed look . . .” She waved her hand in circles in front of her face