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  The Substitute

  The Wedding Pact #1

  Denise Grover Swank

  The Substitute

  The Wedding Pact #1

  Megan Vandemeer meant to tell her parents about her broken engagement, but a month and a half later she finds herself boarding a plane home to her wedding. Having stretched avoidance to its limits, it's time to come clean--a terrifying prospect since her mother is sure to blame her rather than her cheating, emotionally frigid ex. A couple of drinks and two Dramamine later, Megan finds herself spilling her sob story to the tall, dark, and handsome stranger in the seat next to her.

  With only one week left to save his business, Josh McMillan boards a plane to Kansas City in a last-ditch effort, leaving the details to chance. An unexpected answer is delivered in the form of the beautiful brunette beside him. Though she’s completely loopy, her honesty, openness, and humor charm him. So when she passes out before landing, he helps her off the plane--a good deed that leads to a colossal misunderstanding. Her parents assume he’s her fiancé. In a twist of fate, the mix-up might help Josh save his business, so he plays along, figuring he can help Megan too. All he has to do is stage a public break up convincing enough to appease her mother.

  Josh is only supposed to be a substitute groom, but the more time he and Megan spend together, the more their pretend engagement starts to feel real…and the less they want to break it off. Can a relationship that began as a farce turn into happily ever after?

  This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity, and are used fictitiously. All other characters, and all incidents and dialogue, are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real.

  Developmental Editor: Angela Polidoro

  Copy Editor: Shannon Page

  Cover Photographer: James Meierotto

  Artistic Director: Heather Wiley

  Model: Claire Bailey Lee

  Cover Designer: Sarah Hansen

  Copyright 2015 by Denise Grover Swank

  Chapter One

  It was only ten-thirty and it was already a craptastic day.

  Megan Vandemeer stared at the airplane on the tarmac. What the hell was she doing? The Alaska Airlines flight was taking off in twenty minutes and she was actually going to be on it.

  Her phone rang and she dug it out of her purse, cringing when she saw her best friend Blair’s name on the caller ID. She answered anyway.

  “How did she take it?” Blair asked.

  “Well…” Megan glanced up at the digital sign at the gate. Five minutes to boarding.

  “Wait.” Blair’s voice was short. “Tell me that you told her.”

  “I told her.”

  Her friend paused. “You’re lying. That’s your lying voice.”

  Megan shook her head. “I have a lying voice?”

  “It goes up half an octave and gets tight at the end.”

  “Should it worry me that you know me that well?”

  “We’ve been friends since kindergarten. I’d hope I know you that well.” Blair groaned. “You might be trying to change the subject, but your mother’s going to notice when you don’t show up to your own wedding.”

  The overhead PA system blurted a fuzzy message about a changed gate and Megan covered the microphone on her phone.

  “Megan, you have to tell her!” Blair said in frustration.

  “I will.” The digital sign now said four minutes to boarding.

  “When?”

  “Later this afternoon.”

  “Why not just call her now?” The overhead PA sounded again and Blair gasped. “Are you actually at the airport?”

  “Blair...”

  “You never canceled your flight, did you?”

  Megan brushed her hair out of her face and leaned forward, lowering her voice. “Honestly, Blair. I forgot.”

  “Lie.”

  Tears stung Megan’s eyes. “I need a friend right now, Blair. Not a damned lie detector.”

  “I’m sorry.” Blair sighed. “You’re right. Trust me, I understand why you’ve stalled. Your mother scares me and you know I don’t scare easily. But you have to tell her, Megs. The longer you wait, the harder it’s going to be.”

  “I know, but I want to tell her in person. At this point, I could hardly do anything else.”

  “So you’re really coming home?”

  Megan cast a glance at the gate. “I’m boarding the plane in two minutes.”

  “Okay.” Blair was quiet for several seconds and Megan knew she was making some kind of plan. Blair was the one person you could count on in a crisis. If there was ever a zombie apocalypse, her best of chance of survival was to stick by Blair’s side. “You’re going to need to escape tonight. Maybe you, me, and Libby can go out.”

  Megan swallowed the lump in her throat. “Thank you.”

  “What are best friends for? Call me when the deed is done, although I suspect I’ll hear the yelling all the way downtown. If you need to stay at my place, I have a spare bed for you.”

  “What about Neil?”

  “He’s on a three-day business trip and won’t be home until Friday. But even so, he doesn’t like to spend weeknights together.”

  “But you’re getting married in three months. Aren’t you going to be living together?”

  “Of course,” she said, sounding defensive. “We’ll work it out when we need to.”

  “I don’t get it,” Megan muttered, shaking her head.

  “Says the woman boarding a plane to fly to her wedding even though she broke up with her fiancé five weeks ago.”

  “Six.”

  “Sadly, that makes it worse.”

  An airline employee at the gate counter picked up the microphone. “We are about to board Flight 365 to Kansas City. First class passengers will board first.”

  “Blair, I’ve got to go. They’re boarding first class. Considering how much the ticket cost, I might as well board first and get something out of it.”

  “Don’t forget the alcohol. You get free drinks.”

  Megan rolled her eyes, even if the gesture was lost on her friend. “It’s not even eleven o’clock in the morning, Blair.”

  “Mimosas. Bloody Marys. Screwdrivers. There’s a whole assortment of brunch drinks.”

  The overhead PA went off again. “Now boarding our first class passengers.”

  Megan grabbed her purse and stood. “They’re boarding. I’ll call you later.”

  “You can do it, Megs. What’s the worst she can do?”

  She shuddered. “I don’t even want to consider it. I’ll let you know how it goes.” She hung up and stuffed her phone into her purse, eyeing the gate with apprehension.

  The thought of boarding the plane made her nervous for another reason. Turbulence gave her horrible airsickness. But her coworker had suggested she take Dramamine as a preventive measure. While Megan hated taking medication, even aspirin for a headache, she had enough to worry about once she got off the plane. The last thing she wanted to do 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 cha
t 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. But 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. 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 to help justify her statement, then quickly dropped it to her lap. What on earth had possessed her to say that?

  Moments later, the flirty attendant came back and leaned across the man to grab the empty glass on Megan’s tray. Still bent over, the blond turned to face him, her face less than a foot from his. “Don’t you worry, Mr. McMillan.” She patted his arm again. “I’ll come take care of you just as soon as I can.”

  His mouth parted slightly before he grunted, “Thanks.”

  Megan had to wonder what the attendant’s definition of taking care of him included.

  The flight crew started the safety demonstration and Megan leaned her head against the seat, her fingers digging into the armrest. When this flight landed, she would finally have to do what she’d been avoiding for over a month…but how? How was she going to face her mother?

  “Afraid of flying?” the man next to her asked, sounding displeased by the prospect.

  “No, just crashing and burning.” Which was exactly what was going to happen to her after they landed.

  Chapter Two

  It was his turn to ask, “What?”

  “Not the plane.” The brunette’s brown eyes fluttered open, glistening with tears. “My life.”

  Josh nearly panicked. He could deal with paranoid people worried about plane crashes, but he hoped to God this woman wasn’t going to cry. He didn’t think he could take it right now.

  He wasn’t supposed to be here—on this plane, with this woman, at this point in his life.

  Josh McMillan wasn’t the kind of man to take leaps. Every step he took was carefully plotted beforehand. Except for this one.

  Ever since Josh was eight years old, he’d wanted to follow in his father’s footsteps and become an engineer. Josh was sixteen when his father died, but the loss only cemented his resolve. His older brother, already an engineer, took over the family business, and Josh joined him when he graduated from college.

  The firm had struggled since their father’s death and the bad turn in the economy hadn’t helped. But then Josh had created a revolutionary part that could be used on wind turbines to help produce more electricity with the same amount of wind power. The part had the potential to make millions. So they’d hired a patent attorney and spent a fortune they didn’t have to get the patent process started, hinging the future of their business on it. And it had worked. They’d acquired interest from a serious investor who could help take their engineering firm to a whole new level.

  Until last Friday, when their patent had been denied.

  A firm in Kansas City, Missouri, had received approval for an identical plan, but how could a firm in Kansas City have so exactly duplicated the esoteric part? Josh had literally stumbled upon the design by accident.

  Josh’s company would have to pay thousands more to an attorney to fight the ruling. Thousands they couldn’t afford to lose. Worse yet, the investor had caught wind and threatened to pull out of their agreement if the matter wasn’t resolved within a week. The brothers went out for drinks to strategize about the ruling, which is when, after a couple of rounds, Noah confessed to having shown the plans to a friend of a friend at a conference three years before.

  “Who was the friend of a friend?”

  Noah looked slightly embarrassed. “She was a woman I picked up in the hotel bar. I took her to my room and the next morning she was gone and so was my bag. A copy of the plans was inside.”

  “And you didn’t think to tell me?” Josh asked, his temper rising.

  Noah slouched over the bar, cradling a glass tumbler in his hand. He lifted his shoulder into a half-shrug. “They were a copy, Josh. I didn’t think anything of it.”

  “We have to fight this.” Josh only realized he was shouting when he took in the startled looks of the other bar patrons. “We didn’t work so hard to file the patent then get this investor just to let it all be flushed down the drain.”

  Noah sat up and drained his drink. “Maybe there’s nothing left to fight for.”

  Only Josh wasn’t so willing to give up the fight. He’d spent the last seven years pouring his everything into making his father’s company a success. He’d sacrificed his personal life, not to mention his checkbook. No, he couldn’t come this close to making the company financially solvent just to lose it all. There had to be a way to fight this. There just had to be.

  He went on to spend the weekend researching everything he could about PMV Engineering, the firm that had filed the patent two weeks before the McMillan
brothers. PMV consisted of three partners. One had retired and moved to Belize, which—in and of itself—made Josh suspicious. The other two were still active. Andrew Peterman was the second principal, and his son Drew had joined the firm three years prior—suspicious timing, indeed. From the photos Josh found on the Internet, he made the highly unscientific judgment that the man was cold-blooded enough to set Noah up.

  After hours of researching and brainstorming and only six days before the investor pulled out, Josh decided to go to Kansas City to confront the bastards in person. By a stroke of luck, the daughter of the third principal, Bart Vandemeer, was about to get married. Josh figured he could use the distraction to catch them off guard.

  Noah thought he was crazy, but then again, he would. Despite being four years older, he’d never been as invested in the company. Still, in spite of his skepticism about the last-minute trip, Noah had driven him to the airport. Since the ticket had been purchased at the last minute, Josh had needed to spring for first class. It had cost a fortune, but at least he could have a beer or two and relax on the flight to Kansas City, take the opportunity to figure out a real plan.

  Or at least that’s what he’d thought.

  He hadn’t counted on being seated next to the anxious brunette. She was pretty with long, dark hair that hung past her shoulders and long, slender legs—definitely his type—but within a minute of sitting down, she’d accused him of being a terrorist and made her crash-and-burn comment.

  It was going to be a long flight.

  Maybe he could get the eager flight attendant to move him to coach.

  After they reached cruising altitude, the airline attendant stood, and Josh grabbed her attention, not a hard thing to do since she’d kept her eye on him since before takeoff.

  She walked straight toward him with a determined look. “Can I help you, Mr. McMillan?”

  “I need a Jack and Coke,” he said, forgoing his planned beer. The woman next to him was already driving him crazy. He was going to need something stronger than a beer to endure her tics.