Chapter 1

Megan

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

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

My phone rang, and I dug it out of my purse, cringing when I saw my best friend Blair’s name on the caller ID. After a second’s hesitation, I answered anyway.

“How did she take it?” Blair asked.

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

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

“I told her.”

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

“I have a lying voice?” I asked, not sure whether to be offended or impressed.

“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 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 staticky message about a changed gate, and I covered the microphone on my 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?” she asked in disbelief.

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

“Lie.”

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

“I’m sorry.” Blair sighed. “You’re right. Trust me, I understand why you’ve held off. 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 can hardly do anything else.”

“So, you’re really coming home?”

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

“Okay.” Blair was quiet for several seconds, and I 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, my best 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.”

I swallowed the lump in my 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 in downtown KC. 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,” I muttered, shaking my 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.”

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

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

The overhead PA switched on again. “Now boarding our first-class passengers.”

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

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

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

The thought of boarding the plane made me nervous for another reason. Turbulence gave me horrible airsickness. But my coworker had suggested I take Dramamine as a preventive measure. While I hated taking medication, even aspirin for a headache, I had enough to worry about once I got off the plane. The last thing I wanted to do was spend every moment on board battling nausea. I pulled a bottle of water out of my bag, shook two pills from the travel-size container, and swallowed them, hoping they worked in time.

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

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

My eyebrows rose. “Retirement?”

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

I 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 my life was going lately, it seemed almost inevitable.

But thankfully, he sat in the front row, and I was in seat 3D. I stuffed my purse under the seat and looked out the window, remembering when Jay and I had bought the plane tickets to fly to Kansas City for our wedding. That should have been my first clue that Jay was an asshole I shouldn’t marry. He’d insisted that we each pay for our own ticket even though he made triple my salary.

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

I turned to look at the pretty flight attendant who was smiling down at me. 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 I’d spent eighteen years under the tutelage of my impossibly perfect mother—long enough to know a fake smile when I saw one. And the reminder of my mother was nearly enough to send me over the edge. “Uh… a mimosa?”

The attendant nodded. “Coming right up.”

Other passengers filed past me, and after a while I realized that the only open first-class seat was next to mine. 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 I expected from an investment banker? His idea of a wild night was moving my 401K into high-risk mutual funds. Creepy financial planner dude was a year too late.

The flight attendant brought me the drink, and I sipped it faster than intended, trying to quell my nerves. The knots in my 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 at the front of the aisle, his gaze taking in the empty seat next to me.

I wasn’t the only woman to notice him, even if my 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 my drink gave him a sideways glance of appreciation, even if he didn’t notice. Then again, I 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.

I had a neighbor.

He stuffed his overnight bag in the overhead bin and sat next to me, then buckled his seatbelt. He was, without a doubt, a better option than the financial planner, but maybe not by much. I guessed him to be close to my 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 my ex-fiancé’s always was. But his looks didn’t concern me. What did concern me 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 my head. “Are you a terrorist?” I asked before I could stop myself.

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

I shook my head, the movement making me dizzy. “Sorry. You just had a crazed look…” I waved my hand in circles in front of my face to help justify my statement, then quickly dropped it to my lap. What on earth had possessed me to say that?

Moments later, the flirty attendant came back and leaned across the man to grab the empty glass on my 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.”

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

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

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

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