The Substitute (4 page)

He thought back to their conversation. “She said she took two as she was boarding.”

“And you didn’t see her take them?” she asked, her tone full of admonishment. The woman’s eyes lifted to Josh’s face and he knew he was being scrutinized. He could see why Megan was scared of her mother. She was intimidating in the way that only stately women of a certain age could be.

An older man stepped forward and put a hand on her shoulder. “Oh, for God’s sake, Nicole, let the man be. Is this really how you want to meet your future son-in-law?”

Josh shook his head. “See, there’s been a misunderstanding.” But he had to wonder why they didn’t know what Megan’s ex-fiancé looked like. Sure, they’d never met the guy, but hadn’t they at least seen photos?

Megan’s father shot his wife a weighted grimace. “The only misunderstanding is that Nicole is trying to micromanage everything. Like always.” He stepped 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.

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 she’d gotten so drunk on tequila shooters she stood up on the coffee table and serenaded “My Heart Will Go On” to her then-boyfriend…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 her surprise, she loved it.

She wasn’t sure why. She’d never considered herself an outdoorsy person, but she began to cherish her monthly camping trips with her dad and brother.

This had irritated her mother to no end, and in fact, drove an even deeper wedge between the two. And that wedge became a gulf when Megan graduated from Missouri University and flew off to Seattle to work for a nonprofit that worked to prevent over-deforestation. At the time, her well-planned escape had been an act of rebellion. While she loved her job, and had quickly moved up the hierarchy to the position of grant coordinator and fundraiser, she now realized the move had cost her something precious—her close relationship with her father and brother.

But here she was, hip-deep in self-analysis again, when she still had no answer to the pressing issue of how she’d gotten from the plane into her old room.

It all came rushing back to her. Boarding the plane. Drinking two mimosas. Stealing Mr. McMillan’s drink. Blabbering to him about the flight attendant and her defunct fiancé.

She squeezed her eyes shut in horror. She’d made an utter fool of herself.

She sat up and swiped at her wet cheek, realizing the wet sensation was the result of all the drool on her pillow. Great. As if she needed to feel any worse. At least she could take comfort in the fact that she’d never see the man again. What did it matter if he thought she was crazy? Besides, there were bigger things to worry about. She shook her head, trying to clear it, but spiking a fresh round of pain instead. She needed to focus so she could figure how she’d ended up on her bed. The last thing she remembered was snuggling under the blanket in her seat on the plane. But if she was in her room, her mother must have found her somehow.

Her mother was going to kill her. It was a wonder she hadn’t taken advantage of Megan’s supine state to do so already.

Megan glanced around the room and found her old digital alarm clock on the worn white nightstand. 6:12. The sun was streaming through the blinds, but it was summer so that didn’t necessarily give her a clue as to whether it was six o’clock a.m. or p.m. She supposed it didn’t matter. One way or another, there would be hell to pay.

Sliding off the bed, Megan moved to her door and cautiously cracked it open. Voices floated up from downstairs, one of them clearly her mother’s. Since her mother never got up before seven-thirty if she could help it, it had to be evening.

She made her way down the stairs with an anxious ball in the pit of her stomach. She was going to have some explaining to do, though she had no idea how much, because in her drugged state she could have said
anything
to her mother between meeting her in the airport and falling onto her bed. But the sound of other voices in the kitchen gave her a small measure of reassurance. Her mother’s voice was light and airy—her company voice. This was good news for Megan. No matter how upset she was, Nicole Vandemeer would never under any circumstances murder someone in front of guests. No matter how justified.

“…Megan hardly told us anything,” her mother was saying as Megan approached the kitchen.

“I wouldn’t want to bore you with the details,” a man’s voice said. Why did he sound familiar?

“There she is!” Nicole Vandemeer exclaimed, clasping her hands together in glee. She was in full-on hostess mode, but she seemed even more enthusiastic than was warranted by a mere guest. “Megan! We were just talking about you!”

Had the Dramamine transported her to some sort of bizarre world?

Three people sat at the kitchen island, their backs to her, while her mother stood in front of the commercial gas cooktop, a martini glass in her hand. In tandem, the people on the barstools turned to face her. Her grandmother gave her a big smile and her father nodded, a twinkle in his eye. But it was the third person that made the floor turn to molasses.

Mr. McMillan, the man who sat next to her on the airplane, was sitting at her parents’ kitchen counter.

Of course, it couldn’t be true.

She squinted her eyes tight, trying to reboot her brain, but when she opened them he was still there, giving her a hesitant smile. Which left only one solution. She turned around and headed back to her room without another word. Maybe if she went back to bed, she could lie down and hit the restart button, waking up in reality.

“Megan!” her mother shouted after her. “Where are you going? Come officially introduce us to your fiancé!”

Oh, God. She really
was
hallucinating. Maybe this was some kind of psychotic break induced by extreme stress and pharmaceuticals.

“Megan, come back right now!” Her mother’s tone border-lined on slipping out of character. If Megan pushed her over the edge, the consequences would be worse than she felt capable of handling at the moment. “You’re being incredibly rude. Is that how they do things in the Pacific West?”

Megan cringed. Nope. This was real. Her mother was the only person on earth who dropped the North from Pacific Northwest. Megan turned around and walked back into the kitchen, stopping in the doorway. Mr. McMillan studied her with an expressionless face. What in the hell was he doing here? What had he told them?

As if reading her mind—or perhaps her face—he jumped out of his seat and walked over to her. “Hey, honey. How are you feeling?”

She looked up at him, dumbfounded. Why was he smiling at her like that? Scratch that, why was he calling her
honey
? “What the… How did you get here?”

“We picked him up from the airport, of course. Josh told us what happened,” her mother said, her voice light and breezy again. “He told us that you got airsick when you flew to Phoenix last year, so you took Dramamine on this trip as a preventive measure. You should have seen the way Josh took care of you when you got off the plane.” She gave Josh a look of approval. Leave it to her mother to wait to give her elusive stamp of approval to a fake boyfriend.

“Wait.
Josh…?
”

Mr. McMillan put an arm around Megan’s back, his hand resting on her hip, warm and surprisingly comforting. “I told your parents how you insist on calling me Jay even though my name is Josh.”

She shook her head in confusion. “
What?
” Was this some weird joke, or had she just woken up in the
Twilight Zone?

He gave her a patient smile. “Sweetheart, you must still be out of it. Your parents were filling me in on the wedding plans. I know you wanted it to be a surprise, but it’s only a couple of days now. It sounds just as remarkable as I knew it would be.”

She was wrong. This wasn’t a hallucination. This was a nightmare. Anger blazed to life in her stomach, quickly spreading up through her chest. She clenched her hands into fists.

“Why didn’t you bring this young man home sooner, pumpkin?” her father asked. “I can tell he’s going to fit right in with our family.”

Was that supposed to be a
good
thing?

“And he’s got a cute patootie,” her grandmother added. “I think you kids call it an ass.”

“Gram!” Megan protested in shock.

Josh laughed, his hand pulling her closer. “Funny, Megan was saying the same thing today in the airport.”

Megan’s jaw dropped as she glared at him in disbelief.

Gram shook her head. “For the life of me, I don’t know why you would call someone’s back end an ass. Especially a cute one. Don’t you kids know that an ass is a donkey?”

Megan didn’t take her gaze off Josh for a moment, her temper about to blow. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing—”

Before she realized what was happening, he cupped her cheek, and kissed her, his lips soft but insistent. She put her balled hands on his chest with the intention of pushing him away, but her heart began to race in spite of herself and she leaned closer, inexplicably drawn to him as her anger bled out and her hands relaxed. His muscles were firm below her fingertips and her knees began to weaken, but the arm he’d looped around her back held her up. If this was a dream, she decided she wasn’t ready to wake up.

Josh lifted his face, looking slightly dazed for a moment before he turned toward her family, still holding her in his arms. “Sorry,” he murmured. “I just love her so much I can’t stop myself sometimes.”

Megan gaped at him as if she’d just had a lobotomy. The way her brain felt at the moment, it probably wasn’t too far off.

“He doesn’t look like a donkey,” her grandmother said in a smug tone.

“Aww…” her mother cooed. “That’s so precious. Your wedding is going to be the talk of the summer at the country club.”

Megan was speechless again, but this time for an entirely different reason. What had just happened?

The door to the garage opened and Megan turned to see her older brother filling the opening, a duffel bag in his hand. “Get a room,” he groaned with a grin.

“Kevin!” She broke free from Josh’s hold and ran to her brother, throwing her arms around his shoulders.

“Hey, Squirt!” He dropped his bag and wrapped his arms around her back, lifting her several inches off the ground as he swung her in a circle.