From Fake to Forever (Newlywed Games 2)

Surely a conversation with her father in which she admitted her mistake in Vegas and begged his forgiveness would be easier than the ups and downs of Jason’s deal. The worst part was she’d known what would happen last night when she went for broke. But she’d done it anyway because she couldn’t stop herself.

She yearned for the thrill Jason evoked when he slid into her and the kinship they’d shared. Then there was the communication and affinity—they’d had it all once upon a time, and for some reason, he refused to acknowledge how great the two of them naked had been.

But what if the Jason she couldn’t forget never surfaced? Hanging on to that fantasy was the surest path to never moving on.

She slogged through the day, earning cutting remarks from Allo without even trying, a real bonus that went well with her mood. Avery never contacted her, and in an apparent attempt to give her what she’d asked for, Jason didn’t call, either.

When she got back to her hotel, she booted up her laptop in an attempt to distract herself from the day, and an email from her mother put the cap on a supremely awful day. Thought you might want to see this, the note said and included a link to an online article titled: Miss Texas—Where Is She Now?

Dread knotted Meredith’s stomach as she clicked the link. Exactly as she expected, a professional head shot from her pageant days filled the screen alongside the photos of two other women. She recognized Brandi MacArthur and LaTisha Kelley easily. Brandi had handed over her crown to Meredith when she won. And the following year, Meredith had handed her crown to LaTisha.

Kicking off her heels, Meredith sank down in the plush chair, determined to read every word on the screen.

The article wasn’t a smear job or a puff piece. It was a well-written factual chronicle of the three women’s lives since their respective reigns ended. Brandi was now a neonatal neurosurgeon working at the Baylor University Medical Center in Dallas, married to David Thomason, the renowned heart-transplant specialist. LaTisha had taken a different path, receiving a master’s degree in theology and then signing on to become a missionary in Haiti. The writer expanded on their achievements in several glowing paragraphs, highlighting that the Miss Texas pageant had opened doors for these ladies, which they had walked through to enormous success.

Meredith’s sole mention painted a sad but true picture—“Meredith Chandler-Harris works for her sister and is a second-generation Miss Texas. Her mother, Valerie Chandler, won the title in the eighties.”

The article was kind enough to leave out the part where Meredith hadn’t achieved a tenth of what her fellow title-holders had. But it was implied quite well.

Her mother hadn’t sent the link to be malicious. She probably saw nothing wrong with the fact that of the two lines devoted to her daughter, fifty percent were about Valerie. As a major contributor to the Houston social scene, her mother thought nothing of seeing her name in print.

She also didn’t have a shred of ambition. But Meredith, unlike her mother, had always wanted to be more than a wife to someone important. The Grown-Up Pact was supposed to help Meredith figure out what she might be good at besides smiling and traipsing down a runway.

Instead, she’d left Vegas hung up on a man who didn’t long to recreate their connection the way she did. He’d rather lie about whether it had existed in the first place.

Perhaps part of her problem with not embracing her inner adult lay in being so stuck in the past. She sighed. She should really let Fantasy Jason go, get Real-Life Jason’s signature on the divorce papers and move on.

Her cell phone beeped, and when she tapped open the new text message, her brow arched. It was from Jason, with the simple question: Thai for dinner?

Like last night hadn’t even happened?

Of course. Because in his mind, it was business as usual.

Two could play that game. In fact, she’d do herself a favor if she played the game his way and left her emotions out of it.

She texted him back: With plenty of red pepper sauce.

Jason replied: Be there in fifteen minutes.

She couldn’t stop a tiny tendril of hope that dinner might be some kind of apology. A way to say, “Hey, I was just kidding. You rocked me in Vegas and I couldn’t forget it even with brain damage.”

He made it in ten, and when he swept into her hotel room looking devastating in his grey custom-made Lyn Couture suit, with spiky hair in delicious disarray, her heart fell out of rhythm and she couldn’t breathe for a moment.

So much for leaving her emotions at the door.

“How was your day, dear?” she asked a touch more sarcastically than she probably should have, but her not-quite-a-husband had thrown her off balance.