The Wedding Favor Read Online Free PDF

have to sit next to her until they landed in Paris.
    He plowed his fingers through his hair, breathed in, breathed out. Faced the mirror, the circles under his eyes. The agony in them.
    “Fuck,” he hissed. “Fuck fuck fuck.”
    Turning away, he unzipped his jeans, braced his hands on the wall, and pissed whiskey for a minute straight.
    L oretta was waiting when he came out. “I was about to come in there after you,” she said, not unkindly.
    He looked down at her out of red-rimmed eyes, and the hurt there spoke louder than words. It hit her where she lived, that pain in his eyes.
    When his Lissa was alive, Ty had been the fun-lovingest, good-timingest boy you could ever meet. The day she died, his light dimmed. And seven years later, he still hadn’t gotten past it. Nobody understood why. Not his folks. Not his friends. But there it was.
    She couldn’t fix it, she knew that much. But she could damn well pour coffee on it.
    Steering him into the galley, she pointed to a tiny fold-down seat attached to the wall. He opened it and sat down, forearms resting on his knees. Taking the ceramic cup she pushed into his hand, he gave her a weak smile. “I can sure use this.”
    She wagged her head. “Boy, you look like five miles of bad road.” She tried to sound gruff but couldn’t pull it off, covered it up by turning her back and digging through a drawer. “From my private stash.” She tossed him a packet of Pop-Tarts. “Cures a hangover every time.”
    That pulled a genuine smile out of him. “Why, Loretta Jane Mason, I’ve never known you to tie one on. You got a secret life you’re hiding from me?”
    She drew herself up, started to deny it, then flapped a hand. “I wasn’t always sixty, you know. And no,” she cut him off, “no details.”
    Leaning one hip against the counter, she folded her arms and eyed him steadily. “Now tell me what’s wrong with your seat.”
    His brows came down hard. “Not the seat. The blonde.”
    “Seems nice enough to me. A looker too. Figured you’d have her curled up in your lap purring like a kitten by now.”
    He made a face. “She’s a lawyer. Taylor’s lawyer.”
    Loretta dropped her arms, momentarily at a loss.
    “Well,” she said at last, “that’s bad luck.”
    Ty snorted. “Bad luck’s breaking your leg on vacation. Or forgetting to buy a Powerball ticket the day your numbers come up. This”—he waved in the direction of his seat—“this is the hand of a vengeful God.”
    She couldn’t disagree, though why God would wreak vengeance on a kind, sweet boy like Ty was a mystery to her.
    For a long moment she studied him. The whiskers shadowing his jaw, the tousled hair and rumpled shirt. The troubled eyes. She made up her mind.
    “You can stay here till it’s time to buckle up.” She opened the drawer again, took out the new issue of O Magazine . “Drink all the coffee you want, but do not dribble on this. I haven’t read it yet.”
    “Thanks, Loretta. I owe you one.”
    “I’ll collect. Now stay out of my way while I get breakfast going.”
    T he lights were up when Victoria slipped off her eyeshade. Other passengers stirred, folding their blankets, sipping steaming cups of coffee.
    Cracking the window shade on bright sunlight, she squinted down at puffy clouds, snow white against the blue backdrop of the ocean far below. She checked her watch, tried to calculate the time change, then gave it up until after coffee.
    Ty was gone, presumably to the restroom. Folding her shawl, stowing her pillow, she fretted over how to greet him when he returned. There was no protocol for this situation. They’d almost had sex, but didn’t, and yet they were waking up together the next morning. That didn’t happen in the real world. If you decided not to have sex, you went home. You didn’t face each other with morning breath.
    It would be awkward, for sure. But Ty had been pretty drunk. Maybe he wouldn’t remember how close they’d come to doing it. That