Truth or Dare Read Free

her.
    “I’m glad you think so.” Ava grinned back, the glint of steel in her eyes unmistakable. “Because we’re making a pact and you’re doing this with me.”
    Oh hell.

Chapter Two

O CTOBER
    “Seriously, Maggie, we could just say we did it and no one would be the wiser.”
    Maggie stared up into her date’s pleading face, silently cursing Ava and her stupid pact, too.
    Five months in, she was still scrounging up eleventh-hour bailouts. She’d tried to be proactive. Flirt. Drop hints. And flat-out do the asking herself—but with a pool of potentials limited to guys who came with “references,” less than two degrees of separation, and proof of current employment, who weren’t sketchy, were allergen approved, knew how to laugh,
and
were honest—the pickins were slim.
    Which was how she’d ended up going out with Ford Meyers. Again.
    Gah.
    “It’s the honor system, Ford.
Honor.
And you’re talking about lying to your sister.”
    “Uh-huh.” Ford rubbed a hand over the back of his neck, squinting into the brisk October night. “Yeah, thing is, I’ve been lying to Ava for most of my life. So I’m good with it, actually. And believe me, she wouldn’t expect anything less.”
    “From you, maybe!” Maggie laughed, well acquainted already with her friends’ fractious sibling dynamic. “But not from me. We have an agreement. A pact—”
    “I know about the pact. Obviously,” he snapped, underscoring a discomfort over the coming lip-lock potentially surpassing even her own.
    “Look, I’m no happier about it than you are. But we’ve come this far, and if this date is going to count, it’s got to close on a kiss.” She took a deep breath and laced her fingers with his, swallowing past the revulsion pushing at her throat. “A real one.”
    “Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Then, closing his eyes, he warned, “And so we’re clear, this is the last time I bail you out. If the ‘raised stakes’ of a second date equate to open mouth, with tongue…I don’t even want to contemplate what’s involved for a third.”
    Maggie gave the stiff fingers intertwined with hers a light squeeze.
    “Ouch, hey!”
    “You knew what you signed on for, so enough bitching. Just…I don’t know, take it like a man. You guys are supposed to be like dogs, trying to get on anything.” Then, because she really did know what a hugely monumental favor Ford was doing for her, she gently added, “Besides, it probably won’t be half as bad as we’re imagining.”
    How could it?
    “Fine. Let’s get this over with. You want to lean against the wall or something?”
    Maggie glanced over her shoulder at the gray stone entry and thought about the cats that sometimes prowled the neighborhood. “I’m good.”
    “Okay, then.” Taking a step back, he cracked his neck on both sides, rolled his shoulders, and started bouncing on the balls of his feet.
    “Yep.” Maggie nodded, her own adrenaline beginning to ramp. “Let’s do this.”
    Shaking out her fingers, she tried to force an open mind. Ford was a good-looking guy. Tall and lean, with dark, straight hair like his sister’s, only kept in a neatly conservative cut. He was undeniably easy on the eyes…
    But he was
Ford.
    A friend as close as family. Which meant kissing Ava’s brother was going to feel a lot like kissing her own.
Gross.
    Don’t think about it.
    “Wait.” Ford’s brows pulled down. “Do I have to touch you or can I lean in?”
    She should have taken the consequence of missing her quota and popped for Ava’s two-day spa treatment. How important was it really to have tires with actual tread before winter?
    Or money for the gallery, though with her boss’s recent state of fluster and bluster, that wasn’t a conversation she expected to take place anytime soon. At least not until after Hedda’s next retreat. Still, they’d come this far and Ford was standing there with his hands stalled halfway between them, waiting to find out if he had to put them