by Katy Paige
“Actions have consequences. I missed a day of school. My students missed an important review for their midterms. We missed the appointment for Kris and Ingrid. It was hard enough to come up here and do this in the first place, and now it’s just going to hang over me all weekend. And I’ll have to miss another day of school on Monday doing it all again.”
He stared at her with his hands on his hips and his brows furrowed. “I didn’t realize…”
“And if you want the truth,” she added, “I’m embarrassed that I slipped and crashed into you, and I don’t like driving in bad weather if I can avoid it.” She gulped, her fury losing steam. “For the record, I’m not bitter. I’m just…upset.”
He raised his eyebrows, about to say something, then shook his head.
“Listen, we got off to a bad start, right? I think we can both agree on that. Let’s start over. Again.” She had been expecting a snappy retort, so she was surprised when he offered her a small, genuine smile. “How about I take you to dinner? To make up for everything? Looks like I’m staying the weekend.”
Jenny eyed him warily. “I don’t think so.”
“Come on,” he cajoled. “I’m Kristian’s cousin. I can’t be that bad. I’m just…unaccustomed to your aggressive Montana weather patterns. Dinner. It’s the least I can do.”
“I’m not hungr—” she started to say, but just at that moment, her stomach—traitor!—growled, so instead, she rolled her eyes with a sigh, conceding defeat. “Okay, fine. Besides, we need to write to Ingrid and Kris. They probably think they’re already married.”
“I’m sure there’s somewhere around here to have dinner. I have my iPad with me—”
“Oh, I can’t stay here. I have to get home. I have a puppy, and she’s been alone too long. She needs a walk. We can have dinner after that.”
Sam shrugged. “That’s fine. I’m a free agent. I checked out of my hotel in Bozeman this morning. I guess I could come stay in—”
“Gardiner.”
“—Gardiner…for the weekend.”
She cocked her head to the side and looked—really looked—at his face for the first time. When he wasn’t trying so hard to be charming or funny, his eyes were kind. He was several inches taller than she—as tall as her brothers, even—but his hair was a redder blond than theirs. Long lashes gave his brown eyes a softer look than the rest of his face, which was angular and chiseled.
He’s handsome. Really handsome. Ingrid was right about that.
She inhaled deeply, closing her eyes as she held the breath, then opening them as she exhaled.
“Okay,” she said. “It’s not far. You can follow me. I’ll take you to the Lone Wolf Lodge on the way home. It’s the…nicest.”
“Sure. And we can meet up after you walk…”
“Casey,” she said.
“Sounds good.”
She would expect someone from the city to complain about how staying the weekend in off-the-beaten-path Gardiner, Montana, was inconvenient or cramped his style. But here he was, asking to take her out to dinner, not raising any objections to following her back to her hometown.
Maybe she didn’t have his number, after all.
And that single thought made her smile at him for the first time—like he was someone worth smiling for. Then she turned and headed out the door.
***
Sam’s pulse quickened.
Well, that was unexpected.
He was totally caught off guard by the impact of Jenny’s smile.
From the moment he’d met her, she’d been snippy, prickly, bitter, and punitive—a cold, uptight schoolmarm who, he was quite sure, didn’t have a man in her life, warming her bed.
But then she smiled. And it was impossible not to see the potential behind the sudden transformation.
When Jenny Lindstrom wasn’t pissed off? She was a knockout.
He watched as she made her way down the courthouse steps. Her long blonde hair fell halfway down her back, and his hands tingled, remembering the silky softness when he lifted it off her neck.
Why did I do that?
He hadn’t even realized what he was doing until she whipped around, her eyes shooting daggers at him. At the time, it had somehow seemed the most natural gesture in the world.
Once in his rental car, he made a mental note to call Hertz and extend the contract for another few days, then pulled up behind her in front of the courthouse. She waved to him in the rearview mirror, and they started the trip to Gardiner.
Turning on the radio to some Carrie Underwood wannabe, he tried to get his head around the events of the past half hour. Nothing had turned out as he’d expected.
He had expected to meet some meek country gal, stand politely next to her, say whatever words were required of him, shake her hand good-bye, then drive the two hours back to Billings to catch his flight home to Chicago in the morning.
Instead, Jenny Lindstrom had literally fallen into his life, and now he was bound for someplace called Gardiner with a woman who was—in her own fresh-faced way—one of the prettiest girls he’d ever met.
Prickly and pretty.
Well, it’s only for a weekend. Maybe she’ll chill out a little. Anyway, it’s for Kris. Be nice. Maybe the—what was it?—the Lone Wolf Lodge will have Wi-Fi.
The vocalist on the radio stopped screeching, and Sam grinned when Patsy Cline’s honeyed voice filled the car. His parents had often played her music on long car trips when he was little, and he loved her husky voice. While Patsy sang about falling to pieces, he thought about what he would say in his email to Kris.
When he’d received Kristian’s email last week, asking that Sam stand in as proxy for Kristian’s wedding to Ingrid, there was no way he could say no to his favorite cousin. Sam had a ton of vacation time piled up anyway, and it was a slower time of year at the investment firm where he had worked since graduating from college seven years before. People rarely made significant financial investments before the holidays, so it was one of the better times to take a day off.
After he read Kristian’s email, Sam had consulted the internet to confirm that “double proxy marriage” actually existed. It sounded like the implausible plot of a bad movie: two people who couldn’t be at the same place at the same time could be married legally if they designated two other people—proxies—to take their vows for them.
Sure enough, Wikipedia had confirmed that double proxy marriage was a real thing, though Sam had to reread the article twice to understand. Apparently, it was a completely legitimate, little-known legal loophole that existed only in Montana, almost exclusively utilized by servicemen and women—like Kristian and his fiancée Ingrid—deployed to different parts of the world. With Kristian in active service in Afghanistan and Ingrid serving at an army hospital in Germany, their only option for an expedited marriage would be a double proxy ceremony in Montana.
For the young couple, it was a welcome solution to a growing problem: a short, passionate weekend leave two months ago in Germany had resulted in the happy but unexpected news that a baby was on the way, which meant a wedding needed to happen. Immediately. Kristian’s family wasn’t exactly the modern, understanding prototype when it came to matters of propriety: right is right, and if you’re having a baby, then you’d best be married.
Kristian had explained that generally the lawyer expediting the marriage would “supply” proxies, but Ingrid was beside herself with the thought of strangers taking their vows for them. He asked if Sam would stand in for him and said Ingrid would find someone to stand in for her. Sam had replied immediately that he would be happy to go to Montana to help out. Aside from the fact that he loved his cousin, Sam was living it up in Chicago while Kristian was putting his life on the line in Afghanistan. Without calculating the cost, making travel plans, asking for the time off, or figuring out any other details, Sam said yes right away. Refusing to help simply never occurred to him.
Of course, that was before meeting Jenny Lindstrom.
Chapter
2
Jenny flicked a glance to her rearview mirror.
Sam’s rental car followed at a reasonable distance behind her.
She turned her eyes back to the road, but her shoulders slumped in self-reproach, and she shook her head. After having a few minutes on her own, she was wishing she’d handled things differently with Sam.
Bitter.
What an ugly word.
She sighed, frowning at her reflection in the windshield. She’d made assumptions about Sam, merely based on the fact that he was from Chicago. He was right: she’d acted like a snippy, short-tempered priss, and in retrospect, she wasn’t positive he’d deserved it.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, cringing at the thought of plowing into him, then hanging onto his coat like a lunatic.
Yes, she’d been genuinely irritated that he arrived so late, but he had apologized right away.
And after all, it wasn’t his fault the judge had decided to leave early for a weekend in the park.
He wasn’t accustomed to Montana’s version of winter, apparently, but what out-of-towner could be expected to know how quickly the weather could change here?
The bottom line was that he came here to do a favor for his cousin and had traveled a long way to see it through. He certainly hadn’t set out to annoy her as his life’s mission, and she’d treated him as though he had.
She cringed at her behavior, wincing as she remembered enunciating the words Mon-tan-a and win-ter-time as if he were a moron.
Badly done, Jen. Unkind.
If she was honest about it, the whole business of taking someone else’s wedding vows on their behalf was extremely unsettling to Jenny and had been from the first time Ingrid mentioned it. In Jenny’s mind, vows that sacred should only be said once, and certainly not on behalf of someone else. But she was stuck between a rock and a hard place. She couldn’t refuse Ingrid’s request for help, no matter how much it bothered her.
Anyway, the bottom line was that she had no right to take out her misgivings on Sam. She shook her head, as much in anger toward herself as in frustration for the entire situation.
The setting sun out her right window colored the sky with oranges, pinks, and lavenders. Usually she would take a moment to admire the beauty of another stirring Montana sunset, but it was entirely lost on her this afternoon as she muddled through her thoughts.
If she forced herself to be honest, there was another reason that she was uncomfortable around Sam: the handsomer the man, the sharper her prickles. And poor Sam was very, very handsome.
Despite the fact that Jenny had three older brothers—or maybe because of it—she’d never been totally comfortable around boys. As an awkward and painfully shy teenager, Jenny admired the boys in her high school from afar, having unknown, unrequited crushes, but she was too introverted to actually date anyone. She preferred the safe embrace of her small-town church and protective, loving family over the uncertainty and potential heartache of actually falling for someone.
As a college student, she had let her guard down a few times, only to be disappointed by clumsy embraces and grabby touching. Part of her craved an intimate relationship, but it seemed that her blonde, blue-eyed looks; larger-than-normal breasts; and curvy hips attracted the wrong sort of guy.
And immediately after college? Well. Her whole world had suddenly changed. Her family became her top priority, bar none, and any interest in dating dropped from cautious to nonexistent. She became a turtle person, scared of the world, hiding in a prickle-covered shell that was increasingly uncomfortable and claustrophobic for her but had become so much a part of who she was and how she saw herself, she didn’t know how to escape it.
That didn’t mean, however, that Jenny was content to be alone. She wanted someone to love her. She wanted to have children. She longed for those things with an almost painful yearning.
But those things are hard to find when your first instinct is to push eligible men away.
And nobody ever really called her out on it. She’d protect herself by being snippy, and men would stay out of her way. Until now. Sam was in her way, literally following her home. He had pushed back. He had stood up to her and called her “bitter,” that awful, terrible word reserved for dried-up spinsters who have lost hope—and worst of all, she deserved it.
He thinks you’re bitter, but inside you’re not.
Inside, you’re soft, like a turtle’s tummy.
Inside, you’re warm, like a favorite down comforter.
Inside, you want someone to love you, but you’re scared that if you love someone, they’ll leave you…and experiencing that kind of pain again would break you.
But I’ve been protecting what’s in inside so dutifully, for so long, my prickly shell is the first thing that people see.
Is that what I want?
She looked back in the rearview mirror and could almost make out the shape of his head inside the car through the glare of the setting sun.
No. It’s not.
Swallowing over the lump in her throat, she sat up straighter.
Can I change?
Yes, I can.
How strange that someone she barely knew could hold a mirror before her with the use of a single, sad word.
I can show him that I’m not…bitter.
How mollifying that she had a whole weekend to prove him wrong.
***
The small, silver-blue SUV in front of him was about the most uptight, girly SUV he had ever seen.
He could see her blonde head poking just an inch or so above the headrest, the result of impeccable posture, no doubt. She was probably that no-nonsense type of woman who always sat like there was a rod in her spine.
And possibly up her ass, he mused, recalling her sour face and clipped manners.
Not that he didn’t admire her backbone. Grudgingly, he had to admit he did. Most girls he knew didn’t speak their minds as directly as she did. Women were enigmas to him; they’d say one thing and mean something completely different, and he often had a difficult time reconciling the two. But he got the feeling that Jenny said what she meant and meant what she said. It was refreshing—no wasting time trying to figure out if a coy yes really meant yes or some cryptic version of maybe. After years around more sophisticated, urban girls, he found her candid manners intriguing.
He attributed her persona largely to her small-town upbringing. She was a country girl through and through: honest, fresh, wholesome, and extremely uptight. She didn’t seem very worldly, but she sure was genuine.
He thought of her standing there in that shapeless, fake-fur-adorned, puffy parka while she gave him hell and smiled to himself.
She’s a corker, that’s for sure.
He thought about her barreling into him as he walked into the lobby of the courthouse. Through his wool coat, he could feel her full breasts pressed against him, all the more pronounced because she had fallen into him with such force and was taking gulping breaths to steady herself. And while her sweater-dress had been perfectly modest, the material clung to her chest in such a way that it—blessedly—hadn’t left much to the imagination.
In fact, before she had turned into a cross between the Pillsbury Doughboy and Nanook of the North in the space of one zip, he’d taken a quick look at her heavenly handfuls. His palm twitched with the way his thoughts were headed. Her breasts would be soft and real. She was all natural, from the color of her hair, to her trim waist, to her perfect rear, which had proved a pretty unsettling distraction as he followed her up the courthouse stairs.
Too bad she was so sharp tongued, because he could think of some better uses for that tongue other than slinging barbs at guys she barely knew.
Yes, he appreciated that he’d messed up her day—and her Monday too, for that matter—but it wasn’t as though he’d intentionally arrived late to screw up her weekend.
Then again, Sam thought of her cheeks coloring bright pink as they shook hands. There might be a lot of bluster to Jenny Lindstrom, but she wasn’t qu
ite as tough as she wanted him to think she was. He wondered if she was just tightly wound or a little crazy, and if he had to spend the weekend around her, he hoped for the former.
As he turned up the volume for the next Patsy song, he caught sight of her red taillights zigzagging in his peripheral vision and—
WHOA!
Oh, crap!
Suddenly, Jenny’s SUV was spinning out in front of him.
“No! Oh, God! Oh, my God!” Sam yelled.
He clutched at the steering wheel with a white-knuckled grip, watching her car spin across the outside lane. Once. Twice. She gained momentum, and he watched in horror as she slid sideways closer and closer to the guardrail. “Stooooooooop!”
Thank God the snowy grass slowed her down, and he watched as the car rumbled to a stop just inches from the thick, metal rail separating the highway from a dense forest.
Help her!
He slowed down, shifted lanes, and pulled over.
Stopping his car behind hers—her car is facing the wrong way—he unbuckled as fast as he could, threw open the door of his rental, and ran the few snowy steps to her car, peering in through her window.
She stared straight ahead, hands clenching the steering wheel, unmoving.
“Jenny!” he shouted. “Jenny, are you okay?”
She didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch.
She’s in shock.
Opening her door as slowly and calmly as possible, Sam tried to steady his own worried breathing. He squatted down on the ground beside her. In case she was in shock or disoriented, he didn’t want to frighten her.
“Jenny?” he asked quietly, urgently. He cleared his throat softly, then wrapped his hand around the wrist closest to him. “Jenny, can you hear me?”
She gasped loudly, breathing in audibly, painfully, as though she hadn’t taken a breath since her car stopped moving, as though his touch had woken her up from a living nightmare. She exhaled a sob, which released the stiff tension in her shoulders, and they started shaking.
He covered her hands, gently loosening her claw-like grip from the steering wheel.