By Proxy (3 page)

After he read Kristian’s e-mail, he had consulted Wikipedia to confirm “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, all-knowing Wikipedia had confirmed it was true, and Sam re-read 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. 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. 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, he said yes right away. Refusing to help simply never occurred to him.

Of course, that was
before
meeting Jenny Lindstrom.

Chapter 2

Jenny sighed, flicking her glance to her rearview mirror. Sam’s black 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. If only she had handled things differently with Sam.

What is the matter with you, Jenny?
Acting like a snippy, short-tempered spinster at the ripe old age of twenty-four! He called you “bitter,” and after the way you behaved, you deserved it.

Good Lord, what an embarrassing way to meet; she cringed at the thought of plowing into him, then hanging onto his coat like a lunatic. And yes, she had been genuinely irritated that he arrived so late, but he had apologized right away. 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 the bottom line was that he came here to do a favor for his cousin and had traveled a long way. He certainly hadn’t set out to annoy
her
as his life’s mission. She cringed at her behavior, wincing as she remembered enunciating the word “Mon-tan-a” as if he were a moron.
Badly done, Jen. Unkind.

The whole business of taking someone else’s wedding vows was extremely unsettling to her 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, once she had agreed to help Ingrid, 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.

Why had she been so irritable with him? She had jumped to conclusions about who he was simply based on where he was from, the style of his wallet and a bit of harmless teasing. She had taken
prickly
to a new level, for heaven’s sake!

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.

Be honest, Jenny. This goes deeper than petty annoyances or personal unease.
If she were truly honest she would have to admit she just wasn’t very comfortable around men, and the handsomer the man, the sharper her prickles. She smiled to herself cheerlessly. Poor Sam was very, very handsome.

As a painfully shy teenager, Jenny relied on the safe embrace of her small-town church and protective, loving family. She had unknown, unrequited crushes from afar in lieu of dating. As a college student, she had let her guard down a few times, only to be disappointed by clumsy embraces and grabby touching. And immediately after college? Well. Her whole world had suddenly changed. Her family became her top priority, and any interest in dating dropped from cautious to non-existent.

Over the passing years, however, her goals had changed. Jenny wanted to have children and a home of her own someday. In fact, she longed for those things with an almost painful yearning.
But
those things are hard to find when you’re pushing the world away.

And nobody ever really pushed back. Until now.
He
had pushed back. He had called her “bitter.” That awful, terrible word reserved for dried-up spinsters who have lost hope—and more troubling than the effect of simply stanching her anger, it had actually
resonated
with her. She
was
acting like a hopeless, dried-up, old spinster.

She closed her eyes briefly, breathing in, then opened them, breathing out
.
A wave of self-awareness crashed over her, and she knew the sad truth at the root of her present distress:
He thinks you’re bitter, but inside you’re not.

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, then sat up straighter in her seat and grinned. How strange that someone she barely knew could hold a mirror before her with the use of a single, sad word. How mollifying that she had a whole weekend to prove him wrong.

***

The small, silvery-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. 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. 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, despite her crabby mood.

He attributed her persona largely to her small-town upbringing. She seemed a country girl through and through: honest, fresh and wholesome, if not a little uptight. She certainly didn’t seem very worldly contrasted against most of the girls he knew who were sophisticated, stylish and edgy. It made him smile to remember her standing there in that shapeless, fake-fur adorned, puffy parka while she gave him hell.

It’s just a shame it concealed everything.

He thought about her barreling into him as he walked into the lobby of the courthouse. Even through his thick coat, he could feel her 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, making her chest rise and fall more dramatically with the effort. And while her sweater-dress had been perfectly modest, the material clung to her chest in such a way that it hadn’t left much to the imagination either.

Before she had turned into a cross between the Pillsbury Dough Boy and Nanook of the North in the space of one zip, he’d taken a quick look at her
heavenly handfuls
. City girls, at least the ones he knew, had those perfect, voluptuous, pre-fab chests that looked awesome in a dress, but often screamed “plastic surgery” once you got up close, which he frequently did.

He was pretty sure nothing about Jenny was “pre-fab,” and 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 that had already proved a pretty unsettling distraction as she left the courthouse.

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. He appreciated that he’d messed up her day, and her Monday too, for that matter, but it wasn’t as though he had intentionally arrived late to screw up her weekend. Then again, Sam thought of her cheeks coloring bright pink as they shook hands. He grinned. There might be a lot of bluster to Jenny Lindstrom, but she wasn’t quite 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. His eyes widened as “Crazy” started as if on cue. Maybe she—

WHOA!
One minute, he was listening to Patsy croon “Crazy,” and in a blink of an eye Jenny’s SUV was spinning out in front of him.

“No! Oh, God! Oh, my God!” Sam yelled out loud, his adrenaline pumping, making his heart beat like a drum. 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 his eyes widened in horror as she slid sideways closer and closer to the guardrail. “STOP!”

Thankfully, the snowy grass slowed her down, and he sighed in relief as her car rumbled to a stop just inches from the thick, metal rail.

Oh, my God! Is she okay? Please let her be okay!

Sam needed to slow down, shift lanes, and pull over to see if she was all right. As he crossed to the far left lane, he saw the patch of black ice in the middle lane that had caused her to spin out of control.

He pulled over onto the white, icy grass and stopped his car behind hers—
her car is facing the wrong way
—and unbuckled as fast as he could. He 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 rested on the steering wheel, unmoving.

He opened her door as slowly and calmly as possible, trying to steady his heavy, worried breathing. He swallowed and squatted down on the ground beside her. In case she was in shock or disoriented, he didn’t want to frighten her.

“Jenny? Jenny?” he asked quietly, urgently. He cleared his throat and touched the arm closest to him.

She gasped loudly, breathing in audibly, painfully, as though she hadn’t taken a breath since her car stopped moving, as though his simple touch had woken her up from a nightmare. Her breath came out as a sob, racking her shoulders.

He covered her hands, gently loosening her claw-like grip from the steering wheel.

She clutched at his hands.

“Are you—Hey, are you okay?” He wished he knew her better so he’d best know how to help her, what to say to comfort her.

She cried more steadily now, sobbing in a heartbreaking way that made Sam feel even more helpless.

“Are you okay?” he asked again, squatting beside her, holding her cold, tense hands.

She shook her head back and forth, as much from shivering as in answer to his question. He gently let go of her hands and shrugged out of his heavy coat in one smooth movement, leaning back down to drape it clumsily across her chest and lap.

“Th-thank you.” Her hands covered her face, muffling her voice.

He patted her shoulder. “It was…it was black ice. You spun out. Did you see it?”

She breathed in deeply, shakily. Her fingers trembled as she placed one hand over the other on her chest. “N-no. I d-didn’t know what happened.” She sniffled, and it seemed like she was starting to calm down a little. She looked at Sam to her left, wiping tears off her cheeks with her palms. She sighed loudly, leaning her head back against the headrest and closing her eyes. “I’m sorry I was so terrible.”

“No! Hey! Jenny, you were
great
. Most people would have
at least
hit the guardrail, or hit someone else, or, you know, spun out into traffic and caused an accident. You didn’t hit anything. You’re in one piece. Your car’s in one piece. You’re a little shaken up, but seriously, you did great.”

Jenny stared at his face for a moment and then crumpled again, shoulders shaking.

Nice job, Sam. Way to be a comfort. She doesn’t need to hear the worst-case scenario.
He reached out to stroke her arm and he realized with a start the noises she was making didn’t sound exactly like crying.
Hold on.
It sounded like a cross between crying and…
laughing
? Yeah.

She sort of laughed and cried at the same time, and tears covered her red, puffy face. “I meant…I meant at the courthouse,” she clarified. “That’s what I was thinking about right before my car—”

“Oh!” Sam’s forehead wrinkled. Maybe she was in shock or had a concussion. He spoke slowly and carefully, patting her shoulder again. “That’s okay. Don’t worry about that now. You know what, Jenny? We’ll take a mulligan, okay?”

She shook her head a little as if to clear it, took a deep, clean breath, then looked at him with perplexed eyes. “A mulligan?”

Sam smiled. “In golf. If your first shot stinks, you’re allowed to take a second shot. A second chance. It’s called a mulligan.”