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.