By Proxy
A Christmas Challenge
“Is my virtue safe?” Sam asked.
“Safer than it was in Chicago,” Jenny answered, getting the better of him.
He chuckled. “Phew! Okay. That’s a relief. Yes, I will come watch a Christmas movie with you. But you better keep your hands to yourself, Jenny. I mean it.”
She shook her head, smiling as they made their way across the bridge. “You are an ass.”
He gasped. “
Jenny Lindstrom!
A swearword!”
She giggled merrily. “An animal.”
“The back end of one.”
“As you said.”
“Do you kiss your father with that mouth?”
“I kissed
you
with that mouth.”
He stopped walking beside her, but their hands connected them and she had to drop his hand or stop and turn back to him. She stopped and turned. He was standing beside the last lamppost on the bridge, leaning against it with his arm outstretched to her. As she approached him in the dim light, she could see his eyes sparkling.
“No, Jen. I kissed you.” He pulled her closer. “But I’m open to a do-over.”
By Proxy
Katy Regnery
www.BOROUGHSPUBLISHINGGROUP.com
PUBLISHER’S NOTE: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, business establishments or persons, living or dead, is coincidental. Boroughs Publishing Group does not have any control over and does not assume responsibility for author or third-party websites, blogs or critiques or their content.
BY PROXY
Copyright © 2013 Katharine Gilliam Regnery
All rights reserved. Unless specifically noted, no part of this publication may be reproduced, scanned, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Boroughs Publishing Group. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or by any other means without the permission of Boroughs Publishing Group is illegal and punishable by law. Participation in the piracy of copyrighted materials violates the author’s rights.
Digital edition created by Maureen Cutajar
www.gopublished.com
ISBN 978-1-938876-71-4
For my parents,
Diane & George Gilliam,
who always believed in me.
Some as good, but none better.
Acknowledgments
A debut novel is not something I could have pulled off on my own. There are so many people I need to acknowledge for their support and encouragement:
To all of my friends and followers on Twitter and Facebook, I am so excited to share
By Proxy
with you! Thanks for keeping me on my toes each and every day.
Eternal thanks to my editor extraordinaire, Jill Limber, who fished
By Proxy
out of the slush pile and gave it a home. Every fledgling author should have the honor and privilege of working with someone like Jill.
Fond thanks, also, to Chris and Michelle at Boroughs Publishing Group, who have always made me feel valued and welcome.
To my critique group: author Chris Belden, Alison, Cynthia and Paul, thank you for your weekly feedback. You helped me shape
By Proxy
from the very beginning.
To my beta reading group—Mom, Martina, Peggy, Susan, Trieste—you ladies take my breath away. Without your selflessly gifted time, wise comments and frank feedback, I would have been lost. I am so very, very grateful to you.
To Henry and Callie, the most understanding littles that ever cheered on a driven Mommy, I love you so very much and you both make me proud every day.
To George, my darling husband, who encouraged, rallied and reassured me a million times, in a million different ways, never doubting that I’d make it, I cannot possibly thank you enough. All the much, my love.
And lastly, to Lily, Tenley, Hadley and Jack, who are mine…By Proxy.
Contents
Chapter 1
There are some things you should never agree to do, even for your best friend.
Jenny Lindstrom drummed her fingers on her knee and glanced, for the hundredth time, toward the double doors at the entrance to the county courthouse. From the bench where she sat in the back of the small lobby, she had a good view of incoming traffic.
The doors opened and she gulped with anticipation, but instead of the young man she expected, an older man rushed in, followed by a whoosh of snowy Montana wind. He brushed off his snow-covered sleeves and stomped his boots on the large black mat in front of the doors.
She heard him mutter, “Getting bad out there,” to no one in particular.
Jenny checked her watch.
He should be here by now, for heaven’s sake!
Maybe the snow was slowing him down. After all, it had taken her over an hour to drive up to Livingston from Gardiner. But didn’t Ingrid write that he would arrive yesterday? If so, hadn’t that left him ample time to be punctual for their appointment?
Jenny took the printed e-mail out of her purse and re-read Ingrid’s instructions:
…so if you meet there at 2:00 p.m. on December 1, Judge Hanlon should be ready. Kristian’s cousin Sam is tall, blond and hot, Jen. He’s going to stick out like a sore thumb in Livingston—you shouldn’t have any trouble finding him. He promised he would fly in on Thursday night, so he should be able meet you at the courthouse on Friday afternoon.
We can’t thank you enough for what you are doing for us. Baby Svenson thanks you too,
Aunt
Jenny. We know it’s inconvenient, and you’ll have to skip a day of school. We just couldn’t bear the thought of strangers…
The door whooshed open again, and Jenny looked up to see a young couple enter the courthouse, holding mittened hands. They wiped their boots without a word, taking off their mittens. The man used his hands to sign something to the woman, an expectant look on his face. She smiled at him and nodded, signing something back. He kissed her cheek and took a folded piece of paper out of his pocket, lacing his hands through hers and pulling her toward the stairs. As they passed the bench where Jenny sat, she could just make out the bold-type words on the top of the form he held: Marriage License.
Jenny watched them go up the steps, tears stinging the backs of her eyes. She thought of Ingrid and Kris—so far away, so very much in love—and shook off the sudden loneliness that made a thick lump form in her throat.
Silly sentiment
.
You have a good life, Jenny Lindstrom.
She glanced at her watch again and sighed. An hour late! The courthouse would close at four. She had quizzes to grade at home and Monday’s lesson yet to plan. As it was, her nerves were in shreds. She started to wish she hadn’t agreed to do this in the first place. Having to wait for him as the seconds ticked by was just making matters worse.
She craned her neck to look through the windows that flanked the double doors. The thickness of the falling snow had doubled in the last hour. Maybe tripled. It was only dusting when she had arrived, and now she could see it coming down in thick white flakes. She tried not to think about the drive home later when the sun would be setting and the roads would be slick.
If only Ingrid had given her a cell phone contact number so she could call this Sam and give him a piece of her mind for leaving her waiting like this. But everything was thrown together so last-minute, she’d barely had a chance to ask her principal for an emergency day off.
It never occurred to her to say no to Ingrid. She was raised, like the rest of her kin, to honor servicemen and women…and anyway, Ingrid was like a sister to Jenny, and Jenny would have done just about anything for her. She ran her palms flat against her lap and smoothed out the skirt of her simple gray dress: she bought it on mail order from Sears last winter to wear to her cousin Linnea’s wedding. The irony of wearing the dress again today for its second time wasn’t lost on her.
The doors opened again, and she sat up straighter. A disheveled, older woman entered, her arm held by a younger man who looked to be in his mid-thirties. The woman brushed off her snow-covered skirt, thanking him profusely for his assistance, and he smiled at her solicitously, asking her again and again if she was sure she was all right.
Jenny hadn’t seen another single, young man enter the courthouse all afternoon.
This must be him.
He had a kind face, rather more filled out than Ingrid led her to believe, but perhaps he’d changed in the years since Ing was deployed. He was about 5’5”, with a protruding round belly, and while his hair may have been blond at one time, there was so little of it left it was hard to tell. Jenny’s heart thumped uncomfortably as she walked briskly to where he stood in front of the double doors, stomping his boots.
Her feet lost traction and she slipped on a wet patch of marble floor at the same time the double doors whipped open again. Jenny couldn’t stop the forward motion of her body once it started falling, and the short, stout man leapt out of her way just in time. She cried out, slamming into the broad, hard chest of the tall, blond man entering the courthouse. His hands caught her around the waist to keep her from falling and she hung there against his snowy coat like a limp doll, resting her cheek against his chest for a dazed moment. Finally finding her footing, she stepped back from the stranger, staring down at the floor, cheeks blazing crimson. She smoothed out her dress, tossed her hair over her shoulder and readjusted her purse before looking up to meet his eyes.
She gasped, beholding the handsomest man she had ever seen. There was no doubt in her mind:
Finally, here was Sam—the man she was going to marry.
***
Sam Kelley blinked back at her in shock. One minute he’d been rushing to open the doors of the old courthouse, anxious about arriving so late, and the next minute, a cute blonde was barreling into his arms. He took off his gloves and ran his fingers through his cold, wet hair, checking her out.
She had her hands on her hips, long blonde hair framing her face. A simple grey sweater-dress accentuated her small waist. She was taller than the average woman, and he guessed she was in her mid-20s but it was hard to tell with the agitated expression that was souring her otherwise pretty face.
Wait a second. Tall, blonde and 20s.
“You’re Jenny!” he said, beaming at her.
“Sam?” she asked, bright blue eyes trained on him, cheeks flaming red.
He nodded. For no good reason in particular, he had been expecting some thick-waisted, Brunhilde-type, big-boned Scandinavian country gal. Jenny’s cheeks had the fresh color of a country girl, all right, but that’s where the similarities ended. She wasn’t a conventional knockout, but there was certainly something about her.
Cute girl. Huh. Kristian hadn’t mentioned that…
“You’re
very
late,” she said. She turned sharply and crossed the lobby with hurried steps, stopping at a bench beside the stairs to pick up her coat.
He had no choice but to follow behind her and rushed to keep up. “Yes. I’m late. Sorry about that. But, wow, that was—uh—quite a welcome!”
“I didn’t mean to bump into you. I slipped.” Click, clack, click, clack. Her shoes echoed up the stairs. “I’ve been waiting over an hour.”
Huh. You’re welcome, Miss Snippy
.
Maybe I should have just let you fall out the door into a snow bank.
“Sorry about that…again. There was a mountain pass, and a plow—” He stopped, realizing how adolescent and ridiculous he sounded. His next excuse would be about how the dog ate his homework.
“Mmm,” she murmured, still marching straight ahead. “It’s
Mon-tan-a
. Mountains and plows are standard.” She overarticulated her words as if speaking to a child.
“I see.” His voice took on a very slight edge. He wasn’t accustomed to this sort of dressing-down.
Were snippy blondes standard too?
“You’re Kristian’s cousin, but not from around here?”
“My folks left Montana before I was born. I’m from Chicago.”
“Aha. The big city.” She said this like she had his number and knew him inside out.
Stopping at the end of the corridor before a door that read CLERK, she turned to face him, inhaled and exhaled audibly through her nose, then closed and re-opened her eyes like she was practicing a Buddhist relaxation ritual. He just stared at her. What cutting remark would she throw at him next?