By Proxy (9 page)

And when she’d shared her feelings about taking vows on Ingrid’s behalf, his kindness overwhelmed her again, as it had on the side of the road when he treated her so carefully, so gently.
It matters to you.
She felt, for no good reason, but with certainty, that he may as well have said, “It matters to me,” because he seemed so invested in her feelings. She was so touched by his warmth and kindness, his careful acceptance of her feelings, which could have been dismissed or ridiculed by a less gracious man.

She made her fingers into fists, pumping them open and closed several times then cupping them around her nose and mouth to warm them up. When had it gotten so cold?
Too distracted to remember your mittens, Jen? Tsk.

“Hurry up, Casey Mae!”

Jenny’s romantic experience was limited: her entire
oeuvre
consisted of some handholding on a high school church retreat in Yellowstone, and a few kisses with a boy in college who had broken things off when she wouldn’t let him touch her breasts.
And, let’s face it, it’s practically impossible to date anyone in Gardiner with three hulking, well-known brothers all living locally.

Anyway, she had only been working at Gardiner High School for two years, and her job was her first priority. She didn’t need any distractions, and, if she was honest, well, she knew just about everyone in Gardiner, and there just wasn’t anyone to be a distraction. Even if there had been, Jenny would have probably kept him at a respectful distance, especially at school where she honored the simple inherent wisdom of: Don’t get your nookies where you get your cookies.

She grinned, shaking her head. How Sam had managed to get so close to her in the space of a few hours was a mystery to her, especially in light of the fact that everything between them had gotten off to such a rocky start. She realized, with a little bit of wonder, that when she wasn’t completely distracted by his good looks, she was comfortable with him. For the first time in a long time—maybe the first time in her whole life—she was interested in someone up close, not from a guarded and ultimately futile distance.

It was too cold; she had to go inside. “Casey, let’s go!” The puppy came running back over, and Jenny swooped her up, paws icy from the cold ground.

Once Casey was settled in her warm crate, Jenny changed into her pajamas and washed her face. She scrubbed harder than usual, frustrated by her feelings, unable to create any real order out of them. Her face was red and chafed when she finished so she applied some cream, looking at herself closely in the mirror.
Pretty Girl
, she heard him in her head and smiled at herself, but her pleasure was fleeting as she reviewed the situation.

Okay, you misjudged him. He’s funny and beautiful and kind. But, Jenny Lindstrom, get your head out of the clouds and be sensible. He’s from a whole different world, and he’s going back to it in two days. That’s the bottom line. So, put him out of your mind, and quit thinking about him with anything but good, old-fashioned hospitality.
She nodded curtly at her reflection, humorless and severe.

Walking back through the living room to her bedroom, she found her laptop was still on. She opened it up to power down and looked at the screen, realizing her e-mail draft was still up. She hadn’t pressed send.

She reviewed the message quickly for typos and was about to send when she paused at the bottom. Their names were paired at the end of the e-mail with a simple ampersand, “Jenny & Sam.”

“Jenny and Sam
,” she whispered, followed by a small, strangled sound from deep in her throat.

A longing for him, raw and real, bubbled up inside of her.

Oh, no. No, this is no good,
she thought, fingers trembling over the mouse.
You don’t even know him. You can’t possibly be infatuated with him, Jenny
.
No. Stop.

She cringed, knowing protestations were useless: she was already in the middle of something she never even saw coming.

I didn’t mean for this to happen
.

Clenching her eyes shut in frustration, she hit send, powered down and snapped the laptop closed.

She got into bed and turned off her bedside table lamp, lacing her hands under her head and staring at the shadows on her ceiling. Unbidden, yet inevitably, her mind turned to his face, his eyes of smiling, teasing, handsome brown. She balled her hands into fists, turning to her side and closing her eyes with determination.

He’s not from here, and you’re not from Chicago, so let’s end this fantasy now, Jenny, and get this straight and fixed in your mind:

He’s not for you, Pretty Girl. He’s not for you.

Chapter 5

Jenny slept fitfully for the first time in years.

She finally gave up on sleep entirely, got dressed and took Casey for an early morning walk. The sun wouldn’t be up for another hour or so, not until almost 8:00 a.m. The days were as short in December as they were long in June, when even the southern parts of Montana boasted almost 16 hours of daylight at Midsummer. Today was so close to the winter solstice, there would be only 8 hours of daylight at best and less each following day. She didn’t mind the dark, quiet walk; she relished the time to think about the day before her, to settle her thoughts in the shadows of the early morning.

Sam was just about the first thing on her mind when she woke up, and she wanted to try to make sense of her feelings before he came to pick her up later that morning. She had decided firmly last night before bed that despite her attraction to him, he couldn’t be the man for her. Their lives were too substantially different for her to indulge in any real fantasies about him, and she would treat him with nothing more than the same kindness she would extend to any other human being.

I will think of him as I would old Mr. Thorton at church, or any of Pappa’s friends. His eyes will merely be eyes, not teasing brown under dark lashes. His hands will just be hands, not strong, corded hands that I want to reach out and hold. His lips will only be—

She felt cool resolve melt away into rushing falls of longing and shushed her thoughts with a quick head shake.
This isn’t helping. I refuse to give in to this infatuation. There must be another way to shoo you from my mind, Sam Kelley.

Gardiner was starting to come alive as she crossed the bridge and headed back to her apartment. The lights were on at the Prairie Dawn below Jenny’s apartment, and she considered popping in for a latte, but had no sensible reason for such an extravagance when there was perfectly good coffee waiting to be brewed at home. Still, it might be nice to sit with Maggie for a few minutes and get her opinion on things
.
Maggie owned the bookstore-cum-coffee shop downstairs and occasionally walked or fed Casey when Jenny couldn’t get home from school for her midday walk. She was Jenny’s closest friend in town, only a few years older than Jenny and the ongoing crush of Jenny’s oldest brother, Nils.

No. No
, she decided firmly. She didn’t need Maggie’s opinion or anyone else’s: even addressing her feelings would just indulge this silly infatuation.

It occurred to her as she put Casey’s leash away and opened her laptop that there might be another way. “Information is power”, after all, and where better to gather it than on the information superhighway? It wouldn’t hurt to know a little bit more about him. Perhaps she would find something so objectionable it would immediately reverse her inconvenient, fledgling feelings.

She decided to Google him.

Sitting Indian-style on her loveseat, she pulled the laptop onto her lap, shaking off the voice in her head that chastised her as a voyeuristic busybody. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

She typed SAM KELLEY into the Google search bar.
Wow. Who knew so many people were named “Sam Kelley?”
She narrowed it down by typing SAM KELLEY CHICAGO.

Hmm. LinkedIn. A sportswriter? Probably not.
He hadn’t mentioned sports once.
Hmm…Mutual Trust Associates.
She clicked on the link.

Sam’s handsome face stared back at her from the screen in a formal black-and-white photo. He was dressed sharply in a suit jacket and tie over a crisp, white dress shirt. His hair was slicked back like an actor from the movie
Wall Street,
and he wore a reserved smile, which was direct yet approachable at once. Under the photo was his title—Vice President, Mutual Trust— and a short bio about his education and experience.

Jenny combed over the brief paragraph. He had gone to the University of Chicago where he graduated with a B.S. in Economics in 2004 and it looked like he had worked at Mutual Trust for about seven years; she counted back in her head and guessed his age at 28 or 29. He had received his last promotion about a year and a half ago, making him one of the youngest vice presidents in MTA’s history. It said he had initiated his group’s entry into cutting-edge active quantitative strategies and called him “one of the rising stars” at MTA.

Jenny smiled and even felt a little bit proud of him.
He must be pretty smart.

She stared at his face, feeling her own soften in pleasure, and wondered if she could find more pictures of him. Clicking on the word
Images
on the Google toolbar, she waited until a page of tiny thumbnail photos came up. The first picture was the black-and-white one she had just seen on his company’s website. There were several other photos of various unfamiliar faces, and then…

A thumbnail of Sam in a tuxedo, with a stunning woman beside him. Jenny’s heart leapt in her chest, and she clicked on the tiny picture. She was redirected to a photographer’s website: Joseph Grant Photography – 2012 Fall Charity Gala at Navy Pier. She scrolled down until she found the picture again.

It was Sam, all right, looking more handsome than she could have imagined in a tuxedo with his hair gelled back and a devastatingly beautiful woman by his side. If a picture was worth a thousand words, their body language said it all. He had his arm around her and Jenny could see his hand holding on tightly to her waist. The woman leaned into Sam but offered a dazzling smile to the photographer. She was an inch or two shorter than Sam but still tall at around 5’10”, Jenny guessed. She had on a red silk dress that clung to her perfect body like a slip, ending just above her stylish silver high-heeled shoes. The dress had a plunging neckline that showed off her assets and a dramatic slit in the skirt that
almost
went up to her waist, showing her tan, toned leg underneath.

Jenny read the caption under the photo. CHICAGO’S OWN PEPPER PETTWAY WITH HER BOYFRIEND, SAM KELLEY, ATTENDS THE ANNUAL CHARITY GALA AT NAVY PIER, OCTOBER 2012.

Jenny exhaled loudly, her mind racing, at a loss for words. She had assumed Sam’s life in Chicago was more glamorous than her life in Gardiner, but she had no idea how incredibly far away their worlds were from one another until she sat staring at his
girlfriend
, Pepper Pettway.

She looked like a supermodel, or minimally someone very important or famous. Jenny opened another Google session and typed: PEPPER PETTWAY
.

Oh, wow.
Her heart sank.

50 MOST BEAUTIFUL CHICAGOANS. FOX CHICAGO SUNDAY MORNING’S, “WHAT’S THE WEATHER? WITH PEPPER”. Pepper Pettway and Sam Kelley at the Chicago Museum of Art. Pepper Pettway and Sam Kelley at the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Pepper and Sam kissing on the huge HD screen at Wrigley Field, wearing matching Cubs caps. Pepper in a bright yellow skirt suit surrounded by bandaged children, reading stories at the pediatric burn unit of the University of Chicago Medical Center.

She looked like a model, she was on the TV, she wore beautiful clothes but still enjoyed a baseball game, and she volunteered her time to read stories to burned children.
She’s beautiful and glamorous and she’s a good person, too.

Jenny slowly lowered the laptop screen until it snapped shut definitively. She leaned her elbow on the side of the loveseat and cradled her cheek in her hand, looking around her plain, old-fashioned living room dejectedly. She had never looked at her apartment through any eyes but her own, but seeing it through Pepper’s eyes made her feel like a guilty Eve in the Garden of Eden with too much knowledge: exposed and embarrassed.

Second-hand furniture, mostly choices her mother made years ago, looked lumpy and worn. Some simple family photos adorned her mantle: Jenny and the boys in the park over the years, Jenny and Ingrid on high school and college graduations days and her parents’ wedding picture. They spoke to an unsophisticated life. She swallowed looking at the homemade calico curtains she had sewn on her mother’s old Singer and cringed at the needlepoint pillow, crafted lovingly by a young student, that read A#1 TECHER.

She didn’t know how long she sat on the loveseat in silence, but by the time she stood up, her confused feelings for Sam were ebbing away with a finality that made her wistful for yesterday. Reading about Pepper was like dousing herself with cold water. Not only was Sam taken, he was taken by someone as amazing as Pepper Pettway.

You can’t compete, Jenny.
She flinched then felt her backbone kick in.
Silly girl. A bad night’s sleep for nothing. I told you, he’s not for you, and now you know it too.

She jumped up with determination and padded into the kitchen to start her coffee maker, distractedly scooping too many grounds into the basket. Her mind hummed with some unresolved question and although she wished she could just stop this merciless focus on Sam Kelley, the question rose up to the surface like bubbles on a pond.

Why was he flirting with you yesterday?

He had touched her finger at dinner, stroked her ear and—for heaven’s sake!—almost kissed her on the loveseat
and
at the door.

She ran back to the living room, grabbed her laptop and snapped it open on the kitchen counter.
Chicago’s own Pepper Pettway with her
boyfriend
, Sam Kelley, attends…