“I’m not a little girl anymore, Jake. I don’t know what I have to do to prove it to you.”
“I’m not going to marry you, Hope. You’re not what I want. I want someone who can share my memories of the world, someone who’s lived a little.”
“I can catch up,” she said desperately.
He shook his head. “No, little girl. You can’t.”
Hope felt her chin quivering and gritted her teeth to try to keep it still. “So you’re going to marry Miss Carter?”
“Yes, I’m going to marry her. Put your blouse back on, Hope.”
She grabbed her shirt and tried to get it on, but the long sleeves were inside out, and her hands were shaking too badly to straighten it.
She heard Jake swear before he scooted across the bench seat, pulled the shirt from her hands and began to pull the sleeves right-side out. He held the shirt for her while she slipped her arms into it. Her cheek brushed against his as she was straightening. She turned her head and discovered his mouth only a breath from her own. Their eyes caught and held.
She wasn’t sure who moved first, but an instant later their mouths were meshed, and his tongue was inside searching, teasing, tasting. He was rough and reckless, his hands cupping her breasts as a guttural groan was wrenched from his very marrow. His mouth ravaged hers as his hands demanded a response.
She couldn’t catch up. He was moving too fast.
And then he was gone. Out the opposite door. She scrambled after him, pausing in the driver’s seat when she spied him leaning against the van, his palms flat against the metal, his head down, his chest heaving.
He stood and faced her. “That was my fault,” he said. “I…” His eyes were full of pain and regret. “You’re formidable, Hope. I’ll grant you that. Somewhere out there is a very lucky young man.”
“I want you,” she cried.
“I belong to someone else.”
“You’re only marrying Miss Carter because you don’t think you can have me. But you can!” Hope insisted. “There’s nothing stopping us from being together except your own stubborn bias against my age.”
“Your youth,” he corrected.
She snorted. “Eighteen years isn’t that much. Lots of men marry younger women.”
“You need to go to college. You need to find out what you want to do with your life. Maybe you’ll decide you want more out of life than simply being some rancher’s wife. If I were to marry you now, the day might come when you decided marriage to me wasn’t fulfilling enough, that you needed to go find yourself.”
“Is that what happened with your first wife?” Hope asked, her eyes wide.
“I’ve seen it happen,” Jake said without answering her question directly. “You’re too young to know what you’d be giving up, Hope. Go to school. Get an education. Find out what you want to do with your life.”
“If I do that, if I go to college, will you wait for me?”
She saw the struggle before he answered, “In four years I’ll be forty. I—”
“Wait for me,” she said, stepping out of the van. “Don’t marry Miss Carter. Promise you’ll wait for me.”
“I can’t promise anything, Hope. There’s another person in this equation you’re not considering. I’ve proposed to another woman, and she’s said yes. Unless Amanda breaks the engagement, I’m honor-bound to marry her.”
“Even if you don’t love her?”
“Who says I don’t?”
The shock of his words held Hope speechless. “How could you love her and want me like you do?”
He shoved a frustrated hand through his hair. “I respect and admire her. And she loves me. We can have a good life together.”
“You don’t love her,” Hope accused.
“I don’t know what I feel anymore,” he retorted. “You’ve got me so damned confused—”
“Wait for me,” Hope said. “There are such things as long engagements.”
“That wouldn’t be fair to Amanda,” Jake said stubbornly.
“It is if you don’t love her. Don’t you think she’ll notice? Don’t you think she’ll miss being loved?”
Jake stared at the ground, then back at her. “I’ll go this far,” he said. “I won’t press her to get married. But I’m not going to walk away if she sets a date.”
“Thank you, Jake,” she said. “At least that gives me a chance.”
Hope had finished college in three years, waiting with bated breath the entire time for news of Jake’s wedding. But it had never come. She’d seen as much as she could of the world in her two summers off, traveling once to Australia and once to Europe. She’d kept her eyes wide open, absorbing as much of life as she could, trying hard to catch up to Jake.
She’d come home in September, still in love with him, still wanting to spend her life with him, only to discover that Amanda Carter had at long last set a date for their wedding—Christmas Eve.
Which gave Hope only two more weeks to find a way to stop it.
CHAPTER ONE
FAITH
FAITH BUTLER HADN’T SEEN HER twin sister Hope since shortly after they’d arrived at the party celebrating Jake Whitelaw’s impending marriage to their former English teacher Miss Carter. Not that Hope’s entrance hadn’t been noted by one and all.
The afternoon gathering that was supposed to be held inside Miss Carter’s two-story frame house had been moved into her backyard when a warm Chinook wind came through, making the mid-December afternoon feel like a summer day.
Hope had stepped out onto Miss Carter’s back porch dressed in a tight black skirt barely long enough for decency and a form-fitting, V-necked black cashmere sweater cut low enough to raise a man’s heart rate. Ruby-red lipstick emphasized her full lips, and she wore enough mascara and eye shadow to dramatize a dozen dark, smoldering eyes.
Faith knew her sister’s outrageous behavior only stemmed from desperation and determination. Because the man Hope loved was about to marry someone else.
Nonetheless, Hope’s get-up had done the trick. She’d managed to attract the one pair of eyes she’d been hoping to snare. Jake Whitelaw hadn’t been able to stop staring at her. Or maybe it was more honest to say glaring at her.
Faith sighed loud enough to catch her boyfriend’s attention.
“What’s wrong?” Randy asked.
Faith reached for Randy’s hand
