Jake was limping. It was something he rarely did anymore, but today his leg ached. He was exhausted, he’d been on his feet too long and his leg hurt. The combination resulted in a limp bad enough that he needed his cane. He was nervous almost to the point of being terrified.

Despite the fact he was pacing back and forth in a tent on the beach while wearing a tuxedo, he still wasn’t exactly sure how he convinced Vi to marry him. If the truth were to be told, he’d simply asked, but on his wedding day hardly seemed like the time to start telling himself the truth. His mother had, as she tended to do, taken over the wedding. It was now a much larger affair than either he or Vi had originally talked about. The private stretch of beach they’d rented was currently occupied by relatives, both from the US and from Sweden, friends, business associates, and thanks to his brothers, a few old friends from the army that he hadn’t spoken to since the accident. His brothers thought they were doing something nice, something good, but the idea of seeing people who knew all the logistics of what had happened, who might haven been faced with the same sort of situation kindled both fear and shame in the pit of Jake’s stomach.

Jake was in no fucking way ready for this. He’d been up all night trying to convince himself that this was not going to be a disaster. He’d gotten in the car to drive to the spa Vi and the rest of the Safstrom women were staying the night with the intention of kidnapping his future wife then pitching elopement to her. There were few things in this world his mother would not forgive; eloping was one of them. Jake was her baby and her last wedding. Not to mention that she’d planned this one with Vi’s help, of course.

Once he’d accepted the idea that he and Vi would not be eloping, he’d been plagued with an old fear, one that had gotten a great deal of attention in the months after the accident but had faded, for the most part, until now: Why did he deserve this when there were three other men who would never get this? He hadn’t resorted to drinking, but in the absence of alcohol, he’d run his hands through his hair so many times he wasn’t sure it would lie flat again.

Jake was cursing in Swedish and contemplating taking the pain pills when Vi slipped between the slit in the tent canvas that served as a door. For just a moment, the space of a held breath, Jake forgot how much his leg hurt. In fact, his leg seemed to have ceased to hurt. Vi was stunning; that was a given, but today she was doubly so. Her dress was strapless, a swath of white silk that appeared to have been wrapped around her, gathered and pinned along her back then allowed to cascade to the ground. Her hair was loose, woven through with some kind of white flower that Jake couldn’t have named if asked.

“I don’t think anyone saw me.” Vi’s voice was breathless as she ducked further into the tent.

“I’ve seen you.” Brilliant observation, Jake. His brain hadn’t been exactly firing on all cylinders even before Vi walked in the tent. “I mean—I don’t think I’m supposed to see you before the wedding.” The girls night out slash spa night had been all about keeping Jake and Vi apart. His mother was superstitious and speaking of… “How did you escape my mother?”

“She thinks I’m in the restroom having an emotional breakdown.”

“An emotional breakdown?”

Vi slung herself onto the chaise lounge occupying the center of the tent. It looked comfortable, but Jake wouldn’t know as he’d yet to sit down on it.

“Heck if I know. I saw it on bridezillas. I screamed, ran out of the room and said I needed some space. It seemed like the best way to escape.” She rooted around in the ice bucket, pulled a bottle of water out and took a sip.

“Escape?” Jake’s brain had jolted from barely firing to overdrive. She wanted to back out. She couldn’t do this. He was far more broken than she could live with. The fact that she’d been living with him quite happily for the last four years somehow failed to make a blip in is paranoia at the moment.

“So I could come see how you were.” She patted the seat next to her, then seemed to remember something, reaching over to slip off a pair of high heels and toss them under the chaise. “Also giving me the chance to ditch my shoes. How are you holding up? You’re limping.”

“I hurt,” he admitted as he sat down on the lounge, pulling her into his lap to make room. “Mike gave me some pain pills last night, but I don’t want to take them just yet.” Mike was his brother and a doctor. He’d been by earlier, noticed Jake was limping and gotten him a couple of vicodin to help with the pain.

“Afraid you’ll want more of them?” It was a casual question, softened by her arms wrapping around his neck. From someone else, he might get defensive or offended, but Vi had been there with him when he’d been recovering from a Vicodin addiction.

He shook his head, pressing his cheek to her bare shoulder. “No. I don’t want to look back and wonder if I dreamed you marrying me. I’ll take it after the wedding because I think it’s okay to be high at the reception and at least that way, I’ll be able to dance with you.” That part was important to him. It was one tradition he wanted to be able to keep.

She pressed a kiss to his cheek, leaving a rose colored lipstick mark on his skin. “Remember to breathe. I’ll meet you on the beach and if I haven’t mentioned it lately, I think your cane is sexy. Now let me straighten your bowtie then I have to go back to my tent, finishing having histrionics and apologize to your mother.”

“I’ll be the gimp waiting on the beach for you,” he smirked as she straightened his tie and pushed herself out of his lap.

“Yeah, but after today, you’re legally my gimp. Love you. Have to go.”

She was already half way out the door when he remembered he’d never told her. “Hey, you look beautiful.”

Christmas in the Safstrom house was always hectic. Jake was the youngest of four brothers. Two of them were married and brought wives and a total of three kids with them. One was divorced without any kids and then there was Jake, the baby of the family, former playboy and bringing home a girl to Christmas for the first time ever.

It wasn’t pretty. It didn’t even resemble pretty, but as Jake had told Vi, it meant they liked her. They felt comfortable enough to tease her and him. They made comments and wolf whistled. They wanted to know what she saw in him and if he kept her perpetually roofied or maybe she was mentally ill. They were ruthless, but not cruel and she handled it all beautifully. In fact, she’d given it back as well as she’d taken it. His brothers were smitten within hours and had gone back to teasing him mercilessly. It was like a session of X-Box live minus the X-box or shooting zombies. Sure, they’d started out the holiday by giving Jake tense looks, worried glances but by Christmas Day, his mother was dealing out smacks with a wooden spoon because a food fight at the adults’ table was threatening to break out.

By the evening of the twenty-fifth, things were winding down. The kids has succumbed to the sugar coma they’d been working on for twenty-four hours. The adults were sleepy with wine and chasing the kids. Presents had been given out, dinner had been cleaned up and Jake was pretty sure that Alex, his oldest brother, was into the leftovers. He left Vi reading a Disney Princess book to one of his nieces and cloistered himself in the library. There was a big picture window there and a gas fireplace with a starter switch that he could light himself. He hobbled over to the couch, sat down and swung his leg up on the couch, pulling a blanket off the back and wrapping himself up in it.

It’d been a good Christmas, far better than any he’d anticipated and he knew that most of that was Vi’s fault.