“I wish you had told me I was making a mistake by marrying Josh. I would have listened to you.”

“But would you have heard me?” Eric’s mouth slid into that endearing, lopsided grin. “Come on, Molly—I’ve known you a long time. I know you have to make up your own mind.”

But could she? She already knew she wasn’t getting married, but that was all she’d figured out about her life—about her future.

Molly forced a challenging smile. “Are you calling me stubborn?”

His grin widened. “I didn’t say you were the only one.”

“I’m not. You did something none of us could talk you out of doing.” Enlisting in the Marines.

She fisted her hands as they began to tremble. Their other friends had always teased her that he was in love with her, but they’d been wrong. If he had loved her, he wouldn’t have left her when she’d needed him most.

Dear Reader,

Writing Finally a Bride was bittersweet for me. While I’ve been anxious to tell Molly McClintock’s story ever since she ran out on her wedding in Unexpected Bride (February ’08), her book is the conclusion to my THE WEDDING PARTY series for Harlequin American Romance. Molly, with her love of books and romantic nature, is a kindred spirit. Not just with me but with her best friend, Eric South. I hope you enjoy the story of the runaway bride and the man who has always been her hero.

Writing these books has been quite the challenge, as the four stories occur simultaneously. But it’s been a true labor of love. As I’ve finished each book, I’ve thought it my favorite, including Finally a Bride. Not only does Molly get her happy ending—but so do several other residents of Cloverville, the small town in Michigan where I’ve spent so much time it feels real to me.

I hope you’ve enjoyed the time you’ve spent in Cloverville, too!

Happy reading!

Lisa Childs

Finally a Bride

Lisa Childs

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bestselling, award-winning author Lisa Childs writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Harlequin/Silhouette Books. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her Web site, www.lisachilds.com, or by snail mail at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435.

With great appreciation to Kathleen Scheibling

for tutoring me in how to write for

Harlequin American Romance and for trusting me to

handle the challenge of writing simultaneous stories.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Epilogue

Chapter One

His hand shaking, Eric South replaced the cordless phone on the charger. She didn’t do it. She didn’t go through with it. He blew out a ragged breath of relief. Before he could draw another, a chime sounded. He reached for the phone again—it had been ringing off the hook all morning. But only a dial tone filled his ear.

The front door rattled as knuckles rapped hard against the wood, Eric’s visitor obviously giving up on the bell. He dropped the phone and headed from the kitchen across the small, square living area to the door. As he drew it open, his heart thumped hard once, then twice. She was so damn beautiful—even in jeans and a gray zip-up sweatshirt. Her chocolate-brown curls had been tamed into perfect ringlets, held in position by the headpiece of her long white veil.

“You didn’t come to my wedding,” Molly McClintock said, her voice full of accusation, her wide brown eyes glistening with unshed tears.

“From what I hear, neither did you,” Eric murmured.

“Eric!” She lifted her hands as if to strangle him, but instead she wrapped them around the nape of his neck and stepped into his embrace.

He was helpless to resist her, and his arms lifted almost as if of their own accord. He wrapped them tight around her, holding her as she sobbed into his shirt. She pressed close, crushing her breasts against his chest.

If she burrowed any closer, she’d be a part of him. Hell, she already was; she had been since the second grade. That was why he hadn’t been able to stand up at, or even attend, her wedding. How could he watch her marry another man when she’d promised to marry him then, when they were both seven? But he couldn’t hold her to a promise made almost twenty years ago.

She pushed against Eric, nearly knocking him off his feet.

He stumbled back from the doorway. “Molly…”

“Let me inside, Eric, before someone sees me,” she pleaded, pushing harder.

He stepped back and she brushed past him, then closed the door, shutting them both inside his secluded log cabin. “Molly, my house isn’t exactly on the main drag. No one’s going to see you.”

“They haven’t called you?”

“Well…”

“They’re already looking for me here.” Panic widened her eyes even more. “I’m going to have to find someplace else to go.”

“No.” He didn’t want her driving around the country, not when she was this upset. “I’ll hide you, Molly. No one will know you’re here.” He’d lie for her. Hell, he’d kill for her if she asked him to.

“My car…”

“Give me the keys. I’ll pull it into the garage.” His garage, a barn, was bigger than the cabin.

She withdrew the keys from her jeans pocket and dropped them into his outstretched palm. The metal, warm from her body, heated his skin.

“I didn’t know where else to go.” Because she hadn’t considered anywhere else. Molly had thought only of him—her best friend.

“You can always come to me,” he assured her, his gray eyes intense. But then he turned and walked away. His limp was barely perceptible.

He’d probably regained his muscle tone from working out. A charcoal T-shirt defined muscles in his broad shoulders, back and arms. Faded jeans hugged his lean hips. He’d finally, two years out of the Marines, stopped wearing his dark blond hair in a brush cut and now the silky strands covered the nape of his neck.

Molly curled her fingers into her palms so that she wouldn’t reach for him and beg him not to leave her if only for a little while. The door closed behind him, shutting her inside his cozy home. Alone. In the note she’d pinned to her wedding dress before she’d gone out the window of the bride’s dressing room, she’d asked everyone to leave her alone—to give her time to think.

But after driving around for hours by herself, she still hadn’t reached any new conclusions. She already knew what she wanted to do and what she didn’t want to do.

She didn’t want to get married. Not now. Maybe not ever. So why had she accepted a proposal? Why had she agreed to marry someone she hardly knew, let alone loved? She’d made such a mess—and not just of her life. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back, refusing to shed any more. She’d already wept all over Eric. Some great reunion.

Since high-school graduation eight years ago, she hadn’t seen that much of him. They had both left their small hometown of Cloverville, Michigan. She’d gone off to college, and he’d enlisted in the Marines. But they’d written. They’d called. They’d remained friends, even though they were no longer as close as they’d been when they were kids.

But life had gotten complicated—and it had affected them and their friendship. Eric had come back from the Middle East a changed man. Physically and emotionally.

The door opened. As Eric stepped back inside his gaze locked on her, and some of the tension eased from his broad shoulders. He’d probably expected her to run again. “I put the car in the barn and covered it up, just in case…”

“Just in case someone peeks in the windows,” she surmised and sighed. “What about these?” She gestured toward tall windows, through which late-afternoon sunlight poured, brightening the log interior of the old cabin. “Do we need to get heavy drapes—or should I wear a veil?”

“You already are,” Eric pointed out.

She reached up and tugged on the lace headpiece. Hairpins pulled at her scalp, which stung. “I need to take this off. Now!”

Panic, with the same intensity she’d felt at the church when she’d been about to step into her wedding dress, pressed down on her lungs. She struggled to catch her breath as she wrestled with her veil.

“Wait,” Eric said, “you’re going to hurt yourself.”

“Too late.”

Eric caught her hands in his, easing them away from the veil. “Let me help you.”

“That’s why I came to you.” He had always been the one she’d run to—until he’d left her.

His hands on her shoulders now, he pushed her toward the kitchen and one of the stools beside the lacquered wood counter. “Sit down. Relax,” he urged, kneading her tense muscles as she settled onto the stool.

“I can’t until I get this veil off!”

“I’ll take it off…” He pitched his deep voice low, speaking calmly, as if she was one of the accident victims he treated as an emergency medical tech and he was afraid she might be in shock. Well, maybe she was. She had been in an accident, after all. She hadn’t messed up her life this badly on purpose.

Her whole life she’d always tried to do what people expected of her; she had always tried to make everyone happy. Until today.

She closed her eyes as Eric’s fingers moved gently through her hair, removing the pins and loosening the veil. Her scalp tingled, not from the pins but from his touch. She struggled again for breath, but she wasn’t hyperventilating now. When the weight of the headpiece lifted from her head and neck, she moaned in relief and opened her eyes to meet Eric’s intense gaze.

“Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.” And he was. Literally. He hadn’t really saved her life, but he’d saved so many others—in the Middle East as a Marine medic and around Cloverville and Grand Rapids as an EMT.

“I should be the one wearing the veil,” Eric said, the right half of his mouth lifting in a self-deprecating grin as he pressed his fingers to the scar on the left side of his face.

“Is that why you backed out of standing up at my wedding?” Molly asked. She reached toward him and pushed his hand aside to run her fingertips along the raised ridge of his jagged scar.

Eric sucked in a breath, inhaling the scent of lilies from the flowers nestled in Molly’s hair. He shouldn’t have been able to feel her touch—not on his scar, but his skin warmed beneath her fingertips. He released his breath in an unsteady sigh.

“Eric, was that it?” Molly asked, her voice full of concern.

He hated pity. He didn’t want it from anyone, and most especially not from her. He forced a cocky grin and said, “No, I’m used to the way my devastating good looks make people stare.”

Her generous lips curved into a smile and her dark eyes twinkled as she played along. “Arrogant jerk.”

“Hey, it’s a burden to be this good-looking,” he joked.

“You are, you know,” she said, her fingertips running over his scar again. “This doesn’t change that at all. In fact it probably adds an air of danger that makes women find you irresistible.”

Some women. Sure. But not her. She had never found him irresistible. She’d only ever considered him a friend. He’d been kidding himself to think they could ever be anything more.

“You know me. I have to beat them off with a stick.” He laughed at his own joke, but Molly’s beautiful face tensed.

“Are you seeing someone?” she asked.

Just a few short hours ago she had been about to marry someone else. She couldn’t really care if he had a girlfriend. So he continued to be flip. “I don’t kiss and tell.”

“Seriously, Eric, I don’t want to stay if someone’s going to be upset about my living with you.”

Sure, he’d stashed her car in the barn and assured her she could always come to him, but he hadn’t actually thought she was moving in.

“Uh, Molly, just how long are you planning on staying?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep his sanity with her living here.

The honey-toned skin on her face turned red, and she stammered, “I didn’t think—I should have asked—I shouldn’t have just assumed I could stay. You have a life of your own. You’ve always known what you want.”

Her. He’d always wanted her.

“I’m sorry, Eric,” she continued, her words rushing together. “I don’t want to mess up your life like I’ve messed up my own.”

“Molly, you’re not messing up my life.”

“But I don’t want to get you in trouble with your girlfriend.”

“You don’t have to worry about my girlfriend.”

“She’s understanding, then?” Molly asked anxiously. “She knows we’re just friends?”

He shook his head. “You don’t need to worry about my girlfriend because I don’t have one.”

Her slim shoulders slumped, as if she was relieved. Was it just because she felt she had no place else to stay?

“But you have a fiancé,” he reminded her.

She reached for the veil that Eric had dropped on the counter and knotted her fingers in the lace. A square diamond glinted on her left hand. “I don’t anymore.”

“Does he know that?” Eric wondered.

“He’s a smart guy,” she said. “I think he probably figured out our engagement was over when I went out the window.”

The thought of perfect little Molly slipping out a church window had a chuckle rumbling in his throat. “You really went out the window? You—Molly McClintock?”

“You don’t need to sound so shocked,” she protested, sounding offended.

“Going out a window is something Abby Hamilton might do.” He referred to another member of their group of friends, the one who had always gotten into trouble. And had occasionally gotten the rest of them into trouble, as well. He glanced down at the tattoo encircling his arm. Getting ‘tats’ had been Abby’s idea, yet she was the only one of the friends who hadn’t actually gotten “inked.”

“She’s back, you know,” Molly said, her eyes glimmering with happiness.

“That’s great. I can’t wait to see her.” Abby Hamilton had left town eight years ago, and she hadn’t returned once to Cloverville. But since then Eric had visited her and her daughter a couple of times in Detroit and Chicago.

“You would have seen her and Lara if you had come to the rehearsal dinner last night.”

But then he would have had to see Molly’s fiancé, too. Not that he hadn’t seen Dr. Josh Towers before. The plastic surgeon was on staff at the hospital in Grand Rapids where Eric often brought patients, via ambulance or aeromed helicopter. Eric had skipped the rehearsal because he hadn’t wanted to see Towers with Molly, holding hands, kissing. Whatever people in love did.

He had never really been “in love.” He didn’t count the crush he’d had on Molly in the second grade and for most of the following years. But even with his limited experience, he doubted that people in love climbed out windows and left their beloved alone at the altar, humiliated in front of the entire town.

“It’s not like you to take off this way,” Eric pointed out. “And Abby’s not been back long enough to be a bad influence on you again.”

Despite the tattoo, Eric had considered Abby more good influence than bad; she had taught them all how to have fun. But Clayton, Molly’s older brother, had always considered her to be nothing but trouble.

“Who was really the bad influence on whom?” Molly asked as she flashed a smile. “Abby doesn’t have a tattoo.”

Eric closed his eyes as he remembered where Molly had gotten hers—not that a shoulder blade was a particularly sexy spot, but she’d had to strip down to her bra so that the artist could tattoo an open book onto her skin. Because she’d been in pain, she’d wanted Eric to hold her hand.

And that was why she’d come to him now—because she was in pain. He wouldn’t push her for answers she didn’t have. He would just hold her hand. He reached for her fingers and linked them with his. “It doesn’t matter what you did or why, you’re always welcome here.”

She stared up at him. “You really don’t mind that I stay?”

“You can stay however long you want,” he assured her.

Molly rose from the stool and pressed her body against his, sliding her arm around his back to hold him tight—as if she needed someone to hold on to to keep herself from falling over or falling apart.

His body tensed as she clung to him. One of her curls tickled his chin as her soft hair brushed his ear and his neck. He resisted the urge to pull her closer yet and press his lips to hers.

“Thank you, Eric. I knew I could count on you.” She slammed the heel of her hand against his shoulder. “Even though you bailed on me. You never said why you backed out of standing up for me.”

He couldn’t tell her; he couldn’t add to her burden. She already had one man in love with her whom she apparently didn’t love back—or hadn’t loved enough to marry. Not that Eric was really in love with her, but old crushes died hard. At least that was the way it was with his crush on her.

“Molly, I—”

“If it wasn’t because of your scar, why did you change your mind about being in my wedding party?” Her dark eyes narrowed with suspicion. “You knew, didn’t you? You’ve always known me so well. You knew I was making a mistake and you didn’t want to be part of it.”

“It all seemed kind of sudden,” he admitted. She’d certainly taken him by surprise. He hadn’t even realized she was dating anyone when she announced her engagement.

“Too sudden,” she agreed as she pulled herself from his arms to pace back into the living room.

“So that’s why you went out the window?” Because it was too soon and not because she didn’t love her fiancé?

The phone jangled again, but this time Eric let it ring.

“You’re not going to answer it?”

He shook his head. “It’s one of them—Colleen or Abby or Brenna.” Brenna Kelly, the maid of honor, had been perhaps the most upset of Molly’s friends and family. She’d always been the mother of their group of friends.

“I asked them to leave me alone, so I could think,” Molly murmured.

“You left a note.” Abby had told him about the note pinned to the wedding dress, which had been addressed to her and not the groom.

“I just need some time. Thanks for letting me stay here until I sort things out.”

Despite his dry throat, he swallowed hard and repeated his earlier question, “How long?”

She lifted her slender shoulders in a slight shrug. “I don’t know…”

“You’re going to need some things.” Like a lock for her bedroom door, in order for him to maintain his sanity. He cleared his throat and offered, “Do you want me to swing by your house and get your mother to pack you a bag?”

She shook her head. “No. Then everyone will know where I am.”

He gestured toward the phone just as the persistent ringing finally stopped. “You don’t think they already know?”

Despite the sudden silence Molly continued to stare at the phone—as if waiting for it to ring again. “I’m sorry, Eric,” she said, her voice heavy with regret. “I’m so sorry that I’m dumping all my troubles on you.”

“Quit apologizing, Molly.”

She smiled. “You hate contrition. And gratitude. And pity. Is there anything you don’t hate, Eric?”

Her. He could never hate her, not even when she’d been about to marry another man. And he’d tried. “I’m a miserable old grump. Are you sure you want to stay here?”

She nodded. “I don’t have anyplace else to go.”

“Oh, Molly, that’s not true. Your family loves you and will always support you.” Her family had struggled for quite a while to deal with her father’s death eight years ago, but they’d recovered and were stronger than ever. Because they’d been there for each other. Just as his uncle had been there for him.

He added, “And you have so many friends.”

She pressed her palms over her eyes. “I can’t face them. I let them all down—I let everyone down.”

“Molly, that’s not true.”

“Don’t,” she said, her voice as hard as her gaze when she shifted her hands away from her face. “Don’t lie to me. You’ve never lied to me.”

Never to her. Only about her, to himself. “Then believe what I’m telling you. No one is angry with you.” Except maybe Brenna, who had worked hard on the wedding since Molly had been too busy with medical school. “They’re only worried about you. They want to be certain that you’re all right.”

On cue, the phone began to ring again.

Molly closed her eyes as if trying to retreat inside herself, to hide.

He sighed. “Maybe if I tell them you’re here and you’re okay, they’ll stop calling.”

“I don’t know, Eric,” she said, her voice quavering with uncertainty. “I don’t know that I’m okay. But I don’t want you to lie for me, either.”

“What do you want from me?” he asked, his breath burning his lungs as he held it—waiting for her answer.

She lifted her gaze to him. “Probably too much…”

His heart rate quickened. “What do you mean?”

She gestured toward the cordless phone, vibrating with each ring on the countertop. “I shouldn’t put you in this position, of having to hide me. They’re going to keep bugging you.”

“I can unplug it,” he offered. But he’d do more. He’d always done whatever she asked of him—except once.

“No. They’ll give up.” Still the ringing persisted. “Eventually.” Her lips lifted in a stiff smile.

“Since you don’t want me to turn off the phone, what can I do for you?” Could he hold her hand? Kiss her?

“I have a suitcase in the trunk of my car, with enough things packed for two weeks.”

Two weeks. “Your clothes for your honeymoon?” He bit his tongue to hold back a groan as he imagined a sexy assortment of lingerie and bikinis.

She chuckled. “Yes. Looks like I’m going to be spending my honeymoon with you.”

That dream—of a honeymoon with Molly McClintock—had fueled his adolescent fantasies and kept him alive during his years in the Marines.

Now he realized why people always warned you to be careful what you wished for. That fantasy of spending a honeymoon with Molly was going to be a dismal reality, since she’d be crying on his shoulder over another man.

Chapter Two

A honeymoon. The thought of spending one with her fiancé had scared Molly as much as the marriage itself. She hadn’t shared anything more than a few chaste kisses with Dr. Joshua Towers. Despite his good looks, he hadn’t inspired any desire in her—no quickening of her pulse, no rush of heat. But the mention of a honeymoon with Eric instantly shortened her breath. She pushed her trembling hands into the pockets of her sweatshirt.

“You’re shaking,” Eric said.

She wasn’t surprised that he noticed. Nothing ever escaped his attention. Apparently he’d known she was making a mistake before she had.

Unwilling to admit to another weakness, she pulled her cell phone from her pocket. “It’s on vibrate.”

“You should shut it off,” he advised.

She nodded. “You’re right.” Of course. He was always right. But she’d already shut off the phone. Now if only she could shut off her tumultuous emotions—guilt being the predominant one. “I wish you had told me.”

“What?” he asked, his brow furrowing with confusion.

“I wish you’d told me that I was making a mistake,” she clarified.

“No one else told you?”

Her head still pounding from Abby’s lecture the night before at her bachelorette/slumber party at her mom’s, she admitted, “Abby might have said a thing or ten about my rushing into this marriage.”

His gray eyes brightening with humor, he asked, “So did you listen?”

“I’m here, aren’t I?” Without a wedding band on her finger; without having committed herself to a man she didn’t love.

“So Abby talked you out of marrying this guy?”

She shook her head. “No.” She’d come to her senses on her own. She only wished she had done it sooner. For example, before she’d accepted Josh’s proposal.

“Then how could I have talked you out of it?” Eric asked.

“I would have listened to you.”

“But would you have heard me?” His mouth slid into that endearing lopsided grin. “Come on, Molly. I’ve known you a long time. I know you have to make up your own mind.”

Have to. But could she? She already knew she wasn’t getting married, but that was all she’d figured out about her life—about her future. She shrugged off the tension tightening the muscles in her neck and shoulders. She had time—at least two weeks—to figure out her next move.

She forced a challenging smile. “Are you calling me stubborn?”

His grin widened. “I didn’t say you were the only one.”

“I’m not. You did something none of us could talk you out of doing.” Enlisting in the Marines.

She fisted her hands as they began to tremble again, old fear echoing in her heart. She had been so terrified she would lose him, just as she had lost her father. But Eric hadn’t backed out—not even for her. And she’d begged him not to go. Their other friends had always teased her that Eric was in love with her, but they’d been wrong. If he had loved her, he wouldn’t have left her when she needed him most. He wouldn’t have put her through the terror of losing someone else important to her. Someone she loved.

She drew in a shuddering breath. “At least I came to my senses before I did something stupid.”

Almost absentmindedly he stroked his knuckles across his scar. His voice hard with pride and his memories, he insisted, “It wasn’t stupid.”

She knew he spoke of the Marines, not her near-miss marriage. “I’m sorry, Eric.”

“What did I say about apologizing?” he reminded her. “Quit it.”

She smiled at his stern tone.

“I’m going to get your suitcase,” he said, heading toward the kitchen door.

Molly ducked back into the shadows of the living room, as if someone driving by might see her. Her smile widened at her overreaction. Since Eric’s cabin was off a winding private road, tucked into trees on the edge of a small lake, she doubted anyone would be driving by. But then his phone rang again. From the persistence of the phone calls, Molly was surprised someone wasn’t already pounding down the door. She’d left the note. Why wouldn’t they give her what she asked for—time alone?

Anger chasing away her guilt, she grabbed the ringing phone and shouted, “Stop calling!”

“Molly McClintock,” a woman’s voice, sharp with disapproval, admonished her. “Don’t you use that tone with me, young lady.”

Molly’s face heating, she grimaced. “Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was you.”

“It doesn’t matter who’s calling. I’ve taught you better manners than that,” Mary McClintock reprimanded her oldest daughter.

The last thing Molly had expected from her mother, after leaving a groom at the altar, was a lecture on telephone etiquette.

“You did. I’m sorry.” She closed her eyes, hoping Eric hadn’t overheard her apologizing again.

Music could be heard through the receiver, nearly drowning out her mother’s soft sigh.

“Mom, where are you?”

“Your reception, honey,” her mother answered so matter-of-factly.

“My reception?” Molly repeated, totally nonplussed. “But there was no wedding.”

“We couldn’t cancel the party,” her mother explained. “Too many people worked too hard getting ready for it. And the whole town was looking forward to it. We couldn’t disappoint everyone.”

As Molly had. “I know, Mom. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not the one to whom you owe an apology.”

She had already talked to Joshua, the night before the wedding. It seemed the superstition about the groom seeing the bride before the ceremony was well founded. Since she’d warned him about her doubts, he couldn’t have been surprised that she’d backed out of marrying him, and he wouldn’t have been disappointed.

She suspected she hadn’t been the only one regretting their hasty engagement. But he had too much honor to retract his proposal and leave her at the altar. However, he had assured her that if she changed her mind, he would understand. She had also left an apologetic voice mail for him before she’d shut off her cell. But would any apology make up for the humiliation to which she’d subjected him?

Along with music, laughter drifted through the receiver. “Who’s there, Mom?”

“Everyone, honey, but you—you and Eric.”

“Please don’t tell anyone that I’m here.”

Her mother’s laugh echoed the noise of the other guests. “Okay. I won’t say a word. But I don’t have to.”

Of course her bridesmaids knew where she’d run off to—to whom she had run. “Why can’t they leave me alone?”

“Because they love you,” her mother said, her voice warm with affection. For Molly or her friends? Mary McClintock loved all her daughter’s friends as if they were her own children, but only one of them, Molly’s younger sister Colleen, actually was. Mrs. McClintock continued, “They’re worried about you. This isn’t like you, Molly.”

“I’m not sure what isn’t like me and what is.” She sighed. Ever since her dad had died and Eric had left for the Marines, she’d only allowed herself to focus on one thing—medical school—in order to ignore her loss and pain. “That’s why I just need to be left alone.”

“That’s fine, honey, I’ll make sure no one bothers you,” her mother agreed, “but only because you’re not alone. You have Eric.”

But she didn’t have Eric. He still hadn’t returned with her suitcase. “Thanks, Mom.”

“Sure, honey.” Her mother hung up without another word, without giving Molly a chance to ask any more questions. Everyone was at the reception. Even Josh?

Memories flashed through her mind. Not of her and her fiancé but of Joshua and the maid of honor, Brenna Kelly. The looks they’d exchanged at the rehearsal in the church and afterward at the dinner at the Kelly house had charged the air with the electricity of undeniable attraction. Josh and his twin sons had stayed with the Kellys after the rehearsal dinner, and Brenna had skipped the slumber party in order to play hostess to the groom and his boys. If Josh had gone to the reception, it might have been for the sake of Brenna. Molly hoped so. Then maybe some of her guilt over jilting not just Josh but his adorable sons might begin to ease.

His gaze drawn to Molly, Eric shouldered open the back door and dropped her suitcase on the floor. The thud of the heavy luggage against the hardwood startled her so that she whirled toward him, the cordless phone still in her hand. But the smile he’d witnessed when he’d stepped through the door quickly slid away from her beautiful face.

“You scared me,” she accused him.

She wasn’t the only one who was afraid. Eric had stayed in the barn as long as he could, steeling himself for two weeks with Molly as his houseguest—in a very small cabin. Fortunately, he had to work. That morning he’d left his supervisor a voice mail canceling the week off he’d previously arranged because he’d thought he’d be too distracted—by thoughts of Molly married to someone else—to work. Then, after backing out of the wedding party, he’d realized he would need the distraction of work.

“Did I scare you?” he asked. “Or was it whoever you just talked to?”

“No, it was you,” she said. “You’ve often scared me, Eric.”

“Then I guess that makes us even.”

She narrowed her eyes as if confused. But she never had really understood him—not in the way he understood her.

“So who was on the phone?” he asked, gesturing toward the cordless as she replaced it on the charger.

“My mom.”

He couldn’t help but smile. He loved Mrs. Mick, as Abby Hamilton had dubbed her years and years ago. Everyone loved Mary McClintock, although not like her husband had loved her. Eric knew all her kids—whether they admitted or not—wanted the deeply loving relationship their parents had had.

“Is she mad?” he asked.

Molly shook her head, tumbling those chocolate-colored curls around her shoulders. “No. You know my mom. She understands.”

“Yeah, she’s pretty great.”

“You’re pretty great, too,” she said, “for letting me stay here.”

“It’s no problem,” he lied. He reached for the suitcase again, his muscles straining as he hefted the weighty tweed bag. “You might change your mind when you see my spare room, though.” But he didn’t lead her there. Instead he stopped in the doorway to his own room.

Molly’s heart bumped against her ribs as she collided with Eric’s back. “I thought you were putting me up in the spare room.”

He dropped her suitcase then shrugged, his shoulders rippling beneath the thin cotton of his T-shirt. “I can’t put you in Uncle Harold’s old room.”

“Why not? Is he coming home?”

His shoulders lifted as he drew in a deep breath. “No.” He expelled a heavy guilt-ridden sigh. “But every time I visit him at the VA hospital, I let him think that he will.”

She reached out to brush her fingertips along his forearm. “He’s not the only one who wants to think he’s coming home.”

“No, he isn’t,” Eric admitted. “I want him here, so I’ve left all his stuff where it was.”

“I won’t touch anything, I promise.”

“No, it’s not that. Hell, he hardly has anything to touch. Career soldiers travel light,” he explained.

Thank God Eric hadn’t followed completely in his uncle’s footsteps. He hadn’t made a career of the military. Her gaze skimmed over his scar. Had that been his choice, though?

“Guys in the service that long don’t accumulate a lot of stuff,” he continued. “But then, Uncle Harold didn’t need much.”

“No, he didn’t,” she agreed. “He had you.”

“He didn’t need me, either,” Eric dismissed himself.

She hated when he did that. Realizing that she still held his arm, she squeezed it gently and his muscles tightened beneath her grasp. “He was lucky to have you in his life.”

“I was lucky he took me in,” Eric said, his voice betraying the emotions he struggled to suppress. “My parents barely knew him.”

Harold South was actually Eric’s father’s uncle, his great-uncle. With few other relatives alive, his parents had named friends, another married couple, as their son’s guardians in the event of their deaths. They had probably never considered the possibility that Eric might actually have to live with his guardians, and they couldn’t have envisioned the car accident that took their lives when their son was only four. He’d lived with the guardians for a few years, but then their marriage disintegrated and neither had wanted the responsibility of a seven-year-old boy. Fortunately, since his parents’ funeral, Uncle Harold had been keeping track of Eric. And he’d taken Eric in when no one else had wanted him. Molly knew that was the way Eric had interpreted the situation—that no one had wanted him.

“He loved having you live with him.” She reminded her friend of the joy he’d brought to his uncle’s life. “He wanted you sooner, but he didn’t feel it was his place to fight your parents’ wishes.”

So how could she fight her parent’s wishes? How could she disrespect her father, the man who’d meant more to her than any other man—except Eric? She winced as her head pounded, the ache probably generated from stress and too little sleep the night before her wedding day.

“You’re exhausted,” Eric said, as always changing the subject from himself. “Take my bed.”

Heat rushed to her face. “I can’t!”

Not without remembering the last time she’d been in it—when she’d thrown herself at him, begging him not to leave her for the Marines.

He turned toward her, his eyes widening at her sharp tone. “Molly…”

“I can’t take your bed.” Not unless he lay in it with her as he had that night, the last night before he’d left her. “That’s asking too much of you.” And of her. But then it wouldn’t be the first time someone had asked too much of her.

Eric shook his head. “I can’t put you up in there. I haven’t even opened the door in over a year. It’s a dusty mess.”

“So I’ll clean it. It’s fine,” she insisted as she backed away from the doorway.

Molly hadn’t even stepped inside his room with him, but Eric’s heart pounded hard. Before picking up the suitcase again, he glanced once toward the bed. Memories quickened his pulse, but he pushed away the traitorous thoughts. He’d accepted long ago that he’d never get Molly McClintock back in his bed. If only she had come to him that night because she’d loved him—as a woman loves a man, and not just as a friend who hadn’t wanted to lose him.

Hinges creaked as she pushed open the door on the other side of the living room. Unlike Eric’s room, which Uncle Harold had added when his nephew came to live with him, the old man’s quarters were original to the small cabin. Eric joined her in the doorway, where dust particles danced in the late-afternoon sunshine that came streaming through the sagging blinds.

“Come on,” he said. “You can’t stay in here.”

“It’s fine,” she insisted, her eyes watering. She sneezed and then giggled. “Well, it will be once I clean it. Put down my suitcase and show me where your feather duster is.”

His arm straining, Eric hefted her bag onto the bed. More dust rose from the faded flannel comforter. Where before he hadn’t wanted to know, hadn’t wanted to envision her in any skimpy little honeymoon lingerie, now he had to ask, “What do you have in that thing? Bricks?”

“Maybe you’re just getting weak,” she teased, skimming her fingertips over the barbed-wire tattoo on his bicep.

He shoved his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t reach for her, so he wouldn’t drag her into his arms and tumble them both onto the dusty mattress. “Seriously, Molly, what do you have in there?”

Giggling again, she stepped around him and unzipped the steamer trunk–size suitcase. “Books.”

“You packed books for your honeymoon?”

She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and kept her head bent over the bag so he couldn’t see her face. “I like to read.”

“You love to read,” he corrected her. “You’ve always loved to read.” Everyone in Cloverville was aware of that. She was known as the McClintock who had her nose forever in a book.

“That changed a bit when it came to medical school,” she said as she dropped several paperbacks onto the flannel comforter.

“Textbooks kind of dull?”

She made another sound—not her usual carefree giggle but a bitter chuckle. “I prefer fiction.”

His own bitter memories—of the places he’d been, the things he had seen—washed over him. “Yeah, me, too.” And not just because of the past but the present, too. His dreams of a honeymoon with Molly had been much more exciting than the reality.

She pulled an assortment of long dresses, jeans and a sweater from the suitcase.

“Where the hell were you going for your honeymoon?” he asked. “The North Pole?”

She tossed a wide-brimmed straw hat atop the pile of books and clothes. “I wouldn’t need the hat there.”

“Where were you going?” he asked again, then shook his head. He didn’t need an image of her and the GQ doctor lying together on some white sand beach or tangled in satin sheets. “No, it’s probably better that I don’t know.”

A bell pealed in the kitchen as the phone resumed ringing. He groaned. “I should answer that or they’ll keep calling.”

“I thought they’d stop,” she murmured as she followed him.

“Me, too. Brenna called my cell while I was in the barn, getting your suitcase.”

“You talked to her?”

He nodded.

“How mad is she?”

He gestured toward the phone. “I guess madder than I thought.”

“You lied to her?”

“Not exactly. I just didn’t offer any information.” He picked up the cordless and barked into the receiver, “Yeah?”

“South?” his boss asked, his voice flustered with confusion.

“Yes, Steve. So you got my message? Do you need me to come in?” Please, God. His body tensed when Molly brushed against him as she headed back toward the bedroom with the bucket of cleaning supplies he kept under the sink.

Steve chuckled as if Eric had said something particularly funny. “Leave it to you to want to work on your day off, South.”

“It’s no problem. Really,” he assured his supervisor. “I don’t need the time off anymore.”

“Your wedding get canceled?”

“It wasn’t my wedding.” It wouldn’t have been—he’d accepted long ago that he would never marry. “But, yeah, it was canceled. That’s why I left you the voice mail saying I wouldn’t need my vacation time. And if you want me to come in right now…”

“No, Eric, that’s not why I called. In fact, I called for the exact opposite reason.”

“You’re firing me?”

Steve laughed outright, the phone crackling with his raucous chuckle. “I’d like to clone you, not fire you.”

“Then I don’t understand…”

“I’ve already made up the schedule for next week, and I’m leaving you off it.”

“But I don’t need the time off.” Especially now, when he had such a distracting houseguest.

“Yes, you do, Eric. In the two years you’ve been working for me, you haven’t taken a single day off. Not a personal day. Not a sick day and none of your vacation time.”

“I like my job.” He couldn’t help Uncle Harold—or the comrades he’d lost in the Middle East. But as an EMT he could help other people. Sometimes.

“I’m glad you like your job,” Steve said, “and I want to keep it that way. You already arranged for the week off, and I’m going to make sure you stick to it.”

“But I don’t want to.”

“But you need to, Eric. You need to take some R & R or you’re going to burn out. I’ve seen it happen too many times. I don’t want it happening to you.” He laughed. “Hell, I can’t afford to have it happen to you.”

“I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine.”

“So take the time off and stay that way,” Steve insisted. “Everyone’s been warned. No calling you to work for them, either. I don’t want to see you back here for a week, South. That’s an order. I know that you’re too good an employee to disobey an order.” But the supervisor must have doubted him because he hung up before Eric could begin to argue.

Molly ducked her head out of the bedroom doorway. “I take it that wasn’t one of my bridesmaids?”

“Not this time.” He sighed. “Seems like I’m going to be around more than I thought next week.” More than he’d hoped.

“That’s good,” she said, but she sounded about as convinced of that as he was.

“Don’t worry, though,” he assured her. “I’ll stay out of your way. Give you time to…read.” Maybe he would have to borrow a few of her books. Anything to get his mind off the thought of her here, lying in a bed just a few yards away from his.

“Hmm?” She turned toward him, obviously distracted.

“Nothing,” he said. “Your mind is somewhere else.” Or on someone else. Did she regret running out on her groom?

“They didn’t cancel the reception, you know,” she informed him.

“I know,” he admitted. “Your bridesmaids have been calling from the American Legion.” The post was the only facility in Cloverville big enough for parties. Even if the new construction expanding the town included a banquet hall, he doubted any true Clovervillians would use anyplace but the American Legion. The town, like his uncle Harold, was loyal and steeped in tradition.

She groaned. “Didn’t Abby read them the note?”

“You didn’t ask them to leave me alone,” he pointed out.

She grinned, amused by their friends’ ingenuity. “Leave it to them to find a loophole.”

“To find you.”

“Even though they know where I am, I think they’ll leave me alone for a while,” she said, her earlier panic seeming to have subsided.

“If they let you be, it’s probably only because of your mom.” Mrs. McClintock would make sure the others laid off.

“Probably,” she agreed.

“I guess it doesn’t matter why—as long as they agree to do it,” Eric allowed.

Molly glanced up at him and blinked, as if she hadn’t heard a word he said.

“That’s what you want, right?” he asked, wondering if she’d changed her mind. “Time to think?”

“Yes,” she said vaguely, leaving Eric to consider whether she was answering his question or another one she’d asked herself.

“If you’d rather be completely alone, I can take off,” he offered. “I have a buddy I can crash with in Grand Rapids. I stay with him when I work doubles. He’s closer to the hospital.” Maybe that would be far enough away so that he wouldn’t think of her. But he doubted it, since even the Middle East hadn’t been far enough away.

“I don’t want you to leave.” Her dark eyes shone as if something had just occurred to her. “At least I don’t want you to leave without me.”

“I know I’m going to regret asking,” he said, his stomach muscles tightening as he braced himself for her response, “but what exactly do you want, Molly?”

She flashed him a smile as her eyes took on a mischievous glint. “I want to crash my wedding reception.”

Chapter Three

“This is crazy,” Eric grumbled as he handed Molly a glass of punch. But he’d gone along with her plan—just as he always did.

Fighting a smile, Molly tilted her head so she could see beyond the brim of her hat. Eric’s face was also in shadows because of the fedora he wore. In a dark pin-striped suit, with his hat and a bright red tie, Eric resembled the dapper gangsters of old. Dashing but dangerous.

“You look good,” she murmured, pitching her voice low so no one would overhear.

As usual, he didn’t acknowledge her compliment. “You look like Mrs. Hild.”

The elderly widow whose life revolved around her roses…She wore flowered dresses and wide-brimmed hats. Molly smiled. She didn’t exactly consider the comparison an insult. She had always liked the town busybody who lived on Main Street. The hand-carved Cloverville Town Limits sign was planted in the front yard of her little Cape Cod right beside her flowers.

“You were really going to wear that on your honeymoon?” he asked, his voice full of the same disbelief that had been on his face when he’d seen the contents of her heavy suitcase.

She bet his bride wouldn’t bring books, or much of anything else, on their honeymoon. If she had Eric, she wouldn’t need anything else. Her heart clutched at the thought of Eric marrying another woman—any woman but her. Not that she wanted to marry Eric; they were only friends. Despite that night before he’d left for the Marines, that was all they’d ever really been.

She lifted the glass of punch and sipped from the rim, then coughed. She had asked for nonalcoholic, but after he’d worked so hard to get her a drink, sneaking his way over to the bowl, she couldn’t reject what he had brought her.

“What’s wrong with this?” Molly glanced down at the long loose-fitting flowered dress she wore. “I like it.”

And that was all she’d considered when she’d packed for her honeymoon, what she liked—not what her new groom might appreciate. She hadn’t thought about him at all. Guilt tugged at her. Poor Josh. What a horrible woman he’d picked for his bride. She hoped he’d choose a better one next time. She hoped that next time he’d propose out of love, and not from the desire to find a mother for his twin sons.

And she hoped that the woman to whom he proposed would accept out of love—and not just from a desire to escape the choices she’d previously made. Of course Molly had thought she could love Josh. And despite not seeing all that much of his sons, she’d thought she could love Buzz and T.J., too. The four-year-olds made her think of what Eric must have been like at their age, when he’d lost both his parents, not just his mother.

“And the hat?” Eric asked, flicking a fingertip against the brim and snapping her attention back to him and the present.

“The sun is bad for you, you know,” she maintained. But she wasn’t quite sure why she’d packed the hat. She hadn’t even known where they were honeymooning, just as she hadn’t known much about the wedding.

She glanced around the American Legion Hall, its whitewashed paneling and worn linoleum complemented by well-placed white-and-red fairy lights and balloons. White linen tablecloths covered the dark laminate tables where the townspeople ate fish dinners every Friday in the spring. Her mother had been right. Everyone, and most especially Molly’s maid of honor, Brenna Kelly, had worked hard to make the wedding and reception special—beautiful.

Everyone had worked so hard on her wedding—everyone but her. She hadn’t been able to focus on it because she’d been wrestling with another tough decision.

“With your complexion, you don’t burn,” Eric persisted, unwilling to drop the subject of the hat. “You tan.”

“The sun is still bad for you,” she maintained. She hadn’t needed to attend medical school to learn that. Maybe she hadn’t needed to attend medical school at all….

“Did we come here to discuss the sun?” Eric asked, wondering how they had gotten onto that topic when what he really wanted to know was why she’d talked him into crashing her wedding reception. Then he added, with admiration for Molly’s hard work and determination, “Dr. McClintock.”

The playful smile drained from Molly’s face, which paled despite her honey-colored skin. He glanced around, thinking maybe she’d seen someone who upset her. But no one stood around where they loitered in a short hall leading only to a fire exit. Everyone was on the dance floor—enjoying Molly’s reception. Was that what upset her?

“I’m not a doctor,” she said, her voice unusually sharp and defensive.

“Not yet,” he agreed, lifting his glass of punch to his lips. “But you will be soon.”

She shook her head. “I’m not so sure about that anymore. I’ve dropped out of med school.”

He blinked, more stunned by her admission than by the sip of punch he’d just taken. Someone had spiked the nonalcoholic punch bowl. He glanced around for her kid brother, Rory, and the Hendrix boys, Rory’s usual partners in crime. But then he returned his attention to her, half closing his eyes as he studied her face. He could not have heard her right. “What did you say?”

“I dropped out,” she repeated. “I quit medical school.”

He shook his head. “I thought you were just going to take a little time off—for the wedding.”

“That’s what I thought, too,” she said, her eyes darkening with anxiety. “But I’m not sure I can go back.”

Had her wedding just been an excuse to quit medical school? Was that why she had accepted a marriage proposal from a man she’d only dated a few short months? No wonder she’d backed out. She had obviously come to her senses.

“Molly—”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” she stated, lifting her chin defensively. “Not now.”

Maybe not ever, Eric thought. After all these years, had she finally changed her mind about becoming a doctor? He should have been surprised, but he wasn’t. He hadn’t ever believed she’d decided to be a doctor because she wanted to. Had she done the same thing with her wedding? Agreed to marry because it was what someone else wanted, and then run away when she’d realized it wasn’t what she wanted?

“Molly…”

“Come on, let’s dance,” she implored, winding her arm through his to tug him toward the dance floor.

He dragged his feet on the worn linoleum, resisting her, just as he had when she’d begged him not to join the Marines. “Someone will see us.”

“They won’t recognize us in these outfits. I’m so glad you found your uncle’s old hat.” She placed her punch cup on a tray, reaching for his glass next to add to the pile of discarded dishes.

Eric touched the brim of the well-worn fedora, then ran his fingertips down the side of his face. “It doesn’t cover this, so it’s not much of a disguise.”

“Then I guess we’ll just have to dance cheek to cheek,” Molly said, her lips curving in an impish smile.

Eric’s body tensed, even though he knew she was only teasing. So he teased back. “Not with that big floppy hat of yours,” he said, touching the brim. “The way we’re dressed, we’re far more likely to draw attention to ourselves than disappear into the crowd. Do you want people to see you?”

“No, but I want to be able to see what’s going on and I can’t see anything from back in this hallway. Come on.” She tugged on his arm again, pulling him into the reception hall. “I think you’re more worried about being seen than I am.”

She was right. She probably thought he was self-conscious because of the scar, but that wasn’t the reason. Even though he didn’t know how he would weather two weeks with Molly, he’d resigned himself to spending her “honeymoon” with her. Platonically, of course. But if someone saw her and convinced her to come out of hiding, she wouldn’t need to stay with him.

Worse yet, she might decide to stay with him, her jilted groom, and have a real honeymoon—even though she’d skipped the wedding.

“I’m just worried that you haven’t thought this through,” Eric said.

She stopped at the edge of the dance floor and turned toward him, admitting, “I’ve given you good reason to worry about me, the way I ran away from my wedding and let down so many people.”

“They don’t look too let down,” he said, pointing toward all the dancing couples. From the hospital, he recognized the GQ doctors. The blond best man, Nick Jameson, held a brunette tight in his arms—Molly’s younger sister, Colleen. And the jilted groom, Dr. Joshua Towers, danced with the maid of honor, Brenna Kelly. Towers grinned at the redhead, neither of them looking too upset. How would Molly feel about that—that the man she’d been about to marry wasn’t destroyed by the fact that she’d abandoned him at the altar?

“That’s why I had to come here.” Molly tilted her head, so she could peer out from beneath her hat brim. “I had to see if I was right.” Relief eased some of the tension from her shoulders.

“Right about what?”

Brenna and Josh. But she didn’t want to tell Eric that she hoped her fiancé had fallen for her best female friend. She didn’t want him thinking…well, the truth. That she’d been about to marry a man she didn’t love. Because then she would have to explain why—that she was a chicken. She didn’t want Eric to be as disgusted with her as she was with herself.

Molly scanned the rest of the guests on the dance floor, gasping in surprise as she noticed a certain couple doing more than dancing. The dark-haired man leaned over the small blond woman who was in his arms, kissing her as if he never intended to stop. Molly grabbed Eric’s arm. “See—”

“Abby and Clayton?” he asked, whistling through his teeth.

“And you thought I was crazy for wearing this long dress. I suspected it might be cold in here, but even I didn’t realize that hell was going to freeze over.”

Eric laughed. “Man, seeing that almost makes it worth dressing in this crazy getup. I’m seeing it and still not believing it—Clayton and Abby?”

Molly giggled at his shock. “Men can be so oblivious.”

“Are you talking about me or Clayton?” he asked, his mouth lifting in a partial grin. “I always thought he hated her.”

“He wanted to,” Molly explained. “But…” She’d always suspected that attraction, not animosity, existed between Abby Hamilton and her older brother, Clayton.

“That’s not hate,” Eric mused. “I can’t wait to razz Abby about this.”

“You can’t say anything to her.”

“That’s right—we’re not supposed to be here.” His hand closed over her elbow, steering her back toward the deserted hallway.

Her skin tingling beneath the thin material, she pulled away. “We can’t leave yet. It’s just getting good.”

Eric gave her a long, assessing look. “You planned this,” he accused.

She shook her head, and the floppy brim of her hat fluttered. “I didn’t plan.” A smile tugged at her lips. “Hoped, maybe.”

That was why she’d left her note addressed to Abby, asking her to stay until Molly came back. She wanted her friend to move back to Cloverville—for good.

Eric grinned. “You’re a chip off the old block.”

“What?” Her heart clutched at his grin and his words, but she knew he was wrong. She wasn’t like either of her parents. She wasn’t strong, like her father, who had stayed so brave even when he was so sick—or like her mother, who had survived having to watch the man she loved dying, unable to help him, to save him. Even though many years had passed since her father’s death, the memory of that feeling—that sense of utter helplessness—was still as oppressive as it had been the day he’d died.

That helplessness was part of the reason she had decided to become a doctor. She hadn’t ever wanted to lose anyone else she loved because she was unable to save them. She gazed up at Eric, and her heart shifted again. She’d nearly lost him, too—the best friend she’d ever had.

“You’re like your mom,” Eric explained as she studied him with an odd expression, a mixture of confusion and something else he couldn’t name. “You’re a matchmaker.”

But her mother’s matchmaking had never succeeded. Despite all her efforts, Mary McClintock hadn’t ever managed to make her daughter see Eric as anything but a friend. He pulled his attention away from Molly’s beautiful face to focus on the couple on the dance floor, but they weren’t a couple anymore. Clayton stood alone as Abby pushed her way through the other dancers to escape him. Molly’s matchmaking wasn’t any more effective than her mother’s, it appeared.

“Matchmaker? Who? Me?” she asked, widening her eyes in feigned innocence.

At least she probably thought she was feigning it. To Eric she was innocent, full of optimism and hope—qualities he’d forsaken long ago when he lost first his parents, then his guardians. If not for Uncle Harold bringing him to Cloverville, he wasn’t sure where he might have wound up, bounced from foster home to foster home.

He certainly wouldn’t have ended up here, crashing a wedding reception with the runaway bride. “Hmm…I guess it’s true, that whole thing about returning to the scene of the crime,” he murmured.

“Crime?” she asked. “I’m not admitting anything, but since when is matchmaking a crime?”

“Since you set me up with Trudy Sneible for homecoming our sophomore year.” When he’d brought up her crime, he’d actually been referring more to her running out on her wedding than coming to the reception. But he didn’t want to make her feel worse than she already felt; he preferred her mischief making to the heart-wrenching tears she had sobbed when she’d first showed up at his door.

“Trudy was cute,” she defended their old classmate.

“She was.” Not as cute as Molly had always been, though. “She was also six feet tall, and I hadn’t had my growth spurt yet.”

“You were a squirt,” she reminisced.

“She about trampled me on the dance floor.”

Molly’s fingers wrapped around his hand, and she tugged him into the midst of swaying couples. “Dance with me. I promise not to trample you.”

“I’m not worried,” he lied. He wasn’t worried about her physically trampling him; she probably didn’t weigh much over a hundred pounds, while he’d finally had that growth spurt in his junior year of high school and was now six foot himself. But he was worried about her trampling him emotionally.

He could not fall for Molly McClintock again. He was too old for unrequited crushes, and he had even less to attract her now than he had back in school. He couldn’t compete with the handsome and successful doctor.

Not that he wanted to compete. He had learned long ago that if you allowed yourself to feel anything, you opened yourself up to pain. It was better to feel nothing at all.

“If you’re not worried, why are you way over there?” Molly asked as she stepped closer, settling her breasts against his chest. She tipped her head back to look up at him, knocking off her hat in the process.

Eric caught the straw monstrosity and clutched it against the back of her head. “Someone’s going to see us,” he warned her just as a couple dancing near them slowed their steps.

Two elderly women, holding hands, danced to the waltz the deejay was playing, probably at their request. One wore a hat as wide as Molly’s, but hers had flowers, wilted now, covering the brim.

“Damn,” Eric murmured. “We’re busted.”

Molly drew his attention away from the town busybodies as she slid her palms up his chest to clutch his shoulders. Then she pulled herself up until her soft lips brushed his. Eric’s heart slammed against his ribs and his hand, still on her hat, clutched her closer. Summoning all his control he kept himself from deepening the kiss, from taking it further than he knew she intended it to go.

Her mouth slid from his, across his cheek, across his scar, and she whispered in his ear, “Are they still watching us?”

“They never were.”

WAS ERIC RIGHT? Had she kissed him for nothing? Her lips tingling from the all-too-brief contact with his, Molly pressed her fingers to her mouth. Had Mrs. Hild and Mrs. Carpenter not noticed her, them, at all? When she pulled out of Eric’s arms, she hadn’t seen the old women. Of course she’d been too distracted, with her face all hot with embarrassment, to focus on anyone but Eric.

She had murmured something to him before she’d run off the dance floor, away from him. For the moment. Until she went home with him. How could she go home with him now—after she’d kissed him?

Of course he probably hadn’t thought anything of it. He would have realized why she’d done it. He was Eric—he knew everything about her. He knew her better than she knew herself.

She stood in front of the cake table. Someone, probably Mr. Kelly, had sliced up the infamous Kelly confection. Crumbs of chocolate and smears of buttercream frosting marked the plates left on the table. The top tier hadn’t been touched except for the bride. She was gone. The plastic groom stood alone atop the last piece of cake.

Would Josh have done that in exasperation? Had he thrown away the bride? While she’d never seen him as anything but kindhearted and patient, her desertion might have driven him to react strongly. After all, she wasn’t the only woman to break a promise to him. His first wife had abandoned him and his sons shortly after the twins were born. Poor Josh. She winced with a pang of guilt over humiliating such a nice man.

Accepting Josh’s proposal had been a mistake. She’d wanted to be a mother to his sons, but she had no experience with children. Unlike Brenna and Molly, she hadn’t babysat any kids other than her younger siblings. The time she’d spent with Buzz and T.J. had been awkward—she hadn’t known what to say to them and they hadn’t talked to her at all. Josh had assured her that they only needed to get used to her. But it was better that they hadn’t. They wouldn’t miss her.

Would Josh? He’d intended to move both his practice and his home to Cloverville. For her, or for his sons?

Fingers, knotted with arthritis, wrapped around her wrist. “Molly McClintock, I thought that was you beneath that great big hat.”

Molly closed her eyes as the heat of embarrassment rushed to her face again. “Mrs. Hild…”

“And I suppose that was Eric South dancing with you.” From the delight in the older woman’s voice, she had undoubtedly witnessed more than the dancing.

For a moment, vindication lifted Molly’s spirits—she’d had every reason to kiss Eric. Then she remembered that she had been caught, just as Eric had warned her she would be. He had been right. Again.

“Please, Mrs. Hild, don’t tell anyone you saw us,” she implored the other woman.

“Honey—”

Of course, how could she expect the town’s busiest body to keep this delicious gossip to herself? “I know it’s quite the story, the bride crashing her own wedding reception, but I’d hate to hurt anyone—” emotion choked her voice “—any more than I already have.”

Mrs. Hild’s grasp tightened on Molly’s wrist. “Honey, somehow I think you’re hurting the most.”

Apparently Eric wasn’t the only one who knew her better than she knew herself.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, because she had her pride. Well, as much pride as a runaway bride crashing her own wedding could have. “Really.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” the elderly widow assured her.

Somehow Molly suspected those were words Mrs. Hild had never spoken before. And yet Molly believed her. “Thank you.”

“So who do you suppose stole the bride?” the woman asked as she, like Molly, stared at the top of the cake where the groom stood alone.

Despite breaking her promise to marry him, Molly doubted Josh had been angry enough to throw away the plastic bride. No, probably someone had snitched it as a joke. Probably the same someone who had spiked the nonalcoholic punch.

“Rory.” Molly smiled with affection for her naughty teenage brother, despite his tasteless prank.

Mrs. Hild shook her head, and the flowers on her hat brim bobbled. “No. I don’t think it was that boy.”

Molly turned from the cake to study the other woman’s gently lined face. Mrs. Hild’s pale blue eyes sparkled with another secret. “You know,” she realized. “So tell me. Who took her?”

The widow lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug. “I didn’t see him do it.”

“But you have your suspicions,” Molly prodded.

“Oh, I know.”

“So tell me,” Molly urged, “who stole the bride?”

Mrs. Hild closed one faded eye in a wink. “Eric South.”

ERIC RUBBED his hands, which were wet from the running faucet, over his face. Then he gripped the sides of the porcelain sink and stared into the mirror above it. With that scar, he had a face only a mother could love—and he’d lost his mother a long time ago. Molly had kissed him just to hide their faces from Mrs. Hild and Mrs. Carpenter. He knew that. He’d known it the moment her lips had brushed his, but still that hadn’t stopped him from reacting, from desire rushing through him, heating his blood and hardening his body.

Hands shaking, he shoved them into the water again. As he lifted them toward his face, the door creaked open behind him. He glanced into the mirror—not at his own face this time, but at the face of the man who’d just entered the lime green–tiled bathroom.

While not so much as a shaving nick marred the perfection of Dr. Joshua Towers’s face, a frown knitted his brows. He pushed open the empty stall doors before turning toward Eric. But Eric pulled his gaze away and stiffened his back and shoulders, mentally erecting the notrespassing sign he’d been accused of using before, to keep people from getting too close.

Towers ignored the sign. “Uh, sorry to bother you…” His voice cracked with an odd laugh. “Sounds funny for me to say sorry to someone else…”

“Been getting a lot of that yourself?” Eric asked, reaching for the fedora, which he’d set on a metal shelf beneath the mirror. Not that he needed to disguise himself for this man. As a plastic surgeon Towers didn’t spend much time in the E.R., where Eric brought patients. And while Eric had seen him a couple of times before, they had never officially met.

“Yes, I’ve been getting a lot of apologies.” The jilted groom sighed. “Which is crazy, you know, when no one did anything to me. They have no reason to feel sorry about anything.”

“Maybe they feel sorry for you,” Eric pointed out.

“They have no reason for that, either. But you’re right,” the groom admitted with a heavy sigh. Then he added, “They feel sorry for me.” Towers focused on Eric, on the part of his face that everyone focused on as if unable to look away.

Eric touched his scar. “I get a lot of that myself.”

“I don’t know how much you know about me…”

More than he cared to. “That you got left at the altar, but you must not be that mad about it since you attended the reception anyway.”

Josh laughed again. “Oh, my best man thinks I’m mad—the crazy kind of mad.”

From what he’d heard around the hospital about the best man, legendary bachelor Nick Jameson, Eric figured Nick had thought his friend crazy to consider marriage in the first place. He wasn’t wrong.

“Why did you come?” he asked.

Had he hoped that Molly would show up, having changed her mind about marrying him? Was that why Molly had wanted to come—had she changed her mind?

Eric would understand if she had. Towers had a lot to offer a woman. He was successful, rich and handsome, with no obvious scars. But since Eric’s real scars weren’t on the outside, he didn’t know that for certain about Towers.

Josh shrugged. “I told my best man we had to attend the reception—which got changed to an open house, then a welcome-home party for Abby Hamilton—because we need to get to know our potential patients. We’re opening a medical practice in town. Maybe you’d like to make an appointment. We could discuss some options for dealing with your scar.”

Eric, almost absentmindedly, brushed his knuckles across the ridge of flesh on his cheek. “I know my options.”

“I’m a plastic surgeon,” Towers explained. “It’s my specialty.”

Eric already knew that if anyone could repair the damage to his face it was Dr. Josh Towers. The guy was quickly becoming a legend for the relief he’d brought burn and accident victims. But Eric didn’t feel like a victim.

So he changed the subject. “When you came in, you were looking for someone or something.”

Molly? But why would she be hiding in the men’s room? Eric was hiding in here from her.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to bother you, though. You seemed pretty intense.”

Josh wasn’t the first person to think that. Apparently even his boss had thought so, since the man had insisted Eric take his vacation, forcing him to spend time with Molly. It didn’t matter how long Eric hid in the bathroom, he would have to face her eventually. Guilt nagged at him; he wasn’t having the easiest time facing the groom, either.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked.

“Did you see two boys, about this high?” Josh asked, dropping his hands to within three feet of the floor. “They look kind of like me.” Dark-haired and blue-eyed, then. “One has a buzz cut and the other one has spiky hair.”

Eric shook his head, but concern made him ask, “Are they lost?”

“They gave Pop and Mama—Mr. and Mrs. Kelly—the slip.”

Pop and Mama. Towers already referred to the maid of honor’s parents by their nicknames. Of course, Eric had heard that Towers and his boys were staying with them, but Eric detected real affection more than simply gratitude in the other man’s tone.

Knuckles rapped against the door before it pushed open a crack. A woman’s husky voice drifted through the small space. “Josh, I found them.”

Eric slapped the hat on his head and pulled the brim low over his eyes, just in case Brenna stepped inside. He wouldn’t put it past her to enter the men’s room. The maid of honor was one of the boldest women he knew.

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