The Wedding Party

“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

MILLS & BOON

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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.”