“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

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.”

“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.”

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