Finally a Bride (3 page)

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.”

“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.