Unexpected Bride (12 page)

"So we're pretty sure we know where she is," Brenna agreed. "What do we do now?"

"Nothing." Which was exactly what Abby intended to do about Clayton. She'd be gone soon, and they'd never have to see each other again. Unlike the rest of his family, he had never come to visit her since she'd left town. He'd never even called. Despite the kiss, she doubted anything had really changed between them.

"What?" Brenna's voice went deep when she asked the question, as if she were in pain.

"I told you what her note said," Abby said. She hadn't shown it to them—they didn't need to know that Molly wanted her to stay. She wasn't sure she could fulfill that particular request, but she fully intended to honor Molly's first request and make sure that everyone else honored Molly's request for time alone, too. "Ever since her dad died, she's been so focused on college and then on medical school. She's pushed herself so hard that I think maybe she just burned out. She wants time alone to think, and with luck she'll rest and figure out what she really wants."

"But she's probably not alone," Colleen reminded them. She'd always been a little jealous of Eric's interest in her older sister. Heck, she'd always been a little jealous of Molly, who'd always been so close to perfect.

Abby had thought being bad was tough, but it had probably been worse to be Molly and have that constant pressure to be the best. She wasn't surprised that Mol had finally cracked and run away. Abby had had a lot less pressure and had run a lot longer ago.

"If she's not alone—" a smile tugged at Abby's lips "—there's even less reason to worry about her. She's safe. She's fine. She'll be back when she's ready."

Brenna sighed. "I hope she doesn't take as long as you did to come home."

Abby would have protested that she
wasn't
home, but she could see Clayton moving through the crowd toward them. "I have to go," she told her friends, before vanishing through the open door.

A headache pounded behind Clayton's eyes, nagging like a hangover despite the fact he'd had only one glass of champagne the night before, when he'd toasted Abby's return. Then, of course, he'd also had that sip of Rory's punch. But the hangover wasn't from drinking. He was hungover from the kiss.

He hadn't slept at all. He'd have liked to blame Molly, because he'd been too worried about her to sleep. Or Rory, for continually testing him. Or maybe he just wasn't used to having a houseguest. The best man, Nick Jameson, had slept in Clayton's spare room, since it had been too late for him to drive back to Grand Rapids after the reception.

With a cup of fresh-brewed coffee in his hand, Clayton headed to the loft's living room with the two-story-high windows looking down on Main Street. The first rays of morning sun reflected off the glass, momentarily blinding Clayton. Not that there was anything to see this early on a Sunday morning. No one was even up for church yet.

Squinting, Clayton peered out through the slats of his wooden blinds. While nothing moved on the street below his apartment, he caught sight of movement farther down, in Mrs. Hild's yard. The old woman knelt on her grass, trimming the bushes around the Cloverville city limits sign.

Thai wasn't unusual, since Mrs. Hild always rose early to tend her flowers. Seeing her wasn't what jolted Clayton so much that coffee sloshed over the rim of his cup and scalded his hand.

Someone was helping the older woman, bending over to pull weeds from the dirt. That someone wore short shorts that exposed toned legs—surprisingly long legs for such a petite woman. When she straightened up, a curly blond ponytail swung down across the back of her white tank top.

"Damn you, Abby." He shifted the cup to shake the coffee off his burning hand. What the hell was she doing up so early? Hadn't she been able to sleep, either? Had their kiss kept her awake, too?

God, he hoped so.

A shrill whistle drew his attention from Abby to the man who stood next to him, peering through the wooden slats, as well. "Is that the blonde you were kissing last night?" Nick Jameson asked. Having slept in his tuxedo pants and pleated dress shirt, the doctor looked pretty rumpled.

Clayton wasn't the only one who'd had a rough night. "You saw that?"

"Only because I was dancing near you."

"You were dancing?" Clayton hadn't realized the best man had brought a date to the wedding.

"With your sister."

For a second Clayton's heart eased with relief, then he realized Nick was referring to Colleen and not Molly. Molly was still gone. "Damn."

"Yeah, damn." the doctor agreed as he stared through the blinds at Abby in her shorts. "So she's your girlfriend?"

Clayton tilted the slats. "No, she's an old friend of my sisters'."

Nick nodded. "Right, that's why Molly left the note for her. What did it say in it?"

He wasn't about to admit he hadn't seen it. He'd berated himself already, and he didn't need to listen to anyone else's recriminations. Besides which, he believed Abby had shared everything that was important. "She read what it said, that Molly wanted some time alone to sort things out."

"So you and the blonde, that kiss on the dance floor... You were trying to get it out of her where the bride ran off to?"

"What?"

"You were turning on the charm."

He hadn't tried charm. Threats, yes—at the church he'd threatened to wring her neck. But the kiss? He wasn't sure what the kiss had been besides a moment of insanity. "That wouldn't work with Abby."

"I don't know. She seemed into you."

Abby Hamilton into
him?
"Yeah, right."

"Too bad."

Regret tightened Clayton's chest. He shouldn't be disappointed. He didn't want Abby Hamilton "into" him. He didn't want to be into Abby Hamilton, either. But he itched to open up the blinds again and watch her as she helped the older woman in her garden.

"Not too bad at all," Clayton insisted. "Abby Hamilton has never been anything but trouble."

"But she's an old friend of your sisters'?"

"Yeah."

"I saw all the women—Colleen, the blonde and the maid of honor—huddled together for a while last night."

Memories flashed through Clayton's mind of all the times he'd found those friends together over the years, the girls and the one nerdy boy who'd hung out with them. "Nothing unusual about that."

"They've been close a long time, huh?"

Clayton nodded. "Yeah."

"Then they know where she is."

"What?" Unable to help himself, he tilted open the blinds again and gazed down the street to where Abby squatted on the grass, her thighs and calves flexing.

"Josh and I are that close," the best man shared. "If he ran off I'd know where he went, even if he didn't tell me." Nick sipped at a cup of coffee.

Clayton should have known where Molly had gone, too. He'd always thought they were close, but now he realized he didn't know his sister at all. He hadn't known face-to-face what Abby had realized in Chicago, that she'd had doubts about her wedding. So Abby probably did know where Molly was. He sighed. "It doesn't matter. She wants to be alone for a while."

Nick shook his head, and his eyes flashed with emotion. "People shouldn't be alone when they're upset. If I were her brother, I wouldn't care what she'd said in a note. I'd want to see her. Make sure she was okay."

Clayton sighed, torn between following the other man's advice and honoring his sister's wish. Finally, Nick's advice, sound and heartfelt, won the tug-of-war.

And the key to finding Molly was right there, in those short shorts and the little white tank top that revealed a tanned midriff and the tiny waist that his hands had spanned last night when he'd held her close. When he'd kissed her.

"Thank you, Abby, for helping me clean up the mess." Mrs. Hild said.

Abby held tight to the other woman's hand, helping her up from her lawn. Eight years ago she'd thought the woman too old to spend so much time playing in the dirt. Now she understood. Mrs. Hild's roses were like the children she'd never had. "I'm sorry."

"It was those crazy Hendrix boys, not you."

"This time," Abby agreed. "But I've been responsible for tearing up your yard before."

"A long time ago," Mrs. Hild said, "and you always helped me clean up after."

Because Mrs. Hild had insisted she'd press charges if Abby didn't. And so she'd learned her gardening skills from the woman.

"I shouldn't have held you responsible," Mrs. Hild admitted. "Like Mary McClintock reminded me after you left, you didn't have an easy childhood."

She hadn't really had a childhood at all, except when she'd been over at the McClintocks'. "That's no excuse."

"Ah, honey." Mrs. Hild squeezed Abby's hand. "Come inside for some coffee."

Caffeine was the last thing she needed, especially after last night and Clayton's kiss. His kiss had wound her up more than a double espresso. After talking to her friends, she'd left the crowded reception hall for the security of Mrs. Mick's Dutch Colonial, using it as a refuge just as she had when she was a kid.

Apparently, she'd worried for nothing about anyone having witnessed the kiss. Mrs. Hild hadn't mentioned it, and she was the biggest busybody in Cloverville.

"I'd love to have coffee with you," Abby admitted, still stunned at the woman's change of attitude. But her attitude change wasn't nearly as surprising as Clayton's. He'd gone from hating her to kissing her? "I'll have to join you another time, though. I want to finish my run before Lara wakes up."

"She's a beautiful little girl," the older woman said, squeezing Abby's hand again. "And so well-behaved."

"Yes, she is." Abby's heart expanded, filling with pride. "I'm so lucky."

"You're not lucky," Mrs. Hild protested. "You're a good mother."

"I'd like to take the credit, but I had a lot of help."

"Not from your family," Mrs. Hild surmised.

"No." Abby hadn't seen her mother since she'd left Cloverville, and her father had stopped coming home long before that. After Abby had run away, she'd heard her mother had, too, with a married bartender.

"Lara had a wonderful nanny. Miss Ramsey—a retired schoolteacher." And the woman had mothered Abby as much as she had Lara. "But recently she had to retire from babysitting to take care of her ailing mother in Florida. So she had to leave Chicago."

"You should, too," Mrs. Hild advised, still holding tight to Abby's hand. "You should come home, where family can help you raise your daughter."

"I don't have any family here," Abby reminded the woman. Maybe her memory had begun to slip.

"Honey,
everyone
in Cloverville is family." Despite her age, Mrs. Hild was strong enough to pull Abby into a tight embrace. "You shouldn't have stayed away so long."

Abby blinked hard, fighting back the mist of tears that was threatening to blind her. "I didn't think I'd be welcome," she murmured, ducking her head beneath the wide brim of Mrs. Hild's flower-trimmed straw hat.

"You didn't stick around long enough for tempers to cool and for everyone to settle down. No one was as upset about what happened to the colonel as they were about Mr. McClintock. Emotions were running high just then."

Abby had understood that even at the time. That was why she hadn't taken off until after his funeral. She'd wanted to be there for Molly and Colleen.

Who had been there for Clayton?

"I did fine on my own," Abby insisted. "I lived in some big cities."

"You started your business," Mrs. Hild said with admiration.

"When did you hear about Temps to Go?" Yesterday at the wedding, when she'd answered some of the less personal of those intrusive questions?

"I've known for a little while now. Mary McClintock brags about you like you're one of her brood."

If the town busybody had known about her business for a while, how come Clayton didn't know? Was he so uninterested in her that he'd never listened to anything anyone had said about her?

"Mary says that you put yourself through school," Mrs. Hild continued. "And that your business is doing very well."

Abby listened for the disbelief, for the doubt that she'd managed not only to get an education, but also to launch a successful business. But the other woman only smiled— Mrs. Mick must have done a lot of talking in order to change Mrs. Hild's opinion.

"Most temp agencies specialize in either office or manufacturing personnel. But temporary workers are needed in many fields beyond those two." Fortunately. She'd worked any job she'd been able to find to support herself when she'd first left Cloverville. Sick of pounding the pavement to find those jobs, she'd put an ad in the paper listing the skills she'd accumulated while growing up. The Kellys had taught her to cook and bake. And Mrs. Mick had taught her to sew and clean, as well as raise children. Once she'd placed the ad, she began to receive calls from both potential employers and people who shared her skills and wanted employment. Thus, her business was launched, for the price of a classified ad, in a run-down motel room in Detroit. "I have a lot of retired people on my staff, who just want to work part-time and have myriad skills to offer."

"We could use an office here," Mrs. Hild continued, "with all the new businesses opening up. Did you notice on your way in from the airport that the place your folks rented had been knocked down for a strip mall?"

She shook her head. Abby hadn't noticed. Of course, she hadn't looked for the shabby bungalow—she'd spent as little time as possible there when she'd lived in Cloverville. And she wanted to forget that.

"I wouldn't mind some help in my garden from time to time," the older woman admitted, "and I know that stubborn Mr. Carpenter could use some help in his store."

"I'm sure I could find workers in this area with many skills."

Mrs. Hild nodded. "Plenty of retired husbands in this town driving their wives crazy."

Abby smiled. "I have a lot of retired husbands
and
wives working for me."

Temps to Go had earned its reputation for being able to fill every need. Why hadn't its success filled all of Abby's needs? She'd proven she wasn't the screwup everyone had considered her to be. She had a beautiful daughter, but sometimes she felt just the same as she had when she'd been growing up in Cloverville, and she yearned for more.