Unexpected Bride (2 page)

Mom
had spent more time in the bar than at home, and Abby's dad had always been gone because he drove a semi truck for a living.

"What's your name?" he asked the child.

The small girl whispered her response. "Lara."

"Lara?" Clayton glanced up at Abby.

She nodded, then confirmed what he had to be thinking. "Lara
Hamilton."

He straightened up. "So you're not married."

"Nope. The closest I'm getting to an altar is Molly's wedding tomorrow." The one reason she had come back to Cloverville: she was going to watch her friend make the biggest mistake of her life, unless somehow she could manage to talk Molly out of it. If not for all the projects Abby had had going on in the past couple of months, she would have come back to Cloverville much sooner. She hoped she had enough time to talk Molly out of the wedding. "I'm sorry you were sent to get me, Clayton. I thought one of the others..."

" They're already at the rehearsal."

She glanced at her watch, then closed her eyes. "We're late."

He probably held her responsible for the computer problems at O'Hare that had delayed their flight. She blamed herself, too, for not coming in earlier. But Clayton was one of the reasons she hadn't wanted to come back to Cloverville at all. No matter what she'd accomplished since she'd left, everyone here—and especially Clayton—would always see her as the poor, screwed-up Hamilton kid who'd been failing high school even before she'd been expelled for malicious mischief and vandalism.

"Is it too late for me to be the flower girl, Mommy?" Lara asked.

Abby's lids lifted, her gaze on her daughter's concerned expression. Lara had been looking forward to her "job" in Molly's wedding, and she'd be disappointed if Abby convinced her friend to cancel.

Clayton turned back to Lara, too, offering reassurance before her mother had a chance to speak. "No, honey, the wedding is tomorrow, and you're going to be the most beautiful flower girl Cloverville has ever seen." He closed one dark eye in a wink, his lashes brushing his cheek.

Abby's heart fluttered. It had to be an aftereffect of flying. Not that she was an anxious flyer. Nope, the nerves were because she was here, less than an hour away from the Cloverville city limits.

"But we do need to get to the rehearsal," Clayton continued. "So we know what to do tomorrow. And after the rehearsal, we're having dinner at Mr. and Mrs. Kelly's. They own the bakery and they always have lots of goodies around, including the best cookies in the world."

Lara tugged on Abby's hand. "Can I have a cookie, Mommy?"

Abby nodded. Even though it would be awfully close to Lara's bedtime when the rehearsal concluded, if it wasn't finished already, sugar didn't affect Lara as it did her mother.

"I'll get your bags and we'll be on our way," Clayton said as he headed toward the carousel.

Abby rushed after him, pulling Lara along with her. She didn't want to accept his help. She really should have rented a car, but Brenna Kelly, the maid of honor and one of Abby's oldest and closest friends, had insisted that it would be easier and faster for someone to pick her up from the airport. "I'll get my own bags, Clayton. You don't know what my suitcases look like."

"I imagine they're the only ones that are left," he said with a smug smile, turning toward the conveyor.

Abby clenched her free hand into a fist and wished she had something to whip at the back of his head. Clayton McClintock had always irritated the heck out of her, with his smug I-have-everything-under-control personality. Why had her friends sent
him
to get the two of them? Just how crazy had this wedding made everyone?

"He's nice, Mommy."

Clayton McClintock was a lot of things. Judgmental, humorless and uptight. But he was
not
nice. While all the other McClintocks had always accepted her as one of the family, Clayton made her feel as if she didn't belong.

Then again, she really hadn't. But most of the time when she was growing up, she'd had no place else to go.

"Mommy?"

She blinked, then gazed down at Lara. "What, honey?"

"Don't you like Clayton?"

She turned to watch him lift their suitcases from the carousel, his impressive biceps straining his shirtsleeves. Then she lied to her daughter for the first time in her life. "Sure I do."

Clayton stood only a few feet away. Despite the grinding of the conveyor belt, he heard her and smothered a laugh. Abby had
never
liked him, which was fine with him. She'd been such a brat in her day. Her daughter might look exactly like her, but apparently she acted nothing like the wild child her mother had been.

"I wouldn't let them leave again," a male voice commented near Clayton's shoulder.

He glanced over at a gray-haired man who was standing beside him. "Excuse me?"

"Your wife and daughter," the older man said, gesturing toward Abby and Lara. "I flew in from Chicago with them."

Clayton's mouth went dry, too dry for him to respond and correct the misconception. His wife and daughter? He'd never take a wife, never have children of his own. That was one plan he didn't intend to let his family change.

"Despite the computer problems at the airport, they stayed so sweet and patient. They're beautiful," the stranger continued. "You're a lucky man."

Clayton simply nodded, not wasting any time with explanations. They were already late. After the rehearsal dinner he would dump Abby, her daughter and suitcases at his mother's house, and his responsibilities to her would be over.

"Slow down, Clayton," Abby said. Sun-streaked fields and dappled woods whipped past the windows of the hybrid SUV. She turned toward the backseat, where Lara's head bobbed in her sleep with each bump in the road. Less than a foot of console separated Abby from Clayton's broad shoulder. His jaw was rigidly set as he stared straight ahead at the road leading into Cloverville.

He hadn't even heard her request. She reached over and touched his thigh. Muscles flexed beneath her fingers and the SUV surged forward as his foot pressed harder on the accelerator.

"Clayton, slow down!" she whispered, not wanting to wake her daughter, even though Lara could sleep anywhere and through anything.

"Grabbing my leg isn't going to slow me down," he said tersly, as he eased off the gas. "It's actually a good way to wind up in the ditch."

Fingers tingling, Abby snatched back her hand and knotted her fingers in her lap. "Sorry. I didn't mean to startle you, but you didn't hear me."

"Telling me to slow down?" he said. "I thought you were kidding, considering the way you drive. You thrive on speed."

"I used to," she admitted. Although speed had had little to do with her poor driving. Undiagnosed attention deficit disorder had been the real reason for her erratic youthful driving—that and bad brakes.

"Did having a kid finally settle you down?"

Diet and exercise had gotten the ADD under control, but nothing had affected her as much as becoming a mother. "Yes," she agreed.

"Responsibility will do that to you," he said, his voice thick with bitterness.

She'd always figured that after he'd mourned the loss of his father, he'd enjoyed stepping into the patriarch's shoes and taking control of his family. Even before his dad had gotten sick, Clayton had bossed his younger siblings and Abby around so much that they'd all looked forward to his leaving for college.

Maybe his bitterness was because he'd never gotten over his father's death. It had affected all their lives so much. "Clayton..."

He turned his head slightly, his gaze skimming over her. The tingling spread from her fingertips throughout her body in reaction to that look.
What the heck was that about?
He'd never looked at her like that when they were younger, when she'd secretly wished he would; wished that he'd return from college and notice that she was all grown up.

"What?" he asked when she remained silent with remembered self-disgust. In the end, she'd actually missed him when he'd gone away to college. She doubled he'd missed her at all these past eight years.

She expelled a soft, shaky sigh. "So are you speeding to the church?"

He shook his head. "When I went to get the car, I called Brenna's cell. Reverend Howland had another commitment and couldn't wait any longer, so they had to rehearse without the missing members of the party."

"Us," she acknowledged, bracing herself for his accusatory stare. He'd always blamed her for any trouble his sisters had gotten into. Like the tattoos, for instance. But in Abby's opinion, this wedding was the most trouble Molly had ever gotten into, and she wanted to get her out.

"We weren't the only ones who missed the rehearsal," Clayton admitted. "Neither the best man nor Eric was there."

"Eric." Eric South been the lone male member of a group of friends that included Abby, Brenna Kelly, Molly and Molly's sister. Colleen, who was a few years younger than the classmates. "I hope he makes it to the dinner." He could help Abby talk Molly out of marrying a stranger.

"I hope
we
do," Clayton muttered as he pressed down on the accelerator.

Abby lifted her hand from her lap but stopped herself from reaching across the console again. "I'm surprised an insurance agent would drive so fast. I remember the lecture about driving responsibly that Mr. Mick gave me when I got my license."

"You listened?" he asked, sounding surprised. Probably remembering his father's patented lecture himself, he slowed down.

"Since you run the agency now, do you give the safe-driving speech, too?" she asked.

He nodded. "At the high school and the office."

Just as his father had done. Had Clayton chosen to be an insurance agent or had he just assumed the job when he'd taken over his father's business after he died? She couldn't ask something so personal. They weren't friends nor were they ever likely to be.

"The Kellys always make plenty of food." She doubted that had changed. "Why are you in such a hurry to get back to Cloverville? Do you have to pick up a date for the dinner?"

Under his breath, he muttered, "Not anymore."

Her lips twitched into a smile. Apparently even the Clayton McClintocks of the world got dumped. "Then you just don't want to be alone with me."

He didn't deny her assumption. "How long are you planning on staying?"

Obviously he didn't want her in Cloverville any more than she wanted to be back. Since he'd slowed down, the scenery enveloped them. Fields and woods, trees thick with green leaves gave way to subdivisions crowded with new houses, streets lined with strip malls, box stores and fast-food restaurants. "This is Cloverville?"

"It's grown since you've been away. Did you think it would stay the same?"

She shook her head. "Nothing stays the same." She'd learned that at a young age. Sadly enough, so had Lara—it was time for Abby to put down roots for the two of them. To give her daughter a home they would live in for more than a year or two. Time to establish permanent headquarters for the temporary employment agency Abby owned. Abby had already given up her apartment in Chicago. She'd been so busy packing that she couldn't fly in sooner. Now she just had to decide on where she and her dauehter would settle.

Il was only the two of them. The moment Abby had gotten pregnant Lara's father had wanted nothing to do with either of them. Almost five years later, the hurt had faded, but she couldn't fathom how she'd been so wrong about him. She'd thought he'd been such a nice, responsible guy, but maybe it wasn't his fault he couldn't love her. Her own parents hadn't.

Clayton turned the SUV onto Main Street, where nothing had changed. Mrs. Hild's Cape Cod still crowded the corner lot, her prize roses climbing over the carved wooden sign denoting the Cloverville city limits. In the middle of the block was Mr. Carpenter's hardware store, the windows ablaze with the reflection of the setting sun. They also passed the McClintock Insurance Agency, the same gold logo on the front door as the one embroidered on Clayton's shirt. The three-story redbrick building that housed the agency was one of the biggest on the block, taller and wider than the diner and pharmacy flanking it. A For Lease sign had been posted in the window of the first-floor office next to the insurance agency.

"Dr. Strover moved?" she asked.

"He retired," Clayton said. "So I'm looking for a new tenant."

Clayton's dad had owned the building, and now it was Clayton's responsibility—like so many others he'd taken on at twenty-two years of age. The same age Abby had been when she became a mother.

"I was hoping Josh would put his practice there, but his partner thought they needed more space. They're putting up a new building on the west side of Cloverville, closer to Grand Rapids and the hospitals."

"Josh?" she asked, not following his conversation, probably because she was so surprised he was making the effort to talk to her. Eight years ago, except for one night, he'd never bothered to say much of anything to her other than an occasional curt, "Don't you have a home?"

She hadn't then. Or now. She glanced into the backseat where Lara still slept peacefully, her curls tangled around her face. Love filled Abby's heart. Until she'd had her baby, she'd never known how much love one could feel.

"Dr. Josh Towers is the man Molly's marrying tomorrow. I thought you and my sister kept in close contact," he said with a hint of his old disapproval. As if he didn't understand why Molly would want to remain in contact with her. "You don't know the name of her fiance?"

"Molly and I talk every day either by phone or e-mail." And she'd hardly mentioned her fiancé. Of course, Molly had only just gotten engaged—to a man she obviously didn't love. Not that Abby knew anything about love except what she felt for her daughter. "Don't you think it's too soon?"

"What?"

"The wedding. They hardly know each other."

The muscles in his arm rippled as he gripped the steering wheel. "Since her first year of college, Molly has worked summers at the hospital where he's on staff. She's known him a long time."

"No, she hasn't. They've only just started dating." Frustration churned Abby's stomach. She'd tried to talk to Molly, tried to convince her to wait before she leaped into something as serious as marriage. Molly wasn't the type to act impetuously—she'd always been as responsible as her older brother. "I thought
you,
of all people, would be against this shotgun wedding."