Finally a Bride

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.”

Chapter Three

“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.