Wedding Vows: With This Ring: Rescued in a Wedding Dress / Bridesmaid Says, 'I Do!' / The Doctor's Surprise Bride

“When I was little,” she told him, still thinking it was a confidences exchange, “my mom and dad fought all the time. And I dreamed of belonging to a family where everyone loved each other.”

“Ah,” he said, unforthcoming.

“Do you think such a family exists?”

“Honestly? No.”

“You’re very cynical about families, Houston. Why?”

She wanted to know? Okay, he’d tell her. She probably wasn’t going to be nearly as happy to know about him as she thought she was going to be!

“Because I grew up in one just like yours. Constant fighting. Drama. Chaos. Actually it would probably make yours look like something off a Christmas card. And it made me feel the opposite of you. Not a longing for love. An allergy to it.”

“Isn’t that lonely?”

He didn’t answer for a long time. “Maybe,” he finally said. “But not as lonely as waiting for something that never happens. That’s the loneliest.”

“What did you wait for that never happened?”

This was what he had come here for. For her to coax this out of him.

He was silent.

“Trust me,” she said quietly.

And he could not resist her. Even though he pitted his whole strength against it, he heard himself say, his voice a low growl of remembered pain, “Once, when I was quite small, I was in a Christmas concert.”

And somehow he told her all of it. And with every single word it felt like a chain that had been wrapped hard around his heart was breaking apart, link by link.

Somehow, when he was finished, she had moved from the couch across from him to the place right beside him. Her hand was in his. And she was silent for the longest time.

“But why didn’t she come?” she finally asked.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t remember.”

“Was it just that once that she didn’t come?”

Here she was dragging more out of him.

“No, it was all the time.”

“Because she couldn’t care about anybody but herself,” Molly said sadly. “Did you think it was about you?”

As she spoke those words Houston knew a truth he did not want to know. Of course he had thought it was about him.

It was not his father he had never forgiven. Not entirely.

Somewhere in him, he had always thought the truth was that he was a person no one could care about. Not if tested. Not over time. If his own mother had found him unworthy of love, that was probably the truth.

It was not his mother he had not forgiven, either.

It was himself he had never forgiven. For not being worthy of love. For not being a person that his mother and father could have at least tried to hold it all together for.

Molly reached up and guided his hand to her face. It was wet with her tears. It was such a tender powerful gesture, without words.

Something in him surrendered. He allowed himself to feel something he had not felt for a very long time. At home. As if he belonged. As if finally, in this world, there was one place, one person who could accept him for what he was.

He contemplated the temptation to tell her more, not sure if a man could put things back the way they used to be after he had experienced such a thing as this.

And it felt like a weakness that he could not fight and that he was not sure if he wanted to.

Damn it, he wanted to. He could not give in to this.

But then, his hand that rested on the wetness of her cheek went, it seemed of its own volition, to the puffiness of her lip. He traced the fullness of it with his thumb, took in the wideness of her eyes, the gentle puff of her breath touching his thumb.

I’m going to kiss her, he thought, entranced. Dismayed.

He snapped back from her, dropped his hand from the full and exquisite temptation of her lips.

But she wasn’t having it. When he pulled away, she stretched forward. She had clearly seen what he would have loved to have kept hidden. In every sense.

Her lips grazed his. Tender. Soft. Supple.

Sexy.

It took every ounce of his considerable discipline to pull away from her. He got to his feet, abruptly, aware if he stayed on that couch with her he was not going to be fully in control of what happened next.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” he said gruffly.

“Why?” she said softly.

She knew why. She knew she was crashing through his barriers faster than he could rebuild them.

“It was inappropriate. I apologize.”

“I think it was me who kissed you. And I’m not apologizing.”

“Molly, you have no idea what you are playing with,” he told her softly, sternly.

“Maybe I do.”

As if she saw him more clearly than he saw himself! Just because he had told her one thing. He didn’t like it that he had told her that. That brief moment of feeling unburdened, not so damned lonely, was swiftly changing to regret.

“I have work to do,” he said, hardened himself to what these moments had made him feel, turned and walked away, shutting the door firmly behind him.

But he didn’t go back to Second Chances, despite his claim he had work to do. He also had no work at home, not even his laptop. He didn’t even feel compelled to check his BlackBerry. Life could go on without him for one evening.