Finally a Bride

“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.

He could not fall for Molly McClintock again. He was too old for unrequited crushes, and he had even less to attract her now than he had back in school. He couldn’t compete with the handsome and successful doctor.

Not that he wanted to compete. He had learned long ago that if you allowed yourself to feel anything, you opened yourself up to pain. It was better to feel nothing at all.

“If you’re not worried, why are you way over there?” Molly asked as she stepped closer, settling her breasts against his chest. She tipped her head back to look up at him, knocking off her hat in the process.

Eric caught the straw monstrosity and clutched it against the back of her head. “Someone’s going to see us,” he warned her just as a couple dancing near them slowed their steps.

Two elderly women, holding hands, danced to the waltz the deejay was playing, probably at their request. One wore a hat as wide as Molly’s, but hers had flowers, wilted now, covering the brim.

“Damn,” Eric murmured. “We’re busted.”

Molly drew his attention away from the town busybodies as she slid her palms up his chest to clutch his shoulders. Then she pulled herself up until her soft lips brushed his. Eric’s heart slammed against his ribs and his hand, still on her hat, clutched her closer. Summoning all his control he kept himself from deepening the kiss, from taking it further than he knew she intended it to go.

Her mouth slid from his, across his cheek, across his scar, and she whispered in his ear, “Are they still watching us?”

“They never were.”

WAS ERIC RIGHT? Had she kissed him for nothing? Her lips tingling from the all-too-brief contact with his, Molly pressed her fingers to her mouth. Had Mrs. Hild and Mrs. Carpenter not noticed her, them, at all? When she pulled out of Eric’s arms, she hadn’t seen the old women. Of course she’d been too distracted, with her face all hot with embarrassment, to focus on anyone but Eric.

She had murmured something to him before she’d run off the dance floor, away from him. For the moment. Until she went home with him. How could she go home with him now—after she’d kissed him?

Of course he probably hadn’t thought anything of it. He would have realized why she’d done it. He was Eric—he knew everything about her. He knew her better than she knew herself.

She stood in front of the cake table. Someone, probably Mr. Kelly, had sliced up the infamous Kelly confection. Crumbs of chocolate and smears of buttercream frosting marked the plates left on the table. The top tier hadn’t been touched except for the bride. She was gone. The plastic groom stood alone atop the last piece of cake.

Would Josh have done that in exasperation? Had he thrown away the bride? While she’d never seen him as anything but kindhearted and patient, her desertion might have driven him to react strongly. After all, she wasn’t the only woman to break a promise to him. His first wife had abandoned him and his sons shortly after the twins were born. Poor Josh. She winced with a pang of guilt over humiliating such a nice man.

Accepting Josh’s proposal had been a mistake. She’d wanted to be a mother to his sons, but she had no experience with children. Unlike Brenna and Molly, she hadn’t babysat any kids other than her younger siblings. The time she’d spent with Buzz and T.J. had been awkward—she hadn’t known what to say to them and they hadn’t talked to her at all. Josh had assured her that they only needed to get used to her. But it was better that they hadn’t. They wouldn’t miss her.

Would Josh? He’d intended to move both his practice and his home to Cloverville. For her, or for his sons?

Fingers, knotted with arthritis, wrapped around her wrist. “Molly McClintock, I thought that was you beneath that great big hat.”

Molly closed her eyes as the heat of embarrassment rushed to her face again. “Mrs. Hild…”

“And I suppose that was Eric South dancing with you.” From the delight in the older woman’s voice, she had undoubtedly witnessed more than the dancing.

For a moment, vindication lifted Molly’s spirits—she’d had every reason to kiss Eric. Then she remembered that she had been caught, just as Eric had warned her she would be. He had been right. Again.

“Please, Mrs. Hild, don’t tell anyone you saw us,” she implored the other woman.

“Honey—”

Of course, how could she expect the town’s busiest body to keep this delicious gossip to herself? “I know it’s quite the story, the bride crashing her own wedding reception, but I’d hate to hurt anyone—” emotion choked her voice “—any more than I already have.”

Mrs. Hild’s grasp tightened on Molly’s wrist. “Honey, somehow I think you’re hurting the most.”

Apparently Eric wasn’t the only one who knew her better than she knew herself.

“I’m fine,” she insisted, because she had her pride. Well, as much pride as a runaway bride crashing her own wedding could have. “Really.”

“Your secret is safe with me,” the elderly widow assured her.

Somehow Molly suspected those were words Mrs. Hild had never spoken before. And yet Molly believed her. “Thank you.”

“So who do you suppose stole the bride?” the woman asked as she, like Molly, stared at the top of the cake where the groom stood alone.

Despite breaking her promise to marry him, Molly doubted Josh had been angry enough to throw away the plastic bride. No, probably someone had snitched it as a joke. Probably the same someone who had spiked the nonalcoholic punch.

“Rory.” Molly smiled with affection for her naughty teenage brother, despite his tasteless prank.

Mrs. Hild shook her head, and the flowers on her hat brim bobbled. “No. I don’t think it was that boy.”

Molly turned from the cake to study the other woman’s gently lined face. Mrs. Hild’s pale blue eyes sparkled with another secret. “You know,” she realized. “So tell me. Who took her?”

The widow lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug. “I didn’t see him do it.”

“But you have your suspicions,” Molly prodded.