Finally a Bride (4 page)

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.”

W
AS
E
RIC 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.

“Oh, I
know.
”

“So tell me,” Molly urged, “who stole the bride?”

Mrs. Hild closed one faded eye in a wink. “Eric South.”

E
RIC RUBBED
his hands, which were wet from the running faucet, over his face. Then he gripped the sides of the porcelain sink and stared into the mirror above it. With that scar, he had a face only a mother could love—and he’d lost his mother a long time ago. Molly had kissed him just to hide their faces from Mrs. Hild and Mrs. Carpenter. He knew that. He’d known it the moment her lips had brushed his, but still that hadn’t stopped him from reacting, from desire rushing through him, heating his blood and hardening his body.

Hands shaking, he shoved them into the water again. As he lifted them toward his face, the door creaked open behind him. He glanced into the mirror—not at his own face this time, but at the face of the man who’d just entered the lime green–tiled bathroom.

While not so much as a shaving nick marred the perfection of Dr. Joshua Towers’s face, a frown knitted his brows. He pushed open the empty stall doors before turning toward Eric. But Eric pulled his gaze away and stiffened his back and shoulders, mentally erecting the notrespassing sign he’d been accused of using before, to keep people from getting too close.

Towers ignored the sign. “Uh, sorry to bother you…” His voice cracked with an odd laugh. “Sounds funny for me to say sorry to someone else…”

“Been getting a lot of that yourself?” Eric asked, reaching for the fedora, which he’d set on a metal shelf beneath the mirror. Not that he needed to disguise himself for this man. As a plastic surgeon Towers didn’t spend much time in the E.R., where Eric brought patients. And while Eric had seen
him
a couple of times before, they had never officially met.

“Yes, I’ve been getting a lot of apologies.” The jilted groom sighed. “Which is crazy, you know, when no one did anything to me. They have no reason to feel sorry about anything.”

“Maybe they feel sorry
for
you,” Eric pointed out.

“They have no reason for that, either. But you’re right,” the groom admitted with a heavy sigh. Then he added, “They feel sorry for me.” Towers focused on Eric, on the part of his face that everyone focused on as if unable to look away.

Eric touched his scar. “I get a lot of that myself.”

“I don’t know how much you know about me…”

More than he cared to. “That you got left at the altar, but you must not be that mad about it since you attended the reception anyway.”

Josh laughed again. “Oh, my best man thinks I’m mad—the crazy kind of mad.”

From what he’d heard around the hospital about the best man, legendary bachelor Nick Jameson, Eric figured Nick had thought his friend crazy to consider marriage in the first place. He wasn’t wrong.

“Why did you come?” he asked.

Had he hoped that Molly would show up, having changed her mind about marrying him? Was that why Molly had wanted to come—
had
she changed her mind?

Eric would understand if she had. Towers had a lot to offer a woman. He was successful, rich and handsome, with no obvious scars. But since Eric’s real scars weren’t on the outside, he didn’t know that for certain about Towers.

Josh shrugged. “I told my best man we had to attend the reception—which got changed to an open house, then a welcome-home party for Abby Hamilton—because we need to get to know our potential patients. We’re opening a medical practice in town. Maybe you’d like to make an appointment. We could discuss some options for dealing with your scar.”

Eric, almost absentmindedly, brushed his knuckles across the ridge of flesh on his cheek. “I know my options.”

“I’m a plastic surgeon,” Towers explained. “It’s my specialty.”

Eric already knew that if anyone could repair the damage to his face it was Dr. Josh Towers. The guy was quickly becoming a legend for the relief he’d brought burn and accident victims. But Eric didn’t feel like a victim.

So he changed the subject. “When you came in, you were looking for someone or something.”

Molly? But why would she be hiding in the men’s room? Eric was hiding in here from her.

“Yeah, I didn’t want to bother you, though. You seemed pretty intense.”

Josh wasn’t the first person to think that. Apparently even his boss had thought so, since the man had insisted Eric take his vacation, forcing him to spend time with Molly. It didn’t matter how long Eric hid in the bathroom, he would have to face her eventually. Guilt nagged at him; he wasn’t having the easiest time facing the groom, either.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked.

“Did you see two boys, about this high?” Josh asked, dropping his hands to within three feet of the floor. “They look kind of like me.” Dark-haired and blue-eyed, then. “One has a buzz cut and the other one has spiky hair.”

Eric shook his head, but concern made him ask, “Are they lost?”

“They gave Pop and Mama—Mr. and Mrs. Kelly—the slip.”

Pop and Mama. Towers already referred to the maid of honor’s parents by their nicknames. Of course, Eric had heard that Towers and his boys were staying with them, but Eric detected real affection more than simply gratitude in the other man’s tone.

Knuckles rapped against the door before it pushed open a crack. A woman’s husky voice drifted through the small space. “Josh, I found them.”

Eric slapped the hat on his head and pulled the brim low over his eyes, just in case Brenna stepped inside. He wouldn’t put it past her to enter the men’s room. The maid of honor was one of the boldest women he knew.

Josh sighed with relief. “Thanks.” More than gratitude filled the word as his attention turned to the door, which hid Brenna from Eric’s view but obviously not Josh’s.

“They’re sleeping in the coatroom,” she said. “Do you want to take them home?”

“Home…” Josh murmured, his voice soft with awe and acceptance.

Eric suspected he now knew why the other man had attended the reception for his canceled wedding. For Brenna.

How would Molly feel about her fiancé’s attraction to her best friend—her best
female
friend? Did she suspect? Was that why she’d backed out of the wedding but still wanted to attend the reception?

“Think about that appointment,” Josh advised Eric as he stepped through the bathroom door to join Brenna.

They had probably just exited the hall before Molly, still wearing her ridiculous hat, slipped inside the men’s room. “Are you okay?” she asked.

Unable to lie, Eric just nodded. “You?”

Molly sighed. “I’m ready to go home.”

Home. Was that how she thought of the little cabin on the lake, which Eric had struggled for so long to accept as his home?

“Did anyone see you come in here?” he asked, a smile twitching his lips as she cast surreptitious glances at the urinals.

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“You didn’t pass Brenna and Josh in the hall?”

“I watched through a crack in the ladies’ room door until they left,” she explained. “They didn’t see me.”

He sighed. “Even if no one saw you come in, they’re going to notice you coming out of the men’s room.”

Especially in her silly disguise. He caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror. His ensemble wasn’t much better.

She turned toward him, her dark eyes shimmering with humor. “Nobody’s going to see me come out of here.”

He hated to ask, but he had to know. “Why’s that?”

“We’re going out the window.”

“Hurry,” Molly urged Eric, her pulse racing with excitement. “Lift me up.”

“If I push you through that window, you’re going to fall into the alley and land on your head,” he pointed out. “I thought you had experience going out windows.”

“Just one,” she said as she tipped her head back and stared at a narrow window high on the bathroom wall. “And that was only a couple of feet above the floor.”

“You’re going to have to go out the way you came in,” Eric insisted, gesturing toward the door.

Molly shook her head. “Someone will see me.”

“And you don’t think they saw you walk in here?”

She thought she’d been careful to duck inside the men’s room when no one was looking—since she hadn’t exactly been comfortable about doing it in the first place. But she’d gotten worried about Eric, especially when she’d seen Josh join him.

“Someone might have seen me,” she admitted. Or Mrs. Hild might have broken her promise. “That’s why I have to go out this way.”

“Molly…”

“Stop arguing and lift me up.”

Eric stared at the window, assessing her chances of getting through. “You’re going to have to climb onto my shoulders.”

At the thought of climbing all over Eric, Molly’s heart beat faster yet. But she shook her head in protest. “All I need is a boost.”

“Molly, you can’t just jump out. You have to consider how you’re going to fall.”

Was he talking about this window or the one she’d already gone through? Did he think she hadn’t looked before she leaped?

“I’m glad you backed out of the wedding party,” she said with a disgusted snort. “If you’d been at the church with me, I would have wound up getting married by the time we got done arguing over
how
I’d go out the window.” She jerked on his arm. “Hunker down so I can climb on you.”

Eric’s breath audibly caught, but he bent down and hunched his back. Molly wrestled with the skirt of her long dress, bunching it around her thighs so she could swing one leg over Eric’s shoulder.

“This wasn’t so hard when we were kids,” she mused, a smile lifting her lips as she remembered all the piggyback rides Eric had given her over the years.

“No, it wasn’t this hard when we were kids,” he agreed. His warm palms settled against Molly’s bare thighs, holding her on his shoulders as he straightened up. “Are you sure you can’t just go out the door?” he asked, his voice strained.

Molly knocked off his hat and clutched his soft hair with her fingers. “I’m going to fall.”

“I’ve got you. Don’t worry…”

Ironic coming from him, when he was the one about whom she worried the most. She had almost lost him once, and the fear that she might lose him again would forever haunt her. She lifted her hands from his head and reached for the transom window, pulling it open far enough for her to squeeze through.

“Boost me up just a little more,” she directed.

“And we always accused Brenna of being the bossy one,” Eric murmured. His hands tightened on her thighs as he lifted her.

Her skin heated and tingled beneath his touch while her heart pounded hard. She held her breath as she squeezed through the opening, holding on to the brick ledge above the window.

“You okay?” Eric asked. “You’re not stuck?”

“It’s tight,” she murmured as she tried to settle her butt on the sill. “I’m glad now that I didn’t have a piece of cake.”

“Molly, this is crazy…”

Before she could form an argument, her fingers slipped from the bricks above the window and her butt slid off the sill. She fell back, free form, with her hands outstretched, grasping only empty air.

“Molly!”

Grimacing, she tensed, preparing for impact with the asphalt. Instead, she bounced painlessly onto empty boxes and tinfoil tubs of banquet leftovers. Mashed potatoes, gravy and rubbery chicken successfully cushioned her fall.

Eric’s head poked through the window, and he peered down into the Dumpster where she’d fallen. His face stark in the light from the flood lamps illuminating the alley, he asked anxiously, “Are you all right?”

Molly dragged a badly needed breath deep into her lungs, but then she coughed and sputtered, choking on the odors from the trash surrounding her. Hers weren’t the only leftovers in the Dumpster.

“Molly?” The window shuddered as he jammed his shoulders into the opening. To no avail. He couldn’t fit through.

A door opened onto the alley.

“I’m fine,” she whispered, waving him back into the bathroom. Moving slowly she shifted around on the garbage so that she could crouch down and peer over the metal edge.

Brenna and Josh stepped into the alley, each of them carrying a sleeping twin. Molly blinked as her heart warmed at the thought of the beautiful family her friends could have. If they took a chance on love…

A bottle shifted beneath her foot and she knocked against the side of the metal container.

“Whatttt?” one of the twins murmured as he shifted in Brenna’s arms.

“Shh,” she soothed the groggy child. “It was nothing.”

“A rat,” Josh teased.

Her tone haughty, Brenna informed him, “Cloverville doesn’t have rats.”

Molly could have argued that—she felt like a rat for the way she’d treated her friends. Brenna had worked so hard for the wedding, and Josh had to have been humiliated. But if love came out of this, it would be worth it.

Molly wouldn’t have screwed up everyone else’s life, then. Just her own…

She glanced to the bathroom window, looking for Eric. But he was gone, not even a shadow shifting behind the glass. The garbage, however, shifted again beneath Molly’s weight. She sank deeper, mashed potatoes—at least she hoped it was mashed potatoes—oozing between her toes and over the tops of her sandals.

“That’s a rat,” Josh insisted.

“No, it’s probably a raccoon,” Brenna suggested, coming to the defense of her hometown.

A car door opened, and the boys grunted and murmured protests as Josh and Brenna settled them on the backseat. An engine rumbled to life. Molly held her breath against the stench. She only had to wait a couple minutes more….

“I should go inside and let Pop know about the scavenger,” Brenna said.

“The raccoon?”

“Yes, I wouldn’t want Mama or Mrs. George to stumble across it when they’re cleaning up.”

“I can take care of it,” Josh offered.

“Oh, you can?” Brenna challenged him. “You have a lot of experience dealing with raccoons?”

“I’ve always lived in cities. I have experience dealing with rats. Isn’t that all a raccoon is—a big rat with a striped tail?”

The door opened again from the reception hall. Molly braced herself for the maid of honor’s surprise at Eric’s presence, but instead a booming voice vibrated off the brick wall. “You’re still here? The boys are sleeping—they need a soft bed.”

“Pop, there’s something in the Dumpster,” Brenna explained. “If Mama found it…”

“She’d scream the whole town awake,” Pop concluded, “and things are just starting to wind down.”

“Sir—”

“Pop,” Mr. Kelly corrected Josh.

“Pop, I can help you.”

“Nonsense, that’ll be the day I can’t take care of a critter,” Pop said, his big hands gripping the edge of the Dumpster. “But if I needed help, I think I noticed ole Harold’s nephew…”

His eyes widened as he met Molly’s imploring gaze. She lifted a finger to her lips.
Please, don’t say anything….

Not that she didn’t deserve more than her share of humiliation.

“What is it, Pop?” Brenna asked.

“Nothing,” the older man murmured before winking at Molly. “You two need to get out of here. Take those boys home. Look at their necks, all crooked like that….”

“Pop’s right,” Brenna admitted.

“Where’s my recorder when I need it?” her father teased. He waved them off. “I’ll see you back at the house before too long. Everyone’s clearing out now. We’ll be cleaned up in no time,” he assured them.

Pop stood beside the Dumpster, waving, until Josh’s Suburban pulled from the alley. Then he reached a hand over the rim to Molly.

“Thank you,” she said, trying to hold her breath as she put her hand in his and climbed up the side. She was just about to vault over the top when the door opened again. Tugging her hand free of Pop’s, she dropped back inside the metal container, crunching cardboard and tinfoil beneath her once more.

“I thought that was you,” Pop said to someone as he slapped him on the back.

“Pop,” Eric acknowledged the other man with warmth and the easy familiarity of long acquaintance. “Wh-what are you doing out here?”

“Me?” The older man chuckled. “I’m getting a
raccoon
out of the Dumpster.”

“Ra-raccoon?” Eric stammered. “Uh, why don’t you let me handle that for you.”

“Thought you wanted nothing to do with this wedding, son?” the older man teased.

“Pop—”

The old man slapped his hand against Eric’s shoulder this time. “Don’t worry. I know why you’re here.”

That made one of them.
Eric still had no definite idea why Molly had wanted to crash her own wedding.

Molly’s head popped over the edge of the Dumpster, and she extended a hand toward him. “He knows I’m in here,” she said. “He covered for me with Brenna and Josh.”

Eric closed his hand around hers and pulled her onto the edge of the trash container. Then he wrapped his hands around her waist and lifted her down onto the asphalt. Even with her clothes rumpled and coated with garbage, she was gorgeous—especially since she’d lost the god-awful hat, so that her chocolate-colored curls were free to frame her heart-shaped face.

“You okay?” he asked, his stomach still clenched with the horror that had overcome him as she’d dropped out of the bathroom window. He hadn’t been that scared since the Middle East.

She nodded, dislodging a broccoli floret from her tangled curls. “I’m fine.”

“How the heck did you wind up in there, girl?” Pop asked, shaking his head in bemusement.

Eric began to answer for her. “She was in the men’s—” until a small elbow jammed into his side.

“I was hiding.”

“I think you could have found a better place,” the older man commented, green eyes alight with amusement.

Molly wiped a streak of gravy from her arm. “Definitely. But I think it worked. I don’t think Josh and Brenna saw me.”

Pop shook his head, his hair all black but for a shock of white falling across his forehead. “You’re lucky Brenna didn’t climb inside to take care of the ‘raccoon’ herself,” he said, with pride in his daughter.

“Pop,” Molly implored the older man, “you won’t tell anyone that you saw us?”

“That’s your secret to keep or share,” he said. “I trust you have your reasons for everything you’re doing?”

Teeth gnawing her bottom lip, she nodded.

“I’ve known you since you were in diapers, Molly McClintock,” he said. “I know you’d never purposely do anything that would hurt another person.”

“She wouldn’t,” Eric agreed.

Pop flashed him a grin and patted his arm. “If you had any doubts, girl, you did the right thing by not marrying your doctor.”

“Some people don’t belong together,” she said by way of explanation.

Pop’s grin widened as he considered the two of them. “And some people do.”

“Do you need help cleaning up?” Molly asked Mr. Kelly, as if anxious to change the subject. “We can help you.”

He shook his head. “It’s under control, honey. Most of the guests have left, but there are enough still here that your secret will be out if you go back inside. Especially since Mrs. Hild is hanging on. You know that old busybody can’t keep a secret to save her life or anyone else’s.” While he chortled at his joke, Molly gasped.

“You’re sure, Pop?” Eric asked.

“You know old Rosie Hild…”

“No, about cleaning up,” Eric explained. “You’re sure you’ve got it?”

“Of course. You did enough this morning, helping me load the cake into the van.” His bright eyes narrowed as he studied Eric.

Eric resisted the urge to squirm beneath the older man’s scrutiny. He wasn’t exactly proud of what he’d done that morning. It had been childish, and he hadn’t often acted like a child since his parents had died.

“The cleanup’s almost done. You need to get Molly…wherever Molly’s staying.” Pop turned toward her. “Are you going home, honey?”

She shook her head. “I need some time alone to think.”

Eric resisted the urge to snort in derision. Despite Molly’s claim to want time alone, she’d insisted on crashing her own wedding reception.

The older man patted her shoulder, far more gently than he had Eric’s. “You’ll figure things out, honey. You’re a smart girl.”

The door had barely closed behind Pop’s back, before Molly erupted in laughter.

“What?”

She gestured at her dress and hair, which were filthy from her Dumpster dive. “He thinks I’m smart?”

“You are—”

“I’m crazy. I climbed out not one but two windows today. I just swam around in what’s left of my wedding-reception buffet. I’ve totally lost it, Eric.”

Her eyes bright with humor, she’d never been more beautiful to him. She wasn’t the only one who’d lost
it.

S
OFT HAIR DRIFTED
over Eric’s face as he lay back on a lounge on the deck off the kitchen. He dragged in a deep breath that was scented with strawberries and champagne. What a dream…

“Do I still smell like garbage?”

Molly’s voice jolted him back from where his mind had drifted, when he’d allowed himself to focus on the mental image of her in his shower, standing naked under the pulsating spray—her hands lathering soap all over her body as she washed every inch of silky skin….

“Eric? Are you sleeping?” she asked, dropping onto the edge of the wide chair. Her hip bumped his thigh, and every muscle in his body tensed with desire.

“I could have fallen asleep. You were in there long enough….” Torturing him with the images her showering had conjured in his mind.

“You didn’t have to wait up for me,” she said. “I don’t expect you to entertain me while I’m here.”

“What
do
you expect from me?” He asked the question that had been torturing him as much as her naked image.