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Finally a Bride
Lisa Childs
Friend. Lover. Groom?Running out on her own wedding is the only way Molly McClintock can stop herself from making the biggest mistake of her life. But running to her childhood friend Eric South could land her in even more trouble. Ever since the second grade, Eric's always been there for her. Now the wounded war hero is back in her life… and igniting enough sparks to turn friends into lovers.How could Eric forget the girl who accepted his boyhood marriage proposal? Now, twenty years later, he's getting a second chance. With Molly back in his arms where she belongs, will Eric finally get his lifelong wish and meet the woman he loves at the altar?
“I wish you had told me I was making a mistake by marrying Josh. I would have listened to you.”
“But would you have heard me?” Eric’s 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.”
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.
Molly 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. Their other friends had always teased her that he was in love with her, but they’d been wrong. If he had loved her, he wouldn’t have left her when she’d needed him most.
Dear Reader,
Writing Finally a Bride was bittersweet for me. While I’ve been anxious to tell Molly McClintock’s story ever since she ran out on her wedding in Unexpected Bride (February ’08), her book is the conclusion to my THE WEDDING PARTY series for Harlequin American Romance. Molly, with her love of books and romantic nature, is a kindred spirit. Not just with me but with her best friend, Eric South. I hope you enjoy the story of the runaway bride and the man who has always been her hero.
Writing these books has been quite the challenge, as the four stories occur simultaneously. But it’s been a true labor of love. As I’ve finished each book, I’ve thought it my favorite, including Finally a Bride. Not only does Molly get her happy ending—but so do several other residents of Cloverville, the small town in Michigan where I’ve spent so much time it feels real to me.
I hope you’ve enjoyed the time you’ve spent in Cloverville, too!
Happy reading!
Lisa Childs
Finally a Bride
Lisa Childs
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Bestselling, award-winning author Lisa Childs writes paranormal and contemporary romance for Harlequin/Silhouette Books. She lives on thirty acres in west Michigan with her husband, two daughters, a talkative Siamese and a long-haired Chihuahua who thinks she’s a rottweiler. Lisa loves hearing from readers, who can contact her through her Web site, www.lisachilds.com, or by snail mail at P.O. Box 139, Marne, MI 49435.
With great appreciation to Kathleen Scheibling
for tutoring me in how to write for
Harlequin American Romance and for trusting me to
handle the challenge of writing simultaneous stories.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Epilogue
Chapter One
His hand shaking, Eric South replaced the cordless phone on the charger. She didn’t do it. She didn’t go through with it. He blew out a ragged breath of relief. Before he could draw another, a chime sounded. He reached for the phone again—it had been ringing off the hook all morning. But only a dial tone filled his ear.
The front door rattled as knuckles rapped hard against the wood, Eric’s visitor obviously giving up on the bell. He dropped the phone and headed from the kitchen across the small, square living area to the door. As he drew it open, his heart thumped hard once, then twice. She was so damn beautiful—even in jeans and a gray zip-up sweatshirt. Her chocolate-brown curls had been tamed into perfect ringlets, held in position by the headpiece of her long white veil.
“You didn’t come to my wedding,” Molly McClintock said, her voice full of accusation, her wide brown eyes glistening with unshed tears.
“From what I hear, neither did you,” Eric murmured.
“Eric!” She lifted her hands as if to strangle him, but instead she wrapped them around the nape of his neck and stepped into his embrace.
He was helpless to resist her, and his arms lifted almost as if of their own accord. He wrapped them tight around her, holding her as she sobbed into his shirt. She pressed close, crushing her breasts against his chest.
If she burrowed any closer, she’d be a part of him. Hell, she already was; she had been since the second grade. That was why he hadn’t been able to stand up at, or even attend, her wedding. How could he watch her marry another man when she’d promised to marry him then, when they were both seven? But he couldn’t hold her to a promise made almost twenty years ago.
She pushed against Eric, nearly knocking him off his feet.
He stumbled back from the doorway. “Molly…”
“Let me inside, Eric, before someone sees me,” she pleaded, pushing harder.
He stepped back and she brushed past him, then closed the door, shutting them both inside his secluded log cabin. “Molly, my house isn’t exactly on the main drag. No one’s going to see you.”
“They haven’t called you?”
“Well…”
“They’re already looking for me here.” Panic widened her eyes even more. “I’m going to have to find someplace else to go.”
“No.” He didn’t want her driving around the country, not when she was this upset. “I’ll hide you, Molly. No one will know you’re here.” He’d lie for her. Hell, he’d kill for her if she asked him to.
“My car…”
“Give me the keys. I’ll pull it into the garage.” His garage, a barn, was bigger than the cabin.
She withdrew the keys from her jeans pocket and dropped them into his outstretched palm. The metal, warm from her body, heated his skin.
“I didn’t know where else to go.” Because she hadn’t considered anywhere else. Molly had thought only of him—her best friend.
“You can always come to me,” he assured her, his gray eyes intense. But then he turned and walked away. His limp was barely perceptible.
He’d probably regained his muscle tone from working out. A charcoal T-shirt defined muscles in his broad shoulders, back and arms. Faded jeans hugged his lean hips. He’d finally, two years out of the Marines, stopped wearing his dark blond hair in a brush cut and now the silky strands covered the nape of his neck.
Molly curled her fingers into her palms so that she wouldn’t reach for him and beg him not to leave her if only for a little while. The door closed behind him, shutting her inside his cozy home. Alone. In the note she’d pinned to her wedding dress before she’d gone out the window of the bride’s dressing room, she’d asked everyone to leave her alone—to give her time to think.
But after driving around for hours by herself, she still hadn’t reached any new conclusions. She already knew what she wanted to do and what she didn’t want to do.
She didn’t want to get married. Not now. Maybe not ever. So why had she accepted a proposal? Why had she agreed to marry someone she hardly knew, let alone loved? She’d made such a mess—and not just of her life. Tears stung her eyes, but she blinked them back, refusing to shed any more. She’d already wept all over Eric. Some great reunion.
Since high-school graduation eight years ago, she hadn’t seen that much of him. They had both left their small hometown of Cloverville, Michigan. She’d gone off to college, and he’d enlisted in the Marines. But they’d written. They’d called. They’d remained friends, even though they were no longer as close as they’d been when they were kids.
But life had gotten complicated—and it had affected them and their friendship. Eric had come back from the Middle East a changed man. Physically and emotionally.
The door opened. As Eric stepped back inside his gaze locked on her, and some of the tension eased from his broad shoulders. He’d probably expected her to run again. “I put the car in the barn and covered it up, just in case…”
“Just in case someone peeks in the windows,” she surmised and sighed. “What about these?” She gestured toward tall windows, through which late-afternoon sunlight poured, brightening the log interior of the old cabin. “Do we need to get heavy drapes—or should I wear a veil?”
“You already are,” Eric pointed out.
She reached up and tugged on the lace headpiece. Hairpins pulled at her scalp, which stung. “I need to take this off. Now!”
Panic, with the same intensity she’d felt at the church when she’d been about to step into her wedding dress, pressed down on her lungs. She struggled to catch her breath as she wrestled with her veil.
“Wait,” Eric said, “you’re going to hurt yourself.”
“Too late.”
Eric caught her hands in his, easing them away from the veil. “Let me help you.”
“That’s why I came to you.” He had always been the one she’d run to—until he’d left her.
His hands on her shoulders now, he pushed her toward the kitchen and one of the stools beside the lacquered wood counter. “Sit down. Relax,” he urged, kneading her tense muscles as she settled onto the stool.
“I can’t until I get this veil off!”
“I’ll take it off…” He pitched his deep voice low, speaking calmly, as if she was one of the accident victims he treated as an emergency medical tech and he was afraid she might be in shock. Well, maybe she was. She had been in an accident, after all. She hadn’t messed up her life this badly on purpose.
Her whole life she’d always tried to do what people expected of her; she had always tried to make everyone happy. Until today.
She closed her eyes as Eric’s fingers moved gently through her hair, removing the pins and loosening the veil. Her scalp tingled, not from the pins but from his touch. She struggled again for breath, but she wasn’t hyperventilating now. When the weight of the headpiece lifted from her head and neck, she moaned in relief and opened her eyes to meet Eric’s intense gaze.
“Thank you. You’re a lifesaver.” And he was. Literally. He hadn’t really saved her life, but he’d saved so many others—in the Middle East as a Marine medic and around Cloverville and Grand Rapids as an EMT.
“I should be the one wearing the veil,” Eric said, the right half of his mouth lifting in a self-deprecating grin as he pressed his fingers to the scar on the left side of his face.
“Is that why you backed out of standing up at my wedding?” Molly asked. She reached toward him and pushed his hand aside to run her fingertips along the raised ridge of his jagged scar.
Eric sucked in a breath, inhaling the scent of lilies from the flowers nestled in Molly’s hair. He shouldn’t have been able to feel her touch—not on his scar, but his skin warmed beneath her fingertips. He released his breath in an unsteady sigh.
“Eric, was that it?” Molly asked, her voice full of concern.
He hated pity. He didn’t want it from anyone, and most especially not from her. He forced a cocky grin and said, “No, I’m used to the way my devastating good looks make people stare.”
Her generous lips curved into a smile and her dark eyes twinkled as she played along. “Arrogant jerk.”
“Hey, it’s a burden to be this good-looking,” he joked.
“You are, you know,” she said, her fingertips running over his scar again. “This doesn’t change that at all. In fact it probably adds an air of danger that makes women find you irresistible.”
Some women. Sure. But not her. She had never found him irresistible. She’d only ever considered him a friend. He’d been kidding himself to think they could ever be anything more.
“You know me. I have to beat them off with a stick.” He laughed at his own joke, but Molly’s beautiful face tensed.
“Are you seeing someone?” she asked.
Just a few short hours ago she had been about to marry someone else. She couldn’t really care if he had a girlfriend. So he continued to be flip. “I don’t kiss and tell.”
“Seriously, Eric, I don’t want to stay if someone’s going to be upset about my living with you.”
Sure, he’d stashed her car in the barn and assured her she could always come to him, but he hadn’t actually thought she was moving in.
“Uh, Molly, just how long are you planning on staying?” he asked. He wasn’t sure how long he could keep his sanity with her living here.
The honey-toned skin on her face turned red, and she stammered, “I didn’t think—I should have asked—I shouldn’t have just assumed I could stay. You have a life of your own. You’ve always known what you want.”
Her. He’d always wanted her.
