Finally a Bride. Lisa Childs

dishes.

      Eric touched the brim of the well-worn fedora, then ran his fingertips down the side of his face. “It doesn’t cover this, so it’s not much of a disguise.”

      “Then I guess we’ll just have to dance cheek to cheek,” Molly said, her lips curving in an impish smile.

      Eric’s body tensed, even though he knew she was only teasing. So he teased back. “Not with that big floppy hat of yours,” he said, touching the brim. “The way we’re dressed, we’re far more likely to draw attention to ourselves than disappear into the crowd. Do you want people to see you?”

      “No, but I want to be able to see what’s going on and I can’t see anything from back in this hallway. Come on.” She tugged on his arm again, pulling him into the reception hall. “I think you’re more worried about being seen than I am.”

      She was right. She probably thought he was self-conscious because of the scar, but that wasn’t the reason. Even though he didn’t know how he would weather two weeks with Molly, he’d resigned himself to spending her “honeymoon” with her. Platonically, of course. But if someone saw her and convinced her to come out of hiding, she wouldn’t need to stay with him.

      Worse yet, she might decide to stay with him, her jilted groom, and have a real honeymoon—even though she’d skipped the wedding.

      “I’m just worried that you haven’t thought this through,” Eric said.

      She stopped at the edge of the dance floor and turned toward him, admitting, “I’ve given you good reason to worry about me, the way I ran away from my wedding and let down so many people.”

      “They don’t look too let down,” he said, pointing toward all the dancing couples. From the hospital, he recognized the GQ doctors. The blond best man, Nick Jameson, held a brunette tight in his arms—Molly’s younger sister, Colleen. And the jilted groom, Dr. Joshua Towers, danced with the maid of honor, Brenna Kelly. Towers grinned at the redhead, neither of them looking too upset. How would Molly feel about that—that the man she’d been about to marry wasn’t destroyed by the fact that she’d abandoned him at the altar?

      “That’s why I had to come here.” Molly tilted her head, so she could peer out from beneath her hat brim. “I had to see if I was right.” Relief eased some of the tension from her shoulders.

      “Right about what?”

      Brenna and Josh. But she didn’t want to tell Eric that she hoped her fiancé had fallen for her best female friend. She didn’t want him thinking…well, the truth. That she’d been about to marry a man she didn’t love. Because then she would have to explain why—that she was a chicken. She didn’t want Eric to be as disgusted with her as she was with herself.

      Molly scanned the rest of the guests on the dance floor, gasping in surprise as she noticed a certain couple doing more than dancing. The dark-haired man leaned over the small blond woman who was in his arms, kissing her as if he never intended to stop. Molly grabbed Eric’s arm. “See—”

      “Abby and Clayton?” he asked, whistling through his teeth.

      “And you thought I was crazy for wearing this long dress. I suspected it might be cold in here, but even I didn’t realize that hell was going to freeze over.”

      Eric laughed. “Man, seeing that almost makes it worth dressing in this crazy getup. I’m seeing it and still not believing it—Clayton and Abby?”

      Molly giggled at his shock. “Men can be so oblivious.”

      “Are you talking about me or Clayton?” he asked, his mouth lifting in a partial grin. “I always thought he hated her.”

      “He wanted to,” Molly explained. “But…” She’d always suspected that attraction, not animosity, existed between Abby Hamilton and her older brother, Clayton.

      “That’s not hate,” Eric mused. “I can’t wait to razz Abby about this.”

      “You can’t say anything to her.”

      “That’s right—we’re not supposed to be here.” His hand closed over her elbow, steering her back toward the deserted hallway.

      Her skin tingling beneath the thin material, she pulled away. “We can’t leave yet. It’s just getting good.”

      Eric gave her a long, assessing look. “You planned this,” he accused.

      She shook her head, and the floppy brim of her hat fluttered. “I didn’t plan.” A smile tugged at her lips. “Hoped, maybe.”

      That was why she’d left her note addressed to Abby, asking her to stay until Molly came back. She wanted her friend to move back to Cloverville—for good.

      Eric grinned. “You’re a chip off the old block.”

      “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