Forever His Bride. Lisa Childs

choked on the word “…honeymoon? Does Molly know?”

      “About the house?” He shook his head. “I was going to tell her tonight.”

      “The house was her wedding present,” Brenna realized. “You were going to surprise her.”

      Sure, some women might have considered his buying a house without his bride’s input to be high-handed. Ordinarily Brenna would be one of those women. But this was Josh, and for some reason his doing it didn’t make him seem chauvinistic, just incredibly romantic. Jealousy churned in her stomach, but she settled it with a sigh. “And instead she surprised you.”

      “Brenna…”

      “So you’re going to stay with us for two weeks?” She drew in a deep breath, but the pressure on her chest wouldn’t allow her lungs to expand. “Or are you going to go on your honeymoon anyway?”

      “Bermuda alone?” he said with a wry laugh. “Now that would be sad. Do you want to join me?”

      “Josh…”

      The sparkle in his eyes clued her in to the joke. “You’re the second, remember? Gotta take up the sword for the bride.”

      She shook her head. “There’s a reason Pop didn’t ask me to fetch his knife. I’d cut myself.”

      Not to mention the fact that her heart would bleed if she fell for a man such as Josh Towers, a man who must still long for another woman. Her best friend. No, she didn’t intend to be anyone’s second. Not even his…

      “I NEED TO TALK TO MOLLY,” Brenna stated her demand into the cell phone pressed to her ear as she paced the alley behind the American Legion Hall. She needed Molly to come home and reclaim her groom, before Brenna did something stupid like trying to claim him for herself.

      Eric’s deep voice vibrated in the phone. “Bren, I told you the first couple of times you called that she isn’t here.”

      So even though she’d called his cell this time, he was home at the small cabin on the fishing lake just outside of Cloverville. Perhaps Brenna should have just driven over…

      “You told me, but should I believe you?” This was Eric, and everyone in Cloverville but Molly knew how he felt about her. “Eric, you’d lie for Molly. We all know you’d do anything she asked you to do.”

      “We’re friends,” he said, as if that explained everything. “That’s what friends do.”

      “She asked you to be in her wedding party, but you backed out,” she reminded him. Pulling out at the last moment had messed up the wedding party so that Clayton had had to pull double duty, walking Abby down the aisle and then going back to give away the bride.

      “So why would you think I’d lie for her?”

      Brenna, hearing the smirk in his voice, smothered a scream of frustration. Like the younger brother she’d never had, Eric had always enjoyed teasing her. But not in the way Josh teased her. Josh’s teasing felt different—made her feel different.

      “Eric,” she said, lowering her voice in a way she hoped would seem threatening. She didn’t care that he’d grown—considerably—from the puny, little kid he’d once been. She was mad enough to win a wrestling match with the ex-Marine anyway. “Make her come to the phone, or I’m coming over there. Now. I have to talk to her.”

      Eric’s laugh echoed in the cell. “God, Bren, you’re still just as bossy as when we were kids. Still the spoiled only child who’s used to getting her way.”

      He was an only child, too. And so was Abby Hamilton. Brenna could have pointed that out, but Eric was right. She was the only spoiled one in their group, the one with the doting parents who’d given her everything she’d ever wanted. But she had yet to give Pop and Mama what they really wanted—grandchildren. Maybe that was why they’d invited Josh and the boys to stay longer. They wanted as much time as they could manage with Buzz and TJ.

      Maybe if they’d been able to have more kids, they wouldn’t have been in such a hurry for grandkids now. As it was they hadn’t been able to conceive Brenna until they’d been in their forties. If they were younger, maybe they’d be willing to wait until she was ready to settle down and had the time to find a guy who didn’t already belong to someone else.

      Just the way the house she wanted now belonged to someone else.

      When Molly had announced her engagement, Brenna had taken a hard look at her own life. She’d thought Molly would be the last of their friends to marry—she’d been so focused on becoming a doctor that she hadn’t even dated in college. But here was Molly, engaged, and Abby, a mother, while Brenna still lived at home with her parents. She’d decided then to start spending some time on her personal life, and so she’d gone house hunting. But the house she’d fallen in love with had sold to someone else before Brenna could even put in a bid.

      “Bren, you still there?” Eric’s voice rumbled through the phone. “I’m just kidding. You know I love you…”

      But not the way he loved Molly. Brenna smiled. “If you loved me, you’d let me talk to her.”

      “Bren…”

      “Eric, she chose me as her maid of honor.” Probably only because Eric wouldn’t have looked all that good in a dress. “And she’s left me with this disaster.”

      A door opened from the Legion Hall, and music and laughter spilled into the alley. Maybe the reception wasn’t a disaster. But everything else was. Her feelings for the jilted groom, for example. She shouldn’t be so fascinated—or was that infatuated?—with Josh.

      “She left a note, too, asking for some time alone to figure things out,” Eric reminded her. “A good friend would give her that time.”

      “You know about the note.” Molly was there, probably standing right next to him, listening in on Brenna’s call.

      “Colleen or Abby must have told me,” he explained. “They’ve been calling, too. Wanting to make sure she’s all right. But you don’t seem as concerned about Molly as you do about someone else.”

      Josh.

      “I am worried about Molly.” Because she’d obviously lost her mind. Why else would she have left Dr. Joshua Towers at the altar?

      “You don’t need to worry,” Eric assured her before hanging up. “She just needs some time alone. Then she’ll be all right.”

      But would Brenna be okay? If Molly stayed away and Brenna had Joshua Towers in her house, all to herself, would she survive with her heart intact? She doubted it. Still, she wouldn’t have him all to herself. No woman would. She’d have his sons, too.

      From the other side of the Dumpster drifted the excited chatter and giggles of two little boys. Brenna crept around the large metal container, ducking as a spray of pop arced toward her like a liquid rainbow. While most of the cola ran in rivulets down the corner of the Dumpster near Brenna’s head, a few drops caught her face, one sliding down her cheek to drip from her chin. She turned toward the boys, meeting two pairs of blue eyes that widened in astonishment and fear. They hadn’t meant to hit her.

      Brenna sank her teeth into her bottom lip, keeping herself from smiling. She cleared her throat to stifle a laugh and admonished them, “Nicholas James! Thomas Joshua!”

      “You know our real names?” TJ asked, his voice quavering with nerves and surprise.

      Brenna had overheard Josh calling them by their full names when he’d been trying to get them to settle down in the guestroom the night before. Now, through the wall of her room, she’d have to listen to him—every night for two weeks?—reading bedtime stories to his sons. But it was better that they, and not their father, slept in the room next to hers. Or Brenna wouldn’t be able to sleep at all, for his being so tantalizingly close.

      The twins exchanged a glance. Then Buzz twisted his