The Best Man's Bride. Lisa Childs

a fit about paying for it now.” Since their mother, the minute everyone had arrived at the hall, had turned the reception into a welcome home party for Abby Hamilton, the girl Clayton had always considered a bad influence on his sisters. Her smile slid away as guilt took hold. If he only knew that the real troublemaker had been his little sister.

      Mom’s arm wound tighter around her waist. Did her mother know? Over the years Colleen sometimes had suspected that she did.

      “Ah, it’s good for your brother when everything doesn’t go exactly according to his plan.” Once he’d realized there would be repercussions if he canceled the reception, he’d planned to turn it into an open house for the town. But his mother had had other plans. “Abby would be good for your brother.”

      A smile pulled at Colleen’s lips. “Subtle, Mom.”

      “You disagree?”

      Colleen shook her head. “No.” Her older brother had always fascinated and infuriated Abby Hamilton and the reverse was equally true. “But throwing a welcome-home party for Abby doesn’t guarantee she’s actually going to move home.”

      She sighed, thinking of the night before and their impromptu slumber party/bachelorette party, during which she’d tried to convince Abby to come home for good. Abby was looking for a location for the next franchise of her employment agency, Temps to Go. Colleen’s argument that Cloverville, which was growing rapidly, would be the perfect location had fallen on deaf ears. “In fact, she’s pretty set against moving back.”

      Mary McClintock’s smile didn’t slip, and her dark eyes twinkled. “Then we’ll have to change her mind, won’t we?”

      “Okay.” Colleen had learned long ago that it was easier to agree than argue with her mother. “I’m not going to play matchmaker with you, though.” Probably Abby and Clayton were both too stubborn to ever admit to the attraction that had always simmered between them. “But I want Abby and Lara to move back to Cloverville.”

      And not just so Colleen wouldn’t continue to feel so guilty over her leaving. She’d missed her friend. E-mails, phone calls and letters weren’t adequate to fully convey the force of nature that was Abby Hamilton in person. Poor Clayton…

      “I want Molly to come home, too,” Colleen admitted. “I’m worried about her.”

      “Who says your sister isn’t home?”

      “I called the house,” Colleen admitted. “No one answered. Do you think she just went home?”

      Her mother shook her head. “She’s not at our house.”

      “You know where she is?”

      “I think we all know where she is.”

      With Eric. He had always been the friend to whom Molly had turned for comfort and support. Maybe she’d backed out of her wedding just because he hadn’t been there.

      “She’s okay,” her mother assured Colleen. “She just needs time, like she said in her note.”

      Colleen narrowed her eyes and studied her mother’s carefully blank expression. “You talked to her,” she accused. Colleen, as well as Abby and Brenna, had tried Molly’s cell, but it had been turned off. They’d even tried Eric’s, but he’d claimed Molly wasn’t with him. But then, no one had ever been able to lie to Mary McClintock except Colleen.

      “Look at all these gifts,” her mother said, suddenly changing the subject, as she gestured at the crowded table. In addition to the gifts, cards overflowed from a wishing well that Colleen had constructed out of cardboard and wrapping paper.

      “We’ll have to send everything back.”

      “I’ll have Clayton make an announcement for people to pick up their presents before they leave.” Her mother sighed.

      “Or maybe I should do that. He has enough responsibility.”

      “Clayton thrives on responsibility.” While he might grumble about paying for the reception, he would not allow anyone else to assume the duty he considered, like so many others, to be his. Dr. Towers had already said that he would pay for the reception, but Clayton had insisted.

      Mary McClintock shook her head. “He needs more in life. He needs a wife. Children.”

      Colleen snorted, well aware of the fact that her brother shared Dr. Jameson’s views on marriage. He had no intention of ever having a wedding of his own.

      Her derision didn’t faze her mom, however, who continued, “The same things you need.”

      “A wife?” she teased, used to dealing with her mother’s not-so-subtle attempts at matchmaking. Mary McClintock refused to accept that Colleen wasn’t ready for marriage—not now, and maybe not ever.

      Mom squeezed her waist. “A husband.”

      An image of Dr. Nick Jameson, standing at the altar, flashed into her mind, and Colleen’s pulse quickened. “I’m only twenty-three.”

      Her mother smiled wistfully. “I was barely twenty when I married your father.”

      And look how that had ended, with more heartache than any woman should have to endure.

      Colleen blinked again to clear the mist from her eyes. That was why she wasn’t ready. She wasn’t strong enough yet to deal with the kind of loss her mother had experienced. She doubted she would ever be that strong. She far preferred unrequited crushes to a relationship.

      “You and the best man made quite the dashing couple when he escorted you out of the church,” her mother observed.

      “I wasn’t the only one to notice.”

      Colleen bit the inside of her cheek, but the arrival of several of the town busybodies saved her from responding. The organist, Mrs. Hild, in a wildflower-patterned dress and wide-brimmed hat, pulled her mother into a hug. “Oh, Mary, you were so brave to turn the-wedding-that-wasn’t into a party.”

      The wedding-that-wasn’t.

      “And generous,” Mrs. Carpenter added. She was married to the owner of the hardware store, one of the thriftiest men in town.

      “Poor Molly,” Mrs. Hild murmured.

      Poor Molly. They shouldn’t be having her reception without her. Despite her request for time alone, they should probably be out looking for her. Maybe Eric had been telling the truth, and Molly really wasn’t with him. Colleen knew how it felt to run away and have no one care enough to come looking. She murmured some excuse, letting her mother handle the gossips. As she walked away, Colleen passed the cake table. The five-tier confection rose in a pyramid to the little plastic figurine standing at the top. Alone. Just the groom. The bride was gone.

      “THIS IS A MISTAKE,” Nick said, letting the door close behind him as he stepped inside the men’s restroom with the jilted groom.

      Josh crossed the green tile floor to a row of old porcelain sinks, then ran water over his palms to splash on his face. “I’m surprised you’ve controlled yourself this long.”

      Nick tensed. “What?”

      He should have known that he could hide nothing from his oldest, closest friend. Josh must have noticed how hard Nick had fought his attraction to the young bridesmaid, which hadn’t been easy plastered against her in the back of a limousine. Trying to make some space between the two of them, he’d inadvertently knocked the maid of honor off the end of the bench seat. He had to focus on his friend now, and not on some female who would probably prove as untrustworthy as her sister.

      “I don’t know how you managed to wait this long to say I told you so.” Josh’s hands shook as he dragged them over his face.

      “Man, that’s not why…”

      “You followed me into the bathroom?” Josh finished for him.

      “We shouldn’t even be here,”