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.
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