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.
“I’m sorry, Eric,” she continued, her words rushing together. “I don’t want to mess
