“So I’ll clean it. It’s fine,” she insisted as she backed away from the doorway.
Molly hadn’t even stepped inside his room with him, but Eric’s heart pounded hard. Before picking up the suitcase again, he glanced once toward the bed. Memories quickened his pulse, but he pushed away the traitorous thoughts. He’d accepted long ago that he’d never get Molly McClintock back in his bed. If only she had come to him that night because she’d loved him—as a woman loves a man, and not just as a friend who hadn’t wanted to lose him.
Hinges creaked as she pushed open the door on the other side of the living room. Unlike Eric’s room, which Uncle Harold had added when his nephew came to live with him, the old man’s quarters were original to the small cabin. Eric joined her in the doorway, where dust particles danced in the late-afternoon sunshine that came streaming through the sagging blinds.
“Come on,” he said. “You can’t stay in here.”
“It’s fine,” she insisted, her eyes watering. She sneezed and then giggled. “Well, it will be once I clean it. Put down my suitcase and show me where your feather duster is.”
His arm straining, Eric hefted her bag onto the bed. More dust rose from the faded flannel comforter. Where before he hadn’t wanted to know, hadn’t wanted to envision her in any skimpy little honeymoon lingerie, now he had to ask, “What do you have in that thing? Bricks?”
“Maybe you’re just getting weak,” she teased, skimming her fingertips over the barbed-wire tattoo on his bicep.
He shoved his hands into his pockets so he wouldn’t reach for her, so he wouldn’t drag her into his arms and tumble them both onto the dusty mattress. “Seriously, Molly, what do you have in there?”
Giggling again, she stepped around him and unzipped the steamer trunk–size suitcase. “Books.”
“You packed books for your honeymoon?”
She lifted her shoulders in a shrug and kept her head bent over the bag so he couldn’t see her face. “I like to read.”
“You love to read,” he corrected her. “You’ve always loved to read.” Everyone in Cloverville was aware of that. She was known as the McClintock who had her nose forever in a book.
“That changed a bit when it came to medical school,” she said as she dropped several paperbacks onto the flannel comforter.
“Textbooks kind of dull?”
She made another sound—not her usual carefree giggle but a bitter chuckle. “I prefer fiction.”
His own bitter memories—of the places he’d been, the things he had seen—washed over him. “Yeah, me, too.” And not just because of the past but the present, too. His dreams of a honeymoon with Molly had been much more exciting than the reality.
She pulled an assortment of long dresses, jeans and a sweater from the suitcase.
“Where the hell were you going for your honeymoon?” he asked. “The North Pole?”
She tossed a wide-brimmed straw hat atop the pile of books and clothes. “I wouldn’t need the hat there.”
“Where were you going?” he asked again, then shook his head. He didn’t need an image of her and the GQ doctor lying together on some white sand beach or tangled in satin sheets. “No, it’s probably better that I don’t know.”
A bell pealed in the kitchen as the phone resumed ringing. He groaned. “I should answer that or they’ll keep calling.”
“I thought they’d stop,” she murmured as she followed him.
“Me, too. Brenna called my cell while I was in the barn, getting your suitcase.”
“You talked to her?”
He nodded.
“How mad is she?”
He gestured toward the phone. “I guess madder than I thought.”
“You lied to her?”
“Not exactly. I just didn’t offer any information.” He picked up the cordless and barked into the receiver, “Yeah?”
“South?” his boss asked, his voice flustered with confusion.
“Yes, Steve. So you got my message? Do you need me to come in?” Please, God. His body tensed when Molly brushed against him as she headed back toward the bedroom with the bucket of cleaning supplies he kept under the sink.
Steve chuckled as if Eric had said something particularly funny. “Leave it to you to want to work on your day off, South.”
“It’s no problem. Really,” he assured his supervisor. “I don’t need the time off anymore.”
“Your wedding get canceled?”
“It wasn’t my wedding.” It wouldn’t have been—he’d accepted long ago that he would never marry. “But, yeah, it was canceled. That’s why I left you the voice mail saying I wouldn’t need my vacation time. And if you want me to come in right now…”
“No, Eric, that’s not why I called. In fact, I called for the exact opposite reason.”
“You’re firing me?”
Steve laughed outright, the phone crackling with his raucous chuckle. “I’d like to clone you, not fire you.”
“Then I don’t understand…”
“I’ve already made up the schedule for next week, and I’m leaving you off it.”
“But I don’t need the time off.” Especially now, when he had such a distracting houseguest.
“Yes, you do, Eric. In the two years you’ve been working for me, you haven’t taken a single day off. Not a personal day. Not a sick day and none of your vacation time.”
“I like my job.” He couldn’t help Uncle Harold—or the comrades he’d lost in the Middle East. But as an EMT he could help other people. Sometimes.
“I’m glad you like your job,” Steve said, “and I want to keep it that way. You already arranged for the week off, and I’m going to make sure you stick to it.”
“But I don’t want to.”
“But you need to, Eric. You need to take some R & R or you’re going to burn out. I’ve seen it happen too many times. I don’t want it happening to you.” He laughed. “Hell, I can’t afford to have it happen to you.”
“I appreciate your concern, but I’m fine.”
“So take the time off and stay that way,” Steve insisted. “Everyone’s been warned. No calling you to work for them, either. I don’t want to see you back here for a week, South. That’s an order. I know that you’re too good an employee to disobey an order.” But the supervisor must have doubted him because he hung up before Eric could begin to argue.
Molly ducked her head out of the bedroom doorway. “I take it that wasn’t one of my bridesmaids?”
“Not this time.” He sighed. “Seems like I’m going to be around more than I thought next week.” More than he’d hoped.
“That’s good,” she said, but she sounded about as convinced of that as he was.
“Don’t worry, though,” he assured her. “I’ll stay out of your way. Give you time to…read.” Maybe he would have to borrow a few of her books. Anything to get his mind off the thought of her here, lying in a bed just a few yards away from his.
“Hmm?” She turned toward him, obviously distracted.
“Nothing,” he said. “Your mind is somewhere else.”