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privileges—just a little over an hour away. And when Molly told me your town doctor had retired, I saw an opportunity here.”
    Brenna thought she knew what he’d seen in Cloverville—a life with Molly. “So you’re going to handle more than just your specialties?”
    He nodded. “Yes. I am. I’m going to hire a physician’s assistant, and Nick wants to bring in a physical therapist, too.”
    Although he might have rushed his proposal to Molly, Josh apparently had given more time and consideration to the plans for his practice. Brenna could appreciate a man with a brain for business.
    “And I bought a house here,” he continued.
    “You bought a house?” He wasn’t just going to work in Cloverville, he was going to live here, as well?
    “I don’t have possession of it yet,” he explained. “At closing the sellers and I agreed they wouldn’t have to move out for two more weeks.”
    “After your…” she almost 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 M OLLY ,” 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