Free The Best Man's Bride by LISA CHILDS

have to stay. But Nick suspected the only person who’d be able to talk Josh into leaving was his runaway bride. Nick had to find her, and soon—before he put himself at risk.
    “Thanks for the hospitality.” He offered his host gratitude but not an explanation. He’d always been guarded about his personal history, about his pain.
    “You didn’t have to bring me anything,” Clayton said, gesturing toward the picnic basket as he leaned against the front of the walnut kitchen cabinets.
    Nick laughed. “I appreciate you letting me stay here, but this isn’t for you.”
    He’d picked up the basket at his favorite deli in Grand Rapids, when he’d gone back to his condo to pack a few things. He was hoping he wouldn’t be here long enough to wear everything he’d brought with him, but the tux wasn’t his. He’d had to drop it off at the rental place, grass stains, Buzz drool and all.
    “Hot date?”
    Somehow Nick suspected that Clayton, the protective older brother, would not appreciate Nick seeing Colleen. At least not as Nick saw her. Hell, he knew he was too old for her, too cynical, that he had nothing to offer her. He didn’t need Clayton McClintock to tell him what he already knew. Doubting that he’d have a place to stay at all if Clayton were aware of his date’s identity, Nick shook his head. “How about you? Did you talk to your girlfriend this morning?”
    After a restless night in the guest room, Nick had come out of the kitchen at the crack of dawn to find Clayton watching his blond bridesmaid through the living-room blinds. He’d pointed out then that the bridesmaids knew where the bride had run off to, and he’d urged Clayton to find his missing sister—and not just for Josh but to make sure she was okay.
    “Abby Hamilton is not my girlfriend,” Clayton hotly denied, just as he had when Nick had asked him that morning.
    “But I did talk to her.”
    Suppressing a grin at the other man’s vehement reaction, Nick amended his question. “Did you get through to Abby?”
    “No, there’s no getting through to Abby Hamilton.”
    “Stubborn, huh?”
    “Aggravating. Frustrating.” Clayton groaned.
    The man had it bad. Nick’s best friend had been engaged twice, married once, and he’d never talked about either woman with as much emotion as Clayton showed for Abby Hamilton or as Nick had invested in Colleen McClintock.
    “It’s okay, though,” Clayton said, apparently to reassure himself. “She won’t stick around Cloverville.”
    “I bet she’ll be here until your sister comes back.” Old memories stepped out of the shadows of Nick’s mind. “If she comes back…” His brother had never come back, not after his wife left him. Nick always thought that in some ways Bruce had really died that day, long before his car had struck the tree.
    “Molly will come back.”
    “Why?” Nick couldn’t imagine why anyone would willingly return to Cloverville once they’d left. Then images began to flash through his mind—of Colleen in her strapless dress standing on the sidewalk in the moonlight, and then in the park on the grass next to him, her long bare legs folded beneath her, her beautiful face animated as she read to the boys. She shouldn’t be that compelling of an attraction; she shouldn’t mean that much to him already.
    He gripped the handle of his basket. He should not go back to the park. He doubted he’d get any information out of her, but he might give up more than he’d ever intended to give anyone—his heart.
    “You’re a city snob, huh?”
    “What?”
    “You can’t live outside a city? We’re not that far from Grand Rapids, you know.” Clayton’s voice vibrated with pride in his town.
    “Seems like a lot more than an hour,” Nick said. Maybe because only a two-lane highway connected the cities, rather than a freeway, and the only scenery between the two places was fields and woods. “While you’re half right, I’m no snob.”
    He’d worked his way through