Jeannie Watt - Molly's Mr. Wrong

Being cheated on hurt like hell. And trust...what was that? Not anything that Molly believed in anymore.

But trust issues or not, she was going to put herself out there. Step out of her comfort zone socially. She owed it to herself not to let what had happened with Blake ruin her future...she just wasn’t going to get herself into any kind of an emotional bind with any kind of flashy too-good-to-be-true guy again. From now on she was dating her own species—as in guys who were reliable, honest, predictable. She couldn’t live with lack of trust.

When Molly pulled into her driveway, Georgina was not tending to dinner—she was in Mike Culver’s yard crouched next to a flower bed. She waved and got to her feet as Molly walked to the fence that separated the properties.

“Mike is teaching me about fall bulbs,” she said happily. “If we put them in now, we’ll have flowers next year.”

“I’d like that.” Just as she was going to like living in the same place come spring that she was in now. Molly had never lived anywhere long enough to get too deeply into yard beautification, and in Arizona, her house had been xeriscaped in a minimalist way, as was common in the desert. No spring flowers except for yucca, which were pretty, but not in the traditional way.

“The people who lived here before weren’t much for flowers, but I always thought that some tulips around the trees and maybe some narcissi or daffodils in front of the lilacs would be pretty.”

“There are lilacs?” Georgina’s eyes widened.

“Those bushes over there are lilacs,” Mike said, pointing to the hedge at the edge of their lawn. “The heavy flowering kind.”

“I love the smell of lilacs. I haven’t smelled them since we lived in Iowa. Remember, Molly?”

Molly remembered, but she was surprised that Georgina did; she’d been so young then. “Didn’t we have lilacs when we lived here?” she asked her sister, who gave an emphatic shake of her head in reply. “Nope. We had those big yellow bushes—”

“Forsythia, probably,” Mike said.

Georgina looked impressed at the off-the-cuff identification. “And those pink roses that had no scent. We didn’t have lilacs.”

Molly smiled a little. She didn’t remember much about the flowers. “I’ll take your word for it.”

Mike leaned his arms on the top of the chain-link fencing. “I was telling Georgina that I can put together a mix of bulbs from the store and bring them home or I can get you a catalog.”

“You probably know what grows best.” And she would pay for said mixture of bulbs, of course, but it didn’t seem like the time to make that point.

“That’s what I thought,” Georgina said. “And I love surprises.”

“Then I’ll fix you up.” Mike smiled at Georgina, then shifted his attention to Molly, and she saw that his eyes were the same color as Finn’s. A deep, rich hazel. More green than brown. Why had she noticed that? A trickle of annoyance went through her. “Got that drain fixed yet?”

“I have a call in to a plumber. He’s working me in this weekend.” Mike had been right about all the locals being contracted to the construction companies. The Eagle Valley was experiencing a mini housing boom. “I called four before I got one. O’Malley’s Plumbing and Heating? He promised Saturday and said he wouldn’t charge weekend rates, since it’s a simple job.”

Mike didn’t look as if he fully believed the guy would honor his word. “Crazy, all this rain,” he said. “We had floods a little over a year ago, then this summer was so dry that there were bad fires.”

“I heard,” Molly said. “Some people lost homes.”

Mike gave a nod. “My nephew Dylan’s fiancée lost her ranch house in the fire.”

“That’s terrible.” Molly remembered Dylan. She’d liked him. He’d been a year ahead of her, quiet and studious. Invisible in a way. Like she had been, except that he could have been as popular as Finn, had he chosen to be. Somehow she didn’t think that popularity was one of her options. “Who is his fiancée?”

“Jolie Brody.”

Brody. Of course. Allie Brody looked just like Jolie Brody, whom she’d graduated from high school with.

“Does she have an older sister?”

“Three sisters.”

“I just met an Allie Brody at the college.”

“She’s the oldest. She’s teaching a night class at the school. Painting or something.”

Small world...but maybe not. It was a small town, so ending up with a class next to Finn’s cousin’s fiancée’s sister wasn’t that unexpected. And the connection to Finn was a bit distant. Still, she was going to watch what she said around Allie about certain people.

Molly frowned as a memory crept into her brain. “Wait a minute...didn’t Jolie used to...” Mike waited for her to finish and Molly, who wished she’d kept her mouth shut, searched for a tactful word. “Bother Dylan?” Torture would have been a better word, but she was being polite. The strained and somewhat adversarial relationship between wild-child Jolie and quiet Dylan had been legendary in Eagle Valley High School, now that she thought about it.

Mike laughed. “Yes, she did. She and Dylan worked things out.”

“I guess so.”

Georgina was following the conversation with interest and Mike glanced over at her and laughed again. “I’ll get you that mixture of bulbs and maybe we can put them in this weekend.”

“We?” Molly asked on a note of amusement.

“If you needed help, that is.”

“I think we’ll need a lot of help,” Molly said with a smile. If he wanted to help, she wasn’t going to stop him.

They talked for a few more minutes about colors, and then Mike’s phone rang from inside his house and he excused himself.

“I like him,” Georgina said as she and Molly walked to their back door. She shot Molly a look. “You’re going to fill in the gaps about this Dylan guy and his fiancée. Right?”

“I don’t know a lot,” Molly said as she opened the front door. “Dylan was really quiet and hardworking and Jolie was outgoing. Kind of a live-for-today girl.”

“Just like you?” Georgina asked with mock innocence.

“Exactly,” Molly replied. Because she was going to be more like that. Work in progress, et cetera. “All I remember is that they somehow drifted into nemesis territory due to being partnered up in some class and her not taking it seriously enough and him being worried about his GPA.”

“And now they’re getting married.”

“Yes.” Molly headed for the fridge. So very romantic. She wished them well, but hearts-and-flowers romance had been stomped out of her by the lights of reality being snapped on in her own relationship, brilliantly exposing the truth that lay before her and leaving her blinking.

She was still blinking a little. Blake had not only robbed her of most of her savings, he’d robbed her of her hard-won self-confidence. She’d fought to rebuild it little by little, but she hadn’t been able to let go of her resentment. It’d be a while before she could.

“I thought we’d microwave lasagna tonight.” The microwave was truly their best friend with their crammed schedules—which was why having a two-hour break to eat an actual dinner between her afternoon and evening classes was gold. “I made a salad.”

Molly drifted over to the counter and pulled a small tomato out of the mixture of greens and popped it into her mouth. She’d skipped lunch and was famished. “Sounds good.”

Georgina pulled the aluminum tray out of the freezer. “This Dylan is hot prom guy’s cousin, right?”

“Homecoming guy. He is.”

“But you liked him better.”

He didn’t screw me over, so yes. “He’s a nice guy. How were your classes today?”