Kiss the Bride (75 page)

She was oblivious to anything except splashing angry black brushstrokes across the hot, sexy mouth.

Brody exhaled an irritated snort, threw the Crown Vic into park, stuck the Maui Jims in his front shirt pocket, and climbed out. Warily, he eyed the gravel. Loose rocks. His sworn enemy. Then he remembered his new bionic Power Knee and relaxed. He’d worn the innovative prosthetic for only six weeks, but it had already changed his life. Because of the greater ease of movement and balance the computerized leg afforded, it was almost impossible for the casual observer to guess he was an amputee.

He walked directly underneath the sign, cocked his tan Stetson back on his head, and looked up.

As far as he knew—and he knew most everything that went on in Valentine, population 1,987—there’d been no weddings scheduled in town that weekend. So where had the bride come from?

Brody cleared his throat.

She went right on painting.

He cleared his throat again, louder this time.

Nothing.

“Ma’am,” he called up to her.

“Go away. Can’t you see I’m busy?”

Dots of black paint spattered the sand around him.
She’d almost obliterated the left-hand corner of the upper lip, transforming the Marilyn Monroe sexpot pout into Marilyn Manson gothic rot.

The cynic inside him grinned. Brody had always hated those tacky red lips. Still, it was a Valentine icon and he was sworn to uphold the law.

He glanced around and spied the lollipop pink VW Bug parked between two old abandoned railway cars rusting alongside the train tracks that ran parallel to the highway. He could see a red-and-pink beaded heart necklace dangling from the rearview mirror, and a sticker on the chrome bumper proclaimed
I HEART ROMANCE
.

All rightee then.

“If you don’t cease and desist, I’ll have to arrest you,” he explained.

She stopped long enough to balance the brush on the paint can and glower down at him. “On what charges?”

“Destruction of private property. The billboard is on Kelvin Wentworth’s land.”

“I’m doing this town a much-needed community service,” she growled.

“Oh, yeah?”

“This,” she said, sweeping a hand at the billboard, “is false advertising. It perpetuates a dangerous myth. I’m getting rid of it before it can suck in more impressionable young girls.”

“What myth is that?”

“That there’s such things as true love and romance, magic and soul mates. Rubbish. All those fairy tales are complete and utter rubbish and I fell for it, hook, line, and sinker.”

“Truth in advertising
is
an oxymoron.”

“Exactly. And I’m pulling the plug.”

You’ll get no argument from me,
he thought, but vandalism was vandalism and he was the sheriff, even if he agreed with her in theory. In practice, he was the law. “Wanna talk about it?”

She glared. “To a man? You’ve gotta be kidding me.”

“Judging from your unorthodox attire and your displeasure with the billboard in particular and men in general, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and guess that you were jilted at the altar.”

“Perceptive,” she said sarcastically.

“Another woman?”

She didn’t respond immediately and he was about to repeat the question when she muttered, “The Chicago Bears.”

“The Bears?”

“Football.”

Brody sank his hands onto his hips. “The guy jilted you over football?”

“Bastard.” She was back at it again, slinging paint.

“He sounds like a dumbass.”

“He’s Trace Hoolihan.”

Brody shrugged. “Is that supposed to mean something?”

“You don’t know who he is?”

“Nope.”

“Hallelujah,” the bride-that-wasn’t said. “I’ve found the one man in Texas who’s not ate up with football.”

It wasn’t that he didn’t like football, but the last couple of years his life had been preoccupied with adjusting to losing his leg in Iraq, getting over a wife who’d left him for another man, helping his wayward sister raise her young daughter, and settling into his job as sheriff. He hadn’t had much time for leisurely pursuits.

“How’d you get up there?” Brody asked.

“With my white sequined magical jet pack.”

“You’ve got a lot of anger built up inside.”

“You think?”

“I know you’re heartbroken and all,” he drawled, “but I’m gonna have to ask you to stop painting the Valentine kisser.”

“This isn’t the first time, you know,” she said without breaking stride.
Swish, swish, swish
went the paintbrush.

“You’ve vandalized a sign before?”

“I’ve been stood up at the altar before.”

“No kidding?”

“Last year. The ratfink never showed up. Left me standing in the church for over an hour while my wilting orchid bouquet attracted bees.”

“And still, you were willing to try again.”

“I know. I’m an idiot. Or at least I was. But I’m turning over a new leaf. Joining the skeptics.”

“Well, if you don’t stop painting the sign, you’re going to be joining the ranks of the inmates at the Jeff Davis County Jail.”

“You’ve got prisoners?”

“Figure of speech.” How did she know the jail was empty fifty percent of the time? Brody squinted suspiciously. He didn’t recognize her, at least not from this distance. “You from Valentine?”

“I live in Houston now.”

That was as far as the conversation got because the mayor’s fat, honking Cadillac bumped to a stop behind Brody’s cruiser.

Kelvin P. Wentworth IV flung the car door open and wrestled his hefty frame from behind the wheel. Merle Haggard belted from the radio, wailing a thirty-year-old
country-and-western song about boozing and chasing women.

“What the hell’s going on here,” Kelvin boomed and lumbered toward Brody.

The mayor tilted his head up, scowling darkly at the billboard bride. Kelvin prided himself on shopping only in Valentine. He refused to even order off the Internet. He was big and bald and on the back side of his forties. His seersucker suit clung to him like leeches on a water buffalo. Kelvin was under the mistaken impression he was still as good-looking as the day he’d scored the winning touchdown that took Valentine to state in 1977, the year Brody was born. It was the first and last time the town had been in the playoffs.

Brody suppressed the urge to roll his eyes. He knew what was coming. Kelvin was a true believer in the Church of Valentine and the jilted bride had just committed the highest form of blasphemy. “I’ve got it under control, Mayor.”

“My ass.” Kelvin waved an angry hand. “She’s up there defacin’ and disgracin’ our hometown heritage and you’re standing here with your thumb up your butt, Carlton.”

“She’s distraught. Her fiancé dumped her at the altar.”

“Rachael Renee Henderson,” Kelvin thundered up at her. “Is that you?”

“Go away, Mayor. This is something that’s gotta be done,” she called back.

“You get yourself down off that billboard right now, or I’m gonna call your daddy.”

Rachael Henderson.

The name brought an instant association into Brody’s mind. He saw an image of long blonde pigtails, gap-toothed grin, and freckles across the bridge of an upturned
pixie nose. Rachael Henderson, the next-door neighbor who’d followed him around like a puppy dog until he’d moved to Midland with his mother and his sister after their father went to Kuwait when Brody was twelve. From what he recalled, Rachael was sweet as honeysuckle, certainly not the type to graffiti a beloved town landmark.

People change.

He thought of Belinda and shook his head to clear away thoughts of his ex-wife.

“My daddy is partly to blame for this,” she said. “Last time I saw him he was in Houston breaking my mother’s heart. Go ahead and call him. Would you like his cell phone number?”

“What’s she talking about?” Kelvin swung his gaze to Brody.

Brody shrugged. “Apparently she’s got some personal issues to work out.”

“Well, she can’t work them out on my billboard.”

“I’m getting the impression the billboard is a symbol of her personal issues.”

“I don’t give a damn. Get ’er down.”

“How do you propose I do that?”

Kelvin squinted at the billboard. “How’d she get up there?”

“Big mystery. But why don’t we just let her have at it? She’s bound to run out of steam soon enough in this heat.”

“Are you nuts? Hell, man, she’s already blacked out the top lip.” Kelvin anxiously shifted his weight, bunched his hands into fists. “I won’t stand for this. Find a way to get her down. Now!”

“What do you want me to do? Shoot her?”

“It’s a thought,” Kelvin muttered.

“Commanding the sheriff to shoot a jilted bride won’t help you get reelected.”

“It ain’t gonna help my reelection bid if she falls off that billboard and breaks her fool neck because I didn’t stop her.”

“Granted.”

Kelvin cursed up a blue streak and swiped a meaty hand across his sweaty forehead. “I was supposed to be getting doughnuts so me and Marianne could have a nice, quiet breakfast before church, but hell no, I gotta deal with this stupid crap.” Kelvin, a self-proclaimed playboy, had never married. Marianne was his one hundred and twenty pound bullmastiff.

“Go get your doughnuts, Mayor,” Brody said. “I’ve got this under control.”

Kelvin shot him a withering look and pulled his cell phone from his pocket. Brody listened to the one-sided conversation, his eyes on Rachael, who showed no signs of slowing her assault on the vampish pout.

“Rex,” Kelvin barked to his personal assistant. “Go over to Audie’s, have him open the hardware store up for you, get a twenty-five-foot ladder, and bring it out to the Valentine billboard.”

There was a pause from Kelvin as Rex responded.

“I don’t care if you stayed up ’til three a.m. playing video games with your geeky online buddies. Just do it.”

With a savage slash of his thumb on the keypad, Kelvin hung up and muttered under his breath, “I’m surrounded by morons.”

Brody tried not to take offense at the comment. Kelvin liked his drama as much as he liked ordering people around.

Fifteen minutes later, Rex showed up with a collapsible
yellow ladder roped to his pickup truck. He was barely twenty-five, redheaded as rhubarb, and had a voice deep as Barry White’s, with an Adam’s apple that protruded like a submarine ready to break the surface. Brody often wondered if the prominent Adam’s apple had anything to do with the kid’s smooth, dark, ebony voice.

Up on the billboard, Rachael was almost finished with the mouth. She had slashes of angry black paint smeared across the front of her wedding gown. While waiting on Rex to show up with the ladder, Kelvin had spent the time trying to convince her to come down, but she was a zealot on a mission and she wouldn’t even talk to him.

“I want her arrested,” Kelvin snapped. “I’m pressing charges.”

“You might want to reconsider that,” Brody advised. “Since the election is just a little more than three months away and Giada Vito is gaining favor in the polls.”

The polls being the gossip at Higgy’s Diner. He knew the mayor was grandstanding. For the first time in Kelvin’s three-term stint, he was running opposed. Giada Vito had moved to Valentine from Italy and she’d gotten her American citizenship as soon as the law allowed. She was a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat, the principal of Valentine High, drove a vintage Fiat, and didn’t mince her words. Especially when it came to the topic of Valentine’s favored son, Kelvin P. Wentworth IV.

“Hey, you leave the legal and political machinations to me. You just do your job,” said Kelvin.

Brody blew out his breath and went to help Rex untie the ladder. What he wanted to do was tell Kelvin to shove it. But the truth was the woman needed to come down before she got hurt. More than likely, the wooden billboard decking was riddled with termites.

He and Rex got the ladder loose and carried it over to prop it against the back of the billboard. It extended just long enough to reach the ladder rungs that were attached to the billboard itself.

Kelvin gave Brody a pointed look. “Up you go.”

Brody ignored him. “Rachael, we’ve got a ladder in place. You need to come down now.”

“Don’t ask her, tell her,” Kelvin hissed to Brody, then said to Rachael, “Missy, get your ass down here this instant.”

“Get bent,” Rachael sang out.

“That was effective,” Brody muttered.

Rex snorted back a laugh. Kelvin shot him a withering glance and then raised his eyebrows at Brody and jerked his head toward the billboard. “You’re the sheriff. Do your job.”

Brody looked up at the ladder and then tried his best not to glance down at his leg. He didn’t want to show the slightest sign of weakness, especially in front of Kelvin. But while his Power Knee was pretty well the most awesome thing that had happened to him since his rehabilitation, he’d never tested it by climbing a ladder, particularly a thin, wobbly, collapsible one.