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Synopsis
Two Wedding Veil Wishes novels, together for the first time in print! Legend claims this antique Irish wedding veil can grant your heart's deepest desire. But be careful what you wish for . . . ADDICTED TO LOVE Growing up in Valentine, Texas, can make anyone believe in happily ever after. Anyone except Rachael Henderson. After having not one but two grooms ditch her at the altar, Rachael commits an uncharacteristic act of rebellion-and gets arrested by sexy Sheriff Brody Carlton, her childhood crush. Rachael's sworn off of love . . . but now she's fantasizing about Brody. Can it be possible to have her wedding cake and eat it too? ALL OF ME When a searing betrayal leaves Jillian Samuels heartbroken and wishing for a fresh start, her newly inherited cottage in Salvation, Colorado, seems like the perfect place to find it. It has a fireplace, a mountain view-and the most gorgeous and infuriating man she's ever met already living inside! Tuck Manning won't give up his home without a fight, so until they can untangle who owns the cottage, the two resolve to live as roommates. But as the days-and nights-heat up, they find that sometimes salvation comes when you least expect it . . .
Release date: December 17, 2013
Publisher: Forever
Print pages: 768
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Happily Ever After
Lori Wilde
Praise for
“A wild ride.”
—Booklist
“I adored this book! I even kept it in my purse in the hopes that I would have a few minutes in which to squeeze a paragraph or two… I can’t wait to read the next in this wonderful new series… Superb!”
—TheRomanceReadersConnection.com
“FOUR HEARTS! Ms. Wilde conquers a whole new part of the romance genre… lots of funny elements and a great cast of characters.”
—LovesRomanceandMore.com
“A dynamite novel that readers will treasure for years to come.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Lori Wilde at her best… I really loved this story. The writing is wonderful and the plot grabbed my attention from the first page. I fell in love with the characters and couldn’t wait to see how they worked everything out.”
—ContemporaryRomanceWriters.com
“A definite crowd pleaser… Lori Wilde can write very engaging and quirky romances and Once Smitten, Twice Shy is one of them… [A] good read with some suspense to boot.”
—FreshFiction.com
“A wild ride on an emotional roller coaster.”
—FallenAngelReviews.com
“Entertaining and humorous… There’s a seriousness to it also, as the heroine learns to recognize real love and caring. Wilde again includes secondary romances that are intriguing, entertaining, and hot.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Wilde brings romance fans a feel-good, laugh-out-loud read… one of the best romantic comedies I’ve read in a long time.”
—NightsandWeekends.com
“Charming… lighthearted fun… strong secondary romances enhance an engaging Valentine tale.”
—Midwest Book Review
“[The characters’] physical attraction heats up the pages, but their personal development forms the heart and soul of the novel, a delicately revealing in-depth character study. Wilde’s clever combination of humor, sorrow and love brings a deeply appealing sense of realism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A warm serene character study. Jillian is a fully developed person, but the relationship drama is owned by Tuck as Lori Wilde goes deep inside his soul. Fans who appreciate a sometimes amusing but always pathos second chance at life (and love) will enjoy this profound contemporary.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Light and charming, this is a pure romance, which is a nice change… a satisfying read with excellent characterizations and real-life issues.”
—RT Book Reviews
The last thing Sheriff Brody Carlton expected to find when he wheeled his state-issued white-and-black Crown Victoria patrol cruiser past the WELCOME TO VALENTINE, TEXAS, ROMANCE CAPITAL OF THE USA billboard was a woman in a sequined wedding dress dangling from the town’s mascot—a pair of the most garish, oversized, scarlet puckered-up-for-a-kiss lips ever poured in fiberglass.
She swayed forty feet off the ground in the early Sunday morning summer breeze, one arm wrapped around the sensuous curve of the full bottom lip, her other arm wielding a paintbrush dipped in black paint, her white satin ballet-slippered toes skimming the billboard’s weathered wooden platform.
The billboard had been vandalized before, but never, to Brody’s knowledge, by a disgruntled bride. He contemplated hitting the siren to warn her off, but feared she’d startle and end up breaking her silly neck. Instead, he whipped over onto the shoulder of the road, rolled down the passenger-side window, slid his Maui Jim sunglasses to the end of his nose, and craned his neck for a better look.
The delinquent bride had her bottom lip tucked up between her teeth. She was concentrating on desecrating the billboard. It had been a staple in Valentine’s history for as long as Brody could remember. Her blonde hair, done up in one of those twisty braided hairdos, was partially obscured by the intricate lace of a floor-length wedding veil. When the sunlight hit the veil’s lace just right it shimmered a phosphorescent pattern of white butterflies that looked as if they were about to rise up and flutter away.
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.
Shit. If he fell off, it was going to hurt. He might even break something.
Kelvin was staring expectantly, arms crossed over his bearish chest, the sleeves of his seersucker suit straining against his bulky forearms. The door to the Cadillac was still hanging open and from the radio Merle Haggard had given it up to Tammy Wynette, who was beseeching women to stand by their man.
Brody was the sheriff. This was his job. And he never shirked his duty, even when it was the last thing on earth he wanted to do. Gritting his teeth, he gathered his courage, wrapped both hands around the ladder just above his head, and planted his prosthetic leg on the bottom rung.
His gut squeezed.
Come on, you can do this.
He attacked the project the same way he’d attacked physical therapy, going at it with dogged determination to walk again, to come home, if not whole, at least proud to be a man. Of course Belinda had shattered all that.
Don’t think about Belinda. Get up the ladder. Get the girl down.
He placed his good leg on the second rung.
The ladder trembled under his weight.
Brody swallowed back the fear and pulled his prosthesis up the next step. Hands clinging tightly to the ladder above him, he raised his head and counted the steps.
Twenty-five of them on the ladder and seventeen on the back of the billboard.
Three down, thirty-nine left to go.
He remembered an old movie called The Thirty-Nine Steps. Suddenly, those three words held a weighted significance. It wasn’t just thirty-nine more steps. It was also forty-two more back down with Rachael Henderson in tow.
Better get climbing.
Thirty-eight steps.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-six.
The higher he went, the more the ladder quivered.
Halfway up vertigo took solid hold of him. He’d never had a fear of heights before, but now, staring down at Kelvin and Rex, who were staring up at him, Brody’s head swam and his stomach pitched. He bit his bottom lip, closed his eyes, and took another step up.
In the quiet of the higher air, he could hear the soft whispery sound of his computerized leg working as he took another step. Kelvin’s country music sounded tinny and far away. With his eyes closed and his hands skimming over the cool aluminum ladder, he could also hear the sound of brushstrokes growing faster and more frantic the closer he came to the bottom of the billboard.
Rachael was still furiously painting, trying to get in as many licks as she could.
When Brody finally reached the top of the first ladder, he opened his eyes.
“You’re doing great,” Kelvin called up to him. “Keep going. You’re almost there.”
Yeah, almost there. This was the hardest part of all, covering the gap between the ladder from Audie’s Hardware and the thin metal footholds welded to the back of the billboard.
He took a deep breath. He had to stretch to reach the bottom step. He grabbed hold of it with both hands, and took his Power Knee off the aluminum ladder.
For a moment, he hung there, twenty-five feet off the ground, fighting gravity and the bile rising in his throat, wondering why he hadn’t told Kelvin to go straight to hell. Wondering why he hadn’t just called the volunteer fire department to come and get Rachael down.
It was a matter of pride and he knew it. Stupid, egotistical pride. He’d wanted to prove he could handle anything that came with the job. Wanted to show the town he’d earned their vote. That he hadn’t just stumbled into the office because he was an injured war hero.
Pride goes before a fall, his Gramma Carlton used to say. Now, for the first time, he fully understood what she meant.
Arms trembling with the effort, he dragged himself up with his biceps, his real leg tiptoed on the collapsible ladder, his bionic leg searching blindly for the rung.
Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to hold on a second longer, he found the toehold and then brought his good leg up against the billboard ladder to join the bionic one.
He’d made it.
Brody clung there, breathing hard, thanking God for letting him get this far and wondering just how in the hell he was going to get back down without killing them both, when he heard the soft sounds of muffled female sobs.
Rachael was crying.
The hero in him forgot that his limbs were quivering, forgot that he was forty feet in the air, forgot that somehow he was going to have to get back down. The only thing in his mind was the woman.
Was she all right?
As quickly as he could, Brody scaled the remaining rungs and then gingerly settled his legs on the billboard decking. He ducked under the bottom of the sign and peered around it.
She sat, knees drawn to her chest, head down, looking completely incongruous in that wedding dress smeared with black paint and the butterfly wedding veil floating around her head. Miraculously, the veil seemed to have escaped the paint.
“You okay?”
She raised her head. “Of course I’m not okay.”
Up close, he saw tear tracks had run a gully through the makeup on her cheeks and mascara had pooled underneath her eyes. She looked like a quarrelsome raccoon caught in a coyote trap, all piss and vinegar, but visibly hurting.
He had the strangest, and most uncharacteristic, urge to pull her into his arms, hold her to his chest, kiss the top of her head the way he did his six-year-old niece, Maisy, and tell her everything was going to be all right.
Mentally, he stomped the impulse. He didn’t need any damsel-in-distress hassle.
The expression in her eyes told him anger had propelled her up here, but now, her rage spent, she was afraid to come back down. That fear he understood loud and clear.
Calmly, he held out a hand to her. “Rachael, it’s time to go.”
“I thought I’d feel better,” she said in a despondent little voice as she stared at his outstretched hand. “I don’t feel better. I was supposed to feel better. That was the plan. Why don’t I feel better?”
“Destruction rarely makes you feel good.” His missing leg gave a twinge. “Come on, give me your hand and let’s get back on the ground.”
“You look familiar. Are you married?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to answer, but she didn’t give him a chance before launching into a fast-paced monologue. “I hope you’re married, because if you’re not married, you need to get someone else to help me down from here.”
“Huh?” Had the sun baked her brain or had getting stood up at the altar made her crazy?
“If you’re not married, then this is a cute meet. I’m a sucker for meeting cute.”
“Huh?” he said again.
“My first fiancé?” she chattered, her glossolalia revealing her emotional distress. “I met Robert in a hot-air balloon. He was the pilot. I wanted a romantic adventure. The balloon hung up in a pecan tree and the fire department had to rescue us. It was terribly cute.”
“Sounds like it,” he said, simply to appease her. Mentally, he was planning their trip off the billboard.
“And Trace? I met him when he came to the kindergarten class where I taught. On career day. He was tossing a football around as he gave his speech. He lost control of it and accidentally beaned me in the head. He literally knocked me off my feet. He caught me just before I hit the ground and there I was, trapped in his big strong arms, staring up into his big blue eyes. I just melted. So you see I succumb to the cute meet. I’ve got to break the cycle and these romantic notions I have about love and marriage and dating and men. But I can’t do it if I go around meeting cute. There’s no way I can let you rescue me if you’re not married.”
The woman, Brody decided, was officially bonkers.
“Sorry.” He shrugged. “I’m divorced.”
She grimaced. “Oh, no.”
“But this isn’t a cute meet.”
She glanced over at the fiberglass billboard lips, then peered down at her paint-spotted wedding dress and finally drilled him with almond-shaped green eyes, the only exotic thing about her.
The rest of her was round and smooth and welcoming, from her cherubic cheeks to her petite curves to the full bow of her supple pink mouth. She was as soft-focus as a Monet. Just looking at her made him think of springtime and flowers and fuzzy baby chicks.
Except for those disconcerting bedroom eyes. They called up unwanted X-rated images in his mind.
“I dunno,” she said, “this seems dangerously cute to me.”
“It can’t be a cute meet,” he explained, struggling to follow her disjointed train of thought, “because we’ve already met.”
She tilted her head. “We have?”
“Yep.”
“I thought you looked familiar.”
“So no cute meet. Now give me your hand.”
Reluctantly, she placed her hand in his. “Where did we meet?”
“Right here in Valentine.” He spoke with a soothing voice. Her hand was warm and damp with perspiration. He drew her toward him.
She didn’t resist. She was tired and emotionally exhausted.
“That’s it,” he coaxed.
“You do look familiar.”
“Watch your head,” he said as he led her underneath the billboard, toward the ladder.
She paused at the ladder and stared at the ground. “It’s a long way down.”
Tell me about it.
“I’m here, I’ll go first. I’ll be there to catch you if you lose your balance.”
“Will you keep your hand on my waist? To steady me?”
“Sure,” he promised recklessly, placing chivalry over common sense.
He started down the ladder ahead of her, found secure footing, wrapped his left hand around the rung, and reached up to hold on to her waist with his right hand as she started down.
Touching her brought an unexpected knot of emotion to his chest. Half desire, half tenderness, he didn’t know what to call it, but he knew one thing. The feeling was damned dangerous.
“I’m scared,” she whimpered.
“You’re doing great.” He guided her down until her sweet little rump was directly in his face. Any other time he would have enjoyed this position, but not under these circumstances.
“I’m going down another couple of steps,” he explained. “I’m going to have to let go of you for a minute, so hold on tight.”
The long train of her wedding veil floated in the air between them, a gauzy pain in the ass. In order to see where he was going, he had to keep batting it back. He took up his position several rungs below her and called to her to come down. As he’d promised, he put a hand at her waist to guide her.
They went on like that, painstaking step by painstaking step, until they were past the gap, off the billboard, and onto the collapsible aluminum ladder. In that regard, coming down was much easier than going up.
“You’re certain I already know you?” she asked. “Because seriously, this has all the makings of a meet cute.”
“You know me.”
“How?”
“I’m from Valentine, just like you. Moved away, came back,” he said.
Only four feet off the ground now. His legs felt flimsy as spindly garden sprouts.
“Oh my gosh,” she gasped and whipped her head around quickly.
Too quickly.
Somehow, in the breeze and the movement, the infernal wedding veil wrapped around his prosthetic leg. He tried to kick it off but the material clung stubbornly.
“I know who you are,” she said and then right there on the ladder, she turned around to glare at him. “You’re Brody Carlton.”
He didn’t have a chance to answer. The ladder swayed and the veil snatched his leg out from under him.
He lost his balance.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back on the ground, and Rachael Henderson, his one-time next-door-neighbor-turned-jilted-psycho-bride, was on top of him. They were both breathing hard and trembling.
Her eyes locked on his.
His eyes locked on her lips.
Brody should have been thinking about his leg. He was surprised he wasn’t thinking about his leg. What he was thinking about was the fact that he was being straddled by a woman in a wedding dress and it was the closest he’d come to having sex in over two years.
“You! You’re the one.”
“The one?” he asked.
“You’re the root cause of all my problems,” she exclaimed, fire in her eyes, at the same time Brody found himself thinking, Where have you been all my life?
But that was not what he said.
What he said was, “Rachael Renee Henderson, you have the right to remain silent…”
Kelvin Wentworth was so steamed he couldn’t enjoy his crullers. He tossed the half-eaten pastry to Marianne and dusted his sticky fingers against this thigh. The bullmastiff snarfed it up with a smack of her lips, and then eyed him to see if more was forthcoming. When she realized
“A wild ride.”
—Booklist
“I adored this book! I even kept it in my purse in the hopes that I would have a few minutes in which to squeeze a paragraph or two… I can’t wait to read the next in this wonderful new series… Superb!”
—TheRomanceReadersConnection.com
“FOUR HEARTS! Ms. Wilde conquers a whole new part of the romance genre… lots of funny elements and a great cast of characters.”
—LovesRomanceandMore.com
“A dynamite novel that readers will treasure for years to come.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Lori Wilde at her best… I really loved this story. The writing is wonderful and the plot grabbed my attention from the first page. I fell in love with the characters and couldn’t wait to see how they worked everything out.”
—ContemporaryRomanceWriters.com
“A definite crowd pleaser… Lori Wilde can write very engaging and quirky romances and Once Smitten, Twice Shy is one of them… [A] good read with some suspense to boot.”
—FreshFiction.com
“A wild ride on an emotional roller coaster.”
—FallenAngelReviews.com
“Entertaining and humorous… There’s a seriousness to it also, as the heroine learns to recognize real love and caring. Wilde again includes secondary romances that are intriguing, entertaining, and hot.”
—RT Book Reviews
“Wilde brings romance fans a feel-good, laugh-out-loud read… one of the best romantic comedies I’ve read in a long time.”
—NightsandWeekends.com
“Charming… lighthearted fun… strong secondary romances enhance an engaging Valentine tale.”
—Midwest Book Review
“[The characters’] physical attraction heats up the pages, but their personal development forms the heart and soul of the novel, a delicately revealing in-depth character study. Wilde’s clever combination of humor, sorrow and love brings a deeply appealing sense of realism.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A warm serene character study. Jillian is a fully developed person, but the relationship drama is owned by Tuck as Lori Wilde goes deep inside his soul. Fans who appreciate a sometimes amusing but always pathos second chance at life (and love) will enjoy this profound contemporary.”
—Midwest Book Review
“Light and charming, this is a pure romance, which is a nice change… a satisfying read with excellent characterizations and real-life issues.”
—RT Book Reviews
The last thing Sheriff Brody Carlton expected to find when he wheeled his state-issued white-and-black Crown Victoria patrol cruiser past the WELCOME TO VALENTINE, TEXAS, ROMANCE CAPITAL OF THE USA billboard was a woman in a sequined wedding dress dangling from the town’s mascot—a pair of the most garish, oversized, scarlet puckered-up-for-a-kiss lips ever poured in fiberglass.
She swayed forty feet off the ground in the early Sunday morning summer breeze, one arm wrapped around the sensuous curve of the full bottom lip, her other arm wielding a paintbrush dipped in black paint, her white satin ballet-slippered toes skimming the billboard’s weathered wooden platform.
The billboard had been vandalized before, but never, to Brody’s knowledge, by a disgruntled bride. He contemplated hitting the siren to warn her off, but feared she’d startle and end up breaking her silly neck. Instead, he whipped over onto the shoulder of the road, rolled down the passenger-side window, slid his Maui Jim sunglasses to the end of his nose, and craned his neck for a better look.
The delinquent bride had her bottom lip tucked up between her teeth. She was concentrating on desecrating the billboard. It had been a staple in Valentine’s history for as long as Brody could remember. Her blonde hair, done up in one of those twisty braided hairdos, was partially obscured by the intricate lace of a floor-length wedding veil. When the sunlight hit the veil’s lace just right it shimmered a phosphorescent pattern of white butterflies that looked as if they were about to rise up and flutter away.
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.
Shit. If he fell off, it was going to hurt. He might even break something.
Kelvin was staring expectantly, arms crossed over his bearish chest, the sleeves of his seersucker suit straining against his bulky forearms. The door to the Cadillac was still hanging open and from the radio Merle Haggard had given it up to Tammy Wynette, who was beseeching women to stand by their man.
Brody was the sheriff. This was his job. And he never shirked his duty, even when it was the last thing on earth he wanted to do. Gritting his teeth, he gathered his courage, wrapped both hands around the ladder just above his head, and planted his prosthetic leg on the bottom rung.
His gut squeezed.
Come on, you can do this.
He attacked the project the same way he’d attacked physical therapy, going at it with dogged determination to walk again, to come home, if not whole, at least proud to be a man. Of course Belinda had shattered all that.
Don’t think about Belinda. Get up the ladder. Get the girl down.
He placed his good leg on the second rung.
The ladder trembled under his weight.
Brody swallowed back the fear and pulled his prosthesis up the next step. Hands clinging tightly to the ladder above him, he raised his head and counted the steps.
Twenty-five of them on the ladder and seventeen on the back of the billboard.
Three down, thirty-nine left to go.
He remembered an old movie called The Thirty-Nine Steps. Suddenly, those three words held a weighted significance. It wasn’t just thirty-nine more steps. It was also forty-two more back down with Rachael Henderson in tow.
Better get climbing.
Thirty-eight steps.
Thirty-seven.
Thirty-six.
The higher he went, the more the ladder quivered.
Halfway up vertigo took solid hold of him. He’d never had a fear of heights before, but now, staring down at Kelvin and Rex, who were staring up at him, Brody’s head swam and his stomach pitched. He bit his bottom lip, closed his eyes, and took another step up.
In the quiet of the higher air, he could hear the soft whispery sound of his computerized leg working as he took another step. Kelvin’s country music sounded tinny and far away. With his eyes closed and his hands skimming over the cool aluminum ladder, he could also hear the sound of brushstrokes growing faster and more frantic the closer he came to the bottom of the billboard.
Rachael was still furiously painting, trying to get in as many licks as she could.
When Brody finally reached the top of the first ladder, he opened his eyes.
“You’re doing great,” Kelvin called up to him. “Keep going. You’re almost there.”
Yeah, almost there. This was the hardest part of all, covering the gap between the ladder from Audie’s Hardware and the thin metal footholds welded to the back of the billboard.
He took a deep breath. He had to stretch to reach the bottom step. He grabbed hold of it with both hands, and took his Power Knee off the aluminum ladder.
For a moment, he hung there, twenty-five feet off the ground, fighting gravity and the bile rising in his throat, wondering why he hadn’t told Kelvin to go straight to hell. Wondering why he hadn’t just called the volunteer fire department to come and get Rachael down.
It was a matter of pride and he knew it. Stupid, egotistical pride. He’d wanted to prove he could handle anything that came with the job. Wanted to show the town he’d earned their vote. That he hadn’t just stumbled into the office because he was an injured war hero.
Pride goes before a fall, his Gramma Carlton used to say. Now, for the first time, he fully understood what she meant.
Arms trembling with the effort, he dragged himself up with his biceps, his real leg tiptoed on the collapsible ladder, his bionic leg searching blindly for the rung.
Just when he thought he wouldn’t be able to hold on a second longer, he found the toehold and then brought his good leg up against the billboard ladder to join the bionic one.
He’d made it.
Brody clung there, breathing hard, thanking God for letting him get this far and wondering just how in the hell he was going to get back down without killing them both, when he heard the soft sounds of muffled female sobs.
Rachael was crying.
The hero in him forgot that his limbs were quivering, forgot that he was forty feet in the air, forgot that somehow he was going to have to get back down. The only thing in his mind was the woman.
Was she all right?
As quickly as he could, Brody scaled the remaining rungs and then gingerly settled his legs on the billboard decking. He ducked under the bottom of the sign and peered around it.
She sat, knees drawn to her chest, head down, looking completely incongruous in that wedding dress smeared with black paint and the butterfly wedding veil floating around her head. Miraculously, the veil seemed to have escaped the paint.
“You okay?”
She raised her head. “Of course I’m not okay.”
Up close, he saw tear tracks had run a gully through the makeup on her cheeks and mascara had pooled underneath her eyes. She looked like a quarrelsome raccoon caught in a coyote trap, all piss and vinegar, but visibly hurting.
He had the strangest, and most uncharacteristic, urge to pull her into his arms, hold her to his chest, kiss the top of her head the way he did his six-year-old niece, Maisy, and tell her everything was going to be all right.
Mentally, he stomped the impulse. He didn’t need any damsel-in-distress hassle.
The expression in her eyes told him anger had propelled her up here, but now, her rage spent, she was afraid to come back down. That fear he understood loud and clear.
Calmly, he held out a hand to her. “Rachael, it’s time to go.”
“I thought I’d feel better,” she said in a despondent little voice as she stared at his outstretched hand. “I don’t feel better. I was supposed to feel better. That was the plan. Why don’t I feel better?”
“Destruction rarely makes you feel good.” His missing leg gave a twinge. “Come on, give me your hand and let’s get back on the ground.”
“You look familiar. Are you married?” she asked.
He opened his mouth to answer, but she didn’t give him a chance before launching into a fast-paced monologue. “I hope you’re married, because if you’re not married, you need to get someone else to help me down from here.”
“Huh?” Had the sun baked her brain or had getting stood up at the altar made her crazy?
“If you’re not married, then this is a cute meet. I’m a sucker for meeting cute.”
“Huh?” he said again.
“My first fiancé?” she chattered, her glossolalia revealing her emotional distress. “I met Robert in a hot-air balloon. He was the pilot. I wanted a romantic adventure. The balloon hung up in a pecan tree and the fire department had to rescue us. It was terribly cute.”
“Sounds like it,” he said, simply to appease her. Mentally, he was planning their trip off the billboard.
“And Trace? I met him when he came to the kindergarten class where I taught. On career day. He was tossing a football around as he gave his speech. He lost control of it and accidentally beaned me in the head. He literally knocked me off my feet. He caught me just before I hit the ground and there I was, trapped in his big strong arms, staring up into his big blue eyes. I just melted. So you see I succumb to the cute meet. I’ve got to break the cycle and these romantic notions I have about love and marriage and dating and men. But I can’t do it if I go around meeting cute. There’s no way I can let you rescue me if you’re not married.”
The woman, Brody decided, was officially bonkers.
“Sorry.” He shrugged. “I’m divorced.”
She grimaced. “Oh, no.”
“But this isn’t a cute meet.”
She glanced over at the fiberglass billboard lips, then peered down at her paint-spotted wedding dress and finally drilled him with almond-shaped green eyes, the only exotic thing about her.
The rest of her was round and smooth and welcoming, from her cherubic cheeks to her petite curves to the full bow of her supple pink mouth. She was as soft-focus as a Monet. Just looking at her made him think of springtime and flowers and fuzzy baby chicks.
Except for those disconcerting bedroom eyes. They called up unwanted X-rated images in his mind.
“I dunno,” she said, “this seems dangerously cute to me.”
“It can’t be a cute meet,” he explained, struggling to follow her disjointed train of thought, “because we’ve already met.”
She tilted her head. “We have?”
“Yep.”
“I thought you looked familiar.”
“So no cute meet. Now give me your hand.”
Reluctantly, she placed her hand in his. “Where did we meet?”
“Right here in Valentine.” He spoke with a soothing voice. Her hand was warm and damp with perspiration. He drew her toward him.
She didn’t resist. She was tired and emotionally exhausted.
“That’s it,” he coaxed.
“You do look familiar.”
“Watch your head,” he said as he led her underneath the billboard, toward the ladder.
She paused at the ladder and stared at the ground. “It’s a long way down.”
Tell me about it.
“I’m here, I’ll go first. I’ll be there to catch you if you lose your balance.”
“Will you keep your hand on my waist? To steady me?”
“Sure,” he promised recklessly, placing chivalry over common sense.
He started down the ladder ahead of her, found secure footing, wrapped his left hand around the rung, and reached up to hold on to her waist with his right hand as she started down.
Touching her brought an unexpected knot of emotion to his chest. Half desire, half tenderness, he didn’t know what to call it, but he knew one thing. The feeling was damned dangerous.
“I’m scared,” she whimpered.
“You’re doing great.” He guided her down until her sweet little rump was directly in his face. Any other time he would have enjoyed this position, but not under these circumstances.
“I’m going down another couple of steps,” he explained. “I’m going to have to let go of you for a minute, so hold on tight.”
The long train of her wedding veil floated in the air between them, a gauzy pain in the ass. In order to see where he was going, he had to keep batting it back. He took up his position several rungs below her and called to her to come down. As he’d promised, he put a hand at her waist to guide her.
They went on like that, painstaking step by painstaking step, until they were past the gap, off the billboard, and onto the collapsible aluminum ladder. In that regard, coming down was much easier than going up.
“You’re certain I already know you?” she asked. “Because seriously, this has all the makings of a meet cute.”
“You know me.”
“How?”
“I’m from Valentine, just like you. Moved away, came back,” he said.
Only four feet off the ground now. His legs felt flimsy as spindly garden sprouts.
“Oh my gosh,” she gasped and whipped her head around quickly.
Too quickly.
Somehow, in the breeze and the movement, the infernal wedding veil wrapped around his prosthetic leg. He tried to kick it off but the material clung stubbornly.
“I know who you are,” she said and then right there on the ladder, she turned around to glare at him. “You’re Brody Carlton.”
He didn’t have a chance to answer. The ladder swayed and the veil snatched his leg out from under him.
He lost his balance.
The next thing he knew, he was lying on his back on the ground, and Rachael Henderson, his one-time next-door-neighbor-turned-jilted-psycho-bride, was on top of him. They were both breathing hard and trembling.
Her eyes locked on his.
His eyes locked on her lips.
Brody should have been thinking about his leg. He was surprised he wasn’t thinking about his leg. What he was thinking about was the fact that he was being straddled by a woman in a wedding dress and it was the closest he’d come to having sex in over two years.
“You! You’re the one.”
“The one?” he asked.
“You’re the root cause of all my problems,” she exclaimed, fire in her eyes, at the same time Brody found himself thinking, Where have you been all my life?
But that was not what he said.
What he said was, “Rachael Renee Henderson, you have the right to remain silent…”
Kelvin Wentworth was so steamed he couldn’t enjoy his crullers. He tossed the half-eaten pastry to Marianne and dusted his sticky fingers against this thigh. The bullmastiff snarfed it up with a smack of her lips, and then eyed him to see if more was forthcoming. When she realized
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