Kiss the Bride

by Lori Wilde

“No, no, not at all.”

  “I’m tougher than I look.” She blew on her fingernails and rubbed them against her shirt in a comical gesture that said, “Yeah, I bested a badass rogue CIA agent and it was easy.”

  Everyone laughed then.

  “So what became of Larkin?”

  “He’s in big-time trouble. Thanks to your videotape, he’ll be going to prison. Ambassador Kumar is in some pretty hot water himself.”

  Tish shifted her gaze to Elysee. “What about Rana and Alma? Are they okay? Did Larkin get to them?”

  “They’re both fine,” Elysee said. “Rana had never really intended to ship Alma via freighter. It was just a story she concocted because she knew how ruthless the men coming after Alma could be. She had to stay two steps ahead of them. Rana didn’t clue me in, thinking it would be safer for me if I didn’t know Alma’s real travel route. She never dreamed I would end up going to the docks.”

  “It would have been smarter,” Cal chided, “if you hadn’t ditched your bodyguard.”

  “Good thing you showed up,” Shane said. “I hate to think what would have happened if you hadn’t been there.”

  “But how did you know Larkin would be there?”

  “I didn’t know for sure it was Larkin, but your videotape led me to the docks.”

  “My videotape?”

  “You caught Ambassador Kumar on tape hiring Larkin to murder Alma. They were speaking in Hindi and I understood it. So ultimately, Tish, you were the one who broke the case,” Elysee explained.

  “There was so much left to chance.” Tish shook her head. “If Shane hadn’t given me his phone with the GPS tracking, if you hadn’t watched the video, I’d be dead. Thank you, Elysee, for saving my life.”

  Elysee smiled. “I think everything happened the way it did for a reason. We’re connected. All of us.”

  Tish smiled back, recognizing the truth of it. They were all connected in some way.

  “Your mother’s been here,” Shane said, “and your friends Delaney and Rachael. Jillian called from San Francisco. Everyone’s been pretty worried about you.”

  “My head’s so fuzzy. I really don’t remember much of what happened.”

  Lola said. “Cal confessed that the reason he had red lava gravel on his shoes from the garden outside your apartment was because he’d gone there to tell you that Shane was still in love with you.”

  “You knew?”

  “Please,” Cal said gruffly. “I knew you two were meant to be together the night you took him home from Louie’s.”

  Tish glanced over at Shane. Their eyes met and his smile tipped up at the corners. She was barely aware that Elysee, Cal, and Lola had tiptoed out of the room.

  “I think we’re alone now,” he whispered.

  “I thought they’d never leave.” Her gaze took him in. He was dressed in faded blue jeans and a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He managed to look both crisp and relaxed.

  His face was full of tenderness. “I got something for you.”

  “Oh?”

  He reached behind him for something on the floor and pulled up a package wrapped in a turquoise bow.

  “You got me a present?” Her grin widened.

  “Open it.”

  Eagerly, she pulled off the ribbon and lifted the lid. The minute she saw it her heart stilled and her bottom lip started to quiver. “Shane, it’s magnificent.”

  From the box she lifted the Jack bookend, a perfect match to her Jill. “Where did you find him?”

  “E-bay, and I paid a pretty penny for express-mail shipping. Jill’s in the box, too. Dick Tracy brought her by yesterday. The investigation’s closed since Larkin confessed to starting the fire.”

  Tish took Jill from the box, sat her next to Jack in her lap. They were together again, balancing each other.

  “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

  “No,” he said. “Thank you for loving me and never stopping.”

  She slipped out of bed and settled into his lap. Kissing him lightly on the lips, she slid her arms around his neck. He held her close. She could hear the steady lub-dub of his heart.

  They sat there in the hospital room, gazing into each other’s eyes, drinking each other in. All this time, never knowing, they’d been on a journey back to each other.

  She stared into the depths of his breathtaking brown eyes and her heart filled with contentment. They were better now than they’d been. Stronger, wiser, braver.

  “My love, my life, my wife,” he whispered. “For now, forever, for always. Marry me again, Tish. This time we’ll do it right.”

  There was only one thing to say. With a sweet sigh of pleasure, Tish said, “Yes.”

  Epilogue

  Adjusting his boutonniere in his parents’ backyard, the ex–Secret Service agent, turned business manager to his high-profile videographer wife, scanned the crowd.

  All the usual suspects were there. Tish’s friends—Delaney with her rounded belly and her husband, Nick; Jillian, who’d just made Assistant DA in Harris County; Rachael, who was still single and searching; Shane’s parents and his sister, Amy; Tish’s mom, Dixie Ann.

  The special guest of honor, one class act, Elysee Benedict, was present. Cal was there, too, keeping an eye on Elysee.

  They had so many friends, such a loving family. They were so blessed it was hard to believe that they had once gotten so off track. But that detour had taught them a very valuable lesson neither one of them would ever forget.

  Balance. That was key. Shane had learned to stop identifying with an impossible image of heroism that he could never achieve and accept himself, flaws and all. Tish had learned to ask for what she needed rather than burying her emotions under excess spending.

  Some big changes had been made, and they were all for the better.

  Once the vows had been taken and the ceremony completed, his beautiful wife tugged off her wedding veil and handed it to her friend Rachael with a bold wink. Then she pulled him off to the side for a big kiss.

  “I love you, Shane Tremont. I have from the moment you punched that bald guy on my behalf at Louie’s.”

  “And I love you, Tish Gallagher Tremont. From the first night you took me to bed and wouldn’t let me touch you.”

  He wrapped his right arm around her waist with the hand that was now almost healed. “I never stopped loving you, not one time during all the sadness and confusion over losing Johnny.”

  “Shh,” she said. “It’s okay. Everything is as it should be.”

  “I have a very smart wife.”

  And that’s how Shane Tremont, middle-class boy from small-town America, found himself remarried to the love of his life.

  After having not one but two grooms ditch her at the altar,

  Rachael Henderson commits an uncharacteristic act of rebellion and feels liberated—until she’s arrested by sexy Sheriff Brody Carlton…

  Addicted to Love

  Please turn this page for an excerpt.

  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, th
e 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.