Addicted to Love

by Addicted to Love (lit)

  Selina came over to wrap her arm around Rachael’s shoulders. “It’s okay, sweetheart. You have as many supporters as you do detractors. We’re not going to let some small-minded individual terrorize us. Brody will find out who did this.”

  In order to hold his emotions in check, Brody kept his expression neutral and his mind on the job. He stepped closer to examine the VW Bug. He could have the paint analyzed to see if it matched the paint stolen from Audie’s Hardware. But it would take time and funds to confirm what he suspected. That the person or persons who had stolen the paint and the pipe cutter had cut the heads off the parking meters and graffitied Rachael’s car.

  Except his theory didn’t parse. The person who’d beheaded the parking meters appeared to be sending an anti-romance message. Whoever had graffitied Rachael’s car seemed pro-romance.

  Unless . . .

  The intention wasn’t to take a stand on either side of the issue, but rather to pit the townsfolk against one another.

  But who? And why?

  It was something to consider. He had more investigating to do. And that included interviewing Kelvin again.

  Brody turned, not realizing Rachael had come to stand directly behind him, and his arm collided with her shoulder. The protective instinct rushed over him again.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled and stepped back.

  “Hold still.”

  “What for?”

  “I said hold still,” he said more gruffly than he intended. He was still upset over the crude messages on her car. “You’ve got black paint on your cheek.”

  She seemed so tiny next to his bulk and he could feel heat emanating off her compact body. She stood stock- still, staring at the buttons of his uniform as if she were afraid to meet his gaze. He reached over with a thumb and tried to smear the paint away but it wouldn’t budge. Just as he suspected. Oil-based.

  Then he had an arresting thought. Rachael had bought black oil-based paint to use on the billboard. How did he know she hadn’t vandalized her own car to stir up sympathy?

  He hated that his cop’s mind even went there. Hated to think she would do such a thing and the minute the thought was in his head he knew it couldn’t be true. She was trembling, for Pete’s sake. She was truly scared.

  “Are they . . . do you think they’ll . . . ” She swallowed. “Could this turn violent?”

  “Don’t worry,” he promised, knowing he was starting down a slippery slope but sliding headfirst anyway. “I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

  BY THE FOURTH meeting of Rachael’s Romanceaholics Anonymous group, Selina was surprised to find attendance had quadrupled. And even more surprised to find many had driven in from neighboring counties. Word had gotten out.

  The pleased expression on her daughter’s face did Selina a world of good. She’d been down in the dumps ever since she’d wrecked the Caddy.

  And she was tired of being idealistic. She needed an intervention herself.

  Selina was here to support Rachael’s cause, but deep inside she feared she would never stop loving Michael, no matter how hard she tried.

  And he’d been making her life miserable by sending flowers and chocolates over every day, along with cute little cards declaring his abiding love for her. The delivery boy seemed to enjoy it when she thrust the roses and Godiva truffles at him and said, “Give them to your girlfriend.”

  Then she would methodically shred the cards, gritting her teeth against the tears. She stuck the pieces in an envelope and mailed them back to him.

  He wrote her more love letters, begging her forgiveness.

  She sent him the bill for the Caddy’s repair.

  He paid it.

  She ran up his charge card, buying hip, stylish clothes for her slender new figure. She’d dropped twelve pounds since she’d left him. Misery had some small benefits.

  Without a whimper, he’d paid that, too.

  Who was she kidding? Selina wasn’t just there for Rachael. She was here for moral support. She needed help to keep from forgiving Michael, packing her bags, and moving back home.

  Because she missed him something terrible. Twenty-seven years she’d lain next to him, bore his children, cooked his meals, been his constant companion.

  And all this time, he’d carried a torch for Vivian Cole.

  Pain and resentment crowded out nostalgia and longing. She deserved better than finishing second place in her husband’s heart. Knotting her hands into fists, Selina determinedly held on tightly to her resolve.

  People kept piling into the room, looking for places to sit. Her face flushed with pride, Rachael had the librarian bring in more chairs. The sound of metal folding chairs being dragged across the linoleum floor mingled with the buzz of voices as they made room for the newcomers. The air smelled of books and strong coffee.

  Audie Gaston winked at Selina. “You can scoot over next to me.”

  She knew Audie was halfway sweet on her. He gave her a ten percent discount at his hardware store. His wife had died years earlier and he’d grieved for a long time. He wasn’t a particularly good-looking man, but neither was he ugly. He was tall, thin, balding, and wore owlish Harry Potter glasses. But he had a nice smile.

  And a nice butt.

  Selina smiled back and scooted her chair closer to him.

  Take that, Michael.

  Rachael was at the podium. She looked so brave, standing up there in her simple floral-print sleeveless cotton blouse, wheat-colored Capri slacks, and beaded summer sandals. Her daughter hadn’t worn a hint of her signature pink since she’d come back home. Pink, she’d told Selina, was for romantic fools and little girls and she was no longer either one. While Selina was proud of her for facing her character flaw and putting a plan into action for overcoming it, she couldn’t help feeling a little sad that she was giving up on romance entirely. Selina couldn’t help wishing something would develop between her eldest daughter and Sheriff Brody. Hypocritical, maybe, but ultimately all she wanted was for Rachael to be happy.

  Brody was the kind of man Rachael needed. Strong, capable, empathetic, but not a pushover. Unfortunately, he hadn’t been back across the street since the day Rachael’s car had been vandalized.

  It was probably for the best, she told herself. Any romance Rachael entered into now was bound to flop. Her eldest daughter was on the rebound. She simply wasn’t ready, and the last thing Selina wanted was to see her get hurt again.

  The meeting continued as person after person got up and told stories of woe brought on by romance. They were heartbreaking. Then a third of the way through the meeting, the door opened, creaking loudly on its hinges. Everyone turned to stare.

  Michael lumbered in.

  Selina’s heart did the crazy swoon it always did whenever she unexpectedly caught sight of him in a crowd. But then it slid uneasily into the pit of her stomach.

  His hair was rumpled, his eyes bloodshot, his gait unsteady. He’d been drinking.

  Selina was shocked. Michael rarely drank. A New Year’s toast, an occasional beer with a business associate to be social, but that was it. In fact, she’d only seen him completely drunk once, on the night before their wedding. The night he’d been with Vivian.

  From her place at the podium, Rachael stopped speaking. Every eye in the place swung toward the doorway. “Daddy?”

  In that moment, she sounded ten years old and it broke Selina’s heart. What in the hell was wrong with Michael?

  “Hey, sweetheart,” he slurred and wriggled his fingers at Rachael. “Looks like you’ve attracted a nice-sized crowd.”

  Rachael cringed as if she wanted to crawl underneath the podium and cower there until everyone went away. Selina’s heart wrenched. Her daughter was trying so hard, not only to hold it together after everything that had happened, but to recover and ultimately thrive.

  “What are you doing here?” Rachael asked her father.

  “I’m here for the meeting.” He swayed.

  “Hey, Michael,” someone in the audience call
ed out. “AA is meeting across town at Riverside Baptist church.”

  The comment drew a nervous laugh from the crowd. Anyone in the room who was from Valentine knew what was going on with the Hendersons. It was a small town and along with Kelvin, the Hendersons were the biggest fish in it.

  Selina wanted to grab Michael by the throat with both hands and throttle him. How dare he spoil what Rachael was trying to do here just to get even with her?

  “If you’re going to stay, Daddy, then please take a seat,” Rachael said.

  “Rightee-o,” he said, sounding like some misplaced Brit. Selina used to think his little catchphrase was cute. Now it sounded utterly ridiculous. Michael nodded and swung his gaze around the room looking for an empty chair.

  But there wasn’t one.

  His gaze lit on Selina sitting next to Audie.

  “I’ll have someone get you a chair,” Rachael said.

  “I’ve got it,” Michael said, making his way toward Selina. “I’ll just have a seat right here.” He plopped down on the floor between her and Audie and drew his knees to his chest to keep his feet from colliding with the chain of a lady sitting in the row in front of them.

  Rachael hesitated. Clearly, she didn’t know what to do. Selina watched the emotions war on her daughter’s face — uncertainty, embarrassment, nervousness, self-doubt, all mixed with a tinge of anger. The audience watched her with interest, trying to anticipate how she would handle this turn of events. It was a lot of pressure and Selina’s urge to throttle her husband escalated. She could smell the beer on his breath and it was all she could do to keep from kicking him.

  It was much easier feeling angry at him for hurting their daughter than for hurting her.

  Selina studied the top of his head and for the first time noticed a spot that was starting to thin. What happened to the guy I married? Where is the kind and considerate man who’d got down on one knee and excitedly proposed the minute I’d told him I was pregnant?

  Honestly, though, wasn’t that when all the trouble had started? The doubts and fears she’d had thinking he was marrying her simply because of the baby? Why else would a handsome, wealthy man like him marry the daughter of simple restaurant owners?

  Rachael was talking again, inviting people to come up to the podium and share their stories of romance gone wrong.

  Selina dipped her head and leaned over to whisper, “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  Michael swung his gaze up to meet hers. He was clothed in white dress slacks and an oversized Hawaiian shirt, looking like the privileged son he was on vacation in the tropics. But his gaze was sharp in spite of the alcohol.

  “Maybe if you’d answered my phone calls I wouldn’t have had to resort to this.”

  “You could have come by the house,” she said as sternly as she could at whisper pitch.

  “I tried. You didn’t answer the door.”

  “That’s because I didn’t want to see you. I still don’t want to see you.” Selina glared.

  Who was this man? After twenty-seven years he remained a mystery to her. Shouldn’t she know him inside and out by now? But she did not. Maybe that was the problem. On the surface, Michael was an affable, charming guy. But underneath it all ran a current of something deeper, darker. There was a part of him that he’d never revealed to her and his secrecy hurt as much as his betrayal with Vivian.

  Blinking back the tears she was terrified were going to fall and give her away, Selina bit down hard on her bottom lip.

  “I’d like to speak,” Michael said and got to his feet.

  Every eye in the place was back on him again.

  “Sit down,” Selina hissed.

  “Since this is your first meeting, maybe you’d prefer to just listen tonight, Daddy,” Rachael offered, a hint of panic in her voice.

  “Nope. I wanna talk.”

  Rachael’s gaze met Selina’s. She looked as desperate as Selina felt. Michael started toward the podium. How tempting to stick out her foot and trip him.

  “Let him go,” Audie whispered to her. “Let him make a fool of himself.”

  And of me.

  Miraculously, Michael reached the podium without stumbling. Rachael stepped aside with another Help me! glance at Selina. But her soon-to-be ex-husband already had the microphone in his hand.

  “My name is Michael Henderson,” he said, “and I’m a romanceaholic.”

  “Hello, Michael,” chimed the crowd.

  “Just look at what romance has reduced me to,” he said. “A public drunk.”

  A ripple of sympathy went through the crowd as they made noises of condolence.

  Irritation grated Selina. They were feeling sorry for him? He was the jerk who had broken her heart. He was the one who’d made a mockery of their marriage, not her. Why were they on his side?

  “Most of you here know me. Nearly all of my entire adult life I’ve been a faithful husband —”

  “Ha!” Selina interjected.

  “To one woman,” he continued as if she hadn’t said a word. “I could have cheated. Right, Evangeline?” He winked at the flirty, curvaceous Rite Aid clerk sitting in the front row who blushed a blistering shade of crimson. “But I did not.”

  Michael looked out at the audience, but his eyes were focused on Selina and she knew he was speaking only to her. “What can I say? I’m a romantic guy. I showered my wife with gifts and trips. I put in a pool so she wouldn’t swelter away in the Valentine summers. For her forty-second birthday I sent her to Tuscany so she could take gourmet cooking lessons from a famed Italian chef — and by the way, how do I know she didn’t have an affair while she was there?”

  The crowd was watching the action as if it were a prime-time soap opera, raptly shifting their gazes from Selina to Michael and back again.

  Selina couldn’t take anymore. She shot to her feet. “That was uncalled for. Francesco was nothing more than my teacher.”

  “Ah,” Michael said, green eyes that same color as Rachael’s snapping in anger. “But what exactly was he teaching you?”

  The sound of the door opening and then quietly closing ratcheted the emotional tension in the room. Selina, along with everyone else, looked to see who’d come inside.

  It was Brody Carlton. In uniform.

  He surveyed the crowd, taking it all in, and seemed to size up the situation almost instantly. He doffed his Stetson and moved to stand with his back against the wall.

  “How do I know what Selina was doing at the country club when she was supposed to be taking tennis lessons from Gunther?” Michael continued. “I never accused her of an affair. I never entertained the idea. I trusted her. I loved her that much. But you can sure as hell believe I’m entertaining the idea now.”

  Selina’s heart pounded and her ears rang and her breath left her body in one whoosh of pent-up air. She jumped to her feet, chest heaving. “Not once in twenty-seven years did I even glance at another man because I was so stupidly in love with you, but I’m beginning to think I should have had flings all over town. No one would blame me. You’re always waving money in my face, bragging about how well you provided for me, expecting a pat on the back. Give him a hand, folks.” Selina clapped. “Third- generation oil money who never had to work a day in his privileged life buys his poor little Mexican wife expensive baubles and expects to be lauded for lifting her out of poverty.”

  “So that’s what this is all about,” Michael said. “You’re the one who feels inferior about your heritage, not me. I didn’t marry you for your tamale-making abilities.”

  “Then why the hell did you marry me, when you were still in love with your high school sweetheart?”

  “You’re forcing me to say it?”

  Selina sank her hands onto her hips, thrust out her jaw. “Go on, I dare you.”

  “You want me to say? I’ll say it.”

  She’d never seen him looking so angry, but she was determined not to flinch. She grit her teeth, knotted her fists.

  “I married you becaus
e you were knocked up.”

  A collective gasp went up from the crowd at Michael’s confession and then everyone fell completely silent, waiting to see what would happen next.

  Selina felt as if she’d been kicked in the gut. This was it. He’d finally admitted it. Finally voiced her greatest fear. In a weird way, she felt strangely exhilarated. Finally, they were communicating.

  She heard Rachael make a soft noise of distress, and from the corner of her eye she saw Brody step forward. “Mr. Henderson,” he said firmly, his hand hovering above the gun holstered at his hip, looking like Wyatt Earp swooping in to save the day. “Your Porsche is hanging out in the middle of the road and blocking traffic. It needs to be moved.”

  Michael’s jaw set in the resolute line Selina knew too well. He realized Brody was taller, bigger, and had the weight of the badge behind him, but he was Valentine’s favored son. He was accustomed to getting his way, even with law enforcement officers.

  Brody took his handcuffs from his pocket and started for the podium, looking equally resolute.

  “That’s enough!” Rachael exploded. “I’ve had enough of this from all of you.”

  Everyone’s attention volleyed to Rachael.

  Selina had never heard her sweet-natured, accommodating daughter sound so authoritative. It both shocked and pleased her.

  “Brody,” she said to the sheriff, “back off. Someone will move my father’s car in just a minute. Dad, have a seat on the stage.” She pointed to the chair she’d just vacated. “Mom, come up here.”

  To Selina’s surprise they all obeyed her. Brody stepped out of the aisle. Michael sank down in the chair and Selina went to the front of the room.

  Once she and Michael were on the stage together, Rachael paced in front of them, hands clasped behind her back, a frown of supreme disappointment on her face. She looked like a harried mom with two squabbling toddlers and she wasn’t quite sure how to discipline them. Selina squirmed.

  “For twenty-seven years,” she said at last, “you two have allowed a pie-in-the-sky fantasy of what you think marriage is supposed to be rule your lives.”