Last Chance Beauty Queen (32 page)

Bob turned toward Stone Rhodes, who stood at the side of the room with one of his deputies. “You get these women out of here,” Bob bellowed.

Stone hooked his thumbs in his belt, but he didn’t move. “Your honor, are you sure you want me to arrest Miz Marshall?” Stone eyed Jimmy, whose boredom had vanished.

Jimmy Marshall sat there red faced, looking like he might stroke out at any moment.

Bob glanced at Last Chance’s leading citizen and then back at Stone. “Belay that order,” the mayor said.

Stone nodded and stayed put.

Bob banged his gavel. “All right, ya’ll, you’ve made your point. Now sit down and behave like the ladies we know you are. We want to hear what Lord Woolham has to say.”

Hettie scowled at her husband, who made a point of not looking at her. But Bob had made his point, and so
had Hettie. She quietly directed the church ladies to line the back wall. They took their places, placards clutched in their hands.

Hugh turned back to the dais and the council members. “Thank you for this opportunity to speak. I—” he began.

The door at the back of the room burst open a second time. “Stop, right now, ya’ll don’t want to do this.”

Hugh turned around to see Dash Randall stride up the aisle. Rocky followed behind him.

Rocky Rhodes seemed to trail magic wherever she went. Her presence left Hugh confused, dazed, and breathing very hard.

She wore one of her charcoal gray business suits, buttoned up all the way. Her hair was sleeked back. Her eyes were red, as if she’d had a really good cry. Her face looked pale and tired.

When their gazes connected, she stared at him, her green eyes hard and resolute. She’d put her mask back on, hadn’t she? This was Caroline staring at him. Looking poised and polished and in control of herself and everything around her.

And yet, a little curl had escaped her hair clip. It dipped down over her forehead, and it seemed to represent everything Hugh knew about this amazing and beautiful woman.

Aunt Petal would say that he’d been bewitched. And maybe Aunt Petal had the right of it. Unfortunately, in all of those fairy stories, the besotted man didn’t get his beautiful fairy princess. He had to return home and live out his drab, predictable life.

Hugh needed to quit woolgathering and get on with it.
He looked away from Rocky and said, “Mr. Mayor, may I speak,
please
.”

“Not until I do,” Dash said.

“Excuse me, but I believe I was here first.”

“Yeah, you were, but what I have to say is more important.” Dash turned toward the council. “You see, your honors, there is a way for the town to—”

“Hold on one minute.” The door to the back of the council chamber slammed open one more time and in marched Cissy Warren and her father. Cissy looked quite fetching today in a classy yellow suit that matched her blond hair. She was the antithesis of Rocky—colorful in every way on the outside, but utterly lacking in any kind of magic.

The moment Cissy and the senator arrived, Rocky made herself seem smaller. She hunched her shoulders. She looked down. She tried to appear demure. All of that bothered Hugh a great deal. Rocky was far more interesting and vital than Cissy in all the important ways. Rocky was more interesting and vital than Victoria, too. If only Rocky would lose the gray suits, she wouldn’t look like such a little wren, instead of the magnificent bird of paradise that she truly was.

“Senator, what can I do for you?” Bob stood up.

The senator cast his eye around the room, taking note of the church ladies lining the back wall. He frowned in Rocky’s direction. “What in the Sam Hill are you doing?” he asked her.

“Uh, I was trying to help Lord Woolham,” Rocky said.

“Help him? Good gravy, Caroline, do you see what’s written on those signs?”

Rocky blushed. “Uh, yeah, I do, but, see… um.”

“Look, just shut up,” Dash said. “I have something monumental to say.”

Rocky groaned. The senator’s face got red. “Caroline, I really don’t like your boyfriend talking to me that way. And I’m very disappointed in you. I distinctly told you to help Cissy, not to work against her. And, lord knows, the last thing any of us wanted to do was to rile up a bunch of churchwomen. Really, I thought you had more sense.”

Rocky’s face paled. “But—”

The senator turned toward the town council. “I’m taking charge of this situation. There is no reason for ya’ll to condemn the land because—”

“Huey! What are you doing?” This comment came from Aunt Petal, who arrived on the scene wearing a purple dress and her red spectacles. She came striding into the room with Aunt Petunia, followed by Miriam Randall and a little girl with big brown eyes, a dirty T-shirt, and skinned knees.

“Hello, Aunt Petal. I’m here to do what Petunia asked me to do. I’m going to tell these good people that I don’t want Elbert Rhodes’s land. And when I’m finished, we’ll go home to the UK, and I’ll marry Lady Ashton, just as you want. I’m sure Aeval will be pleased to hear this news.”

“What?” Petal, Petunia, Cissy, and Rocky said in unison.

Dash turned toward Rocky. “Shoot, Rocky, you didn’t say he was engaged to be married to someone in England. Did you know that?”

The spectators began to speak at once. Big Bob banged his gavel but no one noticed. Hettie and her
church ladies took that moment to renew their “Down with Lord deBracy” chant.

And into this fray strode Stone Rhodes, the chief of police. One might have expected him to impose order, but instead he walked right up to Hugh and asked, “Are you really engaged to be married to someone else?”

“Um, well, I—” Before Hugh could finish the sentence, Stone hauled back and punched Hugh right in the solar plexus.

Pain exploded, but he couldn’t even whimper. The punch had taken away his ability to breathe. He went down on his hands and knees, stars circling his vision.

Somewhere, from a distance, he heard a child’s voice saying, “Daddy, why did you hit that man? Don’t you always say that it’s better to talk than to fight?”

Rocky stared at the damage her big brother had just inflicted. She wanted to rush to Hugh’s side. Help him. Hold him. Kiss him.

But she couldn’t move. Her fingers, toes, and lips went numb with cold. Her eyes lost their focus. Her mind went fuzzy. Something strange and yet oddly familiar touched her and held her in place.

She watched as a bevy of little old ladies, including Miriam Randal, descended on Hugh. They went down on their knees and started tittering and stroking and comforting him.

He was in good hands. He seemed to be recovering.

But the situation in the council room still teetered on the brink of disaster. Caroline needed to do something.

But what?

The blood roared in her ears. Tears threatened to
spill over. And then, something down deep inside of her snapped.

And the unseen force that had pinned her in place released her. She yanked off her jacket, moved forward, and snatched the gavel from Bob Thomas’s suddenly slack hand.

She pounded the gavel on the desk and shouted, “Ya’ll, just shut up and listen to me!”

The room went quiet, more in shock than because of her gavel banging. The last time Rocky had lost her temper had been pretty darn memorable. But she really didn’t care anymore. She was moved by this weird feeling she couldn’t quite explain.

“Look,” she said. “Let’s get one thing straight. No one is going to bulldoze Golfing for God. So you ladies can just shut up. Now!”

The church ladies stopped and stared. A few mouths hung open.

Rocky continued, “Even if Lillian could condemn the land, the town has no money to buy my daddy out. And besides, you should all know that Lord Woolham is a fake and a phony.”

A collective gasp went through the crowd.

“I say, young woman,” one of the gray-haired ladies ministering to the recovering lord said, “I do take exception to that remark.” The woman spoke with an English accent. Could this be one of Hugh’s aunts?

Rocky cocked her head. “Are you Petal or Petunia?” she asked.

“Petunia.”

Rocky nodded. “Well, it’s true. He came in here all snotty and lord-like, but he’s not at all like that.” She
gestured to the crowd in the council room. “And ya’ll know that, too. He gave money to your committee, Hettie. And he helped Bubba with his car. And he even played matchmaker with Bubba and Rachel. Ya’ll know this.”

Everyone nodded.

“What you don’t know is that someone”—she looked pointedly at Cissy—“made him an offer yesterday that would solve all of his financing and real estate problems. All he had to do was to build his factory upstate along the I-85 corridor. Building up that way would have been easier and cheaper for him. A wise businessman would have taken that chance and run with it. But Hugh deBracy didn’t.

“And you want to know why? Because he didn’t want to sell ya’ll out. That’s why. He knew you needed this factory more than the folks up north do. He didn’t have to care about you, but he did. And if he were some snotty lord, he wouldn’t have cared. He would have just taken his business elsewhere.

“So that’s what I mean. He’s not what you think he is. He’s a good man. In fact, he’s the kindest man I’ve ever met in my life. He’s, well… he’s a regular guy.

She spared a moment to look at Hugh, who had regained his feet and looked no worse for having been manhandled by her older brother. She almost lost herself in his gaze. He was staring at her, with just a hint of a smile on his face. The kindness she loved so much was evident there. How could she have ever doubted him?

She turned back to the people in the visitors’ gallery before she broke down in tears. “If you want to be angry at someone, why not be angry at Jimmy Marshall? He’s the one who sold Lord Woolham worthless swamp and
then egged Lillian on with this whole notion of condemning the golf course. Jimmy should be tarred and feathered for selling that land to Hugh for the price he sold it.”

More mouths dropped open. Behind her Jimmy Marshall stood up. “I’m not listening to this crap.” He hurried from the room. Hettie watched him go. She didn’t follow him.

Dash watched Hettie watch Jimmy. It was pathetic.

Caroline took another breath. “And you”—she pointed to Cissy—“you came into my hometown yesterday and got everyone all riled up, and then when Hugh didn’t agree to your proposal to build the factory upstate, you told your daddy it was my fault. That was dishonest all the way around.

“And don’t you ever say my name again the way you said it the other day at the barbecue. My name is Rocky Rhodes. You say it with respect, because I deserve respect. You’d get on a lot better if you were more like his Lordship. He’s kind to people. You are not. And I’ve got news for you, I’m one of your daddy’s constituents. And the plain, hardworking, slightly quirky folks who live here in Last Chance are his constituents, too. So you can take your red Corvette, and you can go on back to the city.”

“Now Caroline,” the senator said, his face getting red.

“I’m sorry, sir. But I haven’t done anything wrong here. All I’ve done is to find the solution to Lord Woolham’s problems.”

“You have?”

Rocky didn’t elaborate on her solution. That was for Dash to do. Instead, she looked out at the people in the visitors’ gallery, who were watching as if this were a
roller derby. “And the rest of you. Just because I love ya’ll doesn’t mean you can’t improve on some things. You need to stop with the gossip. Before you open your mouths to pass on something unkind, you can also stop to figure out if it makes any sense. You’ve been blaming me for Bubba all these years, and you know what? I let you. But I’m not going to let you do that anymore.

“I never loved Bubba Lockheart. He asked me to marry him at the Davis High senior prom that year we graduated. The prom was in May, ya’ll, not July when we have the Watermelon Festival. I told Bubba no in May. I told him I had a scholarship to USC, and I was too young to get married.

“And you know who supported me in that?”

“No,” a few of the people said in unison.

“It was Stone’s wife, Sharon.”

“What?” Stone said.

“Yeah, it was Sharon.” Caroline took a deep breath. She could almost feel Sharon right beside her, giving her courage. “Sharon told me I shouldn’t run away and get married. Even though ya’ll wanted that to happen in the worst way. You wanted me to be like Sharon. But Sharon told me I should be my own self. She told me that the only reason for running off with someone is because you can’t live without them.

“Well, I could live without Bubba, all right. And I told him so privately. But he reckoned he would up the stakes, and he asked me to run off with him that night I wore my Watermelon Queen dress. Only unlike my brother, he asked me in front of everyone. What did you expect of me when he ambushed me that way?

“He humiliated me. I didn’t break his heart—not
publicly anyway. I wanted to go to college. And he wasn’t willing to wait for me. The fact that he messed up and flunked out is not my fault. He has to take some responsibility for his actions. Being a football player does not absolve him from responsibility for his own life.

“And one last thing—it’s hard for a Watermelon Queen in this town. Girls may want romance in their lives, but an eighteen-year-old in the twenty-first century is not really interested in running off and getting married. Most of your daughters and sisters want to go to college. So quit trying to force us all into that outdated mold. I don’t know why Sharon ran off with my brother, but she was the exception, not the rule. And she knew it, too.”

Rocky glanced at her brother. He looked ashen. She felt a pang of remorse for telling her big secret out loud this way. But maybe it was for the best. People had a way of making Sharon out to be some kind of saint. And she hadn’t been. She’d been a great friend and a good wife and a loving mother. Rocky missed her. But Sharon was a real person, and it was time to give up on the myth.

“All right. Now that we’ve cleared the air, I want ya’ll to sit in your seats and listen to Dash. I know ya’ll still think of Dash as the bad boy orphan who came to town with an attitude when he was twelve. But you know, he’s moved on with his life, too. So y’all listen to him. He has something really important to say.”