Famous In A Small Town
Kristina Knight
Lifestyles of the small-town famousForced to leave Nashville after a scandal, Savannah Walters has come home to Slippery Rock, Missouri, with a bruised ego and her singing career in jeopardy. As if that isn’t humiliating enough, on her way into town she’s rescued by her swoon-worthy childhood crush, Collin Tyler.His hands are full running the family orchard and dealing with his delinquent teen sister, so Collin doesn't need to get involved with someone as fiery and unpredictable as Savannah. But the intense attraction between them can't be denied. And when disaster strikes, they'll both be surprised by who's still standing when the dust settles.
Lifestyles of the small-town famous
Forced to leave Nashville after a scandal, Savannah Walters has come home to Slippery Rock, Missouri, with a bruised ego and her singing career in jeopardy. As if that isn’t humiliating enough, on her way into town she’s rescued by her swoon-worthy childhood crush, Collin Tyler.
His hands are full running the family orchard and dealing with his delinquent teen sister, so Collin doesn’t need to get involved with someone as fiery and unpredictable as Savannah. But the intense attraction between them can’t be denied. And when disaster strikes, they’ll both be surprised by who’s still standing when the dust settles.
“Should I start another song, or should we...?”
Start another song, he wanted to say, but didn’t.
He had the orchard to build.
He had Gran and Amanda to support and, despite her reluctance to return to Slippery Rock, their other sister, Mara.
He wasn’t about to mess up the plans he had for a night with Savannah Walters, no matter how tempted he was to continue caressing her curves.
Reluctantly, Collin loosened Savannah’s hands from his neck and stepped back.
“Thanks for the dance. I’ll see you around,” he said and quickly left the bar, calling himself all kinds of a coward for doing so.
It shouldn’t matter who she was. It should only matter that she was a willing woman, he was a willing man and it had been nearly a full year since he’d...
But it did matter.
Savannah Walters was not the kind of woman to mess around with.
Dear Reader (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0),
I hope you enjoy this first book in my new Slippery Rock series, Famous in a Small Town. Slippery Rock is a place that was born out of my past—I grew up in a small town near Truman Lake in Missouri. There are many man-made lakes in Missouri—most were made to help farmers and ranchers with irrigation, and most have been turned into tourist attractions. Despite the growth of these towns, they still have that mom-and-pop feel, with town squares and main streets, and where people still wave at one another as they pass by in their cars.
Famous in a Small Town is special to me because of the setting, but also because I wanted to write about a family like mine. My husband and I adopted our daughter through the foster care system, and while she doesn’t have the attachment issues that Savannah does, we’ve faced other hurdles, and those hurdles drew us closer together. An adoption quote that’s very special goes: “Family isn’t always blood. It’s the people in your life who want you in theirs; the ones who accept you for who you are. The ones who would do anything to see you smile and who love you no matter what.” That is the kind of family that both Savannah and Collin find...and it is the kind of love and family that I hope all of you find, too.
Have a great read!
Kristina Knight
Famous in a Small Town
Kristina Knight
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KRISTINA KNIGHT decided she wanted to be a writer, like her favorite soap opera heroine, Felicia Gallant, one cold day when she was home sick from school. She took a detour into radio and television journalism but never forgot her first love of romance novels, or her favorite character from her favorite soap. In 2012 she got The Call from an editor who wanted to buy her book. Kristina lives in Ohio with her handsome husband, incredibly cute daughter and two dogs.
For my Brainstormers: Connie, Jill, Jenna, Sloan, Katelynn, Shay. You inspire so much laughter, you offer such unreserved friendship, and I appreciate you all to the moon and back. xoxo ~ K
Acknowledgment (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0)
Special thanks to Julie Kyer, who answered question after question about reactive attachment disorder (RAD), the foster care system, family counseling and adoptive family dynamics. It takes a special kind of person to be a social worker, and Julie is one of those special people. I am forever thankful for her friendship, and for her willingness to be an advocate for children everywhere.
Contents
Cover (#uca083d64-c0ee-5408-8543-c824c9848f1d)
Back Cover Text (#u375e7fd6-42af-58a2-b2dd-65ab3517859c)
Introduction (#u507363d9-fd44-556c-9493-f98d0a4f3437)
Dear Reader (#u98637e0a-867e-58bb-91e3-0d1e97e83265)
Title Page (#u331c8caa-e79e-570c-8135-c7fa011d6f9f)
About the Author (#u0903f52e-596f-5938-9629-99a6a9b7ef03)
Dedication (#u2977161b-92f5-5b7a-8823-99066dd16d7b)
Acknowledgment (#u1ecd640e-d5a7-59eb-a866-e71d285944ce)
CHAPTER ONE (#u5970f017-5dad-569f-aa52-bc4e10fe9988)
CHAPTER TWO (#u2098d3f1-fc17-5fca-aad8-849e56b520df)
CHAPTER THREE (#u6d0d1db5-7f43-5791-87bf-b298c682382b)
CHAPTER FOUR (#ue1e927a1-d2fb-530f-891f-93023e69c5a2)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ucf0e0d0f-a6dc-5dd4-9a92-471c39d8c6eb)
CHAPTER SIX (#ue66fed6d-afef-553e-870d-b04f2e48b65f)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0)
DECISION TIME.
Savannah Walters sat staring at the faded red stop sign at a crossroads—one would lead her into complete anonymity and the other back to a place where everyone knew who she was.
Anonymity beckoned, slick and sweet. A simple left-hand turn onto the southbound lane of a rural highway in southwestern Missouri. She would roll the windows down in her old Honda, smell the freshly mowed highway grass and maybe pass a tractor or twelve before she hit the next town, a town with a bigger road leading to an interstate that would lead her...anywhere.
She hit the turn signal even though there were no other cars on this stretch of blacktop and listened to the click-click-click of it for a long moment. All she had to do was make the turn. This was her chance. A bigger chance than the one she’d taken when she’d elected to go to Nashville. A bigger chance than the one she’d taken to get onto the reality talent show that had made the Nashville move possible. No one would ever have to know she was that Savannah Walters again.
Hell, if she wanted, she could change her name completely and maybe cut off the signature micro-braids she’d spent three days installing, then no one would even make a tiny connection between her and about-to-fall-from-grace, one-hit-wonder Savannah Walters. She could be anything and anyone she wanted. The thought made her giddy. If she could, she would choose to be smart, strong and capable, rather than the dumb, weak and dependent person she’d been since she’d landed in Slippery Rock, Missouri, at the age of seven.
Her second-chance self would have a name like Nancy Smith because there had to be a million Nancy Smiths in the world. Nancy Smith would only sing in the shower or in the car with her windows rolled up. She would work as a bank teller and wear normal clothes without a single rhinestone, and maybe once she was settled she’d go to dental hygienist school. She would eventually buy a small house in a quiet neighborhood, and maybe she would meet a nice guy—not in a bar—and have a real relationship for the first time in her twenty-seven years.
Savannah’s heart a beat a little faster. Nancy Smith wouldn’t care what people thought of her. She would be stronger than that. Stronger than Savannah Walters, who had been afraid of what people thought of her for...most of her life.
Nancy Smith would not be afraid, but she also wouldn’t be reckless. There would be no judgmental dinner conversations, no too-high expectations and no comparisons to a brother who always did the right thing. She would be the opposite of Savanna Walters of Slippery Rock.
There would also be no midnight walks along the lakeshore with that boy—man, now—who couldn’t help being practically perfect; it was simply his way. No whispered conversations through their bedroom windows on hot summer nights. No smell of Mama Hazel’s coffee cake on lazy Sunday mornings and no comforting hugs or encouraging words from the only father she had ever known.
No disappointed looks when the three people who had saved her so very long ago learned that she, once again, had made every possible wrong decision.
God, she wanted to turn left. Take the easy road. They wouldn’t really miss her. It might even be easier for them if she just kept driving out of their lives. Choosing to adopt her didn’t mean they had to be stuck with her screwed-up self for the rest of their lives.
The turn signal kept clicking. Savannah checked the rearview, but there were still no other vehicles on the narrow country road, and so she continued to weigh her options. This might be the last chance she had to make a right decision, and it needed to be right not only for her but also for the people around her.
She hadn’t had a choice about coming to Slippery Rock before, but it was her choice whether or not she returned now.
Maybe if she stopped running away from Savannah Walters she would finally stop mucking up this life she’d been given. Savannah clicked off the turn signal and rested her forehead against the steering wheel. Maybe it was time to stop being afraid of who she might have been, and time to start figuring out who she wanted to be now. She couldn’t do that by running away.
It was worth a shot.
Before she could talk herself out of it, Savannah turned right. She rolled the window down and caught the faint scent of new grass. Tall trees lined both sides of the road. Maybe oak; she’d never bothered to learn the names of trees or the grasses along the road, or the vegetables whose baby stems were just beginning to show through the pencil-straight rows of tilled soil. Naming everything from the crops to the trees seemed too personal. She’d been waiting for her new family to send her away, to decide they didn’t want her, either. Now she wished she’d paid at least a little attention to Bennett and Levi, her adoptive father and brother, while they’d talked at all those family dinners.
The city limits sign, with its welcome message from the local chapters of fraternal organizations, churches and veteran’s groups came into view just as the engine coughed once, twice, and the car rolled to a stop.
Savannah clicked the key to the off position and then back on. Pressed the gas a couple of times and tried again. Nothing. Not even the clicking sound of a dead battery. She glared at the illuminated red check-engine light that had been on since she’d bought the car with her tip money from the Slope, where she’d chosen to clean up and wait tables instead of take a scholarship at a nearby college. Because she convinced herself she wasn’t good enough for college. Of course, if she’d done the college thing, she’d have never tried the talent show and wouldn’t have had a song on country radio.
Wouldn’t be running from scandal now.
The blinking engine light she’d ignored for nearly four years mocked her. One more checkmark in the Savannah the Screwup column.
If she’d only turned left, the stupid car would have run without so much as a twinge, she was positive about that. Lord, sometimes doing the right thing just sucked.
Anyone else would arrive back in her hometown driving an Escalade and find a parade in her honor. Savannah had a broken-down Honda with more than two hundred thousand miles on it. And she’d have to call her parents just to make it into town.
She thunked her head against the steering wheel a few times, but that didn’t make the check-engine light flicker off or the car miraculously start back up. The last thing she wanted to do was to call her parents. Maybe some of that car talk—Bennett helped Levi build his first car from parts found at the local salvage yard—at the dinner table had sunk in by osmosis or something.
Heaving out a sigh, Savannah popped the hood of her car and then stepped onto the pavement. The light wind was brisk—she should have remembered early May in Missouri was touch-and-go weather-wise—so she grabbed her neon-yellow hoodie from the passenger seat and shoved her arms through the sleeves.
At the front of the car, she pulled on the cherry-red hood but it didn’t budge. She tugged on it again and then bent to see the hook still caught in the hood latch. She hit the hood, trying to jar the hook loose, but no matter what she did the hook remained safely in the latch. There must be a mechanism in there somewhere that released it. Savannah bent to look between the narrow spaces of the grille, but didn’t see anything that looked like it might release the latch.
Crap, crap, crap.
Turning, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the hood.
There were two options: walk the five or so miles to her childhood home or call the house so someone could come pick her up.
A responsible person would probably walk it, but Savannah had already done the responsible thing by not turning left and look where that had gotten her: stranded on the side of the road at six thirty in the evening. She sighed.
Call home. Like she’d done a hundred times in the past. Well, better now than in the middle of the night.
She grabbed her phone from her bag on the passenger seat and scrolled until she found the word home, clicked the button and stopped. The sound of an engine caught her ear. Maybe she wouldn’t have to make that call, after all.
A dusty, blue truck rolled to a stop behind the old Honda and a broad-shouldered man sat behind the wheel, looking at her for a long minute. Savannah stiffened under his scrutiny. It was unlikely she had ever spoken to whoever was behind the wheel. When she’d lived in Slippery Rock she’d only had a handful of friends, and most of them had hung out with her just hoping to get to her brother. She tilted her head to the side, still studying the big truck. Not a single one of them would be caught dead in a big farm truck like the one taking up space behind her little car.
Dread crept down her spine.
It was likely, however, that whoever was behind the wheel knew her brother. Or her father. For all she knew, he was now making the call she should’ve swallowed her pride to make as soon as the engine gave out, instead of pretending she knew anything about general car repair. Or maintenance. Her knowledge of the car began and ended with how to put gas in the tank.
Well, this wasn’t going to get better if she didn’t get the man out of the truck. Savannah swallowed and offered a halfhearted wave.
“Hey,” she began as the man opened the door of his truck and stepped down to the pavement.
Dusty boots to match the dusty truck, along with the frayed end of a pair of faded jeans appeared below the open door. Then he slammed it shut and the rest of him came into view.
Well-worn jeans covered a pair of nicely shaped legs. A red T-shirt with a grease stain near the hem hinted at a nice set of abs, and the tight sleeves highlighted a set of biceps that made her mouth go a little dry. Which was just silly. Savannah didn’t go for athletes.
She liked gangly guys who knew how to work their instruments, and not the double-entendre instrument. Their guitars or drums or, a couple of times, keyboards.
He started toward her and it was as if her body went on point. Savannah stood a little straighter, every muscle seemed to clench and a warm heat sizzled to life deep in her belly.
Apparently gangly musician wasn’t her only type.
Finally her gaze arrived at the man’s face and her mouth went from dry to Sahara. This wasn’t a stranger. And he wasn’t a friend.
“Savannah Walters. I heard you were living it up in Nashville.” Collin Tyler, her brother’s best friend, shook his head at her. His voice was deeper than she remembered, and she thought he might even be taller. He was definitely rangier, and there was no way his arms had been that built in high school.
Not that she was looking, now or then.
Savannah ordered her gaze to fix on the truck behind Collin.
“Collin Tyler,” she said, thankful that her voice was working despite her raging thirst. “Still a Good Samaritan, I see.”
He shrugged, and the motion brought her focus right back to his body. Damn it.
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked, walking over to the car. His hands slipped between the hood and the grille and before she could warn him it was stuck, he had it unlatched and resting on the thin rod that held the hood aloft. Collin put his hands on the grille and leaned in as if he might spot the problem. Probably, he could. He fiddled with a couple of wires. “What are you doing driving this old thing still? Figured you have traded up by now.”
“I love this car.”
Collin shook his head and scoffed. “Nobody loves a 1997 Honda hatchback, Van,” he said, using the nickname that Levi had christened her within five minutes of her arrival at Walters Ranch.
“I worked hard for this car. I love this car,” Savannah said, probably a little too stridently. But she did love the car. Even if she wanted something newer and trendier and...road-worthy. This car had taken her out of Missouri to Los Angeles then Nashville. And back again.
“Slinging beers at the Slope isn’t exactly working hard.” He fiddled with a few more wires but, to Savannah, everything looked fine.
“And watching apple trees grow is hard work?” Savannah knew there was more to Collin’s family orchard than watching trees grow, but she couldn’t just stand there while he insulted her car. She might know it was decrepit, but allowing someone to disparage it just felt wrong. They’d been down a lot of roads together.
“Actually it’s apples and pears and peaches now. And in addition to watching them grow I like to prune from time to time, fertilize, and every now and again we actually pick the fruit, too.” He motioned her to the driver’s seat. “Why don’t you try turning it over now?”
Savannah slid behind the wheel and turned the key. “Nothing,” she called out. As if he couldn’t tell the engine hadn’t come back to life. “Idiot,” she mumbled. She returned to the front of the car. “Is there still a tow truck in town?”
“Bud still has one, but he closes at five.”
She checked her watch. Nearly seven. Calling Bud would have to wait until morning. Collin eyed her for a long moment as if weighing his options, and then went around to the driver’s side, sliding behind the wheel. Savannah watched as he turned the key.
“Did you know your check-engine light’s on?”
“Yes, I was aware.”
“What’s wrong with it?”
“Nothing, it’s been on like that since I bought the car,” she said, deliberately baiting him. She didn’t know why. Collin Tyler was one of the nicest guys she’d ever known, even if he’d barely said ten words to her during her entire life. Outside of this conversation, anyway.
Collin sighed. “I meant what’s wrong with the engine,” he said, and she thought she detected a bit of annoyance in his voice. Good, he was annoying her, too. He could just get right back in his dirty, old truck with his dirty shirt and dirty jeans and she’d call the ranch and get on with her humiliating re-entry to life in Slippery Rock, Missouri.
Couldn’t be any more humiliating than the way she’d left Nashville; the only thing missing from her exit had been the proverbial “A” she was positive a few people would have liked to sew onto her clothes.
“How would I know what’s wrong with the car?”
“You never had it checked?” He leaned out of the car and, despite the waning sunshine, she could clearly see the incredulous look in his clear, blue gaze. “You’ve had this car at least four years, Savannah.”
“They never said anything about it when I had the oil changed. Which I do religiously, every three thousand miles, just like the manual says.”
“Did you even ask them? Did you take it to the dealership?”
“Of course not, I was in LA and then Nashville. I wasn’t driving it back to Slippery Rock to have the oil changed. I took it to one of those ‘thirty minutes or it’s free’ places.”
Collin sent her a pitying look. Savannah stood straighter. Of course, she should have had the check-engine light checked but after a while, it became a kind of game. See just how far she could go before something happened. And then she’d mostly forgotten about it, chalking it up to a defective sensor or an overactive light or...something.
“Not the dealership here. A general Honda dealership where they could run diagnostics.”
“Oh.” She hadn’t thought another dealership would look at her third-hand Honda. God, she was an idiot. “It’s never done anything like this before. If it had, I would have taken the light more seriously.”
He sighed and the sound had an interesting effect on her. All the heat that had been building up inside her morphed into a burning desire to smack the long-suffering look right off his face. Up until she’d made the right turn instead of the left, Savannah hadn’t had a violent bone in her body. Interesting.
“A check-engine light, all on its own, is serious.”
“As I discovered when the car stopped working. For now, could we save the lecture? I’m sure I’ll do something equally stupid at some point, and then I’ll happily listen to you drone on and—”
“Did you check any of your other gauges?” he interrupted.
Savannah blinked. “No.”
“Because the battery seems to be fine, the coolant isn’t off the charts, but the gas seems completely nonexistent.”
She peered over Collin’s shoulder. Sure enough, the red gas gauge pointed straight down, hanging at least an inch under the letter E.
She really was an idiot. Savannah closed her eyes, and would have thunked her head against the roof of the car had Collin not still been sitting in her seat.
“I didn’t think to check that,” she said, her voice quiet.
“I’ve got a full can in the truck—never know when you’re going to need gas on the farm.” He climbed out of the car and pushed past Savannah.
“Of course you do,” she said to the air.
Collin Tyler, Good Samaritan, would never let his vehicle run out of gas. He would never ignore a check-engine light, and if his vehicle did run out of gas or stop working for some reason, he would have a solution.
Savannah Walters, Screwup, would forget to check her tank when she left Memphis, and would run out of gas five miles from her destination.
He returned with the portable can, opened the tank and began filling it through a large yellow funnel.
“This old can only holds a couple of gallons, but it’ll get you into town. You should fill up as soon as possible.” And there he went with the free advice. He just couldn’t help himself. And here she was wanting to stomp her feet or sink into the ground.
Running out of gas. It was a teenage mistake, not something a twenty-seven-year-old should do.
Collin finished filling the tank, closed the hatch and nodded. “See if she’ll fire this time,” he said.
Savannah slid behind the wheel and said a please, please, please before cranking the key. When the engine roared to life, she sank back against the beige seat.
Collin tossed the gas can into the bed of the truck and then crossed back to the front of the Honda, closing the hood. He tapped twice on the roof of the car. “Gas up on your way out to the ranch, Savannah, and get that check-engine thing looked at. Better to be safe than sorry.”
He offered a quick wave and in a moment was behind the wheel of his truck. He pulled around her, honked his horn once and drove toward the setting sun.
Better to be safe than sorry.
Savannah closed her door and then pressed back into the seat.
She glanced into the rearview and smirked. “Well, Savannah, not making that left really is turning out to be a great decision.” She put the car in Drive and continued through to the town.
The last rays of sunlight sank into the earth as she turned off the main road and onto the gravel lane that led to her childhood home.
She’d stopped in town to fill the gas tank. There’d been no sign of Collin or his big truck, thankfully, and the kid working the register in the station had barely looked up from his magazine long enough to take the twenty she’d pushed across the counter. Then she took the long way to the ranch, so that it was now after eight. For as long as she could remember, Bennett and Mama Hazel retired to their master suite by eight, and they were both up before dawn.
She stopped for a moment under an old maple tree. The porch light was on, glimmering in the twilight, as it had been every night for as long as she could remember. The last one in for the night was supposed to turn it off, and she wondered if Levi was the straggler tonight or if their parents had changed that eight o’clock bedtime habit.
Her brother, older by nine months and a full school year, rarely stayed out late. Or at least he hadn’t when they were kids. She had no idea what he did as an adult. He’d been gone, to college and then playing in the NFL, while she’d finished school and waited tables at the Slope. She’d left for the reality show just before the injury that had taken him out of football forever.
Didn’t matter. She would park, grab her overnight bag from the backseat and worry about the rest of her luggage tomorrow. Assuming she stayed past tomorrow. Savannah was still unsure just what she wanted to do. Go or stay. Wait out the scandal she knew was coming or run as fast and as far from it as she could.
Her father’s beat-up F-150 sat under a tall tree at the side of the house, along with a newer model that had Levi written all over it—from the flat-black paint job to the chromed bumpers and roll bar. Mama Hazel’s familiar station wagon was gone, probably traded in for the navy sedan that sat under the carport. Savannah couldn’t remember the last time Mama Hazel drove herself anywhere, but she liked to have a car handy “just in case.”
Huh. All the cars were accounted for, so who’d left the light on?
She took a deep breath as she pulled the old Honda in behind Bennett’s truck.
Savannah climbed the steps of the familiar farmhouse with her overnight bag slung over her shoulder. Her hand shook as she reached for the white-enamel doorknob and she willed it to still. This was her home. The place she was safe.
How many times had she been told that as a child? Never, not a single time, had she wanted those words to be true more than she did now. There was a storm coming, one that could shatter her, and she had a feeling she would need the strength of these old walls if she were to withstand it. Maybe, just maybe, if she hid here long enough the storm would never come.
Her agent had said as much. If she left quietly, if she stayed away, maybe nothing would come of her indiscretion.
Savannah swallowed hard and twisted the knob. The door swung in, opening to the small entryway with its familiar hardwood floors and the same brass hat rack in the corner that she remembered from her childhood. Stairs, with that familiar navy blue carpet runner, rose a few feet in front of her, dividing the living area from the dining room and kitchen. A lamp remained on near Mama Hazel’s rocking chair, the book she was reading lying pages-down on the seat, and in the low light she could see the pictures of Levi and her lining the wall. Levi’s trophies were on the mantel. She crossed the room, ran her fingers over a new frame and caught her breath.
They’d framed the write-up in the Slippery Rock Gazette of her third-place finish in the talent show. She hadn’t even called them after, had just said yes to the trip to Nashville and taken off. Under the frame was a copy of a music magazine with her smiling face on the cover. It ran the week her first single hit the top twenty before beginning its slow descent back down the charts.
“Van.” The softly spoken word startled her, and she turned. Levi stood in the gloominess, coffee cup in hand. He wore his usual jeans and T-shirt, his dark-skinned arms looking like the trunks of a couple of the trees she’d passed on the highway. He still kept his hair cropped close to his head, and even in the darkness, she thought his deep brown eyes had just a hint of amber.
It was the same amber her eyes had. When they were kids, she liked to make up stories about how she’d been adopted by her birth family, and the people who’d had her before had been her kidnappers.
Of course, that had only been wishful thinking. The Walters family was wonderful, but they weren’t hers. Her family had left her on the steps of a police station in Springfield with a note pinned to her chest.
Name: Savannah
Birthday in May
Seven years old
Eight freaking words on a note she couldn’t erase from her memory.
“What are you doing here?”
Did he know? Levi always seemed to know when she was in trouble. She willed her thundering heart to slow. There was no way he could know what had happened this time. She’d been listening to the radio all day, and if the story had broken, she knew the DJs would be talking about it nonstop. So far, it seemed Genevieve was sticking to her word and keeping the whole sordid thing a secret. He couldn’t know, she told herself.
“I, uh, needed a break from the tour,” she said, deciding that was the safest answer. No one knew she’d been offered an extended touring gig with Genevieve’s crew. An offer that had been summarily revoked later that night when Genevieve had ended the set early and found Savannah exiting her tour bus. “And I haven’t been back here since the finale eighteen months ago.”
Levi nodded. “You look good,” he said. “Mama and Dad would have waited up if they’d known you were coming.”
“I’ll just surprise them at breakfast,” she said. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you have a house of your own by now?”
“I do. Used the foundation of the cabin,” he said, motioning to the general area where the first Walters cabin had stood more than one hundred years before. Her father had torn down the walls when she was eleven, after she’d nearly been struck by a falling rafter inside. “They’re finishing up the plumbing and then the floors, and I’ll move in.”
“You always loved that old place.” She reached for something more to say but wasn’t sure where to start. She never talked to Levi about why he’d walked away from his professional football contract. Everyone knew about the injury, but from what she’d seen on those Sunday-morning sports talk shows, he could have made a comeback. She didn’t ask then, and it seemed almost too late to ask now. Besides, he’d never asked why she was so hell-bent on a reality talent show when, before leaving Slippery Rock, she’d been petrified of singing in the Christmas pageant at church.
Levi watched her and she wondered what he saw. Wondered how she could make sure he and the rest of her family never saw how truly bad she could be. She would figure out how to live with the shame of sleeping with a married man, but she didn’t want any of that shame to fall on them.
“The porch light’s still on.” She grabbed at the only conversation starter she could think of. “You expecting someone?”
Levi glanced over his shoulder and a small smile played over his wide mouth. “That light’s not for me. It’s been on since you left for the talent show. I turned it off once and the next morning Mama just about stripped me bare with her words. I didn’t know she even knew that kind of language.” He sipped from the mug in his hands.
Savannah blinked. The light was on...for her? After all this time? Emotion clogged her throat. To keep her threatening tears from falling, she focused on breathing.
“You want coffee? Something to eat?”
She shook her head, unable to talk as she stared at the thick, mahogany door and the glimmer of porch light she could see through the side windows. The light was still on, more than two years after she’d left, for her? She drew in an unsteady breath.
“Well, I was headed up for the night. We’re planting alfalfa in the western field before dawn, and I still have some computer work to do before I turn in. You remember the way upstairs?”
If anyone else had said the words, the emotions she was feeling would have dried up in an angry burst. But this was Levi, and those were the same five words he’d been saying to her since that night twenty years before when Hazel and Bennett had brought her home to Walters Ranch.
“I remember,” she said, but the words were barely a whisper.
Levi nodded and turned toward the staircase. He paused at the door. “Last one in, remember?” he asked, and Savannah could only nod.
In a moment, he’d disappeared up the stairs, and she was alone in the familiar living room with Mama Hazel’s rocker and the porch light shining through the windows.
Slowly, Savannah made her way to the front door. She looked out, seeing vague shapes in the darkness beyond the porch. It was barely nine o’clock at night, and if she were in Nashville, she would just be going out for the night. But this was small-town Missouri, where farmers hit the fields before dawn and went to bed soon after sundown. Her fingers rested lightly on the porch light switch.
The emotion she’d held back when Levi was still in the room tore through her like a planter tore the ground during spring seeding. Her fingers shook and she tried to blink back the tears.
They’d left the porch light on for more than two years. For her.
Savannah depressed the switch, and the light flicked off in an instant.
Maybe this time, she really was home.
CHAPTER TWO (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0)
COLLIN GLANCED AT the clock on the dash as he accelerated the truck on the highway. He should have kept driving when he realized it was Savannah Walters on the side of the road playing at being a damsel in distress. Ignoring the red check-engine light. Running her car out of gas.
He didn’t need her kind of drama right now.
Although why she was still driving that old beater of a car when she had a fat record deal in Nashville was curious.
Curiosity—and a penchant for drama, he’d always been certain—killed the cat. And he had no intention of going down just now.
Collin pulled into a parking spot on main drag of town, just a couple of blocks from the marina and the lake. He’d left his window rolled down and could hear a few gulls calling out in the evening air.
James Calhoun, one of his best friends and a deputy sheriff, waited on the steps to the sheriff’s office. He wore the county uniform of khaki pants and shirt, the dark utility belt holding his gun and other cop paraphernalia around his waist, and he’d pushed his aviator sunglasses to the top of his head.
Seeing Collin, he started down the walk.
“She’s inside. A little scared, I think, but she’s hiding the scared pretty far under the usual teenage attitude.”
Collin stepped out of the truck and met James on the sidewalk. “Damages?”
“She swears she wasn’t in on it, and I tend to believe her. From what I’ve been able to get from the others, she was walking by when the fire started in the parking lot, and ran over to try to help put it out.”
Well, that was a new one. Usually when the sheriff’s department called about his little sister, the call was to come bail her out for some minor offence or another. At least this time she’d been trying to do the right thing.
“Thanks for calling my cell instead of the house. The last thing Gran needs is more Amanda worries.” He grabbed the bill of his ball cap from his back pocket and shoved it over his head.
“No worries. How’s Gladys doing?”
“Physical therapy three times a week, simple exercises every day to build up her strength. The doctor says she’ll be getting around without the walker before long.” Collin wasn’t so sure. He’d seen his grandmother’s post–hip replacement progress for himself, but there was something not quite right about her. He’d caught her staring into the distance a few times as if she didn’t quite understand what she was seeing, and he’d had to remind her of dates and events several times over the past few weeks.
“I kept her out of the main holding area, since she wasn’t actually involved in starting the fire,” James said, motioning Collin up the sidewalk. “I have to tell you, though, I’m pretty much alone in my belief in her innocence. She’s been involved in too many other incidents lately. A few of the officers think all eight of those kids should have the book thrown at them.”
“And you’re stuck in the middle.”
“Call me Switzerland.” James opened the door to the office and they stepped inside. There was no hectic movement, no scanners chattering in the growing gloom. The Slippery Rock sheriff’s office at seven thirty on a Friday night was as quiet as a church on Monday morning. The receptionist had gone home and the 9-1-1 center in the next county took care of most dispatch calls.
God, but he loved his small town. He just loved it a little more when his sister wasn’t doing her best to become a criminal.
“You shouldn’t have to play peacemaker between my little sister and your squad room.”
“Stuck in the middle is no place I haven’t been a time or two, and since the other kids cleared her, there’s no reason to add another asterisk to her record.” He put his hand on Collin’s arm. “But, Col, you’re gonna have to talk to her at some point about the mischief calls, the skipping curfew. She’s headed down a dangerous road.”
James flipped on the fluorescent lights as he led Collin behind the bulletproof glass protecting the reception area. Collin knew from a school field trip that the holding cells were in the basement along with a storm shelter, the deputy’s cubicles in the back half of the first floor, and that their workout room shared space with the department’s small armory on the second floor. He followed James through the maze of cubicles.
Collin sighed. “Yeah. I know.” He just didn’t know how to have the conversation that Amanda obviously needed. He wasn’t her father or even a guardian.
Since Gladys’s fall just before the holidays, Amanda had been on a tear. Skipping curfew, getting speeding tickets as if she were trying to make the Guinness Book of World Records. She’d even been caught defacing the fountain in the square by filling it with laundry detergent. Amanda needed parents and he didn’t have a clue how to fill that role for her.
“She’s not a bad kid.”
“I know that, too.” She was just messed up, the way they’d all been messed up by their parents. Samson and Maddie Tyler had been absentee parents for half of Collin’s life, and nearly all of Amanda’s. There would be the occasional birthday card, and one year they showed up at Christmas, but for the most part the people who were supposed to parent Collin, Amanda and their sister, Mara, had simply not.
“I can get you guys into family counseling, if you think it would help.”
Sitting in a stuffy office talking about their lack of parental supervision sounded like the fifth circle of hell to Collin. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Something had to have set Amanda off and, despite all his efforts to talk to his baby sister, he hadn’t been able to figure out what it was.
“I’ll think about it.”
They rounded a corner and he saw Amanda sitting cross-legged in an old plastic chair. Her long blond hair was pulled up in a high ponytail and she wore her old Converse sneakers—with fresh scorch marks—along with ripped-up jeans and a sweatshirt with an image of the galaxy and the words You Are Here with an arrow on it.
Collin wanted to shake her. She was here, in a police station, when she could be home with her family. All she had to do was stop whatever crazy train she’d jumped on.
Amanda chewed on her bottom lip and wrapped and unwrapped the string from her hoodie around her finger. She was just a kid. A lost, hurt kid, and he was doing a crap job of making her feel safe.
“Collin’s here,” James said as they neared the cubicle.
Amanda straightened in her chair, put her feet on the floor and folded her arms over her chest. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t have to bother him.”
“How else were you going to get home, kid? You’re grounded from the car, remember?” James backed away, leaving them to sort this out without him.
Amanda eyed him for a long minute. “I’ve got two legs.”
“You’d rather walk the ten miles back to the orchard than spend fifteen minutes in the truck with me, huh?” Collin asked, leaned a shoulder against the cubicle wall.
Amanda twisted her mouth to the side. “I didn’t want you to be bothered.”
And just like that, Collin wanted to shake her again. She wasn’t a bother to him, she was his sister. But no matter what he did, he just seemed to mess things up between them. After speeding ticket number four, he’d taken her car keys. After the laundry soap incident, he’d banned her from being out after five.
He wasn’t sure what he could take away from her for this latest stunt.
Hell, maybe he should give something back. After all, she’d helped to put out the fire the other teens had set. A fire that could have decimated the courthouse square or that might have killed or seriously injured someone.
Maybe even Amanda.
“You’re not a bother, kid.”
She mumbled something he didn’t quite hear. He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.
Collin shoved his hands into his pockets, unsure what to do next. He needed her to know she wasn’t a nuisance to him. But her actions lately were a nuisance to him. A nuisance and a worry. He was doing his best to keep the orchard profitable, to keep Amanda comfortable, to ensure their grandmother’s recovery. His job was to keep everything and everyone in their little circle together, and he felt as if he was losing his grip on every single aspect.
He hooked his thumb toward the front door. “How about we get out of here?”
Amanda shrugged but she stood quickly and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m free to go?”
“Unless you’re changing your story about the fire,” James said. He stood near the wall.
“I just tried to help put it out. I didn’t even know they were in that alley until I smelled the smoke.” She shot James a look from the corner of her eye, and Collin fisted his hands. She knew more than she was letting on.
“That’s good enough for me, then,” James said, using his cop voice.
“If it’s good enough for the law...” Collin teased, but he wasn’t rewarded with one of Amanda’s reluctant smiles. Her shoulders stiffened and her mouth turned down at the corners. “Just a joke, kiddo. You said you weren’t involved in the setting, just the dousing. That’s all that matters.”
She mumbled something else under her breath and didn’t meet his eyes.
“Amanda—” he began, but she interrupted.
“Can we just go home?”
“Sure.”
Once they were in the truck and clear of the sheriff’s office, Collin said, “You want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“About why you were still in town when you know you (a) don’t have a car, and (b) still have a curfew, and I’m going to add a C to it—why did you lie to James about your involvement?” She pressed her lips together. “Fine, we’ll start with the easy one. Why didn’t you ride the bus home after school?”
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, a move Collin was all too familiar with. He’d done the same too many times to count when he was a teenager, but their sister, Mara, had made the gesture a near art form. “I’m seventeen years old. The bus is vile,” Amanda declared.
“So you were...what? Going to walk the ten miles out to the orchard and you just happened to come across a few pyromaniacs who were trying to set the courthouse on fire?”
“They were just testing the combustion rates of visco fuses and spolettes. After the fire marshal did his talk about fireworks safety leading up to the Memorial Day Kick Off the Summer celebration, they got the idea that they’d mess with the fuses for the big fireworks show. Trick the workers into thinking they’d bought a bunch of duds, and then scare the crap out of them when everything started going off at once.”
Collin gripped the steering wheel harder. That could have gotten someone seriously hurt. “And you know this how?”
Amanda blew out a breath. “I was hiding out under the bleachers in the gym during health class, and I heard them planning it all out.”
“You skipped class—”
“For the five millionth time, Mr. Acres is doing the unit on intercourse. I couldn’t face another hour of bananas and condom demonstrations. I swear he gets off on lubing up the fruits.” She shivered with disgust.
Collin blinked and squeezed the steering wheel. “We’ll get back to that in a minute. You skipped class, you overheard them talking about this prank and you...what, wanted to join in?”
“No, I was going to show them that what they were planning wouldn’t work. And then I was going to show them what would work, but Courtney Gains is an idiot and instead of setting up the fuses on something nonflammable and using slow-burning punks to light them, he used his dad’s grill lighter and stuck all the fuses on top of his backpack.”
Collin wasn’t sure where to begin. The skipping of class or the destruction of public property that Amanda nearly took part in because she’d wanted to see it done correctly. He was so in over his head here.
“And what would you have done differently?”
“Replaced all the usual fuses with fast-burning but connected fuses. Instead of delaying the explosions, which could get someone hurt, everything would just go off at once and without the delay. Simple. Added benefit? It would be prettier than a usual ‘light one rocket, wait five minutes, light another, wait another five minutes’ show.”
Collin made the turn from the highway onto the gravel road leading to the orchard.
“Why?” It was the only question he thought he could ask without getting pseudo-parent-y and...angry.
“Why what?”
“Why mess with the fireworks? Why not just let people have a fun night without a bunch of drama and craziness?”
Amanda pulled her lower lip between her teeth and then turned her head to look out the window. Moonlight hit the apple trees blooming pink and white in the fields surrounding them. The pear and peach trees behind the main house would bloom later in the spring. He wondered what she saw in the fields. Did she see the security he saw? Or did she see only trees?
“This is dangerous, Amanda. Can’t you see that?”
“It was just a prank, and now it’s nothing because the fuse has already been lit once. They’ll be expecting it.”
Collin pulled the truck to a stop at the side of the main house and blew out a breath. “Pranks hurt people, Amanda—”
“It was just going to be a joke, Collin, jeez.”
“And speeding down Main Street was a joke? What if some kid ran out into the street chasing his ball? Would that have been a joke?” Her face paled, but Amanda kept her mouth in that stubborn line. “What if the detergent trick had clogged the line and flooded someone’s house? Or if the stupid bubbles had blocked part of the road? Just another funny?”
“None of those things happened. And you and Mara did worse.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Of course it isn’t. The point is I screwed up. Again. I’m not the amazing, the wonderful, the never-get-caught Collin Tyler, football hero and member of the Sailor Five. I’m just Amanda. The forgettable,” she said, grabbing her backpack and running from the truck. Amanda slammed the front door, making the spring wreath of tulips bounce against the wood.
Sailor Five. Damn it, anyway. He’d been part of a winning football team, along with James, Levi Walters, Aiden and Adam Buchanan. Yes, winning the state football championship was a big deal, and yes, the five of them, along with Mara, had pulled their share of pranks and gotten away with it. Was that what this was all about? Amanda felt she was, what, being overshadowed by something he did in high school? That was just silly. The Sailor Five was in the past. Tyler Orchard, their family, their friends, those were the things that were important.
He should follow her. Go upstairs and make her talk to him. He wasn’t some infallible god. The last four months were evidence enough of that. But going after Amanda would just lead to another misunderstanding. He would let her cool down. They could talk again in the morning.
God, he was so out of his depth.
CHAPTER THREE (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0)
“HOW DID YOU not know she was back in town?” Adam Buchanan narrowed his eyes at the dartboard six feet in front of him, cocked his arm and threw. The dart embedded itself into the paneled wall several inches to the right of its target.
“It’s called having a life. You should try it sometime.” Collin marked down the missed shot and then gathered the darts for the next round. He, Adam, Levi and James had been playing darts at the Slippery Slope every Wednesday night for the past few years. Ever since Levi had ripped up his knee tackling a wide receiver in the first game of his team’s playoff matchup.
Adam snorted. “Since when did working 24/7 constitute having a life?”
“Adam.” Levi kept his voice low but the authority behind it was unmistakable. This was the captain of their football team talking and it annoyed the bejesus out of Collin. He could fight his own battles. And this wasn’t a battle; this was Adam being a jackass because he was bored. And Collin lying through his teeth to his three best friends because, damn it, since he’d run into Savannah Walters on the road outside of town, he’d been hard-pressed to keep her out of his head. That had been nearly a week ago. He should have forgotten about a ten-minute conversation and gas tank fill-up by now.
“Since working 24/7 got the orchard out of hock, that’s when. Some of us don’t have the luxury of working for Daddy.”
“Just play darts.” Levi put the red-winged darts in Collin’s hand and gave the blue ones to James.
When they’d started playing, darts was a way to get Levi’s uber-competitive mind off his ruined football career and onto something else. Now, eighteen months later, it was habit. One Collin had never thought about changing until tonight. He took aim, and his dart landed on the twenty triangle. James threw and hit fifteen.
He should have stayed home with Amanda. God knew his baby sister could use a little more attention thrown her way. He could have gone over the projections for harvest, finished that proposal for the organic chef’s association. The orchard was on stable financial ground for the first time in years, and now was so not the time to slack off. This was the time to build something that would last more than a lifetime.
“I’m not the one mooning over a girl at the bar,” Adam said, and took a long drink of his beer.
Collin aimed again and hit the ten. James hit another fifteen.
“She’s not just any girl. That’s a fine looking—” James started.
Levi cut him off. “Before you say something you might regret, J, that’s my baby sister over there.”
Screw darts. Collin tossed his last dart toward Adam’s head. It landed harmlessly on the Formica tabletop. “I’m not mooning over anyth—”
“Sure you are, Col.” Levi picked the dart off the table and pulled the others from the paneling around the board. “Let’s start the next round.” He took up position and began throwing, narrowing his eyes as he took aim just as he’d done when they’d been kids playing football. Levi had been the quarterback, Collin and James the receivers, and Adam and his twin Aiden the defensive specialists. After practices or game nights, they would sneak in here, and Merle, the owner and bartender, would let them stay as long as they didn’t try to scam drinks from any of the patrons.
Collin looked around the dingy bar. The same neon strip was burned out of the beer sign behind the bar. Same cowhide-covered bar stools. Merle wiped down the bar this evening, entertaining Savannah and her giggling gaggle of former high-school cheerleaders.
Three of whom Collin had dated.
Not that Savannah would care.
Not that he should care if Savannah did care.
One of the women at the bar said something, and Savannah threw her head back, mahogany hair cascading past her shoulders in a mass of waves, and laughed like she was at a freaking Kevin Hart show.
He wasn’t mooning. He was distracted, maybe. It wasn’t every day a woman walked into the Slope wearing a rhinestone party dress and high-heeled, over-the-knee boots. What the hell was Savannah thinking anyway?
“You’re up.”
Not that she didn’t look good in the dress that cinched tightly around her waist. And she’d learned a few new makeup tricks since she’d left town. That had to be the reason her eyes were so luminous.
“Collin.”
And her hair had always been the color of rich wood, but it hadn’t always been that thick, had it?
“Coll.”
A dart whizzed through his eye line, and Collin shook himself.
“What?”
“While you’re busy not mooning over the lovely Savannah, you might want to throw. You’re up,” Adam said, grinning. He picked up the dart from the hardwood floor.
Collin stepped to the line, gauged where the darts fell, and threw his first. It landed just over the white line above Levi’s dart. Damn it.
“When did she roll into town?” Adam asked. Couldn’t he leave Savannah out of five minutes of conversation?
“Friday night. And don’t ask me why she’s back. She’s done a good job of not talking about herself since she got here.” Levi took aim, and his dart landed in the bull’s-eye. “Guess that’s game.”
“I’ll buy the next round before I leave, boys,” James said, signaling the waitress. Juanita Alvarez had worked at the bar as long as Merle had.
“Don’t you have a shift later?” Collin asked.
“Yep. On midnights for the next few weeks.” James finished his water. “It’s why Juanita’s been serving me bottled water all night. And why I’m buying the last round, not drinking it.”
“None for me. Early morning.” Levi sat back in the booth, stretching his arms over the vinyl back. “I’ll take a cup of coffee, though,” he said as Juanita arrived at the table.
“Coke for me,” Collin said. There was still time to go over the books, but not if he had another drink.
“You guys are wusses,” Adam said and then asked Juanita for another draft. “Time was we’d drink in here until Merle shut it down and still get up at the butt crack of dawn for work or...whatever.”
“Time was we didn’t all have responsibilities,” James reminded his friend and then added, with a pointed gaze, “like a lovely wife and two great kids waiting at home.”
Adam rolled his eyes at that. “Jenny gets the guys’ night out thing, and the kids have school, which means an eight o’clock bedtime.”
“If Jenny was my wife, I’d be taking advantage of kids’ early bedtimes with an early bedtime of my own,” James said, a sly smile on his face. Of all of them, James had changed the most since high school. Back then he’d been the geek—the football-playing geek, but still the geek. Now he had half the single women in Slippery Rock panting after him, wanting to be Mrs. Sheriff James Calhoun. That was, if James’s father ever left his post as sheriff. “See you guys next week,” he said, grabbing his water bottle from the table.
“James has the right idea. See you guys next week,” Levi said. He picked up his ball cap from the table and slipped it over his head. He looked back. “No more trying to maim each other with darts,” he said, waving a finger between Collin and Adam. “Never mind the coffee, Juanita,” he called as he pushed through the doorway.
Adam lifted his hands as if he were innocent. “You gonna go talk to her?”
“You’re an ass.” Collin shook his head. “No, I’m not talking to Savannah Walters. We don’t have anything to talk about.”
“Who said you needed something to talk about?”
Collin blinked. Was he missing something here?
“She’s back in town.” Adam said the words slowly as if Collin might not understand simple English.
“And?”
“You’re currently available.”
“And?”
“She’s currently available, at least if you go by the tabloids.”
“Again, I say ‘so’?”
Adam blew out a breath. “So, she’s always been cute, but you heard James. That girl—” he motioned toward her with his hands “—has turned into one hot—”
“Don’t. Say. It.” He needed to get his brain off Savannah’s assets.
“What?”
“Stop acting like you’re my wingman for cripe’s sake. I don’t need help in the female department.”
“I’m just saying—”
“Well, don’t just say. I’m not hitting on Savannah. I’m not dating Savannah and I’m not sleeping with Savannah.”
“You’re not sleeping with anyone.” Adam held up his hands. “Just trying to get you off this celibacy shtick you’ve been on since last summer.”
“It’s not a celibacy shtick, A. I’m running a business that, until recently, was on very shaky ground. I’ve got a seventeen-year-old sister to raise.”
Savannah sipped from her glass again and Collin swallowed. It was more than not having time for recreational sex. Women hit on him all the time, but he didn’t have time for the dating thing, and random hookups had never been his thing. Until tonight, anyway. Somehow, since Savannah had walked through the door, all he’d had on his mind was meaningless, hot sex.
Which was ridiculous. He wasn’t a twenty-year-old kid any longer. He’d grown up. Had responsibilities. He didn’t need a woman like Savannah Walters screwing any of that up.
* * *
SAVANNAH SIPPED FROM the plastic cup made to look like a high-end wineglass. It was boxed wine. When she convinced Merle to add wine to his twenty brands of beer, and the staples of Jim Beam, Johnny Walker and Jose Cuervo, she’d intended for him to add wines from one of the regional vineyards. Only Merle, stubborn, beer-drinking, wine-hating Merle, would buy wine for his bar from the local grocery store, insisting that people came to the Slope for conversation and “real drinking.” She supposed he was right, she was the only one drinking it. And she hated boxed wine.
She also hated that the women she was drinking with—the women who used to be barely civil to her—were pretending to be her best friends because she was a minor Nashville star. Or at least, she had been.
More than either of those things, she hated that spending another night cooped up at the ranch might have caused a meltdown that could have ended with her spilling everything to Bennett and Mama Hazel. So she’d made one phone call and two hours later here she was on a girls’ night out with strangers she had to pretend were her friends.
She glanced to the left as Marcy Nagle started another story about her eight-year-old son, the football prodigy. God, she hated football more than she hated Slippery Rock.
Scratch that. She didn’t hate the little town. She just felt...surrounded by it. Watched by it.
Collin was still there. In the corner booth that her brother, Levi and the sheriff’s son had vacated a few minutes before.
Sitting with...who was that? His dad owned the cabinet shop in town and re-did Mama Hazel’s pantry a few years ago. Buchanan. Aiden Buchanan. Aiden had been so much fun back in the day. Carefree. A little restless. Always up for a good time. He’d been the ringleader of Levi’s motley group of football buddies. The five boys who put Slippery Rock, Missouri, on the map all those years ago. The Sailor Five.
Aiden turned his head and she caught a glimpse of the scar along his jaw and neck. Her mind flashed to a car accident when she’d been a sophomore and the tangled wreckage she, Levi and Bennett had come upon on a Sunday morning on their way to church.
That’s not Aiden. It’s his twin, Adam.
The boy whose car slid on black ice. He’d missed most of a year of school from his injuries and, although he’d recovered, had never regained full mobility of his left shoulder. Adam had gone from one of the stars of their football team to the equipment manager.
Adam Buchanan. The sweet boy who’d danced with her at the homecoming dance. Unlike his table mate who had never paid any attention to the younger sister of his best friend.
Just like he hadn’t noticed her tonight, despite the stage-worthy outfit and killer heels.
Damn it, why couldn’t Collin have gotten fat or bald or something while she’d been following her dreams to Nashville? But he hadn’t. Collin was as handsome as ever and every time she looked in his direction those stupid butterflies started dancing around in her stomach again. As if she was hung up on her brother’s best friend.
Well, she wasn’t.
She was an adult who had learned the hard way what kind of man to stay away from.
Savannah sighed. Collin would be the perfect guy to have a little rebound, short-term relationship with while she was in town. He would be a harmless distraction and...who was she kidding? If Collin were either harmless or just a distraction she wouldn’t still be obsessing over him a week after he’d rescued her on the side of the road. She’d been thinking practically nonstop about the orchard owner for the past five days.
One more reason to stay far, far away from him. Adam, on the other hand, would be fun and sweet and totally, amazingly forgettable.
“Excuse me, ladies, I think I see something a little more interesting than football mom stories and boxed wine,” she said, nodding toward the corner booth. “No offense.”
A chorus of “Go, girl” rang out at the bar, and Savannah used the enthusiasm to bolster her confidence as she started across the long space between the bar and the booth. In the fantasy that just popped into her mind, Adam fell instantly under her spell, led her to the dance floor—which was currently uninhabited—and danced with her to a Dierks Bentley song while Collin sat alone in the booth, wondering what he’d done so wrong that the fabulous, beautiful Savannah Walters didn’t want to dance with him.
Her palms went clammy.
Adam said something to Collin, and Collin squinted his eyes. Savannah smoothed her hands over her hair. She wasn’t the tagalong kid trailing after her brother. She was a grown woman with a life to lead.
Okay, so her life was currently in shambles around her, but it didn’t have to stay that way. She could fix it. Adam would be a bit of a morale booster.
Collin could suck a lemon between his perfect teeth while eating his heart out for not noticing her.
She swallowed and took a steadying breath.
Adam shrugged. Collin looked annoyed.
Savannah straightened her shoulders as she arrived at the corner booth. The room seemed too quiet, not that it had been all that loud to begin with. Other than her group of high school friends, only a handful of townies occupied the bar.
Thom Hall, owner of the best restaurant in town, and his wife sat at a side table, feeding the jukebox quarters. Felix Brown, owner of the marina, leaned his beefy forearms on the bar as he talked to Merle. A few young people she didn’t recognize. No one was paying any attention to the table in the corner, so why did she suddenly feel as if a spotlight was shining down on her?
“I’m not interested in no-strings sex,” Collin was saying, and the words seemed to vibrate around the table.
Savannah let a playful smile settle on her face. This was going to be simpler than she’d thought. Any time a man said he didn’t need or want random sex, it was exactly what he needed. At least, in her experience.
Not that she was going to have sex with Collin. She was here for Adam.
Bland, boring Adam.
She should have stayed at the bar. But since she was here... “That’s too bad. I hear no-strings sex is the best kind to have.” The words rolled from her mouth like she’d practiced them. It was exactly what Savannah would have said to a regular bar guy. The words seemed idiotic here, though.
Collin looked at her, blinking his eyes as if he were an opossum coming out of its den.
“Savannah Walters. Look at you,” Adam said, whistling a little bit.
“Hello, Adam. Hi, Collin,” she said, slipping into the booth beside Adam, and still, she couldn’t keep her eyes off Collin. His blond hair was cut short and he wore a faded ball cap that read Tyler Orchards with a tree of some sort embroidered on the front. “So, what are you boys up to tonight?”
“Shooting the breeze. Playing darts. Exciting Wednesday night in Slippery Rock,” Adam said after a moment.
“Mmm.” Savannah nodded as if Adam had said they were heading out to a red-carpet awards show. “It’s good to see you again, Collin. You’ll be happy to know I made it to a gas station in one piece.”
Adam’s gaze darted between her and his friend. Collin didn’t say anything; he just stared at the glass in his hands.
“Who won?” Savannah picked up one of the darts and twirled it in her fingers, then threw it neatly at the board where it hit bull’s-eye.
“Nice throw,” Adam said. Collin stared into the glass of Coke between his big hands.
“You learn a few things when you sling beers here.”
Savannah focused on Adam. Clearly, Collin had zero interest in her and, if she was going to salvage this night, she needed to make sure Adam had at least a little interest.
“Levi and James.” Adam looked from Collin to Savannah. “I’m just going to go,” he said, looking uncomfortable for perhaps the first time in his life.
“I was hoping you’d dance with me,” she said, using her best, most sultry voice.
Adam shook his head. “That’s not a good idea.”
“Why not?”
Thom Hall and his wife walked to the door, waving at Merle and the marina owner as they left.
Adam held up his left hand and a thin gold band glinted in the low, bar lighting. “My wife’s understanding about the weekly dart throw, but she’s not so good with other women. But it was good to see you, Savannah.” He looked pointedly over her shoulder, and Savannah slid out of the booth, feeling like a fool. Of course Adam was married. All the good, solid, normal, forgettable guys were married. And she’d just made a complete fool of herself—again—in front of Collin.
“I’d forgotten you were married,” she said, the words sounding lame to her ears. How could she have forgotten that Adam got married to the homecoming queen as soon as she graduated high school, and right after Aiden left town for California?
“No worries.” Adam threw a quick hug around her shoulders. “It was good to see you, Savannah. I’ll leave an extra tip for Juanita at the bar,” he said as he started for the bar. “Losers always tip.”
He stopped at the register, handed a few bills over to Merle and then exited the bar. Savannah realized her pretend friends were gone, too. Merle wiped down the bar, but ignored them, and Juanita had disappeared into the back room. Leaving her alone with Collin and a jukebox playing a song about a battered woman killing her husband. Savannah wanted to leave, but wasn’t sure how to excuse herself.
“Looks like we have the place to ourselves,” Savannah said.
“Slippery Rock closes down around ten, remember?”
“Surely not every place in town is closed down.” She sat across the table from him.
Collin looked at her, really looked, for the first time since she’d come over to the table. Savannah swallowed again, but this time not in anticipation. He looked at her as if...as if he didn’t like what he saw. His sharp blue gaze studied her face for a long moment and then traveled down her neck, hesitating slightly when it reached her breasts. The table hid her long legs, but still she curled them back toward the booth bottom.
“I’m not sure what kind of game you’re playing, Savannah, but whatever it is, I’m not in the mood.”
“I’m...I’m not playing games.”
Except she was, and she hated it.
He smiled but the expression wasn’t friendly. This smile didn’t make butterflies flap in her belly. This smile turned those sweet, sweet butterflies into roving vultures intent on eating her alive.
“Sure you are.”
Maybe direct was the better way to go where Collin was concerned. Maybe it was time she stopped playing games altogether.
“Okay, I am. But I’m a big girl and I know the rules.” She ran her hand over Collin’s, and the flash of heat at the contact seemed to spike the temperature around them. Despite the dim light, she saw his pupils dilate, his nostrils flare. He didn’t pull his hand away. She brushed her fingertips over his once more. The heat didn’t intensify but it didn’t disappear, either. “Would you like to dance?”
CHAPTER FOUR (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0)
THIS WAS A MISTAKE. A big, huge, lose-the-game-in-overtime mistake.
Collin drew his hand away from Savannah’s. “That isn’t a good idea.”
She tilted her head to the left and widened her eyes a little, but he knew she wasn’t confused. “Why not?”
Because the last thing he wanted to do with Savannah Walters was dance. An image of their bodies moving in time to some beat he couldn’t place formed in his mind. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the last thing he wanted.
In his imagination, though, they were dancing without clothes and Savannah getting naked with him was very definitely off-limits.
The last thing Savannah Walters had ever wanted was to live in a small town.
Whereas he wanted small town. He liked living and working in a place where he knew everyone.
Then there was Amanda to consider. He was her brother, not her father, but he was all the girl had and he needed to give her security. Taking Savannah back to the orchard, bringing home someone who wouldn’t stick around, was a disaster waiting to happen.
Savannah slid from the booth and sashayed across the dimly lit bar, stopping next to the jukebox. She slipped a quarter through the slot, and Collin heard it ping down the chute. Then she tapped a couple of keys and music filled the empty bar.
When had everyone left?
Merle still stood behind the bar, but his attention was on the money from the till, not his patrons. Juanita was nowhere to be seen and everyone else had gone, including Savannah’s old cheerleader friends.
Definitely not a good idea.
Collin slid from the booth and tossed a few dollars on the table. Adam may have left a few bills at the register, but Juanita lived on her tips. Besides, taking bills from his wallet gave Collin something to do with his hands.
A crooning male voice filled the bar, and Savannah began swaying to the music.
He couldn’t move.
Collin ordered his feet to walk to the door and out into the warm spring night.
His feet ignored him and remained firmly planted on the worn hardwood floors of the Slope.
Savannah turned, crooked her finger at him and continued swaying in time to the music on the dance floor. She should look ridiculous. The way she’d looked when she’d worn her mother’s too-high heels to the homecoming dance that time.
Only she didn’t really look ridiculous. She looked...damn good.
Too good. Like she’d done this a million times in a million bars and with a million other men.
Collin was no prude, but he didn’t want to fall under some spell Savannah had been perfecting during her time in Los Angeles and Nashville. If they were going to do this, it was going to be his way.
Not that they were going to do this. He was not, repeat not, taking Savannah Walters back to the orchard. That wasn’t the kind of example his baby sister needed.
His feet moved him across the wide dance floor that was so seldom used Merle didn’t bother keeping it waxed anymore. Savannah seemed to melt into his arms. She lay her head against his shoulder and linked her arms around his neck as he swayed them to the music.
Collin fastened his arms around her waist, feeling her heat through the thin material of her dress. Savannah sighed. The rhinestones beneath his hands were warm beneath his touch, adding to the burn he’d felt earlier when Savannah had brushed her hand over his. This was crazy.
He wasn’t some impulsive kid any longer. He wasn’t the same teenager that followed along with his friends’ reckless plans. He had a job, a family to support.
God, but she smelled good, though. Some kind of flowery scent seemed to envelop them on the dance floor. It started at Savannah’s hair, but it seemed to be everywhere. Like it was a part of the atmosphere. Her soft hands began playing with the longish hairs at the nape of his neck.
“Should I start another song or should we...” She let the words trail off.
Start another song, he wanted to say, but didn’t.
He had the orchard to continue building.
He had Gran and Amanda to support and, despite her reluctance to return to Slippery Rock, their other sister, Mara.
He wasn’t about to mess up the future plans he had for a night with Savannah Walters, no matter how tempted his hands were to continue caressing her curves.
Reluctantly, Collin loosened Savannah’s hands from his neck and stepped back.
“Thanks for the dance. I’ll see you around,” he said and quickly left the bar, calling himself all kinds of a coward for doing so.
It shouldn’t matter who she was. It should only matter that she was a willing woman, he was a willing man and it had been nearly a full year since he’d...
But it did matter.
Savannah Walters was not the kind of woman he needed to be messing around with.
* * *
SAVANNAH BLINKED. LOOKED around the empty bar.
He’d left.
She ran her hands up and down her arms, suddenly feeling as if all the warmth in the bar had gone out the door as Collin closed it behind him.
He’d really left.
She’d offered herself up to him and... Damn it, what was it about the men in this town?
Okay, that wasn’t fair. Not all the men in Slippery Rock were cold, clinical, orchard owners.
From what she remembered, Collin wasn’t cold or clinical. Maybe he just didn’t like her. Somehow, that didn’t make her feel better.
Savannah Walters was a grown woman who knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was to not think about what a mess her life was. Just for a little while. It wasn’t as if she was an ugly stepsister or something. She had assets, and she knew how to use them. And that left her right back at He Isn’t Interested. She blew out a breath. Okay, then, she wouldn’t be interested.
Merle stood behind the bar, still counting the money from the register.
“What do I owe you?” she asked, feeling foolish. She’d just come on—hard—to Collin Tyler and been turned down flat. The old bartender might pretend he didn’t see anything in the bar, but she knew he caught it all. God, this was so embarrassing.
“Your friends cleared the tab.” He put most of the money into a bank bag, locked it, and then put a few tens, fives and ones back into the register before closing it up.
“Oh.” She looked around, not sure what to do. Leave, she supposed. Go back to the ranch.
“When am I going to get one of your songs for the juke?” Merle asked.
“Oh. Um... I just finished cutting my first record.” Not that it would be released anytime soon. Genevieve was the star of their shared label. Savannah was the newcomer who’d literally screwed herself out of a tour slot. Not being in front of the fans coupled with Genevieve’s pull at the label probably meant a fast and definite death for her career. The career that Savannah wanted for her parents more than she’d wanted it for herself.
The whole time she’d felt like a fraud. Petrified the world would find out she wasn’t who she’d told them she was—the normal girl from the normal family from a normal small town—when the truth about the way she came to Slippery Rock or her family was so not normal. Not knowing her actual birth date wasn’t normal. Not knowing her biological medical history wasn’t normal. Not knowing her racial makeup wasn’t normal.
She’d been told as a kid that she couldn’t be white because of her hair type. But, she’d also been told she couldn’t be black because her skin tone was light, like Jennifer Beals or Zoe Kravitz. None of the kids in Slippery Rock seemed to realize that both of those actresses were biracial. She’d been raised by an African-American family who hadn’t cared that her skin tone was several shades lighter than theirs. For the most part, Savannah didn’t, either. She just wished she could feel worthy of them. That was the feeling that drove her to Los Angeles and then to Nashville.
Bennett and Mama Hazel loved country music, and had passed that love on to her. Once she arrived in LA, no one seemed to care about anything but her singing, so she’d pretended to be just another small-town girl, trying to make it. Then she stepped on the stage and realized she wanted to be anywhere but in the middle of that spotlight. The crowd was too loud, and the lights were too hot, and she’d just wanted it all to stop.
She couldn’t stop the LA circus, though, no matter how much she wanted out. Singing country music had been Mama Hazel’s dream as a young woman, but she’d fallen in love with Bennett and given it up. Savannah doing well on the show, doing well in Nashville, would have given a little bit of Mama’s dream back to her.
Then the discomfort of the stage turned into fear that some zealous reporter would start to dig into her past. Would make the connection between Levi and her. There would have been questions she couldn’t answer, and maybe even accusations that she’d been trying to “pass.” In truth, she hadn’t considered her ethnicity at all; she had been too focused on finally doing something that would make her parents proud.
Merle’s voice brought her thoughts back to the bar. “Well, when you’ve got that song, you make sure we get a copy. It’ll be the most played song in the Slope, I guarantee.” Merle winked.
“I will.” Savannah backed out of the bar. The thick oak door closed behind her and Savannah leaned against it for a second. She heard the tumblers click over as Merle locked up for the night.
She had no illusions about the perfection of Slippery Rock. There were racial and economic divisions even in the middle of nowhere. Bennett and Mama Hazel were respected landowners, her brother, a beloved football star, but there were other families who weren’t thought of in the same way. Families who lived below the poverty line. Some of them also families of color. Ever since the adoption worker had brought her here, Savannah had been caught in the vicious cycle of wanting to be worthy of the family that had chosen her, but of being too afraid to accept their love.
Afraid that they would come to the same realization that her first family had—that Savannah was too much trouble—and would send her back to those cold police station steps.
Getting out of town, finding herself living a very sheltered and artistic California life in which no one questioned her race, had been freeing for the first few days. Then the old fears had come back. What if people turned on her because she might not be the typical, Caucasian country music star? What if people turned on her because she could have been the one to break the musical stereotype but instead had chosen to pass, even if she hadn’t consciously thought not mentioning her past was an attempt at passing?
It had been a relief when she hadn’t won. It was as if she’d dodged a bullet. But then the Nashville record company had offered her a deal, and then, when one of the biggest country stars opened a tour slot for her, it had all spun out of control.
From the second those offers came in, she’d started to think she really could earn the love of the family that chose her, but she’d still been so uncomfortable under all of that attention. And when Philip Anderson, Genevieve’s tour manager and estranged husband, had come on to her, she’d found herself following him to Genevieve’s bus.
Why had she gone onto that bus with Philip? She didn’t even like the man.
She doubted, deep-in-her-heart doubted, that she deserved her family’s love now.
Savannah pushed away from the door, got into Mama Hazel’s sedan and pulled onto the highway.
This was one more blinking neon light indicating that she should focus on her own mental health and not start chasing a man who obviously didn’t want her. She needed to get her life in order.
She parked the car in the carport and slowly climbed the steps to the house. The door creaked as she opened it. Savannah flicked off the porch light and climbed the stairs to her old room.
Pretty yellow curtains fluttered in the light breeze and the familiar blue of the walls soothed her. She didn’t bother with pajamas, just unzipped the party dress and climbed between the cool sheets in her undies. She pulled a pillow to her chest and closed her eyes.
She fell asleep dreaming she was still swaying in Collin’s arms.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0)
A HEAVY KNOCK sounded at the front door. Collin pulled a couch pillow over his head. Big mistake. His hands still had Savannah’s flowery scent on them and he could smell it through the feathers.
“Go away, Savannah,” he muttered. He’d turned her down once already tonight, he wasn’t sure he had two turn-downs in him.
The knock sounded again.
It couldn’t be Savannah. First, he’d walked out on her and she had never been the type to go running after rejection. Second, he was sleeping on the couch in the main house tonight, not in the barn that he’d turned into his office-slash-apartment a couple of years before. If Savannah wanted him, she would be at the barn, not the main house. Of course, Savannah wouldn’t know about the apartment in the barn, so it made sense she was knocking on the front door.
Collin scratched his scalp as he started for the door, tripping slightly over the light blanket he’d pulled over his hips when he’d sank onto the couch a couple of hours before.
Another knock.
If she didn’t stop trying to demolish the front door with her knocks she would wake up the rest of the house. Wait, what rest of the house? Gran took out her hearing aids at night and Amanda slept like the teenage dead. She hadn’t moved a muscle when he’d checked in on her after arriving home to work on the books.
Collin reached for the door, prepared to send Savannah on her way. At least he hadn’t been dreaming about her. He unlocked the dead bolt, opened the door and his jaw dropped.
It wasn’t Savannah.
It was James.
And his baby sister in handcuffs.
Collin glanced at the grandfather clock in the hall. Just after two thirty.
“Sorry, man, found her using these—” James held up two rolls of pink-camo duct tape “—to cut off the streets leading to the town square.”
“I wasn’t cutting off traffic, I was funneling it in a way that actually makes sense.” Amanda blew out a breath, making the wispy blond fringe around her face float up and then back down. Her eyes were green, rather than the blue of his or Mara’s, but the stubborn set of her jaw was all Tyler. For Collin, that stubbornness led to a football scholarship and a degree in Agri-Business. For Mara, it led to a top technical university and a job as a cyber-security expert.
In Amanda, that stubbornness was likely to lead straight to jail. He couldn’t let that happen.
“We have one-way streets that funnel traffic just fine,” James said. He elbowed Amanda gently. “And we don’t have the money for a middle-of-the-night traffic cop.”
“There’s no traffic to direct.” Amanda, likely realizing she’d just ruined her own excuse for taping over the streets of downtown, began talking quickly. “Except during the day, and then all Slippery Rock has are one-way streets that make it impossible to get from Maple to Franklin without making a detour down Main.”
James, one strong hand at Amanda’s elbow, directed her through the front door, gentle despite his height and weight advantage over the teen. Collin felt like a largemouth bass left on the bottom of a boat, gasping for air and getting none.
“You taped off downtown?”
Amanda shrugged. Her blond hair hung in a ponytail down her back, and she wore his old hunting jacket, dark yoga pants and shirt. She’d obviously considered the best way to go undetected during her trek. She’d been planning this for a while. And just who had he said good night to a couple of hours before? She slouched on the leather sofa in the family room, putting her booted feet up on the coffee table. Collin knocked her feet off the table and stood over her.
“What the hell, Amanda! What are you thinking?”
His sister straightened on the sofa and shrugged. “It isn’t like I took a jackhammer to the pavement,” she said sullenly.
“It isn’t like we have the budget to take a street crew off their job to take down your five rolls of duct tape, either.” James tossed two remaining rolls to Collin and put three emptied rolls on the entry table. “Look, I’m not filing a report. This time,” he said sternly. “But this isn’t like the fire you helped to put out. This is a straight-up nuisance, and it’s the third time I’ve caught her out with her tape. The last time, she taped a giant maze through the courthouse square, and the time before that she taped the high school principal into his house.”
Collin caught a hint of mirth in James’s eyes. But this was so not the time to go easy on Amanda. Even though Old Man Tolbert had been running Slippery Rock High with an iron fist since before Collin’s high school days.
“I deconstructed the maze and you can’t prove I was the one to tape Troll-bert into his house,” she said and then mumbled, “On the third snow day he screwed us out of last year.”
“Col, I know you’ve got your hands full with the orchard and all, but I can’t keep covering for your kid sister. It could mean my badge.”
“No, I’ll take care of it. This won’t happen again,” Collin promised his friend, wondering how long he would be able to keep it. He hadn’t even realized Amanda was gone tonight.
Or any of the other times she’d snuck out of the house since he’d grounded her.
He wasn’t good at this stand-in-father thing.
“If you think it’ll help, I’ll take her to the station house. She can spend the night in a holding cell.”
Amanda’s eyes widened. “You can’t send me to jail.”
“Au contraire,” James said. “I can. And if your brother wasn’t one of my best friends, you’d already be there.”
“I’ve got this one,” Collin said. He walked James to the front door. “I’ll make sure this doesn’t happen again, man.”
“I’m not always going to be the one getting the call about her antics, Col. I know you guys are going through some stuff right now, but if one of the other deputies catches her, she’ll do more than spend a night in our county lockup, you know?”
Collin nodded. “Yeah, I know.”
“This isn’t us painting the mascot on the water tower or Mara resetting the stoplight so it taps out an SOS in Morse code.”
“I know.” God, did he know.
Collin had once thought the rebellious Tyler gene had skipped his baby sister, but Amanda seemed to be making up for lost time. And he didn’t know how to help her.
How the hell was he supposed to come down hard on her when he’d done worse than she had on so many other occasions? The difference was he didn’t get caught. She not only had the Tyler Rebel gene, but their mother’s Bad Timing gene.
“Thanks for bringing her home, J. I’ll take care of it. This won’t happen again.”
James stepped out onto the front porch. “See you for the fish fry Sunday?”
Collin nodded. “Sure. I’m bringing the apples, remember?”
James got into the squad car and backed down the drive. Collin closed the front door and rested his forehead against it for a second.
“What the hell were you thinking, Amanda? What are you trying to do?”
She didn’t answer.
“Are you trying to get sent to some halfway house for rejects? Because if Sheriff Calhoun or one of the other deputies catches you out one night, that’s where you’ll go. It won’t matter that I’m your older brother, but it will matter that I don’t have custodial rights. That you don’t have parental supervision.”
Still no answer.
“You could wind up in juvenile hall.”
Nothing.
Collin turned around.
Amanda lay on the sofa, a round pillow clutched to her chest, asleep. Her legs were curled up to her chest, the way she’d slept when she was a baby, and the ponytail was fanned out over the sofa cushions.
“What am I going to do with you?” he asked, but her only answer was a soft snore.
Collin gathered his sister in his arms as if she weighed nothing and carried her upstairs and down the long hall to her bedroom. When he pulled back the electric-pink covers, he saw Mara’s old doll on the pillow. It was one of those life-size dolls that seemed to walk alongside when a little girl held its hands. Mara had used it to fake out their grandparents every time she’d snuck out as a teen.
“I’m trying, Amanda, but I don’t know what you need,” he said as he laid her sleeping form on the bed. Collin pulled the covers over her and smoothed her hair off her face. “I wish I could say they’re coming back, but I can’t. I’m sorry. I wish I could change it. I wish I could make our family like every other family in Slippery Rock, but I can’t. I’m what you’ve got, kid. Me and Gran, and she’s not as strong as she used to be. The upside of that is that the two of you are all I’ve got, and I’m not going to let you down the way our parents let me and Mara down, okay? I’m going to get you through this.”
Amanda snuggled into her pillow as another snore escaped her lips. The sullen expression was gone, the rebellious bent to her shoulders nonexistent. She was just a kid. A lonely, screwed-up kid whose parents showed up two weeks after her grandfather’s funeral, saying it was a wake-up call, and that they wanted to build a relationship with their youngest daughter. They had actually stayed at the orchard for just over a year, but when Gran needed the hip replacement, things got too real for Samson and Maddie and they’d left in the middle of the night, just before Christmas.
From the second they arrived, Collin wanted to make them leave, but the hope he’d seen in Amanda’s eyes, the desperation he’d seen in Gran’s, had kept him from kicking them right back to wherever they’d been living. Prior to that visit, the last time they’d been at the orchard had been when Collin and Mara graduated from high school, and that had been a quick trip between what Samson Tyler called “business meetings.” Collin had heard him begging for money from Granddad, though, so he’d known it was a lie.
Collin had caused Amanda’s rebellion. If he’d only kicked them out, like Mara had suggested, none of this would be happening. There would have been no time for Amanda to get so attached to them that she forgot they couldn’t be relied upon.
He’d been pissed after their mother had called to say they were taking more time in Florida. Even more pissed when the two weeks she’d said they needed turned into two months. He hadn’t heard from them since mid-January. Not a phone call or an email. At first, all he’d thought about was what an inconvenience it was to have to look after Amanda while they sunned themselves in Florida. How much time he was taking away from the orchard and his plans.
He’d never thought about the toll this must be taking on her.
Collin closed her bedroom door quietly.
For as long as he could remember, Samson had talked about how things would be different in Florida. How they would find a good life in Florida. Apparently, they had found that better life.
Now he had to figure out how to make a better life for his sister here in Slippery Rock. Before he lost her.
* * *
SAVANNAH WOKE THE next morning feeling restless. She showered and dressed and then shoved the sequined number she’d worn the night before to the back of her closet. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded of Collin Tyler’s walkout.
Or her own idiocy.
Mama Hazel was in the kitchen when she walked in, squeezing orange juice into a tall carafe. Hazel Walters was sixty-two years and one hundred pounds of feisty. Her hair was steel-gray and she had lines around her eyes, but the backs of her hands were still smooth and rich.
“It’s about time you got out of bed. You’re back on the ranch now, not in your fancy Nashville apartment.”
“So I’m supposed to wake up with the rooster and ride the range?” Savannah teased as she snagged a glass from the cabinet and poured juice from the filled carafe. Hazel began filling a paper plate with biscuits and bacon.
“Wouldn’t hurt. Levi and your father have been up since dawn, you know.”
“Levi is a paragon of virtue,” Savannah said drily. Levi had left the bar early, and alone. Levi hadn’t made a play for a woman and been walked out on.
Levi was a football star. Levi made the pros. Levi would have been inducted into the Hall of Fame if not for a squidgy hit. But even though he’d blown out his knee, he’d kept his opponent from scoring.
Levi. Levi.
Freaking. Levi.
“Pssh. Levi has his bad qualities.”
“And I have my good ones. After all, if it weren’t for me, the Walters clan wouldn’t have a black sheep. And every family needs a black sheep.”
“Sweetheart, you’re no black sheep. You are my beautiful angel.” Hazel reached up and tucked a wayward strand of hair behind Savannah’s ear. “When I saw these braids for the first time on television, I wasn’t sure I liked them. Your natural hair was always the prettiest of corkscrew curls. I was wrong, though, it’s just as beautiful like this.” She put the plate of food in Savannah’s hands, tucked a thermos between her elbow and rib cage and motioned her to the door. “Take this out to your brother. He didn’t bother to come in for breakfast. He’ll be in the barn by now.”
Savannah walked across the front yard toward the massive barn. It was painted red, as it had been for as long as she could remember, but the black tin roof was new. The last time she’d been home the roof was still shake-shingled. Not that it mattered what the roof of the barn was made from. It just looked funny to her.
The same swing, fashioned from the metal seat of an old tractor, hung from a limb of the ancient oak in the side yard. The same ranch trucks sat before the barn, and the same horses ran in the paddock behind it. At least, they looked like the same horses. Somehow, despite growing up on the ranch, she hadn’t learned much about farm animals.
She found Levi in the barn office, clicking through a file on his computer. “Mama said you skipped breakfast,” she said, setting the plate on the desk.
“And you’re her errand girl sent to make me eat?”
Savannah sat in the hard wooden chair across the desk from her brother. “Something like that. I didn’t want to get roped into whatever confection she was starting to make, anyway.”
“Fish fry on Sunday. She’s probably prepping her apple-caramel pie.” Levi eyed the plate as if trying to convince himself not to eat.
“You on a diet or something?”
“No.” He stuck a couple of bacon slices into the center of a biscuit. He took a bite. “Have fun at the Slope last night?”
Savannah folded her arms across her chest. “What if I did?”
“Just tell me you didn’t go home with Merle, okay?”
“Not that it’s any of your business, but I didn’t go home with anybody. I came back here.”
“I didn’t hear you come in.”
“Are you my keeper now?”
“No. Dad mentioned—”
“Would you both back off? I’m twenty-seven years old, and I’ve been living on my own in a major metropolitan area for the past couple of years. I think I can handle Slippery Rock without accidentally falling on some guy’s penis and impregnating myself.”
Levi blinked. “It isn’t that we don’t think you can take care of yourself—”
“Sure it is.” Savannah stood and began to pace. “You want me to be helpless, but I’m not. I’m like Mama.” At least I want to be.
Mama Hazel was always calm, always knew what to say and how to fix a hurt. She baked pies and loved her family.
“Mama has a purpose.”
“And I don’t?” She didn’t know why she was picking a fight with her brother. It was stupid and childish, especially when she wasn’t sure she wanted the things she kept telling her family she wanted. She liked singing, and she was good at it, but there was a difference between the fun of karaoke night with a few friends and singing in front of an audience in an arena. In having all those people scrutinize her every move. There were good points, too, like meeting little girls who wanted to be singers. A few of them had looked up to her. At least, it seemed as if they had.
Levi just watched her for a long moment. “Mama worked in the Peace Corps, Van. She didn’t vagabond all over the world with a hobo sack over her shoulder.”
“I’m not a vagabond, and my luggage is Louis Vuitton. I lived in Nashville and I’ve been on tour with the top artist at the label.”
Levi nodded as he finished his biscuit.
“Fine, I have no illusions about world peace and I’m not curing cancer. That doesn’t mean my dreams are inconsequential.”
She just needed to figure out what her dreams were. Did she want to go back to Nashville and face the music? The one part of the city she liked was the weekend music program the label put together for underprivileged kids. Helping those kids find their music had been the highlight of her months there. Now she wasn’t welcome in Nashville and definitely not in the music program.
“They could be so much more, Van. You had a scholarship to the university. You were talking about med school.”
“And then I realized I didn’t want ten more years of school. I wanted...something else.”
Levi waited, watching her expectantly. “What is the something else?”
“I don’t know.” She crossed her arms over her chest.
“Is that why you’re here ‘on a break’ now? Because you don’t know what you want?”
“Is that so wrong?” She didn’t wait for his answer.
Savannah stalked out of the barn and started down one of the trails leading to Slippery Rock Lake, which separated Walters Ranch from the Tyler’s orchard. Through the trees she could see sunlight dancing over it.
What was wrong with her? Getting turned down by a guy was no reason to take her frustrations out on her family. And keeping this lie that things in Nashville were perfect was ridiculous. Things were so not right in Nashville it wasn’t even funny.
She’d gone to Nashville to try to get people to notice her the way that nobody had in Slippery Rock. To validate her in some way. When she was onstage she was more than Levi’s sister. Offstage, though, she was still the kid someone had left on the steps of a police station with her name pinned to her jacket.
The truth was that she didn’t know what she wanted. She liked singing, but had found out that she detested being on a big stage in front of thousands of people. She enjoyed working with the kids in the music program, but she didn’t play an instrument so mostly she’d just encouraged their interest. Now she was back in Slippery Rock, pretending she had her life together, when in truth it was falling apart and she had no idea how to make things right or if she even wanted to.
She’d been wrong to come back here.
Wrong, wrong, wrong.
Savannah should have kept driving and completely reinvented herself in some town where no one knew who she was.
She could use some distraction.
As she neared the lake, she saw Collin sitting on the hood of his old pickup truck, staring out over the calm water. She hadn’t realized she’d walked so far.
“Hi,” she said as she neared him. Brilliant May sunlight gave his blond hair streaks of white, which was just unfair. Women in Nashville paid hundreds of dollars to beauticians for streaks like that.
“Savannah.”
“You say that like you’re unhappy to see me,” she said, leaning against the fender of his truck and shooting a flirtatious look his way.
Collin glanced at her. “I’m not.”
“Not unhappy to see me? I figured,” she said, pretending she couldn’t read the disdain in his expression. He might have turned her down last night, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from flirting with him again. “What brings you to my side of the lake?”
“Technically, you’re on my side.”
Savannah grinned wickedly. “Do you want to know what brought me to you, then?”
Collin sat straighter. “No.”
It was the panic in his eyes that did her in. It was fun flirting with a man who was reluctant to flirt back. It wasn’t fun to flirt with a man who was not only not interested but potentially afraid of her. Although why Collin would be fearful of her, Savannah couldn’t quite figure out.
“You don’t have to look at me like that. I’m not going to jump your bones out here.” Savannah stood straight, smoothing her hands over the thin tank top she wore. It was royal blue and she knew it contrasted nicely with her skin.
“I can take care of myself, whether or not you want to jump my bones,” he said, and she thought she caught a hint of laughter in his voice. It seemed like progress. She didn’t want him to hate her, after all. They could be friends. “Well, I didn’t come here to see you—”
“And I didn’t come here to see you,” she put in.
“So how did we both wind up here?”
“I needed a break from Levi the Lecturer.” She shook her head when Collin started to say something. “Or maybe he deserved a break from me. I was in a mood.”
“And now you’re not?” Collin seemed genuinely curious.
“I’m trying to not be in a mood. Being in a mood gets me into trouble. By the way, he has no idea about last night, and he’s not going to.” And maybe, if she really was going to make a change, it should start now. “I should apologize for all that. I...um...” She wasn’t quite sure how to explain last night without laying bare those old insecurities.
“‘Was in a mood’?” Collin asked, and this time she definitely caught a hint of laughter in his voice.
“Something like that.”
“What caused the mood?”
Nope. Not going there. Collin Tyler might not hate her, but that didn’t mean she needed to dump all her baggage on him. He was barely an acquaintance. She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”
Collin nodded. “I was in a weird mood, too,” he said.
“So you did want to dance with me?” Savannah leaned her shoulder against the truck and crossed one foot over the other in the dirt.
“No,” he said, a little too quickly, a little too harshly. She couldn’t ignore the quick hit of pain. Stupid pride.
“Don’t go getting all soft on me now,” Savannah said. “Tell me how you really feel.”
He didn’t look at her for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he seemed completely focused on a tree with branches hanging low over the smooth water.
“Savannah, I have... There’s a lot.” He drew his brows together. “You’re Levi’s sister. I just don’t think about you that way.”
Oh. Well, that was way more information than she wanted at—Savannah glanced at her watch—ten o’clock in the morning. The day after she’d made a serious come-on to the man.
“Maybe we could be friends,” he said.
The feelings she felt around Collin were definitely not the friendship breed of feelings. Good thing she was decent at covering up her true feelings. That was the one thing in life she’d always been good at.
“Sure, whatever. I just wanted to apologize because I had a little too much to drink last night. But I’m going back to Nashville in a couple of weeks, so we don’t have to pretend we’re friends or anything. We can just go back to being Levi’s sister and Levi’s best friend. It’s all good,” she said, hating the words even as she said them. Hating the intentionally careless tone she’d pushed into her voice.
Savannah was pretty sure she didn’t want to be Collin’s friend.
He might not think he wanted her as his girlfriend—not even in the short term—but she definitely didn’t want to just be his friend.
And if no one ever called her Levi’s sister for the rest of her life, it would be too soon.
She backed away from the truck, feeling Collin’s gaze on her the way she’d felt his hands the night before.
“See you around, friend,” she said and then turned and walked away from him as quickly as she could.
CHAPTER SIX (#u2310f482-b0e4-5557-b1e9-b66522d980f0)
COLLIN WANTED—BADLY—to adjust the tie trying its best to strangle him. He liked farm work because most days the dress code called for jeans and a T-shirt, like he’d been wearing last Saturday when Savannah had found him at the lake. God, he’d like to be at the lake now instead of this conference room talking to the head of a regional grocery chain about the next step in his plan to expand Tyler Orchard. Even if being there meant lying some more about how Savannah being Levi’s younger sister was the reason he’d walked out of the Slope that night.
Walking out of the Slope had had zero to do with Levi and one hundred percent to do with the things he’d been thinking while breathing in Savannah’s sweet perfume. He’d been thinking they could take a drive out to the lake, or maybe just a quick run to his truck, so he could strip her down to see if her skin was that glowy, coppery tone everywhere, or if it was just a trick of the lighting. Yeah, there was no way he was telling Savannah any of that. He didn’t need her kind of distraction right now.
Collin focused on the question Jake Westfall asked about growth averages for the past three years. Luckily, he only needed half of his brain to talk growth averages, as the other half was still firmly in the imaginary bed of his truck. He needed to get his mind fully into this office building in Joplin, an hour west of Slippery Rock. With effort, he pushed Savannah all the way out of his brain, imagining he and the other executives were walking one of the ruler-straight rows of apple trees instead of sitting in this conference room, with its wide windows looking over the downtown area, the potted ficus in the corner, and its granite-topped table.
Damn, but he’d like to loosen this damn tie. Suits and ties were for bankers and insurance salesmen, not orchard owners. The last time he’d worn a suit, this very suit, had been his grandfather’s funeral a year and a half before. The only other time he’d worn it had been to the party his grandparents had thrown after he’d graduated college with his degree in agri-business.
The other suits in the room didn’t appear to be suffering from the same issues as he was, though, so he kept his hands away from his neck as he wrapped up his presentation about how he’d taken the orchard from a small, family-run business to a larger business, still family run but with more ties to the community.
Adding peaches and pears to the apples Tyler Orchards was known for had been a risky move, but it was paying off. The fruit stand his grandfather had run had become a fruit market, and then other local farmers had joined in, creating a full-fledged farmers’ market with locally grown vegetables, dairy products and locally sourced honey. Going into business with a regional grocery company was a logical step in his plans to take Tyler Orchards to the next level. It would increase the family’s financial stability. Money might not buy happiness, but it definitely made it easier to enjoy life.
If the deal went through with Westfall Foods, maybe it would ease whatever was stressing Amanda out to the point she was using duct tape to reroute traffic downtown and getting caught up with a group of high school firebugs.
“We’ve gone down this road before with local growers. They promise us the moon, but then they deliver late or give us sub-par goods.”
He wouldn’t risk his reputation or the reputation of the orchard his grandfather had built from nothing. That’s what made the difference, Collin wanted to say. He didn’t think Jake Westfall, the lead partner in the chain, would be swayed by an impassioned plea about personal reputation or work ethic, though. Especially if he’d been burned by someone making the same impassioned plea in the past.
“I could send you to our pages on Yelp or Facebook or any of the review sites, and you’d see thousands of satisfied customers’ comments. I could make a fifteen-minute speech about personal integrity. But I have a feeling you’ve read those comments and heard that speech before. I can only stress...” He paused. Because what else did he have except his word? These corporate executives didn’t know him, and they didn’t know how important this move was for his business. His family.
He handed another paper-clipped bunch of papers across the conference table. Recommendations from a few local restaurants and B and Bs he’d begun supplying three years before.
“I’m going to give that speech to you anyway. My family has been growing organic apples for a local fruit stand for more than forty years. Quality has always been important to us, and that isn’t going to stop if we begin contracting with you. If anything, that focus on quality will increase. You have to make the right decision for your stores. I can only tell you that contracting with Tyler Orchards is a good move for both our businesses.”
The three executives exchanged a look and then Westfall said, “If you could give us a few minutes, we’d like to have the room.”
Collin nodded, picked up the leather attaché case he’d carried in college and left the conference room with its broad table and leather executive chairs. Alone in a tiled hallway with photographic prints of the Ozark Mountains and Mark Twain National Forest, he considered his options.
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