Christmas In A Small Town
Kristina Knight
Running out on her wedding was the best decision ever!A cheating fiancé sends Camden Harris fleeing to her grandparents’ home in Missouri. When her ex follows, determined to win her back, Camden makes a deal with neighbor Levi Walters: they’ll pretend to be in love and she’ll support his plan to buy her grandparents’ land.The boy from her childhood has grown up into an impressive man. His charm, good looks and sweet gestures make it difficult for Camden to remember this is fake. And Levi’s kisses only confuse her more.
Running out on her wedding was the best decision ever!
A cheating fiancé sends Camden Harris fleeing to her grandparents’ home in Missouri. When her ex follows, determined to win her back, Camden makes a deal with neighbor Levi Walters: they’ll pretend to be in love and she’ll support his plan to buy her grandparents’ land.
The boy from her childhood has grown up into an impressive man. His charm, good looks and sweet gestures make it difficult for Camden to remember this is fake. And Levi’s kisses only confuse her more.
“So we pretend to kiss, go on a fake date to the dance and your ex finally moves on. What do I get?”
Camden drew her bottom lip between her teeth. “I’ll suggest to my grandfather that selling you those forty acres might not be a terrible idea.”
Levi held out his hand, and when Camden took it, he pulled her closer. “But you haven’t asked me to the dance,” he said. It was fun watching those golden flecks in her eyes sparkle to life in annoyance.
“Levi, will you go with me to the Christmas dance tonight?” she asked, and turned on her heel without waiting for his answer. Levi held fast to her hand, and Camden turned to look at him again.
“Yes, I’ll go with you. Do I get a corsage?” She pursed her full lips, and Levi couldn’t hold back the grin any longer. “You’re cute when you’re annoyed.”
“You’re annoying when you speak,” she retorted. “Are we doing this or not?”
“Yes, we’re doing this.”
“Good.” Camden pulled away from him and said, “I’ll see you tonight.” Then she was gone.
When Levi got to the pasture, he was still thinking about kissing Camden. What kind of man cheated when he had a beautiful woman like Camden already in his bed? What kind of man pretended to date a woman like Camden, not to get her into bed, but to enter into a real estate deal with her grandfather?
Dear Reader (#uc6693e7b-8c6d-5898-b756-2db4849375d0),
I adore Christmas! From the music to the lights to the anticipation as gifts pile up under the tree, Christmas is by far my favorite holiday. I especially love small towns that go all out with one special event after another until everyone falls into a holiday stupor after the last sip of eggnog.
Levi and Camden are positive of one thing this holiday season: they won’t be falling in love. But when Camden’s sleazy ex comes to town, suddenly they’re knee-deep in a pretend affair that is feeling all too real...and if they aren’t careful, love is exactly what they’ll find under their tree this year!
Christmas in a Small Town is all about the small-town celebration of Christmas and, of course, the greatest gift we can give one another: love.
I love hearing from readers. You can catch up with me through my website and newsletter at www.kristinaknightauthor.com (http://www.kristinaknightauthor.com) or on Facebook, www.Facebook.com/kristinaknightromanceauthor (https://www.Facebook.com/kristinaknightromanceauthor), and if you’re a visual reader like me, follow my books on my Pinterest boards—you’ll get some behind-the-scenes information and lots of yummy pictures.
Happy reading!
Kristina
Christmas 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 everyone who loves the holiday season!
A heartfelt thank you goes out to Lyle and Lois at the Serendipity Stockdog School. I am awed by not only what you teach the animals in your care, but the way you teach them. The next time I’m in town, I want to see that herding ducks thing live and in person instead of on video!
Contents
Cover (#u279d5435-8653-5e13-a5fc-d2a7931d1d55)
Back Cover Text (#u6784793d-f928-55ca-b57c-82c79a72f026)
Introduction (#ufc514a90-cbc0-542d-beae-2ff1a8d9b3ac)
Dear Reader (#u351cdfc0-f17d-5eb8-b28e-2bc831652fe4)
Title Page (#ud2669195-43b5-5ca9-9108-e47384ff0358)
About the Author (#ud971ebf1-bad1-5d74-8d8a-f7062726bb51)
Dedication (#ueb3b669a-2cc5-5df8-9f2b-8bce35afe6c0)
CHAPTER ONE (#u8410eec6-73f7-52e8-a6d3-9b8e54678dc2)
CHAPTER TWO (#ucb2a3ea3-7d2d-5d75-be96-24bdc8b7aedb)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc73b5cf9-c031-59b0-9734-9c808b8e6ddf)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u562d03d7-022b-50d5-b130-d36148aff057)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#uc6693e7b-8c6d-5898-b756-2db4849375d0)
SHE SHOULD HAVE changed before she got on the highway. Or off the highway onto the two-lane road leading into town. Or at any of the rest areas between Kansas City and Slippery Rock County line—she had to have passed at least twenty during the trip south.
Camden Harris eyed the stained parking lot and the layers of bodily fluids, oil, gasoline and whatever else that covered the pavement. She swiped a hand over the miles of tulle covering her hips, creating what her mother had described as “bridal perfection” in the dress shop a few weeks earlier. She eyed the stained parking lot once again. Nothing about this gas station was bridal perfection, but then, what small-town gas station ever promised perfection? Gas stations were about utility. Getting to the next stop on whatever journey a person was taking. Camden sighed.
She could chance that whatever gas was left in the tank of her car would get her where she was going—although the red needle was precariously close to the E marker—or she could get out.
Knuckles rapped sharply against the window beside her, causing Camden to jump in her seat. An older man wearing a faded Slippery Rock Sailors ball cap and an old gray hoodie with grease-stained jeans stood beside her car.
“Fill it up?” he asked. His voice held the gentle twang of the Ozarks that she remembered from childhood summers spent at her grandparents’ dog school just outside Slippery Rock. “I’m guessing you want the high-octane stuff,” he said, not waiting for her to answer as he grabbed the nozzle from the machine at his back.
Camden rolled down her window. “Thank you. I didn’t realize gas stations still offered full service fill-ups.”
“Most people do it themselves. You had the look of a desperate woman, though, and I’m guessing that dress and my concrete wouldn’t mix well.”
The older man pulled a squeegee and a bottle of window washer fluid from a receptacle on the side of the gas pump and began washing her windows. In the stark lighting from the overhead bulbs, she realized she’d hit about a million insects on the drive down, and that the light rain storm she’d passed through around Springfield had left a thin coating of dust and spots on her windshield.
“Thanks, again,” she said, and opened her phone. She’d gotten this far on her own, but now that she was in town, she would need help finding the old farm. She knew it was vaguely west of town, but other than that, she had no clue how to get to her grandparents’ place. How ridiculous was that?
She was a twenty-seven-year-old woman, had been successfully navigating the Kansas City streets since she was sixteen, had managed to find her way around both Chicago and Atlanta on her own. But she had no idea how to get to her grandparents’ farm in a town tinier than the neighborhood surrounding her parents’ Mission Hills mansion.
Camden entered the address from her phone into the car’s navigation system and waited.
“We don’t get many cars like this one around Slippery Rock. Not even in the summer when the tourists come to town,” the older man was saying as he finished cleaning the windshield. The gas pump clicked off, and he plopped the squeegee and bottle of cleaning fluid back into the side bin. “Passing through?”
Camden handed the man her credit card and shook her head. “Visiting for a while.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said and hurried inside to ring up her purchase.
“Address not found,” said the voice of the Australian man she’d chosen for her car’s navigation system. Usually she liked the voice she’d dubbed Thor, but this time she didn’t like what he had to say.
Camden entered the address again, and while she waited, looked up her grandparents using one of those online address finders. The same address she had in her phone popped up on her screen just as Thor told her, again, that the address didn’t exist.
“You’re just messing with me now, aren’t you?” she said.
“Nope, it really is thirty bucks on the nose,” the gas station attendant replied, passing her card and the receipt slip through the window.
Camden cringed. “Sorry. I was just talking to Th—uh, my navigation system. It says my destination is an unknown address.”
The older man shook his head. “Happens all the time down here. Those computer maps focus a lot on the big cities, but you get into the rural routes and they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Where are you?”
Camden blinked. “Where am I what?” She was in her car. At the gas station. Unless she’d fallen asleep at the wheel and was dreaming all of this while in some weird comatose state in a hospital. She pinched the back of her hand. Nope, that hurt. She was awake, all right. Awake and wearing her wedding dress at what was probably the last full-service gas station in the entire world.
“Where you going?”
“Oh, of course. Harris Farms.” Camden began reciting the address from her phone, but the older man cut her off.
“Sure, Calvin and Bonita’s place. You’re gonna continue on this road till you hit the grocery store. At the light you’ll turn south for a couple of blocks before taking Double A Highway West out of town. You’ll turn back north a few miles out when you see the county road sign, then follow 251 until you get to their lane. Can’t miss it. Bonita bought Calvin one of them big mailboxes a few years ago, in the shape of a collie. I swear you could fit a small child in that thing.” He tapped the roof of her car. “Nope, we don’t see many cars like this one around town. You have a nice evening, ma’am.”
Camden’s mind swirled with the information the older man had offered up. Straight to the grocery store, follow that road to the highway, follow the highway to the county road that would lead to the farm. She could handle this. Camden put the Porsche in Drive and waved to the older man as she pulled back onto the road that led through Slippery Rock.
Just as he’d said, a few blocks on, the grocery store stood on the corner with a flashing red light. Camden flicked her blinker on and turned toward what she vaguely remembered as Slippery Rock’s downtown. The old brick buildings looked familiar, but the large grandstand area was new. Several of the buildings appeared to have recently constructed roofs or walls, probably cleanup from the tornado that had nearly ripped the little town apart last spring. She came to a stop sign, and hanging on the pole was a sign for the highway the older man had mentioned. With an arrow pointing to the right. The only problem was the other sign, the one that read One-Way Street, with an arrow pointing the opposite direction. Maybe there was an outlet.
Camden followed the one-way street down a few blocks, until another arrow directed her to turn left to meet back up with the highway that would lead to her grandparents’ farm. She continued to follow the arrows and the highway markers until she wound up exactly where she’d been before—the same corner with the same arrow indicating the one-way street, going the opposite direction of the highway she needed to take out of town. Maybe she’d missed a sign somewhere.
Camden pulled the Porsche through the intersection and followed the signs, paying close attention to each intersection she passed. And wound up back at the first, with the arrows pointing in different directions, and Thor’s voice echoing in her mind, telling her that the address she wanted did not exist.
There had to be another gas station or some business where she could ask for directions to get out of the endless loop she’d found herself in. Camden began following the signs again, this time focusing on the businesses—all with closed signs in their windows—along the route. The only place that appeared to be open at—she checked her watch—eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening was what appeared to be a bar. The Slippery Slope.
Camden blew out a breath, contemplating her options. Go into a bar in what would have been her wedding dress. Keep driving around in circles until the other businesses opened the next day. She’d already decided that she wouldn’t call her grandparents, for two reasons. First, they didn’t know she was coming. And second, as sleepy as this part of the state was, it was still dangerous at night. She didn’t hunt, but she knew it was deer season. She wouldn’t risk her grandparents trying to drive into town at night when deer would be out.
Yet driving in circles seemed pointless.
Decided, Camden parked the Porsche outside the bar and stepped out, shivering at the chill in the air. Camden gathered as much of the skirt of the dress in her hands as she could. This street seemed marginally cleaner than the gas station lot, but neither could be confused with the clean flooring of a church. She had no intention of wearing this dress again, no intention of getting married at all, but she didn’t want to ruin it.
Until five hours ago, she’d been ready to become Mrs. Grant Wentworth, the debutante, beauty-queen wife of the next partner of Wentworth, Carlson and Wentworth, the best law firm in Kansas City, Missouri. Grant, a future mayor of Kansas City, would become governor one day, and probably president of the United States eventually. But instead of marrying him, she was running away because while she’d been prepared to marry a man she didn’t quite love, she wasn’t prepared to marry a man who’d had so little regard for Camden that he’d been banging her maid of honor. Yep, in the closet just down the hall from the room where her mother and several friends waited for the society wedding of the season to begin. She’d wanted Heather’s opinion on the dress and hair combination before walking down the aisle, and thank God she had. If she hadn’t gone looking for her maid of honor, if she hadn’t heard the noises in the closet, she might have married that stupid son of a bitch. Might have truly thrown her life away.
When she saw Grant bent over Heather in the closet, though, it was as if a Camden she barely remembered had woken up. That Camden didn’t scream or yell—she simply turned around, grabbed her bag from the chaise in the dressing room and walked out. She’d walked out of the historic mansion where the wedding was to be held, gotten into her car, driven to her mother’s house and thrown some clothes into a suitcase, and driven out of their suburb, out of Kansas City. Out of a life she’d never wanted to live, and away from the rut her life had been in since joining the Junior League after that last pageant five years ago.
Camden caught a glimpse of herself in a picture window. Not a single lock of hair out of place, but there was a crease where the seat belt had lain across the bodice of the dress. She smoothed her hand over her hip and felt a few errant threads along the tulle roses. She should have left it at her mother’s house, where it could have been returned and become some other bride’s perfect dress, but she had been afraid if she took the time to change, someone might have found her. Convinced her to go back.
Now this dress would never see the inside of a church. Camden sighed. It wasn’t her choice for a dress but it was pretty. And she’d ruined it. After an hours-long car ride in the cramped front seat of a Porsche, it would never be the same; she might as well stop pretending she could box it up and send it back.
Camden released the skirt of the designer gown, letting it trail along the pavement as she continued toward the bar.
If she were to consider marriage one day, it would be on her terms. No formal society wedding. No fiancé her parents liked more than she did. And no wedding that would seal a partnership or a merger, like the one she’d barely escaped a few hours before.
Her life had suddenly become an adult version of the game Clue. Only instead of the groom murdering the bride in the study with a candlestick, he was doing the maid of honor in the closet of the historic Kansas City mansion.
It wasn’t that she’d expected Grant to vow his undying love, but she’d assumed—at the very least—those vows would have included fidelity. And that his fidelity would have been in effect since his proposal over the Fourth of July weekend.
Camden sighed. Obviously, she’d been wrong. On so very many levels.
And now, wearing what would have been her wedding dress, she had to face however many strangers were in this small-town bar and ask directions to the only place she’d ever felt was home.
* * *
LEVI WALTERS TOSSED a dart toward the board on the wall, liking the sound the sharp tip made as it sank into the rubber bull’s-eye area. “That’s three. You’re toast,” he said as Collin Tyler, his best friend, picked up three darts from the booth the two of them shared with Aiden Buchanan, another of their group.
It was Wednesday night, and usually there would be five of them here. Shooting darts, drinking a few beers. But James had his hands full with Collin’s sister, Mara, and their two-year-old, Zeke. Adam was spending more time with his wife, Jenny, and while Aiden had been doing a good impression of a man about to propose ever since Julia Colson blew into Slippery Rock, he was here at the bar while Julia was going over lighting and dress options with Savannah, Levi’s sister and Collin’s fiancée. Julia ran a dress shop and was opening a destination-wedding business in a Victorian home that overlooked Slippery Rock Lake. Tonight, she and Savannah were testing out lighting options for Savannah’s upcoming wedding to Collin. Since the two of them were also trying on wedding gowns, Collin was banned from the area. He didn’t seem to mind.
For that matter, Aiden didn’t seem to mind being away from Julia, and that was just weird. For the past couple of weeks, the two of them had been inseparable. Maybe Aiden was getting itchy feet again. He’d only been in Slippery Rock for a couple of months, but that was several weeks longer than any visit he’d made since leaving town after high school.
And why did Levi care what was going on in Aiden’s love life? Or, for that matter, the love lives of any of the guys he’d grown up with? It wasn’t like he wanted what they had. Maybe someday, but not right now. He had enough going on in his life without dealing with a woman, too. This winter, he wanted to work on new organic lines for the dairy. They had milk and cream and cheeses, but he wanted to add ice cream and other dairy products. That would take time to develop.
He still had to figure out what to do with the older dairy cows, those his father had used before the dairy went organic. Right now, the cows were on land rented from a neighbor, but that wasn’t a permanent solution.
And his parents weren’t getting any younger. Sooner or later, they were going to have to downsize, and that would mean moving them into town from the farmhouse where they’d lived for the past thirty-five years of their marriage. That would also take time, not just with the move, but with the convincing. He didn’t want Bennett and Mama Hazel to be overwhelmed with a big house, like their neighbors Calvin and Bonita Harris.
No, he had too much going on to be worried about a relationship, too. So why was he getting all maudlin when he should just be shooting darts?
Collin wrote down his scores on the little sheet of paper on the table, and Aiden grabbed the third set of darts to begin throwing. No bull’s-eyes for Collin, but he was still hanging in. Aiden would drop out after this round, no matter what he shot. He had no chance of catching Collin, much less Levi.
“What’s going on with you?” Collin asked and then finished off his bottle of beer. He signaled Juanita, the bar’s waitress, and she started in their direction.
“Shooting darts,” Levi said and finished his own beer. Maybe he had a brain tumor, pressing on whatever part of the brain that was in charge of impulse control. Because the idea of starting up a relationship, just because every person he knew was now coupled off, was definitely impulsive, illogical. Maybe the fog was some kind of early-onset seasonal affective disorder. Not that the changing weather had ever affected him before. He considered the empty bottle in his hand. Maybe it was just time to switch to water. It wasn’t even nine, but it was a Wednesday, and he had work tomorrow.
“Anything else?” Aiden asked.
Levi rolled his shoulders. Would his two friends back off? He was fine. Nothing was wrong. He wasn’t jealous; he didn’t want what his friends had. Not right this second, at any rate. “Would the two of you just shoot darts? Since when is darts night also psychoanalysis night, anyway?”
Collin and Aiden exchanged a look. “Since its inception?” Collin asked. “Since you blew out your knee? Since Adam got messed up in the tornado?”
Okay, so he’d led a few interventions–slash–drinking nights. That didn’t mean he was in need of one himself. “No therapy needed, just the check. Unless you guys want another?” he asked, indicating the empty bottles on the table.
“Another round, boys?” Juanita arrived at the table, and began clearing the empty bottles.
“Nah, I’m headed back to the orchard soon,” Collin said.
Aiden tossed his last dart at the board and hit ten. “Nothing here.” He pulled the darts from the board and put them into the holder to the side. “Julia should be finished up with Savannah by now, and I promised I’d measure for the new cabinets out at the Point.”
The Point was what locals called the Victorian home, set on a low cliff, overlooking Slippery Rock Lake. It was one of the oldest structures to have survived the building of the lake fifty or so years before and had been vacant until Julia came to town in September and bought it, and partnered with Shanna’s, the original owner of the dress shop. Her plan was to turn the old house into a destination wedding venue, although Levi couldn’t see many people intentionally choosing Slippery Rock as their wedding event location. He loved his small town, but it wasn’t touristy like Branson or Lake of the Ozarks. The first wedding set at the old place would be Collin and Savannah’s, on New Year’s Eve.
“Same, just the bill, and a water if you’ve got time,” Levi added.
“If I’ve got time.” Juanita chuckled and looked around the nearly empty bar. “Nope, just can’t fit the water into my busy night.”
“So what’s up?” Collin asked again after Juanita had left. Aiden gathered the other darts, putting them in the holder on the wall. He joined them at the table.
“Where were we?” Aiden asked.
“Headed back to the orchard as soon as Levi here spills on whatever it is that’s eating him.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.” He had a new product line to develop—that meant new vendors to contact and new contracts. Aging parents. A sister getting married in a few more weeks. He didn’t have time for a relationship. And he wasn’t jealous of the relationships his friends were building with their women. Nothing was wrong.
“Sure, you always try to kill the dartboard when you throw.”
“And you always get that look in your eye when you’re taking aim,” Aiden added.
“What look?”
“The look like we’re on the fifteen, fourth down, and need one more touchdown to win state,” Collin offered.
“The look like you’re about to unload on the running back across the line, hoping for a first down,” Aiden offered.
“You guys didn’t play with me when I went to defense. How would you know what I looked like?”
Collin blinked. “High-definition TV. Replay shows. And, you know, we did play with you all through junior high and high school. Doesn’t matter if you’re quarterbacking or playing the defensive line, like you did in college and the pros—the Levi Walters focus is the same.”
“Also, and I don’t think we can emphasize this enough, at least three of your throws pushed the dart through the board and into the wall. So what’s up?” Aiden rolled his bottle of beer through his hands, making it scrape against the table.
It grated on Levi’s nerves.
Just because he had a few strong throws didn’t mean something was bothering him. He certainly wasn’t upset. Levi Walters didn’t get upset. He focused on the job at hand until it was done. Then he focused on the next job. He didn’t get upset. He didn’t get bothered. He didn’t wonder why good things happened to other people.
Which made it all the more weird that he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the guys and their new relationships.
But he definitely wasn’t bothered.
“What do you guys think about the bike trail they’re talking about? The one that will follow the old railroad tracks?”
Collin and Aiden exchanged a look. Neither said anything.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. That land is undeveloped, but it’s adjacent to the ranch, and to the Harris property, too. Could lead to mischievousness, especially during the summer months.”
“He broke out a twenty-five-cent word,” Aiden said.
“Still avoiding the actual conversation, too,” Collin replied. As if Levi weren’t sitting right there with them. As if he weren’t trying to hold a legitimate conversation instead of whatever it was the two of them were trying to get him to admit to.
“Nothing’s bugging me.” He settled his shoulders against the back of the booth. “Just here to throw darts.” The guys stared at him. “And that bike trail could lead to all kinds of other prob—”
The door to the bar opened, and Levi stopped talking. He couldn’t breathe, and that didn’t make any sense at all. It was just a woman. Pretty brown hair pinned up on her head. Pale, creamy skin. He couldn’t see her eyes from this distance, but her lips were red and turned up at the corners. She twirled a set of car keys on her finger, and gathered the train of her dress—a wedding dress, and that was weird—in her other hand, saving it from the closing of the door.
“You were saying?” Collin prodded him, but Levi couldn’t remember what the three of them had been talking about. He’d been a little annoyed with them. Something about the bike trail that still hadn’t been decided on by the county commissioners.
His mouth went a little dry, and he forced himself to take a long breath. Tried to make his heart stop galloping in his chest. She was...the most beautiful figment his imagination had ever created.
“Something’s definitely wrong with him,” Aiden said. And Levi realized his friend was right.
There was something very, very wrong with a man who hallucinated a beautiful woman in a wedding dress. Something really wrong.
Maybe it was a brain tumor, only instead of giving him migraines, the tumor was causing him to imagine beautiful women. Or maybe Adam’s epilepsy was catching. Airborne or something. Didn’t he say that things went fuzzy and stopped looking normal when a seizure was starting?
A beautiful woman, in a wedding dress, in his favorite bar was definitely not normal.
Levi blinked. The woman was still there, standing just inside the door of the bar, looking a little lost. She wasn’t fuzzy around the edges or anything.
So she wasn’t a hallucination, then. He could cross brain tumor off the list of things that were wrong with him. That left the epilepsy. Except that couldn’t be it, because a person didn’t catch epilepsy because he hung out with someone who had the disease. That left...jealousy.
Was he jealous of the relationships his friends were in?
Levi Walters didn’t get jealous. He had everything he needed at the ranch. More than he needed when he thought about the plans he had for the business that had been in his family for three generations. He didn’t need a girlfriend. Definitely didn’t need a woman in his life who walked into a bar in a wedding dress. That was a little too desperate, even for a guy who hadn’t had sex in...more months than he cared to recall.
She focused in on Merle, the bartender, and crossed the room, the heels of her shoes click-clacking across the hardwood floor.
“I’m lost,” she said, and Levi found himself leaving the booth and crossing the bar.
He wasn’t looking for anything. He knew who he was, knew where he was going. He had good friends, and he was happy for those friends.
But there was something about the woman who’d just walked into the bar that was different.
Maybe, just this once, he should let himself consider something different.
CHAPTER TWO (#uc6693e7b-8c6d-5898-b756-2db4849375d0)
CAMDEN CROSSED THE hardwood floor to the bar, wishing she’d at least grabbed the ballet flats she’d worn to the wedding venue that afternoon. The ballet flats wouldn’t echo so much in the cavernous space. At least there weren’t hundreds of people crowding the dance floor, staring at the strange woman in the wedding dress. She really should have thought this whole thing through. Should have taken five minutes at her mother’s house to shed this ridiculous gown.
She couldn’t stop now, though. She was probably the only person in the world to get lost in such a small town. And she wasn’t even really lost. She knew she needed to get on the highway—it was those stupid one-way streets that were causing the problem.
The older man at the bar wore a faded Kansas City Royals T-shirt and was wiping down a mahogany bar that already looked pristinely clean.
“I’m a little lost,” she said, trying to keep her voice low. The only full table was in the back of the bar. What appeared to be three locals were sitting there, and they probably couldn’t overhear her. Still, she didn’t want to advertise her predicament to the whole town. “I’m trying to get on the highway, but every time I hit the intersection, the one-ways make me go the wrong direction.”
“You want a beer?” The older man’s voice was gruff, but he didn’t seem annoyed.
“No, just the directions, please.” He looked at her for a long moment. “Okay, and the beer.”
He grabbed a bottle from below the bar and slid it across the shiny surface. The mountains on the label were icy blue. She eyed the amber bottle for a long time, hearing her mother’s voice in her head. Telling her wine was a lady’s drink, but that a lady never had more than half a glass. As if she were living in the 1800s and not the twenty-first century. Real women drank. And she was tired of living by rules that were not her own.
What the heck? She was in a bar, in a strange town, wearing her wedding dress. “Do you have a bottle opener?”
“Twist-off cap,” the bartender said. He put the cleaning rag away.
Camden twisted the cold cap and grinned when it popped off in her hand. She put the bottle to her lips and grimaced as the beer hit her tastebuds. Maybe her mother had been right about this one thing; wine was very definitely preferable to the contents of this bottle, pretty amber color or not. She pushed the bottle away. “About those directions?”
“Sure. The mayor ordered new signs after the tornado. Only the crew working that area were supposed to put them just past that intersection. You go one more street past the light, then hang your right and follow the signs from there.”
That seemed simple enough. “Great. Thank you.”
“No problem.” He seemed to consider his answer. “Course, you could also just take this street out to the bridge and catch the highway there.”
Even better, she wouldn’t have to make her way around the one-ways again. “Thank you, again. How much for the beer?”
“Three dollars. You taking it with you?”
Camden eyed the bottle. “No. No, I’ve had enough. You wouldn’t have a white wine?”
The older man narrowed his eyes and snatched the still-full bottle from the counter. “This is a bar, lady, not a nightclub. We serve beer, whiskey and tequila.”
“Don’t you let this old geezer bother you, honey.” A Hispanic woman came up to the bar, holding a round serving tray. “I’m Juanita, and this is Merle. He’s harmless, but he has definite ideas about the differences in bars, nightclubs and bar-and-grill-type places. We have a nice boxed blush—”
“You said I only had to keep those frou-frou drinks on hand during the summer.”
“Summer ended about a week ago—”
“A month and a half ago, woman, it’ll be Thanksgiving tomorrow,” Merle put in, but Juanita kept talking.
“We’re still working through the supply. Don’t worry, you’ll be disappointing your customers with the limited menu in another few days.” She turned back to Camden. “So you want that glass, honey?”
“Sure.” As much as she wanted to get out of this dress, she still hadn’t figured out what she was going to say to Calvin and Bonita when she showed up on their doorstep.
Hi, how’ve you been? seemed a little too breezy, especially as she hadn’t seen them in more than a decade. She wasn’t up to spilling the whole sordid tale about her mother’s expectations, the life she’d hated and the colossal mistake she’d made when she accepted Grant’s proposal. Not yet.
Juanita delivered the glass of wine, and Camden took a sip. It glided down her throat, tasting sweet and soothing. So much better than the beer. She hooked her heel around the rung of one of the bar stools and settled herself at the bar.
Calling her grandparents was probably the best next step, but what if they were already asleep? Or didn’t want to see her? She’d sent Christmas and birthday cards, had invited them to her graduations, but other than that, her grandparents were strangers to her over these past few long years. All she knew about them was that they were far away from Kansas City. And that there was no love lost between her father’s parents and his former wife.
This was childish, wasn’t it? Running away from her problems instead of facing up to them wouldn’t solve anything. But what was done was done, and she was too exhausted to drive all the way back to Kansas City tonight. Maybe she should get a hotel room and wait until the morning to see her grandparents.
“You seem a little lost,” a man suddenly said beside her.
Camden took another sip of her wine, weighing her options. “No, I have the directions. Thanks, though.”
If she went to a hotel, chances were she would talk herself out of visiting Calvin and Bonita at all.
If she drove back to Kansas City, chances were her mother would convince her Grant would change his ways once they were married.
She didn’t want to be married to Grant. Not because it would cement her stepfather’s place at the firm, and not because Grant wanted a former beauty queen on his arm at political events. She didn’t want to be married to Grant. At all.
For the first time since she found Grant and Heather in the closet, Camden felt as if she could breathe. She didn’t want to be married to Grant. That was settled.
“A woman doesn’t walk into a bar wearing a designer wedding gown, alone, without being a little lost,” the man said, and there was a teasing note in his deep voice.
“I don’t want to be married,” Camden said, testing how the words sounded when spoken aloud. No twinge of anxiety. No guilt. She didn’t want to be married. “I didn’t pick out this monstrosity of a dress, and I didn’t pick the groom, but I am picking where I’m going from here. And I’m not going down the aisle.”
“That’s good, since we don’t seem to have an aisle.” The words seemed to rumble from his chest, vibrating between them and making the little hairs on her arm stand up. Weird. Camden rubbed her hand along her arm, and the engagement ring she’d forgotten to take off winked at her in the dim light.
“Wow,” he said, taking her hand in his and letting the light catch the different facets of the three-carat ring from Tiffany & Co. Camden kept her focus on the half-full glass before her. Her skin tingled where his hand held hers, and tension set off butterflies in her stomach. Camden snatched her hand away. How could she have forgotten the ring? And how could she have a physical reaction like this to a guy she’d known for only a minute? Her stomach never got jumpy like this with Grant. At best, she was lukewarm around him, but suddenly, the bar seemed hot and humid, as if hundreds of people were crowded into it on a steamy summer day. Not a handful of people on a chilly fall night.
“Nice rock,” he said, leaning against the bar, facing the big dance floor she had crossed only a few minutes ago. Camden kept her focus on the wineglass. She wasn’t interested in marrying the man she’d been engaged to for the last few months, and she wasn’t interested in flirting with the man who’d sidled up next to her in this bar.
“I didn’t pick it out.” Now, where had that come from? She’d been blown away by the ring when Grant presented it to her back in the summer. Sure, it was heavy on her hand, and it snagged on everything. But it—
No, Camden shut down that train of thought. Yes, Grant had bought the ring for her. But Grant had also been screwing her maid of honor in a closet about fifteen minutes before they were supposed to pledge their love—or at least fidelity—to one another. So...she had no reason to feel sentimental about this ring or guilty that she was happy she could now take it off and never wear it again.
Camden wasn’t quite sure what she wanted, but she knew diving into a flirtation with a stranger wouldn’t help her figure it out. She needed to focus.
“It’s a nice-looking dress, though.”
“Not my style.”
“I find that hard to believe. You wear it too well.”
Because she’d been trained to wear it well. Her mother had started her on the pageant circuit when she was nine, and after her father died, the pageants had become almost weekly occurrences. Still, having a stranger comment on her appearance was nice. Maybe a little stalkery, but nice. “Yeah, well, it’s not like it takes a special set of skills to wear designer clothing.”
“I don’t know about that.”
Okay, that upped the stalker level a little too high. She was not going to let some cowboy in a small town take her to his trailer just because she’d walked out on her old life.
“I’m going to finish this glass of wine and be on my way. You can scurry back over to your buddies now and tell them what a hateful witch I am.”
“You don’t seem all that hateful. Maybe a little sad. But not hateful.” His voice was kind, kinder than she probably deserved after walking away from everything and everyone the way she had done. But she still wasn’t letting a stranger talk her into bed. No matter how sexy his voice sounded in the darkened bar. “You’re wearing a ring you didn’t pick out, and a dress that isn’t your style. Seems to me like this has not been your day.”
“Try lifetime,” she said and twirled the stem of the wineglass between her fingers. And she was not going to keep talking to a perfect stranger about her life. She was not feeling like herself, but she wasn’t completely desperate.
“How much do I owe you?” she asked Merle, who was looking from Camden to the man at the bar and back again.
“Ten dollars,” the older man said.
“I’ll take care of it.”
“I pay my own bills,” Camden said and turned to look at the man standing beside her.
He was tall, built like a football player. His skin was a rich brown, and there were golden flecks in his brown eyes.
And she knew him.
He was taller than she remembered. His shoulders wider. His voice deeper. But the laughter in the gaze was the same, as was the crooked tilt to his mouth. Camden clapped her hand over her mouth. Oh, God, she wanted to sink through the floor of the bar.
Of all the bars, in all the world, why did she have to walk into Levi Walters’s?
* * *
“CAMDEN?”
Levi blinked once, twice, then a third time. This brain tumor–epilepsy thing was getting out of hand. He’d gone from imagining a beautiful woman in a wedding dress to imagining Camden Harris—a girl he hadn’t seen since he was fourteen. Not girl. Woman. From the tilt of her pretty head to the smooth shoulders, full bust—
Levi slammed his hand against the bar, and Camden jumped. So did Merle. And he was pretty sure he’d gotten the attention of everyone else in the bar, too, from annoying Collin and Aiden to Juanita, who stuck her head around the corner of the door leading to the kitchen.
“Sorry.” He swallowed. “I’m not crazy, right? You’re Camden Harris.”
“Hello, Levi.”
Her voice was the same. A little twang, which was odd, because she lived in a fancy part of Kansas City and competed in beauty pageants. At least, she’d been on the posters of several pageants around the university campus where he played football.
Slight southern drawls weren’t welcomed in those circles. For beauty pageants it was full-on, south-of-the-Mason-Dixon drawl or what he considered broadcaster cool, with no hint of an accent. From anywhere. Or maybe he was reading too much into a short conversation.
He needed to get a grip on himself or he was really going to lose it. Levi didn’t like to prove people right on the crazy side of things. He was steady. Not impulsive. He considered options, developed a plan of action. He didn’t rush into decisions.
He didn’t even usually rush into flirting with women, especially women he didn’t know. So, naturally, now that he had, it had to be someone he used to know.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, and the question threw him. What was he doing here? What was she doing here? And in a wedding dress?
“I live here.” Levi sat on the stool beside her. “What are you doing here?”
A half smile crossed her wide mouth but didn’t reach her eyes. Camden shook her head. “Paying my bill.” She stood, and her high-heeled shoes clacked against the hardwood. She pulled a ten from the little bag strapped around her wrist and left it on the bar. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”
“I live here,” Levi said and felt like an idiot for repeating himself. And in such a lame way. Of course they’d see one another—Slippery Rock was a small town. His ranch and her grandparents’ farm were next to each other. It would be a miracle if he didn’t bump into her now and again.
He reached out, and a sharp little burst of attraction hit him hard when his hand brushed her arm. Which was just weird. Sure, he’d felt a little heat when he took her hand to look at the glimmering rock on her finger, but that was when he’d been in the mood to seduce the sexy stranger at the bar.
Camden Harris wasn’t a sexy stranger. She was the girl next door. The girl with the big brown eyes who tagged along after him during her summer visits with her grandparents.
The girl who hadn’t been back to Slippery Rock in at least a decade and, as far as he knew, whom her grandparents hadn’t seen in at least as long.
Calvin and Bonita had pictures of Camden, though, and he’d seen them on several occasions when he stopped in to check on them. One more reason he should have recognized her as soon as she walked into the bar. But he hadn’t. The girl—no, woman—in those pictures was confident. Happy.
The Camden standing next to him at the bar...wasn’t. Something had changed. Whatever that something was, it wasn’t his business. He should just back off. Camden Harris was a childhood acquaintance, not a personal friend.
“Yes?” she asked, and Levi realized his hand still gripped her arm, holding her in place. He let go quickly, and her arm fell to her side.
“Nothing, nothing,” he said, and she turned to go. “Wait! You didn’t say what you were doing back in town.”
She turned to face him, and those big brown eyes went soft, her mouth turned down and Levi wondered what might have happened in Camden’s privileged life that would make her look so sad.
So lost.
So...familiar.
And that wasn’t right. Of course she was familiar. Her hair was the same walnut brown he remembered, and her eyes were still big and round and had those honey-colored flecks that mesmerized him. She was taller, but that was normal. What twelve-year-old didn’t grow a few more inches in their teens and early twenties? He’d put on about fifty pounds of muscle and added nearly three inches to his height since graduating high school.
Only it wasn’t the color of her hair or her eyes that drew him in—it was something else. Something to which Levi didn’t want to get too close. Something that might be a little bit dangerous for a man who liked to consider and think his way through life, because his impulse was to pull Camden Harris into his arms to make that look go away.
Levi Walters had too much going on in his life to let a woman with a sad look on her face distract him, though. He had very specific plans, and those plans had specific goals, and getting distracted with Camden Harris was definitely not part of the plan.
“I’m just here for a few days. Visiting my grandparents,” she said, but he didn’t think she was telling him the whole truth.
“In a wedding dress.”
She shrugged, and the half smile that crossed her face made a little of the lost disappear. “I already told you the dress isn’t my style.”
“And the ring wasn’t your choice.”
“Something like that.”
The evasive answers were interesting. More interesting than the conversation he’d been avoiding with Collin and Aiden. More interesting than the fact that he had a video conference with his investment counselor in the morning about making an offer on a portion of the Harris land he’d been renting for the past two years.
“Is coming here your choice?”
She looked around, and he wondered what she saw in the weathered floor, the neon signs and the dim lighting. He saw familiarity. Safety. Home. The sign behind the bar had been partially unlit for as long as he could remember. The juke in the corner had played the same songs since he was in high school, with the exception of Merle adding Savannah’s single a few months before. The vinyl on the booth seats was cracked, and the chairs were scuffed.
It was perfect to him. Not a shiny disco ball in sight.
“Yeah. Coming to Slippery Rock was my choice,” she said, and when she looked at him again, he thought he saw more confidence in her expression. In the set of her shoulders. That zing of attraction buzzed a bit brighter. “I’ll see you around, Levi.”
“See ya around, Camden,” he said as she crossed the room. Her footsteps seemed to echo in the bar long after the door closed behind her.
Camden Harris was back in town. This might be the most interesting thing to happen to Slippery Rock in...okay, that wasn’t fair. A lot had happened over the past year. Savannah had scandalized the town, as had the revelation that Sheriff James Calhoun had been having an ongoing affair with the favorite local rebel, Mara Tyler. The tornado had nearly destroyed the town. And Aiden Buchanan had finally come back.
But Camden...
That was interesting on a whole other level.
“I guess we figured out what’s bugging Levi,” Collin said, coming up behind him at the bar. He pulled his wallet from his rear pocket.
“Yeah, we thought there was trouble at the ranch. Turns out, Levi Walters just needs to get laid,” Aiden added. Levi started to give a sharp reply, but that would only encourage the two of them. And they weren’t wrong.
Not that he was going to sleep with Camden Harris. That zing of attraction was just a zing. A reminder that it had been too long since he’d taken time away from Slippery Rock to be with a beautiful woman.
Like Camden. Levi shoved the thought away. “What do we owe you, Merle?”
“Thirty’ll cover it,” the older man said.
“I got it—loser buys, remember? And who was that, anyway?” Collin leaned against the bar, holding out a handful of bills to Merle.
“She looked familiar. Kind of,” Aiden added.
“Camden Harris.” Levi turned his attention to the door again and then pulled a few bills from his wallet, but Collin pushed the money away. Right. Because Collin and Aiden lost at darts. Levi needed to get his mind back inside the bar. “You remember. Calvin and Bonita’s granddaughter. She used to spend her summers here.” Neither Collin nor Aiden said anything, and that brought Levi’s attention fully back inside the bar, not out there in the night with Camden. “She used to tag along with us to the lake on really hot days. Camden Harris.”
Aiden snapped his fingers. “That’s how I know her. She did the beauty pageant thing with Julia while they were in college. The two of them traded off winning and losing there for a while. Until Camden was crowned at the state level and went on to the national competition.”
“Julia competed in pageants?” Julia was a beautiful woman, but she didn’t have the slick polish Levi associated with beauty pageant contestants. She was too genuine for that. For that matter, so was Camden. At least, the Camden he remembered. The woman he’d spoken to a few minutes before was a stranger, in a wedding gown, wearing a ring she said she didn’t want. Weird.
“Something her mom got her into. After her parents died, it was a way to keep that connection going. Plus, she wanted to save the money they left her, and academic scholarships only went so far. The pageant circuit paid the difference.” Aiden leaned an elbow on the bar. “I wonder if Julia knows she actually came to town?” he muttered.
“Julia’s been talking to Camden?” Even more interesting. Camden had made it seem like this visit was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but if she’d been talking to Julia, it probably wasn’t. So what was up?
“They text, Facebook now and then. She was supposed to be getting married this weekend. Today, actually. Obviously that didn’t happen.”
Obviously. Levi watched the door for a few more minutes. Camden was engaged. Or had been engaged. Was still engaged? And now she was in Slippery Rock, wearing the dress and the ring, but apparently alone. Interesting on that whole other level.
“You fellas gonna leave sometime tonight? I’d like to close,” Merle said. He was leaning against the counter on the back side of the bar, arms crossed over his flannel-clad chest. He tapped the toe of one well-worn boot against the rubber matting on the floor.
“Sorry,” Collin said, pocketing the change Merle had left on the counter.
The three of them walked out of the bar, got into their cars, and each went in a different direction from there. Once Levi was out of town, he considered what might have brought Camden to town.
It could be she was just running away.
It could be that the deal he was about to close with her grandfather had brought her.
It could be anything, really.
The narrow road leading to the ranch and the Harris property split, and Levi paused, watching the lane that would lead to Harris land, for a long time. No taillights shone down the lane, not that he’d expected any, and despite the late November date, the foliage blocked out any light that might have shone from the porch or yard lights at the Harrises’.
Probably she was tucked up in one of the guest rooms Bonita kept in pristine condition despite the fact that no visitors had been at the farm since Levi was a teen.
Probably she was just here for a quick visit, like she’d said.
Probably he shouldn’t wonder what might have brought Camden back to Slippery Rock.
In a wedding dress.
He really needed to stop thinking about what she looked like in that dress.
Levi put the truck back in Drive and turned to go down the road that would lead to his parents’ home and then around to his own. All the lights were off at the main house, which meant Bennett and Mama Hazel had gone to bed and Savannah was spending the night at the orchard.
He shouldn’t let Camden’s reasons for coming to Slippery Rock get under his skin, but her evasive answers in the bar were doing just that. The memory of her soft hand in his still made his palm hot. But her evasiveness, that was the issue here. He had a deal going with Calvin, and he didn’t want that deal messed up. More than that, he liked the older couple. They were like grandparents to him, and maybe it was crazy, but Camden showing up now, when they’d decided to sell—it only made sense if she wanted something from them.
Like money.
Levi gripped the steering wheel as he crossed over the cattle guard separating his drive from the county road.
He would find out what Camden was up to. Then he’d get back to his plans for Walters Ranch. And he’d take a weekend off, maybe go to Little Rock or Tulsa for a few days. He knew women in both cities who would be glad to hear from him, who wouldn’t expect more than a weekend’s worth of fun.
He turned off the truck and went inside, toeing off his boots in the mudroom and slinging his beat-up jacket on the wall hook.
Camden Harris was back in town, and he would find out what she was up to.
CHAPTER THREE (#uc6693e7b-8c6d-5898-b756-2db4849375d0)
CAMDEN BLEW TWO sharp blasts into the whistle. The border collie who had been working his way through the course of inclines and tunnels stopped and his head swiveled to look at her. She held him there, not moving, for a slow ten count, then blew into the whistle again, giving him the go-ahead to complete the course.
She’d been back in Slippery Rock for only two days, and already she felt like the Camden she remembered from childhood. Not the worried, sheltered, bored woman she’d been in Kansas City. She wanted to stay here, and she was beginning to see a way she could. Maybe for a long time.
“You haven’t forgotten,” her grandfather Calvin said. He stood beside her, looking so much older than she remembered. And shorter, somehow. She didn’t think the shorter was just because she’d grown taller since her last visit to Slippery Rock. God, she’d been a jerk to have stayed away.
Yes, she had only been twelve when her father died and her mother took her away from Slippery Rock, but she’d been an adult for many years now. She could have come down here on her own.
“I practiced,” she said. “Mom had me in pageants, playing piano. I wanted to work a cattle dog as my talent, but she insisted piano was more ladylike.”
“She wasn’t wrong about that.” His voice was gruff, and he put the stopwatch he’d been using in his pocket. “He’s dropped three seconds, and it’s not because of me.”
“It’s just a fluke.”
“You said you’d been practicing.”
“I did, for a while. Mom didn’t care that I hated piano, and I wanted to do something else. So I found a dog trainer whose wife taught piano. I was obnoxiously horrible to every piano teacher in the Kansas City metropolitan area until she worked her way to the teacher with the dog-trainer husband, and I made that teacher a deal. I’d get Mom to spring for two hours of lessons if I could use half the time to work with the dogs.”
Granddad chuckled. “And the teacher went for it?”
“She’d heard how obnoxious I could be.”
“Sneaky. And a little bit brilliant.”
Camden wasn’t so sure about the brilliant part. Desperate was more to the point. And somehow dumb seemed to fit, too. Because a truly brilliant person would have stood up to her mother about the pageants in the first place.
A truly brilliant person wouldn’t have gone to sleep the last two nights thinking about a two-minute conversation with Levi Walters. Or woken up the past two mornings still thinking about the man and half dreaming more conversations with him. Camden shook her head, hoping to dislodge the Levi train of thought. She refocused on her grandfather.
“Let’s take him through one more time,” Granddad said, and Camden blew three whistles. Jake, the collie, lined up at the starting line. When Camden blew the whistle, he started through the course.
Jake was one of only a handful of dogs left at Harris Farms, and the pup of a dog Camden remembered from her childhood. When she was younger, there had been at least thirty collies, Australian cattle dogs and other working dogs on the farm. Her grandfather had trained them to work on ranches all over the United States, Canada and Mexico. Working cattle, sheep, llamas. She’d come here hoping to work with Calvin for a while until she found her footing again, but the dogs he had now were mostly old favorites. They liked the course work, but they were more pets than working dogs.
Still, it was nice to be out here in the bright sunshine, watching the big collie go through the paces. She wondered what Levi was doing this morning. She knew he was running the dairy his family had owned for several generations. Would he still be milking cattle at almost noon on a Friday?
Not that it mattered if he was. Levi was a childhood acquaintance; she was a recently unengaged woman who was not—repeat, not—looking for a one-night stand. No matter how cute the boy she’d known so many years ago had grown up to be.
He kept the hair she remembered as dense and curly nearly shaved now. His eyes—eyes that has mesmerized her as a young girl—were rich and brown with a few hints of hazel or amber in the depths. His skin a shade lighter than his eyes. His smile a bit crooked, but that only made him more memorable to her.
The breadth of his shoulders made her heart skip a beat, and she could still feel his hand on hers.
Calvin snapped off the timer as the collie crossed the finish line, and that snapped Camden back to the course.
She would not let her childhood crush on Levi Walters take hold. Not again. He was her grandparents’ neighbor, that was all. A guy she used to know.
“I think he could be ready for sheep or goats soon,” Granddad was saying.
“Do you still have sheep and goats?” she hadn’t noticed any early morning feeding runs, the pasture near the farmhouse was empty, and she hadn’t hear any distant lowing or bleating from a small herd.
Granddad shook his head. “Hasn’t been much need for a herd lately.” A wistful expression crossed his face. “Probably won’t be again, but it’s nice to consider the option. I’m too old for full-time training.”
“I’m not.” She snapped her mouth closed. Camden wasn’t a professional stock dog trainer. A couple of lucky runs, and a year or so of training lessons for competition dogs might have given her a little experience, but she didn’t know the first thing about running a working stock dog school. And if Calvin still wanted to run a school, wouldn’t he be running it?
The idea though, kept nagging at her. What if Granddad wanted to rejuvenate the school? For her time with the trainer in Kansas City, she knew competition dogs were sought after and could sell for high amounts of money. Training fees on top of that...
If she could get just one dog ready for competition, she could help her grandparents rejuvenate Harris Farms. Could have a real reason to stay here rather than return to Kansas City.
“You want to train stock dogs?”
“There’s a stock dog competition in Tulsa in a week. I couldn’t train a dog in time, but if you want to build the school back up, it might be a good place to start.”
Calvin turned an assessing eye on her. “That isn’t an answer.”
Did she want to train stock dogs? Camden blew out a breath.
Training dogs was something she’d done as a kid, something she’d done with her father and Granddad. It was miles away from training pageant contestants, a business she’d gone into with her mother after her last competition. Elizabeth always said to go into business with someone who was a success. Calvin Harris was a world class stock-dog trainer. His collies and Australian shepherds and cattle dogs were working cattle ranches and smaller llama and sheep farms all over North and South America. Cattle, llama, sheep. Camden gave Jake a rub behind his ear and tossed a treat into the air. The dog snapped it between his jaws, swallowing it whole.
“I might want to train dogs,” she said, and although the words sounded weak, saying them aloud made her stand a little straighter. As if saying them had woken up something deep inside Camden. The way walking away from Grant had woken something else. “I’d at least like the chance to try.”
Calvin nodded. “We haven’t had sheep or goats around here for more than three years. Other than the cows Levi boards on the north side of the property, Jake and his buddies are the only livestock around.”
The two then started toward the farmhouse where Camden had spent two of the best summers of her life. Before her mother married Darren Carlson, a rich lawyer from Kansas City. After that, visits to her father’s family farm stopped abruptly. Her grandparents came to Darren’s Mission Hills mansion a few times for Christmas dinners or the odd birthday, but she’d never been allowed to come back here after her father was killed in a drunk-driving accident.
When she called her mother Thanksgiving morning to tell her she would not be coming back to Kansas City for a while and that she wasn’t marrying that two-timing weasel, Grant, Elizabeth Carlson had hung up the phone. She hadn’t called back. Hadn’t texted. She probably expected Camden to snap out of it and show up for their traditional Black Friday shopping marathon.
Elizabeth would be shocked to see Camden in knee-high rain boots, nondesigner jeans and a hoodie instead of the high heels, designer jeans and cashmere sweaters she’d worn in Kansas City. Camden chuckled.
She’d never been more comfortable than the past two days, and that included wearing the baggy sweat suit she’d borrowed from Bonita on Thanksgiving afternoon to go into town to get a few items of clothing from her old friend, Julia’s, store. Julia bought into Shanna’s boutique earlier in the fall, and had plans to run a destination wedding business here eventually. She’d taken the polish and poise she’d learned from pageants and turned them into something real.
Camden wanted, desperately wanted, to turn her life into something real.
The rain boots, a deep navy, the only pair Julia had in stock, rustled through fallen leaves. She had three more pairs coming, bought online just the night before—one with butterflies, another with little umbrellas, and a third with unicorns—and bought them all, along with several pairs of jeans, flannel shirts, tees, and a few tunics. It felt good to buy clothes that struck her as cute, that she liked, rather than clothes designed to impress others.
Although she wouldn’t mind impressing a certain former football player. And that was a road she didn’t need to start traveling down. The little hairs on her arms stood up and her tummy did a flip-flop. No, not going there. She’d just walked out on an engagement only a couple of days ago. Jumping into something with Levi Walters just because he made every last inch of her stand up and take notice was dumb. Worse than dumb—it would likely blow up the very life she wanted to build in Slippery Rock.
She needed to figure out who she was, without her mother’s input and without an ill-thought-out relationship distracting her.
“Granddad?”
Calvin tilted his head and watched her but didn’t say anything. It was his familiar way. He had been more talkative when she was a kid—at least that was how she remembered it. Now, he almost seemed like a functional mute, only speaking when he’d measured each and every word.
“I’d like to train Six on my own, if that’s okay with you.” This was step one in the plan she’d been working on for roughly five minutes. A plan that seemed solid, despite its short life. She hadn’t been here forty-eight hours, but even she could see the dog school was barely hanging on.
“Okay. He’s not big enough to be a working dog, not even for smaller livestock.”
“I’d like to train her for showing, not real-world herding,” she added. Six was the youngest dog in what was left of Calvin’s stable. The small dog was still a puppy, really. Calvin had found it on the side of the road last summer, and brought it to the farm. He was a smart little thing, and in the five minutes it took to get his food and drink into the run, she’d seen his eagerness to learn. She didn’t care that she’d only met the dog, had only been back in Slippery Rock, for a little over a day.
The “for showing” bit got a raised eyebrow from her grandfather. “I trained stock dogs for working conditions. Not show rings,” he said.
She’d only planned to be here a day or so, and then had vague thoughts about going back to Kansas City to figure out what she would do with the rest of her life. Running the pageant business with her mother held no appeal, but there had to be something else she could do back in the city.
But the rickety dog runs used to be solid. The handful of dogs remaining used to have dozens of friends, and the pastures around the farmhouse used to hold sheep and goats and a few ducks, too.
Then, there was the silly, slobbering Six. The little puppy was a runt and had likely been dumped on the side of the road by a breeder who couldn’t sell him. But Six was all border collie—eager to learn, eager to please and eager to do. Camden fell in love with the little ball of fur that licked her face every time she picked him up. And she picked him up too often, she knew. Granddad treated his dogs well, but he treated them like workers. They received praise for a good job, treats, plenty of food and water. When the day was over, though, the dogs went into their runs for the night.
When the other dogs piled on one another, Six was left outside the group. Camden felt a camaraderie with the little dog. She’d felt left out of so many things in her life—from decisions about pageant dresses to her actual college degree program. Before running away from the wedding, the only decision she’d made in her life was to stop pageanting after losing the national crown. And even then, she’d fallen right in line with her mother’s plan to open a pageant coaching studio in the city.
Now she was here, and she was remembering how much fun she’d had with her grandfather’s dogs and the dogs at the trainer’s in Kansas City. This was something she could do, something that held value. Something that would keep her near her grandparents. After only a couple of days with them, Camden was already dreading leaving them again.
Six clambered up to her when they stopped at the barn. When the older dogs went inside, Six stayed, looking up at Camden with excitement vibrating through his little body. She took the green tennis ball from her pocket and tossed it. Six took off at a run to chase it down. The three other dogs with them this morning watched Granddad for an opening, but he closed the kennel door, and they lost interest.
“Six is too little for real stock work,” Granddad said. “He’d make a better pet than a working cow or sheep dog.”
Six caught up with the ball and turned around, the neon green of the covering showing between his teeth. He dropped it at her feet and waited. Camden bent, tossed the ball again and watched the puppy chase after it. Granddad had stopped to watch, too. One of the dogs in the run whined. He shot the dog a look. It stopped.
“I was thinking, if it went well, I could train a few others for showing. You know, stock-dog showing is popular at fairs and things. People who don’t have ranches or farms can be just as passionate about the training. About the sport of it.” Camden winced. Comparing her grandfather’s work to a sport was probably not the best wording. Other than baseball, she didn’t think he was interested in any sport.
“The sport of it, huh?” he said after a long moment.
“If it goes well, we could maybe build the dog school back up. It would create another way to make money for the farm. More people would bring their dogs to you. You might even have more outlets for runts like Six.” And she would have something to do. Something that was hers.
Something she could be proud of doing—a kind of fulfillment she never found while competing in pageants and then training contestants.
The beauty queen thing was never something Camden wanted—that was always her mother’s dream. And the irony of her walking away from a world that required training only to go into a different sort of training wasn’t lost on her. The difference was that the dogs she’d train would have a skill that required more than good genes.
Six returned, and she held the ball until he quieted. “One more time, then into the run. Okay?” The little dog’s tail wagged, and he seemed to smile at her. “Last one, ready?”
The dog vibrated a bit harder. Camden threw the ball, and Six took off like a shot.
Camden knew she wasn’t being fair about the pageants. There were legitimately good reasons to take part. The scholarships opened educational avenues for a lot of women. Pageants taught poise, even if they focused a little too much on appearance, in her opinion. They also celebrated talents like music and creative writing and put a focus on charity work.
But she didn’t particularly care that she wasn’t being fair; competing hadn’t been her choice.
It had been her responsibility.
When her mother was floundering after her father died, Camden competing in pageants seemed to lessen Elizabeth’s depression.
Camden knew a lot of beauty queens who were smart, who were passionate about their work. Maybe if her mother had let her choose her talent or her volunteer work, she could have been passionate about pageanting. But Elizabeth Camden Harris Carlson had only cared about winning. As a Kentucky Miss and then a North America Miss herself, she knew what it took to win, and she hadn’t allowed Camden to veer from the chosen path. Camden had worn the same color dresses as her mother, had sung the same song her mother sang during competitions and used the same platform her mother had used during her days as a pageant girl.
Hell, even if she’d chosen something of interest to her, Camden wouldn’t have liked parading around on those stages, smiling until her cheeks hurt. That was what made it so easy to walk away, not only from the pageant world, but from the rest of her life. She only regretted that it had taken until now to walk out.
“Showing at fairs, huh?”
“It could be fun. Challenging,” she corrected. Not once in her twenty-six years had she won a conversation with her mother or stepfather by describing something as “fun.” How ridiculous was it that she hadn’t realized until she was twenty-six that she’d made only a handful of decisions about her own life?
“Nothing wrong with doing something just for the fun of it, kiddo,” Granddad said. “You think I’d’ve trained dogs all my life if I was only in it for the money?”
She’d never thought about her grandfather as liking anything. “I, um...”
“I trained dogs because it was fun. It was challenging, too, but so was accounting. I hated accounting. Hated sitting at a desk all day just to come back the next and do the same thing again.”
“You were an accountant?”
Granddad grinned, and it was the first smile she could remember passing over his face since she’d come back. “Did the books for most of the businesses in Slippery Rock at one time or another. Until I decided there had to be more to life than sitting at a desk fifty weeks out of every year. I didn’t start the dog school until your daddy was in school. And I didn’t start it because it was challenging, I started it because Bennett Walters needed a new stock dog to help keep the dairy cows in line.”
Camden blinked. This was more information than she’d ever known about her grandfather. “You started the school on a whim?”
He shrugged. “I liked dogs. I didn’t like the way the dogs were being treated when the trainer Bennett hired brought a few to his place. Figured it was something I could do that would get me outside a little more, especially during the summer months. So I trained that dog for Bennett, then a few more area ranchers asked for dogs, and within a couple of years I was spending nearly all my time training the dogs. Shut down the accounting business and haven’t worried about it once.”
“Then why aren’t you training any longer?”
“A man has to retire at some point, Camden. I thought it was time.” She started to protest, but Granddad held up a hand. “Why don’t you tell me more about stock competitions.”
“They use sheep, goats, chickens. A few calves. One trainer works a few dogs to get the animals from one pen to another, and they’re judged on speed, agility and time.”
“Sounds like what I did when I was training.”
“It’s a lot like a training session, actually.” Camden couldn’t get the thought of her grandfather retiring out of her mind. He wasn’t that old, maybe in his midsixties. Sure, it was the age when a lot of people retired, but he’d loved working the dogs. How could he just stop? “That competition show in Tulsa I mentioned? Six couldn’t compete in that one, but you could get an idea how the show circuit differs from the working circuit. If you wanted to go.”
“Your grandma’s not going to want to go to Tulsa this close to the holidays,” Granddad said. He opened the run for Six. The dog went in and began sniffing. Probably for water. Camden grabbed an empty bowl from a shelf and filled it from the sink on the wall. Granddad did the same for the other dogs. “All these runs used to be full,” he said after a while.
“I remember.” She’d come out here every morning that last summer, watching Granddad and her dad and the collies from the hayloft above. Listening to the men talk about training methods. Elizabeth never set foot in the barn. She’d rarely left the porch, insisting that the dirt would ruin her shoes. God, her mother had hated this place. It was no wonder she had never wanted to come back.
Camden looked around. How could anyone hate the smell of fresh hay and summer sunshine? Even the gray November sky today couldn’t take away the smells that lived in her memory. She remembered traipsing over these fields with Levi when the sun was high and the temperatures much hotter than on this chilly morning. He’d had this sky and these smells all of his life. Did he know how lucky he was?
“Your dad wanted to train a few dogs for the show circuit.”
“I remember.” He’d been so excited about the prospect. Her father, Bobby Harris, liked his job in the marketing department of the television station in Kansas City, but he’d loved coming back to Slippery Rock for vacation every year. Had been talking about getting a dog for the city, not a cattle dog, but a retriever or something.
“You don’t have to train dogs because it was something your dad liked to do. Not even because it’s something I like.”
“I know. I just liked working with them. I’d like to work with them again.” She didn’t want to live her life in a quiet office, watching girls try on dresses and perfect their makeup.
“Then you should do it.”
She inhaled, deeply. “Yeah?”
Calvin nodded.
Camden grinned at her grandfather, and he swung his arm around her shoulders the way she’d seen him embrace her father so many times in the past. “I’m glad you came home, kiddo.”
“So am I,” she said.
In the kitchen, her grandmother Bonita was just taking toasted cheese sandwiches off the stove. “You two are back early.” She wore a neon-orange hoodie with black yoga pants and sneakers with bold orange, green and yellow striping on them. Her bobbed hair, dyed a crisp black, was perfectly arranged, and she’d put on lipstick.
Camden hung her jacket on the peg in the mudroom, slipped the muddy boots off her feet and smoothed her hands over her long brown hair.
“Couldn’t stay away any longer.” Calvin put his arms around his wife’s waist, pulling her back against his chest and nipping her earlobe with his teeth. Bonita slapped at his hand and blushed as a grin spread over her face. “Camden wants us to hit Tulsa for a dog show in a week.”
“Tulsa in the middle of the holiday shopping season?” Bonita shook her head. “I’m going into town this afternoon. Groceries. And then I need to stop in at the boutique. They’re holding a pair of earrings for me. Want to come along?” Bonita looked pointedly at Camden. “I don’t know what you could need after the five packages that were delivered this morning, but you might find something.”
“I was going to—”
Bonita held up a hand. “Play with the dogs, I know.”
“Train Six,” Camden corrected. Bonita and Calvin exchanged a look.
“We’re going to reopen Harris Farms,” he said after a long moment.
Bonita’s smile grew wider. “He’s been pretending to be retired and complaining about having nothing to do for nearly a year now. Yet on only your second day back in town, you got him to agree to reopen? That is reason enough for a little celebratory shopping. You can help me pick out a few things for Tulsa, because while he’s only going for the stock, I’m thinking I can get him to agree on at least one fancy restaurant.”
Granddad frowned at his grilled cheese. “This is a business trip, Bonnie.”
“Everyone has to eat, Cal. Who says we only have to eat at fast food restaurants?”
Camden watched the two of them bicker and thought it was the cutest thing she’d ever seen. She had been too young to realize whether or not her parents bickered, but her mother and stepfather didn’t. Her stepfather made the decisions about schools and household budgets, and her mother made the decisions about vacations. There was something odd about parents who presented logical, spreadsheeted presentations about everything from the type of shoes needed for tennis to a summer spent sailing in the Caribbean.
“I’d like to work with Six a little this afternoon,” Camden said when they’d agreed on one fancy dinner and the purchase of at least two new collies.
“You aren’t reopening today, and you can’t train a puppy for a competition set for only a few days away,” her grandmother said. “Come on, woman does not live by dog obstacle courses alone.”
Bonita made a good point. And there had been that really cute tunic at the store yesterday. “I guess training could start tomorrow.”
* * *
NINETY-NINE PERCENT of the time, football held zero allure for Levi Walters. What fans saw as a couple of hours of playing on television he knew was actually six hours in the weight room, another three watching film and a minimum of two more hours of on-the-field practice. He’d been out of the game for nearly three years and could honestly say he didn’t miss the grind of the football life.
He did, sometimes, miss the glitz. Red carpets could be fun. The roar of the crowd after a particularly good tackle made him feel alive in a way nothing else did. The women were beautiful.
Although none had made him forget to breathe like Camden had the other night at the Slope.
And he wasn’t going to spend another day thinking about Camden Harris. She was a childhood friend, that was all. He had no business wondering about her appearance in Slippery Rock. Or thinking about what she’d look like out of that designer gown.
Wedding dress, dude, wedding dress. He was not going to get hung up on a woman who ran out on her own wedding. Back to pondering football. The things about it he’d liked. The exhaustion after a particularly grueling workout.
An image of Camden, face pinkish with exertion, body naked, popped into his mind. Levi gritted his teeth and refocused on football.
Signing autographs for kids had been fun. Visiting them in the hospital.
An image of Camden in a nurse’s costume popped into his mind, and Levi angrily sank the shovel he was holding into a pile of manure and hay. He barely knew Camden Harris. He’d talked to her for all of five minutes. What the hell was she doing in his head?
Football never failed to distract him, so Levi ran back through the things he’d liked about the game. The exhaustion that made his mind blank—he wouldn’t mind a bit of that right now. The one-on-one interactions with kids, the roar of the crowd on game day. The bullshitting in the locker room.
Fifty-three sweaty men, some with questionable hygiene to begin with, were definitely better than the two hundred cows he cleaned up after twice a day.
Levi sank the shovel into another pile of manure and hay in the milking parlor. Mucking out the stalls after the herd of dairy cows had done their morning session was one of the times he missed the relative cleanliness of football.
A clump of manure landed on his boot.
In some very specific instances, football was better than being a dairy farmer. Definitely better.
He flicked the clump into the pile in the back of the ranch truck. Brilliant November sunlight peeked over the trees, turning the sky a brilliant blue. Under the smell of manure, there was the scent of dew on the grass, and the leaves were finally beginning to turn. All along the lakeshore, the trees would be laden with deep red and orange leaves with a bit of gold thrown in for good measure. He’d missed the turning of the leaves for four long professional seasons, and for the four before that, when he’d played at the college level.
The few things he missed about football life didn’t compare to the beauty of a country sunrise or getting to watch the slow change of the leaves or knowing that the products that came from his dairy were wholesome and healthy for the people who consumed them.
Football was fun, but the best part was that the money he’d made playing the game ensured the stability of Walters Ranch.
Levi put the last shovel full of hay and manure into the truck bed. He’d drive the load to the composting area. It would be ready for the local home and garden store by spring. He should check with Collin to see if they needed more compost at the orchard, too.
Then he needed to check on the cattle over on the Harris property. He’d been renting several acres from the older couple since making the dairy an organic operation; the cows couldn’t mix with the organic cattle, but that didn’t mean they had no value. Of course, they didn’t have much monetary value, but that was beside the point.
And while he was at the Harrises’, he’d probably run into Camden, could maybe learn why she was back in town after being gone for so long. Maybe seeing her again—hopefully wearing something other than that dress—would get her out of his head.
Another image of Camden, naked, popped into his head. Levi rapped his fist against his head, hoping to dislodge thoughts of Camden—in the wedding gown and out of it—from his mind.
He turned on the hoses to begin the rest of the cleanup.
“I still say you should install a sprinkler system in here so you can do away with the shoveling altogether.”
Levi turned to see his sister, Savannah, in the doorway.
“Yeah, because what everyone wants to breathe are minute manure particles.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Maybe a vacuum and sprinkler system then.”
“If you aren’t going to be helpful, you can just leave.” He took the sting out of the words with a smile. Not that he’d intended any sting to begin with. Savannah could be sensitive about things, though. He hadn’t known how sensitive until she returned to Slippery Rock last summer. She was settling in now. Practically living at the orchard with Collin, and in another few weeks would be married to him.
Levi couldn’t have picked a more perfect man for his sister. It was good to see her so happy lately.
She was dressed for the orchard today, in old jeans and a fleece hoodie, with gloves poking out of the big front pocket. The ripped big front pocket. He tilted his head to the side. The sweatshirt had to be about three sizes too big for her. She looked like a kid with the hoodie hanging past her hips and her skinny legs clad in ripped jeans.
“Is that my sweatshirt?”
“I don’t know. I found it in the mudroom. Collin said to dress warmly. We’re pruning today.”
Another change in his life. Savannah pruning apple trees. Savannah working, in general. She’d waited tables in town for a while then run off to sing in a talent competition. But before returning to Slippery Rock, Levi had never seen her do agricultural work. It was interesting to see that now. Especially because she seemed to enjoy it. Whether it was football or dairy farming, no feeling was better than the knowledge he’d done a solid day’s work. It was good that Savannah had that now, too.
“Do you want it back?”
“Nah, you can wear it. As long as you don’t mind that it’s been covered in cow dung too many times to count.”
Savannah gave the hoodie a side eye, wrinkling her nose.
“It’s been washed just as much,” he added. “You know Mama Hazel wouldn’t let anything hang in her mudroom unless it had been thoroughly cleaned first.”
“True.” She put her hands in the back pockets of her jeans and rocked back on her heels. She wore rain boots today, the rubber kind that reached almost to her knees, with a plaid design on them. “Anyway, I wasn’t just here to talk about the sprinkler system. I was wondering what you’re planning for the old cows. The ones on the Harris property?”
“Not really planning anything. We’ll feed them, make sure they’re comfortable. Let them live out their lives in peace over there. Why?”
“I was thinking a few of them might be a nice addition to the camp when it’s up and running in the spring. They’re so gentle. It might be nice to have... I don’t know, not a petting zoo, but actual farm animals that the kids can interact with.”
“I thought this camp was a musical one?”
She’d had the idea to form a program like the one she’d volunteered with in Nashville. A music program for kids in the foster care system—kids like she had been before Bennett and Mama Hazel adopted her at the age of seven. Police officers had found her, abandoned and dirty, on the steps of their precinct in Springfield, and Levi vividly remembered her quiet demeanor and how skinny she’d been when they first brought her to Walters Ranch. How she’d jumped at loud noises for a while. That early beginning had left scars on Savannah he hadn’t realized until she came back to Slippery Rock last summer. Seeing her blossom like this, planning a camp for kids like her, it was something he wished he’d thought of.
Still, to add dairy cattle? That seemed a little...off.
“It is. I was talking to one of the therapists who has agreed to spend a few days each month at the farm. She told me about horse therapy and mentioned that having other animals around could give the kids more responsibility. You know, feed the cows, clean up after them.” She wrinkled her nose again at the cleaning part, and Levi bit back a smile.
“And you’re going to teach them this cattle feeding, cattle cleaning stuff?”
“Ah, maybe?” She looked around the milking parlor. “I did learn how to milk them, after all.” Levi raised an eyebrow at his sister. She laughed. “Okay, so it took me a while to get the hang of it, but I did. If I can do it, the kids in the program can figure it out. Especially if one former star defensive back from the NFL is around to encourage them.”
And the other shoe dropped. She wanted him to be part of the camp. Levi shrugged. “Sure, I’ll pick out a couple of the really docile cows.” And he’d volunteer as much time as Savannah wanted. After all, wasn’t that what family was for?
Savannah rewarded him with a big smile and reached up on her tiptoes to press a quick kiss to his cheek. “We can talk it through more whenever you have some free time. Hey, you’re coming to the downtown lighting tonight, right?”
“Do we know yet why Thom has called, emailed and texted everyone in town to be there?”
“Do we ever know why the mayor does something?” Savannah asked and shrugged. “He invited the TV stations from Springfield to come, too, because most of them covered the Branson lighting on Thanksgiving. My guess is he’s trying to drum up more winter tourism. You know, tour the small-town lights, drink hot cider, spend your money in our town. That kind of thing.”
“But we don’t have anything for people to see. Only lunatics hit the lake at this time of year—the water’s too cold.”
Savannah shrugged. “Thom always has his reasons. Listen, I need to get to the orchard. We’ll save you a spot tonight, though,” she said, looking at her watch. She hurried out of the parlor, and he heard one of the ranch four-wheelers start up and then fade into the distance.
Her plan wouldn’t hurt anything, Levi told himself as he got into the truck and turned it toward the compost area. The camp wasn’t set to open until the spring, and cows were adaptable. Adding another thing to his calendar wouldn’t be a bad thing, either. With Aiden, James, Collin and Adam deep in relationship heaven, he was kind of the odd man out.
Levi liked people. He liked conversation and camaraderie. Those were two of the things he’d loved about football. There was never a lack of backslapping or talking on a football field. There had been plenty of both here, too, before his buddies started dropping like flies under Cupid’s bow. He didn’t want to be a third wheel to any of them, so he needed to find something else to do with his time. Savannah’s camp was a good starting place. The new product lines for the dairy would take up more time, too.
At the compost area, Levi began shoveling the manure onto the smoking squares. By spring they would have a good amount of compost for the local home and garden store, and probably enough for the orchard and a few other local businesses, too. He shoveled another pile into one of the compost squares.
It wasn’t that he envied his friends falling in love. He wouldn’t mind falling like that himself, if he could find the right woman.
The problem was most of the women in Slippery Rock were taken—a hazard of small-town living. If he didn’t make the time to either meet someone from a nearby town who fit the bill of farmer’s wife or head to Little Rock or Tulsa to find someone to at least take the edge off his physical needs, though, this restless feeling he’d been trying to shake since the summer would keep bothering him. The daydreams about Camden were only the fruits of his too-long celibate streak.
Until he could fit one of those two plans of attack into his schedule, he would just keep himself busy in other ways. The less time he had free, the less time he’d have to brood over...things. Like his lack of a love life.
Like the pretty girl he remembered from childhood wandering back into town looking like a drop-dead-gorgeous woman, complete with a wedding dress.
Finished with the compost piles, Levi tossed the shovel into the truck bed and got behind the wheel. He’d go check on the old cows. His father, Bennett, would have already fed them today, but Levi could check the salt licks. Maybe make some notes for Savannah’s new project.
He pointed the truck to the rutted path that led to the fence between Walters property and the Harris farm.
Nothing was wrong. Everything was fine. He’d made the right choice to come back to Slippery Rock, to gracefully back out of football. This was just part of the adjustment period. So it had taken more than two years to get to the questioning phase—that didn’t make his decision wrong.
He wanted to be here. Here, he had a purpose. Plans for the future.
Camden Harris was just a distraction. One he would start ignoring right now.
CHAPTER FOUR (#uc6693e7b-8c6d-5898-b756-2db4849375d0)
LEVI STOOD ON the crowded dock in the Slippery Rock Marina. Two remote broadcast trucks from Springfield news stations were parked on the road, their cameras trained on the Slippery Rock mayor, Thom Hall, as he made a speech at the makeshift podium.
Thom was going on about the resilience of Slippery Rock, how neighbors had pulled together this year and how that togetherness would make this the best holiday season in memory.
Levi shoved his hands into the pockets of his denim jacket, willing away the nip in the air. It didn’t work, but at least his fingers didn’t feel as if they would fall off now.
People he’d known all his life surrounded him. Buddies he’d grown up with, women he’d watched fall for those buddies. His parents were somewhere on the crowded dock, likely closer to the shore because his mother was afraid of water. It wouldn’t matter to her that this part of the lake was no more than eight feet deep, that she could actually swim or that she had spent time on a big ocean liner while in the Peace Corps.
“That’s why I invited you all here tonight, to celebrate the rejuvenation of Slippery Rock, and to kick off this wonderful season of giving,” Thom was saying.
Levi held back an eye roll.
Thom wasn’t exaggerating, but he could use a better speech writer. After a tornado had torn apart the downtown area, leaving several people wounded and causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage, the town had come together. Neighbors had put new roofs up, and locals had banded together to build the new grandstand area and rebuild the farmer’s market. Still, Thom was talking like some kind of character from It’s a Wonderful Life.
This was Slippery Rock, Missouri, not Bedford Falls, New York. This wasn’t a black-and-white movie. And he was freezing his butt off out here on the dock, where Thom had insisted everyone stand for the lighting ceremony of the inaugural Slippery Rock Holiday Festival.
He’d hired a carnival to come to town every weekend between Thanksgiving and New Year’s. There were street vendors, and live music would be in the grandstand that had been erected after the tornado.
The festival would definitely bring in crowds of tourists, and that was good, but if the man didn’t stop pontificating about the town, they were all going to freeze to these wooden dock boards.
“Is it just me, or does the temperature keep dropping despite the amount of hot air coming out of Thom’s mouth?” Collin whispered.
Savannah shushed them. Levi gave her the eye roll he’d been holding back.
“It’s sweet how he’s going on,” she insisted.
“All he has to do is throw a switch. We’ve been out here for thirty minutes while he talks about us like we’re living in some kind of cross between George Bailey’s Bedford Falls and Captain von Trapp’s prewar Austria.”
Savannah shot him a confused look. Levi shrugged.
“I was going for two heroic dudes.”
“And you didn’t think John Wayne or Denzel Washington?” Collin asked.
“I was going for heroic and Christmassy.”
“The Sound of Music isn’t a Christmas movie,” Savannah offered.
“Then why is it only shown on TV between Thanksgiving and Christmas?”
“Arnold Schwarzenegger was in a Christmas movie, remember? He beat up Sinbad over a children’s toy,” Collin offered.
Arnold Schwarzenegger probably would have been a better choice. But both Jimmy Stewart and Christopher Plummer had been on late-night TV in their iconic roles this week when he couldn’t sleep for the visions of Camden Harris dancing in his head. There had been no sign of Arnold on TV.
“So was Bruce Willis,” Savannah teased. She wound her arm around Collin’s as she spoke, snuggling closer to him. Levi would never have imagined his baby sister would fall for his best friend, but the two of them were perfect for each other.
Levi rubbed a hand over the back of his neck. Why their perfection annoyed him he couldn’t figure out. But the more they snuggled and whispered, the more he wanted to toss them both into the lake. He’d leave them and join James, Slippery Rock’s recently elected sheriff, but James was canoodling with Mara at the other end of the dock. Same with Adam and Jenny, although they weren’t canoodling so much as looking as if, once they got their little boys back home and asleep, they’d start the canoodling.
Canoodling. What the hell was wrong with him? Levi Walters didn’t use words like canoodling. He didn’t watch sappy movies. He took care of his cattle. Played a little football every now and then with the guys. He threw darts and drank beer—all manly things.
So why was he so annoyed that Collin and Savannah were holding hands? That James had wrapped his arms and coat around Mara, holding her close to him? That Adam just kissed Jenny on her forehead when Thom said that line about the “best Christmas ever”? That Aiden and Julia were currently in a lip-lock, ignoring the speech and the crowd entirely?
He definitely needed to get started on either Plan A, find a local girl who’d fall for him, or Plan B, settle for a weekend of fun with a city girl. Maybe tonight.
The cattle weren’t in birthing season yet, and even if they were, his dad could handle a few deliveries. The cattle knew their routine, and the dairy was mostly mechanized now, anyway. Maybe he’d get in his truck once Thom stopped chattering on about Christmas and drive south until he hit the Gulf. Spend a few days with his toes in the sand.
Get away from Love Central and have a fling of his own. Carry around one of those souvenir cups filled with something highly alcoholic.
Someone jostled him.
“Excuse me, just trying to get a good shot of the lighting.” The woman, tall and slender, with her hair up in a ponytail that came out the back of her ball cap, pushed past Levi to stand closer to the edge of the dock. She had a camera up to her face, looking through the viewfinder as she moved around in the crowd, and she looked nothing like the woman who’d walked into the Slope the other night in a wedding dress. But this was definitely Camden. His heartbeat revved a little faster in his chest. Levi frowned. “Better,” she said, to no one in particular.
“So, let’s count it down, people,” Thom Hall said, raising his voice despite the microphone before him. Levi winced as the mic fed back through the speakers. “From five,” Thom called out.
Everyone on the dock joined in. “Five.”
Finally. They’d be off this dock and into the Slippery Slope in a few minutes, and maybe then he could feel his fingers again. Putting a few extra feet between his body and Camden’s wasn’t a bad idea, either. Levi’s entire body had clenched the moment she pushed past him, and he couldn’t get the muscles to release.
That settled it. He had to get out of Slippery Rock and into a fling of some sort. Pronto.
“Four,” Thom continued, leading the town through the chant.
Once the feeling returned to his fingers, Levi would make a list of things that needed to be done before he took that vacation.
“Three,” the town called out.
Savannah kissed Collin. Camden stepped a little closer to Levi, still apparently unaware that he was anywhere near her. Screw the list—he was just going to get in his truck and go.
“Two” rang out over the dock as the countdown continued. Collin and Savannah were still stuck in their lip-lock.
“One!”
Thom raised his arms like the flagger at a NASCAR race, and when he lowered them, a man on shore activated the lights. Streams of fairy lights crisscrossed the streets of downtown; more lights outlined the buildings and the grandstand. New flags had been hung on the street poles, and the school band struck up “Winter Wonderland” from inside the grandstand.
“Oh, it’s perfect,” Camden said, keeping her focus on the viewfinder on her camera rather than the people around her. “They’re going to love this,” she said, moving the camera from side to side.
Making a video, not taking stills, Levi realized. No wonder she was so focused on the camera’s viewfinder instead of where she was going. She stepped back, and so she wouldn’t land on him and lose her balance again, Levi moved back, too. He put his hands on her shoulders, letting her know he was there.
“Sorry,” she said, “I just want to get all the lights.” She tilted the camera, he supposed, to get the outlines of the buildings as well as the Main Street lights.
“No problem.”
The crowd began to move back to shore. Levi started to inch away from Camden, but when she took another little step back, he realized he couldn’t move. He was the only thing between her and the lake. The dock was sturdy, but this area was where the boats tied up, with no railings to stop anyone from diving—or falling—off the side.
He waved at Collin and Savannah as they started moving away. “I’ll catch up.”
“Playing hero?” Savannah teased.
Levi gave her another eye roll. “Protecting someone from catching cold by falling into the lake in November.”
Collin and Savannah continued back down the dock, along with the other town residents. He saw James and Mara start climbing the steps leading to the street. Adam and Jenny, along with their little boys, were nearly back to shore. He didn’t catch Aiden and Julia, but they’d probably already left the dock. Everyone watched the twinkling lights as they walked, and Levi had to admit the downtown area had taken on a bit of a fairy-tale quality.
Something he probably wouldn’t have noticed if AMC wasn’t in full-on holiday mode with the old movies this week. Old movies beat reruns of those daytime talk shows any day of the week.
Camden took another step back, her heels at the edge of the dock now. Levi reached for her arm.
“Watch your step,” he said, but she startled as he brushed her arm.
Camden pulled away from him, quickly, and the move threw her off balance. As if in slow motion, Levi reached for her as she tried to take another step back to regain her balance. But there was no place for her foot to make purchase. She flailed, and Levi surged forward, trying to catch her before her other foot left the dock.
And then they were both falling.
Frigid water splashed over Levi’s head, and he gasped, taking in a mouthful of lake water as he did. Levi kicked for the surface, sputtering and coughing when his head found the air.
Camden surfaced just after him, coming up just a couple of yards from Levi, spluttering.
“You okay?”
“What the heck was that?” she asked angrily. The ball cap had come off under water, and long, dark, saturated hair hung over her face. She pushed a mass of it away, but the darkness hid her face from him.
She kicked toward the dock, and Levi followed. She was mad at him? “I was trying to keep us both dry,” he said, hauling himself up on the dock while she used the ladder.
“Nice job,” she said, and there was a note of sarcasm underlying the anger.
Well, she wasn’t the only one ending a chilly November night with a dunking in the lake. “What the hell were you doing watching your camera screen instead of watching your step?”
“I was taking a video of the lighting ceremony, thank you very much.” She made it to the top of the ladder, and Levi held out his hand to help her onto the dock. “Granddad and Grandmom stayed home, and I wanted them to see what the lights looked like from the docks.”
She ignored his hand and stepped onto the wood, water streaming off her clothes to puddle on the dock around them.
“I’ll never find my hat,” she mumbled as she gathered the hem of her shirt in her hands and squeezed out some of the water. The camera dangled from a string around her wrist.
Lights were strewn intermittently around the dock, and in the dim light, he could see her bottom lip tremble. Not in fear or hurt, but from the cold. Camden gathered her hair in her hands and wrung out the excess water. He should do something. Offer her his coat. Of course, it was soaking wet, along with everything else he wore.
“I have a blanket in my truck,” he said. He shrugged the soaked denim jacket off his shoulders and twisted it in his hands as water streamed onto the wooden slats at their feet, then hung it on a dock post and stripped his shirt over his head.
“What the—What are you doing, Levi?” A hint of panic edged into her voice.
“I’m wringing out my shirt. Don’t worry, the feminine virtue of a woman who wanders around strange towns in a wedding dress is safe with me.”
“I wasn’t wandering around town, I was getting directions. And I told you, the gown wasn’t exactly my choice.”
“And yet you were driving across Missouri wearing it.”
“I needed to clear my head.” She frowned.
“Looks like you finally found some nonwedding attire to wear.”
“I picked up a few things at Julia’s store on Thanksgiving. And thankfully ordered a few more things online, because these clothes are probably done for.” A tremor shook her body as she spoke.
Levi wadded the shirt in his hands until no more water dripped out, then held it by the hem, snapping it between his hands. He put it back on and shivered. He grabbed his soaked jacket from the post. “Come on, let’s get you somewhere warm and dry,” he said. Levi didn’t wait; he caught Camden’s elbow in his hand and led her toward downtown. For the first time, his skin didn’t tingle at her touch. Good—maybe the other night had just been a fluke and he wasn’t as hard up for sex as he’d imagined.
He slipped the damp shirt back over his head and shivered. He needed to get out of these clothes, pronto. Camden shivered beside him. So did she.
“A little cold water hasn’t hampered my ability to walk, thank you,” she said, pulling her arm from his grasp. But she continued walking beside him. After a moment, she blew out a breath. “Do you make a habit of knocking unsuspecting women into the lake so you can offer them a warm blanket?”
“It’s probably not much warmer than we are at the moment, but it’s dry. And I didn’t knock you into the lake, you stepped right off the dock.” They crossed from the dock to the main road, and Levi pointed. “My truck’s right over there.”
“Because you grabbed at me.” He hadn’t expected her to fall to her knees in gratitude, but this was a little much on the annoyance side of things. All he’d done was tell her to watch out and then try to keep her from falling. She was the one who overreacted to the situation.
She kicked her legs and stomped her feet as they walked, as if either would do much to get more of the water off her. Her tennis shoes made squishing sounds as they walked. So did his. Levi held back a grin. She looked ridiculous. He probably did, too.
“I grabbed at you because you were flailing around like a bass in the bottom of a boat.” He unlocked the truck and grabbed the blanket out of the back seat.
“I was just fine until you—”
“You’re welcome,” he interrupted, handing the soft throw to her.
She narrowed her gaze at him and didn’t take the blanket. “That wasn’t a thank-you.”
“It should have been.”
Streetlights threw a cozy glow on the downtown area, brightened even more by the Christmas lights around the buildings and in store windows. Only a few people were still outside; most had gone into the Slippery Slope or the grandstand, where a local band was playing holiday music. Camden pushed her hair out of her eyes, and Levi’s hands tightened into fists.
Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.
Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».
Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию (https://www.litres.ru/kristina-knight/christmas-in-a-small-town/) на ЛитРес.
Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.