Famous In A Small Town
Better to be safe than sorry.
Savannah closed her door and then pressed back into the seat.
She glanced into the rearview and smirked. “Well, Savannah, not making that left really is turning out to be a great decision.” She put the car in Drive and continued through to the town.
The last rays of sunlight sank into the earth as she turned off the main road and onto the gravel lane that led to her childhood home.
She’d stopped in town to fill the gas tank. There’d been no sign of Collin or his big truck, thankfully, and the kid working the register in the station had barely looked up from his magazine long enough to take the twenty she’d pushed across the counter. Then she took the long way to the ranch, so that it was now after eight. For as long as she could remember, Bennett and Mama Hazel retired to their master suite by eight, and they were both up before dawn.
She stopped for a moment under an old maple tree. The porch light was on, glimmering in the twilight, as it had been every night for as long as she could remember. The last one in for the night was supposed to turn it off, and she wondered if Levi was the straggler tonight or if their parents had changed that eight o’clock bedtime habit.
Her brother, older by nine months and a full school year, rarely stayed out late. Or at least he hadn’t when they were kids. She had no idea what he did as an adult. He’d been gone, to college and then playing in the NFL, while she’d finished school and waited tables at the Slope. She’d left for the reality show just before the injury that had taken him out of football forever.
Didn’t matter. She would park, grab her overnight bag from the backseat and worry about the rest of her luggage tomorrow. Assuming she stayed past tomorrow. Savannah was still unsure just what she wanted to do. Go or stay. Wait out the scandal she knew was coming or run as fast and as far from it as she could.
Her father’s beat-up F-150 sat under a tall tree at the side of the house, along with a newer model that had Levi written all over it—from the flat-black paint job to the chromed bumpers and roll bar. Mama Hazel’s familiar station wagon was gone, probably traded in for the navy sedan that sat under the carport. Savannah couldn’t remember the last time Mama Hazel drove herself anywhere, but she liked to have a car handy “just in case.”
Huh. All the cars were accounted for, so who’d left the light on?
She took a deep breath as she pulled the old Honda in behind Bennett’s truck.
Savannah climbed the steps of the familiar farmhouse with her overnight bag slung over her shoulder. Her hand shook as she reached for the white-enamel doorknob and she willed it to still. This was her home. The place she was safe.
How many times had she been told that as a child? Never, not a single time, had she wanted those words to be true more than she did now. There was a storm coming, one that could shatter her, and she had a feeling she would need the strength of these old walls if she were to withstand it. Maybe, just maybe, if she hid here long enough the storm would never come.
Her agent had said as much. If she left quietly, if she stayed away, maybe nothing would come of her indiscretion.
Savannah swallowed hard and twisted the knob. The door swung in, opening to the small entryway with its familiar hardwood floors and the same brass hat rack in the corner that she remembered from her childhood. Stairs, with that familiar navy blue carpet runner, rose a few feet in front of her, dividing the living area from the dining room and kitchen. A lamp remained on near Mama Hazel’s rocking chair, the book she was reading lying pages-down on the seat, and in the low light she could see the pictures of Levi and her lining the wall. Levi’s trophies were on the mantel. She crossed the room, ran her fingers over a new frame and caught her breath.
They’d framed the write-up in the Slippery Rock Gazette of her third-place finish in the talent show. She hadn’t even called them after, had just said yes to the trip to Nashville and taken off. Under the frame was a copy of a music magazine with her smiling face on the cover. It ran the week her first single hit the top twenty before beginning its slow descent back down the charts.
“Van.” The softly spoken word startled her, and she turned. Levi stood in the gloominess, coffee cup in hand. He wore his usual jeans and T-shirt, his dark-skinned arms looking like the trunks of a couple of the trees she’d passed on the highway. He still kept his hair cropped close to his head, and even in the darkness, she thought his deep brown eyes had just a hint of amber.
It was the same amber her eyes had. When they were kids, she liked to make up stories about how she’d been adopted by her birth family, and the people who’d had her before had been her kidnappers.
Of course, that had only been wishful thinking. The Walters family was wonderful, but they weren’t hers. Her family had left her on the steps of a police station in Springfield with a note pinned to her chest.
Name: Savannah
Birthday in May
Seven years old
Eight freaking words on a note she couldn’t erase from her memory.
“What are you doing here?”
Did he know? Levi always seemed to know when she was in trouble. She willed her thundering heart to slow. There was no way he could know what had happened this time. She’d been listening to the radio all day, and if the story had broken, she knew the DJs would be talking about it nonstop. So far, it seemed Genevieve was sticking to her word and keeping the whole sordid thing a secret. He couldn’t know, she told herself.
“I, uh, needed a break from the tour,” she said, deciding that was the safest answer. No one knew she’d been offered an extended touring gig with Genevieve’s crew. An offer that had been summarily revoked later that night when Genevieve had ended the set early and found Savannah exiting her tour bus. “And I haven’t been back here since the finale eighteen months ago.”
Levi nodded. “You look good,” he said. “Mama and Dad would have waited up if they’d known you were coming.”
“I’ll just surprise them at breakfast,” she said. “What are you doing here, anyway? Shouldn’t you have a house of your own by now?”
“I do. Used the foundation of the cabin,” he said, motioning to the general area where the first Walters cabin had stood more than one hundred years before. Her father had torn down the walls when she was eleven, after she’d nearly been struck by a falling rafter inside. “They’re finishing up the plumbing and then the floors, and I’ll move in.”
“You always loved that old place.” She reached for something more to say but wasn’t sure where to start. She never talked to Levi about why he’d walked away from his professional football contract. Everyone knew about the injury, but from what she’d seen on those Sunday-morning sports talk shows, he could have made a comeback. She didn’t ask then, and it seemed almost too late to ask now. Besides, he’d never asked why she was so hell-bent on a reality talent show when, before leaving Slippery Rock, she’d been petrified of singing in the Christmas pageant at church.
Levi watched her and she wondered what he saw. Wondered how she could make sure he and the rest of her family never saw how truly bad she could be. She would figure out how to live with the shame of sleeping with a married man, but she didn’t want any of that shame to fall on them.
“The porch light’s still on.” She grabbed at the only conversation starter she could think of. “You expecting someone?”
Levi glanced over his shoulder and a small smile played over his wide mouth. “That light’s not for me. It’s been on since you left for the talent show. I turned it off once and the next morning Mama just about stripped me bare with her words. I didn’t know she even knew that kind of language.” He sipped from the mug in his hands.
Savannah blinked. The light was on...for her? After all this time? Emotion clogged her throat. To keep her threatening tears from falling, she focused on breathing.
“You want coffee? Something to eat?”
She shook her head, unable to talk as she stared at the thick, mahogany door and the glimmer of porch light she could see through the side windows. The light was still on, more than two years after she’d left, for her? She drew in an unsteady breath.
“Well, I was headed up for the night. We’re planting alfalfa in the western field before dawn, and I still have some computer work to do before I turn in. You remember the way upstairs?”
If anyone else had said the words, the emotions she was feeling would have dried up in an angry burst. But this was Levi, and those were the same five words he’d been saying to her since that night twenty years before when Hazel and Bennett had brought her home to Walters Ranch.
“I remember,” she said, but the words were barely a whisper.
Levi nodded and turned toward the staircase. He paused at the door. “Last one in, remember?” he asked, and Savannah could only nod.
In a moment, he’d disappeared up the stairs, and she was alone in the familiar living room with Mama Hazel’s rocker and the porch light shining through the windows.
Slowly, Savannah made her way to the front door. She looked out, seeing vague shapes in the darkness beyond the porch. It was barely nine o’clock at night, and if she were in Nashville, she would just be going out for the night. But this was small-town Missouri, where farmers hit the fields before dawn and went to bed soon after sundown. Her fingers rested lightly on the porch light switch.
The emotion she’d held back when Levi was still in the room tore through her like a planter tore the ground during spring seeding. Her fingers shook and she tried to blink back the tears.
They’d left the porch light on for more than two years. For her.
Savannah depressed the switch, and the light flicked off in an instant.
Maybe this time, she really was home.
CHAPTER TWO
COLLIN GLANCED AT the clock on the dash as he accelerated the truck on the highway. He should have kept driving when he realized it was Savannah Walters on the side of the road playing at being a damsel in distress. Ignoring the red check-engine light. Running her car out of gas.
He didn’t need her kind of drama right now.
Although why she was still driving that old beater of a car when she had a fat record deal in Nashville was curious.
Curiosity—and a penchant for drama, he’d always been certain—killed the cat. And he had no intention of going down just now.
Collin pulled into a parking spot on main drag of town, just a couple of blocks from the marina and the lake. He’d left his window rolled down and could hear a few gulls calling out in the evening air.
James Calhoun, one of his best friends and a deputy sheriff, waited on the steps to the sheriff’s office. He wore the county uniform of khaki pants and shirt, the dark utility belt holding his gun and other cop paraphernalia around his waist, and he’d pushed his aviator sunglasses to the top of his head.
Seeing Collin, he started down the walk.
“She’s inside. A little scared, I think, but she’s hiding the scared pretty far under the usual teenage attitude.”
Collin stepped out of the truck and met James on the sidewalk. “Damages?”
“She swears she wasn’t in on it, and I tend to believe her. From what I’ve been able to get from the others, she was walking by when the fire started in the parking lot, and ran over to try to help put it out.”
Well, that was a new one. Usually when the sheriff’s department called about his little sister, the call was to come bail her out for some minor offence or another. At least this time she’d been trying to do the right thing.
“Thanks for calling my cell instead of the house. The last thing Gran needs is more Amanda worries.” He grabbed the bill of his ball cap from his back pocket and shoved it over his head.
“No worries. How’s Gladys doing?”
“Physical therapy three times a week, simple exercises every day to build up her strength. The doctor says she’ll be getting around without the walker before long.” Collin wasn’t so sure. He’d seen his grandmother’s post–hip replacement progress for himself, but there was something not quite right about her. He’d caught her staring into the distance a few times as if she didn’t quite understand what she was seeing, and he’d had to remind her of dates and events several times over the past few weeks.
“I kept her out of the main holding area, since she wasn’t actually involved in starting the fire,” James said, motioning Collin up the sidewalk. “I have to tell you, though, I’m pretty much alone in my belief in her innocence. She’s been involved in too many other incidents lately. A few of the officers think all eight of those kids should have the book thrown at them.”
“And you’re stuck in the middle.”
“Call me Switzerland.” James opened the door to the office and they stepped inside. There was no hectic movement, no scanners chattering in the growing gloom. The Slippery Rock sheriff’s office at seven thirty on a Friday night was as quiet as a church on Monday morning. The receptionist had gone home and the 9-1-1 center in the next county took care of most dispatch calls.
God, but he loved his small town. He just loved it a little more when his sister wasn’t doing her best to become a criminal.
“You shouldn’t have to play peacemaker between my little sister and your squad room.”
“Stuck in the middle is no place I haven’t been a time or two, and since the other kids cleared her, there’s no reason to add another asterisk to her record.” He put his hand on Collin’s arm. “But, Col, you’re gonna have to talk to her at some point about the mischief calls, the skipping curfew. She’s headed down a dangerous road.”
James flipped on the fluorescent lights as he led Collin behind the bulletproof glass protecting the reception area. Collin knew from a school field trip that the holding cells were in the basement along with a storm shelter, the deputy’s cubicles in the back half of the first floor, and that their workout room shared space with the department’s small armory on the second floor. He followed James through the maze of cubicles.
Collin sighed. “Yeah. I know.” He just didn’t know how to have the conversation that Amanda obviously needed. He wasn’t her father or even a guardian.
Since Gladys’s fall just before the holidays, Amanda had been on a tear. Skipping curfew, getting speeding tickets as if she were trying to make the Guinness Book of World Records. She’d even been caught defacing the fountain in the square by filling it with laundry detergent. Amanda needed parents and he didn’t have a clue how to fill that role for her.
“She’s not a bad kid.”
“I know that, too.” She was just messed up, the way they’d all been messed up by their parents. Samson and Maddie Tyler had been absentee parents for half of Collin’s life, and nearly all of Amanda’s. There would be the occasional birthday card, and one year they showed up at Christmas, but for the most part the people who were supposed to parent Collin, Amanda and their sister, Mara, had simply not.
“I can get you guys into family counseling, if you think it would help.”
Sitting in a stuffy office talking about their lack of parental supervision sounded like the fifth circle of hell to Collin. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Something had to have set Amanda off and, despite all his efforts to talk to his baby sister, he hadn’t been able to figure out what it was.
“I’ll think about it.”
They rounded a corner and he saw Amanda sitting cross-legged in an old plastic chair. Her long blond hair was pulled up in a high ponytail and she wore her old Converse sneakers—with fresh scorch marks—along with ripped-up jeans and a sweatshirt with an image of the galaxy and the words You Are Here with an arrow on it.
Collin wanted to shake her. She was here, in a police station, when she could be home with her family. All she had to do was stop whatever crazy train she’d jumped on.
Amanda chewed on her bottom lip and wrapped and unwrapped the string from her hoodie around her finger. She was just a kid. A lost, hurt kid, and he was doing a crap job of making her feel safe.
“Collin’s here,” James said as they neared the cubicle.
Amanda straightened in her chair, put her feet on the floor and folded her arms over her chest. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t have to bother him.”
“How else were you going to get home, kid? You’re grounded from the car, remember?” James backed away, leaving them to sort this out without him.
Amanda eyed him for a long minute. “I’ve got two legs.”
“You’d rather walk the ten miles back to the orchard than spend fifteen minutes in the truck with me, huh?” Collin asked, leaned a shoulder against the cubicle wall.
Amanda twisted her mouth to the side. “I didn’t want you to be bothered.”
And just like that, Collin wanted to shake her again. She wasn’t a bother to him, she was his sister. But no matter what he did, he just seemed to mess things up between them. After speeding ticket number four, he’d taken her car keys. After the laundry soap incident, he’d banned her from being out after five.
He wasn’t sure what he could take away from her for this latest stunt.
Hell, maybe he should give something back. After all, she’d helped to put out the fire the other teens had set. A fire that could have decimated the courthouse square or that might have killed or seriously injured someone.
Maybe even Amanda.
“You’re not a bother, kid.”
She mumbled something he didn’t quite hear. He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.
Collin shoved his hands into his pockets, unsure what to do next. He needed her to know she wasn’t a nuisance to him. But her actions lately were a nuisance to him. A nuisance and a worry. He was doing his best to keep the orchard profitable, to keep Amanda comfortable, to ensure their grandmother’s recovery. His job was to keep everything and everyone in their little circle together, and he felt as if he was losing his grip on every single aspect.
He hooked his thumb toward the front door. “How about we get out of here?”
Amanda shrugged but she stood quickly and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m free to go?”
“Unless you’re changing your story about the fire,” James said. He stood near the wall.
“I just tried to help put it out. I didn’t even know they were in that alley until I smelled the smoke.” She shot James a look from the corner of her eye, and Collin fisted his hands. She knew more than she was letting on.
“That’s good enough for me, then,” James said, using his cop voice.
“If it’s good enough for the law...” Collin teased, but he wasn’t rewarded with one of Amanda’s reluctant smiles. Her shoulders stiffened and her mouth turned down at the corners. “Just a joke, kiddo. You said you weren’t involved in the setting, just the dousing. That’s all that matters.”
She mumbled something else under her breath and didn’t meet his eyes.
“Amanda—” he began, but she interrupted.
“Can we just go home?”
“Sure.”
Once they were in the truck and clear of the sheriff’s office, Collin said, “You want to talk about it?”
“About what?”
“About why you were still in town when you know you (a) don’t have a car, and (b) still have a curfew, and I’m going to add a C to it—why did you lie to James about your involvement?” She pressed her lips together. “Fine, we’ll start with the easy one. Why didn’t you ride the bus home after school?”
Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, a move Collin was all too familiar with. He’d done the same too many times to count when he was a teenager, but their sister, Mara, had made the gesture a near art form. “I’m seventeen years old. The bus is vile,” Amanda declared.
“So you were...what? Going to walk the ten miles out to the orchard and you just happened to come across a few pyromaniacs who were trying to set the courthouse on fire?”
“They were just testing the combustion rates of visco fuses and spolettes. After the fire marshal did his talk about fireworks safety leading up to the Memorial Day Kick Off the Summer celebration, they got the idea that they’d mess with the fuses for the big fireworks show. Trick the workers into thinking they’d bought a bunch of duds, and then scare the crap out of them when everything started going off at once.”
Collin gripped the steering wheel harder. That could have gotten someone seriously hurt. “And you know this how?”
Amanda blew out a breath. “I was hiding out under the bleachers in the gym during health class, and I heard them planning it all out.”
“You skipped class—”
“For the five millionth time, Mr. Acres is doing the unit on intercourse. I couldn’t face another hour of bananas and condom demonstrations. I swear he gets off on lubing up the fruits.” She shivered with disgust.
Collin blinked and squeezed the steering wheel. “We’ll get back to that in a minute. You skipped class, you overheard them talking about this prank and you...what, wanted to join in?”
“No, I was going to show them that what they were planning wouldn’t work. And then I was going to show them what would work, but Courtney Gains is an idiot and instead of setting up the fuses on something nonflammable and using slow-burning punks to light them, he used his dad’s grill lighter and stuck all the fuses on top of his backpack.”
Collin wasn’t sure where to begin. The skipping of class or the destruction of public property that Amanda nearly took part in because she’d wanted to see it done correctly. He was so in over his head here.
“And what would you have done differently?”
“Replaced all the usual fuses with fast-burning but connected fuses. Instead of delaying the explosions, which could get someone hurt, everything would just go off at once and without the delay. Simple. Added benefit? It would be prettier than a usual ‘light one rocket, wait five minutes, light another, wait another five minutes’ show.”
Collin made the turn from the highway onto the gravel road leading to the orchard.
“Why?” It was the only question he thought he could ask without getting pseudo-parent-y and...angry.
“Why what?”
“Why mess with the fireworks? Why not just let people have a fun night without a bunch of drama and craziness?”
Amanda pulled her lower lip between her teeth and then turned her head to look out the window. Moonlight hit the apple trees blooming pink and white in the fields surrounding them. The pear and peach trees behind the main house would bloom later in the spring. He wondered what she saw in the fields. Did she see the security he saw? Or did she see only trees?
“This is dangerous, Amanda. Can’t you see that?”
“It was just a prank, and now it’s nothing because the fuse has already been lit once. They’ll be expecting it.”
Collin pulled the truck to a stop at the side of the main house and blew out a breath. “Pranks hurt people, Amanda—”
“It was just going to be a joke, Collin, jeez.”
“And speeding down Main Street was a joke? What if some kid ran out into the street chasing his ball? Would that have been a joke?” Her face paled, but Amanda kept her mouth in that stubborn line. “What if the detergent trick had clogged the line and flooded someone’s house? Or if the stupid bubbles had blocked part of the road? Just another funny?”
“None of those things happened. And you and Mara did worse.”
“That isn’t the point.”
“Of course it isn’t. The point is I screwed up. Again. I’m not the amazing, the wonderful, the never-get-caught Collin Tyler, football hero and member of the Sailor Five. I’m just Amanda. The forgettable,” she said, grabbing her backpack and running from the truck. Amanda slammed the front door, making the spring wreath of tulips bounce against the wood.
Sailor Five. Damn it, anyway. He’d been part of a winning football team, along with James, Levi Walters, Aiden and Adam Buchanan. Yes, winning the state football championship was a big deal, and yes, the five of them, along with Mara, had pulled their share of pranks and gotten away with it. Was that what this was all about? Amanda felt she was, what, being overshadowed by something he did in high school? That was just silly. The Sailor Five was in the past. Tyler Orchard, their family, their friends, those were the things that were important.