Famous In A Small Town

CHAPTER THREE

“HOW DID YOU not know she was back in town?” Adam Buchanan narrowed his eyes at the dartboard six feet in front of him, cocked his arm and threw. The dart embedded itself into the paneled wall several inches to the right of its target.

“It’s called having a life. You should try it sometime.” Collin marked down the missed shot and then gathered the darts for the next round. He, Adam, Levi and James had been playing darts at the Slippery Slope every Wednesday night for the past few years. Ever since Levi had ripped up his knee tackling a wide receiver in the first game of his team’s playoff matchup.

Adam snorted. “Since when did working 24/7 constitute having a life?”

“Adam.” Levi kept his voice low but the authority behind it was unmistakable. This was the captain of their football team talking and it annoyed the bejesus out of Collin. He could fight his own battles. And this wasn’t a battle; this was Adam being a jackass because he was bored. And Collin lying through his teeth to his three best friends because, damn it, since he’d run into Savannah Walters on the road outside of town, he’d been hard-pressed to keep her out of his head. That had been nearly a week ago. He should have forgotten about a ten-minute conversation and gas tank fill-up by now.

“Since working 24/7 got the orchard out of hock, that’s when. Some of us don’t have the luxury of working for Daddy.”

“Just play darts.” Levi put the red-winged darts in Collin’s hand and gave the blue ones to James.

When they’d started playing, darts was a way to get Levi’s uber-competitive mind off his ruined football career and onto something else. Now, eighteen months later, it was habit. One Collin had never thought about changing until tonight. He took aim, and his dart landed on the twenty triangle. James threw and hit fifteen.

He should have stayed home with Amanda. God knew his baby sister could use a little more attention thrown her way. He could have gone over the projections for harvest, finished that proposal for the organic chef’s association. The orchard was on stable financial ground for the first time in years, and now was so not the time to slack off. This was the time to build something that would last more than a lifetime.

“I’m not the one mooning over a girl at the bar,” Adam said, and took a long drink of his beer.

Collin aimed again and hit the ten. James hit another fifteen.

“She’s not just any girl. That’s a fine looking—” James started.

Levi cut him off. “Before you say something you might regret, J, that’s my baby sister over there.”

Screw darts. Collin tossed his last dart toward Adam’s head. It landed harmlessly on the Formica tabletop. “I’m not mooning over anyth—”

“Sure you are, Col.” Levi picked the dart off the table and pulled the others from the paneling around the board. “Let’s start the next round.” He took up position and began throwing, narrowing his eyes as he took aim just as he’d done when they’d been kids playing football. Levi had been the quarterback, Collin and James the receivers, and Adam and his twin Aiden the defensive specialists. After practices or game nights, they would sneak in here, and Merle, the owner and bartender, would let them stay as long as they didn’t try to scam drinks from any of the patrons.

Collin looked around the dingy bar. The same neon strip was burned out of the beer sign behind the bar. Same cowhide-covered bar stools. Merle wiped down the bar this evening, entertaining Savannah and her giggling gaggle of former high-school cheerleaders.

Three of whom Collin had dated.

Not that Savannah would care.

Not that he should care if Savannah did care.

One of the women at the bar said something, and Savannah threw her head back, mahogany hair cascading past her shoulders in a mass of waves, and laughed like she was at a freaking Kevin Hart show.

He wasn’t mooning. He was distracted, maybe. It wasn’t every day a woman walked into the Slope wearing a rhinestone party dress and high-heeled, over-the-knee boots. What the hell was Savannah thinking anyway?

“You’re up.”

Not that she didn’t look good in the dress that cinched tightly around her waist. And she’d learned a few new makeup tricks since she’d left town. That had to be the reason her eyes were so luminous.

“Collin.”

And her hair had always been the color of rich wood, but it hadn’t always been that thick, had it?

“Coll.”

A dart whizzed through his eye line, and Collin shook himself.

“What?”

“While you’re busy not mooning over the lovely Savannah, you might want to throw. You’re up,” Adam said, grinning. He picked up the dart from the hardwood floor.

Collin stepped to the line, gauged where the darts fell, and threw his first. It landed just over the white line above Levi’s dart. Damn it.

“When did she roll into town?” Adam asked. Couldn’t he leave Savannah out of five minutes of conversation?

“Friday night. And don’t ask me why she’s back. She’s done a good job of not talking about herself since she got here.” Levi took aim, and his dart landed in the bull’s-eye. “Guess that’s game.”

“I’ll buy the next round before I leave, boys,” James said, signaling the waitress. Juanita Alvarez had worked at the bar as long as Merle had.

“Don’t you have a shift later?” Collin asked.

“Yep. On midnights for the next few weeks.” James finished his water. “It’s why Juanita’s been serving me bottled water all night. And why I’m buying the last round, not drinking it.”

“None for me. Early morning.” Levi sat back in the booth, stretching his arms over the vinyl back. “I’ll take a cup of coffee, though,” he said as Juanita arrived at the table.

“Coke for me,” Collin said. There was still time to go over the books, but not if he had another drink.

“You guys are wusses,” Adam said and then asked Juanita for another draft. “Time was we’d drink in here until Merle shut it down and still get up at the butt crack of dawn for work or...whatever.”

“Time was we didn’t all have responsibilities,” James reminded his friend and then added, with a pointed gaze, “like a lovely wife and two great kids waiting at home.”

Adam rolled his eyes at that. “Jenny gets the guys’ night out thing, and the kids have school, which means an eight o’clock bedtime.”

“If Jenny was my wife, I’d be taking advantage of kids’ early bedtimes with an early bedtime of my own,” James said, a sly smile on his face. Of all of them, James had changed the most since high school. Back then he’d been the geek—the football-playing geek, but still the geek. Now he had half the single women in Slippery Rock panting after him, wanting to be Mrs. Sheriff James Calhoun. That was, if James’s father ever left his post as sheriff. “See you guys next week,” he said, grabbing his water bottle from the table.

“James has the right idea. See you guys next week,” Levi said. He picked up his ball cap from the table and slipped it over his head. He looked back. “No more trying to maim each other with darts,” he said, waving a finger between Collin and Adam. “Never mind the coffee, Juanita,” he called as he pushed through the doorway.

Adam lifted his hands as if he were innocent. “You gonna go talk to her?”

“You’re an ass.” Collin shook his head. “No, I’m not talking to Savannah Walters. We don’t have anything to talk about.”

“Who said you needed something to talk about?”

Collin blinked. Was he missing something here?

“She’s back in town.” Adam said the words slowly as if Collin might not understand simple English.

“And?”

“You’re currently available.”

“And?”

“She’s currently available, at least if you go by the tabloids.”

“Again, I say ‘so’?”

Adam blew out a breath. “So, she’s always been cute, but you heard James. That girl—” he motioned toward her with his hands “—has turned into one hot—”

“Don’t. Say. It.” He needed to get his brain off Savannah’s assets.

“What?”

“Stop acting like you’re my wingman for cripe’s sake. I don’t need help in the female department.”

“I’m just saying—”

“Well, don’t just say. I’m not hitting on Savannah. I’m not dating Savannah and I’m not sleeping with Savannah.”

“You’re not sleeping with anyone.” Adam held up his hands. “Just trying to get you off this celibacy shtick you’ve been on since last summer.”

“It’s not a celibacy shtick, A. I’m running a business that, until recently, was on very shaky ground. I’ve got a seventeen-year-old sister to raise.”

Savannah sipped from her glass again and Collin swallowed. It was more than not having time for recreational sex. Women hit on him all the time, but he didn’t have time for the dating thing, and random hookups had never been his thing. Until tonight, anyway. Somehow, since Savannah had walked through the door, all he’d had on his mind was meaningless, hot sex.

Which was ridiculous. He wasn’t a twenty-year-old kid any longer. He’d grown up. Had responsibilities. He didn’t need a woman like Savannah Walters screwing any of that up.

* * *

SAVANNAH SIPPED FROM the plastic cup made to look like a high-end wineglass. It was boxed wine. When she convinced Merle to add wine to his twenty brands of beer, and the staples of Jim Beam, Johnny Walker and Jose Cuervo, she’d intended for him to add wines from one of the regional vineyards. Only Merle, stubborn, beer-drinking, wine-hating Merle, would buy wine for his bar from the local grocery store, insisting that people came to the Slope for conversation and “real drinking.” She supposed he was right, she was the only one drinking it. And she hated boxed wine.

She also hated that the women she was drinking with—the women who used to be barely civil to her—were pretending to be her best friends because she was a minor Nashville star. Or at least, she had been.

More than either of those things, she hated that spending another night cooped up at the ranch might have caused a meltdown that could have ended with her spilling everything to Bennett and Mama Hazel. So she’d made one phone call and two hours later here she was on a girls’ night out with strangers she had to pretend were her friends.

She glanced to the left as Marcy Nagle started another story about her eight-year-old son, the football prodigy. God, she hated football more than she hated Slippery Rock.

Scratch that. She didn’t hate the little town. She just felt...surrounded by it. Watched by it.

Collin was still there. In the corner booth that her brother, Levi and the sheriff’s son had vacated a few minutes before.

Sitting with...who was that? His dad owned the cabinet shop in town and re-did Mama Hazel’s pantry a few years ago. Buchanan. Aiden Buchanan. Aiden had been so much fun back in the day. Carefree. A little restless. Always up for a good time. He’d been the ringleader of Levi’s motley group of football buddies. The five boys who put Slippery Rock, Missouri, on the map all those years ago. The Sailor Five.

Aiden turned his head and she caught a glimpse of the scar along his jaw and neck. Her mind flashed to a car accident when she’d been a sophomore and the tangled wreckage she, Levi and Bennett had come upon on a Sunday morning on their way to church.

That’s not Aiden. It’s his twin, Adam.

The boy whose car slid on black ice. He’d missed most of a year of school from his injuries and, although he’d recovered, had never regained full mobility of his left shoulder. Adam had gone from one of the stars of their football team to the equipment manager.

Adam Buchanan. The sweet boy who’d danced with her at the homecoming dance. Unlike his table mate who had never paid any attention to the younger sister of his best friend.

Just like he hadn’t noticed her tonight, despite the stage-worthy outfit and killer heels.

Damn it, why couldn’t Collin have gotten fat or bald or something while she’d been following her dreams to Nashville? But he hadn’t. Collin was as handsome as ever and every time she looked in his direction those stupid butterflies started dancing around in her stomach again. As if she was hung up on her brother’s best friend.

Well, she wasn’t.

She was an adult who had learned the hard way what kind of man to stay away from.

Savannah sighed. Collin would be the perfect guy to have a little rebound, short-term relationship with while she was in town. He would be a harmless distraction and...who was she kidding? If Collin were either harmless or just a distraction she wouldn’t still be obsessing over him a week after he’d rescued her on the side of the road. She’d been thinking practically nonstop about the orchard owner for the past five days.

One more reason to stay far, far away from him. Adam, on the other hand, would be fun and sweet and totally, amazingly forgettable.

“Excuse me, ladies, I think I see something a little more interesting than football mom stories and boxed wine,” she said, nodding toward the corner booth. “No offense.”

A chorus of “Go, girl” rang out at the bar, and Savannah used the enthusiasm to bolster her confidence as she started across the long space between the bar and the booth. In the fantasy that just popped into her mind, Adam fell instantly under her spell, led her to the dance floor—which was currently uninhabited—and danced with her to a Dierks Bentley song while Collin sat alone in the booth, wondering what he’d done so wrong that the fabulous, beautiful Savannah Walters didn’t want to dance with him.

Her palms went clammy.

Adam said something to Collin, and Collin squinted his eyes. Savannah smoothed her hands over her hair. She wasn’t the tagalong kid trailing after her brother. She was a grown woman with a life to lead.

Okay, so her life was currently in shambles around her, but it didn’t have to stay that way. She could fix it. Adam would be a bit of a morale booster.

Collin could suck a lemon between his perfect teeth while eating his heart out for not noticing her.

She swallowed and took a steadying breath.

Adam shrugged. Collin looked annoyed.

Savannah straightened her shoulders as she arrived at the corner booth. The room seemed too quiet, not that it had been all that loud to begin with. Other than her group of high school friends, only a handful of townies occupied the bar.

Thom Hall, owner of the best restaurant in town, and his wife sat at a side table, feeding the jukebox quarters. Felix Brown, owner of the marina, leaned his beefy forearms on the bar as he talked to Merle. A few young people she didn’t recognize. No one was paying any attention to the table in the corner, so why did she suddenly feel as if a spotlight was shining down on her?

“I’m not interested in no-strings sex,” Collin was saying, and the words seemed to vibrate around the table.

Savannah let a playful smile settle on her face. This was going to be simpler than she’d thought. Any time a man said he didn’t need or want random sex, it was exactly what he needed. At least, in her experience.

Not that she was going to have sex with Collin. She was here for Adam.

Bland, boring Adam.

She should have stayed at the bar. But since she was here... “That’s too bad. I hear no-strings sex is the best kind to have.” The words rolled from her mouth like she’d practiced them. It was exactly what Savannah would have said to a regular bar guy. The words seemed idiotic here, though.

Collin looked at her, blinking his eyes as if he were an opossum coming out of its den.

“Savannah Walters. Look at you,” Adam said, whistling a little bit.

“Hello, Adam. Hi, Collin,” she said, slipping into the booth beside Adam, and still, she couldn’t keep her eyes off Collin. His blond hair was cut short and he wore a faded ball cap that read Tyler Orchards with a tree of some sort embroidered on the front. “So, what are you boys up to tonight?”

“Shooting the breeze. Playing darts. Exciting Wednesday night in Slippery Rock,” Adam said after a moment.

“Mmm.” Savannah nodded as if Adam had said they were heading out to a red-carpet awards show. “It’s good to see you again, Collin. You’ll be happy to know I made it to a gas station in one piece.”

Adam’s gaze darted between her and his friend. Collin didn’t say anything; he just stared at the glass in his hands.

“Who won?” Savannah picked up one of the darts and twirled it in her fingers, then threw it neatly at the board where it hit bull’s-eye.

“Nice throw,” Adam said. Collin stared into the glass of Coke between his big hands.

“You learn a few things when you sling beers here.”

Savannah focused on Adam. Clearly, Collin had zero interest in her and, if she was going to salvage this night, she needed to make sure Adam had at least a little interest.

“Levi and James.” Adam looked from Collin to Savannah. “I’m just going to go,” he said, looking uncomfortable for perhaps the first time in his life.

“I was hoping you’d dance with me,” she said, using her best, most sultry voice.

Adam shook his head. “That’s not a good idea.”

“Why not?”

Thom Hall and his wife walked to the door, waving at Merle and the marina owner as they left.

Adam held up his left hand and a thin gold band glinted in the low, bar lighting. “My wife’s understanding about the weekly dart throw, but she’s not so good with other women. But it was good to see you, Savannah.” He looked pointedly over her shoulder, and Savannah slid out of the booth, feeling like a fool. Of course Adam was married. All the good, solid, normal, forgettable guys were married. And she’d just made a complete fool of herself—again—in front of Collin.

“I’d forgotten you were married,” she said, the words sounding lame to her ears. How could she have forgotten that Adam got married to the homecoming queen as soon as she graduated high school, and right after Aiden left town for California?

“No worries.” Adam threw a quick hug around her shoulders. “It was good to see you, Savannah. I’ll leave an extra tip for Juanita at the bar,” he said as he started for the bar. “Losers always tip.”

He stopped at the register, handed a few bills over to Merle and then exited the bar. Savannah realized her pretend friends were gone, too. Merle wiped down the bar, but ignored them, and Juanita had disappeared into the back room. Leaving her alone with Collin and a jukebox playing a song about a battered woman killing her husband. Savannah wanted to leave, but wasn’t sure how to excuse herself.

“Looks like we have the place to ourselves,” Savannah said.

“Slippery Rock closes down around ten, remember?”

“Surely not every place in town is closed down.” She sat across the table from him.

Collin looked at her, really looked, for the first time since she’d come over to the table. Savannah swallowed again, but this time not in anticipation. He looked at her as if...as if he didn’t like what he saw. His sharp blue gaze studied her face for a long moment and then traveled down her neck, hesitating slightly when it reached her breasts. The table hid her long legs, but still she curled them back toward the booth bottom.

“I’m not sure what kind of game you’re playing, Savannah, but whatever it is, I’m not in the mood.”

“I’m...I’m not playing games.”

Except she was, and she hated it.

He smiled but the expression wasn’t friendly. This smile didn’t make butterflies flap in her belly. This smile turned those sweet, sweet butterflies into roving vultures intent on eating her alive.

“Sure you are.”

Maybe direct was the better way to go where Collin was concerned. Maybe it was time she stopped playing games altogether.

“Okay, I am. But I’m a big girl and I know the rules.” She ran her hand over Collin’s, and the flash of heat at the contact seemed to spike the temperature around them. Despite the dim light, she saw his pupils dilate, his nostrils flare. He didn’t pull his hand away. She brushed her fingertips over his once more. The heat didn’t intensify but it didn’t disappear, either. “Would you like to dance?”

CHAPTER FOUR

THIS WAS A MISTAKE. A big, huge, lose-the-game-in-overtime mistake.

Collin drew his hand away from Savannah’s. “That isn’t a good idea.”

She tilted her head to the left and widened her eyes a little, but he knew she wasn’t confused. “Why not?”

Because the last thing he wanted to do with Savannah Walters was dance. An image of their bodies moving in time to some beat he couldn’t place formed in his mind. Okay, maybe it wasn’t the last thing he wanted.

In his imagination, though, they were dancing without clothes and Savannah getting naked with him was very definitely off-limits.

The last thing Savannah Walters had ever wanted was to live in a small town.

Whereas he wanted small town. He liked living and working in a place where he knew everyone.

Then there was Amanda to consider. He was her brother, not her father, but he was all the girl had and he needed to give her security. Taking Savannah back to the orchard, bringing home someone who wouldn’t stick around, was a disaster waiting to happen.

Savannah slid from the booth and sashayed across the dimly lit bar, stopping next to the jukebox. She slipped a quarter through the slot, and Collin heard it ping down the chute. Then she tapped a couple of keys and music filled the empty bar.

When had everyone left?

Merle still stood behind the bar, but his attention was on the money from the till, not his patrons. Juanita was nowhere to be seen and everyone else had gone, including Savannah’s old cheerleader friends.

Definitely not a good idea.

Collin slid from the booth and tossed a few dollars on the table. Adam may have left a few bills at the register, but Juanita lived on her tips. Besides, taking bills from his wallet gave Collin something to do with his hands.

A crooning male voice filled the bar, and Savannah began swaying to the music.

He couldn’t move.

Collin ordered his feet to walk to the door and out into the warm spring night.

His feet ignored him and remained firmly planted on the worn hardwood floors of the Slope.

Savannah turned, crooked her finger at him and continued swaying in time to the music on the dance floor. She should look ridiculous. The way she’d looked when she’d worn her mother’s too-high heels to the homecoming dance that time.

Only she didn’t really look ridiculous. She looked...damn good.

Too good. Like she’d done this a million times in a million bars and with a million other men.

Collin was no prude, but he didn’t want to fall under some spell Savannah had been perfecting during her time in Los Angeles and Nashville. If they were going to do this, it was going to be his way.

Not that they were going to do this. He was not, repeat not, taking Savannah Walters back to the orchard. That wasn’t the kind of example his baby sister needed.

His feet moved him across the wide dance floor that was so seldom used Merle didn’t bother keeping it waxed anymore. Savannah seemed to melt into his arms. She lay her head against his shoulder and linked her arms around his neck as he swayed them to the music.

Collin fastened his arms around her waist, feeling her heat through the thin material of her dress. Savannah sighed. The rhinestones beneath his hands were warm beneath his touch, adding to the burn he’d felt earlier when Savannah had brushed her hand over his. This was crazy.

He wasn’t some impulsive kid any longer. He wasn’t the same teenager that followed along with his friends’ reckless plans. He had a job, a family to support.