Famous In A Small Town

Levi just watched her for a long moment. “Mama worked in the Peace Corps, Van. She didn’t vagabond all over the world with a hobo sack over her shoulder.”

“I’m not a vagabond, and my luggage is Louis Vuitton. I lived in Nashville and I’ve been on tour with the top artist at the label.”

Levi nodded as he finished his biscuit.

“Fine, I have no illusions about world peace and I’m not curing cancer. That doesn’t mean my dreams are inconsequential.”

She just needed to figure out what her dreams were. Did she want to go back to Nashville and face the music? The one part of the city she liked was the weekend music program the label put together for underprivileged kids. Helping those kids find their music had been the highlight of her months there. Now she wasn’t welcome in Nashville and definitely not in the music program.

“They could be so much more, Van. You had a scholarship to the university. You were talking about med school.”

“And then I realized I didn’t want ten more years of school. I wanted...something else.”

Levi waited, watching her expectantly. “What is the something else?”

“I don’t know.” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“Is that why you’re here ‘on a break’ now? Because you don’t know what you want?”

“Is that so wrong?” She didn’t wait for his answer.

Savannah stalked out of the barn and started down one of the trails leading to Slippery Rock Lake, which separated Walters Ranch from the Tyler’s orchard. Through the trees she could see sunlight dancing over it.

What was wrong with her? Getting turned down by a guy was no reason to take her frustrations out on her family. And keeping this lie that things in Nashville were perfect was ridiculous. Things were so not right in Nashville it wasn’t even funny.

She’d gone to Nashville to try to get people to notice her the way that nobody had in Slippery Rock. To validate her in some way. When she was onstage she was more than Levi’s sister. Offstage, though, she was still the kid someone had left on the steps of a police station with her name pinned to her jacket.

The truth was that she didn’t know what she wanted. She liked singing, but had found out that she detested being on a big stage in front of thousands of people. She enjoyed working with the kids in the music program, but she didn’t play an instrument so mostly she’d just encouraged their interest. Now she was back in Slippery Rock, pretending she had her life together, when in truth it was falling apart and she had no idea how to make things right or if she even wanted to.

She’d been wrong to come back here.

Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Savannah should have kept driving and completely reinvented herself in some town where no one knew who she was.

She could use some distraction.

As she neared the lake, she saw Collin sitting on the hood of his old pickup truck, staring out over the calm water. She hadn’t realized she’d walked so far.

“Hi,” she said as she neared him. Brilliant May sunlight gave his blond hair streaks of white, which was just unfair. Women in Nashville paid hundreds of dollars to beauticians for streaks like that.

“Savannah.”

“You say that like you’re unhappy to see me,” she said, leaning against the fender of his truck and shooting a flirtatious look his way.

Collin glanced at her. “I’m not.”

“Not unhappy to see me? I figured,” she said, pretending she couldn’t read the disdain in his expression. He might have turned her down last night, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from flirting with him again. “What brings you to my side of the lake?”

“Technically, you’re on my side.”

Savannah grinned wickedly. “Do you want to know what brought me to you, then?”

Collin sat straighter. “No.”

It was the panic in his eyes that did her in. It was fun flirting with a man who was reluctant to flirt back. It wasn’t fun to flirt with a man who was not only not interested but potentially afraid of her. Although why Collin would be fearful of her, Savannah couldn’t quite figure out.

“You don’t have to look at me like that. I’m not going to jump your bones out here.” Savannah stood straight, smoothing her hands over the thin tank top she wore. It was royal blue and she knew it contrasted nicely with her skin.

“I can take care of myself, whether or not you want to jump my bones,” he said, and she thought she caught a hint of laughter in his voice. It seemed like progress. She didn’t want him to hate her, after all. They could be friends. “Well, I didn’t come here to see you—”

“And I didn’t come here to see you,” she put in.

“So how did we both wind up here?”

“I needed a break from Levi the Lecturer.” She shook her head when Collin started to say something. “Or maybe he deserved a break from me. I was in a mood.”

“And now you’re not?” Collin seemed genuinely curious.

“I’m trying to not be in a mood. Being in a mood gets me into trouble. By the way, he has no idea about last night, and he’s not going to.” And maybe, if she really was going to make a change, it should start now. “I should apologize for all that. I...um...” She wasn’t quite sure how to explain last night without laying bare those old insecurities.

“‘Was in a mood’?” Collin asked, and this time she definitely caught a hint of laughter in his voice.

“Something like that.”

“What caused the mood?”

Nope. Not going there. Collin Tyler might not hate her, but that didn’t mean she needed to dump all her baggage on him. He was barely an acquaintance. She shook her head. “Doesn’t matter.”

Collin nodded. “I was in a weird mood, too,” he said.

“So you did want to dance with me?” Savannah leaned her shoulder against the truck and crossed one foot over the other in the dirt.

“No,” he said, a little too quickly, a little too harshly. She couldn’t ignore the quick hit of pain. Stupid pride.

“Don’t go getting all soft on me now,” Savannah said. “Tell me how you really feel.”

He didn’t look at her for a long moment. When he finally spoke, he seemed completely focused on a tree with branches hanging low over the smooth water.

“Savannah, I have... There’s a lot.” He drew his brows together. “You’re Levi’s sister. I just don’t think about you that way.”

Oh. Well, that was way more information than she wanted at—Savannah glanced at her watch—ten o’clock in the morning. The day after she’d made a serious come-on to the man.

“Maybe we could be friends,” he said.

The feelings she felt around Collin were definitely not the friendship breed of feelings. Good thing she was decent at covering up her true feelings. That was the one thing in life she’d always been good at.

“Sure, whatever. I just wanted to apologize because I had a little too much to drink last night. But I’m going back to Nashville in a couple of weeks, so we don’t have to pretend we’re friends or anything. We can just go back to being Levi’s sister and Levi’s best friend. It’s all good,” she said, hating the words even as she said them. Hating the intentionally careless tone she’d pushed into her voice.

Savannah was pretty sure she didn’t want to be Collin’s friend.

He might not think he wanted her as his girlfriend—not even in the short term—but she definitely didn’t want to just be his friend.

And if no one ever called her Levi’s sister for the rest of her life, it would be too soon.

She backed away from the truck, feeling Collin’s gaze on her the way she’d felt his hands the night before.

“See you around, friend,” she said and then turned and walked away from him as quickly as she could.

CHAPTER SIX

COLLIN WANTED—BADLY—to adjust the tie trying its best to strangle him. He liked farm work because most days the dress code called for jeans and a T-shirt, like he’d been wearing last Saturday when Savannah had found him at the lake. God, he’d like to be at the lake now instead of this conference room talking to the head of a regional grocery chain about the next step in his plan to expand Tyler Orchard. Even if being there meant lying some more about how Savannah being Levi’s younger sister was the reason he’d walked out of the Slope that night.

Walking out of the Slope had had zero to do with Levi and one hundred percent to do with the things he’d been thinking while breathing in Savannah’s sweet perfume. He’d been thinking they could take a drive out to the lake, or maybe just a quick run to his truck, so he could strip her down to see if her skin was that glowy, coppery tone everywhere, or if it was just a trick of the lighting. Yeah, there was no way he was telling Savannah any of that. He didn’t need her kind of distraction right now.

Collin focused on the question Jake Westfall asked about growth averages for the past three years. Luckily, he only needed half of his brain to talk growth averages, as the other half was still firmly in the imaginary bed of his truck. He needed to get his mind fully into this office building in Joplin, an hour west of Slippery Rock. With effort, he pushed Savannah all the way out of his brain, imagining he and the other executives were walking one of the ruler-straight rows of apple trees instead of sitting in this conference room, with its wide windows looking over the downtown area, the potted ficus in the corner, and its granite-topped table.

Damn, but he’d like to loosen this damn tie. Suits and ties were for bankers and insurance salesmen, not orchard owners. The last time he’d worn a suit, this very suit, had been his grandfather’s funeral a year and a half before. The only other time he’d worn it had been to the party his grandparents had thrown after he’d graduated college with his degree in agri-business.

The other suits in the room didn’t appear to be suffering from the same issues as he was, though, so he kept his hands away from his neck as he wrapped up his presentation about how he’d taken the orchard from a small, family-run business to a larger business, still family run but with more ties to the community.

Adding peaches and pears to the apples Tyler Orchards was known for had been a risky move, but it was paying off. The fruit stand his grandfather had run had become a fruit market, and then other local farmers had joined in, creating a full-fledged farmers’ market with locally grown vegetables, dairy products and locally sourced honey. Going into business with a regional grocery company was a logical step in his plans to take Tyler Orchards to the next level. It would increase the family’s financial stability. Money might not buy happiness, but it definitely made it easier to enjoy life.

If the deal went through with Westfall Foods, maybe it would ease whatever was stressing Amanda out to the point she was using duct tape to reroute traffic downtown and getting caught up with a group of high school firebugs.

“We’ve gone down this road before with local growers. They promise us the moon, but then they deliver late or give us sub-par goods.”

He wouldn’t risk his reputation or the reputation of the orchard his grandfather had built from nothing. That’s what made the difference, Collin wanted to say. He didn’t think Jake Westfall, the lead partner in the chain, would be swayed by an impassioned plea about personal reputation or work ethic, though. Especially if he’d been burned by someone making the same impassioned plea in the past.

“I could send you to our pages on Yelp or Facebook or any of the review sites, and you’d see thousands of satisfied customers’ comments. I could make a fifteen-minute speech about personal integrity. But I have a feeling you’ve read those comments and heard that speech before. I can only stress...” He paused. Because what else did he have except his word? These corporate executives didn’t know him, and they didn’t know how important this move was for his business. His family.

He handed another paper-clipped bunch of papers across the conference table. Recommendations from a few local restaurants and B and Bs he’d begun supplying three years before.

“I’m going to give that speech to you anyway. My family has been growing organic apples for a local fruit stand for more than forty years. Quality has always been important to us, and that isn’t going to stop if we begin contracting with you. If anything, that focus on quality will increase. You have to make the right decision for your stores. I can only tell you that contracting with Tyler Orchards is a good move for both our businesses.”

The three executives exchanged a look and then Westfall said, “If you could give us a few minutes, we’d like to have the room.”

Collin nodded, picked up the leather attaché case he’d carried in college and left the conference room with its broad table and leather executive chairs. Alone in a tiled hallway with photographic prints of the Ozark Mountains and Mark Twain National Forest, he considered his options.

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