Rebel In A Small Town
“If we aren’t going to play, I’m going to head back. Pulling double duty with the cleanup crews and at the ranch is killing me. I had no idea twenty-eight could feel so old.” Levi wove a single dart through his fingers.
“We’ll play,” Collin said, and James nodded.
All three of them—hell, most of the people in town—were working around the clock to get the town back in shape. A few weeks before, Savannah and some friends from Nashville had hosted a benefit concert to help with renovations. Now the town was pulling together to complete the projects in the hope that the Bass Nationals would hold a major tournament at Slippery Rock Lake this fall. As part of the benefit, they’d held a smaller fishing event, but having their lake on national television would do a lot to promote tourism and show the world that Slippery Rock remained a good vacation destination.
The three of them played a couple of rounds of darts, but without Adam, their usual round-robin style of play wasn’t as fun, and Levi bowed out and left after the third game. Collin and James nursed their beers across the table from one another.
“Jenny called this afternoon. The doctors say he’ll need surgery eventually, but that Adam is going to walk again,” Collin said after a long moment.
That was the best news James had heard in a while.
“Any word on when they’ll release him?”
Collin shook his head. “Jenny said they needed more testing, and the doctors are still tweaking the treatment of the seizures. I thought I might drive up to Springfield to see him, but Jenny says he doesn’t want visitors still.”
“That’s not like Adam.”
“How would you feel about gawkers if a tornado left you partially buried under the rubble of a church? And if the head injury left you with seizures?”
James didn’t have to think about the answer. “Pissy.”
“So, we leave him be. We can bug the bejesus out of him when he’s home.”
Collin finished his beer, and James watched the clock tick off a couple of minutes. No songs played over the jukebox, and Juanita, the waitress, was snacking on the cherries and oranges Merle kept on the bar to garnish the fancy drinks. He wanted to ask about Mara again, but couldn’t think of a way to do it without sounding like a concerned boyfriend.
“You want to tell me why you’re so all-fired interested about where my sister stays this visit?” Collin finally asked.
“Curiosity. You know it killed the cat. Apparently it’s trying to kill a deputy sheriff now, too.”
“Acting sheriff, soon to be elected sheriff,” Collin added. “Unless you’ve changed your mind?”
James shook his head. His father, the current sheriff, was off work on disability and couldn’t come back to the department. He’d gotten caught in the tornado and broken a hip; Jonathan Calhoun wasn’t ready to step down from his position, but he had to. “You know my dad’s legacy speech.” James deepened his voice to imitate his father. “Three generations of Calhouns have protected this town from predators.” James finished his beer. “If I don’t become that fourth generation, I think he might disown me.”
“If you didn’t want to be sheriff, you wouldn’t care about being disowned.”
There was truth to that. He’d wanted to be sheriff for as long as he could remember, long before graduation night, and not just because it was his father’s dream. James finished his beer. “Sorry about the third degree.”
Collin shrugged. “Enquiring minds,” he said, a teasing note in his voice.
“Yeah, well. I have an early shift tomorrow, and you’ve probably got trees to plant or something.”
“I’ll be at the farmers’ market in the afternoon, finishing up the roof.”
“See you there.”
Collin left while James went to the bar to pay the bill. The four of them—three of them, he corrected himself—took turns paying rather than making Juanita print separate checks every Wednesday. Merle made change from the old-fashioned register. Then James walked onto the familiar street.
He could smell the lake and the pine trees surrounding it. He even thought he might smell the cattle from Walters Ranch, where Levi and his family lived, and the fruit from Tyler Orchard. He knew that was fanciful thinking, and he wasn’t a fanciful guy. He was straightforward. Conscientious. Responsible.
He’d spent nearly all his life trying to live up to the legacy his father established; the one time he’d stepped outside the boundaries, he’d nearly ruined his entire life. Put the local school in financial jeopardy. Stepping outside the bounds wasn’t worth it. He should have remembered that before he’d started meeting Mara on the sly years ago.
Maybe, with Mara back in town, he would finally learn that lesson.
CHAPTER THREE
“AND THAT—” MARA pointed to the tilted neon sign that read The Slippery Slope “—is the town bar where everyone goes on Friday nights. Of course, it’s only Thursday so no big crowds tonight.” One of the green Ps was burned out, along with the word The on the sign, just as it had been when Mara was a teen. Some things never changed. The thought was comforting, especially considering the amount of change she was bringing to Slippery Rock.
“There’s a church on either side of it and one across the street, too.” Cheryl laughed. “God, small towns are great.”
“If the beer doesn’t save you, the brimstone sermons might,” Mara agreed. It was Cheryl’s last night in Slippery Rock, and Mara had convinced her to come out and really see the town. She used an online service to find a local babysitter for Zeke, a teenage girl who didn’t seem to associate the Mara Tyler she was working for with Tyler Orchard outside town.
Mara and Cheryl had dinner at the Rock Café overlooking Slippery Rock Marina, and had been walking around for the past few minutes while Mara pointed out the local landmarks. They weren’t due back at the B and B for another hour.
“If you want to see real small town, you have to go inside the Slope. Mahogany everything, a jukebox from the 1970s that still has mostly old stuff on it and enough neon to light up downtown.”
Cheryl grinned. “I’ll buy the first round, and if I go for a second, remind me I’m driving to Tulsa at the crack of dawn tomorrow morning.”
“I make no promises,” Mara said, holding up her hand.
The bar was mostly empty when they walked in. A few old-timers sat at the tables scattered around the dance floor. No one noticed Mara and Cheryl as they entered. Mara went straight to the bar.
“Do you still have the best apple shandy in southern Missouri?” she asked the older man behind the bar.
Merle flipped the dishrag he always carried over his shoulder as a grin split his face. “Did you get kicked out the one time you tried to con some salesman passing through to buy for you? Never tried that one again, did ya?”
“I’m a fast learner, and now that I’m legal, I’ll have the shandy.” Merle came around the bar quickly and wrapped his arms around Mara’s waist, squeezing her tight. He’d been one of her grandfather’s best friends, and although he readily allowed her and the guys in back in the old days, he’d never served them. Not even the shandy, which was more apple juice or cider than beer.
“Me, too,” Cheryl added, hopping onto a stool at the bar.
“I’ll make it two,” he said. “I hadn’t heard you were back in town.”
That was surprising. Mara had figured CarlaAnn and her gossiping cronies would have spread the news of Mara’s near arrest all over town by now.
“I’m here for work,” Mara said.
“Come to think of it, some civic-minded soul might have mentioned you and a package of stolen cookies?” Merle winked at her as he slid the drinks across the bar. Mara shook her head. She would bet money CarlaAnn or another of her ilk were spreading the news.
“It was a misunderstanding. I’m actually working on Mallard’s security system.”
Merle shrugged and went back to work. Mara took a good look around. A few of the neon signs had changed, but the juke was the same, and the polished dance floor still gleamed in the dim light. Juanita roamed among the tables, waiting on her customers.
“This place is exactly what I thought it would be,” Cheryl said as she turned in her seat. She sipped from the frosty glass. “And the drink is better.”
“He won’t tell anyone his secret, and I’ve never had a better one. Not in any of the überhip clubs, not in the dive joints and not in any of those bottled options you find at grocery stores.”
The jukebox turned on and a wailing, twangy tune warbled through the bar’s speakers.
“You’re not really leaving at the crack of dawn, are you?” Mara asked.
“By ten, that way I’m home by early afternoon. No rush-hour traffic.” Cheryl didn’t like driving in heavy traffic. She’d gotten around as Zeke’s nanny because Mara usually chose to stay in downtown areas where everything was in walking distance.
“You’ll call when you get in?” Mara asked.
Cheryl nodded. “And you’ll call when...well, when the little man does anything of consequence? Or not of consequence?”
“Yes.” Mara would not get maudlin. Cheryl leaving was a good thing. She would love her job with the school district, the wedding planning and the trip with her father. Mara was a grown woman with a good job who could easily hire another nanny for her child if she needed to. Hiring someone as good as Cheryl, that was the problem. Of course, there was the other option. The staying-in-Slippery-Rock option.
She wanted... God, it didn’t matter what she wanted. It mattered that Zeke was well cared for, and she was equipped to do that caring, even after her job took her to another strange hotel in a distant town. A town that didn’t have a decent apple shandy, or a bar that might have been caught in a time warp.
She slid a few bills across the bar but didn’t finish her drink.
Staying in Slippery Rock wasn’t really an option, it was a pipe dream. A second thought, and this wasn’t the time for second thoughts. She’d given in to enough of them over the past two years. She’d nearly called James a dozen times early in her pregnancy, and again after Zeke was born. But telling the man he was a father over the phone seemed wrong, and she had known she wasn’t strong enough to do it in person. Even after her therapist assured her she should face this last demon, she’d told herself that she was too busy, that Zeke was too little, that “later” would have to do.
Cheryl’s voice cut through her thoughts. “You’re going to be okay, you know. You and Zeke, you and your family.”
“I know.”
“Don’t run, not now.”
Cheryl knew almost everything about Mara’s past. She knew about the pranks and graduation night; she knew about the neglect that marked Mara’s first few years of life. She knew everything except who the father of Mara’s baby was, but she had probably guessed it was someone from Slippery Rock.
Mara took a deep breath. “I’m not going to run. I ran from here once before, but I’m not going to run this time.” Mara took one more sip of her drink. “I just want to.” Because not telling James would be so much simpler than telling him.
James with the perfect family history, the perfect job and the ability almost always to do the right thing might never understand why she’d walked away from him. Why she had needed finally to confront those first few years of her life, and why she needed to do that without him in her life.
“Are you ready to leave?” she asked Cheryl. “We haven’t been to the marina yet, but you’ll see most of it from the street.”
Cheryl nodded, and as they started for the door, she left Mara with her thoughts, seeming to understand that she needed to think.
Samson and Maddie Tyler were horrible parents. They had been too wrapped up in one another to give any attention to their children. She could remember many times in whatever cramped apartment Samson was renting when she and Collin had stayed alone while their parents went out. When Amanda, their younger sister, was born, Samson and Maddie were gone even more often. Mara never doubted that her parents loved one another, but the lack of love they had for their children had scarred her. Even after the three of them came to live at the orchard with their grandparents, Mara would worry when Gran would go to the grocery store or when Granddad was late coming in for supper.
As a teen, she covered that worry with a carefree attitude, and in all of her personal relationships, she did a good job of keeping people at a distance. All except one: James Calhoun. She’d never told him the worst of what had happened before she and Collin and Amanda came to Slippery Rock, but she had told him other things.
It was a chance meeting during her first year in grad school and his year at the police academy when things between them went further than friendship. When she’d started thinking of James not just as one of her brother’s cute friends but as a man who made her stomach do funny little flips, and whose touch made her skin burn. After that first weekend, it had been hard to separate herself from him, hard to keep things light and easy between them.
How many times had she heard Maddie on the phone with one girlfriend or another, talking about how crazy she was for her husband, how he made her stomach clench and how his touch burned? Those were the same feelings she had for James, and the knowledge made her nervous.
James was part of the reason she chose the job with Cannon. He made her want things that she knew she couldn’t have, and if she lived on the road while he was tied to Slippery Rock, it was simpler to keep things easy between them. To convince herself that her feelings for him were the result of really good sex or the fact that seeing him only sporadically kept things fresh.
Mara didn’t want her entire life to be wrapped up in one person. She wanted a career, financial security and to know she could take care of herself. When she found out she was pregnant, she went from scared to terrified in a heartbeat.
“Which way?” Cheryl asked, pulling Mara out of her thoughts as they exited the bar.
“Right,” she said, and they started toward the marina. Mara pointed out the pontoon boats and speedboats in the marina and the ample dock space available. Obviously some of the tourists were still staying away after the tornado.
“The air is so clean here,” Cheryl said, breathing deep. “I’m going to soak in as much of it as I can before I head to Tulsa.”
“I’ve always thought they should bottle it. Pine and lake and, I know it’s only my imagination, but I swear there is a hint of fruit under it all.”
“I’m just glad there is no undertone of manure. Didn’t you say there is a big dairy farm here?”
“Other side of town, and out in the country so—” Mara walked into a solid wall of muscle as she spoke. A hint of sandalwood joined those other scents, sending her senses into overdrive. She knew that scent, knew the feel of the muscles under her hands. She tilted her head up and saw those same chocolate-brown eyes that had glared at her less than twenty-four hours ago. “Hi, James,” she said, stepping carefully away from him and his muscles.
“Mara.”
“Are you on patrol?”
“Do you need to be arrested?” His voice held a teasing note, but then his gaze caught on something—or someone—to her right and narrowed. “Hello,” he said, using the voice she associated with his professional side. Kind, courteous. The way he’d spoken to CarlaAnn at the grocery store, not the way he spoke to friends.
“I’m Cheryl—”
“This is Cheryl,” Mara said at the same time Cheryl stuck out her hand. “Cheryl is my n—” She hadn’t told James about his baby on the phone or in the middle of him almost arresting her, and she definitely couldn’t tell him about the child on the sidewalk after visiting a bar. “My friend,” she said, insisting to the quiet voice inside that it wasn’t a lie. Cheryl was her friend, in addition to being her nanny.
“I’m just in town for the night,” Cheryl added helpfully, “and Mara was showing me around a bit.”
Tension crackled between Mara and James. Even in the darkening evening, she could see his eyebrows draw together and his lips form that thin line they’d had at the grocery store the day before. Which was silly. It wasn’t as if Mara was not allowed to have a friend, or she and her friend had been doing anything illegal. Even if they had been, James wasn’t in uniform, which probably meant he was off duty.
“Another security expert for the grocery store?” he asked.
“No, I’m a na—”
“Cheryl works for a school in Tulsa,” Mara said. “She decided to hook up with me before she gets roped into her sister’s wedding plans.”
Cheryl raised an eyebrow at Mara’s explanation. Then understanding dawned in her expression. She turned her attention to the man before them, probably comparing his features to the baby waiting at the B and B. After a moment she nodded like she understood everything.
“I’m going to finish my walk while you two—” she pointed her finger between them “—get reacquainted.”
Mara wanted to call her back, but that was silly. She could exchange a few pleasantries with James in the twilight, with the last rays of sunlight shooting golden flecks into his brown hair. She swallowed.
“So, I guess CarlaAnn is outing me as a kleptomaniac around town,” she began, keeping her voice light.
James watched Cheryl walking down the street for a moment, and the interest in his gaze hit Mara hard in the belly. He couldn’t be interested in Cheryl. That would just be too... What did Mara care who he was interested in? She’d spent the past two years getting over James Calhoun. She didn’t want to get under him again.
“I guess going back into the store to reassure her Mike did hire you, or at least your company, and that you weren’t an actual shoplifter didn’t do the trick.”
“Did you really think the truth would stop CarlaAnn’s rumor mill? But, thanks. You didn’t have to do that.” His gaze remained trained on Cheryl. Annoyed, Mara snapped her fingers. “Hello, I’m over here.”
“What?” He turned to Mara as if realizing she was still standing before him. Just the confidence booster her vanity needed. “Sorry, I just... Is she...” He pointed to Cheryl, who was halfway down the block already. “Are you and she...”
“Friends? Yes, I believe I introduced her as my friend.”
“So that’s it.” The words sounded almost excited, and Mara couldn’t figure out why.
“That’s what?”
“You’re friends. That’s it.” James shook his head. “This is weird. Should I apologize?”
The conversation seemed to be going around in a circle that Mara couldn’t see.
“Aplogize for what?”
“You’re friends. And I kept coming around—”
“Yes, we’re friends. I don’t know what is it about that fact. And why should my having a friend mean you shouldn’t have come around?” This circle talk was making her dizzy. Maybe she hadn’t been ready for Merle’s apple shandy.
“Not that you have a friend. That you have a friend,” he said, emphasizing the word. “I always wondered what made you walk away like that. Now I know. It wasn’t me.”
Mara’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. Not a friend. A friend. James thought she was, what, bisexual, and that made her walking out on him okay? “I don’t know what you think you understand, but you are completely and totally off base—”
“It’s okay to be a lesbian—”
“I’m not a lesbian.”
“Okay, a bisexual—”
“If that look means you think you might be joining in a little three-way action now that I’m back in town, think again, Deputy Doofus. I’m not bisexual and I’m not a lesbian. I am a straight, CIS-gendered female who likes men.”
James blinked. “But she’s... And you’re... You said she was here to hook up with you.”
“I didn’t mean hook up hook up. God, why do men assume women can be friends with one another only if they’re also hooking up?”
“It was a natural assumption from the way you introduced her.”
“Are you sure you passed that police academy test? Your deductive reasoning could use a little work.”
“Yes, I’m sure I passed it, and my deductive reasoning isn’t flawed. You insinuated—”
“—that she was my friend. She’s also my employee, and no, that doesn’t mean I pay her for sex.” Mara intentionally lowered her voice even though there were no other people on the sidewalk. “There is no sex between Cheryl and me. I thought you’d already gotten the memo that my preferences lean toward men.”
“I didn’t know friends randomly meet up with other friends in strange towns where one or the other of them is working.”
“Then you obviously don’t have very good friends.” Mara crossed her arms over her chest. “Or you live in a town with a single stoplight, and so do all your friends.”
“Touché.” James put his hands in his pockets. “You look good.”
“So now that I’m not an attached lesbian-slash-bisexual, you’re going straight into hook-up mode?”
James grinned. “It was a statement of fact,” he said, “not an invitation for either of us to go jumping into whatever lake we were swimming in up until two years ago.”
Two years ago. Zeke. Fatherhood. Arguing with James about her sexuality was another no-no in the parenthood talk they needed to have. “Yeah, well, that was a pretty deep lake.”
“I was thinking it was kind of shallow,” he said, reaching to curl a lock of her hair around his finger. “We kept things light and simple, and you walked away.”
She could feel his heat even across the distance between them. Wanted to feel the soft pads of his fingers against the skin of her cheek. Wanted to drink in that sandalwood smell that was James Calhoun. “I...thought you wanted simple.”
“What the hell did I know about what I wanted? Other than more time with you,” he said, and his brown eyes seemed to darken. Mara closed her eyes. She could lean forward just a little bit, could stand on tiptoe and her lips would meet his. She would have him, one more time, in her orbit. God, she wanted that.
She snapped her eyes open. That was not how this was going to happen. She was not hooking up with James one night only to tell him he was a father the next. She couldn’t do that, not to him. Not to Zeke. She was better than this, stronger than the kind of person who let herself get wound up in a man and forgot about all the responsibilities in her life.
Like the baby in her room at the B and B.
“Cheryl is my nanny,” she said, blurting the words out as she took a deliberate step away from James. His eyes widened and she immediately wished the words back.
“You have a nanny?” He cocked his head to the side, confusion evident from the slight drop in his jaw.
“Technically, my son has a nanny. I employ a child care provider who also happens to be a friend.”
“You have a son?” James pulled away from her, both physically and emotionally. She watched it happen in a smooth motion that started when his hand dropped from her hair and ended when his eyebrows beetled in that cold cop expression she’d seen the day before. The same cop expression his father used in any number of school assemblies and during “conversations” with her outside the principal’s office in high school. James was just as good at that condescending look as his father, but coming from Jonathan Calhoun, the look had never hurt like this. Like a bomb had exploded in her belly.
“He’s fourteen months old,” she said, forcing her voice to remain crisp and clear. She could pretend to be just as calculated and cold as he; she would not break in front of him. Mara closely watched his expression as he counted back. Fourteen months, plus nine for the pregnancy, would land him at the conference he’d attended in July in Nashville. She’d been writing a new security protocol for a musical publishing company in Nashville. That was the last time they’d seen one another until this week. Realization hardened his gaze into an impenetrable brick. “Yes,” she said, “I got pregnant in Nashville.”
James took another step back, putting more breathing room between them. “We used protection,” he said, his voice wooden. “Every time.”