Christmas In A Small Town

CHAPTER TWO

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.