Kristina Knight - Christmas In A Small Town

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.

Not that he was going to sleep with Camden Harris. That zing of attraction was just a zing. A reminder that it had been too long since he’d taken time away from Slippery Rock to be with a beautiful woman.

Like Camden. Levi shoved the thought away. “What do we owe you, Merle?”

“Thirty’ll cover it,” the older man said.

“I got it—loser buys, remember? And who was that, anyway?” Collin leaned against the bar, holding out a handful of bills to Merle.

“She looked familiar. Kind of,” Aiden added.

“Camden Harris.” Levi turned his attention to the door again and then pulled a few bills from his wallet, but Collin pushed the money away. Right. Because Collin and Aiden lost at darts. Levi needed to get his mind back inside the bar. “You remember. Calvin and Bonita’s granddaughter. She used to spend her summers here.” Neither Collin nor Aiden said anything, and that brought Levi’s attention fully back inside the bar, not out there in the night with Camden. “She used to tag along with us to the lake on really hot days. Camden Harris.”

Aiden snapped his fingers. “That’s how I know her. She did the beauty pageant thing with Julia while they were in college. The two of them traded off winning and losing there for a while. Until Camden was crowned at the state level and went on to the national competition.”

“Julia competed in pageants?” Julia was a beautiful woman, but she didn’t have the slick polish Levi associated with beauty pageant contestants. She was too genuine for that. For that matter, so was Camden. At least, the Camden he remembered. The woman he’d spoken to a few minutes before was a stranger, in a wedding gown, wearing a ring she said she didn’t want. Weird.

“Something her mom got her into. After her parents died, it was a way to keep that connection going. Plus, she wanted to save the money they left her, and academic scholarships only went so far. The pageant circuit paid the difference.” Aiden leaned an elbow on the bar. “I wonder if Julia knows she actually came to town?” he muttered.

“Julia’s been talking to Camden?” Even more interesting. Camden had made it seem like this visit was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but if she’d been talking to Julia, it probably wasn’t. So what was up?

“They text, Facebook now and then. She was supposed to be getting married this weekend. Today, actually. Obviously that didn’t happen.”

Obviously. Levi watched the door for a few more minutes. Camden was engaged. Or had been engaged. Was still engaged? And now she was in Slippery Rock, wearing the dress and the ring, but apparently alone. Interesting on that whole other level.