Kristina Knight - Rebel In A Small Town

“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.