Kristina Knight - Famous In A Small Town

When had everyone left?

Merle still stood behind the bar, but his attention was on the money from the till, not his patrons. Juanita was nowhere to be seen and everyone else had gone, including Savannah’s old cheerleader friends.

Definitely not a good idea.

Collin slid from the booth and tossed a few dollars on the table. Adam may have left a few bills at the register, but Juanita lived on her tips. Besides, taking bills from his wallet gave Collin something to do with his hands.

A crooning male voice filled the bar, and Savannah began swaying to the music.

He couldn’t move.

Collin ordered his feet to walk to the door and out into the warm spring night.

His feet ignored him and remained firmly planted on the worn hardwood floors of the Slope.

Savannah turned, crooked her finger at him and continued swaying in time to the music on the dance floor. She should look ridiculous. The way she’d looked when she’d worn her mother’s too-high heels to the homecoming dance that time.

Only she didn’t really look ridiculous. She looked...damn good.

Too good. Like she’d done this a million times in a million bars and with a million other men.

Collin was no prude, but he didn’t want to fall under some spell Savannah had been perfecting during her time in Los Angeles and Nashville. If they were going to do this, it was going to be his way.

Not that they were going to do this. He was not, repeat not, taking Savannah Walters back to the orchard. That wasn’t the kind of example his baby sister needed.

His feet moved him across the wide dance floor that was so seldom used Merle didn’t bother keeping it waxed anymore. Savannah seemed to melt into his arms. She lay her head against his shoulder and linked her arms around his neck as he swayed them to the music.

Collin fastened his arms around her waist, feeling her heat through the thin material of her dress. Savannah sighed. The rhinestones beneath his hands were warm beneath his touch, adding to the burn he’d felt earlier when Savannah had brushed her hand over his. This was crazy.

He wasn’t some impulsive kid any longer. He wasn’t the same teenager that followed along with his friends’ reckless plans. He had a job, a family to support.

God, but she smelled good, though. Some kind of flowery scent seemed to envelop them on the dance floor. It started at Savannah’s hair, but it seemed to be everywhere. Like it was a part of the atmosphere. Her soft hands began playing with the longish hairs at the nape of his neck.

“Should I start another song or should we...” She let the words trail off.

Start another song, he wanted to say, but didn’t.

He had the orchard to continue building.

He had Gran and Amanda to support and, despite her reluctance to return to Slippery Rock, their other sister, Mara.

He wasn’t about to mess up the future plans he had for a night with Savannah Walters, no matter how tempted his hands were to continue caressing her curves.

Reluctantly, Collin loosened Savannah’s hands from his neck and stepped back.

“Thanks for the dance. I’ll see you around,” he said and quickly left the bar, calling himself all kinds of a coward for doing so.

It shouldn’t matter who she was. It should only matter that she was a willing woman, he was a willing man and it had been nearly a full year since he’d...

But it did matter.

Savannah Walters was not the kind of woman he needed to be messing around with.

* * *

SAVANNAH BLINKED. LOOKED around the empty bar.

He’d left.

She ran her hands up and down her arms, suddenly feeling as if all the warmth in the bar had gone out the door as Collin closed it behind him.

He’d really left.

She’d offered herself up to him and... Damn it, what was it about the men in this town?

Okay, that wasn’t fair. Not all the men in Slippery Rock were cold, clinical, orchard owners.

From what she remembered, Collin wasn’t cold or clinical. Maybe he just didn’t like her. Somehow, that didn’t make her feel better.

Savannah Walters was a grown woman who knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was to not think about what a mess her life was. Just for a little while. It wasn’t as if she was an ugly stepsister or something. She had assets, and she knew how to use them. And that left her right back at He Isn’t Interested. She blew out a breath. Okay, then, she wouldn’t be interested.

Merle stood behind the bar, still counting the money from the register.

“What do I owe you?” she asked, feeling foolish. She’d just come on—hard—to Collin Tyler and been turned down flat. The old bartender might pretend he didn’t see anything in the bar, but she knew he caught it all. God, this was so embarrassing.

“Your friends cleared the tab.” He put most of the money into a bank bag, locked it, and then put a few tens, fives and ones back into the register before closing it up.

“Oh.” She looked around, not sure what to do. Leave, she supposed. Go back to the ranch.

“When am I going to get one of your songs for the juke?” Merle asked.

“Oh. Um... I just finished cutting my first record.” Not that it would be released anytime soon. Genevieve was the star of their shared label. Savannah was the newcomer who’d literally screwed herself out of a tour slot. Not being in front of the fans coupled with Genevieve’s pull at the label probably meant a fast and definite death for her career. The career that Savannah wanted for her parents more than she’d wanted it for herself.

The whole time she’d felt like a fraud. Petrified the world would find out she wasn’t who she’d told them she was—the normal girl from the normal family from a normal small town—when the truth about the way she came to Slippery Rock or her family was so not normal. Not knowing her actual birth date wasn’t normal. Not knowing her biological medical history wasn’t normal. Not knowing her racial makeup wasn’t normal.

She’d been told as a kid that she couldn’t be white because of her hair type. But, she’d also been told she couldn’t be black because her skin tone was light, like Jennifer Beals or Zoe Kravitz. None of the kids in Slippery Rock seemed to realize that both of those actresses were biracial. She’d been raised by an African-American family who hadn’t cared that her skin tone was several shades lighter than theirs. For the most part, Savannah didn’t, either. She just wished she could feel worthy of them. That was the feeling that drove her to Los Angeles and then to Nashville.

Bennett and Mama Hazel loved country music, and had passed that love on to her. Once she arrived in LA, no one seemed to care about anything but her singing, so she’d pretended to be just another small-town girl, trying to make it. Then she stepped on the stage and realized she wanted to be anywhere but in the middle of that spotlight. The crowd was too loud, and the lights were too hot, and she’d just wanted it all to stop.

She couldn’t stop the LA circus, though, no matter how much she wanted out. Singing country music had been Mama Hazel’s dream as a young woman, but she’d fallen in love with Bennett and given it up. Savannah doing well on the show, doing well in Nashville, would have given a little bit of Mama’s dream back to her.

Then the discomfort of the stage turned into fear that some zealous reporter would start to dig into her past. Would make the connection between Levi and her. There would have been questions she couldn’t answer, and maybe even accusations that she’d been trying to “pass.” In truth, she hadn’t considered her ethnicity at all; she had been too focused on finally doing something that would make her parents proud.

Merle’s voice brought her thoughts back to the bar. “Well, when you’ve got that song, you make sure we get a copy. It’ll be the most played song in the Slope, I guarantee.” Merle winked.