Kristina Knight - Famous In A Small Town

“I will.” Savannah backed out of the bar. The thick oak door closed behind her and Savannah leaned against it for a second. She heard the tumblers click over as Merle locked up for the night.

She had no illusions about the perfection of Slippery Rock. There were racial and economic divisions even in the middle of nowhere. Bennett and Mama Hazel were respected landowners, her brother, a beloved football star, but there were other families who weren’t thought of in the same way. Families who lived below the poverty line. Some of them also families of color. Ever since the adoption worker had brought her here, Savannah had been caught in the vicious cycle of wanting to be worthy of the family that had chosen her, but of being too afraid to accept their love.

Afraid that they would come to the same realization that her first family had—that Savannah was too much trouble—and would send her back to those cold police station steps.

Getting out of town, finding herself living a very sheltered and artistic California life in which no one questioned her race, had been freeing for the first few days. Then the old fears had come back. What if people turned on her because she might not be the typical, Caucasian country music star? What if people turned on her because she could have been the one to break the musical stereotype but instead had chosen to pass, even if she hadn’t consciously thought not mentioning her past was an attempt at passing?

It had been a relief when she hadn’t won. It was as if she’d dodged a bullet. But then the Nashville record company had offered her a deal, and then, when one of the biggest country stars opened a tour slot for her, it had all spun out of control.

From the second those offers came in, she’d started to think she really could earn the love of the family that chose her, but she’d still been so uncomfortable under all of that attention. And when Philip Anderson, Genevieve’s tour manager and estranged husband, had come on to her, she’d found herself following him to Genevieve’s bus.

Why had she gone onto that bus with Philip? She didn’t even like the man.

She doubted, deep-in-her-heart doubted, that she deserved her family’s love now.

Savannah pushed away from the door, got into Mama Hazel’s sedan and pulled onto the highway.

This was one more blinking neon light indicating that she should focus on her own mental health and not start chasing a man who obviously didn’t want her. She needed to get her life in order.

She parked the car in the carport and slowly climbed the steps to the house. The door creaked as she opened it. Savannah flicked off the porch light and climbed the stairs to her old room.

Pretty yellow curtains fluttered in the light breeze and the familiar blue of the walls soothed her. She didn’t bother with pajamas, just unzipped the party dress and climbed between the cool sheets in her undies. She pulled a pillow to her chest and closed her eyes.

She fell asleep dreaming she was still swaying in Collin’s arms.

CHAPTER FIVE

A HEAVY KNOCK sounded at the front door. Collin pulled a couch pillow over his head. Big mistake. His hands still had Savannah’s flowery scent on them and he could smell it through the feathers.

“Go away, Savannah,” he muttered. He’d turned her down once already tonight, he wasn’t sure he had two turn-downs in him.

The knock sounded again.

It couldn’t be Savannah. First, he’d walked out on her and she had never been the type to go running after rejection. Second, he was sleeping on the couch in the main house tonight, not in the barn that he’d turned into his office-slash-apartment a couple of years before. If Savannah wanted him, she would be at the barn, not the main house. Of course, Savannah wouldn’t know about the apartment in the barn, so it made sense she was knocking on the front door.

Collin scratched his scalp as he started for the door, tripping slightly over the light blanket he’d pulled over his hips when he’d sank onto the couch a couple of hours before.

Another knock.

If she didn’t stop trying to demolish the front door with her knocks she would wake up the rest of the house. Wait, what rest of the house? Gran took out her hearing aids at night and Amanda slept like the teenage dead. She hadn’t moved a muscle when he’d checked in on her after arriving home to work on the books.

Collin reached for the door, prepared to send Savannah on her way. At least he hadn’t been dreaming about her. He unlocked the dead bolt, opened the door and his jaw dropped.

It wasn’t Savannah.

It was James.

And his baby sister in handcuffs.

Collin glanced at the grandfather clock in the hall. Just after two thirty.

“Sorry, man, found her using these—” James held up two rolls of pink-camo duct tape “—to cut off the streets leading to the town square.”

“I wasn’t cutting off traffic, I was funneling it in a way that actually makes sense.” Amanda blew out a breath, making the wispy blond fringe around her face float up and then back down. Her eyes were green, rather than the blue of his or Mara’s, but the stubborn set of her jaw was all Tyler. For Collin, that stubbornness led to a football scholarship and a degree in Agri-Business. For Mara, it led to a top technical university and a job as a cyber-security expert.

In Amanda, that stubbornness was likely to lead straight to jail. He couldn’t let that happen.

“We have one-way streets that funnel traffic just fine,” James said. He elbowed Amanda gently. “And we don’t have the money for a middle-of-the-night traffic cop.”

“There’s no traffic to direct.” Amanda, likely realizing she’d just ruined her own excuse for taping over the streets of downtown, began talking quickly. “Except during the day, and then all Slippery Rock has are one-way streets that make it impossible to get from Maple to Franklin without making a detour down Main.”

James, one strong hand at Amanda’s elbow, directed her through the front door, gentle despite his height and weight advantage over the teen. Collin felt like a largemouth bass left on the bottom of a boat, gasping for air and getting none.

“You taped off downtown?”

Amanda shrugged. Her blond hair hung in a ponytail down her back, and she wore his old hunting jacket, dark yoga pants and shirt. She’d obviously considered the best way to go undetected during her trek. She’d been planning this for a while. And just who had he said good night to a couple of hours before? She slouched on the leather sofa in the family room, putting her booted feet up on the coffee table. Collin knocked her feet off the table and stood over her.

“What the hell, Amanda! What are you thinking?”

His sister straightened on the sofa and shrugged. “It isn’t like I took a jackhammer to the pavement,” she said sullenly.

“It isn’t like we have the budget to take a street crew off their job to take down your five rolls of duct tape, either.” James tossed two remaining rolls to Collin and put three emptied rolls on the entry table. “Look, I’m not filing a report. This time,” he said sternly. “But this isn’t like the fire you helped to put out. This is a straight-up nuisance, and it’s the third time I’ve caught her out with her tape. The last time, she taped a giant maze through the courthouse square, and the time before that she taped the high school principal into his house.”

Collin caught a hint of mirth in James’s eyes. But this was so not the time to go easy on Amanda. Even though Old Man Tolbert had been running Slippery Rock High with an iron fist since before Collin’s high school days.

“I deconstructed the maze and you can’t prove I was the one to tape Troll-bert into his house,” she said and then mumbled, “On the third snow day he screwed us out of last year.”