Christmas in a Small Town
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Kristina Knight
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14
Chapter One
SHE SHOULD HAVE changed before she got on the highway. Or off the highway onto the two-lane road leading into town. Or at any of the rest areas between Kansas City and Slippery Rock County line—she had to have passed at least twenty during the trip south.
Camden Harris eyed the stained parking lot and the layers of bodily fluids, oil, gasoline and whatever else that covered the pavement. She swiped a hand over the miles of tulle covering her hips, creating what her mother had described as “bridal perfection” in the dress shop a few weeks earlier. She eyed the stained parking lot once again. Nothing about this gas station was bridal perfection, but then, what small-town gas station ever promised perfection? Gas stations were about utility. Getting to the next stop on whatever journey a person was taking. Camden sighed.
She could chance that whatever gas was left in the tank of her car would get her where she was going—although the red needle was precariously close to the E marker—or she could get out.
Knuckles rapped sharply against the window beside her, causing Camden to jump in her seat. An older man wearing a faded Slippery Rock Sailors ball cap and an old gray hoodie with grease-stained jeans stood beside her car.
“Fill it up?” he asked. His voice held the gentle twang of the Ozarks that she remembered from childhood summers spent at her grandparents’ dog school just outside Slippery Rock. “I’m guessing you want the high-octane stuff,” he said, not waiting for her to answer as he grabbed the nozzle from the machine at his back.
Camden rolled down her window. “Thank you. I didn’t realize gas stations still offered full service fill-ups.”
“Most people do it themselves. You had the look of a desperate woman, though, and I’m guessing that dress and my concrete wouldn’t mix well.”
The older man pulled a squeegee and a bottle of window washer fluid from a receptacle on the side of the gas pump and began washing her windows. In the stark lighting from the overhead bulbs, she realized she’d hit about a million insects on the drive down, and that the light rain storm she’d passed through around Springfield had left a thin coating of dust and spots on her windshield.
“Thanks, again,” she said, and opened her phone. She’d gotten this far on her own, but now that she was in town, she would need help finding the old farm. She knew it was vaguely west of town, but other than that, she had no clue how to get to her grandparents’ place. How ridiculous was that?
She was a twenty-seven-year-old woman, had been successfully navigating the Kansas City streets since she was sixteen, had managed to find her way around both Chicago and Atlanta on her own. But she had no idea how to get to her grandparents’ farm in a town tinier than the neighborhood surrounding her parents’ Mission Hills mansion.
Camden entered the address from her phone into the car’s navigation system and waited.
“We don’t get many cars like this one around Slippery Rock. Not even in the summer when the tourists come to town,” the older man was saying as he finished cleaning the windshield. The gas pump clicked off, and he plopped the squeegee and bottle of cleaning fluid back into the side bin. “Passing through?”
Camden handed the man her credit card and shook her head. “Visiting for a while.”
“I’ll be right back,” he said and hurried inside to ring up her purchase.
“Address not found,” said the voice of the Australian man she’d chosen for her car’s navigation system. Usually she liked the voice she’d dubbed Thor, but this time she didn’t like what he had to say.
Camden entered the address again, and while she waited, looked up her grandparents using one of those online address finders. The same address she had in her phone popped up on her screen just as Thor told her, again, that the address didn’t exist.
“You’re just messing with me now, aren’t you?” she said.
“Nope, it really is thirty bucks on the nose,” the gas station attendant replied, passing her card and the receipt slip through the window.
Camden cringed. “Sorry. I was just talking to Th—uh, my navigation system. It says my destination is an unknown address.”
The older man shook his head. “Happens all the time down here. Those computer maps focus a lot on the big cities, but you get into the rural routes and they don’t know whether they’re coming or going. Where are you?”
Camden blinked. “Where am I what?” She was in her car. At the gas station. Unless she’d fallen asleep at the wheel and was dreaming all of this while in some weird comatose state in a hospital. She pinched the back of her hand. Nope, that hurt. She was awake, all right. Awake and wearing her wedding dress at what was probably the last full-service gas station in the entire world.
“Where you going?”
“Oh, of course. Harris Farms.” Camden began reciting the address from her phone, but the older man cut her off.
“Sure, Calvin and Bonita’s place. You’re gonna continue on this road till you hit the grocery store. At the light you’ll turn south for a couple of blocks before taking Double A Highway West out of town. You’ll turn back north a few miles out when you see the county road sign, then follow 251 until you get to their lane. Can’t miss it. Bonita bought Calvin one of them big mailboxes a few years ago, in the shape of a collie. I swear you could fit a small child in that thing.” He tapped the roof of her car. “Nope, we don’t see many cars like this one around town. You have a nice evening, ma’am.”
Camden’s mind swirled with the information the older man had offered up. Straight to the grocery store, follow that road to the highway, follow the highway to the county road that would lead to the farm. She could handle this. Camden put the Porsche in Drive and waved to the older man as she pulled back onto the road that led through Slippery Rock.
Just as he’d said, a few blocks on, the grocery store stood on the corner with a flashing red light. Camden flicked her blinker on and turned toward what she vaguely remembered as Slippery Rock’s downtown. The old brick buildings looked familiar, but the large grandstand area was new. Several of the buildings appeared to have recently constructed roofs or walls, probably cleanup from the tornado that had nearly ripped the little town apart last spring. She came to a stop sign, and hanging on the pole was a sign for the highway the older man had mentioned. With an arrow pointing to the right. The only problem was the other sign, the one that read One-Way Street, with an arrow pointing the opposite direction. Maybe there was an outlet.
Camden followed the one-way street down a few blocks, until another arrow directed her to turn left to meet back up with the highway that would lead to her grandparents’ farm. She continued to follow the arrows and the highway markers until she wound up exactly where she’d been before—the same corner with the same arrow indicating the one-way street, going the opposite direction of the highway she needed to take out of town. Maybe she’d missed a sign somewhere.
Camden pulled the Porsche through the intersection and followed the signs, paying close attention to each intersection she passed. And wound up back at the first, with the arrows pointing in different directions, and Thor’s voice echoing in her mind, telling her that the address she wanted did not exist.
There had to be another gas station or some business where she could ask for directions to get out of the endless loop she’d found herself in. Camden began following the signs again, this time focusing on the businesses—all with closed signs in their windows—along the route. The only place that appeared to be open at—she checked her watch—eight o’clock on a Wednesday evening was what appeared to be a bar. The Slippery Slope.
Camden blew out a breath, contemplating her options. Go into a bar in what would have been her wedding dress. Keep driving around in circles until the other businesses opened the next day. She’d already decided that she wouldn’t call her grandparents, for two reasons. First, they didn’t know she was coming. And second, as sleepy as this part of the state was, it was still dangerous at night. She didn’t hunt, but she knew it was deer season. She wouldn’t risk her grandparents trying to drive into town at night when deer would be out.
Yet driving in circles seemed pointless.
Decided, Camden parked the Porsche outside the bar and stepped out, shivering at the chill in the air. Camden gathered as much of the skirt of the dress in her hands as she could. This street seemed marginally cleaner than the gas station lot, but neither could be confused with the clean flooring of a church. She had no intention of wearing this dress again, no intention of getting married at all, but she didn’t want to ruin it.
Until five hours ago, she’d been ready to become Mrs. Grant Wentworth, the debutante, beauty-queen wife of the next partner of Wentworth, Carlson and Wentworth, the best law firm in Kansas City, Missouri. Grant, a future mayor of Kansas City, would become governor one day, and probably president of the United States eventually. But instead of marrying him, she was running away because while she’d been prepared to marry a man she didn’t quite love, she wasn’t prepared to marry a man who’d had so little regard for Camden that he’d been banging her maid of honor. Yep, in the closet just down the hall from the room where her mother and several friends waited for the society wedding of the season to begin. She’d wanted Heather’s opinion on the dress and hair combination before walking down the aisle, and thank God she had. If she hadn’t gone looking for her maid of honor, if she hadn’t heard the noises in the closet, she might have married that stupid son of a bitch. Might have truly thrown her life away.
When she saw Grant bent over Heather in the closet, though, it was as if a Camden she barely remembered had woken up. That Camden didn’t scream or yell—she simply turned around, grabbed her bag from the chaise in the dressing room and walked out. She’d walked out of the historic mansion where the wedding was to be held, gotten into her car, driven to her mother’s house and thrown some clothes into a suitcase, and driven out of their suburb, out of Kansas City. Out of a life she’d never wanted to live, and away from the rut her life had been in since joining the Junior League after that last pageant five years ago.
Camden caught a glimpse of herself in a picture window. Not a single lock of hair out of place, but there was a crease where the seat belt had lain across the bodice of the dress. She smoothed her hand over her hip and felt a few errant threads along the tulle roses. She should have left it at her mother’s house, where it could have been returned and become some other bride’s perfect dress, but she had been afraid if she took the time to change, someone might have found her. Convinced her to go back.
Now this dress would never see the inside of a church. Camden sighed. It wasn’t her choice for a dress but it was pretty. And she’d ruined it. After an hours-long car ride in the cramped front seat of a Porsche, it would never be the same; she might as well stop pretending she could box it up and send it back.
Camden released the skirt of the designer gown, letting it trail along the pavement as she continued toward the bar.
If she were to consider marriage one day, it would be on her terms. No formal society wedding. No fiancé her parents liked more than she did. And no wedding that would seal a partnership or a merger, like the one she’d barely escaped a few hours before.
Her life had suddenly become an adult version of the game Clue. Only instead of the groom murdering the bride in the study with a candlestick, he was doing the maid of honor in the closet of the historic Kansas City mansion.
It wasn’t that she’d expected Grant to vow his undying love, but she’d assumed—at the very least—those vows would have included fidelity. And that his fidelity would have been in effect since his proposal over the Fourth of July weekend.
Camden sighed. Obviously, she’d been wrong. On so very many levels.
And now, wearing what would have been her wedding dress, she had to face however many strangers were in this small-town bar and ask directions to the only place she’d ever felt was home.
* * *
LEVI WALTERS TOSSED a dart toward the board on the wall, liking the sound the sharp tip made as it sank into the rubber bull’s-eye area. “That’s three. You’re toast,” he said as Collin Tyler, his best friend, picked up three darts from the booth the two of them shared with Aiden Buchanan, another of their group.
It was Wednesday night, and usually there would be five of them here. Shooting darts, drinking a few beers. But James had his hands full with Collin’s sister, Mara, and their two-year-old, Zeke. Adam was spending more time with his wife, Jenny, and while Aiden had been doing a good impression of a man about to propose ever since Julia Colson blew into Slippery Rock, he was here at the bar while Julia was going over lighting and dress options with Savannah, Levi’s sister and Collin’s fiancée. Julia ran a dress shop and was opening a destination-wedding business in a Victorian home that overlooked Slippery Rock Lake. Tonight, she and Savannah were testing out lighting options for Savannah’s upcoming wedding to Collin. Since the two of them were also trying on wedding gowns, Collin was banned from the area. He didn’t seem to mind.
For that matter, Aiden didn’t seem to mind being away from Julia, and that was just weird. For the past couple of weeks, the two of them had been inseparable. Maybe Aiden was getting itchy feet again. He’d only been in Slippery Rock for a couple of months, but that was several weeks longer than any visit he’d made since leaving town after high school.
And why did Levi care what was going on in Aiden’s love life? Or, for that matter, the love lives of any of the guys he’d grown up with? It wasn’t like he wanted what they had. Maybe someday, but not right now. He had enough going on in his life without dealing with a woman, too. This winter, he wanted to work on new organic lines for the dairy. They had milk and cream and cheeses, but he wanted to add ice cream and other dairy products. That would take time to develop.
He still had to figure out what to do with the older dairy cows, those his father had used before the dairy went organic. Right now, the cows were on land rented from a neighbor, but that wasn’t a permanent solution.
And his parents weren’t getting any younger. Sooner or later, they were going to have to downsize, and that would mean moving them into town from the farmhouse where they’d lived for the past thirty-five years of their marriage. That would also take time, not just with the move, but with the convincing. He didn’t want Bennett and Mama Hazel to be overwhelmed with a big house, like their neighbors Calvin and Bonita Harris.
No, he had too much going on to be worried about a relationship, too. So why was he getting all maudlin when he should just be shooting darts?
Collin wrote down his scores on the little sheet of paper on the table, and Aiden grabbed the third set of darts to begin throwing. No bull’s-eyes for Collin, but he was still hanging in. Aiden would drop out after this round, no matter what he shot. He had no chance of catching Collin, much less Levi.
“What’s going on with you?” Collin asked and then finished off his bottle of beer. He signaled Juanita, the bar’s waitress, and she started in their direction.
“Shooting darts,” Levi said and finished his own beer. Maybe he had a brain tumor, pressing on whatever part of the brain that was in charge of impulse control. Because the idea of starting up a relationship, just because every person he knew was now coupled off, was definitely impulsive, illogical. Maybe the fog was some kind of early-onset seasonal affective disorder. Not that the changing weather had ever affected him before. He considered the empty bottle in his hand. Maybe it was just time to switch to water. It wasn’t even nine, but it was a Wednesday, and he had work tomorrow.
“Anything else?” Aiden asked.
Levi rolled his shoulders. Would his two friends back off? He was fine. Nothing was wrong. He wasn’t jealous; he didn’t want what his friends had. Not right this second, at any rate. “Would the two of you just shoot darts? Since when is darts night also psychoanalysis night, anyway?”
Collin and Aiden exchanged a look. “Since its inception?” Collin asked. “Since you blew out your knee? Since Adam got messed up in the tornado?”
Okay, so he’d led a few interventions–slash–drinking nights. That didn’t mean he was in need of one himself. “No therapy needed, just the check. Unless you guys want another?” he asked, indicating the empty bottles on the table.
“Another round, boys?” Juanita arrived at the table, and began clearing the empty bottles.
“Nah, I’m headed back to the orchard soon,” Collin said.
Aiden tossed his last dart at the board and hit ten. “Nothing here.” He pulled the darts from the board and put them into the holder to the side. “Julia should be finished up with Savannah by now, and I promised I’d measure for the new cabinets out at the Point.”
The Point was what locals called the Victorian home, set on a low cliff, overlooking Slippery Rock Lake. It was one of the oldest structures to have survived the building of the lake fifty or so years before and had been vacant until Julia came to town in September and bought it, and partnered with Shanna’s, the original owner of the dress shop. Her plan was to turn the old house into a destination wedding venue, although Levi couldn’t see many people intentionally choosing Slippery Rock as their wedding event location. He loved his small town, but it wasn’t touristy like Branson or Lake of the Ozarks. The first wedding set at the old place would be Collin and Savannah’s, on New Year’s Eve.
“Same, just the bill, and a water if you’ve got time,” Levi added.
“If I’ve got time.” Juanita chuckled and looked around the nearly empty bar. “Nope, just can’t fit the water into my busy night.”
“So what’s up?” Collin asked again after Juanita had left. Aiden gathered the other darts, putting them in the holder on the wall. He joined them at the table.
“Where were we?” Aiden asked.
“Headed back to the orchard as soon as Levi here spills on whatever it is that’s eating him.”
“Nothing’s bothering me.” He had a new product line to develop—that meant new vendors to contact and new contracts. Aging parents. A sister getting married in a few more weeks. He didn’t have time for a relationship. And he wasn’t jealous of the relationships his friends were building with their women. Nothing was wrong.
“Sure, you always try to kill the dartboard when you throw.”
“And you always get that look in your eye when you’re taking aim,” Aiden added.
“What look?”
“The look like we’re on the fifteen, fourth down, and need one more touchdown to win state,” Collin offered.
“The look like you’re about to unload on the running back across the line, hoping for a first down,” Aiden offered.
“You guys didn’t play with me when I went to defense. How would you know what I looked like?”
Collin blinked. “High-definition TV. Replay shows. And, you know, we did play with you all through junior high and high school. Doesn’t matter if you’re quarterbacking or playing the defensive line, like you did in college and the pros—the Levi Walters focus is the same.”
“Also, and I don’t think we can emphasize this enough, at least three of your throws pushed the dart through the board and into the wall. So what’s up?” Aiden rolled his bottle of beer through his hands, making it scrape against the table.
It grated on Levi’s nerves.
Just because he had a few strong throws didn’t mean something was bothering him. He certainly wasn’t upset. Levi Walters didn’t get upset. He focused on the job at hand until it was done. Then he focused on the next job. He didn’t get upset. He didn’t get bothered. He didn’t wonder why good things happened to other people.
Which made it all the more weird that he couldn’t seem to stop thinking about the guys and their new relationships.
But he definitely wasn’t bothered.
“What do you guys think about the bike trail they’re talking about? The one that will follow the old railroad tracks?”
Collin and Aiden exchanged a look. Neither said anything.
“I don’t think it’s a good idea. That land is undeveloped, but it’s adjacent to the ranch, and to the Harris property, too. Could lead to mischievousness, especially during the summer months.”
“He broke out a twenty-five-cent word,” Aiden said.
“Still avoiding the actual conversation, too,” Collin replied. As if Levi weren’t sitting right there with them. As if he weren’t trying to hold a legitimate conversation instead of whatever it was the two of them were trying to get him to admit to.
“Nothing’s bugging me.” He settled his shoulders against the back of the booth. “Just here to throw darts.” The guys stared at him. “And that bike trail could lead to all kinds of other prob—”
The door to the bar opened, and Levi stopped talking. He couldn’t breathe, and that didn’t make any sense at all. It was just a woman. Pretty brown hair pinned up on her head. Pale, creamy skin. He couldn’t see her eyes from this distance, but her lips were red and turned up at the corners. She twirled a set of car keys on her finger, and gathered the train of her dress—a wedding dress, and that was weird—in her other hand, saving it from the closing of the door.
“You were saying?” Collin prodded him, but Levi couldn’t remember what the three of them had been talking about. He’d been a little annoyed with them. Something about the bike trail that still hadn’t been decided on by the county commissioners.
His mouth went a little dry, and he forced himself to take a long breath. Tried to make his heart stop galloping in his chest. She was...the most beautiful figment his imagination had ever created.
“Something’s definitely wrong with him,” Aiden said. And Levi realized his friend was right.
There was something very, very wrong with a man who hallucinated a beautiful woman in a wedding dress. Something really wrong.
Maybe it was a brain tumor, only instead of giving him migraines, the tumor was causing him to imagine beautiful women. Or maybe Adam’s epilepsy was catching. Airborne or something. Didn’t he say that things went fuzzy and stopped looking normal when a seizure was starting?
A beautiful woman, in a wedding dress, in his favorite bar was definitely not normal.
Levi blinked. The woman was still there, standing just inside the door of the bar, looking a little lost. She wasn’t fuzzy around the edges or anything.
So she wasn’t a hallucination, then. He could cross brain tumor off the list of things that were wrong with him. That left the epilepsy. Except that couldn’t be it, because a person didn’t catch epilepsy because he hung out with someone who had the disease. That left...jealousy.
Was he jealous of the relationships his friends were in?
Levi Walters didn’t get jealous. He had everything he needed at the ranch. More than he needed when he thought about the plans he had for the business that had been in his family for three generations. He didn’t need a girlfriend. Definitely didn’t need a woman in his life who walked into a bar in a wedding dress. That was a little too desperate, even for a guy who hadn’t had sex in...more months than he cared to recall.
She focused in on Merle, the bartender, and crossed the room, the heels of her shoes click-clacking across the hardwood floor.
“I’m lost,” she said, and Levi found himself leaving the booth and crossing the bar.
He wasn’t looking for anything. He knew who he was, knew where he was going. He had good friends, and he was happy for those friends.
But there was something about the woman who’d just walked into the bar that was different.
Maybe, just this once, he should let himself consider something different.
