Famous In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

board. “Let’s start the next round.” He took up position and began throwing, narrowing his eyes as he took aim just as he’d done when they’d been kids playing football. Levi had been the quarterback, Collin and James the receivers, and Adam and his twin Aiden the defensive specialists. After practices or game nights, they would sneak in here, and Merle, the owner and bartender, would let them stay as long as they didn’t try to scam drinks from any of the patrons.

      Collin looked around the dingy bar. The same neon strip was burned out of the beer sign behind the bar. Same cowhide-covered bar stools. Merle wiped down the bar this evening, entertaining Savannah and her giggling gaggle of former high-school cheerleaders.

      Three of whom Collin had dated.

      Not that Savannah would care.

      Not that he should care if Savannah did care.

      One of the women at the bar said something, and Savannah threw her head back, mahogany hair cascading past her shoulders in a mass of waves, and laughed like she was at a freaking Kevin Hart show.

      He wasn’t mooning. He was distracted, maybe. It wasn’t every day a woman walked into the Slope wearing a rhinestone party dress and high-heeled, over-the-knee boots. What the hell was Savannah thinking anyway?

      “You’re up.”

      Not that she didn’t look good in the dress that cinched tightly around her waist. And she’d learned a few new makeup tricks since she’d left town. That had to be the reason her eyes were so luminous.

      “Collin.”

      And her hair had always been the color of rich wood, but it hadn’t always been that thick, had it?

      “Coll.”

      A dart whizzed through his eye line, and Collin shook himself.

      “What?”

      “While you’re busy not mooning over the lovely Savannah, you might want to throw. You’re up,” Adam said, grinning. He picked up the dart from the hardwood floor.

      Collin stepped to the line, gauged where the darts fell, and threw his first. It landed just over the white line above Levi’s dart. Damn it.

      “When did she roll into town?” Adam asked. Couldn’t he leave Savannah out of five minutes of conversation?

      “Friday night. And don’t ask me why she’s back. She’s done a good job of not talking about herself since she got here.” Levi took aim, and his dart landed in the bull’s-eye. “Guess that’s game.”

      “I’ll buy the next round before I leave, boys,” James said, signaling the waitress. Juanita Alvarez had worked at the bar as long as Merle had.

      “Don’t you have a shift later?” Collin asked.

      “Yep. On midnights for the next few weeks.” James finished his water. “It’s why Juanita’s been serving me bottled water all night. And why I’m buying the last round, not drinking it.”

      “None for me. Early morning.” Levi sat back in the booth, stretching his arms over the vinyl back. “I’ll take a cup of coffee, though,” he said as Juanita arrived at the table.

      “Coke for me,” Collin said. There was still time to go over the books, but not if he had another drink.

      “You guys are wusses,” Adam said and then asked Juanita for another draft. “Time was we’d drink in here until Merle shut it down and still get up at the butt crack of dawn for work or...whatever.”

      “Time was we didn’t all have responsibilities,” James reminded his friend and then added, with a pointed gaze, “like a lovely wife and two great kids waiting at home.”

      Adam rolled his eyes at that. “Jenny gets the guys’ night out thing, and the kids have school, which means an eight o’clock bedtime.”

      “If Jenny was my wife, I’d be taking advantage of kids’ early bedtimes with an early bedtime of my own,” James said, a sly smile on his face. Of all of them, James had changed the most since high school. Back then he’d been the geek—the football-playing geek, but still the geek. Now he had half the single women in Slippery Rock panting after him, wanting to be Mrs. Sheriff James Calhoun. That was, if James’s father ever left his post as sheriff. “See you guys next week,” he said, grabbing his water bottle from the table.

      “James has the right idea. See you guys next week,” Levi said. He picked up his ball cap from the table and slipped it over his head. He looked back. “No more trying to maim each other with darts,” he said, waving a finger between Collin and Adam. “Never mind the coffee, Juanita,” he called as he pushed through the doorway.

      Adam lifted his hands as if he were innocent. “You gonna go talk to her?”

      “You’re an ass.” Collin shook his head. “No, I’m not talking to Savannah Walters. We don’t have anything to talk about.”

      “Who said you needed something to talk about?”

      Collin blinked. Was he missing something here?

      “She’s back in town.” Adam said the words slowly as if Collin might not understand simple English.

      “And?”

      “You’re currently available.”

      “And?”

      “She’s currently available, at least if you go by the tabloids.”

      “Again, I say ‘so’?”

      Adam blew out a breath. “So, she’s always been cute, but you heard James. That girl—” he motioned toward her with his hands “—has turned into one hot—”

      “Don’t. Say. It.” He needed to get his brain off Savannah’s assets.

      “What?”

      “Stop acting like you’re my wingman for cripe’s sake. I don’t need help in the female department.”

      “I’m just saying—”

      “Well, don’t just say. I’m not hitting on Savannah. I’m not dating Savannah and I’m not sleeping with Savannah.”

      “You’re not sleeping with anyone.” Adam held up his hands. “Just trying to get you off this celibacy shtick you’ve been on since last summer.”

      “It’s not a celibacy shtick, A. I’m running a business that, until recently, was on very shaky ground. I’ve got a seventeen-year-old sister to raise.”

      Savannah sipped from her glass again and Collin swallowed. It was more than not having time for recreational sex. Women hit on him all the time, but he didn’t have time for the dating thing, and random hookups had never been his thing. Until tonight, anyway. Somehow, since Savannah had walked through the door, all he’d had on his mind was meaningless, hot sex.

      Which was ridiculous. He wasn’t a twenty-year-old kid any longer. He’d grown up. Had responsibilities. He didn’t need a woman like Savannah Walters screwing any of that up.

      * * *

      SAVANNAH SIPPED FROM the plastic cup made to look like a high-end wineglass. It was boxed wine. When she convinced Merle to add wine to his twenty brands of beer, and the staples of Jim Beam, Johnny Walker and Jose Cuervo, she’d intended for him to add wines from one of the regional vineyards. Only Merle, stubborn, beer-drinking, wine-hating Merle, would buy wine for his bar from the local grocery store, insisting that people came to the Slope for conversation and “real drinking.” She supposed he was right, she was the only one drinking it. And she hated boxed wine.

      She also hated that the women she was drinking with—the women who used to be barely civil to her—were pretending to be her best friends because she was a minor Nashville star. Or at least, she had been.

      More than either of those things, she hated that spending another night cooped up