Christmas In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

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