Christmas In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

stomach never got jumpy like this with Grant. At best, she was lukewarm around him, but suddenly, the bar seemed hot and humid, as if hundreds of people were crowded into it on a steamy summer day. Not a handful of people on a chilly fall night.

      “Nice rock,” he said, leaning against the bar, facing the big dance floor she had crossed only a few minutes ago. Camden kept her focus on the wineglass. She wasn’t interested in marrying the man she’d been engaged to for the last few months, and she wasn’t interested in flirting with the man who’d sidled up next to her in this bar.

      “I didn’t pick it out.” Now, where had that come from? She’d been blown away by the ring when Grant presented it to her back in the summer. Sure, it was heavy on her hand, and it snagged on everything. But it—

      No, Camden shut down that train of thought. Yes, Grant had bought the ring for her. But Grant had also been screwing her maid of honor in a closet about fifteen minutes before they were supposed to pledge their love—or at least fidelity—to one another. So...she had no reason to feel sentimental about this ring or guilty that she was happy she could now take it off and never wear it again.

      Camden wasn’t quite sure what she wanted, but she knew diving into a flirtation with a stranger wouldn’t help her figure it out. She needed to focus.

      “It’s a nice-looking dress, though.”

      “Not my style.”

      “I find that hard to believe. You wear it too well.”

      Because she’d been trained to wear it well. Her mother had started her on the pageant circuit when she was nine, and after her father died, the pageants had become almost weekly occurrences. Still, having a stranger comment on her appearance was nice. Maybe a little stalkery, but nice. “Yeah, well, it’s not like it takes a special set of skills to wear designer clothing.”

      “I don’t know about that.”

      Okay, that upped the stalker level a little too high. She was not going to let some cowboy in a small town take her to his trailer just because she’d walked out on her old life.

      “I’m going to finish this glass of wine and be on my way. You can scurry back over to your buddies now and tell them what a hateful witch I am.”

      “You don’t seem all that hateful. Maybe a little sad. But not hateful.” His voice was kind, kinder than she probably deserved after walking away from everything and everyone the way she had done. But she still wasn’t letting a stranger talk her into bed. No matter how sexy his voice sounded in the darkened bar. “You’re wearing a ring you didn’t pick out, and a dress that isn’t your style. Seems to me like this has not been your day.”

      “Try lifetime,” she said and twirled the stem of the wineglass between her fingers. And she was not going to keep talking to a perfect stranger about her life. She was not feeling like herself, but she wasn’t completely desperate.

      “How much do I owe you?” she asked Merle, who was looking from Camden to the man at the bar and back again.

      “Ten dollars,” the older man said.

      “I’ll take care of it.”

      “I pay my own bills,” Camden said and turned to look at the man standing beside her.

      He was tall, built like a football player. His skin was a rich brown, and there were golden flecks in his brown eyes.

      And she knew him.

      He was taller than she remembered. His shoulders wider. His voice deeper. But the laughter in the gaze was the same, as was the crooked tilt to his mouth. Camden clapped her hand over her mouth. Oh, God, she wanted to sink through the floor of the bar.

      Of all the bars, in all the world, why did she have to walk into Levi Walters’s?

      * * *

      “CAMDEN?”

      Levi blinked once, twice, then a third time. This brain tumor–epilepsy thing was getting out of hand. He’d gone from imagining a beautiful woman in a wedding dress to imagining Camden Harris—a girl he hadn’t seen since he was fourteen. Not girl. Woman. From the tilt of her pretty head to the smooth shoulders, full bust—

      Levi slammed his hand against the bar, and Camden jumped. So did Merle. And he was pretty sure he’d gotten the attention of everyone else in the bar, too, from annoying Collin and Aiden to Juanita, who stuck her head around the corner of the door leading to the kitchen.

      “Sorry.” He swallowed. “I’m not crazy, right? You’re Camden Harris.”

      “Hello, Levi.”

      Her voice was the same. A little twang, which was odd, because she lived in a fancy part of Kansas City and competed in beauty pageants. At least, she’d been on the posters of several pageants around the university campus where he played football.

      Slight southern drawls weren’t welcomed in those circles. For beauty pageants it was full-on, south-of-the-Mason-Dixon drawl or what he considered broadcaster cool, with no hint of an accent. From anywhere. Or maybe he was reading too much into a short conversation.

      He needed to get a grip on himself or he was really going to lose it. Levi didn’t like to prove people right on the crazy side of things. He was steady. Not impulsive. He considered options, developed a plan of action. He didn’t rush into decisions.

      He didn’t even usually rush into flirting with women, especially women he didn’t know. So, naturally, now that he had, it had to be someone he used to know.

      “What are you doing here?” she asked, and the question threw him. What was he doing here? What was she doing here? And in a wedding dress?

      “I live here.” Levi sat on the stool beside her. “What are you doing here?”

      A half smile crossed her wide mouth but didn’t reach her eyes. Camden shook her head. “Paying my bill.” She stood, and her high-heeled shoes clacked against the hardwood. She pulled a ten from the little bag strapped around her wrist and left it on the bar. “I’ll see you around, I guess.”

      “I live here,” Levi said and felt like an idiot for repeating himself. And in such a lame way. Of course they’d see one another—Slippery Rock was a small town. His ranch and her grandparents’ farm were next to each other. It would be a miracle if he didn’t bump into her now and again.

      He reached out, and a sharp little burst of attraction hit him hard when his hand brushed her arm. Which was just weird. Sure, he’d felt a little heat when he took her hand to look at the glimmering rock on her finger, but that was when he’d been in the mood to seduce the sexy stranger at the bar.

      Camden Harris wasn’t a sexy stranger. She was the girl next door. The girl with the big brown eyes who tagged along after him during her summer visits with her grandparents.

      The girl who hadn’t been back to Slippery Rock in at least a decade and, as far as he knew, whom her grandparents hadn’t seen in at least as long.

      Calvin and Bonita had pictures of Camden, though, and he’d seen them on several occasions when he stopped in to check on them. One more reason he should have recognized her as soon as she walked into the bar. But he hadn’t. The girl—no, woman—in those pictures was confident. Happy.

      The Camden standing next to him at the bar...wasn’t. Something had changed. Whatever that something was, it wasn’t his business. He should just back off. Camden Harris was a childhood acquaintance, not a personal friend.

      “Yes?” she asked, and Levi realized his hand still gripped her arm, holding her in place. He let go quickly, and her arm fell to her side.

      “Nothing, nothing,” he said, and she turned to go. “Wait! You didn’t say what you were doing back in town.”

      She turned to face him, and those big brown eyes went soft, her mouth turned down and Levi wondered what might have happened in Camden’s privileged life that would make her look so sad.