Christmas In A Small Town. Kristina Knight

right. Of course she was familiar. Her hair was the same walnut brown he remembered, and her eyes were still big and round and had those honey-colored flecks that mesmerized him. She was taller, but that was normal. What twelve-year-old didn’t grow a few more inches in their teens and early twenties? He’d put on about fifty pounds of muscle and added nearly three inches to his height since graduating high school.

      Only it wasn’t the color of her hair or her eyes that drew him in—it was something else. Something to which Levi didn’t want to get too close. Something that might be a little bit dangerous for a man who liked to consider and think his way through life, because his impulse was to pull Camden Harris into his arms to make that look go away.

      Levi Walters had too much going on in his life to let a woman with a sad look on her face distract him, though. He had very specific plans, and those plans had specific goals, and getting distracted with Camden Harris was definitely not part of the plan.

      “I’m just here for a few days. Visiting my grandparents,” she said, but he didn’t think she was telling him the whole truth.

      “In a wedding dress.”

      She shrugged, and the half smile that crossed her face made a little of the lost disappear. “I already told you the dress isn’t my style.”

      “And the ring wasn’t your choice.”

      “Something like that.”

      The evasive answers were interesting. More interesting than the conversation he’d been avoiding with Collin and Aiden. More interesting than the fact that he had a video conference with his investment counselor in the morning about making an offer on a portion of the Harris land he’d been renting for the past two years.

      “Is coming here your choice?”

      She looked around, and he wondered what she saw in the weathered floor, the neon signs and the dim lighting. He saw familiarity. Safety. Home. The sign behind the bar had been partially unlit for as long as he could remember. The juke in the corner had played the same songs since he was in high school, with the exception of Merle adding Savannah’s single a few months before. The vinyl on the booth seats was cracked, and the chairs were scuffed.

      It was perfect to him. Not a shiny disco ball in sight.

      “Yeah. Coming to Slippery Rock was my choice,” she said, and when she looked at him again, he thought he saw more confidence in her expression. In the set of her shoulders. That zing of attraction buzzed a bit brighter. “I’ll see you around, Levi.”

      “See ya around, Camden,” he said as she crossed the room. Her footsteps seemed to echo in the bar long after the door closed behind her.

      Camden Harris was back in town. This might be the most interesting thing to happen to Slippery Rock in...okay, that wasn’t fair. A lot had happened over the past year. Savannah had scandalized the town, as had the revelation that Sheriff James Calhoun had been having an ongoing affair with the favorite local rebel, Mara Tyler. The tornado had nearly destroyed the town. And Aiden Buchanan had finally come back.

      But Camden...

      That was interesting on a whole other level.

      “I guess we figured out what’s bugging Levi,” Collin said, coming up behind him at the bar. He pulled his wallet from his rear pocket.

      “Yeah, we thought there was trouble at the ranch. Turns out, Levi Walters just needs to get laid,” Aiden added. Levi started to give a sharp reply, but that would only encourage the two of them. And they weren’t wrong.

      Not that he was going to sleep with Camden Harris. That zing of attraction was just a zing. A reminder that it had been too long since he’d taken time away from Slippery Rock to be with a beautiful woman.

      Like Camden. Levi shoved the thought away. “What do we owe you, Merle?”

      “Thirty’ll cover it,” the older man said.

      “I got it—loser buys, remember? And who was that, anyway?” Collin leaned against the bar, holding out a handful of bills to Merle.

      “She looked familiar. Kind of,” Aiden added.

      “Camden Harris.” Levi turned his attention to the door again and then pulled a few bills from his wallet, but Collin pushed the money away. Right. Because Collin and Aiden lost at darts. Levi needed to get his mind back inside the bar. “You remember. Calvin and Bonita’s granddaughter. She used to spend her summers here.” Neither Collin nor Aiden said anything, and that brought Levi’s attention fully back inside the bar, not out there in the night with Camden. “She used to tag along with us to the lake on really hot days. Camden Harris.”

      Aiden snapped his fingers. “That’s how I know her. She did the beauty pageant thing with Julia while they were in college. The two of them traded off winning and losing there for a while. Until Camden was crowned at the state level and went on to the national competition.”

      “Julia competed in pageants?” Julia was a beautiful woman, but she didn’t have the slick polish Levi associated with beauty pageant contestants. She was too genuine for that. For that matter, so was Camden. At least, the Camden he remembered. The woman he’d spoken to a few minutes before was a stranger, in a wedding gown, wearing a ring she said she didn’t want. Weird.

      “Something her mom got her into. After her parents died, it was a way to keep that connection going. Plus, she wanted to save the money they left her, and academic scholarships only went so far. The pageant circuit paid the difference.” Aiden leaned an elbow on the bar. “I wonder if Julia knows she actually came to town?” he muttered.

      “Julia’s been talking to Camden?” Even more interesting. Camden had made it seem like this visit was a spur-of-the-moment thing, but if she’d been talking to Julia, it probably wasn’t. So what was up?

      “They text, Facebook now and then. She was supposed to be getting married this weekend. Today, actually. Obviously that didn’t happen.”

      Obviously. Levi watched the door for a few more minutes. Camden was engaged. Or had been engaged. Was still engaged? And now she was in Slippery Rock, wearing the dress and the ring, but apparently alone. Interesting on that whole other level.

      “You fellas gonna leave sometime tonight? I’d like to close,” Merle said. He was leaning against the counter on the back side of the bar, arms crossed over his flannel-clad chest. He tapped the toe of one well-worn boot against the rubber matting on the floor.

      “Sorry,” Collin said, pocketing the change Merle had left on the counter.

      The three of them walked out of the bar, got into their cars, and each went in a different direction from there. Once Levi was out of town, he considered what might have brought Camden to town.

      It could be she was just running away.

      It could be that the deal he was about to close with her grandfather had brought her.

      It could be anything, really.

      The narrow road leading to the ranch and the Harris property split, and Levi paused, watching the lane that would lead to Harris land, for a long time. No taillights shone down the lane, not that he’d expected any, and despite the late November date, the foliage blocked out any light that might have shone from the porch or yard lights at the Harrises’.

      Probably she was tucked up in one of the guest rooms Bonita kept in pristine condition despite the fact that no visitors had been at the farm since Levi was a teen.

      Probably she was just here for a quick visit, like she’d said.

      Probably he shouldn’t wonder what might have brought Camden back to Slippery Rock.

      In a wedding dress.

      He really needed to stop thinking about what she looked like in that dress.

      Levi put the truck back in Drive and turned to go down the road that would lead to his parents’ home and then around to his own. All the lights were