Jumping into bed with Levi would only muddy the waters. Her toes curled involuntarily at the thought of her body so close to his during their most recent kiss. Well, maybe she wouldn’t mind seeing a little bit more of that hard body she’d felt so intimately this morning.
She was getting off track. Levi’s body might turn her body on, but that was the end of it. Camden was not going down Hormone Alley with exciting Levi Walters simply because she’d walked away from Marriage Avenue with boring Grant Wadsworth. Shaking her head, Camden waved her hands toward the key on the table. “I really don’t need a key. But thank you.”
Bonita exchanged a look with Calvin and said, “We love you, but we aren’t that interesting. You need life and young people. You need to get out and live your life.” Bonita elbowed Calvin, who looked incredibly uncomfortable with the conversation as a whole. He shrugged, and Bonita went on. “Honey, we don’t know everything that happened in Kansas City, and we’re not asking you to pour your heart out to us. You can stay here as long as you like, date whomever you’d like—not that Grant fellow, though, he’s a little too shiny for my taste—but anyone else will do.” She motioned to the key. “This way you don’t have to worry about us. You can come and go as you please.”
Camden blew out a breath. “Like I told you, Grant was cheating on me, which is why I left, but I should have left or called off the wedding long before that. I didn’t for a lot of reasons—fear of disappointing all the people who had worked so hard on the wedding chief among them. But I didn’t come here looking for another man, I came here to find myself.”
“Levi’s a good man. You couldn’t do better,” Granddad said. He held out the key.
Camden wanted something to fill her hands with, something that would make it impossible to take the key and their implicit approval of Levi as dating material. But if she told them this was a setup to get Grant out of Slippery Rock, she would also have to tell them about the whole deal with Levi. She didn’t want Granddad to sell the land, but she’d made a deal with Levi, and she wouldn’t renege on that deal.
“I didn’t come here to hide. I came back here because this is the last place I really felt like me. Like Camden Harris, human being. Not Camden Harris, Elizabeth’s daughter, or Camden Harris, pageant queen.” Granddad was still holding the key, so Camden took it and slid it into the pocket of her jeans. She’d come here to figure things out, and she’d known if she went practically any other place in the world her mother wouldn’t be far behind. Elizabeth hated the farm enough that she wouldn’t willingly set foot here. Before Camden could figure anything out, she needed to get her past out of her present. “Will it make you feel better to know I’m going out tonight?”
“Infinitely,” Grandmom said. “To that dance with Levi, right?”
“And dinner beforehand. Why don’t you come with us? I remember watching the two of you dance until midnight one year during the founders’ weekend celebration.”
“Psh. You’re twenty-six years old. You don’t need your grandparents horning in on your date. We can make it to the dance on our own, and we can drive ourselves home and you can enjoy that young man.”
“I’m sure I’ll be home by ten.” Eleven at the latest. Pretend dating Levi didn’t have to mean staying out until midnight. In fact, the earlier he brought her home, the easier it would be to keep things between them impersonal.
“You don’t need a curfew.”
“If she wants a curfew, Bonnie, I don’t see—” Calvin began, but Bonita stopped him with a glance.
“We won’t wait up.” Her grandparents exchanged another look, and Camden had the uncomfortable feeling they had plans of their own for the evening. Bonita took Calvin’s hand, leading him into the large family room with the big-screen TV—an addition since Camden had visited here as a child—and an old-fashioned jukebox that played only country and pop hits from the 1960s. It should be strange to hear the Beach Boys followed by Willie Nelson; instead, it was comfortable.
Camden pulled the key from her pocket and turned it over in her hand, feeling a little like a teenager who had been given the keys to her father’s sports car. In the other room, the evening news came on, with an anchor talking about holiday festivities in the area. She mentioned the concert at the grandstand, along with some bigger events in larger, more established tourist communities.
Camden had no intention of sleeping with Levi. She had no intention of having a real relationship with the man at all. Before she even considered that, she needed to figure out who and what she was on her own. Was she the novice dog trainer happy with life in a small town? Was she the professional beauty queen who now coached pageant girls and did the Junior League circuit? Whoever she was, how did she go about keeping that identity without letting someone else—either her mother or the man she loved—mold it in their image?
The sound of a big engine pulling down the drive interrupted her thoughts. Had to be Levi; Grant’s Mercedes had been practically silent that morning, and she didn’t know anyone else who would be coming to the farm. That overly warm feeling returned to her belly, followed by the flapping of about a dozen butterflies.
Camden willed the feeling away. This wasn’t a date. Even if it was, Levi was so far from the type of guy she usually dated—not that she had dated much, even before Grant—that it wasn’t funny. Levi was too big, too handsome, too much.
And if she didn’t leave right this second, her grandparents would be too present, watching her get into that big truck like she was going off to the prom instead of a holiday dance with a local band performing. Camden shoved the key back into her pocket, grabbed the vintage denim jacket she’d found in a thrift store when she was in college and the small bag that held lip gloss and a few other essentials, and hurried out the door.
She stopped short, gaping at the giant black truck parked in the drive. Levi was a big man, tall and muscular, and filled with confidence. His truck was painted a matte black, she’d missed the color when he pulled the blanket out of the back seat the night of the downtown lighting ceremony, with the Walters Ranch brand on the doors, the truck had dual wheels in the back, a chrome roll bar over the cab and tinted windows. It looked like something Batman might drive if Batman were a cowboy from a small town instead of a crime fighter from Gotham City, and it made her heart rev in her chest.
Silly. She didn’t get turned on by trucks any more than she got turned on by overly muscled men with piercing brown eyes, molten chocolate skin and almost-shaved heads. Slowly, Camden made her way to the truck, opened the door and used the step to climb inside the enormous truck.
“You like to make an entrance, I see,” she said, fastening her seat belt as if she rode in trucks the size of small planes every day of her life.
“We have that in common,” he replied. Levi put the truck in gear, turned around and pointed the truck back down the lane.
“I don’t make grand entrances. I blend.”
Levi chuckled. “Sure. Waltzing into a bar in a wedding dress is blending. Guess I missed that trend when I moved back to Slippery Rock after football.”
He had a point, and that annoyed her more than it should have. They drove in silence for a while, the truck eating up the miles between the neighboring farms as if Levi drove seventy-five rather than the more sedate—and legal—fifty-five. They crossed the city limit, with its welcome sign naming local churches and service organizations. There was a matching sign on the other side of town. They passed the marina, where only a few brave boats and pontoons were still moored, and entered the quiet downtown area. A few people walked around, but the crowd hadn’t yet arrived for the concert, and traffic was light. They drove by Mallard’s Grocery, where she’d tasted her first Bomb Pop one hot summer afternoon when she was a kid. It was strange to see the empty lot where the old community church had been; the church had been destroyed, along with a few other buildings, in the tornado l
ast spring. The drive took a half hour, yet, when they arrived at the Slippery Rock Grill a few minutes later, Camden wished they had a few more minutes to themselves.
Maybe it was the darkness of the truck cab, but Camden suddenly felt as if she owed Levi some kind of explanation, at least about why she’d asked him to be her pretend boyfriend. When he opened his door, Camden put her hand on his arm to stop him. The light touch sent a zing of awareness through her, and Camden withdrew. “I didn’t intend to draw attention to myself that first night in the bar. I just wanted to get home.”
“This hasn’t been your home in a lot of years, Camden.”
Camden sighed. She knew that. Slippery Rock had never truly been her home. At best, it was a vacation spot that her mother hated and her father canonized. Still, it was the place she went to in her mind any time things in her life had seemed off-kilter.
He watched her for a long moment in the dim light trickling in from the sparse streetlights, and Camden wondered what he saw when he looked at her. A lost puppy like Six? An out-of-place debutante? The girl he remembered? Most likely he saw a stranger, because that’s what she was. A stranger to Slippery Rock. A stranger to her grandparents. A stranger to Grant—the man she’d been ready to marry.
A stranger to herself. Camden had been here for two weeks, and still she caught glimpses of herself in jeans and tees and rain boots and wondered who the woman was looking back at her from the reflection.
“Nonetheless, I wasn’t trying to be a spectacle, and I’m usually the most boring person you would ever meet. No drama.” He shot her a look as if he didn’t believe her. That was okay—he had no reason to believe that the woman who’d walked into a strange bar wearing a wedding dress was not a drama queen. “I’ll probably forget to thank you.”
“For what?” he asked, seeming surprised at her words.
She smiled at him, and the expression felt pinched. “For helping me perpetrate a fraud against a man I’d been willing to marry, even though I wasn’t in love with him, until I found him...” She trailed off.
“Playing Pin the Penis on the Bridesmaid?” He filled in the blanks, and the way he said it, as if it had happened to someone in a movie and not her, made her smile.
“Yeah. Thank you for that.”
“You’re assuming he shows up.”
“Are you assuming my talking to him at the barn changed his opinion on our compatibility and future plans? Because Grant Wadsworth doesn’t give up that easily. He was a member of the Harvard debate club and once argued with a Yalie about who developed the forward pass in football until the man threw up his hands in annoyed defeat. And Grant didn’t even know who really had developed the forward pass—he just didn’t want to admit he was wrong.”
“What kind of self-respecting American man doesn’t know Bradbury Robinson threw the first forward pass?” Levi rolled his eyes, and suddenly the dim cab didn’t feel like some kind of weird confessional. It was just Camden, talking to her old friend Levi.
“I thought that was Knute Rockne from Notre Dame?”
Levi shook his head. “Rockne and Notre Dame were the first to be successful at it, but Robinson was the first to throw it in a game. His pass resulted in a turnover, but he was the first to throw it.” Levi motioned to the restaurant, where a few couples were going inside. “We should eat, if you want this whole fake-dating thing to be taken seriously.”
The moment she stepped out of this truck, their pretend relationship would become real, at least to the people of Slippery Rock. It was already real to her grandparents, and Camden wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Lying to them made her feel queasy, as if she’d jumped from one fake life to another. Maybe a little white lie like this was what it would take to finally break the ties from her past.
She opened the truck door and climbed down. Inside the restaurant, they were seated at a corner table overlooking a pretty garden filled with flowering quince and daphne. The sun had long since set, but the restaurant had placed a few outdoor lights in the area that shed just enough light that Camden could imagine what the garden would look like during the day.
The waitress stopped by to take their drink orders and tell them about the evening specials of prime rib and lamb chops. Once their orders were placed, the woman disappeared into the dimly lit restaurant.
Camden fiddled with the little packets of sugar and sugar substitutes in the small container near the lit votive candle. She hated first dates—not that this was a true first date—and she hated blind dates, not that Levi was a total stranger. He also wasn’t a friend. She wished she knew how to fill the weird void between them.
“What are you doing here, Camden?” he asked, jolting her out of her thoughts.
“Visiting my family. Figuring out my life.”
He sat back in his chair. “You haven’t been to Slippery Rock in, what, ten years?”
More like fourteen, but she didn’t care to think too much about that. She couldn’t change the past, and when she was a kid, it hadn’t been her choice to stay away.
“I understand about Grant and Pin the Penis, but why come back here? Couldn’t you have, I don’t know, made off with the honeymoon tickets and come to terms with your life on a beach somewhere?”
She could have. Running off to a Mexican beach had been at the top of her to-do list when she first realized what she was seeing in that closet. Running off to a vacation, though, wasn’t the same as running off to start her life. Camden had been afraid that instead of making her confront her decisions, Mexico would have covered those decisions in a haze of tequila, making it too easy to go back to the life she no longer wanted to lead.
She’d known that she needed to fully break out of the mold her mother had been building around her since her father died. Mexico might have made it simple to dump Grant yet continue as her mother’s right-hand pageant coach, dressing the right way, doing her hair the right way, wearing the right clothes.
Levi didn’t need to know any of that. He couldn’t understand the kind of terror that had forced her out of the comfort shell that she’d been living in. Men like Levi, who went from high school football star to college star and into the National Football League, didn’t blindly follow what another person wanted for them. They chased their own dreams. Instead of following her dreams, Camden had opted for making her mother happy, and it had taken nearly fifteen years for her to realize it was something she could no longer do. Elizabeth had to make herself happy.
Camden had to learn how to make herself happy, too. She deserved that.
She wanted that.
How to explain that to Levi without admitting how very weak she had been, though?
“I decided it was time to take control of my life. The last place I felt like I had any kind of control was here, so this is where I’m starting.” She curled her hands together in her lap as she spoke. “That probably sounds silly to you.”
Levi watched her for a long moment. “It sounds brave, actually. But I still don’t think we need to pretend date for you to take control of your life back. Look around—no Grant to be seen.”
She had to admit that he had a point. There’d been no sign of Grant inside the restaurant or on the streets as they’d driven through town. Still, it wasn’t like Grant to go away without a fight, especially when he was convinced he was right. Wadsworth men married beauty queens. Wadsworth men married women in the Junior League. Both were part of Camden’s pedigree.
Wadsworth men were all about pedigree.
* * *
SHE ISN’T REALLY here with you.
Levi repeated the words to himself for the millionth time since the two of them had arrived at the Slippery Rock Grill. That was two hours and—he checked his watch—seventeen minutes ago. He knew there was more to her taking back her life explanation that she’d offered, but it was the most he’d gotten out of her s
ince first catching her in her wedding dress in the Slope. He knew her secrecy should bother him, but she seemed like the old Camden to him the more he hung around with her. Kissing notwithstanding, of course. He’d wanted to kiss Camden a few times when they were kids, but fourteen-year-old guys didn’t kiss twelve-year-old girls.
The old Camden wouldn’t be on a mission to hurt her grandparents.
Of course, the Camden he remembered also wouldn’t agree to help him influence her grandfather about the acreage on the north side of the property, either.
Still, it was hard to remember she wasn’t here at the dance with him when he was holding her in his arms. Which meant she needed to come back from the girls-only bathroom run with Mara, Jenny, Savannah and Julia. He would never understand the mentality of women who needed entourages to pee.
“They’ll be back in a few more minutes. Once Mara and Jenny get the lowdown on what Camden’s intentions are toward you,” Collin said, interrupting Levi’s thoughts.
“Camden has no intentions where I’m concerned.” Her intentions were all about Grant, the khaki-wearing ex who still hadn’t showed up.
The band switched from “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree” to a modern Christmas ballad, the singer lamenting being alone over the holidays and wanting her love to return. Like he wanted Camden to return—only she wasn’t his love. She was his coconspirator, and he’d better start remembering that simple fact.
“I’d say her intentions are more murky than unintentional,” James said, joining the conversation. He wore his sheriff’s department uniform, having drawn the short straw for patrol duty that night. He’d dropped in to the dance a few minutes before, ostensibly to make sure there was nothing crazy going on, but he’d spent most of his time flirting and dancing with Mara and not watching the rest of the dancing couples for any signs of bad behavior.
“I’d say she has perfectly clear intentions and those intentions are to turn our resident monk, Levi Walters, into a modern-day Romeo,” Aiden added.
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