it did matter.
Savannah Walters was not the kind of woman he needed to be messing around with.
* * *
SAVANNAH BLINKED. LOOKED around the empty bar.
He’d left.
She ran her hands up and down her arms, suddenly feeling as if all the warmth in the bar had gone out the door as Collin closed it behind him.
He’d really left.
She’d offered herself up to him and... Damn it, what was it about the men in this town?
Okay, that wasn’t fair. Not all the men in Slippery Rock were cold, clinical, orchard owners.
From what she remembered, Collin wasn’t cold or clinical. Maybe he just didn’t like her. Somehow, that didn’t make her feel better.
Savannah Walters was a grown woman who knew what she wanted, and what she wanted was to not think about what a mess her life was. Just for a little while. It wasn’t as if she was an ugly stepsister or something. She had assets, and she knew how to use them. And that left her right back at He Isn’t Interested. She blew out a breath. Okay, then, she wouldn’t be interested.
Merle stood behind the bar, still counting the money from the register.
“What do I owe you?” she asked, feeling foolish. She’d just come on—hard—to Collin Tyler and been turned down flat. The old bartender might pretend he didn’t see anything in the bar, but she knew he caught it all. God, this was so embarrassing.
“Your friends cleared the tab.” He put most of the money into a bank bag, locked it, and then put a few tens, fives and ones back into the register before closing it up.
“Oh.” She looked around, not sure what to do. Leave, she supposed. Go back to the ranch.
“When am I going to get one of your songs for the juke?” Merle asked.
“Oh. Um... I just finished cutting my first record.” Not that it would be released anytime soon. Genevieve was the star of their shared label. Savannah was the newcomer who’d literally screwed herself out of a tour slot. Not being in front of the fans coupled with Genevieve’s pull at the label probably meant a fast and definite death for her career. The career that Savannah wanted for her parents more than she’d wanted it for herself.
The whole time she’d felt like a fraud. Petrified the world would find out she wasn’t who she’d told them she was—the normal girl from the normal family from a normal small town—when the truth about the way she came to Slippery Rock or her family was so not normal. Not knowing her actual birth date wasn’t normal. Not knowing her biological medical history wasn’t normal. Not knowing her racial makeup wasn’t normal.
She’d been told as a kid that she couldn’t be white because of her hair type. But, she’d also been told she couldn’t be black because her skin tone was light, like Jennifer Beals or Zoe Kravitz. None of the kids in Slippery Rock seemed to realize that both of those actresses were biracial. She’d been raised by an African-American family who hadn’t cared that her skin tone was several shades lighter than theirs. For the most part, Savannah didn’t, either. She just wished she could feel worthy of them. That was the feeling that drove her to Los Angeles and then to Nashville.
Bennett and Mama Hazel loved country music, and had passed that love on to her. Once she arrived in LA, no one seemed to care about anything but her singing, so she’d pretended to be just another small-town girl, trying to make it. Then she stepped on the stage and realized she wanted to be anywhere but in the middle of that spotlight. The crowd was too loud, and the lights were too hot, and she’d just wanted it all to stop.
She couldn’t stop the LA circus, though, no matter how much she wanted out. Singing country music had been Mama Hazel’s dream as a young woman, but she’d fallen in love with Bennett and given it up. Savannah doing well on the show, doing well in Nashville, would have given a little bit of Mama’s dream back to her.
Then the discomfort of the stage turned into fear that some zealous reporter would start to dig into her past. Would make the connection between Levi and her. There would have been questions she couldn’t answer, and maybe even accusations that she’d been trying to “pass.” In truth, she hadn’t considered her ethnicity at all; she had been too focused on finally doing something that would make her parents proud.
Merle’s voice brought her thoughts back to the bar. “Well, when you’ve got that song, you make sure we get a copy. It’ll be the most played song in the Slope, I guarantee.” Merle winked.
“I will.” Savannah backed out of the bar. The thick oak door closed behind her and Savannah leaned against it for a second. She heard the tumblers click over as Merle locked up for the night.
She had no illusions about the perfection of Slippery Rock. There were racial and economic divisions even in the middle of nowhere. Bennett and Mama Hazel were respected landowners, her brother, a beloved football star, but there were other families who weren’t thought of in the same way. Families who lived below the poverty line. Some of them also families of color. Ever since the adoption worker had brought her here, Savannah had been caught in the vicious cycle of wanting to be worthy of the family that had chosen her, but of being too afraid to accept their love.
Afraid that they would come to the same realization that her first family had—that Savannah was too much trouble—and would send her back to those cold police station steps.
Getting out of town, finding herself living a very sheltered and artistic California life in which no one questioned her race, had been freeing for the first few days. Then the old fears had come back. What if people turned on her because she might not be the typical, Caucasian country music star? What if people turned on her because she could have been the one to break the musical stereotype but instead had chosen to pass, even if she hadn’t consciously thought not mentioning her past was an attempt at passing?
It had been a relief when she hadn’t won. It was as if she’d dodged a bullet. But then the Nashville record company had offered her a deal, and then, when one of the biggest country stars opened a tour slot for her, it had all spun out of control.
From the second those offers came in, she’d started to think she really could earn the love of the family that chose her, but she’d still been so uncomfortable under all of that attention. And when Philip Anderson, Genevieve’s tour manager and estranged husband, had come on to her, she’d found herself following him to Genevieve’s bus.
Why had she gone onto that bus with Philip? She didn’t even like the man.
She doubted, deep-in-her-heart doubted, that she deserved her family’s love now.
Savannah pushed away from the door, got into Mama Hazel’s sedan and pulled onto the highway.
This was one more blinking neon light indicating that she should focus on her own mental health and not start chasing a man who obviously didn’t want her. She needed to get her life in order.
She parked the car in the carport and slowly climbed the steps to the house. The door creaked as she opened it. Savannah flicked off the porch light and climbed the stairs to her old room.
Pretty yellow curtains fluttered in the light breeze and the familiar blue of the walls soothed her. She didn’t bother with pajamas,
