and the car rolled to a stop.
Savannah clicked the key to the off position and then back on. Pressed the gas a couple of times and tried again. Nothing. Not even the clicking sound of a dead battery. She glared at the illuminated red check-engine light that had been on since she’d bought the car with her tip money from the Slope, where she’d chosen to clean up and wait tables instead of take a scholarship at a nearby college. Because she convinced herself she wasn’t good enough for college. Of course, if she’d done the college thing, she’d have never tried the talent show and wouldn’t have had a song on country radio.
Wouldn’t be running from scandal now.
The blinking engine light she’d ignored for nearly four years mocked her. One more checkmark in the Savannah the Screwup column.
If she’d only turned left, the stupid car would have run without so much as a twinge, she was positive about that. Lord, sometimes doing the right thing just sucked.
Anyone else would arrive back in her hometown driving an Escalade and find a parade in her honor. Savannah had a broken-down Honda with more than two hundred thousand miles on it. And she’d have to call her parents just to make it into town.
She thunked her head against the steering wheel a few times, but that didn’t make the check-engine light flicker off or the car miraculously start back up. The last thing she wanted to do was to call her parents. Maybe some of that car talk—Bennett helped Levi build his first car from parts found at the local salvage yard—at the dinner table had sunk in by osmosis or something.
Heaving out a sigh, Savannah popped the hood of her car and then stepped onto the pavement. The light wind was brisk—she should have remembered early May in Missouri was touch-and-go weather-wise—so she grabbed her neon-yellow hoodie from the passenger seat and shoved her arms through the sleeves.
At the front of the car, she pulled on the cherry-red hood but it didn’t budge. She tugged on it again and then bent to see the hook still caught in the hood latch. She hit the hood, trying to jar the hook loose, but no matter what she did the hook remained safely in the latch. There must be a mechanism in there somewhere that released it. Savannah bent to look between the narrow spaces of the grille, but didn’t see anything that looked like it might release the latch.
Crap, crap, crap.
Turning, she crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the hood.
There were two options: walk the five or so miles to her childhood home or call the house so someone could come pick her up.
A responsible person would probably walk it, but Savannah had already done the responsible thing by not turning left and look where that had gotten her: stranded on the side of the road at six thirty in the evening. She sighed.
Call home. Like she’d done a hundred times in the past. Well, better now than in the middle of the night.
She grabbed her phone from her bag on the passenger seat and scrolled until she found the word home, clicked the button and stopped. The sound of an engine caught her ear. Maybe she wouldn’t have to make that call, after all.
A dusty, blue truck rolled to a stop behind the old Honda and a broad-shouldered man sat behind the wheel, looking at her for a long minute. Savannah stiffened under his scrutiny. It was unlikely she had ever spoken to whoever was behind the wheel. When she’d lived in Slippery Rock she’d only had a handful of friends, and most of them had hung out with her just hoping to get to her brother. She tilted her head to the side, still studying the big truck. Not a single one of them would be caught dead in a big farm truck like the one taking up space behind her little car.
Dread crept down her spine.
It was likely, however, that whoever was behind the wheel knew her brother. Or her father. For all she knew, he was now making the call she should’ve swallowed her pride to make as soon as the engine gave out, instead of pretending she knew anything about general car repair. Or maintenance. Her knowledge of the car began and ended with how to put gas in the tank.
Well, this wasn’t going to get better if she didn’t get the man out of the truck. Savannah swallowed and offered a halfhearted wave.
“Hey,” she began as the man opened the door of his truck and stepped down to the pavement.
Dusty boots to match the dusty truck, along with the frayed end of a pair of faded jeans appeared below the open door. Then he slammed it shut and the rest of him came into view.
Well-worn jeans covered a pair of nicely shaped legs. A red T-shirt with a grease stain near the hem hinted at a nice set of abs, and the tight sleeves highlighted a set of biceps that made her mouth go a little dry. Which was just silly. Savannah didn’t go for athletes.
She liked gangly guys who knew how to work their instruments, and not the double-entendre instrument. Their guitars or drums or, a couple of times, keyboards.
He started toward her and it was as if her body went on point. Savannah stood a little straighter, every muscle seemed to clench and a warm heat sizzled to life deep in her belly.
Apparently gangly musician wasn’t her only type.
Finally her gaze arrived at the man’s face and her mouth went from dry to Sahara. This wasn’t a stranger. And he wasn’t a friend.
“Savannah Walters. I heard you were living it up in Nashville.” Collin Tyler, her brother’s best friend, shook his head at her. His voice was deeper than she remembered, and she thought he might even be taller. He was definitely rangier, and there was no way his arms had been that built in high school.
Not that she was looking, now or then.
Savannah ordered her gaze to fix on the truck behind Collin.
“Collin Tyler,” she said, thankful that her voice was working despite her raging thirst. “Still a Good Samaritan, I see.”
He shrugged, and the motion brought her focus right back to his body. Damn it.
“What seems to be the problem?” he asked, walking over to the car. His hands slipped between the hood and the grille and before she could warn him it was stuck, he had it unlatched and resting on the thin rod that held the hood aloft. Collin put his hands on the grille and leaned in as if he might spot the problem. Probably, he could. He fiddled with a couple of wires. “What are you doing driving this old thing still? Figured you have traded up by now.”
“I love this car.”
Collin shook his head and scoffed. “Nobody loves a 1997 Honda hatchback, Van,” he said, using the nickname that Levi had christened her within five minutes of her arrival at Walters Ranch.
“I worked hard for this car. I love this car,” Savannah said, probably a little too stridently. But she did love the car. Even if she wanted something newer and trendier and...road-worthy. This car had taken her out of Missouri to Los Angeles then Nashville. And back again.
“Slinging beers at the Slope isn’t exactly working hard.” He fiddled with a few more wires but, to Savannah, everything looked fine.
“And watching apple trees grow is hard work?” Savannah knew there was more to Collin’s family orchard than watching trees grow, but she couldn’t just stand there while he insulted her car. She might know it was decrepit, but allowing someone to
