Rebel In A Small Town

He’s not giving up his family without a fight

James Calhoun has never been able to resist Mara Tyler, or her knack for mischief. Her reputation as a reckless teenager drove Mara from their hometown. So Slippery Rock is the last place James ever expected to see her, and Mara’s timing couldn’t be worse. With the upcoming election for sheriff, she threatens the squeaky-clean image James needs to win. Because Mara has brought with her the result of their steamy affair: his two-year-old son, Zeke. After the initial shock, James is determined to have both his family and career. He just needs to convince Mara that her home is where it’s always been. With him.

“It isn’t just—” James blew out a breath. “I’m angry, yes. And confused. And...this changes everything.”

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you. Zeke doesn’t have to change anything for you. You can still run for sheriff. I think you’d make a great one. You don’t have to worry about supporting us, not on a county sheriff’s salary, because I have a great job with good benefits—”

James shut off the engine and got out of the Jeep, slamming the door shut behind him. Mara took a few steps back.

He advanced on her, pointing his finger at her chest.

“I’m not going to walk away and pretend I don’t know I have a kid in this world.”

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Slippery Rock! Although Rebel in a Small Town has both secret-baby and reunion-romance hooks, at its core the book is about accepting who we are, flaws and all. Mara and James both have preconceived notions about the other, and neither has been 100 percent honest. For baby Zeke, they’ll have to be honest, about what they want and about who they are.

Mara and James (and baby Zeke) stole my heart from the moment they appeared on my computer screen...and I hope they steal your heart, too.

I love hearing from readers. You can catch up with me through my website and newsletter at www.kristinaknightauthor.com or on Facebook, www.Facebook.com/kristinaknightromanceauthor, and if you’re a visual reader like me, follow my books on my Pinterest boards—you’ll get some behind-the-scenes information and lots of yummy pictures.

Happy reading!

Kristina

Rebel in a Small Town

Kristina Knight

www.millsandboon.co.uk

KRISTINA KNIGHT decided she wanted to be a writer, like her favorite soap-opera heroine, Felicia Gallant, one cold day when she was home sick from school. She took a detour into radio and television journalism but never forgot her first love of romance novels, or her favorite character from her favorite soap. In 2012 she got The Call from an editor who wanted to buy her book. Kristina lives in Ohio with her handsome husband, incredibly cute daughter and two dogs.

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For Shelby, Ace, Tyler, Josh and Kayla, you are my favorite little people in the whole world, and for Megan and Mandi, who were the first little people to steal my heart. Zeke is a little bit of all of you.

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Extract

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Two years ago

“TONIGHT WE ARE going to take this slow?”

Mara Tyler couldn’t find the words to answer, so she only smiled, letting her hands trail over the broad shoulders of James Calhoun—the very last man she should be having a clandestine affair with.

The very last man for whom she should be having feelings of anything but the physical variety. Yet here they were, in Nashville. It had been nearly a week since she logged her last speaking engagement at the securities conference. James was supposed to have returned to their hometown of Slippery Rock, Missouri, three days earlier. He kept making excuses for why he was staying, but to be honest, Mara didn’t care.

They stood at the window overlooking downtown Nashville. Neon signs twinkled in the darkness, and masses of people wandered from bar to bar and lounge to lounge. They’d been down there with the crowd until a half hour before, just like any other couple.

They weren’t any other couple, though. He had been voted most likely to succeed in their high school class, was now a sheriff’s deputy and was next in line to become the sheriff. She had been voted most likely to blow something up, and although she’d changed, no one in their hometown would believe the girl who had broken several laws as a teen was now a respected securities consultant. Or that one of her partners in crime had been the sheriff’s son.

None of that mattered. They were in Nashville, not Slippery Rock, and none of this was real. It was just for fun.

James cocked an eyebrow, the back of his hand teasing the side of her breast.

God, this was so much fun.

“No answer?” he asked. “Then we’ll see how long you can take slow.”

He lifted her in his arms and laid her gently on the bed. Slowly he unzipped one knee-high boot, letting it clatter to the floor, and then the next.

Her hands found his shoulders, urging him up, but James seemed perfectly content between her legs.

With one hand he pulled the zipper of her skirt down, down, and with the other he teased the bit of exposed flesh between her skirt and blouse. Mara’s muscles clenched and she fisted her hands against the soft, hotel room duvet. James pulled the skirt from her hips, tossing it over his shoulder. Her silk cami followed, and she was nearly naked before him. Only the green lace boy-briefs and matching bra covering her.

Mara was torn. She wanted the lace gone, too, but she liked that dangerous look in his gaze. The look that said this was going to last a long time.

She wouldn’t mind if it lasted forever. She could stay in this hotel room or even a desert island forever, just as long as James Calhoun was right there with her.

That thought was nearly as dangerous as the look in James’s eyes, though, because this thing between them wasn’t real. It wasn’t forever. This was a fling. It was hard to remember that when his heat was burning her to the ground.

Time to get this thing between them back on solid, nonthreatening ground.

“When you said slow, I didn’t think you meant glacial,” she said and used his tie to urge him up. James planted a hand on either side of her, grinning.

“You say glacial, I say leisurely,” he said. Then he covered her mouth with his, and his legs tangled with hers.

Mara wrapped her arms around his neck, wanting to hold him here, right here, for as long as she could.

They had done this a hundred times, and still she wasn’t tired of it. Of him. Still, she wanted more of him. Wanted to feel the hardness of his chest against her, wanted the heat from his skin to warm her, wanted to lose herself in him until she forgot that no matter what happened in a hotel room in another city, it didn’t mean anything could ever happen between them in real life.

She didn’t want to go down that road quite yet, though, so she loosened his tie, pulling it from his neck, and then unbuttoned his shirt, letting her hands meander over the wide expanse of his chest for a few moments.

“I can go glacial, too,” she said, before pushing the shirt from his shoulders.

James reached for the buckle of his belt, but Mara put her hand over his and stopped him.

“Slow, remember?”

He lifted one eyebrow. “You were just complaining about the glacial pace.”

True, but now that she thought about it, glacial could be fun. As long as he was on the receiving end, just for a little while. She found the tie on the bed and held it up.

“Maybe you’ve convinced me that glacial has its interesting points.”

Mara pushed against his shoulders until James was flat on his back, and she dangled the tie from her fingertips.

“Hands up, Officer.”

James grinned, but he raised his hands above his head, grasping the spindles of the headboard in his hands.

“That’s ‘deputy,’ ma’am, not ‘officer.’”

“Deputy Calhoun, do you know why you’re being confined?” she asked mildly as she tied the tie loosely around his wrists.

“Speeding?”

Mara chuckled. “The speed limit in this room is ‘leisurely.’”

“And I was going glacially?”

“Something like that.” With his arms secured, Mara reached for the buckle of his belt. She slid the leather from the clasp, and then unsnapped his pants. She kissed his sternum, and couldn’t resist licking her way down his washboard abs.

“You going to—” he was grinning at her “—fine me, Deputy?”

Mara glanced up. His hands were clenched and his eyes were closed.

“Is this your way of asking for a ticket? You don’t want to plead your case?” Mara pushed his pants over his hips, and James kicked them to the floor. He wasn’t wearing boxers, and for a moment, Mara wasn’t sure what to do. She’d been expecting one more slow removal of clothing, and instead she saw him, thick and hard.

“I think I’ll just take the fine.”

Mara swallowed. The fine. The fine. She had no idea what to say next, how to keep this role-playing thing going when all she could think about was taking him in her hands. In her mouth.

Snap out of it, Mar, this is just fun and games.

She unsnapped the clasp of her bra, letting the lace fall to the floor, and then stepped out of her panties. Mara kneeled on the bed, putting her hands on either side of his head and straddling his hips before she took his mouth with hers. Screw the game, she only wanted James.

He pulled her body against his, the hairs on his chest tickling her breasts.

“Hey, I tied you up,” she said between kisses.

“You’d never survive in the wilderness with those knot tying skills. I’ll teach you a simple tie. For next time,” he said, pushing her to her back.

“Next time,” she said, and the words sounded dreamy to her ears.

Every time she met up with James, she told herself it would be the last time, but it never was. He was like that last bit of birthday cake—impossible to resist.

His mouth found her breast and Mara arched her back, wanting more.

“James,” she said, pressing her hips against him, urging him to hurry.

James reached into the drawer of the bedside table and pulled out a foil packet. He tore it open with his mouth, and rolled the thin covering over his length.

And then he was inside her. Mara wrapped her legs around his waist, loving the feel of his body against hers, inside hers. This was all she needed.

James Calhoun was everything she wanted, even if she could never be the woman that he needed.

* * *

MARA WATCHED JAMES sleeping soundly on the hotel room bed. The lights were off, but the glow of the neon on the street below was enough to illuminate the room dimly. His mouth was open slightly, his left hand over his heart and his legs tangled in the sheets. The tie draped over the pillow. A lock of hair fell over his eyes. She pushed it back.

This wasn’t just fun.

She swallowed. She wanted to slide under his arm and rest her head over his heart. Wanted to lie there for hours, listening to his heart beating.

God, what had she done?

They’d been meeting like this, in hotel rooms around the country every few months, for nearly three years. Every time it had just been about the sex. Good sex. Excellent sex.

Why did she have to go and let her heart ruin it? This was a great arrangement. He liked his small-town life, and she liked her on-the-road life. They met up for sex, they each went back to their lives, and no one expected anything more.

She took a deep breath. She shouldn’t want more, so why did she? It wasn’t fair. She should have been able to love him and leave him, the way she had every other time they’d met.

Mara pressed a quick kiss to his cheek. James rocked his head slowly to the side, but he didn’t wake.

“I don’t want to mess this up,” she whispered to the man on the bed. The man who had been her best friend for most of her life. The man she should never have fallen in love with. “This will lead to broken hearts and anger, so I’m ending it now without the anger and without breaking anything. It’s better this way.”

She slid off the bed, picked up her satchel and laptop, and quietly left the hotel room. She would arrange for the hotel to pack her things and ship them to her office in Tulsa, because if she waited for him to wake, she wouldn’t be able to leave. She would tell him how she felt about him.

He might tell her he felt the same, but it wouldn’t matter. She didn’t want his kind of life any more than he wanted hers.

More than that, he deserved better.

He deserved someone who wasn’t broken.

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

MARA PULLED INTO the parking lot of Mallard’s Grocery in Slippery Rock, Missouri. The lot with its cracked pavement sat at the corner of Main Street and Mariner, a few blocks north of Slippery Rock Lake. The grocery store still had the image of a duck on its sign, the paint dividing the parking spaces was still off-center from the cement blocks at the head of each space, and the same cracked glass was in the revolving door.

Despite the light breeze along the shore, it was oppressively hot in the town center. She had forgotten exactly how muggy and uncomfortable a southern Missouri summer could be. Since slipping out of town the night after her high school graduation, Mara had allowed herself only a handful of visits, all around the holidays, when the weather was significantly cooler.

She turned off the ignition and tossed her keys into the large tote she carried for work. Although the store stood several blocks from the waterfront, where a horrible tornado had leveled several buildings a few weeks before, she could hear the hammering and sawing going on in the downtown area.

This section of town had experienced a few uprooted trees, but most of the damage had been to roofs and windows. The grocery store still had one big plate-glass window boarded over, and one of the cart corrals looked as if a tree had landed on it. Maybe one had.

She hadn’t expected to feel sympathy for the town when she decided to come back, but sympathy was the only explanation she had for the tightening in her chest. Closing her eyes, she took a few deep, centering breaths. The tornado was an act of God. It wasn’t her fault. Not like so many other happenings that had befallen this town because of her. Now she was in a position to help this place that had saved her as a child.

And ideally, while she was helping the town at large, she could fix a couple of personal messes, too.

Mara activated the locks on the SUV as she exited. A few cars and trucks sat in the lot, and she decided to begin her security sweep here rather than checking in with the office first. She didn’t need a store manager distracting her from her job with talk of how little crime they’d experienced. If the stores she visited weren’t in need of a security upgrade, she would not have been dispatched to their area.

On a small notepad, she jotted the locations of several security cameras situated to capture the inbound and outbound foot traffic to the store, but as she crossed to the rear, near the row of Dumpsters and a big cardboard baler, she noted only one camera. It appeared to be slightly askew, and she wondered if it worked at all. Not a great setup despite the low crime rate in Slippery Rock. She made a notation in the notebook.

Air-conditioning blasted her as she pushed through the two-sided revolving door into the store, a nice relief from the heat of the blacktop parking lot. The clerk, a middle-aged woman with salt-and-pepper hair, ignored her as Mara passed through the automatic doors. The woman’s hair might have changed color since Mara left Slippery Rock ten years before, but that frown on her face was as familiar as the bored tap-tap-tapping of her fingernails against the counter. A teen with red-and-blue-striped hair—the high school colors—sat on the end of the check stand, chewing gum while he waited for a customer to come through the line. A few glass-domed cameras looked down over the front of the store, but again, in the back there was little security. She scribbled more notes. To test the system, she put a box of cookies in her bag along with a small carton of milk.

She waved to the clerk as she left the store. The clerk ignored her. No sirens sounded, and the teenage bagger remained at his perch at the end of the check stand.

Not good. No wonder the grocery store wanted an upgrade. They were probably losing a small fortune in junk food to kids who either didn’t have the money to buy it or simply didn’t want to pay. The fact that the beer aisle was one over from the cookies probably pushed their loss ceiling even higher. A man with only a couple of dollars in his bank account and a tremendous thirst for a Budweiser wouldn’t think twice about risking a run through the less-than-secure store.

Mara turned around and headed back inside, and as she stepped into the revolving door, buzzers began beeping, and the mechanical door stopped moving altogether, trapping her in between a wall of glass and the inner door. Mara tried to stop, but her shoe slipped against the floor, and she lost her balance. Her shoulder slammed into the glass, making her wince in pain. Mara regained her footing only to find she was trapped inside the door. She had never encountered a system that trapped only people who returned to a store with stolen merchandise. For that matter, she didn’t think such a system existed. Probably some kind of kink in the software.

The gum-smacking teen pointed a broom handle at her as if she were under fire, and the bored clerk talked animatedly into the phone, waving her hands as she said something Mara couldn’t make out from her side of the thick-paned door.

She motioned to her bag and tried to shout above the racket of the beepers. “I’m with Cannon Security,” she said, but the teenager kept wielding the broom handle at her like it was a machete. “I’m on a security check,” she said, trying again, but neither of the employees seemed able to hear her. Maybe the two of them didn’t want to hear her.

Damn it. She checked her watch. She needed to be at the bed-and-breakfast in twenty minutes, and she didn’t see that happening. Crap, crap, crap. She never missed Zeke’s postnap snack. Never.

A crowd gathered behind the check stand, mostly middle-aged women wearing jeans and T-shirts and probably boots, just like their husbands would. A few had small children with them and pushed the kids behind their carts as if Mara might be dangerous. “Turn off the buzzers,” she yelled, putting her hands over her ears.

The checker hung up the phone and came over to the glass. She said something that sounded peculiarly like “Criminals deserve discomfort” before backing away to the safety of her check stand. As if Mara was about to draw a gun or something.

“Now I know what the goldfish at the office feels like,” she muttered, still holding her hands over her ears. She pushed one foot against the inner and outer doors, but neither budged.

Finally the beepers stopped and everything quieted. Mara took her hands from her ears and tried the doors again. They didn’t budge. She repeated her call through the thick glass.

“I’m here on a security check. I need to speak with Michael Mallard.” The clerk shot a glance behind her toward an area marked Employees Only. No one appeared. The crowd began to disperse, lessening the goldfish effect.

She tugged at her earlobe when a low siren began to wail. Was this some kind of second-tier warning system? The clerk crossed her arms over her chest as if in triumph. The wailing became louder, and it wasn’t coming from inside the store. Mara pressed her face against the outer door, looking left and then right.

“No, no, no. Please, no.”

The siren grew louder, and a few cars passing on the street pulled to the side.

“Let it be a fire. Let it be a fire.”

But it wasn’t a red fire truck that entered the parking lot. It was a big black SUV with Wall County Sheriff plastered along its side. She was definitely not making it to the B and B for snack time.

As the SUV came to a stop, she could make out the driver, a large man with brown hair and big aviator sunglasses over his eyes—eyes she knew would be the color of molten chocolate. This man had been interrupting her dreams since she’d hit puberty and began to figure out why male and female body parts were made so deliciously dissimilar.

“Crap, crappity crap.”

* * *

JAMES PULLED INTO the parking lot of Mallard’s Grocery and sighed. He could see a tall, thin woman caught between the double doors, and she looked annoyed. Her long hair was pulled through the back of her Kansas City Royals baseball cap, which obscured her face. Probably another customer who’d reentered the store after making a purchase. He’d been called out here at least a dozen times since Christmas, when the store’s security system started going wonky. Not once in all the calls he’d answered had anyone actually been stealing from the store. Of course, that didn’t stop CarlaAnn from acting like she’d been deputized every time. And, crap, was the bag boy wielding a broom at the woman?

That alarm system was a menace. Mike should invest in better locks and leave it at that. There was no need for expensive—and defective—security systems in Slippery Rock.

He got out of the SUV, blistering afternoon sunshine reflecting off the pavement. Since the tornado, the summer temperatures had been relatively mild, but according to the local weatherman, this heat wave would continue for at least a week.

James knocked on the glass of the entrance, his attention focused on the woman still caught between the doors. She turned and faced the store, her shoulders and spine seeming rigid beneath the vibrant blue of the tank top she wore. Cropped jeans hugged the curves of her lower half, making his mouth go a little dry.

CarlaAnn, the clerk at the checkout, pressed the button that disabled the alarm, allowing the doors to whoosh open, but the woman caught inside didn’t budge until the door pushed her gently forward. She stepped from the doorway, holding on to her oversize shoulder bag with both hands, gaze focused intently on the empty aisle leading to the butcher counter. Maybe she wasn’t a typical customer. James put his hand on his holster just in case as he motioned for her to follow him to the check stand.

“We’ll get this straightened out in a moment,” he said.

“I wasn’t stealing anything. I had a reason for being in this store,” she said, and her husky voice sent a shiver down James’s spine. He knew that voice. Even after two years, he knew it.

“Mara?” He turned his shocked gaze to her. She’d let her hair grow, and she wasn’t the stick-thin girl he remembered either from high school or the day she’d walked out on him two years ago.

“I swear,” she said, reaching into the bag and pulling out a box of cookies and a small carton of milk, “I have a really good explanation for this.”

Well, that much, at least, was familiar. Mara Tyler always had a good explanation, both before she acted and after the fact. While in high school, the six of them—he and Mara, her brother Collin, Levi Walters and the twins, Aiden and Adam Buchanan—had pulled a number of pranks on the town. They’d painted Simone Grainger’s phone number on the water tower after she dumped Aiden before the last basketball game of their senior year. They’d all brought dogs to school on the same day, and had switched the cables from the principal’s computer to the secretary’s. They repainted the downtown parking spaces and put up Tractors Only parking signs. There were countless other pranks, but each one had been orchestrated by Mara, and every single one of them he’d gone along with because he would rather have been with her than without her.

Whenever Mara came around, his law-abiding side warred with his reckless side, and usually the reckless side won, leaving his law-abiding self to clean up the mess.

Like the mess the two of them made graduation night.

Correction: the mess he’d made all by himself when he took one of her pranks to a whole other level.

No one except him and Mara knew exactly what happened that night, and he planned to keep it that way.

“Yeah, it just figures Mara Tyler would set off the store alarm.” CarlaAnn had joined them. “I thought I recognized her when she walked in, but I wasn’t sure until the alarms went off.” She shook her head, her shoulder-length, salt-and-pepper hair shaking from side to side. “This alarm system isn’t good for much, but it finally caught her in the act.” She stabbed a finger toward Mara’s chest. James stepped between them.

CarlaAnn was Simone’s mother, and she’d always blamed their group for the water tower incident—with just cause. A few weeks after that incident, Simone ran off with the biker she’d dumped Aiden for, and she had never returned to Slippery Rock. CarlaAnn blamed only Mara for that offense, and her blame had turned into a raging hatred before the six of them graduated.

“I have a perfectly good explanation for being here, and for setting off the alarms. I tried to tell you that through the glass,” Mara said, stepping around James’s arm. “I need to speak with Mike.” She glanced at her watch, and she tapped the toe of her shoe against the tile.

CarlaAnn crossed her arms over her chest. “Mike is on vacation. You’ll have to deal with me.”

Mara kept her gaze trained on the other woman for a long moment. CarlaAnn was the first to look away. “Then I need a phone number or email address where he can be reached.”

CarlaAnn pressed her lips together and scowled. “I don’t have either of those,” she finally said.

James noticed the crowd of shoppers gradually inching closer to Mara and CarlaAnn, probably expecting some kind of girl fight now that Mara had been identified. Small towns meant there was always a helping hand around, but they also meant long memories. Everyone remembered the water tower prank, among others. The love-hate relationship between Mara and the town had turned to flat-out hate after the fiasco of graduation night, though.

Since then, James had done his best to prove he was a man worthy of being the next sheriff. Mara setting off alarm bells at the grocery store would only reinforce their belief that she was a felony charge away from jail time.

He knew she wasn’t a felon, and their pranks had been generated out of boredom rather than malice, but that wouldn’t matter. Nor would the fact that James graduated at the top of his class in both college and the police academy. His anonymous restitution to the school would be irrelevant. None of those things would matter to the townspeople, just as those things didn’t truly assuage his conscience. He could only hope that someday the man he’d become would matter more than the boy he’d been. Maybe that was how Mara felt, too.

“We’ll take care of this, everyone.” He motioned to the crowd to continue shopping, then turned to Mara. “Why don’t you and I go into the office area and talk this through?”

Mara checked her watch again. “Can we make it quick? I, um, have an important, uh, conference call in fifteen minutes.”

“Don’t you need my statement, too, Deputy Calhoun? Or is this a purely cursory investigation?”

James thought he heard a silent too on the end of CarlaAnn’s last question, as well, and remembered his mother confronting his father after CarlaAnn accused him of conducting a “cursory investigation” into Simone’s disappearance with the biker. James took Mara’s arm and pushed past CarlaAnn.

“Hey,” Mara said in protest, but he ignored her until the door to the back office closed behind them. “I’m not a criminal. And I have another appointment.”

“No, you’re a mischief maker. And important conference call or not, I’m going to investigate why you’re setting off alarm bells at my grocery store.”

“I thought it still belonged to the Mallard family, or have the Calhouns gone into groceries as well as law enforcement?”

“You know what I meant. This is my town, and the people here are my friends, my family. The businesses they run, I protect.”

“They were mine once, too.”

“Until the day you ran out on everything.”

Mara jerked her arm from his grasp. “You, of all people, know why I left.”