Famous in a Small Town Page 3

  “I kept her out of the main holding area, since she wasn’t actually involved in starting the fire,” James said, motioning Collin up the sidewalk. “I have to tell you, though, I’m pretty much alone in my belief in her innocence. She’s been involved in too many other incidents lately. A few of the officers think all eight of those kids should have the book thrown at them.”

  “And you’re stuck in the middle.”

  “Call me Switzerland.” James opened the door to the office and they stepped inside. There was no hectic movement, no scanners chattering in the growing gloom. The Slippery Rock sheriff’s office at seven thirty on a Friday night was as quiet as a church on Monday morning. The receptionist had gone home and the 9-1-1 center in the next county took care of most dispatch calls.

  God, but he loved his small town. He just loved it a little more when his sister wasn’t doing her best to become a criminal.

  “You shouldn’t have to play peacemaker between my little sister and your squad room.”

  “Stuck in the middle is no place I haven’t been a time or two, and since the other kids cleared her, there’s no reason to add another asterisk to her record.” He put his hand on Collin’s arm. “But, Col, you’re gonna have to talk to her at some point about the mischief calls, the skipping curfew. She’s headed down a dangerous road.”

  James flipped on the fluorescent lights as he led Collin behind the bulletproof glass protecting the reception area. Collin knew from a school field trip that the holding cells were in the basement along with a storm shelter, the deputy’s cubicles in the back half of the first floor, and that their workout room shared space with the department’s small armory on the second floor. He followed James through the maze of cubicles.

  Collin sighed. “Yeah. I know.” He just didn’t know how to have the conversation that Amanda obviously needed. He wasn’t her father or even a guardian.

  Since Gladys’s fall just before the holidays, Amanda had been on a tear. Skipping curfew, getting speeding tickets as if she were trying to make the Guinness Book of World Records. She’d even been caught defacing the fountain in the square by filling it with laundry detergent. Amanda needed parents and he didn’t have a clue how to fill that role for her.

  “She’s not a bad kid.”

  “I know that, too.” She was just messed up, the way they’d all been messed up by their parents. Samson and Maddie Tyler had been absentee parents for half of Collin’s life, and nearly all of Amanda’s. There would be the occasional birthday card, and one year they showed up at Christmas, but for the most part the people who were supposed to parent Collin, Amanda and their sister, Mara, had simply not.

  “I can get you guys into family counseling, if you think it would help.”

  Sitting in a stuffy office talking about their lack of parental supervision sounded like the fifth circle of hell to Collin. But maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. Something had to have set Amanda off and, despite all his efforts to talk to his baby sister, he hadn’t been able to figure out what it was.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  They rounded a corner and he saw Amanda sitting cross-legged in an old plastic chair. Her long blond hair was pulled up in a high ponytail and she wore her old Converse sneakers—with fresh scorch marks—along with ripped-up jeans and a sweatshirt with an image of the galaxy and the words You Are Here with an arrow on it.

  Collin wanted to shake her. She was here, in a police station, when she could be home with her family. All she had to do was stop whatever crazy train she’d jumped on.

  Amanda chewed on her bottom lip and wrapped and unwrapped the string from her hoodie around her finger. She was just a kid. A lost, hurt kid, and he was doing a crap job of making her feel safe.

  “Collin’s here,” James said as they neared the cubicle.

  Amanda straightened in her chair, put her feet on the floor and folded her arms over her chest. “I didn’t do anything wrong. You didn’t have to bother him.”

  “How else were you going to get home, kid? You’re grounded from the car, remember?” James backed away, leaving them to sort this out without him.

  Amanda eyed him for a long minute. “I’ve got two legs.”

  “You’d rather walk the ten miles back to the orchard than spend fifteen minutes in the truck with me, huh?” Collin asked, leaned a shoulder against the cubicle wall.

  Amanda twisted her mouth to the side. “I didn’t want you to be bothered.”

  And just like that, Collin wanted to shake her again. She wasn’t a bother to him, she was his sister. But no matter what he did, he just seemed to mess things up between them. After speeding ticket number four, he’d taken her car keys. After the laundry soap incident, he’d banned her from being out after five.

  He wasn’t sure what he could take away from her for this latest stunt.

  Hell, maybe he should give something back. After all, she’d helped to put out the fire the other teens had set. A fire that could have decimated the courthouse square or that might have killed or seriously injured someone.

  Maybe even Amanda.

  “You’re not a bother, kid.”

  She mumbled something he didn’t quite hear. He waited, but she didn’t say anything else.

  Collin shoved his hands into his pockets, unsure what to do next. He needed her to know she wasn’t a nuisance to him. But her actions lately were a nuisance to him. A nuisance and a worry. He was doing his best to keep the orchard profitable, to keep Amanda comfortable, to ensure their grandmother’s recovery. His job was to keep everything and everyone in their little circle together, and he felt as if he was losing his grip on every single aspect.

  He hooked his thumb toward the front door. “How about we get out of here?”

  Amanda shrugged but she stood quickly and slung her backpack over her shoulder. “I’m free to go?”

  “Unless you’re changing your story about the fire,” James said. He stood near the wall.

  “I just tried to help put it out. I didn’t even know they were in that alley until I smelled the smoke.” She shot James a look from the corner of her eye, and Collin fisted his hands. She knew more than she was letting on.

  “That’s good enough for me, then,” James said, using his cop voice.

  “If it’s good enough for the law...” Collin teased, but he wasn’t rewarded with one of Amanda’s reluctant smiles. Her shoulders stiffened and her mouth turned down at the corners. “Just a joke, kiddo. You said you weren’t involved in the setting, just the dousing. That’s all that matters.”

  She mumbled something else under her breath and didn’t meet his eyes.

  “Amanda—” he began, but she interrupted.

  “Can we just go home?”

  “Sure.”

  Once they were in the truck and clear of the sheriff’s office, Collin said, “You want to talk about it?”

  “About what?”

  “About why you were still in town when you know you (a) don’t have a car, and (b) still have a curfew, and I’m going to add a C to it—why did you lie to James about your involvement?” She pressed her lips together. “Fine, we’ll start with the easy one. Why didn’t you ride the bus home after school?”

  Amanda crossed her arms over her chest, a move Collin was all too familiar with. He’d done the same too many times to count when he was a teenager, but their sister, Mara, had made the gesture a near art form. “I’m seventeen years old. The bus is vile,” Amanda declared.

  “So you were...what? Going to walk the ten miles out to the orchard and you just happened to come across a few pyromaniacs who were trying to set the courthouse on fire?”

  “They were just testing the combustion rates of visco fuses and spolettes. After the fire marshal did his talk about fireworks safety leading up to the Memorial Day Kick Off the Summer celebrat
ion, they got the idea that they’d mess with the fuses for the big fireworks show. Trick the workers into thinking they’d bought a bunch of duds, and then scare the crap out of them when everything started going off at once.”

  Collin gripped the steering wheel harder. That could have gotten someone seriously hurt. “And you know this how?”

  Amanda blew out a breath. “I was hiding out under the bleachers in the gym during health class, and I heard them planning it all out.”

  “You skipped class—”

  “For the five millionth time, Mr. Acres is doing the unit on intercourse. I couldn’t face another hour of bananas and condom demonstrations. I swear he gets off on lubing up the fruits.” She shivered with disgust.

  Collin blinked and squeezed the steering wheel. “We’ll get back to that in a minute. You skipped class, you overheard them talking about this prank and you...what, wanted to join in?”

  “No, I was going to show them that what they were planning wouldn’t work. And then I was going to show them what would work, but Courtney Gains is an idiot and instead of setting up the fuses on something nonflammable and using slow-burning punks to light them, he used his dad’s grill lighter and stuck all the fuses on top of his backpack.”

  Collin wasn’t sure where to begin. The skipping of class or the destruction of public property that Amanda nearly took part in because she’d wanted to see it done correctly. He was so in over his head here.

  “And what would you have done differently?”

  “Replaced all the usual fuses with fast-burning but connected fuses. Instead of delaying the explosions, which could get someone hurt, everything would just go off at once and without the delay. Simple. Added benefit? It would be prettier than a usual ‘light one rocket, wait five minutes, light another, wait another five minutes’ show.”

  Collin made the turn from the highway onto the gravel road leading to the orchard.

  “Why?” It was the only question he thought he could ask without getting pseudo-parent-y and...angry.

  “Why what?”

  “Why mess with the fireworks? Why not just let people have a fun night without a bunch of drama and craziness?”

  Amanda pulled her lower lip between her teeth and then turned her head to look out the window. Moonlight hit the apple trees blooming pink and white in the fields surrounding them. The pear and peach trees behind the main house would bloom later in the spring. He wondered what she saw in the fields. Did she see the security he saw? Or did she see only trees?

  “This is dangerous, Amanda. Can’t you see that?”

  “It was just a prank, and now it’s nothing because the fuse has already been lit once. They’ll be expecting it.”

  Collin pulled the truck to a stop at the side of the main house and blew out a breath. “Pranks hurt people, Amanda—”

  “It was just going to be a joke, Collin, jeez.”

  “And speeding down Main Street was a joke? What if some kid ran out into the street chasing his ball? Would that have been a joke?” Her face paled, but Amanda kept her mouth in that stubborn line. “What if the detergent trick had clogged the line and flooded someone’s house? Or if the stupid bubbles had blocked part of the road? Just another funny?”

  “None of those things happened. And you and Mara did worse.”

  “That isn’t the point.”

  “Of course it isn’t. The point is I screwed up. Again. I’m not the amazing, the wonderful, the never-get-caught Collin Tyler, football hero and member of the Sailor Five. I’m just Amanda. The forgettable,” she said, grabbing her backpack and running from the truck. Amanda slammed the front door, making the spring wreath of tulips bounce against the wood.

  Sailor Five. Damn it, anyway. He’d been part of a winning football team, along with James, Levi Walters, Aiden and Adam Buchanan. Yes, winning the state football championship was a big deal, and yes, the five of them, along with Mara, had pulled their share of pranks and gotten away with it. Was that what this was all about? Amanda felt she was, what, being overshadowed by something he did in high school? That was just silly. The Sailor Five was in the past. Tyler Orchard, their family, their friends, those were the things that were important.

  He should follow her. Go upstairs and make her talk to him. He wasn’t some infallible god. The last four months were evidence enough of that. But going after Amanda would just lead to another misunderstanding. He would let her cool down. They could talk again in the morning.

  God, he was so out of his depth.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “HOW DID YOU not know she was back in town?” Adam Buchanan narrowed his eyes at the dartboard six feet in front of him, cocked his arm and threw. The dart embedded itself into the paneled wall several inches to the right of its target.

  “It’s called having a life. You should try it sometime.” Collin marked down the missed shot and then gathered the darts for the next round. He, Adam, Levi and James had been playing darts at the Slippery Slope every Wednesday night for the past few years. Ever since Levi had ripped up his knee tackling a wide receiver in the first game of his team’s playoff matchup.

  Adam snorted. “Since when did working 24/7 constitute having a life?”

  “Adam.” Levi kept his voice low but the authority behind it was unmistakable. This was the captain of their football team talking and it annoyed the bejesus out of Collin. He could fight his own battles. And this wasn’t a battle; this was Adam being a jackass because he was bored. And Collin lying through his teeth to his three best friends because, damn it, since he’d run into Savannah Walters on the road outside of town, he’d been hard-pressed to keep her out of his head. That had been nearly a week ago. He should have forgotten about a ten-minute conversation and gas tank fill-up by now.

  “Since working 24/7 got the orchard out of hock, that’s when. Some of us don’t have the luxury of working for Daddy.”

  “Just play darts.” Levi put the red-winged darts in Collin’s hand and gave the blue ones to James.

  When they’d started playing, darts was a way to get Levi’s uber-competitive mind off his ruined football career and onto something else. Now, eighteen months later, it was habit. One Collin had never thought about changing until tonight. He took aim, and his dart landed on the twenty triangle. James threw and hit fifteen.

  He should have stayed home with Amanda. God knew his baby sister could use a little more attention thrown her way. He could have gone over the projections for harvest, finished that proposal for the organic chef’s association. The orchard was on stable financial ground for the first time in years, and now was so not the time to slack off. This was the time to build something that would last more than a lifetime.

  “I’m not the one mooning over a girl at the bar,” Adam said, and took a long drink of his beer.

  Collin aimed again and hit the ten. James hit another fifteen.

  “She’s not just any girl. That’s a fine looking—” James started.

  Levi cut him off. “Before you say something you might regret, J, that’s my baby sister over there.”

  Screw darts. Collin tossed his last dart toward Adam’s head. It landed harmlessly on the Formica tabletop. “I’m not mooning over anyth—”

  “Sure you are, Col.” Levi picked the dart off the table and pulled the others from the paneling around the board. “Let’s start the next round.” He took up position and began throwing, narrowing his eyes as he took aim just as he’d done when they’d been kids playing football. Levi had been the quarterback, Collin and James the receivers, and Adam and his twin Aiden the defensive specialists. After practices or game nights, they would sneak in here, and Merle, the owner and bartender, would let them stay as long as they didn’t try to scam drinks from any of the patrons.

  Collin looked around the dingy bar. The same neon strip was burned out of
the beer sign behind the bar. Same cowhide-covered bar stools. Merle wiped down the bar this evening, entertaining Savannah and her giggling gaggle of former high-school cheerleaders.

  Three of whom Collin had dated.

  Not that Savannah would care.

  Not that he should care if Savannah did care.

  One of the women at the bar said something, and Savannah threw her head back, mahogany hair cascading past her shoulders in a mass of waves, and laughed like she was at a freaking Kevin Hart show.

  He wasn’t mooning. He was distracted, maybe. It wasn’t every day a woman walked into the Slope wearing a rhinestone party dress and high-heeled, over-the-knee boots. What the hell was Savannah thinking anyway?

  “You’re up.”

  Not that she didn’t look good in the dress that cinched tightly around her waist. And she’d learned a few new makeup tricks since she’d left town. That had to be the reason her eyes were so luminous.

  “Collin.”

  And her hair had always been the color of rich wood, but it hadn’t always been that thick, had it?

  “Coll.”

  A dart whizzed through his eye line, and Collin shook himself.

  “What?”

  “While you’re busy not mooning over the lovely Savannah, you might want to throw. You’re up,” Adam said, grinning. He picked up the dart from the hardwood floor.

  Collin stepped to the line, gauged where the darts fell, and threw his first. It landed just over the white line above Levi’s dart. Damn it.

  “When did she roll into town?” Adam asked. Couldn’t he leave Savannah out of five minutes of conversation?

  “Friday night. And don’t ask me why she’s back. She’s done a good job of not talking about herself since she got here.” Levi took aim, and his dart landed in the bull’s-eye. “Guess that’s game.”