Chapter One

“This is your home town? This tiny little blip in the middle of nowhere?”

“Yeah, this is it.” Riley Jensen tensed as the tour bus pulled down Central Street. In ten years, nothing much had changed. The post office was still there and so was the hardware store, the clothing shop that was probably still owned by busybody Charlene Talmage, and the diner on the corner where her foster mother used to drag her on Saturdays so she could gossip with all her friends. The five and dime still stood in the center of all the chaos.

“And you said people wouldn’t come.” Riley’s publicist stretched her long, lithe body across the leather seats and peered out the darkened privacy glass. “The streets are lined with people.” Joann turned to Riley. “See? Your town still loves you.”

Riley sniffed. “My town just wants to be on television and they know I come with photographers and a TV crew.”

Joann tsked. “So cynical for one so young.”

“I’m almost thirty, Jo. I’m hardly young anymore.”

Jo swiveled and gave her an eye roll. “You’re twenty-eight, not anywhere close to thirty, and you’re hardly headed for the rocking chair, so knock it off, put on your biggest smile and get ready to greet your hometown fans. It’s show time.”

Show time. Hometown. She hadn’t been home since she’d bought a bus ticket ten years ago and ran like hell from Deer Lake. And she’d never once looked back, come back or wanted to, until Joann and her agent, Suzie, convinced her—no, forced her—to make this trek in order to film part of the biography special in her hometown.

That they wanted to do it during the Christmas holidays was ridiculous, but whatever. Not that she had any plans anyway.

Why Deer Lake agreed to it considering she hadn’t once stepped foot in this place in the ten years she’d been gone wasn’t because they loved their long lost home town gal. They should hate her for turning her back on them, for never coming back, for never once giving back to the town that had raised her.

Yet here they were, lined up on the streets as if she were Santa in the annual Christmas parade. And she knew why. All the smiles and waves and banners and screams outside the bus were for one thing and one thing only—exposure for the town that sat on the outskirts of the Ozarks. Deer Lake had its quirky charm and a few interesting attractions. The lake for one thing, which was a hotspot in the summer. Tourism would benefit from the exposure, and so would the town.

Jo held Riley’s jacket in front of her. “You ready?”

“Ready as I’ll ever be.” She slid into the warm suede and took another look at the woman in the mirror. She was so different from the girl she’d been when she’d left ten years ago. Back then she’d been scared out of her mind when she’d bought the one-way ticket to Nashville with nothing but a few clothes in her suitcase, her guitar and the money she’d saved working at both the movie theater and the restaurant.

“They’re proud of their hometown girl, Riley. Grammy Awards, ACMs, CMAs. You name it, you’ve won them all. They know that and they want to celebrate you.”

“They know that and they want to capitalize on me.”