Chapter 9
CHAPTER NINE
When nobody had knocked on Levi’s door a full thirty minutes after June was meant to come by for his first singing lesson, he had no choice but to admit to himself that he’d been stood up.
He was surprised by how much it stung. He was a grown man, and he barely even knew June, but, still. He was extremely disappointed that she hadn’t come, that they hadn’t gotten the chance to rectify that “barely knowing each other” thing.
He sighed. There was only so much he could do.
If she didn’t want to spend time with him, or if some other priority had gotten in the way of her coming by, that was out of his control.
He was kicking himself for not exchanging phone numbers with her when they’d set up the time and date, but that wasn’t something he could control either.
The cancelled plans had gotten him in the mood to do something beyond kick around his house and noodle on the guitar, however, so he decided to bundle into his outdoor clothing and stop in at the grocery store.
He didn’t really need too many things, since he’d stocked his fridge with snacks and beverages; he’d planned to, at the end of their lesson, tell June the truth about his identity and invite her to spend time with him in a more social capacity, and he wanted to have something tasty to put on the table if she agreed.
Normally, he would have asked a woman to a date at one of the cool, hole-in-the-wall places he knew in Nashville.
He had spent a lot of time picking out snacks at the store, because things were really different when he was the one who had to supply the food. Admittedly, however, this had not provided him with the kind of pantry staples that he would need to cook for himself.
Also, he was still riding a little high on the anonymity of Magnolia Shore, where nobody knew him other than the guy who had bought three different types of olives.
Indeed, the moment he walked through the front doors of Country Corner Market, Kelly, the woman who worked there, shot him a playful grin.
“Let me guess,” she said. “You want one of those fancy, wax wrapped sausages to diversify your offerings.”
Levi had skipped over the meat sections on his first trip in case June was a vegetarian, but now that Kelly mentioned it…
“You’re a born saleswoman, Kelly,” he said. “I will definitely be adding one of those to my list.”
“They’re back by the deli section,” she said, pointing.
He gave her a wave of acknowledgement, then headed in the direction she’d indicated, leaving her to go back to putting price stickers on the bundles of fresh-baked cookies that had left the most wonderful aroma in the air.
Levi made a mental note to swing back around and buy some of those before he left too.
He added two of the small sausages to his basket when he couldn’t decide between the one that was listed as spicy and the one that was listed as mild, then picked up an extra carton of milk, because he was running low.
He lingered over buying a cod fillet for dinner, then nabbed a lemon to season the fish.
He headed into the grains aisle to find some rice pilaf to round out the meal…
Then, he stopped. June was in the aisle, squinting at the back of a package of rice.
Before he could decide if he should approach her or just turn around and pretend that he’d never seen her, June looked up, saw him, blinked in surprise, and then gave him an apologetic wince.
“Oh dear,” she said.
Well, leaving now would make this already highly uncomfortable situation even more awkward, so he approached her with a faint smile.
“Urgent grocery trip got in the way of our appointment?” he said, making certain that his voice was pitched toward lightness, so that she didn’t think he was truly angry.
Because he wasn’t angry, not really. She was obviously well within her rights to not spend time with him. He was definitely disappointed, though.
She scrunched her nose up even more, and he was irked to find that he still found her totally adorable.
“I would have texted you,” she said. “But we didn’t actually exchange numbers. I’m sorry about that.”
“No, I get it,” he said. “You obviously urgently needed…” He glanced down at her basket. "Sweet potatoes, lentils, and—wow, that’s a lot of strawberries, there.”
She followed his look down at her groceries. “Yeah, they’re all low-glycemic foods that my son loves… but you don’t care about any of that,” she murmured, mostly to herself.
By contrast, Levi was actually interested, but he decided to let it lie for now.
“Anyway,” she said, smiling. “How’d you even find me here?”
Levi hefted his grocery basket. “I didn’t, or at least I didn’t do it on purpose.
You should get it,” he added teasingly. “You’re supposed to be the small-town expert, not me.
” She didn’t look entirely convinced, so he raised his free hand in a gesture of innocence.
“I promise you that there was no stalking involved.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “Should I be worried that you jumped right to ‘stalking?’” She paused. “And does it count as stalking if you use your country star contacts to find me?”
This time, it was Levi’s turn to wince.
“You know who I am?”
She nodded. “So, you can probably see why I didn’t believe that you needed singing lessons…”
A flicker of doubt crossed over her face, and Levi felt a corresponding flash of guilt.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth,” he said, reaching up to rub the back of his neck sheepishly. “I promise it wasn’t because I was having a laugh at your expense.”
June looked relieved, but guardedly so.
“I did wonder,” she said. “But can I ask, why didn’t you tell me, then?”
“Okay, so let me preface this by saying that I know this sounds totally self-absorbed,” he said.
“But when I go out and about in Nashville, which is where I usually live, I get recognized kind of a lot. I might not be tabloid famous or anything, but I am country music famous, and Nashville is crammed to the rafters with country music fans. And that means that my job affects all parts of my life, and colors most of the interactions I have with new people that I meet.”
She nodded in understanding, and he was struck by how kind she seemed. She would be well within her rights to be far angrier about his lie of omission than she seemed.
“I can understand how that might get to be a lot after a while,” she murmured.
“That’s a good way of putting it,” he said. “It’s a big part of why I came to Magnolia Shore in the first place: to get a break from feeling like everybody was watching me all the time. And when I met a pretty woman at a bar, I might have let that get a little bit away from me.”
She flushed. “Are you trying to charm me?”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely.” He made the confession without an ounce of hesitation. “I’m hoping that if I do it right, you’ll give me another chance.”
“Another chance?” she echoed. “So accepting my ‘singing lessons’ really was about flirting?” She made air quotes around the words singing lessons.
“I’d say it was ninety-three percent flirting,” he clarified.
“The other seven percent was me wanting to hear you sing again. I was charming you at the bar too, but it wasn’t false flattery.
” He grinned at her. “And now that you know who I am, I can brag a little and say that I know my music pretty well.”
He could tell that she was struggling hard not to smile.
“You know, my friends said the same thing,” he admitted.
“You talked to your friends about me?” Despite himself, he was pleased at the idea. He must have made some kind of impression if she’d talked to her friends about him.
“Don’t look so pleased about it,” she said, pointing at him.
“Can’t help it,” he said, holding his one hand up in that same innocent gesture. “Like I said, I get distracted when I’m talking to a pretty woman. That’s why I agree to things like singing lessons just so that I can get to know her better… and seven percent to hear her sing.”
She lost her battle against her laughter.
“You’re incorrigible,” she told him.
“But it’s all part of my charm?” he suggested.
She scoffed, but she was smiling.
“I think you know it is,” she told him.
Levi grinned even more broadly. His afternoon might have started with disappointment, but it was looking up now.
He hadn’t realized how much it had bothered him that he would be getting to know June under false pretenses until he was given the possible opportunity to do so as his full self. It felt a lot better.
“Would you say that my charm is sufficient to get you to agree to dinner with me?” he asked. “Say, tomorrow night? There’s a local place… Captain’s Chest?”
“Do you maybe mean Captain’s Crest?” she corrected with a playful smile.
“I’m almost positive that that is definitely what I said,” he said with a sage nod. “For sure absolutely.”
“It must have been my ears,” she said. She was smiling back in earnest now, and she was even prettier when she smiled.
Levi was forced to admit another truth: he was a little bit smitten with this woman. It was still obviously very new, and by virtue of that newness, very casual. But for all that he kept trying to appeal to her, he was the one who was charmed.
“There had to be part of you that was imperfect,” he said, pleased when this made her blush as he had hoped. “Does that mean that you’ll let me take you to dinner?”
She thought for a second, and it was one of the longest seconds that Levi had experienced in recent memory.
“Yeah,” she said at last, and her smile was like the first warm day of spring. “I think I would like that.”
“Amazing,” he told her. “It’s a date.”