Chapter One

Meredith Clark yawned and squirmed in the driver’s seat when she saw the sign for Nashville. Not Nashville, Tennessee. Nashville, Kansas. Not for the first time did she second-guess her method of deciding where she’d go once she left Las Vegas. Taping a map of the United States to her bedroom wall, closing her eyes, spinning around a couple of times, then walking toward the map with her index finger pointing was, perhaps, not one of the best ideas she had ever had.

But, she reminded herself, it didn’t matter where she went. Nashville, Kansas, was as good as anywhere. If she didn’t like it, she could leave. But she’d promised herself she would give it a try.

She had spent more than ten years literally dancing to everyone else’s tune. She had saved her money because dancing, especially in the glitzy, theatrical productions Vegas was known for, was a precarious business at best. And job security was laughable. One injury—and she’d had a few over the years—meant she couldn’t work, and there was always another dancer eager to take her place in the line.

But this past year had made up her mind. After yet another ligament tear, followed soon after by the collision with a drunk driver, which had messed up her knee even further, she had had it. Not to mention there’d been hints that, at barely past thirty, she was getting a little too old to be a producer’s top casting pick.

The signs were all there. It was time to move on. So she’d collected the substantial monetary settlement from the other driver’s insurance company, waited until she’d healed as much as the orthopedist decided she was going to, packed up her recent college diploma with a major in English, pointed at the map, and said, “Bye-bye, Vegas. Nashville, here I come.”

She didn’t have much to show for the years she’d spent in Vegas, and nothing to hold her there. She wouldn’t miss the condo she shared with two other dancers. Or the kind of guys who seemed destined to do nothing but profess to love her, then leave. The glitz, the glamour, the sequins, the elaborate costumes? The celebrities, the casinos, the bright lights? None of it held the appeal it had once had for her.

Meredith signaled for the exit ramp to Nashville and thought, Small-town middle America, here I come.