Small Town Girl

by Rice, Patricia

  Or maybe she was just in lust.

  “I love this song,” she shouted in his ear, hoping to remind herself as well as him that this was a public place. “It’s wry and sexy and tells a story. That’s my kind of music.”

  In reply, Flint slid his hands to her bare waist and all bad thoughts vanished into smoke. Just one dance, she promised herself. Enjoying his expertise, she fell into his rhythm as he twisted her back and forth while stepping sideways with the coordination of an athlete. She nearly melted at his firm lead. Her lower parts tingled when his gaze dropped admiringly to her flat midriff. It was times like this that made her glad she had chosen the single life.

  “It’s a damned stupid song,” she thought he said, but the chorus was reaching a crescendo, and she couldn’t be certain she heard right.

  Randy had preferred screeching guitar to words, but she’d taught him better. Surely a smart-looking man like Flint…

  Uh-uh. She wasn’t going down that road again. She was just having a little fun, not training another puppy. Although Flint was more like a full-grown hound dog than a puppy, only prettier.

  He spun her around on the last refrain and dipped her nearly off her feet with the final note. She came up breathing so hard she couldn’t speak. Or maybe that had something to do with the smoldering depths of gray eyes studying her from behind thick, dark lashes.

  “Are you a professional dancer, Miss Joella?” he inquired politely as the lights flashed and the band announced an intermission.

  Now was the time to make or break it, she knew. Her mama hadn’t raised a coward, but she wasn’t about to tell him she was only a waitress in a two-bit coffee shop. She was doing her best to accept that she didn’t have what it took to be anything more, but tonight she wanted to shine as if she’d finally bought that ticket to fame and fortune she craved.

  She laughed to put off his question and headed for a table in a dark corner. Her friends would get the signal and leave them alone. “Hardly,” she replied, thinking fast. “Dancing wouldn’t be fun if I had to do it for a living.” Amen to that, she added fervently and silently. Been there, done that, wrote the song.

  He had a gentlemanly way of escorting her with a touch at her waist, blocking the drunks stumbling into their path. He even pulled out a chair for her. Maybe she should have looked at older men a lot sooner—although he lost a lot of years when he danced. Or smiled. He didn’t smile enough. From the creases beside his eyes, she gathered he must have laughed a lot once.

  “That’s a wise observation.” He gestured at the waitress and ordered two beers. “I suppose we lose the fun in anything we have to do for a living.”

  “It’s that ‘have to do’ part that sucks the fun out of it.” She propped her chin on her hand and tried to act casual as he took a seat and all that form-fitting cotton rippled right before her eyes. She admired a man who could wear a checked shirt and still look as if he belonged in a Marlboro ad instead of on a pig farm. She checked out his ring finger—not even a pale circle where a ring might have been. “When I reach the point in a job when I figure I have to do it instead of wanting to do it, I quit.”

  “That’s a rather irresponsible policy, Miss Jo,” he said, but his eyes twinkled as he said it. “I take it that means you aren’t married because if you had to do your husband, you’d quit?”

  She laughed. “You’re right! I never thought of it that way. When sex becomes a requirement, it isn’t fun anymore.”

  “A woman who thinks like a man! I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”

  His gaze slid over her like molten silver, saying he liked her looks, and Jo shivered at the sexiness of it. They were both practically humming with impatience while they danced around the polite chatter required of first encounters. At least Dirk knew him. He’d warn her if Flint was a stinker.

  “Men don’t usually want women to think like them.” She wriggled slightly to hold his attention while she reached for the glass the waitress set in front of her. “They want us to coo and pretend they know everything so they can feel superior.”

  He grinned. “I am superior. You don’t have to coo to prove it.”

  “Ooo, a masterful man, I like that,” she cooed sweetly.

  He chuckled and lifted his bottle in salute. “To a masterful woman.”

  Damn, he was good. Randy had always looked at her as if she’d lost her mind when she tried to apply irony to an argument. And she was going to quit thinking about that unfaithful pissant right now.

  “So what brings you to the foothills of North Carolina, Mr. Flint? The little lady need a spa? Or the kids into whitewater rafting?”

  The way he quit grinning, she may as well have kicked his shins. Maybe she would if he planned to pull some sorry-ass tale of the bitch who got away. She’d hung around enough bars to have heard them all.

  “My kids are with my parents. They’re not speaking to me these days. Guess it serves me right. I didn’t speak to my old man much when I was their age.”

  Wow. Her eyes widened. “That’s probably the most honest thing a man’s ever said to me. Did you take responsibility class along with the honesty ones?”

  A deliberately slow and sexy grin riveted her gaze, and she watched in awe as the smile rose to light his eyes and crinkled the laugh lines above his sharp cheekbones. He probably wasn’t movie-star handsome, but he exuded sexy masculinity as if he had a corner on the market. Oh, man, she’d really done it now. She couldn’t resist sexy and responsible.

  “I learned in the school of hard knocks, as my pappy used to say,” he drawled mockingly. “How about you? Did you go to sexy school?”

  “I’m from the mountains. We come by sexy naturally.” She was used to men looking at her as if she were a ripe peach ready for tasting, but admiration from a man with his kind of raw power injected hormones straight to her bloodstream. “I like dancing,” she warned him before he started getting any ideas about where they were going with this.

  “So do I,” he agreed. “But there’s dancing, and then there’s dancing. I’m good at it all.”

  Like the dance of flirtation he was doing right now. Damn straight he was good at it. If she’d ever been the sensible sort, she’d run. But her sister Amy was the sensible one, thank goodness.

  Fireworks were popping between them, and she didn’t notice Dot’s approach until her friend touched her shoulder. Joella didn’t look away from the man across the table as Dot leaned down to tell her that she and Rita were leaving.

  “That’s fine.” Jo waved her off. “I’ve got my car. I’ll talk at you later.”

  Flint seemed as focused on her as she was on him. He smiled a triumphant masculine smile when she sent her friends away.

  “You’re an excellent dancer, too, Miss Joella,” he mocked.

  “It’s not often I find a good partner,” she retaliated.

  They both knew they weren’t talking about the two-step.

  She didn’t do casual sex, but she could see making an exception for this man. How often did a Hugh Jackman look-alike walk into a girl’s life? Besides, since she was giving up on men and relationships, she might have to rethink her position on casual sex.

  The band began tuning their instruments, and she didn’t have to beg Flint to stand up with her. He pushed back his chair and offered his hand before she could ask.

  “You got any more favorite songs you want to hear?” he inquired, steering her toward the dance floor.

  “None of that crying-in-your-beer stuff,” she warned. “I’m not crying anymore.”

  He touched her cheek and looked serious for a second. “Any man who would leave a woman like you hasn’t got the sense to recognize pure gold when he sees it.”

  She’d heard all the lines before. It would be nice to believe he meant it, but he didn’t know her any better than she did him. They were faking it, but they both knew it, so that worked. “Or the sense to keep his pants on when he sees anything in skirts,” she retorted, to keep her achy-breaky heart from l
eaping in expectation.

  His smile was better than a margarita. “Darlin’, no man has that kind of sense. C’mon, let’s shake away the blues.”

  Tomorrow, she could go back to scrubbing floors. Tonight, she’d enjoy her handsome prince.

  ***

  Life was good.

  He’d paid his penance, resolved to change his ways, and Miss Joella was his reward.

  “Want to step outside for some fresh air, Miss Jo?” Flint murmured through the final bars of a slow song. She moved so close to him that it was nearly like dancing with himself—if his hand wasn’t cupping one sweet handful of ass and her breasts weren’t imprinted on his chest for life. She had to feel what she was doing to him.

  She tilted her head back to study him, and a loosened blonde curl fell along her cheek. Maybe those long lashes were all hers, but she’d darkened them so her eyes looked as big as twin full moons. Or emeralds.

  “If you’ll just steer me toward that booth over there, we can slip behind the curtains to the side door,” she agreed.

  With an alacrity that said he hadn’t completely lost his touch, he had her at the curtains before the last note rang out.

  He was familiar with the back exit of this place and a lot of other bars just like this one. Bands used the exits to slip out for a quick smoke, a toke, or a make-out session. There were some things he’d miss about that life—maybe a lot of things—but the sleaziness wasn’t one of them.

  But it didn’t feel sleazy when Joella took his hand and stepped outside under a bowlful of stars in the clear mountain air. He didn’t know which way was up. She sparkled like the night sky. Lights glittered along her long gold earrings and sequins.

  “I’d forgotten how the stars look up here.” Drawing her into him, Flint gazed above Asheville’s limited excuse for a skyline. “If you wore midnight blue, you’d blend right in with the night.”

  She laughed softly and melted into his arms as if she belonged there. “I’d have to wear silver with blue, and I was in a gold mood tonight.”

  That didn’t make a lick of sense to him, but he wasn’t out there to talk. Any thought of his reason for being in the bar had fled several songs ago.

  Flint leaned over and nuzzled Joella’s ear. When she lifted her head to him, he accepted the invitation and claimed her mouth.

  Had it been so long since he’d had sex that he couldn’t remember any woman’s kiss being as delicious as hers? Her lips softened invitingly, and his tongue accepted the invitation. He tasted the strawberry sweetness of her daiquiri and drank deeply.

  Her long fingers stroked his nape, and he nearly shook his leg like a horny dog. Her kiss was liquid fire that swept down inside his soul and incinerated all the bad times and lit the empty hollows with promises. Her lips didn’t cause just a physical ache, but the kind of longing the poets wrote about, of moments missed and ships passing in the night.

  For his own mental health, he needed to stick with the physical. He slid his hand down her slender back, finding that thin line of nakedness at her waist and glorying in the warmth of sun-browned flesh.

  She practically purred into his mouth. Hope flourishing, Flint slipped his fingers beneath her sequined shirt and along the supple muscles of her back. She returned the favor, unbuttoning his shirt and branding his skin with the heat of her palms.

  “I’ve got my truck right over there,” he managed to say against her kiss-softened mouth. “Want to take this somewhere a little more private?”

  She hesitated, and time froze as he waited. He wanted her so bad he would have cracked molars chewing nails if she asked it of him. He needed this one last night of irresponsible freedom before conforming to small town ways. He needed her, an angel sent straight from heaven to tell him he was on the right path.

  “You’re not from these parts, are you?” she whispered, not opening any distance between their sandwiched bodies, much to his intense relief. “I’ve got you pegged as a traveling man.”

  “You’ve got me pegged well,” he admitted. He would be hobbling like a pegged horse if he didn’t get her into that truck and back to the motel.

  “You don’t look like a salesman,” she said with soft inquiry, running a finger beneath his shirt and shooting electric shocks to his groin.

  Ah, he’d forgotten that part of the game. Women liked sexy jobs and bad boys, not respectable businessmen. Without lying, he whispered in her ear, “I play a little guitar.” Very little, now that his fingers were out of commission.

  He slid his hand up to her breast, expecting the instant gratification he’d always received after recognition of his name or talent or career. Lots of people associated the music business with fame and fortune. He wasn’t one to discourage their foolish fancies.

  Instead of the excited reaction he’d expected, the beautiful Miss Joella shoved away and glared at him with wintry eyes. “A musician?” she asked scathingly, as if it were a filthy word. “And a lousy guitar player at that. Hell, I’ll never learn.”

  Without further explanation, she stalked off to a rusty pumpkin-orange Ford Fiesta, leaving him rock hard and in shocked misery.

  Three

  The Stardust Café was even seedier than Flint remembered, the perfect joint for a man suffering blue balls and a hangover. With luck, a few cups of hot java would ease his headache. Unrequited lust was a little more difficult. But he’d promised Charlie that he would open on the first of June, and he wasn’t copping out because he’d gotten wasted the night before.

  He shoved the key into his back pocket and opened a front door flaking with ancient red paint.

  Faded gray café curtains on the big front window hid the June dawn. Flint flipped a switch by the door, electrifying the bulbs hanging in tin cans over the tables, creating more shadow than illumination. Good. It felt like a dark bar where he could snarl all he liked, not that there was anyone here at this ungodly hour to notice.

  The old wooden floors and dark paneling stank of must and mold and old cigarette smoke. Kicking aside a chrome dinette chair with a cracked pink vinyl seat, he stalked between the gray Formica tables, trying to recall what had inspired the pleasure of his childhood memories.

  Instead, last night’s debacle seared his brain cells, stealing all the satisfaction he’d anticipated of owning this piece of his past.

  The worst part was that he didn’t even know what he’d done wrong. Since when had guitar player become bad words?

  He refused to dwell on the unexpected rejection. He had a pounding hangover from taking a six pack to his room and drinking himself to sleep. The lovely Miss Joella had ruined his last night of freedom.

  He sure the hell wouldn’t let a woman ruin his first day back in Northfork.

  He had fond memories of this tiny mountain town where his daddy had once run the textile mill. He and his brothers had run wild through field and stream. It was the ideal place to bring up boys. His counselor had agreed he might figure out where he’d taken the wrong turn if he returned to his roots, whatever that meant.

  He switched on the light over the grill. Charlie sure had been one hell of a lousy housekeeper. There was grease on here that was probably personally acquainted with the original Cherokees who discovered these mountains. And Noah had probably dropped off the rest of the equipment on his watery sojourn. Judging from the water stains on the paneling, it looked as if the river, if not Noah, had visited a time or two.

  He grimaced at the aging Bunn burners that constituted his coffee makers. He knew he’d purchased the place cheap. It wasn’t as if he could afford a lot. At the time, he’d hoped Charlie had a good pension fund because what Flint had paid for the shop wouldn’t finance a trip to Florida for a month much less Charlie’s retirement. Now he was thinking Charlie had milked the place for all it was worth and left him the hollow shell.

  He had a head for business that could pull this together, if he’d just apply it instead of wasting it on wine, women, and song. He wouldn’t be in these straits if he had paid att
ention to his accounting statements instead of listening to the siren call of his Muse. Guess he’d have to learn on his own, the hard way, because he wasn’t trusting anyone else these days.

  So, he was still paying penance. And instead of being an angel of deliverance, the woman last night had been an imp sent straight from hell to remind him of his sins. Wasn’t there some saint who’d suffered all the torments of the damned before being blessed? He sure the hell wasn’t any saint, which made any blessings unlikely.

  Wondering if he had to start attending church now that he was a reformed, respectable citizen, Flint dug around in the cabinets until he found a bottle of ammonia and some rags. One thing about growing up middle class, he had learned how to clean. He’d had an army of maids to do it for decades, but some things were ingrained.

  He had the antiquated coffeemaker scrubbed to a stainless steel shine when the front door creaked on its rusty hinges. “Not open yet,” he called over his shoulder, trying to read the frosted print on the coffee bean package he’d found in the freezer. For the life of him, he couldn’t figure out how to measure a pot of coffee. He wanted real caffeine smelling up the place, not that sissy stuff they served in hotel rooms.

  “I wouldn’t recommend opening until you de-crudify the grill,” a cheerful voice sang out. “I came in early to help out.”

  Even without the raucous noise of a bar band as backdrop, Flint would recognize the angel’s heavenly soprano. Surely even God wouldn’t be cruel enough to punish him in such a humiliating fashion?

  Turning slowly, searching the gray shadows of the sad café, he met the wide-eyed shock of last night’s blonde goddess. Lowering his gaze, he could just make out her shapely silhouette wearing a midnight blue bib apron with Stardust Café embroidered across it in flowery pink.

  “Well, hell, if it isn’t little Miss Starshine come to add twinkle to my day. Do you do dishes like you do men?”