Small Town Girl

by Rice, Patricia

  “What happened to your wife and kids?” she asked, thinking of roaming daddies and abandoned kids. She knew how that felt.

  He stared at the heat lightning in the distance without replying immediately. When he finally spoke, his voice was strained. “The night I got drunk? That was the night the cops called to tell me Melinda had died in a car crash. So like an idiot, I went out and did the same. Counselor said it was a form of self-destruction.”

  Shaken, Jo couldn’t think of a thing to say. He’d just admitted to a selfish stupidity worse than anything her father had ever done. Or her mother. Instead of thinking of his kids’ devastation, he’d thought only of his own.

  A loud crack of thunder accented the pain in Flint’s admission as he continued. “I was messed up pretty bad, in the hospital for weeks, in physical therapy for months. My parents had to hire estate lawyers to settle the mess Melinda left with her death. They came up and got the kids and took them home with them while I was in the hospital. I wasn’t working, didn’t have a home. They’ve been with my parents ever since. I’ve given up music and moved here so I can have them back.”

  I’m not feeling sorry for him, she swore. She’d been hearing some version of this story her entire life. He’d effectively abandoned his kids, just as her father had abandoned her and Amy. Just as He-Who-Should-Rot-In-Hell had deserted her in Atlanta ten years ago and Ratfink Randy had skipped out. One day, Flint would hear the siren call of music and forget what he said here tonight. She was slowly accepting these things.

  The thunder rolled louder, and Flint glanced up at a jagged streak of lightning on the mountain peak.

  Jo let the thunder be her reply. The band down below struck up a slow tune, and the audience was singing along, probably to drown out Slim’s nasal notes.

  “Still trust me to find a lawyer for you?” Flint asked. His voice was so distant that he might as well have been standing at the foot of the mountain.

  That he accepted his responsibility in his fate and hadn’t hid his faults were strong points in his favor. He’d been square with her. Jo wanted everything in the open between them, so she returned the favor.

  “My mama started binge-drinking when I was little. At least she had the sense to never drive drunk.” If he winced over that acid comment, she couldn’t tell.

  “My dad abandoned us to tour with some oldies group that’s working Europe these days,” she continued. “My first love was a lying talent scout who took me to Atlanta with promises of fame and fortune. I was eighteen. When we got there, he signed me up at a strip bar. I learned waitressing to earn the bus fare home.”

  She didn’t bother repeating the whole humiliating scene that still had the power to wake her up, shrieking, in the middle of the night. She had pinned all her teenage hopes on becoming a singer like her father, of earning the fortune that would make her mother happy again. She’d won a regional beauty contest with one of her songs. He-Who had promised her a recording contract. She’d had huge stars in her eyes when he’d bought her a glitzy costume and taken her to a nightclub for her first paid performance.

  And then she had stepped onto a real stage, in front of an all male audience so shit-faced at that hour they’d instantly started screaming at her to take it all off. They’d been too busy crawling up on stage to grab her breasts and crotch to hear a note she sang—not that she’d managed more than a whimper before trying to run. He-Who had blocked the exit. After the crowd had torn off her meager costume, she’d really believed they would strip off a piece of her hide next. Eighteen and ignorant, nearly naked, she’d collapsed in hysterics right there in the spotlight, and spewed out her guts on the club manager who’d hauled her to her feet. The audience had roared with laughter and rage.

  She’d been thrown out on the street, broke and friendless, to make her own way home.

  Everyone in town knew the story, so she didn’t have much to hide. She just figured she owed Flint after he’d bared his soul to her.

  “Jeez,” he muttered. Leaning his hands on the landing behind them, he stared out at the light display. “No wonder you told me to go to hell.”

  “I was politer than that,” she reminded him.

  “The first time. Today, you tried to kill me.”

  She laughed a little. “Yeah, maybe I did at that.”

  He chuckled, a pleasant sound from deep in his chest. “I think we may have the first partnership based on complete and total distrust.”

  She laughed out loud as she realized he probably was right.

  Nine

  “How’d the game go last night? You won? That’s great.”

  Jo tried not to listen in on Flint’s strained conversation with his sons on Saturday morning, but he was pacing behind the counter with his cell phone, talking loudly in nervousness. He seemed to have a strange notion that he was being helpful through the morning rush hour by staying out here instead of holing up in his office.

  She needed to summon more antipathy for a man who’d deserted his kids when they needed him, but he was trying so determinedly to win them back that he was breaking her feeble heart.

  “Who’s he talking to?” Sally asked as Jo poured her a second cup of decaf. Her soft cow eyes were pools of sympathy. “He looks miserable.”

  “Apparently that’s what kids do to you.” Jo poured another cup for Amy at the same table. “Did Josh and Louise get to see their dad this morning or did Evan have to go in to work?” Jo had always thought her sister had a real marriage, but lately, her new-found cynicism had been kicking in where her brother-in-law was concerned.

  Amy poured sugar into her coffee and shrugged. “They’re trying to get the samples out before the show. You know how it is.”

  “You know I’ll baby-sit anytime you want to go in and help him out.” Jo did her best not to show her skeptical side to Amy. She’d just remove Evan’s balls if he hurt her sister. Despite her petite size, Amy had been the bulwark who had shielded Jo throughout their dysfunctional childhood. Amy deserved fairytale happiness.

  “Next week?” Flint shouted, unaware of all ears in the place turned in his direction. “Yeah, sure, that’s fine.”

  “He doesn’t look fine,” Jo observed, watching her macho boss run his hand over his thick hair, tousling it nicely. “You’d better run to his rescue, Sally. Something tells me he’s gonna need help with a couple of hellions.”

  “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that,” Sally whispered. “That would be too forward. Maybe he could bring them to Sunday school.”

  Jo snorted. “Want to bet they’re chips off the old block? I don’t think Sunday school will hold them.”

  “Hey, Jo, where’s my donut?” a customer at the counter called.

  “I keep it right next to my heart, Hoss.” She sashayed over to the big man and leaned over his shoulder to fill his cup. “You really want me to go back there to get stampeded for a donut?” She shot a look at Flint, who had thrown his cell phone on the stove but still stalked back and forth looking like last night’s storm.

  She’d invited him into her apartment last night when the clouds had opened. Instead of coming in, Flint had sat there with the rain pelting his broad shoulders, staring at the thunderbolts crossing the sky. “What’s that old church song?” he’d asked as she’d taken refuge behind the screen door. “’I got to walk that lonesome valley all by myself?’”

  She’d almost wept as he’d walked down the stairs in the pouring rain looking as miserable as a man could be. If she wasn’t so immune to men these days, she’d have run after him, thrown her arms around him, and dragged him back to her bed.

  That would have been disaster for both of them.

  She knew the solution to misery, though. Unable to tolerate his restless pacing a second longer, Jo walked around the counter and shoved a spatula at him. “Number one wants scrambled eggs. Henry will want more toast in a minute. I’m taking a girl break.”

  She left him standing there with his hands full and his mouth open as she ran back to th
e restroom. Flint wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sit still. She’d scarcely slept a wink last night. She was just about to bust out of her skin in anticipation and anxiety thinking of Randy and her stolen songs. It was time to apply both their excess energies to something useful. Pity it was Saturday and they couldn’t call lawyers.

  Behind closed doors, she pulled her cell phone out of her pocket and punched up a number. “Hey, Dave? This is Jo. You still have that paint on sale?”

  At his affirmative, she took a deep breath. “How much longer?”

  “Until you talk your boss into remodeling?” he guessed.

  Dave’s recognition of her ability to talk anyone into anything lifted her spirits. She did have a knack for doing what was best for people, if they’d just let her meddle a little. Flint might be a bit more difficult than most, but she needed a challenge.

  With something more productive to do than worry about lying, cheating scoundrels and sexy, hurting hunks, Jo returned to the café with a big grin.

  “What?” Flint asked with suspicion at seeing her expression. He handed the spatula back to her and reached for the coffee beans.

  “What what?” She flapped her lashes and scooped eggs on a plate. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Watch it when she gets that shit-eater grin on her face,” George Bob warned from the counter. “We got stuck with the pigs last time she looked like that.”

  “Do I need to tie her down and stuff her in a closet until she gets over it?” Flint asked in a surly tone, although the corner of his mouth curled in a hint of a grin.

  “The women would go looking for her,” Hoss said. “The trouble with this town is that the women run it. I don’t know when we let them get so out of hand.”

  “When you started keeping your brains in your jeans,” Jo retorted. “Those pigs are good for the town. We’ve already had a reporter up here from Charlotte to see them. Once that story gets out, we’ll have lots of people up here, spending money.”

  With a fresh batch of coffee cooking, Flint slid a plate of toast to Hoss, glanced around to see that all his other customers had been served, then leaned his hip against the counter and crossed his arms. “People will come up here just to see purple pigs?”

  Jo hurriedly refilled more cups rather than admire her boss’s muscled biceps in his short-sleeved shirt. Even when he was looking at her with suspicion, her heart performed a drum solo. She needed to get laid real bad if she was contemplating, even for a moment, a volatile man like Flynn Clinton. He was way over her simple head.

  “Some of those pigs were painted by famous artists. We have more talent up here in these hills than just country bumpkins, you realize. Present company excluded of course. George Bob and Hoss are bumpkins.” She slid them each a donut as she said it. She’d traded insults with these guys since grade school.

  “Yeah, well, I don’t see any pigs in an art gallery, and I don’t see rich tourists coming up here to admire any,” Flint challenged her with logic instead of insults.

  “Negativity,” she admonished, flashing him a high-voltage smile that knocked some of his attitude askew. She liked how all his muscles tightened when he was forced to look her way. “With that mind-set, it’s a wonder you ever get a girl.”

  “It doesn’t take a mind to get a girl,” he growled.

  She had his number now. He put on the grouchy bear act to make her back off. She winked, and he had to wipe his grin away with the back of his hand.

  “Maybe not,” she countered, “but it takes a mind to get a woman.” Now that the subject was safely off her, Joella redirected it. “Are your kids coming up to visit?” She returned to buttering toast.

  “Yeah, only because my parents promised to take them rock climbing. Know any good rocks?”

  “If they ain’t ever been climbing, better take them down to Chimney Rock,” Hoss advised, standing up with his donut-to-go and leaving his money on the counter. “If they want white water rafting, I’m your boy. Just give me a call.”

  “I’ll do that, thanks.” Flint put the bills in the register and Jo’s tip in her jar. “Chimney Rock will be busy on a weekend, won’t it?”

  “Yup, but Hoss is right. Unless they know what they’re doing, rock climbing is hazardous, and the rescue squad has started charging to save idiots.” Seizing her opportunity, Jo offered him a seductive smile. “What will you trade me if I find your kids a bona fide rock climbing expert to show them the ropes?”

  “Trade?” he asked with a lift of his eyebrows that did wonders for her pulse rate.

  “Yeah. What are your kids worth to you? A new paint job in here, maybe?”

  Flint studied Jo’s saucy grin and wished he was a mind reader. He was damn glad she covered her front with that ugly apron because just watching her from behind all morning had burned out his last brain cell. She had on a little blue knit halter top and white short shorts beneath that thing, and even with his eyes closed, all he could see was long shapely brown legs.

  How much were his kids worth? He’d trade the whole café for them, but he didn’t need to give Joella that bargaining chip. “I reckon I can find a rock climber on my own,” he said confidently.

  He’d learned enough about his waitress this past week to figure she could find the best climber in the mountains faster than he could drum up a rank amateur, but he didn’t want to make this too easy. She already had him over a barrel, and he wasn’t liking the position.

  “Reckon you might,” she agreed. “But he’s likely to be busy on weekends unless you ask him right.”

  “And you know the right way to ask?” Flint was aware that half the coffee shop was listening, and he was wondering why in hell he’d thought it would be a good idea to operate gossip central.

  “Just give her the paint job,” George Bob urged, pulling out his billfold. “Jo knows every man on this mountain and each of their weak spots. Everyone knows if you want something done, Jo knows how to do it.”

  She blinked demurely, but watching her out of the corner of his eye, Flint could see that big grin she’d worn earlier. He hadn’t just bought gossip central. He’d acquired the local database, troublemaker, and sex goddess along with it.

  And he couldn’t fire her. He’d have to learn to work with temptation so she wouldn’t sue him. He’d remembered that saint’s name last night. Job. Except Job wasn’t a saint either, just a poor beleaguered businessman that God decided to pick on. Like him.

  “What color and how much?” he asked grumpily, to keep her from being too sure of herself.

  “Yellow and purple and all of it,” she said so promptly that he knew she’d been planning this for a long time.

  “Tan and brown and only the two walls by the booths,” he countered. He couldn’t remember why he’d thought mud ugly was so wonderful as a kid, but he’d be damned if he’d paint his shop yellow.

  “Oh, ugh, why don’t you just paint it with sludge? How about the color of the pretty persimmon and sunflower plates?” She pulled the dishes out to show him.

  “You want to turn this into a tea shop?” Flint shouted. Since the whole place was listening by now, he might as well get his point across. He wasn’t turning into his daddy and becoming a rug under any woman’s feet.

  “How about a creamy white for the wainscoting, and Jo could put up rose curtains?” one of the women suggested.

  Wainscoting? What in hell was that? Sounded like something that went in castles.

  “How about we leave it just the way it is?” a disgruntled male customer asked. “If this was good enough for our daddies, it’s good enough for us.”

  Flint almost agreed to yellow and purple after that. He had the sudden urge to offer his kids something better than his daddy had.

  He studied the battered brown paneling—wainscoting?—and beige walls with faded sepia photographs from the 1950’s that had rested so fondly in his memory. His tastes must have matured a lot since childhood. Everything in here was mud brown, except the pink and gray tables an
d chairs. Even the floor was brown. He liked brown, but he could see where the joint could use a little updating.

  “I don’t want to have to wash walls every night,” he told his audience, although he directed the protest at Jo.

  “Stainless steel equipment, pewter paneling, and eggplant walls,” she threw back.

  “Eggplant?” he asked in outrage. “What kind of color is that? And pewter paneling? That’s just plain crazy. Did you grow up in a circus?”

  “Pretty much,” she agreed brightly. “And they have pewter-colored paneling down at the supply house. It’s supposed to go in kitchens with stainless steel.”

  “Eggplant’s too dark,” a woman argued. “Use the turquoise from the Fiestaware. That will fit in with your fifties pink.”

  “I can’t afford stainless steel appliances!” Flint objected.

  “Not yet,” Jo agreed, “but when we start bringing in more money, you’ll be all fixed up and ready for them.”

  Now he knew how a snowball felt rolling down a mountainside in a blizzard.

  “If you’re a member of the Chamber, you can get a discount at the supply store on the paneling,” someone called.

  Suggestions flew after that, but Flint had pretty much tired of decorating. He glared at Jo. He just about believed her claim to have grown up in a circus. She was a performer par none, and she belonged on the stage. She flirted him another mind-melting grin that made him want to back her up against the stove and kiss the smirk off her face.

  But he was already picturing stainless steel in here. A dishwasher that didn’t maim his feet. A place his boys could be proud of. One that would make money—

  “New paneling, and blue paint,” he agreed with a feeling that he’d just been manipulated. “And you’ll call the rock climber teacher?”

  “You got it boss man.” Returning to impale an order on the spike by the grill, Jo stood on the toes of her athletic shoes and pressed a kiss to his cheek. Her lips seared a brand he’d carry all day. He nearly passed out from the testosterone overload from her magnolia scent. “Are you calling that lawyer of yours on Monday, partner?” she purred.