Small Town Girl

by Rice, Patricia

  “We’re rational adults,” he claimed, arguing even though she was right. They’d burn the Stardust down if they had sex now and tried to forget it later.

  “No, we’re not.” Her eyes crinkled in the corner with laughter. “We’re horny dogs and not thinking at all.”

  “There’s something to be said about not thinking,” he mused. “After that boulder, I’m ready to adopt a live-for-today policy.” Hell, his blood was boiling, and he was ready to throw out every vow he’d made, if Jo would only be kind—or cruel—enough to agree.

  “Adrenaline high,” she scoffed. “You’ll recover and be sorry in the morning. Teach me to play that guitar over there. I always wanted to learn.”

  He could seduce her. Flint knew with confident male instinct that all he had to do was drag her into his arms, and she wouldn’t push away. Her kiss earlier had told him that. But since it was only sex and nothing more, she was offering him an alternative—music. Talk about being caught between hell and damnation…

  Shadows flickered in the far reaches of the vaulted ceiling. Firelight glimmered in the black panes of the windows. Rain pounded against the roof. It was a night for making love. His big black leather couch beckoned. Plush cushions, a willing woman, and he hadn’t had sex in so long he’d forgotten what it was like. And Jo was just the kind of woman he liked to have it with.

  Even the siren call of music rushing through his veins couldn’t compete with the willful, wonderful woman waiting for his decision. He knew she could light his night. And maybe more than a night. Offered the choice between sex and the addiction that haunted his soul and had ruined his life, he’d choose sex every time.

  But the music addiction only affected him, and sex affected both of them. He was trying to follow the mature path and think of others. Besides, as she was showing him, lust wasn’t a replacement for a full life, a real relationship, and the future of his sons. He couldn’t have any of those with a woman who would sue him for all he was worth and take off to Nashville as soon as the opportunity offered.

  So he might as well help her along the road and remove her from temptation. He wouldn’t repeat the mistake he’d made with Melinda. Jo had the talent his ex never had.

  For Jo’s sake, Flint gritted his teeth and grabbed the guitar from the dark corner where he’d thrown it the day he’d moved in. It was acoustic, the first guitar he’d ever owned. He’d written his first hit song on it.

  He shoved it at her. “The strings are old, and I don’t have replacements. If they snap, we’re out of luck.”

  She took the instrument without comment, settling cross-legged in the middle of the couch and holding his baby with the care and respect it deserved. He nearly groaned aloud when she stroked the guitar’s neck with loving fingers and cradled the pearl-inlaid body beneath her breasts.

  She played the scale on untuned strings and glanced mischievously at him. “Doe, a deer, that ate my ear.”

  He did groan then and dropped into his recliner where he wouldn’t have to drink in her soft scent or look at her making love to his guitar instead of him. “You can play,” he said with disgust at being tricked.

  “The scale. I don’t know all the finger thingies. Randy was more singer than player and wouldn’t teach me.”

  “Couldn’t,” Flint said with a grunt, wishing he had a beer instead of coffee. “He just gets up there and wales the tar out of the strings. Can you read music?”

  “Nope. Give me a note, and I can probably figure it out. Do you sing?”

  “Nope. Give me a note, and I’ll probably kill it.”

  “You were singing in the car.”

  “That wasn’t singing. That was mouthing words in time to a beat. You’re the one with a voice that can make grown men weep.”

  Ignoring his praise, she fingered the strings and sang the scale. Her vocals were a perfect pitch. The guitar far less so. With a growl, Flint swung out of his recliner and took the instrument away from her. Sitting on the sofa, he settled Pearl in his lap like an old friend and began tuning her strings. His left hand curled naturally around the guitar’s neck, but every finger movement as he adjusted the knobs shot waves of pain up his arm.

  He was ready to fling the instrument to the floor when Jo began to sing softly, “And the walls, the walls come tumbling down.”

  Her voice seeped straight through him and into his fingers. Flint had to pour it out again or do something rash. He settled for picking the notes she sang, staying with a single chord, adding a back beat, ignoring the warning twinges as the muscles of his hand tried to seize up. “And the clowns come tumbling with them,” he sang on a wry note.

  “The mountains, the mountains come tumbling down,” she sang in a triumphant voice that echoed from her diaphragm to the rafters.

  “That changes the meter. You need a new note.” He handed the guitar back to her. “Here, put your fingers on these spots.” He settled the guitar in her lap. It was a temptation to put his arm around her shoulders to show her the best position, but he settled for covering her fingers with his, adjusting them along the fret. He didn’t have to bend his fingers as much if they wrapped over hers, and the pain lessened.

  Except the sensation of covering her slender hands with his jarred him into stupidity. The sight of the full curves of her breasts beneath the opened buttons of his son’s shirt held him riveted.

  “I think you better play and let me sing,” she suggested so softly that he almost didn’t hear her through the fog filling his head.

  “Yeah, right.” He took the guitar and backed off to the far corner of the large couch, working his fingers open and shut to unclench them.

  She eased toward the other corner. Flint did his best not to look at her as he returned to strumming the strings, letting his pain flow into the music. The gospel beat easily transformed into a joyous protest to match her earlier transcendent cry.

  His fingers wanted to curl up and weep, but the Muse that had run off with the accident now found her way back through the glory of Jo’s voice and wicked imagination.

  As Jo turned the old song into a battle cry of bringing down all that was wrong in the world, Flint let the music soar, and for the first time since he’d worked on RJ’s album, he felt better than alive. Renewed. Reborn. Miraculously ready to take the world by storm.

  ***

  Jo closed her eyes and let pure joy pour from her throat. In Flint’s cozy cabin, with the rain pounding the roof, she felt safe and didn’t hesitate to release all the emotion inside her until shivers of excitement ran up and down her arms.

  Sometimes, if she couldn’t sing, she felt as if she would burst at the seams. Song would seep from her like steam from an untended iron.

  But tonight, she didn’t have to hold back. Flint didn’t fiddle and carp and backtrack and tell her to hush. He kept up with her, note for note, improvising when she changed the meter far better than the Buzzards had ever done, catching up with her and improving as he learned her habits.

  As if he already knew and appreciated her habits.

  Which he did, if he’d turned her old rhymes into real music. She hadn’t fully comprehended what that meant until now. She stopped abruptly and faced him. “Sing one of my songs,” she demanded.

  A thick strand of chestnut had fallen across Flint’s brow. The hair brushing his nape had dried but curled from the dampness. Whiskers shadowed his hollowed cheeks. But it was the burning light shining from beneath his dark-lashes that held her transfixed. She felt that light clear to her bones, and deeper. The ferocity stirred everything feminine in her, but she resisted reacting to the urge.

  At her request, he seemed to make a mental adjustment. Tilting his head, he studied the guitar strings. Tapping his fingers again, he grimaced with pain, but he picked a few strong notes. A minute later, his gravely voice was singing the song of a wicked woman who shaved her drunken husband’s head while he was sleeping, then marched off to the city to sell his long wavy hair and buy a ticket home to mother.

>   Flint made it sound like real music instead of a silly ditty she’d written after Atlanta when she’d wanted revenge for her shame. His composition of sad and defiant chords reflected the song that was in her heart when she’d written the words.

  Stunned, Jo just sat there when he finished. She really was a songwriter.

  She knew she could sing. She’d given up hope of ever doing anything with her singing since vocalists required far more stage presence and training than she could emulate. But if she could write… If Randy could make money off her words…

  They’d really used her words. Not just a line or a chorus, but her whole song.

  Dazed, she let Flint go on to the next tune.

  “Do the first one again,” she begged when he finished. “I want to learn the melody.”

  He obliged without protest. He pointed out her flaws when she went the wrong way, started the chord over, and let her try again. By the time she had it all down, he was grinning as widely as she was.

  “I think I must have written that music for you,” he said. “RJ will sound mighty silly after anyone hears you singing it.”

  Loving the thought of singing Flint’s music, Jo bounced up and down, unable to sit still as the beat strummed through her. “When is his album coming out? If he’s coming down here in August for the MusicFest, maybe I could…” She stopped. No she couldn’t.

  “It should hit the air sometime in August.” He watched her with curiosity. “If you sang before he did, you’d steal his thunder, for sure.”

  “I couldn’t, but it’s fun to think about.” She squirmed beneath his gaze and hugged herself, which tugged the shirt tighter. Her nipples rose hard and aching against the cotton, and she couldn’t look at him.

  “Why can’t you?” he demanded. “Is the line-up full?”

  She felt like a fool saying it aloud. “Stage fright,” she said with what she hoped was a laugh. “I throw up when the lights come on.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “You perform in front of our customers. You sang for me in a room full of people. Don’t let fear stop you from having the life you deserve.”

  The life she deserved. She shivered a little in expectation and stared longingly at the guitar. “I’ve always dreamed of someday meeting my daddy up on stage, showing him what he threw away.” She’d never stated the dream aloud, knowing she’d be laughed at.

  The guitar landed in her lap. “Your turn. My hand won’t take more. You’ve got more natural talent in your little finger than I have in my whole body.”

  Talent? This was coming from a man who’d made millions as a musician. She needed time to absorb his wild claim and decide whether it was just another lie to get what he wanted. She’d thought Flint had been pretty straight with her so far.

  She watched his hand as he tried to straighten it. The scar cut a thin white line across dark hair and bronze skin, akin to a rubber band pulling his fingers into awkward shape. Instinctively, she set the guitar on the floor and reached for his hand.

  “Have you seen a therapist?” She hadn’t noticed the room’s chill until she held the heat of his hand between hers. She rubbed her thumb along the line, feeling him flinch from the pressure.

  “Yeah, until the insurance ran out. She said it would take more surgery, and even then, she wasn’t certain how much function I’d regain. I haven’t got the time or the money right now. There are more important things in the world than strumming a guitar.”

  “Not for you,” she said without giving her words much thought. “That guitar riff of yours really makes the Barn Boys’ sound.” She had never known it was him until she’d compared the songs done with and without him. Their new bass player lacked Flint’s flair.

  He tried to pull his hand away, but she wouldn’t let him. She circled her thumb over the taut tendons, using the massaging pressure she’d learned to help her mother’s circulation.

  “My sons are more important than music.” He tried to jerk away again.

  This time, she made the mistake of meeting Flint’s eyes. They burned with the heat of desire, even as he fought to obey her wishes by staying away.

  The same hunger yearned in her, and she’d forgotten why she was supposed to deny it. “Your sons need a whole man for a father, not half of one.” She’d said a lot of crazy things in her life, spouting off at society and the world in general. This time, she thought maybe she’d made sense.

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said angrily, shaking her off.

  “I think maybe I do. You’re another man when you’re into the music. You’re not as angry. You listen.”

  “I listen all the time.” He grabbed the guitar she’d set on the floor.

  “With your ears, maybe, but not your heart.” She took the guitar away and laid it back on the floor, nudging it away with her foot as she leaned toward him. She tapped his chest and almost went up in flame at the contact with firm muscle. “When you’re not roiling with anger, you can hear better.”

  Flint grabbed her arms and dragged her toward him until his whiskers scratched her chin and his mouth was a hair’s breadth from hers. “I’m not angry. I’m being sensible and providing a home for my kids,” he told her firmly.

  She grinned from ear to ear, unsurprised by his action. With their lips only inches apart, she met his gaze again, loving the way he focused on her to the exclusion of all else. “There are two ways to let all that testosterone loose before it fries your brains.”

  She didn’t give him the opportunity to ask what they were, as if he needed to be told. Twisting her arms so she grasped his biceps, she tilted forward and applied her mouth to his.

  Fifteen

  Jo’s passionate kiss stoked the embers of desire that had smoldered between them for weeks. The caress of her hands along Flint’s bare arms ignited him like a torch.

  Freed by her first move from any obligation to hold back, he hauled her into his lap and crushed her against him as he’d dreamed about for weeks. Her warmth seeped through his body into all the cold places of his soul. Hungrily plundering her mouth, he held her tightly to prevent losing her in the next breeze of fate. Jo obliged by wrapping her arms around his neck and hanging on like a tenacious vine. He didn’t know why people talked about clinging vines as if they were weak. Good kudzu could bring down a tree.

  And he was falling rapidly.

  With Jo’s curves pressed all up and down him at last, Flint leaned back against the cushions and thrust his hands into her silken mass of curls, tilting her head to better accommodate his kiss. She matched him eagerly with parted lips and a heated tongue that reached straight to his groin. And then she matched his maneuver by sliding her hands into his hair and pulling him closer.

  Thrilled to the marrow that he needn’t tease and beg, Flint slid his crippled hand between them to finally knead and shape the full firmness of breasts.

  Despite her tough attitude, she moaned with vulnerability at his caress. She didn’t pull away but pushed into his palm with a demand equal to his own.

  After that, there wasn’t a chance in hell of turning back. She was right. They were no better than mating dogs. And that was just fine with him. He didn’t want to be rational anymore. He wanted every bit of Jo that he could see, touch, hear, and taste. He was a starving man who’d been offered a feast.

  Flint ripped Jo’s buttons in his eagerness to reach more warm flesh. She slid her palms beneath his shirt and tweaked his nipples until he groaned and jerked the cotton over his head, flinging it across the room.

  He swung full length onto the leather cushions, bringing her with him so she lay sprawled on top, her legs between his. The leather was like a second skin against his bare back. He slid her shirt off so he could admire all that lush flesh in the flickering firelight.

  “A golden goddess,” he murmured senselessly, nudging her sparkling earrings out of his way so he could kiss his way around her ear lobe.

  “Eve,” she muttered in reply.

  He la
ughed and denied her accuracy. “My Muse,” he countered. He could swear the heat from her skin eased the pain of his hand.

  Using his abs so he didn’t disturb her position, Flint curled up enough to taste the ripe buds of her breasts. Her moan of pleasure was sweet music to his ears, a soothing balm to his angry soul. How could he have forgotten the soaring joy of pleasuring a woman?

  Not that Joella was one to lie still and let him do all the work. Flint laughed again when she shoved him back down, her slender hands only half covering his chest. He shifted to his side, trapping her against the couch back so he could plunder at will.

  She went for his belt buckle.

  He located her skirt zipper first.

  She stilled when he ran his hands beneath her waistband and cupped the delicious curve of her buttocks in their silky covering.

  He stroked, and she melted into him as if they were two parts of the same whole—flesh against flesh, heads touching, hands rubbing, absorbing the heated sensations of each other’s bodies. Their kisses deepened and consumed, communicating the desire they had yet to fulfill.

  As Jo tried to shove Flint’s jeans over his hips, a brief flash of rationality hit him. “Condom,” he whispered. “Upstairs.”

  “Pill,” she murmured back, nipping at his collarbone and tugging at his waistband. “Clean. You?”

  “Yep.” And that was the end of rationality for the evening.

  ***

  When Flint rolled off the couch to kick off his jeans, Jo lay back against the butter-soft cushions and let admiration pump hormones directly into her blood. Flynn Clinton hadn’t let his physique go to pot as so many men over thirty did.

  The fire played along his naturally bronze skin. Broader in chest than hip, tautly muscled in all the right places, he could have modeled as a Greek god as far as she was concerned. Except she didn’t think he could hide all that masculinity beneath a fig leaf.

  Before she realized what she meant to do, she leaned on one elbow and kissed the tip of his erection before he had time to return to the couch.