She had to admit, Evan and Linda made a spectacular couple.
Nineteen
Sensing work halting all around him, Flint flung another shovelful of dirt off his front step into the street, then turned to see what disaster loomed next on his horizon.
His upper arm still burned where Jo had seared it with her kiss. She was an unabashed mix of optimism, passion, and talent, and he felt the tug of her presence no matter where her busyness carried her. He’d heard her singing the “Volga Boatmen’s Song,” smiled when it changed to a country version of the Disney dwarfs’ Heigh ho, heigh ho, and eagerly awaited her next choice of music.
With a jolt of fear, he realized that it was her silence that had warned him.
He had to climb up the mound of dirt and stone to see the Mercedes parked in the middle of chaos. A handsome couple stood beside the car, consulting with heads bent, ignoring the frozen townspeople watching them with varying expressions of hope, wariness, and cynicism. Flint ground his molars, wondering if the sharks had smelled blood and arrived already.
To his amazement, quiet little Amy was the one who stepped forward, carrying a bolt of the fabric Jo had been squirreling away to safety. Neither of the pair in suits offered to take the heavy bolt from her, although both were taller and probably stronger. They examined the damage, glanced around at the remaining fabric buried under dirt, and shook their heads.
Flint suffered the horrible notion that they’d just condemned the town to death.
He started down the dirt pile to join Jo and find out what was really happening when he noticed a tanker truck heading a little too fast around the bend toward them. Due to the rock slide, truck traffic on the highway had practically halted except for local deliveries. The town had no gas stations. He couldn’t imagine why the tanker was out here—or how it would get out now that it had reached a dead end. The road wasn’t wide enough for turning around.
Apparently not noticing the obstruction until he drove past the post office on the curve, the driver slammed his brakes into a grinding squeal. A flock of escaped chickens flew up from the roadway, hitting his windshield and bouncing off.
Distracted by the chickens, the truck driver veered to his right—in the opposite direction of the café for a change. The semi cab’s forward motion slowed, but on the hill, the tank behind it had a momentum of its own.
Flint had seen trucks jackknife before, and his heart lodged in his throat. He dived down the mound, caught Jo’s arm, and all but threw her toward the café on his way out to the street. Oblivious to anything but her confrontation with the Mercedes couple, Amy remained where she was, arguing heatedly. Flint dashed into the street as the semi’s brakes ground to a halt. He grabbed Amy, hauling her backward to the sidewalk. With Flint’s actions as warning, everyone in the street scattered.
The steel tank continued its slow slide at an angle to the stopped cab. Flint flattened Amy and Jo against the building as the trailer’s wheels hit an obstacle—not inches from the fire truck and the Mercedes.
The heavy load of liquid sloshing inside the tank didn’t stop as neatly.
The trailer tilted. Screams of warning split the air. The driver jumped from the cab just as the tank tore loose and toppled—straight onto the Mercedes and the fire truck.
Unlike the movies, flames didn’t soar dramatically into the air. Instead, in an anticlimactic hiss, brown liquid dribbled from the busted seams of the tank where it had dented upon impact. The drips increased to a steady flow as the tank settled into the fire truck ladder. Within moments, the brown goo reached the Mercedes roof, trickled down its windshield, and created a river over its hood to the street.
A white hen squawked, flew up to the Mercedes hood, and was quickly coated in sticky brown. Her cackles drew more of her feathery friends.
Shaken, Flint wiped his brow. Jo stood beside him, and he wrapped his arm around her without thinking. She’d donned a halter top that didn’t cover her much better than the nightgown, but he was grateful for the warm flesh he grasped. His imagination had envisioned explosions and rolling balls of flame, and terror had struck down deep in his soul.
“Adrenaline rush,” she murmured, recalling the night of the boulder when she’d said the same, and they’d ended up in bed. Flint wished he’d gone up in her loft last night and shared that bed. He was starting to think that life in this damned town was too short to deny themselves pleasure. He’d carry her upstairs right now except he feared the building would collapse before they reached the top.
“What is that slime?” he asked, seeking a more suitable direction for his straying thoughts and lighting on the Perfect Couple. They hovered on the sidelines, staring in dismay at their shiny car disappearing under a river of brown syrup and a flock of feathers.
“Molasses,” Amy gasped from Jo’s other side, holding her hand over her mouth.
Flint couldn’t decide whether she was holding back laughter or tears.
“For the cookie plant down by the mill,” Jo explained.
Molasses? Tacky brown hens strutted up and down the street, tracking goo and feathers from the Mercedes to the flying pig before the full impact of this made-for-TV drama bypassed his terror and hit his funny bone.
Molasses! Holy shit. Flint had to chew back a shout of laughter. Molasses and doughnuts and chickens and rocks. If the Man Upstairs was trying to tell him something, he’d was doing it with a wicked sense of humor.
A chicken squawked and leaped from the Mercedes to Evan’s head as he inspected the damage.
Jo giggled. Amy chuckled. And before Flint could warn them about inappropriate behavior, they fell into each other’s arms and roared until tears ran down their cheeks.
Flint bit his cheek and kept a straight face as the tall blond guy wiped the hen off his hair, then came toward them looking as if he’d chewed sour grapes for breakfast. Sour grapes with molasses dressing. A rumble of laughter started inside his belly, even though he had to agree with the guy stalking toward them.
“This isn’t funny, Amaranth,” Evan said furiously, wiping at his face and hair with his handkerchief, while the sisters broke up and laughed louder. “Without the profit from that shipment, we won’t be able to make next month’s payroll.”
Amaranth? Flint tried to concentrate on the ludicrous, but Amy’s laughter suddenly dried up and Jo’s grip transferred to his bare arm, warning of worse to come.
“Work some overtime and put out a new shipment,” Amy suggested. “Call in some of the people you laid off. They’re all good workers. They can do it. One truckload shouldn’t shut down the mill.”
Shut down the mill.
Trying to ignore the growing pain in his gut, Flint glanced around. He wasn’t the only one who had heard Evan. Others had eased closer. Lips tightened. Women wept. Work-worn hands balled into fists.
“Those were our samples.” Evan flung his arms wide to encompass the stacks of bravely rescued fabric. “Next year’s orders are based on them.”
The rich colors suddenly looked soiled and sad beneath his disparaging gesture.
“We can’t sell what we can’t show.” Without a word of comfort to his distraught wife, Evan stalked up the sidewalk, past his stunned audience, in the direction of the parking lot. The woman he’d arrived with fell into step with him.
“He’s taking your car,” Jo muttered. “I hope you got that title signed.”
“Josh spilled juice in the front seat this morning.” Wiping her eyes, Amy hiccupped and put on a brave face to match Jo’s. “Lurid Linda will have to sit on the wet spot.”
Flint decided then and there that he didn’t want to get on the wrong side of the sisters and their subversive attitude. Using Jo’s method of rationalization, Flint figured that confronting the Sanderson sisters not only came under the heading of Life’s Too Short, but started a whole new column of Dare At Your Own Risk.
***
Joella slipped into Flint’s office, out of the cacophony in the dining room. The café had alwa
ys been the town gathering place. Despite the lack of window and door, things hadn’t changed.
“You have company,” she said softly to the man slumped in Charley’s battered chair.
Flint had washed up in her apartment and donned clothes from his duffle bag after the bulldozer and tow trucks had finished their work. He looked reasonably clean, although tired and dejected as he jotted a note on the pad he kept by the telephone. She wanted to rub his neck and whisper sweet nothings in his ear and make the world go away, but the world was pounding on their door.
It looked as if he’d been making telephone calls rather than just sulking as she’d feared. Every time she wanted to nail him as a typical male, the kind to whom she was immune, he caught her by surprise and impressed her.
He barely glanced up while he flipped the cards in his Rolodex. “It sounds like the whole town is out there already. Which part is company?”
“The family part?” She hugged her elbows, uncertain of his reaction. It was late in the day, but it would have taken his family hours to drive all the way up from Charlotte, bypass the roadblock, and travel to Knoxville to come in the back way.
Flint laid down his pen and rubbed his wrinkled brow, not looking at her. “Do you think it’s too late to go back to being a badass guitar-picker?”
That had been her question from the first, and she didn’t think either of them had the answer. “Your decision, boss, but your kids are looking pretty worried.”
That got him out of his chair. “They brought the boys? Jeez Louise, why the hell did they do that?”
“Because they were anxious about you?” She didn’t think Flint heard as he pasted on a facsimile of a happy face and raced past her.
“Did you see the pictures in the news?” he was asking jovially as Jo trailed out behind him. “I think we even made CNN.”
He grabbed Johnnie by the shoulder for a hug and tousled Adam’s wavy chestnut hair. His customers were trying to keep a polite distance, but Jo knew they could hear everything that was said. Unlike Evan with his cowardly retreat, Flint stood tall and strong in the face of disaster, and his hearty response relieved worried frowns around the room, including Jo’s—even though she knew his casual assurance was a fraud. She recognized brazen when she saw it. Tears of deep down understanding welled in her eyes.
“The boys insisted that we come,” Martha Clinton was saying. Her tone held its usual disapproval, but this time, Jo could tell it also hid a well of concern. “I told them we’d just be in the way.”
“No, of course not. I’m glad you’re here.” Flint ushered them toward a vacant booth. “The electric company turned off the utilities until we could get the building inspected, but Dave loaned us a generator so we can make coffee and keep the refrigerator running. I’m afraid the doughnuts are gone.”
“We saw them all over the road on TV,” Johnnie said with more excitement than Jo had ever seen him display. “And you were digging up a mountain of dirt.” A note of pride crept into his pre-adolescent voice.
“Hoss had his video camera in his trunk.” Jo set fresh coffee on the table for his parents and milk for the boys. They made faces, but she noticed they drank it. “And then the local news people sent up a helicopter. It’s been a real circus.” None of the news stations had mentioned the town’s predicament, though. The official announcement of the mill’s closing hadn’t been made yet.
“It looks like the structure is still sound,” Floyd Clinton said, studying the gaping holes in the front wall.
“It’s not safe,” Martha said firmly. “Flint needs to come home with us. That road out there is a death trap. It’s just a matter of time before one of those monster trucks plows—”
“The town has been here over a hundred years, Martha,” Floyd interrupted. “The building has withstood flood and blizzards. It can tolerate a little molasses and rock.”
The boys snickered. “Did you see that Mercedes?” Adam asked of no one in particular. “With the chicken stuck on top of it?”
Jo patted Flint’s arm and left him to reassure his family. She’d hoped he would be spending the night with her, but it looked like he’d be leaving. It was a good thing they hadn’t gotten involved. He deserved better than a town on the verge of bankruptcy and a business that couldn’t survive.
That relieved her guilt over suing him. Flint didn’t have anything left to lose. Randy would have to cough up his cash instead. With wicked triumph, she decided to sign the papers and take the envelope to the post office first chance she got.
“Hey, Jo.” A table of customers waved her over. “Is Flint keeping the place open?”
Jo glanced at the bare wall the pretty plates had once adorned, and an aching sadness crept over her. They’d worked so hard to build up the café. She hated to see it go. At least the pewter paneling had stayed up. “I don’t know. Guess it depends.”
On the insurance. The mill. His kids. She wouldn’t be a factor in the decision. It was time she started looking for a better-paying job anyway. It wasn’t as if she expected the lawsuit to produce results anytime soon, if at all.
Dave from the hardware joined them. “I can get more plate glass up here tomorrow. The supply store has some real fancy doors that would look good.”
“Flint would have to borrow the money,” she reminded him gently.
Everyone knew what that meant. If the mill closed, Flint would have no customers and no way to pay his debts.
“I’ve got an old door out in my barn,” George Bob offered. “He can have it for nothing. When the insurance check comes in, he can use the money on something else.”
“If we build a frame, I’ve got some old sashes that might fit,” someone else offered. “It would look purty with them windowpanes up there instead of all that bare glass.”
Jo’s naturally ebullient spirits began to lift as she pictured a cottage look for the front. “We could paint the outside a pretty salmon and put in a window box with geraniums!”
She felt Flint’s muscular build behind her before he dropped a big hand on her shoulder. She caught her breath as desire rocketed through her. How could she think about sex when the world had just turned upside-down?
Flint’s confident voice calmed her flutters into a different kind of longing.
“No salmon. No geraniums. No ferns,” he said firmly. “I’m sending my family up to Knoxville for the night. I’m gonna have to board up the place, folks. Hate to break up a party—”
She didn’t want him to go. Anxiously, Jo cut him off. “Amy has tons of room. Let me give her a call. Company will keep her from killing Evan.”
Heart pounding with foolish hope, she retreated to his office, leaving Flint to discuss plywood with the men. By the time she’d confirmed the invitation and returned to the dining room, Flint had his family on their feet, prepared to leave. He wore a mask of resolve that Jo feared was death to her pitiful hopes.
“We want to stay, Dad,” Adam was protesting. “There’s nothing to do at home.”
Jo lifted her eyebrows in surprise and kept her mouth shut at this turnabout.
“It’s going to be hard work, guys,” Flint warned. “I’ll be roughing it up here.”
He was staying? He was staying! Jo almost did a jig of delight. “Amy said you’re all welcome to stay with her,” she intruded quickly before his parents could argue. “Evan had to go down to Charlotte, and she’d love the company.” She crossed her fingers and prayed. If Flint’s family would help instead of carping…
Floyd overrode his wife’s objections. “If you don’t mind, Joella, we’d like to accept that invitation. It was a long drive up here. Flint, if you’ll show us the way—”
“I’ll let Jo do that.” With a smoldering glance that nearly incinerated Jo and left her in ashes, Flint took his mother’s arm and started the procession out the door. “I’ll be staying here tonight.”
He was staying here tonight? Did that mean he wanted to pound her into the ground for her interference or… Jo didn
’t dare let her hopes ride too high. A man who could turn her to ashes in a single look was explosive property.
“We can stay, too,” Johnnie said eagerly. “There are still news trucks out there. We can show them—”
Flint chuckled and gently clipped him on the ear. “They’ll all be going home to supper shortly, and you’ll be complaining the rest of night about sleeping on hard floors. Get all the sleep you can. I’m putting you to work first thing in the morning.”
Jo sucked down a lump in her throat at the sight of Flint’s affection for his sons. She’d never known a father, but she was certain Flint was an example of a good one, if he could hold a job that kept him home. All this time, she’d been looking at Flint as a piece of sugar pie, yummy to look at but not good for the health. Watching him with his kids produced unsettling perspectives that she wasn’t prepared to entertain. Sex, she understood. Anything more… Maybe she ought to push him at Sally. Sally would love to have kids.
“Will you come up after us later?” Adam asked.
Jo was already out the door, car keys in hand, when she stopped with his family and waited for his reply.
Catching Jo’s eye, Flint shook his head regretfully at his son’s question. “Sorry. Maybe I’ll run up for a bit to see you settled in when I’m done here, but with all that molasses on the street, I have to stay here tonight and keep the bears out.”
“Bears? You have bears up here?” Adam asked in a tone that showed more excitement than fear.
The boys’ excited clamor drowned out Martha’s protests, and a warm heat stole around Jo’s foolish heart. Bears were a Bunyan-sized excuse.
He was staying here. For her.
Twenty
Jo had her hair scrubbed, blow-dried, upswept and dangling in perfect little curls on her neck while waiting for Flint to return from supper at Amy’s. When she’d come back from showing his family to her sister’s earlier, he’d already had the front of the café boarded up and had washed and dressed.
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