He had exactly one hour before he had to step out in front of the audience and introduce the first act. He didn’t have time to think about how it would feel walking out there without his guitar.
He just knew he wouldn’t look half as bad as Randy would with a black eye and split lip. He smiled in satisfaction at the memory of Jo’s sucker punch. If he had to fall in love at a ripe old age, at least it was with a woman who could stand up for herself.
***
“You’re the man, Flint.” Dave smacked him on the back as Flint straightened his tie and arranged his low-crowned Stetson prior to making his stage entrance. “Make us a fortune out there.” He jumped down from the narrow piece of makeshift stage behind the curtain, leaving Flint alone with his Nashville cronies.
“Go get ’em, boy,” Travis said in his guttural growl. “Make ’em rowdy.”
Travis had showed up to check out the stage conditions—and probably to check out Flint’s chord hand. Flint didn’t begrudge his old friend the curiosity. He did begrudge him the company he’d brought along though.
“It’s only nine in the morning and the house is full,” RJ murmured in disgust. “Don’t these people ever sleep?”
He’d arrived backstage in full regalia: skin-tight leather pants, white silk shirt open to the navel, and ten-gallon hat. Someone had applied enough make-up on his black eye for a bus-load of church ladies, Flint noticed.
RJ had already thrown ten fits when he’d discovered his place on the line-up, so he damned well knew he wasn’t on until after all the big acts played. Flint didn’t want to know why the scoundrel had showed up early.
If he wasn’t so worried about Jo’s absence, he would have been delighted to anticipate her reaction to her ex’s appearance. If he was really lucky, she’d find a bucket of pig shit and christen the bastard.
Except for worrying about Jo, Flint was primed to run out in front of the audience, to hear the applause and feel the lights one last time. He’d never needed the glory. It had always been about the music. But a farewell appearance would ease the parting.
The band out front played the cue for Flint’s entrance.
The kind of scream that made a father’s blood curdle erupted behind him.
Instead of running on stage, Flint swung toward the backstage area to locate his boys. A creak followed by more screams froze him in his tracks, and he anxiously scanned the makeshift setting, catching the sway of the scaffolding for the backlights just before it collapsed in a cloud of dust and a crash of timber—with Johnnie and Adam in the middle.
Shoving his wireless microphone at Travis, Flint ran down the stage steps in a blur, not distinguishing anything except the crumpled figures of his sons beneath broken two-by-fours and fractured lamps. They’d had cameras. In a blinding flash of hindsight, he knew what they’d done. They’d climbed the scaffolding to catch his stage entrance. He didn’t have enough curses in him to cover his stupidity in not predicting this.
Panicked shouts and the press of people didn’t register as Flint bullied his way through the crowd to kneel beside Johnnie, whose leg was bent at an angle he knew wasn’t right. Adam lay unconscious yards away. Using all the prayers he thought he’d forgotten, he cradled his frightened youngest in his arms and shouted for an ambulance.
He was more terrified than Johnnie. Desperately, Flint wished Jo would get here now. He needed her to check on Adam. He couldn’t be in two places at once.
Sally rushed up to hold Adam’s head as he’d wanted Jo to do.
Flint thought his insides would crush with the pain of knowing Jo would never be there when they needed her. Sucking in a deep breath, he nodded curtly at Sally and waited for help to arrive.
Travis came down to lay a heavy hand on Flint’s shoulders. “Let the medics handle it, boy. You got a show out there and a lot of people counting on you.”
Flint glared at his good buddy. “They’re not counting on me. They’re counting on you. I’m damned well not leaving my boys.”
If he’d learned anything at all in his life, it was that the show would always go on without him.
Twenty-nine
Cursing the late night and the unaccustomed alcohol, cursing the alarm that hadn’t gone off on one of the most important days of her life, cursing the button that fell off her cuff and hair that wouldn’t stay in its damned clips, Jo parked her aging Fiesta in the far back field of the mill. Still fighting with the clips in her hair, with one sleeve dangling open, she dodged through a sea of parked cars, crossing trampled grass and cow patties toward the pounding rhythm of a band. She was beyond late.
Why was it that everything always went wrong at the worst possible times? She’d planned this outfit for weeks, the silky cream shirt with the flirty collar, the suede miniskirt to match Flint’s suede jacket, the knee-high suede boots with stout heels made for walking because she knew damned well she wouldn’t sit for twelve hours. She wanted to make an impression on Flint’s Nashville friends. And on Flint, she wasn’t too proud to admit. And now the damned cuff wouldn’t fasten, and she didn’t have time to sew on the missing button. She couldn’t even get the safety pin in it with one hand.
She’d tried calling Flint from the apartment to say she was on her way, but she’d only got his voice mail. She’d be there before he bothered checking messages.
Her heart beat frantically. She needed a chance to talk to Flint. By now, he probably thought she’d run off with RJ and the Nashville cats.
Maybe that’s what he wanted her to do—get out of his life.
The ghost of an old song whispered—too late to say you’re sorry.
She didn’t intend to be sorry. Through all the drinking and thinking, she’d made up her mind about how she’d handle this sue-or-settle thing. She hadn’t told anyone yet. She still had time to change her mind. She didn’t know if Flint would appreciate her decision. She was still scared witless that she was doing this wrong, but she knew what she wanted. If she was wrong, well, it wouldn’t be the first time.
But right now, she didn’t want to miss the boys’ big chance. She glanced at her watch. The Buzzards should be starting their set. She’d listened to them play the songs of the finalists all week and had recognized one. Flint would be so proud.
Discovering the ambulance behind the barn set her pulse on fire. Mama?
She jerked open the employee entrance to the mill building and almost slammed into a stretcher on its way out. Holding the door, she stepped aside, and her heart stopped beating as she recognized Adam’s pale face. His eyes were closed.
She located Flint holding Johnnie’s hand as his son was carried out on a second stretcher. The boy was trying hard not to cry but released a pained sound when the cot bumped over the sill.
Flint caught sight of her and relief flooded his face. Jo’s heart did an inappropriate dance of joy. She’d never thought to see the day that he needed her.
“Thank God!” he cried. “Get out there and stand in for me. RJ is chomping at the bit for being kicked down the line-up. Keep him the hell away from the mike, or he’ll take over the whole CD.”
Caught by surprise, Jo blinked. She had no clue what he was talking about. Her only concern was for those two boys and Flint. “Wait a minute, I’m going with you!” she yelled as he hurried past without looking back.
She started to run after them, but then realized from prior experience that there wouldn’t be room in the ambulance. She’d left her car out in the back field. She glanced around, hoping to find someone with a car closer. Before she could act, Dave raced up with clipboard in hand.
“Joella, get the hell out there and do something!” he whispered harshly, grabbing her elbow and dragging her inside.
“Do what?” she protested in confusion, fighting him off and trying to escape. “I need to go with Flint. What happened? Will the boys be all right?”
“Broken bones, the medic said. Amy’s gone for her car to follow them. We need you here.” With panic clearly written in his eyes
, Dave tugged with more strength than she’d realized the older man possessed. “It’s going to hell out there, Jo. You know these guys. Make them behave before they ruin everything. The whole town is counting on this concert.” He shoved her up the stairs toward the break in the curtains at the stage entrance.
The stage entrance. With terror for the boys already shredding her nerves, Jo stared through the gap in the curtains to the bright lights bouncing off the stage. She hastily backed away from the sight of an enormous sea of strangers on the other side. “What the devil are you—?”
Before she finished her question, Randy’s singing voice echoed over the top of the Buzzard’s raucous music. “Oh my word. What’s he doing out there?”
“Randy took over the minute Flint turned his back. Why in hell isn’t he singing the song the band is playing? The audience will be walking out any minute. He’s ruining everything.”
Randy, on stage—with the band that had every reason to hate his guts. Had Randy had anything to do with whatever had happened to the kids? Jo couldn’t believe that. He was a selfish jerk, but not a monster.
All the scary things that might be happening in that ambulance frightened her more than the bright lights, the audience, and the testosterone overload on stage ruining everything. She needed to be with Flint.
Amy was with him. Probably Sally, too. Flint hadn’t wanted her with him. She wanted to cry, but she was shaking too badly. If she couldn’t have Flint, then she’d made the wrong decision last night, and her future was out there on that stage. The town’s future was out there as well. She gagged on a swell of nausea. Had she been taking the easy road?
“You’re the only one who can sweet talk them into behaving. Get out there Jo.” Without giving her further time to question, Dave shoved her past the curtain.
Jo stumbled over a warped board into view of the entire barn filled with a standing-room-only crowd. The lights blinded her, and she froze, trapped in a time warp when hoots and catcalls had shamed her. She wanted to fall down and crawl out of sight before she threw up again.
“It’s a tired old love song,” Randy crooned into the mike on center stage.
Those were her words. She was hearing her song on stage for the very first time since she’d figured out she’d actually written a song—and Randy and the band were crucifying her baby.
Randy was singing Flint’s haunting version of her song, while the band was playing the line one my mammy used to play, in time to the original rocking composition the Buzzards had helped create before Randy deserted them.
Flint had given Slim and the band the new music. They knew they were playing the wrong tune. The Buzzards were getting their revenge by screwing with Randy’s head. At any other time, Jo would have laughed and enjoyed the joke, just as the local people in the audience who knew her songs were doing. They’d seen her entrance. They thought Randy was part of some prank she was perpetrating on them.
That was her song they were mangling!
Not only her baby, her ticket to fame and fortune, but the future of the town.
They were ruining the festival. She couldn’t let Randy’s ego bring down her friends and family, not if she had to crawl out there and heave her guts across someone’s loafers. Flint had made it clear that she couldn’t help Adam and Johnnie, but Dave was right. She knew how to make Randy and the boys behave.
Flint thought she could do this. He was counting on her. His future was riding on this concert, too. Those spotlights out there weren’t on her—they were on Northfork. Hell, looked at in the clear light of nausea, her whole life had been a rehearsal leading up to this. What would Erin Brockovich have done?
Sweat puddled under Jo’s arms, but the fury of righteousness shoved terror aside. The image of upchucking on Randy’s snakeskin boots carried her forward. With her loosely pinned curls already falling down, she staggered into the lights with Ratfink in her gun sights and the need for justice providing momentum.
She was taking Randy down. Randy was every damned man who’d ever hurt her, starting with her father, right through the yahoos in Atlanta, up to and not stopping at the unknown clerk who’d denied her mother disability, and Evan for deserting Amy. She would show them all that they couldn’t keep a good Sanderson down.
The band cheerfully switched to Flint’s melody as soon as Jo reached center stage. The familiar tune supplied her with a backbone when the spotlight hit her. Instead of freezing or staggering, she shot the Buzzards a glare that should have mowed them down like an AK47. Slim waved. She ought to barf on his shoes first. Randy was a closer target.
Turning from the Buzzards to study the audience waiting outside the cone of white light, Jo swallowed the sour taste in her throat, thankful she hadn’t had time for breakfast. Randy’s singing had finally fallen into rhythm with the band, but Flint was right. He couldn’t do justice to her music. And she was standing here like a shaky statue, afraid to grab the moment and run with it.
Her mama had told her she belonged here in Northfork, where people knew her, that she was pretending she was bigger than she was to want more. She’d already made a fool of herself twice trying to prove her mama wrong. She ought to run after Flint, prostrate herself at his feet, and pray he would take a silly waitress who wrote foolish rhymes.
But then she’d never know if she could have been more, a grown woman who could have saved the concert, and made the fortune to help her family.
Frozen in the spotlight, she could hear the audience, hear their rustle of expectation, the nervous coughs, the titters. She could crawl off now. It wasn’t as if she could do much when her mouth was so dry she couldn’t even speak.
The desperate desire to make the festival work welled up as Randy hit a flat note. They were taping everything sung here today, and he was butchering her claim to fame. Jo forced her fear so far down inside that only her hands trembled as she marched forward to snatch the mike away from Randy, who’d been blindly ignoring her entrance.
Now that she had the mike, she could either hurl or offer the audience her best sugary smile. The smile came first. The band lowered their volume.
“H-h-howdy, everybody!” she shouted, waving into the lights, doing her best to pretend she was in the coffee shop in front of friends while Randy glared. “Welcome to N-n-northfork, North Carolina,” she stammered, before closing her eyes so she couldn’t see the stage lights, “where the people are friendly and the music is crazy.”
Polite laughter agreed with her assessment. Something tight in her chest loosened, but the leers and heavy breathing still occupied the dark corners of her mind. She had to open her eyes again and do it right this time.
She could feel the sweat stains ruining her good silk shirt, but they wouldn’t be visible beneath her suede jacket. Now that she’d got the band and RJ to shut up, she lost the momentum of fury and had to search for words.
“What the hell are you doing out here, Jo?” Randy whispered, trying to recover the mike. “You’ll ruin everything.”
That was all the inspiration she needed. She held the mike tight and switched the sugary smile to him. The anger in Randy’s handsome face held her steady. If anything told her how little he regarded her, it was his inability to accept her out here with him. She’d bet her lawsuit money that with all his masculine self-confidence, Flint would have grinned and played for her without any fear of competition.
“This here’s RJ Peters, a hometown boy made good,” she simpered into the microphone. “RJ’s album will be out this month, but he ain’t anything without me.”
More laughter. Okay, she’d got this far without hurling. She had friends here. They would laugh with her, not at her. They were depending on her.
Flint was depending on her. If she thought too hard about what was happening with him and his sons, she’d scare herself even sillier, so she wouldn’t think.
“Let’s show the people how the song was meant to be sung, honey,” she oozed into the mike. She knew how to tame all that testosterone thre
atening to torch the show. She flapped her lashes and turned away from Randy to signal Slim. “Okay, boys, hit it!”
And they did, with Flint’s wonderful version of her song. She could sing this one number for him. They could do the contest next. The boys! They were supposed to sing their composition if they won. Punching down her anxiety, she belted out the song the way she had written it—the way Flint had meant it to be sung.
RJ stood there, gaping, as she let her voice soar.
Tickled that she’d stunned Mr. Big Mouth, Jo did a little dance wiggle just for him, adding a big smile so Ratfink knew what he was missing. She recognized the light in his eyes when it flicked on. Randy was a selfish turd, but not stupid. And he was still male. She flashed him a brief glimpse of her cleavage and chortled as his gaze drifted down instead of to the audience.
Satisfied that she’d showed him she was a little more than an insignificant country waitress that he could walk over, she forgot about the strangers in the audience, and sang out the joy and love she’d felt when she’d written the lyrics.
Realizing she was stealing his thunder, Randy attempted to reclaim the audience and the song. He strangled the fixed mike, glared at her, and picked up on the refrain.
Jo continued as if he wasn’t there. Her notes were higher, purer, and Randy didn’t have the talent to harmonize. She confused him by adding new words and changing the old. Caught up in her own bubble, she had the power, and inspiration flowed. Randy stumbled to keep up, and laughter tittered through the audience.
Confident that she had made the song hers again, knowing how it felt to be laughed at, Jo finally took pity on him and reined in her voice to complement his limited range. With a look of disgruntlement when he realized that she was singing down to him, Randy set the mike down and walked off.
Jo thought she heard him yell at someone offstage. Her voice was lifting to the rafters again, and she didn’t care. Remembering the night she’d sung for Flint in his cabin, how her notes had floated to some transcendental realm she might never conquer again without him, she closed her eyes and let the last bar soar.
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