It wasn’t until she let her voice rise and ring out with “He might not always be my friend, but he’ll always be my dad,” that Flint nearly sank to his knees in shock.
She was singing his sons’ song. She had stayed here so he could hear what they had written. He choked and halted near the stage as he tried to absorb his sons’ sentiments from the song. They didn’t think he was a full time jerk, the man who’d driven away their mother and deserted them? His kids were speaking through their song as he once had, showing him that music could be a gift when it was used right.
Johnnie shyly hobbled up to him. Flint draped his arm over his younger son’s shoulder and hugged him. He wasn’t a crying man, but his eyes were wet as Jo belted out the chorus one more time. Seeing Adam hovering behind the band’s guitar player, Flint beckoned for him to join them. Looking proud and embarrassed at the same time, Adam took his place on Flint’s left. Tall, with his dark hair falling in his face, he’d chosen a black sling for his wrist and looked like a pirate.
Flint knew all about meter and rhyme and market niches, but all the prosaics of the business flew out of his head, leaving only the thought that he was hearing the most beautiful, heart-rending piece he’d ever heard in his life. He may have done most everything wrong, but his sons were willing to forgive. If he died right this minute, it would be as a proud and happy man.
But he didn’t intend to die anytime soon, not when he’d just been offered the chance to have the sun and the moon and the stars. Instead of dodging the difficult and hiding his hurt behind attitude, he had to take the risk of falling flat on his mug in front of friends and family and an entire town.
He sure the hell was man enough to do what a man ought to do, no matter how high the danger that Jo would punch him in the nose and walk away.
This time, he wouldn’t give up what he loved without a fight.
***
Jo sobbed out the last note. Flint looked so stricken standing there in his Sunday hat, with his arms wrapped around his boys that she wanted to break down in tears and turn back the hands of time. The three of them looked good together, stalwart and strong, despite the cast and sling.
She smiled a little at that. Boys would be boys. She understood that just fine. But grown men now, that was another kettle of fish. She was just a wee bit shaky at her presumption.
She had no idea what was going through Flint’s head. She didn’t know if he had any notion of what she was telling him. So far, everyone had told her she was crazy.
And she was. She was so crazy in love that she was willing to risk it all, all over again. She had grits for brains. And a heart that desperately needed to love.
The music ended, and she didn’t know what to do. She’d said everything she knew how to say, in the only way she knew how to say it. She didn’t have any more brazen left in her. The audience was clapping and laughing and Flint was still standing there, staring at her as if she might disappear at any minute.
Like an ice cream cone. Or a miracle.
She wiped her eyes and smiled big at that, and he covered the last few steps between them in the blink of an eye. Hopping up on stage, he shoved the mike back in its stand without once tearing his gaze from her. Mesmerized, she tried to take him in all at once—the tired lines around his eyes, the bristles on his jaw, the tousled hair falling from beneath his hat, the smile that spread wider than hers as he hauled her into his embrace.
Jo wrapped her arms around Flint’s neck and clung, weeping into his broad shoulder as if she were a big baby. She didn’t ever want to be parted from him again.
“You’re the craziest woman I’ve ever met,” he whispered in her ear, “and I’m never letting you out of my sight. Life would be hell without you, so I guess I’ll have to follow wherever you go. Can I be your stagehand?”
She laughed and hiccupped and buried her face against his shirt. “I don’t want a stagehand. It was awful out there without you. Please don’t ever leave me alone like that again.”
He hugged her tighter, rocking her in front of an audience that had grown unusually quiet. “I don’t want to, baby, but that life out there means I can’t always follow you. But I love you, and I’ll keep at you until you’re ready to give up the glitz and settle down and marry a tame respectable businessman like me.”
She laughed again, sounding a little stronger this time. Lifting her head from his shoulder, she poured kisses over his face. “You’re about as tame as a grizzly after a long winter’s sleep. Don’t treat me like a dumb waitress, Flynn Clinton. I know a good man when I see one, and I know the difference between glitter and gold. And I’m not saying anything else in front of a whole audience of Nosy Parkers except I want a fern in the front window. I don’t know how to turn off a microphone.”
Laughter rang out behind them, and there was a hurried scuffling of feet and chairs. Flint turned around and glared, and their audience began to scatter. He glanced down at his sons who watched him wide-eyed. “Go get some rope. We’re hog-tying and keeping her.”
The kids and the remains of the crowd whooped in agreement.
“Say yes, Jo,” a voice that sounded like Hoss’s rang out. “You two would sure look purty up on stage together!”
“You better treat her right, Flint,” Dot cried out over the laughter, “or every woman in town will see you tarred and feathered!”
“And every man will be gunnin’ for your balls!” George Bob added.
Deciding he wasn’t pouring out any more of his guts for their amusement, Flint swung Jo into his arms and marched down the stage steps with her. Slim and the band struck a rowdy rendition of the wedding march. The crowd broke into yells and catcalls. Jo gasped, laughed, and grabbed his neck.
To Flint’s embarrassment, his parents stood beside the exit. His father gave him a thumbs-up. His mother looked concerned, but he understood where she was coming from now. Love and fear made a cranky combination sometimes. He’d have to hug her for her understanding some other time when he didn’t have an armful of hot woman.
With a weepy smile, his mother ushered the boys and their friends away.
Undeterred, Jo leaned back from his shoulder as he carried her up the stairs to her place. “I’m glad I don’t have an audience the first time I tell you I love you, but I expect they’ll hear it often enough after this. I love you, Flynn Clinton. What are you gonna do about it?”
“Marry you tomorrow,” he said promptly. “I can’t go shacking up with my kids around. I’m trying to atone for my mistakes, you know.”
He grew serious then, and Jo knew what was coming. She pressed her fingers over his lips before he could say it. “I’m being totally selfish,” she said. “I figure I might or might not find fame and fortune in the big world. But I’m a grown-up, and I understand that even if I find it, fame and fortune can’t keep me from being lonely and heartbroken. I’m a girl who needs her family. So I guess I’ll just have to find some other way of helping Mama and Amy because I want to stay here with you and your boys, if that’s okay with you.”
Flint crushed her in his arms and shoved open her unlocked door with his shoulder. “I’ll be there to help you take care of them. We’ll make beautiful music together. And you’ll still be rich and famous. You have the talent, and I’ll see that you get the recognition you deserve, if I have to build a studio in the back room to do it.”
Catching his face in her hands, Jo sealed their promises with a kiss.
Epilogue
“Will I have to find scaffolding to hang your glittery things from the rafters?” Flint asked, gazing up at the roof of his cabin from the pillow-strewn wooden floor, feeling a contentment he’d never experienced in his fast-lane life.
It was the last day of their honeymoon, and his sons were still with his parents. He and Jo had accepted a wedding gift of a weekend at Asheville’s famed Grove Park Inn and Spa, but Jo had been more than happy to slip back to his place for the rest of the week. They’d turned off the telephones and hidden the vehicl
es and pretended they were in the mountains of Colorado.
“I like sparkle,” she admitted in reply to his question, then held up the tiny diamond on her ring finger so it caught the light from the front windows.
Flint had caught her playing with the sparkles off the tiny chip a dozen times this past week, and he’d had to grin at the deep down warmth her joy brought him. He could have given her a great big piece of glass that shimmered the same way, and Jo would have been equally happy. But he wanted that ring on her finger to be as real as his feelings for her.
“You didn’t have to buy this, you know,” she told him earnestly. “You had me hooked without bling.”
“I used to wear a diamond bigger than that in my ear. It’s worth a little debt to give you glitter. Maybe I’ll buy you a bigger one each year—especially if I don’t have to climb on scaffolding to hang Christmas balls.”
She laughed, and the happiness of that sound tingled right down to the place he thought he’d just exhausted. His new wife was as creative in her lovemaking as she was in her songwriting. He’d need to build a separate wing on the cabin if he bought it—just so they’d have some privacy. She inspired him in more ways than one.
“You bought Myrtle, so I don’t need ornaments, and I’ll hold you to that big diamond when we’re rich,” she agreed with a husky chuckle that said she didn’t believe or care if that day came. “For now, we’ll just call our company Diamond Records and each song we write will be our sparkle.” With the grace of a woman well-pleasured, Jo used her bare foot to nudge the guitar they’d been playing out of harm’s way and drew her fingers along a sensitive area of his chest.
Sprawled on the pillows Jo had brought from her place, Flint just grinned at the high beams above him, content to have the woman he loved in his arms, more than content to have her naked. “I like this business of being your manager. If I’m not touring, I can devote a lot more time to the money end than I could before.”
Jo snuggled into his arms and did stimulating things to a part of him that would make a good flagpole about now.
“I like it even better that writing music means we can be here for the boys instead of traveling,” she added. “I can’t wait until you propose the idea of a Music Barn to the Chamber. Just imagine us up on that stage, singing our songs together. With your connections, we can call in the best talent around.”
Flint finally lowered his gaze to Jo. Her assets were definitely in that active brain of hers. “If the world wants to hear you sing, they’ll have to come here. I like that just fine.”
“And hear you play,” she reminded him, her eyes smoking with the same lust filling his. “We’ll get your hand fixed. The restaurant could…”
“Don’t get too carried away,” he warned. “If the town can’t buy the mill…”
The sound of a car pulling up in the drive ended that negative thought. Jo shot straight out of his arms and toward the stairs. “That has to be your parents! They’re a day early. I can’t let them see me…”
Flint doubted his parents would let the kids out of their sight a day early, but she was gone before he could argue. Tugging jeans over his not-yet flagging pole, he peered through the big front window to check his driveway and snorted.
Jo’s sister and lawyer were out there. Amy had produced the most spectacular wedding cake a reception could ever need, so he couldn’t yell at her. Not too loudly, anyway, or she’d bring down his ceiling fan. She was still a mite nervous around him.
Elise, on the other hand, was smiling like a malicious Madonna, knowing damned well she was interrupting their last precious moments of privacy, and anticipating volcanic reactions. He’d have to be extra sweet just to throw her off-balance.
He buttoned his jeans and shrugged into his T-shirt before they reached the porch.
***
Pulling her hair back in a clip, Jo ran down the stairs in time to catch Flint opening the front door. She’d pulled on shorts and one of Flint’s shirts so she’d at least be covered, but the sight of Amy and Elise made her want to throw things. She loved them both, but they brought the world into their idyll before she was ready.
“This had better be good!” she shouted at them from the stairs. She was still tingling in anticipation of their interrupted lovemaking. She’d never get enough of Flint’s kisses. To her good fortune, he was generous with them. And with compliments. She’d never heard a man invent so many flattering phrases—all of which would eventually be included in her lyrics because they played like music in her head. For once in her life, she had a real man, and she meant to take care of him.
Elise waved legal file folders, and Amy held up a box of muffins.
“We come bearing gifts of peace,” Amy said as Jo landed in front of her. “We need signatures before Elise takes the papers back tonight.”
“Which papers?” Realizing she was starved, thinking she couldn’t take real good care of a man if she never fed him, Jo grabbed a muffin and handed the box to Flint. “We have to rely on Amy for food, so I guess we’d better play nice.”
He winked. “You can feed my hunger anytime. Amy’s baking is just dessert.”
Jo wiggled under the intensity of his gaze, tingling in places that said the honeymoon wasn’t over. “I do whip cream real well,” she murmured suggestively.
“We’ll let the two of you get back to your games in a minute. But if you want money to play them with, you need to sign the papers settling the suit with Randy.” Elise handed her the top folder. “The record company has agreed to advance Jo the same amount Flint received as payment out of the album’s future earnings, so you’ll have a nice fat check coming.”
Jo shrieked and hugged Elise’s neck. The elegant lawyer bore her embrace with fortitude and waited until Jo moved on to hug Amy before handing Flint the next folder.
“These papers transfer the Stardust into a company owned equally by the two of you. They include the bylaws and so forth if you intend to expand the business into songwriting and music management. You need to talk to a tax lawyer about copyrights.”
“I wish you would set up an office down here,” Flint said, flipping through the file. “We’ll be needing someone like you around.”
Elise shrugged. “I’ve been spending so much time here, I might make it my second home. Think the town could use a new lawyer?”
Amy nodded decisively. “A woman lawyer, yes. But you’ll have to do more than contract law. The women here need a lawyer who will respect them.”
Ashamed of her happiness in the face of her sister’s heartache, Jo hugged her sister harder. “Evan might come around, honey. Just let him see what a cold hard world it is without the ones who love you.”
A stubborn look that Jo had never seen before set Amy’s lips in a straight line. “I’m saying Mama needs a lawyer who can take her disability case to court. I’ve got my own lawyer already. Evan wants me to sell the roof over the kids’ heads! I wouldn’t take that sucker back now if you gift wrapped him.”
Flint squeezed Jo’s waist, easing the emotional outburst. “I’ll steer both of you and your mama away from wrapping paper,” he drawled, “so you’re not too busy tying up Evan to hold down the restaurant. Are you ladies planning on helping out for a while?”
“They’re my posse,” Jo declared, escaping his hold to slip her hands through Amy and Elise’s arms. “You sure you’re ready to take on a woman with a posse?” She tossed her head and met his gaze with laughter and defiance.
Flint grinned and kissed her forehead. “Baby, I know what I like.”
Whistling “Chantilly Lace,” he grabbed her waist again and danced her away from the others and into the kitchen where they could spread out the papers that would seal their future for the next thousand years or so.
Jo scrawled her signature binding her financially to Flint with the same kind of joy and satisfaction that she’d felt on their wedding day—the satisfaction of trust.
She’d found a man who was far better than fame and ric
hes—a man so cock-sure of himself that she couldn’t shake him if she tried. She probably wouldn’t give up trying, just to watch Flint come after her with that arrogant grin of his, but she figured their badass days were over. Respectable business owners were supposed to act like pillars of the community—in public, at least.
Jo glanced up the stairway leading to the bedroom she now shared with Flint. In private, they could be anyone they wanted. She had lots of creative plans for the future. One of them was to hang guitars on that big blank wall so they could make music and love together whenever the spirit took them.
She planned on making that happen real often.
Sweet Home Carolina
Patricia Rice
Sample Chapter: One
“Take that, Dr. Evil!” Amy Warren pointed a wooden spoon at the currently offending appliance—her toaster oven. A small gray cloud of smoke swirled upward from its frying innards, filling her stainless steel kitchen with the acrid stench of burnt bread.
The microwave was already erratically blinking error messages, and the clock on the stove had permanently hovered on twelve since the day Evan had driven off with his tall, slender and gorgeous boss. But she didn’t need either appliance to bake her special croutons.
“I’ll zap your sorry behind into the ether and back again,” she muttered, referring to her uncanny ability to royally screw up electrical appliances.
But it was really Evan she’d like to zap into infinity. How predictable—the machine didn’t respond to her dire warnings any better than the man. The toaster oven still smoked.
“If I could fix anything, I’d fix my damned life.” With disgust, Amy used the wooden spoon to yank the oven’s cord out of the socket.
The wall phone rang and Amy grabbed it, praying it was her Dr. Evil-Ex telling her he would be early and had time to pick up a new toaster on the way up the mountain.
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