Small Town Girl (17 page)

Marie spun the stool to scan the shelves of plates adorning the newly turquoise wall. "Charlie would just die if he could see this now. He hated change."

Flint winced before Jo could elbow him. A lot of people resisted change, including him. But he was learning. Of course, if Jo won the lawsuit, she could own all this. No wonder she was excited. It was kind of convenient knowing just where he stood in her eyes. Experience sure wiped the romance out of him.

"Everybody seems to like the change real fine," Jo admonished. "Dave even brought his wife over to buy some of the plates. I didn't know she collected them."

"That's because Dave is a snob but Jane is down-to-earth," Amy concluded, pulling a muffin in half and handing the pieces to the kids.

With the children settled, Amy came around to inspect the stove Flint had spent the day ripping out cabinets to install. "I could bake three batches of muffins at a time in this." She sighed with admiration and smoothed the top with her fingers, just as Jo had.

Outnumbered by women and children, Flint started feeling a little uncomfortable. He wondered if he ought to just bow out and let them chat while he returned to his office and the bills he hadn't yet paid. But Jo was wearing some mouthwatering scent that urged him to lick her all over, and he couldn't quite tear away.

She knew damned well that she fueled his flames, but she didn't seem to acknowledge the term
personal space
. She leaned against the counter beside him, her elbow poking him every so often to make a point.

He liked her proximity too well. He liked the way she included him in her family. He liked the way she thought. And he sure enough loved the way she kissed.

Flint worked his sore hand and contemplated kicking something just to show them he wasn't the teddy bear they apparently thought he was.

He didn't need a counselor to tell him that he was trying to hide from the heart-racing, gut-churning uncertainty that women called feelings.

"If we stay open in the evenings, maybe you could bring the kids in and mix up muffins for mornings," Jo suggested. "It might get crowded behind the counter, but maybe Flint could move it again." Her eyes danced with laughter as she slanted them his way.

The look clamped around his heart, and Flint had only to see the excitement in Amy's expression to know it was a done deal. Hurricane Joella had struck again.

"Would you let me bake cupcakes?" Amy asked shyly. "I mean, if you're going to have dinner customers and all, they might like dessert."

"The ones with the fudge goo inside!" Jo demanded, looking up to Flint for agreement. "You have to taste them to believe them."

"They have to make money," he reminded her. "I'm not a charity."

To his amazement, the sisters immediately began adding up costs of ingredients, dividing them up into cupcake quantities, and performing the kind of higher math that had even his business head spinning.

"We're used to counting pennies," Marie said from the counter where she was minding the kids and apparently reading his mind. "It comes of growing up poor."

"It comes of growing up smart and taking advantage of what you have." He'd grown up rebellious and disdaining everything he had. Like his kids, now that he thought about it. The more he was around them, the more he understood them.

"Well, some of us have to learn the hard way," she agreed. "I was lucky and had two good-spirited girls. If I'd had a boy, he'd probably have turned out like you."

Flint had to laugh. "Mean and ugly?" he suggested.

"No child of mine would be ugly," Marie said with a smile of irony. "And we all can be mean when we want. But men have this one-track mind that leads them down all the wrong paths before they find the right one. Their daddy was like that."

He didn't have time to ask if their father had ever found the right path. Jo grabbed his arm and pulled him around to look at a dark booth in the back corner next to the counter that she thought they could take out.

He was dissolving beneath the pressure of her breasts against his arm, and she was chattering so fast that he didn't even attempt to follow. The one-track-mind theory worked real well under the circumstances.

"Don't you think?" she ended the excited stream of chatter, looking up at him with an expression in her wide green eyes that meant he'd just been snowed under.

"Does it matter what I think?" he asked, just because.

"Of course it matters! You don't see me dragging you back to where the guys are setting up, do you? You told me you didn't want to go, and I left it at that." She looked at him indignantly. "I am not a bossy woman who won't take no for an answer."

"Yeah, you are." He grinned at her, feeling more sure of himself than he had all week. "But it's okay because I'm a bossy man who will keep telling you no."

"Yeah, masterful," she breathed, the same way she had the night they'd met.

For a brief moment, it was just the two of them again, the stars were twinkling overhead, and he had images of her in his arms again, hot and lush and eager.

"Hey, Flint, is it okay if we start moving the tables?" Coming in from the back room, Slim intruded on their silent communication.

Well, hell.

"Looks like we might have to add tables for Friday evenings if you want to do dinner," Jo whispered, pulling away and leaving an empty space where she'd been.

More money he didn't have. But he had this terrifying notion that if he could have Jo, he wouldn't need money.

How in hell did he know if he'd found the right path until he took it? Jo sure looked like a one-way path to heaven, but so had Melinda.

If his instincts demanded unmaternal glamour girls who sought fame and fortune, did that mean he really was a lousy father?

Chapter Thirteen

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Flint tried to shut out the bass beat of the band as he entered another number into the minus side of his calculations. He'd saved his laptop from the auction, but the keyboard was too cramped for his hand, and he couldn't enter numbers easily. He'd have to buy a bigger keyboard. For now, he could calculate the old-fashioned way—by pencil and Charlie's adding machine.

He stopped at the sound of Jo's clear soprano ringing over the rumble of the crowd in the next room. His toe tapped to the rhythm of her song. It must be somebody's birthday. He'd learned Jo never appeared onstage as she had for him. She usually sat at the table of the friend she was targeting with her song.

He'd give hard money to wander in there and listen, but he didn't think he could settle at just watching her this time. With his eyes shut he could see her wiggling her fanny in that fringed leather. He'd woken up this morning dreaming of her in bed beside him with her golden curls draped across his pillows.

The heat-seeking missile in his pants had found its target and needed only the right excuse to take aim and fire, without considering the consequences.

And in this case, the consequences could be very ugly. Jo wanted what he'd given up. He knew too much to be seduced back into that life again, no matter how hot her kisses. He didn't want to lead her into thinking differently, but Jo was used to manipulating men, and she'd think she could change him.

He tried to concentrate on numbers as Jo's song ended, but every column showed him coming up so far in the red that he didn't want to think about it. Between the mortgage and the credit line at the supply store, he owed more than he was worth. If business slowed down for any reason, he'd have to give up the house and sleep in the back room.

Or in Jo's apartment, but that was back to mixing business with pleasure and would be disastrous for his relationship with the boys.

He had safely turned his thoughts to entertaining John and Adam tomorrow when his office door crashed open, slamming into the cracked chair behind it.

With backlighting from a lamp in the hall, Joella appeared to hover inside a golden halo, but no angel ever looked like Jo. She had
hot sex
stamped from the supple curves of long legs and arms, to the outline of her full breasts behind the blue knit.

"Mama's took sick, and I need to get her down to the hospital in Asheville. Can you look after the kids so Amy can go with me? We need her SUV."

Flint responded to her panic and not the song his body was singing. "I'm better at driving than taking care of kids. If Amy will let us have the SUV, I'll drive, and Amy can use my truck to take the kids home. Where's your mother?"

Flint was at the door, catching Jo's elbow and turning her around, before she could protest his orders.

She swiftly fell into stride with him. "In the restroom. Everything she ate came up, and now she's shivering and hardly conscious. She has hepatitis and cirrhosis and takes a lot of medicine. I think it's a reaction to a new one."

Flint had only just met Marie, but he hated to think of that feisty woman hurting.

They found Sally reassuring Josh and Louisa outside the restroom. "If you could drive us to my parents' house, I'd be happy to look after them," she offered. "I can't drive."

"And Evan is out of town—again," Jo said. Her sarcastic tone morphed into cheerfulness as she shoved open the restroom door. "How are you doing in here?"

The question sounded so upbeat that Flint would have mistaken the seriousness of the situation if he hadn't learned Jo's body language well. She was stiff as a board and would have started throwing things if anyone set her off.

"Just take me home," he heard Marie say. "The hospital costs too much. I'll be fine."

"You are not fine," Joella argued, "You have insurance. That's what it's for."

Relieved that Jo's mother wouldn't have to come up with emergency-room costs, Flint turned back to Sally. "I'll take Jo and her mom down," he said, commanding the situation, acting in the only way he knew how. "The kids would be better off in their own beds."

His instinct was apparently correct. Sally looked relieved, and just inside the door, Amy stepped out to gather up her worried children and give him a grateful smile. "You're a saint, Flint. Jo would have driven us off the mountain in this rain, she's that frantic."

He nodded and prayed that he didn't do the same. Jo had the ability to spin his head off his shoulders on a good day. This wasn't turning out to be a real good day.

"She's resting, Miss Sanderson. You can't do anything more. Why don't you go home and get some sleep?" The nurse nudged Jo to the door.

Jo glanced past the nurse, hoping for one more glimpse of her mother, but the aide had pulled the curtains around the bed and turned off the lights. Frightened, Jo didn't want to leave. "I could just sleep in that chair over there," she suggested.

"The room's much too small, Miss Sanderson. I'm sorry. We have to think of our other patients. Visiting hours start at nine."

Ushered down the hall to the waiting room, blinking back tears, Jo had Flint's arms around her before she remembered walking into them.

"How is she?" he murmured, cuddling her as if she were a small child.

He did that so well. His arms were big and strong, and his wide shoulders shielded her from a world of woe. She wanted to curl up against him and weep, but she'd done that before and didn't want to wear out her welcome. He was being amazingly kind for someone who had every right to distrust her.

He'd taken over and returned order to her chaos. For that alone, she was grateful.

"She's sleeping. They're giving her fluids and antibiotics. They think it's just a bug." She prayed it was just a bug. Watching her mother pass out like that had scared her straight through. "She's going to kill me though. The mill's HMO won't cover the emergency room because we didn't call her doctor first."

She rested against Flint, absorbing his strength and life force. He simmered with passion and energy, and she marveled that he didn't explode from holding it all in. His arms tightened around her, and she didn't fight his embrace, even knowing she should. He'd already showed her plainly that the heat between them had no future. Not in his head, anyway. Hers was ready to accept anything in exchange for more of his kisses. Guess that made him smarter than she was.

"Do you have some way of paying the bill for her?" he asked.

"Amy, except Evan is getting nasty about money. We always figure it out." She dismissed the problem with a shrug, although the constant worry about money was as debilitating as her mother's disease.

"Do you want to get a room here so you can be back first thing in the morning?"

This was a tourist town in summer. Rooms on a Friday night didn't come cheap if they could be found at all. She could stay with Rita, but she wasn't up to her friend's questions. "Amy can drive down. Tomorrow's your time with the boys. Peggy can't handle the cafe alone."

"We'll worry about that in the morning. Let's get you home."

Jo didn't want to leave Flint's arms. She was a strong woman. Life had taught her to stand on her own. But every once in a while, it was nice to have someone to lean on.

She'd relied on men before and look where that had got her. Jo straightened and stepped back from the security of Flint's ironclad hold. She couldn't meet his eyes. She'd fall apart if she saw the least bit of sympathy there.

"I appreciate this, boss man," she said, putting a distance between them to cool off the sparks they were striking. "You went above and beyond the call of duty."

If he was ticked at her cool response, she couldn't tell. They took the elevator and walked out of the hospital in silence, not touching. The rain hadn't let up while they were inside. Hoping the downpour would cool off any simmering embers, Jo dashed across the blacktop rather than have Flint pull around for her.

She wasn't used to handling SUVs so Flint drove while she turned on a blast of heat in hopes of drying off. They exchanged cursory directions but avoided the personal. The atmosphere was so thick with awareness, she figured they could ignite any moment.