Small Town Girl (21 page)

Jo stalked out in her high-heeled slides, prepared to take on the world, and almost fell over the young Goth sitting at the top of the stairs, tapping away on a laptop. He didn't even glance up at her as she approached.

At the sound of musical notes emerging from the box, Jo lowered herself to the top step with him. She'd never owned a computer. Curiosity was her besetting sin, and she was equally curious about the machine and the kid. No Fear was her new motto. Besides, the kid looked too unhappy to fear him. "It plays music?" she asked, studying the screen.

The notes from the computer were erratic and not high-fidelity. She watched in amazement as he punched some buttons to change them.

"Of course it plays music," he answered with the arrogance of the young. "Do you think he has DSL?"

"DSL? Daily Silly Lines? Yeah, a lot." She really wasn't that dumb, but the kid was way too serious.

He shot her a scornful look that was pure Flint. "For the Internet. Or cable, maybe. I didn't ask when we were here last week."

"Sorry. Cable hasn't reached this far into the hills. We have to use the phone lines. What's that making the music?"

"A program." He hurriedly shut it down, turning off the noise. "I need to plug it in. My battery is low."

"Right. Well, I'm sure there are electric outlets. We got electricity a few years ago." She was pulling his leg, but he seemed to take her seriously.

"Why would anyone live in a hole like this? It's the pits." He got up and walked away, apparently in search of electricity.

Interesting. But she didn't have time for child psychology. She liked kids well enough, but her grand plans for fame and fortune had never included them. Ending up broke and supporting two kids like her mother wasn't on her agenda.

With no other diversion to prevent her from entering the lion's den, Jo headed down the stairs where the argument had escalated to sullen silence.

Flint had to bite back a grin of pride as Joella sashayed down the stairs as if she were wearing a ball gown and glass slippers. Her crowning glory of golden curls were no more than lank, damp tendrils dripping over his shirt, and she was still the most glorious sight he'd ever seen.

And he had to quit thinking of her right now. Despite her declaration of stage fright, she had a promising future outside these hills. His kids deserved better than another traveling musician in their lives.

"Good morning, Mr. and Mrs. Clinton," she called brightly, as if his parents weren't staring at her as if she were Eve and the serpent all in one. Jo switched her gaze to him. "Where's your phone? I need to call and check on Mama. Amy might know if they're fixing the rock slide. If Mama is ready to go home, I'll have to find someone to take us around to the other side of the mountain."

All this flowed like musical notes as Jo nonchalantly strolled past him, his parents, and back to the kitchen.

Flint followed as if she were the Pied Piper. He noticed his parents did the same.

"How about some eggs this morning?" she chirruped when she found Adam gazing into the refrigerator. "I'd fix you the best pancakes this side of the Pacific if I thought Flint had the ingredients in there."

She picked up his cordless and hit numbers while she gazed over Adam's shoulder into the refrigerator. "You did good. Eggs and milk and maple syrup. A little flour and baking soda somewhere maybe?"

Flint opened the cabinet with the dry goods. He hadn't a clue what baking soda was, but he had pancake mix and figured that was better.

Propping the telephone against her ear to ask for her mother's room, Jo handed ingredients to a startled Adam. She located the bacon and pulled that out.

It wasn't until she started chatting with Marie and mixing pancakes at the same time that Flint recognized what Jo had done. She had thrown a verbal shield around both of them. Unable to get a word in edgewise, his mother grabbed the bacon and huffily prepared it for microwave cooking. His father took his newspaper and wandered back to the front room. Adam had been handed a fork and the bowl Jo had poured ingredients into, and he mixed the batter, unable to utter a word of protest.

"That's good, Mama. I'll find someone to take me down to get you. Are you sure you'll feel well enough to go all the way around the mountain? I could get you a room in Asheville…"

Flint suspected she'd twist arms until she found one, too, then would scrub floors to pay for it. He was calculating how much more his credit card could hold when Marie apparently decided she wanted to go home.

"Let me talk to Amy if she's at the cafe," he managed to squeeze in when Jo clicked the phone off on one call and began punching in numbers for another.

He tried to keep enough distance between them so he didn't smell his shampoo in her hair or accidentally set his chimes to ringing by touching her. Adam watched them with enough suspicion as it was.

Listening for the phone to ring, she nodded while Flint produced a frying pan from beneath the stove. He'd lived on his own before. He knew the essentials.

"Honestly, Flint," his mother whispered, flinging the platter into the microwave, "you expect your sons to live like this?"

"Hey, Amy, stay away from our new stove," Jo called into the receiver with laughter in her voice, drowning out anything else his mother could say.

The kitchen wasn't big enough for two women, Flint decided. He really ought to escape before the next world war broke out, but he couldn't desert Jo like that. Besides, Adam was turning to him with the bowl of pancake batter as if he expected him to do something with it. Might as well show the kid how it was done.

Just as Jo was showing him how handling family was done. Flint admired her style and resolved to learn it. It wasn't as if he'd paid a lot of attention over the traveling years, but the opportunity beckoned.

In a blinding moment of revelation, he realized he didn't
want
a maternal woman like his mother for a wife. He loved and respected his mother. He'd let her take his kids, after all. But a
maternal
woman tended to nest and peck like a hen if a man got too close to her chicks. A woman like his mother would make life hell.
Damn
, now what would he do? Raise the kids on his own?

Shit
, he should have known life never provided an easy road.

After Jo had reported on their mother to Amy and discussed alternative transportation, she handed the receiver to Flint and took over pancake flipping.

Rather than examine his latest brainstorm, Flint checked on business. "All right, why don't you close up around two?" he told Amy on the other end of the line. "That will give everyone time to come in and gossip and get a hot meal if they need it. I sure appreciate this. If Sally babysits the kids, I'll pay for it."

Reassured that his customers were taking the roadblock in stride, even if the tourist business was cut off and his profits wiped out for the weekend, Flint hung up to dump coffee into the machine. Unlike Jo, he couldn't do two things at once.

"Adam helped, so he gets first serving." Jo reached for a plate in the dish cabinet she'd located. "Mrs. Clinton, how many can you and Mr. Clinton eat? I'll remind Flint to stock some frozen strawberries next time so he can make strawberry compote for you."

"We've already eaten," his mother replied frostily.

"Oh, then you won't mind if I give this next batch to Flint. He had a long night last night." She said it with a naughty wink in his direction before ruining the effect by adding, "He was a lifesaver helping me get my mama to the hospital. And you should have seen how he stopped that car when the boulder came down! He ought to be in NASCAR."

"We heard about that on the news. We had to go around a roadblock to get here. It's unsafe living in mountains." His mother checked the bacon, then slammed the microwave door. "You really can't expect your sons to live like this."

Flint grabbed Jo and clapped his hand over her mouth before she launched any more verbal volleys. At the breakfast table, Adam snorted and hastily shoved an enormous forkful of pancake into his mouth.

To get even, Jo nibbled on Flint's fingers and ground her lush tush near his groin, but Flint figured it was time he took control. He didn't need a woman fighting his battles, although he sure appreciated her efforts.

"It's unsafe living anywhere, Mom, and you know it. The boys are mine. Don't push me too far, okay? All I want is what's best for them."

It was a pretty good speech and would have worked, too, if Johnnie hadn't walked in right then with what would have been complete innocence, except Flint knew his clever younger son far better than that.

Johnnie held up his Sunday shirt and the thin strip of silk that Flint hadn't been able to locate in his hurry this morning. "Why were these shoved behind the couch cushions?" he asked.

Chapter Sixteen

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With the
brazen
knocked right out of her, Jo gave up the fight and waited for the humiliating scene to sink her through the floor. Flint's arm had left a permanent impression on her midriff. She was amazed she could still stand upright when he released her.

She mentally cheered as Flint took his son's defiance in stride. Before Mrs. Clinton could open her mouth, he pointed Johnnie toward the door at the end of the kitchen. "Put those in the laundry and sit down at the table if you want to eat."

Shoulders slumped, the kid dragged himself across the tiled floor to do as told. Not as easily defeated, Mrs. Clinton found the outlet she needed for her rage.

"I cannot let children be raised in a house with these kinds of lewd goings-on. This is
exactly
the reason we took the boys in. They need a stable home environment. You have to learn to live the kind of life—"

"Can it, Mom. If we can't provide a solid front for them instead of this constant carping, then it's no better than before."

Jo watched Flint's noncompromising sternness with admiration. She might not know much about raising kids, but he did. And he wasn't afraid to stand up and show it. Any idea she had harbored that he'd abandoned his kids—as her father had—got up and walked out the door.

His mother shut up and poured coffee for herself and her husband, who'd followed Johnnie in. With relief, Jo returned to flipping pancakes and stayed out of the family squabble—even if those were her panties, and she was standing here with nothing on under her skirt, and Flint had to know it.

A night of sex hadn't reduced the steam between them any. It only took one of his smoldering gazes to imagine him lifting her onto that table and having his way with her.

Hands shaking, she set a plate of pancakes on the large pine trestle table just as Johnnie returned to sit beside his brother. She'd like to collapse in a chair until her knees stopped trembling, but Flint blocked her way. He slapped a jar of sugar-free jam on the table beside the maple syrup without a word of comment. Johnnie took one look at his father's face and reached for the jam.

Jo was impressed. Apparently, if he was watching his kid's weight problem, Flint took his responsibility seriously. He'd even bought
sugar-free
ahead of time. Maybe if she dwelled on his superior character, she'd quit thinking about his bod.

"Can your computer at the cafe play music?" she asked Flint out of curiosity as well as interest in breaking the awkward silence. She began mixing another batch of pancakes before the first ones disappeared.

"Probably, but I don't have cable to download it."

Jo waited for Johnnie to explain about his program, but the kid sat in sullen silence.

"You could get a satellite dish," Mr. Clinton suggested in an apparent attempt to placate the angry cloud drifting about the room.

"I have a radio if I want music." Flint offered more pancakes to his sons, and when they were refused, dumped them on his plate with the last of the bacon.

Jo caught the exchange of looks between the two boys. Kids wouldn't be kids unless they were hiding something. She slid the platter on the table and reached for the coffeepot to freshen everyone's cup. "Johnnie has a computer program that plays music."

"Stealing songs off the Internet is robbing the poor," Flint said bluntly. "Ninety-nine percent of the musicians who get paid by record sales are struggling to stay alive."

"We know that," Adam said with disgust. "We don't steal music."

Jo slid in beside Flint, enjoying their proximity on the bench. Her hip rubbed his as she leaned over to help herself to some of the pancakes. His hand slid over her thigh when she settled back on the bench again.

"Johnnie's program
makes
music," she said brightly, trying not to show the effect he had on her. "Maybe he could write a song for the MusicFest contest."

All eyes turned to Johnnie, who turned a nice shade of maroon.

"We bought that computer so you could do your homework, young man," Mrs. Clinton said with disapproval. "There is no future in music, as your father has proved."

Deciding this argument came under the Life's Too Short category, Jo warbled the first lines of the soft drink commercial about the world being a better place if everyone could sing in harmony.

Adam choked on the bacon he was inhaling. Johnnie stared in disbelief. And Flint removed his hand from her thigh to hide a grin behind his coffee cup. Watching her speculatively, Mr. Clinton reached for a pancake. Mama Clinton shut up.

Letting Flint discuss the foreign territory of computers and software programs with his sons, Jo ate her breakfast in blissful peace.

Tuesday evening, waiting at her mother's for Amy and the kids to show up, Jo watched Marie wince and rub her back as she bent to sit in her ragged recliner.

"Mom?" She held out her hand to help, not that her mother would accept it. The drive around the mountain on Saturday had been interminable, but her mother shouldn't still be aching. She wasn't taking her medicine again.