Small Town Girl (6 page)

"You sure you don't want a flying pig to go with that?" George asked in disgruntlement, sliding out of the booth. "I might even give you a discount to take it."

"A purple cow, if you have one," Flint replied agreeably, clueless about the joke but willing to pass it on.

"Damn good thing Jo didn't think of cows." Grumbling, George walked off, greeting the newcomer with a nod before departing.

"Hey, Flint, come meet my sister." Jo poured coffee for her customers at the counter and nodded toward the newcomer.

Warily, Flint left the booth and held out his hand. "Just call me, Flint, ma'am. Howd'ya do?"

"Amy Warren. This is Louisa, and that's Josh." She indicated the kids with a harried nod. "Pleased to meet you, Flint. And bless you for letting Jo have Josh for a while. I knew Charlie would find a good man to take over. I have to run. I'll bake you some muffins this afternoon."

Flint blinked and wanted a televised replay of what had just happened here as Amy Warren picked up her daughter and rushed out. He'd bask in the woman's approval, except he didn't know what the heck he'd done to gain it.

"Here, take the kid while I get some more beans out of the back." Jo shoved the boy's hand into his.

Flint was left staring into solemn blue eyes with ridiculously long lashes. A grimy thumb popped into the kid's mouth. He remembered his kids at that age. He'd give half his life to have that time back.

"You're too old to suck your thumb," he admonished, sounding like his mother.

The kid sucked harder.

"Does it taste good?" Flint deposited the boy on the counter with the full intention of leaving him there and getting back to work.

The kid offered his wet thumb for tasting.

"No, thanks, I'm on a diet and had to give up thumbs. How about a doughnut instead?" He opened the case and selected a chocolate one.

The kid reached in and helped himself to a sticky one.

"Josh doesn't like chocolate." Jo closed the case as she passed by with the bag of coffee beans. "And now he'll have sugar all over everything and be hyper for hours. Better get a paper towel."

"Tell me again why I'm babysitting?" Flint reached for the towels. Sugary fingerprints already adorned his shirtfront.

"Because Mary Jean just had a baby, and Peggy goes to bed if she sneezes, and Louisa has a doctor appointment."

"Okay, that's one inanity too many. I've got to work on the books." Not even admiring the way Jo's feathery earrings accentuated her pouty lips was sufficient to cope with her diarrhea of the mouth.

Hauling the chubby cherub out of the way of his breakfast crowd before the kid ate up the profits, he escaped to get the phone call off his agenda.

The office wasn't bigger than a storage closet. He dropped Josh on a cracked overstuffed chair, handed him pencil and paper, and took a seat at his desk. Vowing to buy a cordless speakerphone to bring some piece of the twenty-first century in here, Flint dialed the number for his ex-manager's office and set his feet up on the battered oak desk. Putting his big clodhoppers anywhere else involved endangering overflowing wastebaskets or kicking file drawers spilling yellowed invoices.

"Darla, put me through to Ned right now, or I'll sue his pants off, and you'll be out of a job," he told the gum-smacking secretary who answered.

As soon as he heard Ned pick up the receiver, Flint launched into his tirade. "You lied to me again, Slick. The album is slated to hit the stores
in August
, and I have yet to see RJ's approval for a correction on that cover."

He tried not to sound as desperate as he felt. He'd worked his heart out on the tunes for the record company's latest greatest star. He'd thought RJ was a
friend
. He'd given the lying, thieving bastard some of the best work he'd ever done. Maybe the last work he'd ever do. He had wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, not in a sleazy river of lawsuits and name-calling between ex-friends and ex-managers.

"Flint, you're bulldozin' mountains out of cesspools, son. The cover is fine."

"He left my name off! It's damn well not fine, and you know it!" Flint roared.

Startled by Flint's shout, the kid looked up so fast that he dropped his pencil. He puckered up, whether at the shout or the fact that the pencil had rolled under the desk, Flint couldn't determine. Grimacing, he tried to maneuver the long, curly cord of the phone around the tarnished brass accountant's lamp to reach under the desk.

In a lower voice, Flint continued his rant. "Tell RJ if I don't get credit on that album, I'm coming up there to cut him a new asshole."

Ned started more of his backpedaling bullshit. Fed up, Flint let the receiver dangle and crawled beneath the desk to retrieve the pencil from the dust bunnies.

He had a real bad feeling about lying scum like RJ. He had an ulcer shouting
lawsuit
every time he thought about the lyrics on that scrap of envelope RJ had passed off as his. In his experience, any man who could rip off a friend would cheat his own mother. That writing wasn't RJ's.

Grabbing the pencil, he started backing out from under the desk.

"Hide-and-seek, now why didn't I think of that?" called a melodious voice over his head. "The cafe has emptied out and I've come to retrieve Josh, but if you're having fun—"

"What's an
asshole
, Aunt Jo?" Josh asked.

Flint whacked his head against the desk coming up too fast.

All five feet six inches of blond bombshell beamed at him as he staggered up and fell into his desk chair, nursing his bruised head.

"Teaching the boy a new vocabulary, are we? How thoughtful." Without missing a beat, she scooped up the dangling receiver and hung up on Ned, abruptly cutting off the whining—whether intentionally or not, Flint wasn't about to guess. Joella looked like the kind who didn't get mad, but got even.

"C'mon, Josh, let's draw on the counter where Aunt Jo can help you with your letters."

"He's fine in here," Flint protested, annoyed at being caught in fatherly incompetence with a kid who wasn't even his own. His language skills had deteriorated from years of hanging out in bars.

Jo grabbed a new pencil from the desk and helped Josh out of the chair, ignoring Flint's protest. "Did George Bob give you the go-ahead for the back room?"

"I'm not sure it's a wise idea to open up when I'm not—"

"Mary Jean is great with the customers, and she needs the tips. You're not even paying her," she pointed out. "She's doing it for Eddie and the guys. If we had an espresso machine, you could make a fortune in the evenings."

"I'm not paying her?" Shocked, Flint got up and followed Jo to the front. "I could have the Feds down my throat for that. That's all I need, one more fight with the fu—" He cut himself off before he completed that word.

"Nobody cares what we do up here," she said with a dismissive wave. "As long as Mary Jean doesn't complain, who's to know? You're not running Starbucks."

"You have no
idea
how… frigging… wrong that is," he yelled. "It's that kind of lame-assed thinking that gets everybody concerned in deep shit."

"Mommy says
shit
is a bad word," Josh said, climbing up to reach the doughnut case. "Daddy says
damn
and he's going to hell," he continued in the ensuing silence.

Jo giggled and dried off a butt-ugly green dish from a stack she'd been hand washing. Flint rubbed his face. He wanted to back out of here as fast as his boots would carry him, but he had nowhere to run these days. Besides, she ought to be the one to go, not him. Knowing this was
his
place made him feel better.

"I'm already in hell, so I don't reckon you ought to try out any bad words in front of your mama," he advised, lifting the boy off the counter and back to a seat. "If you're hungry, we have bananas."

"Yeah, I wanna banana." He looked up at Flint expectantly. "You got any little boys I can play with?"

"I have two boys. Adam is twelve and Johnnie is eleven. Maybe you'll meet them when they come to visit." He'd missed most of their childhoods, and at this rate, he'd miss their adolescence, too.

"You got any big boys
I
can play with?" Jo murmured, brushing past him to hand Josh an apple instead of a banana.

Her aphrodisiac cologne filled his head with images of rose petals, bubble baths, and tan lines. "Am I big enough?" He lifted one eyebrow suggestively. Out of self-defense, he was already reverting to his old ways.

She slanted him a wicked look from beneath long, dark lashes. "Oh, you're big enough, all right. The question is, are you
good
enough?" she purred, running a finger down his chest and setting it on fire.

"
Good
ain't hardly the word for it," he promised.

Cursing inwardly that he'd let her push his buttons, Flint leaned against the counter at a safer distance, only to be distracted by the lift of Joella's breasts as she reached for more dishes in the cabinet over the stove. He'd been within inches of having all that in his palms… He breathed a sigh of relief when the front door creaked open to let in a customer.

He had to be out of his mind to even consider discussing his ugly quest with Joella, but she was just the sort of person who would know RJ. He had to find out if his partner had plagiarized those lyrics they'd sold to the record company
before
he got his kids home and raised their hopes.

Flint waited until Jo finished pouring coffee for their customer. When she reached to take down a purple platter, he asked casually, "You know a guy called RJ Peters used to play around here?"

The platter dropped from Jo's hand to hit the stove with a splintering crash. She stood there wide-eyed, not bothering to glance at the destruction. "Why d'ya ask?"

Wondering what the hell that was about, Flint checked to make certain Josh was still safely in his seat. Then he knelt down to pick up the pieces. He had about ten seconds to figure out if she liked the lying cheat or wanted RJ's head smashed like the platter.

"I'm trying to make RJ live up to his obligations," he explained, figuring he was already in deep shit and might as well dig deeper.

"Well, you find a shotgun and a lawyer, and I'll do that for you." Without another word of explanation, she left him picking up china while she grabbed Josh and headed for the door. "We're going for a walk," she called as she departed.

Well, hell
, Flint thought as he cut his finger on a porcelain splinter. Looked like ol' RJ had left an entire trail of shattered lives behind him. And at least one heart.

Chapter Six

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"Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home…" Joella sang as she pushed the porch swing with her toe, peeled potatoes, and admired the purple rhododendron blooms spilling over the rail. Her mother's house was way out in the woods where no one would hear or care if she sang her heart out or cried a river.

"You ought to sing in church more often." Marie wandered out to the rough-planked porch with a glass in her hand. Once as tall as Jo, she'd shrunk some with time and ill health, but she still stood straight and feisty, cigarette in hand despite doctor's orders.

Her hard-living mother hadn't touched alcohol in years, but Jo automatically eyed the glass with suspicion before deciding it looked like lemonade. Her mother's current situation was enough to cause anyone to pick up a bottle and start drowning. She admired Marie's strength in avoiding temptation. She should take lessons.

Jo shrugged. "They sing boring old songs here. I'm thinking of going down to Asheville and looking for a church that does contemporary music."

"Don't be silly." Marie sat on the swing and picked up a potato and peeler. "You don't belong down there. You belong here where people know you. I thought you'd learned that by now. You're all the time trying to be bigger than you are."

"I'm a pretty big girl, Mama. I couldn't afford new clothes if I get much bigger." Jo shoved aside the slight with twisted humor. It was the only way to take her mother when she went down this path, which was at least once a visit. Her mother spoke from experience, after all. "That reminds me, the kids need summer clothes, and Evan's hoarding money again. Maybe I could buy some material with my next check and you could make it up into some little shorts and things."

Her mother had worked as a sewing machine operator in the samples department at the mill for years, despite the crippling pain and fatigue of hepatitis. It had taken the layoff of half the workforce last year to end her decades of hard work.

Social Security had turned down her disability request, and the unemployment benefits expired next month. Jo had hoped maybe her mother could take up making clothes for others—just enough to cover her COBRA insurance until they could hire a lawyer to help with the disability application. The house was paid for, and she and Amy could provide groceries for a while.

Once COBRA ran out, however, no other insurance company would take her on. Without continued treatment, the doctor said Marie would die.

There had to be a way—Jo just hadn't found it yet. Her mama was only fifty-five.

"Evan is being smart about their money." Marie brushed off Jo's implied criticism. "Things are bad out there, and he's trying not to go into debt."

Jo cooled her anger at her brother-in-law by envisioning dumping the pot of potato peelings on Evan's shiny blond head. The man was a control freak who would stab his own mother-in-law in the back, but Marie had old-fashioned
values
and would never find fault with a man who provided for his family.

"Evan laid you off, even knowing you need insurance," Jo protested. "He won't pay for day care so Amy can take a job and use her education. It's all about
him
."

"That's you talking, not Amy. You just don't understand men. You should have known that fast-talking Randy was just using you."