Small Town Girl (10 page)

Jo grimaced. She hadn't meant to rile bad memories.

For the first time since they'd met, Jo let herself see past Flint's good looks and smooth charm to the pain eroding his insides. She hadn't wanted to see inside him. It was a lot easier despising him for his outside. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take my meanness out on you."

He shot her a glare. "It was over a year ago. She'd been out drinking with RJ, and they had a lovers' spat right before she crashed."

Jo sighed. She had never been good at hating people. She put down her towel and held out her hand. "Well, Mr. Flint, it looks like you and me are about to go into partnership to carve Randy down to his knees, I reckon I know what part of him I want to cut off first."

He winced, hesitated, then held out his hand and shook on it. "You'll listen to my advice on how to go about it?"

"About as often as you listen to my advice on how to run the cafe," she agreed with a smile that grew from ear to ear at his scowling reaction.

"Can you prove you wrote the lyrics?" he asked in retaliation.

Shot down in one. She didn't let her smile falter. "Are pigs pink?"

She hoped he didn't understand the ambiguity of that reply while she scrambled to figure out how to accomplish the impossible.

Chapter Eight

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"Look, just have them cut the lights, okay?" Jo paced her room over the cafe nervously, trying to ignore the voice inside her head screaming,
Run now, while you can
. "I think I can do it if I just pretend I'm sitting in church."

Slim snorted. "You don't write hymns, Jo. Just get up there and sing. You'll bring down the house."

She caught her elbows and hung on. The guys thought she was good ol' Jo who could do anything she put her mind to, and she'd really like to protect the image. She'd had a lifetime to learn how to disguise anxiety, but this particular anxiety was a purple monster.

After the Atlanta debacle, she'd lost interest in performing onstage. She could do it, if only to prove to Flint that those were
her
songs. But after Atlanta, spotlights made her downright nauseous, and claiming her songs was too important to look like a fool. She'd had to quit singing in church after the choir director had added spotlights. "I'm not singing a birthday ditty, Slim. People expect a performance if I get up on that stage, and I'm no performer." As she'd proved once already.

"Just sing the song, Jo," Eddie said impatiently. "We've got to get down there."

"Promise you'll cut the lights or I'll never give you another verse again."

"Tell the kid to cut the lights when I give him a high sign," Slim said in disgust, carrying his guitar toward her door as the other band members gathered up their gear and prepared to follow. "There won't be anyone out there that'll care one way or another."

"Except me," Jo whispered to herself as the guys trudged out. She didn't mind making a fool of herself in front of them. She simply couldn't handle an entire audience waiting expectantly. She'd freeze and squeak like a mouse—or hurl all over someone's wing tips like last time—and she'd never be able to face the town again.

But Slim didn't know her new material, so she had to sing it herself. Her mother's life might depend upon her ability to convince Flint and a courtroom that she was more than a cleavage-blessed waitress.

For a little past eight in the evening, the back room of the coffee shop was amazingly full. Flint reckoned there weren't too many other places to go in Northfork on a Friday night. He hid his grimace in a sip of bad coffee as the bass player hit a flat note. No one else seemed to notice or care that the Buzzards were the next best thing to mediocre.

With the racket from the audience, the music didn't stand a chance anyway. The band was loud, enthusiastic, and could set feet stomping, which was all the crowd needed.

Since this was a dry town, coffee, soft drinks, and tea were the only beverages available. Jo's espresso suggestion might have its place, but he'd checked the prices of machines. New, one could set him back nearly three grand. And he'd need new cups. He couldn't see the locals paying more money for smaller cups of caffeine. Scratch that idea and get back to the real problem that had him sitting here listening to bad music on a Friday night.

Joella had promised to meet him tonight to prove she'd written RJ's songs and that her earlier inspired medley wasn't just a repetition of the songs he'd sung with the band. But like all women, she was running late.

"Hey, Flint, did you like my muffins?" With a shy smile, Amy Warren stopped beside his table.

"Your sister fed them to the hogs before I got one," he admitted. He had some difficulty seeing the resemblance between Joella, with her flashy good looks, and this slender woman in her taupe pants suit, sensible heels, and short, salon-styled brown hair, but there was a similarity in the big green eyes, he guessed. "The pigs on top were cute," he lied.

She beamed as if he'd handed her a gold watch. "You liked the pigs? Evan said icing on muffins is silly, but Charlie said cupcakes don't sell." She settled on the edge of the chair as if prepared to take flight if he said boo. She learned forward so he could hear over the noise of the band and audience. "I
love
to decorate cakes."

Flint would like to say that he wasn't a dessert man, but he didn't want to hurt the sparrow's feelings. Besides, the stage had just darkened, and the band broke into a rollicking number that brought the audience to an expectant silence. Even the little bird turned to watch.

"Muffin man," a clear soprano rang out from the darkness over the sound of an off-key fiddle, "muffin man, you listen. You don't know what you're missin'."

Flint nearly choked on his coffee as he located Joella perched on the edge of the stage, not feet from where he sat. The vixen obviously knew she was borrowing words and music from another song. Even in this dim light, he could see her point straight at him and flash a sexy, naughty smile that revved all his engines.

When she caught his eye, her hundred-watt grin of mischief exploded from the stage. She didn't need bright lights. The raucous guitar that erupted behind her was irrelevant. Flint could hear only Joella as the lyrics changed to a laughing paean to life behind a counter.

She not only filled the room with her voice, but her presence. She had donned some outrageous attire of buff leather with fringe that struck her midthigh, drawing the unwavering attention of every male member of the audience even in the dim houselights. Beneath her short jacket she wore a glittery red shirt he thought he recognized from the night they'd met. Red, beaded earrings swung near her long throat, and Flint almost vowed to become an ear man instead of a breast man.

She had the same effect as a lightning bolt zigzagging across the room. She had a voice that crept down inside him and threatened to turn him inside out. She poured her soul into the music, and if he wasn't so wise to the ways of the world, he'd already be head over heels for her.

And she was mocking him and the Stardust with her words.
Her
words. She may as we!! have autographed them. There was no mistaking the subject and the sly wit, even though he'd never heard the lyrics in his life, and she was borrowing music from an old Beatles song. The whole audience recognized her satire and sang along with the chorus.

He was so totally knocked out that she caught him off guard when she jumped down from the stage and wriggled into his lap to the accompaniment of loud whistles.

"Muffin man," she crooned more softly, wrapping her arm around his neck and branding his chest for life with the heat of her breasts, "are you listenin' now?"

Hell, no, not if she meant with his ears. But the rest of him was wide-awake and hearing every vibration where her body met his. He was one giant tuning fork. He wanted to bury his face in the thick hair she'd loosely pinned up, inhale her powdery scent, and kiss her nape—just for starters.

But she was so far off his road map for the future that she might as well be from another planet, so Flint fought his natural instincts. As the fiddle died out, he caught her waist, stood up, and reluctantly deposited Joella back onstage. "Not bad," he murmured for her ears only.

Then he returned to his table and the quiet woman watching in wide-eyed awe.

"Wow" was all Amy managed to say.

Well, he'd wanted a quiet woman. Pity this one was taken.

Unfazed by his reaction, Jo waved at her wildly clapping audience, then ignoring the crowd's shout for more, she handed the mike back and slipped from the stage to join Flint and Amy. The spotlight returned, and the band struck up a tune Flint recognized from RJ's repertoire, a disrespectful salute to school rules and young love—a song Joella must have written. He recognized the style.

"Hey, Ames. Where are the kids?" Jo stole a sip of her sister's cold drink.

"Evan had to go to Charlotte for a meeting this weekend, so I left them with Sally for a little bit. I've forgotten what it is to hear adult conversation."

Flint signaled the teenager serving drinks. She produced a cola and set it down in front of Jo, who flashed him a smile more challenging than grateful.

"Well, boss man, how'd I do?"

Was that nervousness he heard in his brash waitress's voice? He couldn't imagine it. She had to know she'd just knocked him out with the power of her voice and talent. She ought to be rubbing his nose in it.

"You need a tune with an extra meter in the chorus, and a faster beat." He tried to play it cool, when his mind was a riot of lyrics, music, and sex. The damned woman had turned him on as if she'd flipped a magic switch. It was frigging unsettling that she had that kind of power over him. "Humor has a rhythm all its own."

"Uh-huh." Her smile lost its high voltage as she sipped her drink. "It's just a few rearranged words that I put together today. It's not as if I was taking them anywhere."

Today
? She'd put all that together in one day? That she took so little pride in her tremendous talent rocked him, but Flint figured it was just a shield of self-deprecation. Women had odd habits like that. He stuck to the topic. "I can hear the same style in the material RJ brought me, but a lawyer isn't likely to notice the similarity. What other proof do you have?"

"Everybody knows Jo's songs," Amy protested in puzzlement. "She writes rhymes for our birthdays."

She turned to Jo. "I think the 'Muffin Man' was one of the best things you've ever done."

Jo patted her sister's hand. "I don't need a peacemaker, Mama Warren, but thank you."

"Well, then, I'll let the two of you slug it out. Don't think I haven't heard about the plate fight." Amy waved at someone coming in and hurried away.

Joella leaned over the table to sip through the straw, flashing her cleavage under his nose. When she saw the direction of his gaze, she offered a sultry smile. "Want to slug it out or go over in that corner and shimmy?"

Flint crossed his arms on the table and leaned forward so he could growl into her ear. "If we go over in that corner and I shimmy, you'll have to beat off every woman in this room. We wouldn't want that now, would we?"

She laughed. "Okay, you want to slug it out, I got it."

Her laughter stimulated parts that needed no encouragement. "You got it in one," he agreed. Most women wouldn't have understood the reasoning behind his aggressive suggestion. This one had his number without even trying—if they didn't fight, months of abstinence would overrule sanity, and testosterone would do the talking. He was already prepared to write an ode to that skimpy red top she was wearing.

To his relief, she shoved her drink aside and sat up straight so he could fall into the green pools of her eyes instead of her chest. Except those dangly red earrings held him fixated.

"Every person here could sign an affidavit acknowledging I wrote ditties for the band," she announced in her most businesslike voice. "Slim probably has the original copies of my scribbling in that trash bin he calls an apartment. We made a demo a few years back in Charlotte. How much proof do you need?"

While he was still pondering kissing her splendid long throat, she hit him with icy pragmatism. Flint had the urge to grab his ears and jerk his head back on straight, but he attempted to sound functional. "That's a good start, but a lawyer will ask for proof that RJ wasn't the author."

Instead of taking him up on the challenge, she raised a quizzical eyebrow. "How do you know so much about lawyers?"

That cleared the cloud of lust from his head. Flint drained his coffee cup and set it down with a thud that the drum player drowned out. "Because I've spent these last few years in more law offices than I ever want to see in a lifetime, and I'm in no hurry to revisit one again. Lawyers have nasty minds."

She raised her color-tinted eyebrows expectantly. When he hesitated over spilling, she reminded him, "We're partners in this, remember? If I'm dealing with a crook about to go to jail, I'd like to know it now."

"You don't read the trade papers, do you?" he said with a disgust directed at himself and not her. She backed off warily, but he gestured to erase what he'd said. "Sorry. I thought the entire galaxy knew my story."

She relaxed a fraction. "Maybe the Planet Earth, but you've come to Planet Northfork. We don't even have cable, remember."

"How could I forget? Listen, we can't talk here. How about some other time?" Anything to avoid the issue. Damn, he didn't know if it was cowardice or polite reluctance to spread shit.

"Now's good. Here's not." She stood, and for a moment the spotlight created a white-gold halo of her hair. She gestured at him to follow, then started winding between the tables.

Flint had already deduced that all the movable tables from the shop had been hauled in here in his absence. He wasn't certain where the rest of them had come from. The chairs were mostly the uncomfortable metal, folding kind that the church probably rented out. He hoped he didn't have to clean this up in the morning.