Small Town Girl (19 page)

"I haven't tested the heating system yet. I'll throw some logs in the fireplace in a minute." He shoved open the door and flipped the switch that lit the lamp by his recliner. Fifties wiring didn't include overheads in living rooms.

"Gee, I love what you've done with the place." Laughter played beneath Jo's praise as she entered his domain. "Early Male, right? Leather, wood, a couch, a recliner, a TV, and a table to set your beer on, the basic necessities of life. No pillows, no plants, no rugs."

"I haven't had time to play decorator." Unoffended, he started for the stairs. "I need to get out of these clothes and find something dry for you. The kitchen is straight back if you want coffee, or if you want to crash, I can show you the guest room."

Flint had never run away from a woman, but having Joella standing in his favorite room wearing a wet knit top that revealed every voluptuous curve did things to his libido that he shouldn't act on. And after this past half hour, his resistance was at an all-time low.

"My nerves are wired. I don't think I'll be sleeping anytime soon," she admitted. "If you have a shirt I can put on, I'll fix coffee. You want some?"

"Yeah, same goes for me. I'll get you one of Johnnie's shirts."

He grabbed one of his son's Sunday shirts and dropped it over the stair rail to her before returning to his own room to change. He kicked clothes under the bed and threw the sheets into some kind of order—just in case. He knew the twin beds in the boys' room had clean sheets because he'd prepared the room for their visit.

By the time he hurried back down with his blood racing so fast it overheated his brain, Jo had coffee ready and a fire started.

"No fair. I was supposed to play Mountain Man and impress you with my ability to make fire." Flint took the coffee mug and joined her on the expansive stone hearth. The house was large and echoing around them, and his skin hummed with awareness of the stunning woman warming his lonely space better than any fire.

She'd removed the rest of her hairpins and let the whole golden mass down to dry. It tumbled over Johnnie's plain, blue dress shirt, but on Jo, nothing could look plain. The shirt fit better than his would have, but she'd left the top buttons open, and the soft cotton molded to high, firm curves untouched by any suggestion of support.

So shoot him. He was a breast man.

Silence fell between them as they sipped their coffee and let the fire warm the chill from their bones. Sparks jumped through the logs in accompaniment with the electric ones leaping between the two of them. He'd pulled on the first T-shirt out of the drawer, but Flint had to wonder if his subconscious wasn't working overtime. The shirt was an old one that clung like GLAD wrap. He didn't think he was a vain man, but Joella wasn't a shy woman. They were both standing there admiring the goods.

"I like my job," she said abruptly.

But not irrelevantly. He understood, because his thoughts had gone there already. They'd nearly combusted the first night they'd met. After weeks of working together, kissing wasn't enough. The coals of desire had blown red-hot. "I don't want to lose you as a waitress," he replied.

She nodded as if that answered her question. "It would never work out anyway. You want a mom for your kids, someone educated like Sally."

Now that she'd agreed with him, Flint perversely wanted to argue. Sally sure the hell wasn't whom he wanted right now. "Education has nothing to do with what I want."

"Maybe not, but keeping my job afterward has a lot to do with what I want."

"We're rational adults," he claimed, arguing even though she was right. They'd burn the Stardust down if they had sex now and tried to forget it later.

"No, we're not." Her eyes crinkled in the corner with laughter. "We're horny dogs and not thinking at all."

"There's something to be said about not thinking," he mused. "After that boulder, I'm ready to adopt a live-for-today policy." Hell, his blood was boiling, and he was ready to throw out every vow he'd made, if Jo would only be kind—or cruel—enough to agree.

"Adrenaline high," she scoffed. "You'll recover and be sorry in the morning. Teach me to play that guitar over there. I always wanted to learn."

He could seduce her. Flint knew with confident male instinct that all he had to do was drag her into his arms, and she wouldn't push away. Her kiss earlier had told him that. But since it was only sex and nothing more, she was offering him an alternative—music. Talk about being caught between hell and damnation…

Shadows flickered in the far reaches of the vaulted ceiling. Firelight glimmered in the black panes of the windows. Rain pounded against the roof. It was a night for making love. His big black leather couch beckoned. Plush cushions, a willing woman, and he hadn't had sex in so long he'd forgotten what it was like. And Jo was just the kind of woman he liked to have it with.

Even the siren call of music rushing through his veins couldn't compete with the willful, wonderful woman waiting for his decision. He knew she could light his night. And maybe more than a night. Offered the choice between sex and the addiction that haunted his soul and had ruined his life, he'd choose sex every time.

But the music addiction only affected him, and sex affected both of them. He was trying to follow the mature path and think of others. Besides, as she was showing him, lust wasn't a replacement for a full life, a real relationship, and the future of his sons. He couldn't have any of those with a woman who would sue him for all he was worth and take off to Nashville as soon as the opportunity offered.

So he might as well help her along the road and remove her from temptation. He wouldn't repeat the mistake he'd made with Melinda. Jo had the talent his ex never had.

For Jo's sake, Flint grit his teeth and grabbed the guitar from the dark corner where he'd thrown it the day he'd moved in. It was acoustic, the first guitar he'd ever owned. He'd written his first hit song on it.

He shoved it at her. "The strings are old, and I don't have replacements. If they snap, we're out of luck."

She took the instrument without comment, settling cross-legged in the middle of the couch and holding his baby with the care and respect it deserved. He nearly groaned aloud when she stroked the guitar's neck with loving fingers and cradled the pearl-inlaid body beneath her breasts.

She played the scale on untuned strings and glanced mischievously at him. "Doe, a deer, that ate my ear."

He did groan then and dropped into his recliner, where he wouldn't have to drink in her soft scent or look at her making love to his guitar instead of him. "You can play," he said with disgust at being tricked.

"The scale. I don't know all the finger thingies. Randy was more singer than player and wouldn't teach me."

"Couldn't," Flint said with a grunt, wishing he had a beer instead of coffee. "He just gets up there and whales the tar out of the strings. Can you read music?"

"Nope. Give me a note, and I can probably figure it out. Do you sing?"

"Nope. Give me a note, and I'll probably kill it."

"You were singing in the car."

"That wasn't singing. That was mouthing words in time to a beat. You're the one with a voice that can make grown men weep."

Ignoring his praise, she fingered the strings and sang the scale. Her vocals were a perfect pitch. The guitar far less so. With a growl, Flint swung out of his recliner and took the instrument away from her. Sitting on the sofa, he settled Pearl in his lap like an old friend and began tuning her strings. His left hand curled naturally around the guitar's neck, but every finger movement as he adjusted the knobs shot waves of pain up his arm.

He was ready to fling the instrument to the floor when Jo began to sing softly, "And the walls, the walls come tumbling down."

Her voice seeped straight through him and into his fingers. Flint had to pour it out again or do something rash. He settled for picking the notes she sang, staying with a single chord, adding a backbeat, ignoring the warning twinges as the muscles of his hand tried to seize up. "And the clowns come tumbling with them," he sang on a wry note.

"The mountains, the mountains come tumbling down," she sang in a triumphant voice that echoed from her diaphragm to the rafters.

"That changes the meter. You need a new note." He handed the guitar back to her. "Here, put your fingers on these spots." He settled the guitar in her lap. It was a temptation to put his arm around her shoulders to show her the best position, but he settled for covering her fingers with his, adjusting them along the fret. He didn't have to bend his fingers as much if they wrapped over hers, and the pain lessened.

Except the sensation of covering her slender hands with his jarred him into stupidity. The sight of the full curves of her breasts beneath the opened buttons of his son's shirt held him riveted.

"I think you better play and let me sing," she suggested so softly that he almost didn't hear her through the fog filling his head.

"Yeah, right." He took the guitar and backed off to the far corner of the large couch, working his fingers open and shut to unclench them.

She eased toward the other corner. Flint did his best not to look at her as he returned to strumming the strings, letting his pain flow into the music. The gospel beat easily transformed into a joyous protest to match her earlier transcendent cry.

His fingers wanted to curl up and weep, but the muse that had run off with the accident now found her way back through the glory of Jo's voice and wicked imagination.

As Jo turned the old song into a battle cry of bringing down all that was wrong in the world, Flint let the music soar, and for the first time since he'd worked on RJ's album, he felt better than alive. Renewed. Reborn. Miraculously ready to take the world by storm.

Jo closed her eyes and let pure joy pour from her throat. In Flint's cozy cabin, with the rain pounding the roof, she felt safe and didn't hesitate to release all the emotion inside her until shivers of excitement ran up and down her arms.

Sometimes, if she couldn't sing, she felt as if she would burst at the seams. Song would seep from her like steam from an untended iron.

But tonight, she didn't have to hold back, Flint didn't fiddle and carp and backtrack and tell her to hush. He kept up with her, note for note, improvising when she changed the meter far better than the Buzzards had ever done, catching up with her and improving as he learned her habits.

As if he already knew and appreciated her habits.

Which he did, if he'd turned her old rhymes into real music. She hadn't fully comprehended what that meant until now. She stopped abruptly and faced him. "Sing one of my songs," she demanded.

A thick strand of chestnut had fallen across Flint's brow. The hair brushing his nape had dried but curled from the dampness. Whiskers shadowed his hollowed cheeks. But it was the burning light shining from beneath his dark lashes that held her transfixed. She felt that light clear to her bones, and deeper. The ferocity stirred everything feminine in her, but she resisted reacting to the urge.

At her request, he seemed to make a mental adjustment. Tilting his head, he studied the guitar strings. Tapping his fingers again, he grimaced with pain, but he picked a few strong notes. A minute later, his gravelly voice was singing the song of a wicked woman who shaved her drunken husband's head while he was sleeping, then marched off to the city to sell his long, wavy hair and buy a ticket home to mother.

Flint made it sound like real music instead of a silly ditty she'd written after Atlanta when she'd wanted revenge for her shame. His composition of sad and defiant chords reflected the song that had been in her heart when she'd written the words.

Stunned, Jo just sat there when he finished.
She really was a songwriter
.

She knew she could sing. She'd given up hope of ever doing anything with her singing since vocalists required far more stage presence and training than she could emulate. But if she could
write
… If Randy could make money off her words…

They'd really used her words. Not just a line or a chorus, but her
whole song
.

Dazed, she let Flint go on to the next tune.

"Do the first one again," she begged when he finished. "I want to learn the melody."

He obliged without protest. He pointed out her flaws when she went the wrong way, started the chord over, and let her try again. By the time she had it all down, he was grinning as widely as she was.

"I think I must have written that music for you," he said. "RJ will sound mighty silly after anyone hears you singing it."

Loving the thought of singing Flint's music, Jo bounced up and down, unable to sit still as the beat strummed through her. "When is his album coming out? If he's coming down here in August for the MusicFest, maybe I could…" She stopped. No she couldn't.

"It should hit the air sometime in August." He watched her with curiosity. "If you sang before he did, you'd steal his thunder, for sure."

"I couldn't, but it's fun to think about." She squirmed beneath Flint's gaze and hugged herself, which tugged the shirt tighter. Her nipples rose hard and aching against the cotton, and she couldn't look at him.

"Why can't you?" he demanded. "Is the lineup full?"

She felt like a fool saying it aloud. "Stage fright," she said with what she hoped was a laugh. "I throw up when the lights come on."

He stared at her in disbelief. "You perform in front of our customers. You sang for me in a room full of people. Don't let fear stop you from having the life you deserve."

The life she deserved. She shivered a little in expectation and stared longingly at the guitar. "I've always dreamed of someday meeting my daddy up onstage, showing him what he threw away." She'd never stated the dream aloud, knowing she'd be laughed at.

The guitar landed in her lap. "Your turn. My hand won't take more. You've got more natural talent in your little finger than I have in my whole body."

Talent? This was coming from a man who'd made millions as a musician. She needed time to absorb his wild claim and decide whether it was just another lie to get what he wanted. She'd thought Flint had been pretty straight with her so far.