Small Town Girl (3 page)

Fireworks were popping between them, and she didn't notice Dot's approach until her friend touched her shoulder. Joella didn't look away from the man across the table as Dot leaned down to tell her that she and Rita were leaving.

"That's fine." Jo waved her off. "I've got my car. I'll talk at you later."

Flint seemed as focused on her as she was on him. He smiled a triumphant masculine smile when she sent her friends away.

"You're an excellent dancer, too, Miss Joella," he mocked.

"It's not often I find a good partner," she retaliated.

They both knew they weren't talking about the two-step.

She didn't do casual sex, but she could see making an exception for this man. How often did a Hugh Jackman look-alike walk into a girl's life? Besides, since she was giving up on men and relationships, she might have to rethink her position on casual sex.

The band began tuning their instruments, and she didn't have to beg Flint to stand up with her. He pushed back his chair and offered his hand before she could ask.

"You got any more favorite songs you want to hear?" he inquired, steering her toward the dance floor.

"None of that crying-in-your-beer stuff," she warned. "I'm not crying anymore."

He touched her cheek and looked serious for a second. "Any man who would leave a woman like you hasn't got the sense to recognize pure gold when he sees it."

She'd heard all the lines before. It would be nice to believe he meant it, but he didn't know her any better than she did him. They were faking it, but they both knew it, so that worked. "Or the sense to keep his pants on when he sees anything in skirts," she retorted, to keep her achy-breaky heart from leaping in expectation.

His smile was better than a margarita. "Darlin', no man has that kind of sense. C'mon, let's shake away the blues."

Tomorrow, she could go back to scrubbing floors. Tonight, she'd enjoy her handsome prince.

Life was good.

He'd paid his penance, resolved to change his ways, and Miss Joella was his reward.

"Want to step outside for some fresh air, Miss Jo?" Flint murmured through the final bars of a slow song. She moved so close to him that it was nearly like dancing with himself—if his hand weren't cupping one sweet handful of ass and her breasts weren't imprinted on his chest for life. She had to feel what she was doing to him.

She tilted her head back to study him, and a loosened blond curl fell along her cheek. Maybe those long lashes were all hers, but she'd darkened them so her eyes looked as big as twin full moons. Or emeralds.

"If you'll just steer me toward that booth over there, we can slip behind the curtains to the side door," she agreed.

With an alacrity that said he hadn't completely lost his touch, he had her at the curtains before the last note rang out.

He was familiar with the back exit of this place and a lot of other bars just like this one. Bands used the exits to slip out for a quick smoke, a toke, or a make-out session. There were some things he'd miss about that life—maybe a
lot
of things—but the sleaziness wasn't one of them.

But it didn't feel sleazy when Joella took his hand and stepped outside under a bowlful of stars in the clear mountain air. He didn't know which way was up. She sparkled like the night sky. Lights glittered along her long gold earrings and sequins.

"I'd forgotten how the stars look up here." Drawing her into him, Flint gazed above Asheville's limited excuse for a skyline. "If you wore midnight blue, you'd blend right in with the night."

She laughed softly and melted into his arms as if she belonged there. "I'd have to wear silver with blue, and I was in a gold mood tonight."

That didn't make a lick of sense to him, but he wasn't out there to talk. Any thought of his reason for being in the bar had fled several songs ago.

Flint leaned over and nuzzled Joella's ear. When she lifted her head to him, he accepted the invitation and claimed her mouth.

Had it been so long since he'd had sex that he couldn't remember any woman's kiss being as delicious as hers? Her lips softened invitingly, and his tongue accepted the invitation. He tasted the strawberry sweetness of her daiquiri and drank deeply.

Her long fingers stroked his nape, and he nearly shook his leg like a horny dog. Her kiss was liquid fire that swept down inside his soul and incinerated all the bad times and lit the empty hollows with promises. Her lips didn't cause just a physical ache, but the kind of longing the poets wrote about, of moments missed and ships passing in the night.

For his own mental health, he needed to stick with the physical. He slid his hand down her slender back, finding that thin line of nakedness at her waist and glorying in the warmth of sun-browned flesh.

She practically purred into his mouth. Hope flourishing, Flint slipped his fingers beneath her sequined shirt and along the supple muscles of her back. She returned the favor, unbuttoning his shirt and branding his skin with the heat of her palms.

"I've got my truck right over there," he managed to say against her kiss-softened mouth. "Want to take this somewhere a little more private?"

She hesitated, and time froze as he waited. He wanted her so bad he would have cracked molars chewing nails if she asked it of him. He needed this one last night of irresponsible freedom before conforming to small-town ways. He needed
her
, an angel sent straight from heaven to tell him he was on the right path.

"You're not from these parts, are you?" she whispered, not opening any distance between their sandwiched bodies, much to his intense relief. "I've got you pegged as a traveling man."

"You've got me pegged well," he admitted. He would be hobbling like a pegged horse if he didn't get her into that truck and back to the motel.

"You don't look like a salesman," she said with soft inquiry, running a finger beneath his shirt and shooting electric shocks to his groin.

Ah, he'd forgotten that part of the game. Women liked sexy jobs and bad boys, not respectable businessmen. Without lying, he whispered in her ear, "I play a little guitar." Very little, now that his fingers were out of commission.

He slid his hand up to her breast, expecting the instant gratification he'd always received after recognition of his name or talent or career. Lots of people associated the music business with fame and fortune. He wasn't one to discourage their foolish fancies.

Instead of the excited reaction he'd expected, the beautiful Miss Joella shoved away and glared at him with wintry eyes. "A musician?" she asked scathingly, as if it were a filthy word. "And a lousy guitar player at that. Hell, I'll never learn."

Without further explanation, she stalked off to a rusty pumpkin-orange Ford Fiesta, leaving him rock hard and in shocked misery.

Chapter Three

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The Stardust Cafe was even seedier than Flint remembered, the perfect joint for a man suffering blue balls and a hangover. With luck, a few cups of hot Java would ease his headache. Unrequited lust was a little more difficult. But he'd promised Charlie that he would open on the first of June, and he wasn't copping out because he'd gotten wasted the night before.

He shoved the key into his back pocket and opened a front door flaking with ancient red paint.

Faded gray cafe curtains on the big front window hid the June dawn. Flint nipped a switch by the door, electrifying the bulbs hanging in tin cans over the tables, creating more shadow than illumination. Good. It felt like a dark bar where he could snarl all he liked, not that there was anyone here at this ungodly hour to notice.

The old wooden floors and dark paneling stank of must and mold and old cigarette smoke. Kicking aside a chrome dinette chair with a cracked pink vinyl seat, he stalked between the gray Formica tables, trying to recall what had inspired the pleasure of his childhood memories.

Instead, last night's debacle seared his brain cells, stealing all the satisfaction he'd anticipated of owning this piece of his past.

The worst part was that he didn't even know what he'd done wrong. Since when had
guitar player
become bad words?

He refused to dwell on it. The lovely Miss Joella had ruined his last night of freedom. He had a pounding hangover from taking a six-pack to his room and drinking himself to sleep.

He sure the hell wouldn't let a woman ruin his first day back in Northfork.

He had fond memories of this tiny mountain town where his daddy had once run the textile mill. He and his brothers had run wild through field and stream. It was the ideal place to bring up boys. His counselor had agreed he might figure out where he'd taken the wrong turn if he returned to his roots, whatever in hell that meant.

He switched on the light over the grill. Charlie had sure been one hell of a lousy housekeeper. There was grease on here that was probably personally acquainted with the original Cherokees who'd discovered these mountains. And Noah had probably dropped off the rest of the equipment on his watery sojourn. Judging from the water stains on the paneling, it looked as if the river, if not Noah, had visited a time or two.

He grimaced at the aging Bunn burners that constituted his coffeemakers. He knew he'd purchased the place cheap. It wasn't as if he could afford a lot. At the time, he'd hoped Charlie had a good pension fund because what Flint had paid for the shop wouldn't finance a trip to Florida for a month much less Charlie's retirement. Now he was thinking Charlie had milked the place for all it was worth and left him the hollow shell.

He had a head for business that could pull this together, if he'd just apply it instead of wasting it on wine, women, and song. He wouldn't be in these straits if he had paid attention to his accounting statements instead of listening to the siren call of his muse. Guess he'd have to learn on his own, the hard way, because he wasn't trusting anyone else these days.

So, he was still paying penance. And instead of being an angel of deliverance, the woman last night had been an imp sent straight from hell to remind him of his sins. Wasn't there some saint who'd suffered all the torments of the damned before being blessed? He sure the hell wasn't any saint, which made any blessings unlikely.

Wondering if he had to start attending church now that he was a reformed, respectable citizen, Flint dug around in the cabinets until he found a bottle of ammonia and some rags. One thing about growing up middle-class, he had learned how to clean. He hadn't done it in twenty years, maybe, but some things were ingrained.

He had the antiquated coffeemaker scrubbed to a stainless steel shine when the front door creaked on its rusty hinges. "Not open yet," he called over his shoulder, trying to read the frosted print on the coffee bean package he'd found in the freezer. For the life of him, he couldn't figure out how to measure a pot of coffee. He wanted real caffeine smelling up the place, not that sissy stuff they served in hotel rooms.

"I wouldn't recommend opening until you de-crudify the grill," a cheerful voice sang out. "I came in early to help out."

Even without the raucous noise of a bar band as backdrop, Flint recognized the angel's heavenly soprano. Surely even God wouldn't be cruel enough to punish him in such a humiliating fashion?

Turning slowly, searching the gray shadows of the sad cafe, he met the wide-eyed shock of last night's blond goddess. Lowering his gaze, he could just make out her shapely silhouette wearing a midnight blue bib apron with
Stardust Cafe
embroidered across it in flowery pink.

"Well, hell, if it isn't little Miss Starshine come to add twinkle to my day. Do you do dishes like you do men?"

Joella debated the relative merits of sinking through Charlie's filthy wood floor, ripping off her apron, and fleeing, or brazening it out in the face of Flint's temper and her own shock. Since she possessed no magic traits for liquefying, and she needed a job to eat, brazening it out was her only option.

"A guitar player?" she asked, ignoring his insolence and forcing a chuckle as she swayed her hips and crossed the floor. Damn, but he was even hotter looking than she remembered, although slightly green around the gills once she got close enough to see. "Do you also play the coffeepot?"

She rounded the corner and removed the bag of coffee beans from his hand. Without asking permission, she measured a full load into the grinder, ignoring the intimidating height and breadth of pure furious male hovering over her shoulder.

"Just the guitar," he growled with a note of threat in his throat. "I'm Flynn Clinton, lately of the Barn Boys, fresh out of Nashville."

"No wonder you can't make coffee." She tried to sound perky, but he'd pretty much ruined her day. She was going to have to quit this job now. She couldn't work here and suffer the daily electric zing of attraction to another lying, cowardly guitar picker who would be gone as soon as he found the next gig.

"Since when do guitar pickers play cafes?" was all she asked.

"I can make coffee,"
Mr. Clinton
growled, completely unlike the sweet-talking hunk of last night. "And it's a coffee shop, not a cafe. We won't do music."

"Well, so much for my singing-waitress routine," she answered saucily, tapping his blue work shirt with a cup to get him out of her personal space.

He backed off, but Jo noticed he watched her intently as she set the grinder.

"Got any other ideas how you'll rebuild business? Maybe a little soft-shoe, hmm?" She danced a step or two to her own music.

"Why, you got something to sell?" he taunted.

She accidentally on purpose stomped his boot toe while reaching for the chicory. "Unless you're planning on charging ten bucks a cup, you'd better sell something besides coffee, and your good looks don't count."

She ought to block what she was doing so he had to rely on her if he wanted to keep his customers, but she'd never been the spiteful sort. Besides, she didn't want to be responsible for the repercussions if people didn't get their caffeine fix.