Small Town Girl (7 page)

Like Jo's first boyfriend and so-called business manager, He-Who-Should-Rot-in-Hell. Any reference to that dangerous episode went unspoken, but the fear was there in her mother's eyes.

"Tell me something I don't know." Cutting the potato into quarters and nearly taking off her finger with the viciousness of her slice, Jo decided they had enough potatoes. She picked up the pot and carried it into the house.

Her mother had good reason to question Jo's poor choices. She was not only a bad judge of men, but it seemed she'd recently turned coward. She'd waited until the lunch rush had started before taking Josh back to the cafe. That wasn't like her. She should have waited to see what that no-good, cheating, rotten…

Which was why she hadn't hung around. She couldn't think of Randy—RJ!—Peters without looking for a rope and a gun.
RJ
! For heaven's sake alive, who did the miserable, rotten cur think he was?
Randolph John
wasn't good enough?

He'd been good old
Randy
while he was playing with the Buzzards. He'd left for Nashville and the music circuit a couple of years ago, but until she'd heard through the grapevine in January that he'd finally sold an album, she hadn't fully comprehended she'd been dumped along with the band. Stupidly, she'd had high hopes that his visits and sweet promises meant his heart was growing fonder with his absence. She'd just been waiting for him to keep his word to take her with him.

She didn't know who was stupider, her for believing him, or Randy for turning his back on the people who'd got him where he was today.

The phone rang at the same time that Amy's SUV chugged up the gravel drive. Balancing the potato pot on her hip, Jo picked up the cordless on the way through the shabby living room to the even shabbier kitchen. "Jo here."

"Has Amy arrived yet? I have some new clients in my office, and I've promised we'd feed them. I need to talk to her when she gets there."

"Hello, Evan, good to hear from you, Evan. How's life treating you these days, Evan?" Jo slammed the pot on the stove, added more water and some salt, and turned on the burner. Evan's pomposity was another of the traits that made her skin crawl. "Have you moved all the mill jobs to Mexico yet, Evan?"

She heard the kids shouting to their grandmother and waited to hear if Amy would come in. She glanced at the old Seth Thomas wall clock. Her sister was running late. She'd probably go on down the road. Amy hated to be late for anything. That was just fine, because Jo had no intention of handing dickhead over to Amy to ruin her evening out. He was perfectly capable of feeding clients in Asheville, He did it all the time. He just hated that Amy was taking classes instead of waiting on him.

"Just let me talk to my wife, dammit, Joella. This doesn't have to be the Spanish Inquisition."

"Inquisition! Big word. I'll have to go look that up. I'll be right back." She set the phone on the counter and went out to greet the kids.

"Who was that on the phone, dear?" Marie tickled Louisa's belly beneath her too small shirt. Josh had already taken off for the apple tree.

"Just an encyclopedia salesman. I left him dangling."

So, she had a little problem with the truth. The problem with truth was that it sometimes got in the way of justice and hurt people who didn't deserve to be hurt. Every once in a while, she'd like the good people to win.

And she figured whatever Flint had intended to say about Randy John Peters wouldn't have much to do with good people winning. Not unless he handed her a gun and told her it was okay to use it.

On light feet, Joella raced down the fire-escape steps of her apartment over the cafe on Friday morning. She didn't think Flint had figured out yet that she was his tenant. Some surprises were better left to time.

Humidity met the night breeze in a fine mist that blended with the gray light of dawn here in the alley between the cafe and the hardware store. She liked the isolated feeling of having the town to herself for these few minutes before she went to work.

A new day gave her a chance to start over. She'd kicked herself all night. She hadn't given Flint a chance to explain. Maybe he wanted to take Randy down, too. She ought to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

She was just a little sensitive on the subject of the man she'd invested the best three years of her life in. She thought the one damned thing she did right was to know people, and Randy had shattered her illusions. She'd believed him when he'd said he was building a career on the road. She'd even believed him when he'd said he was too busy or too tired or traveling too late to call her often. She'd let him into her house and into her bed whenever his circuit had come back through here.

He'd told her he
lived
for the days and nights with her. Just last Christmas he'd been telling her how he
loved
her. He must have known then that he'd sold the album. Jeez, you'd think she was eighteen all over again.

She must have beans for brains to believe Randy actually liked her rhymes as much as her bed.

Great track record, Jo. He-Who-Should-Rot-in-Hell had taught her stage fright and Randy RJ Ratfink had taught her not to trust a lying, conniving music man. And now she had to work for one. Well, at least she knew better than to trust Flint. She just needed to think with her head instead of her hormones for a change. Easier said than done.

She stepped out of the alley into the early morning of Main Street, Northfork, North Carolina. She loved the picturesque brick storefronts with their sagging signs and wood benches strategically located under awnings. The side of a mountain didn't leave a lot of flat land for building, so the highway between the shops was narrow and the sidewalks tight. Tourists had to park in the lots on either side of town, or on the residential streets that wound up into the hollows. Foot traffic, the big-city planners had called it. Good for business.

But tourists came up only on weekends. To survive, businesses needed a thriving local population. Since the müi had started laying off, the local economy had flattened. She could see evidence of it already in the
For Sale
signs on houses, the closed gift shop, and the empty pharmacy that used to always be there on the corner. Asheville was less than an hour away, and people went down there on the weekends to do their shopping now, to the big box stores that could offer cheaper goods—made in China.

She couldn't do anything about the mill, but she had lots of ideas about other ways to boost business. The big MusicFest the first week of August was one of them. And if Flynn Clinton really was an ex-member of the Barn Boys, then he might be just the man they needed on the committee.

Speak of the devil… There he stood, contemplating the flying fuchsia pig in front of George Bob's insurance office. He had his fingers stashed in his front jeans pockets and his head tilted as if in conversation with the pig on its pedestal. Jo admired his long legs in boot-cut jeans and smiled in memory of his dancing. Her boss was one hell of a sexy man. It was a pity she wasn't trusting men these days.

She'd have to pry his story out of him sometime. His story, and nothing more, she reminded herself. And she'd take any tale he told with a grain of salt. She planned on learning cynicism before her thirtieth birthday.

She sauntered across the street to stand beside him. "Impressive, isn't she? That's Dot's creation. She sells ceramic artwork, so she's a professional at this kind of thing. The purple pig the kids painted isn't quite so neat, but it's cute."

"What the hell is it?" he asked in obvious confusion. "An ashtray?"

"It isn't
anything
. It's art. Knock knock." She tapped his temple with her knuckles. She liked that she had to reach a bit to do so. She liked the heated look he shot her as well. She needed to be reminded she still had what it takes, even if she didn't plan to use it. "Where have you been? Everybody's doing them. I think Chicago started it with the cows. We can't do anything quite so fancy, but if it makes money for the festival, who cares?"

"How do they make money?" He leaned his head back to look the fuchsia pig in its checkerboarded eye. "It's the ugliest damned thing I've ever seen."

"Folk art. People like whimsical. We take bids on the pigs all summer and start the auction where the bids leave off at the festival in August. Cute, huh?"

"People are going to put these things in their houses?" He shook his head in disbelief and started across the street to the cafe.

Jo stayed in stride with him. "Or their gardens. Whatever. Will you take Sally's pig? It will look adorable by the front door."

He shoved the key in the lock. "If everyone else is doing it and I don't have to keep it forever, reckon I can give it a try. It won't trip any customers, will it?"

"That's why George Bob asked for the one on the pedestal, but you'd have to be blind to trip over one. I'll call Sally. She'll be delighted."

"Has she got anyone special?" Flint asked, not looking at Jo as he flipped on the lights.

Jo tried not to reel in shock. This handsome cowboy who could have any woman he wanted was interested in little Sally? Boy, she really was losing her judgment about people. "No one special. She sings in the choir at First Baptist. You might go up there on Sunday if you're out to make an impression."

"Better class of people in church than in bars," he agreed, apparently forgetting where he'd met Jo.

She contemplated socking him over the back of his oblivious head with a coffee mug, but he was a man and clueless. "You'll see some of the same people in both places," she said with what she considered great restraint.

He regarded her tight expression with suspicion. "Right. If you'll start the coffee, I'll go back and unlock for the delivery truck."

They were stepping around each other as if his mention of RJ yesterday had planted a mine field. Maybe it had. Figuring she'd better wait until they both had some caffeine before approaching him about Randy, Jo tightened her apron bow and sauntered back to the counter.

She had coffee brewing and Charlie's newly washed Fiestaware collection stacked all over the counter by the time Flint returned. He carried boxes heavy enough for two forklifts and efficiently stacked them in the pantry without dropping one. Jo sighed in regret over all those rippling muscles she shouldn't touch.

After storing the delivery and breaking out the Krispy Kremes to stack in the counter case, Flint gazed over the array of plates she'd set out. "Having a party?"

"They're Fiestaware," she said proudly. "They're real popular now, and I bet these are the genuine things, not the cheap ones from the discount store. I looked them up at the library when I was in Asheville, and we have some of the old colors. I had this idea—we could paint the cafe in tangerine and persimmon and juniper and line shelves with the plates. Sit some in the front window. Tourists would come in and want to buy them. We could serve them coffee in the cups."

"Tangerine?" He looked as if he'd swallowed the persimmon. "I don't think so. You think these things are worth money?"

"Maybe turquoise and cobalt then?" she asked hopefully. "The place is so gloomy and dull. Bright colors would attract kids, but I guess blues…"

He shook his head. "I like the place like it is. Just because I agreed to a purple pig doesn't mean you can change everything. But if those plates are worth something, I could fix up a shelf in the window maybe."

That was a start, she supposed. She traced the tip of her finger lovingly over one of the colorful coffee cups. "And serve coffee in them maybe?"

"They need saucers. Twice the washing." He poured coffee into the plain white restaurant mug and leaned back against the counter to sip it.

Jo could feel the heat of his gaze burn straight through her clothes, but she was practicing
focus
this morning. Men seldom turned down her ideas, but Flint probably had lots of women throwing themselves at his feet. She apparently had to appeal to his pockets if she wanted to win this one. She kinda liked the idea that he couldn't be swayed by sex.

Before he asked about the cost of the platter she'd broken, Jo switched the subject. "Why did you ask about Randy yesterday?"

"Randy?" He had to change mental gears for that one. "RJ? I'd forgotten we used to call him Randy when we were kids."

She poured herself some coffee and leaned her hip against the stove, far enough away from him that she could keep her mind on the subject and not how it had felt to be held in Flint's big brown arms. If she wanted to learn more, she had to keep this low-key even if she had the urge to fling a plate every time she heard RJ Ratfink's name. "You knew him when he was a kid?"

Flint set down his cup and headed toward the door to switch the
Closed
sign to
Open
. "He was a few years younger than me, but he lived next door until my family moved away when I was ten. We bumped into each other regularly on the circuit."

That meant he could probably tell her all about the two-timin' bastard's escapades. As if he heard her thought, Flint avoided her proximity by straightening chairs. In those cowboy boots, he looked almost too tall for the room.

"How do you know him?" he asked with an edge in his voice.

"He used to play with the Buzzards," she replied, keeping it casual. She could see George Bob opening his office across the street. She'd have to be quick.

"Yeah? I didn't know that. When he came up to Nashville, I helped him get a few jobs." He stacked a few misplaced chairs and held them over his head to carry them to the back where they belonged.

Jo sighed in regret again. He looked good in jeans. "I heard about his recording contract." She moved the ugly white mugs to the closed cabinet to make room for the pretty cups in the glass display cabinet and tried to look disinterested. She didn't know why she ought to be interested in RJ's doings, except he seemed to make Flint real uneasy.

When she didn't throw a tantrum or drop anything, Flint returned to top off his cup. "Yeah. That's why I asked about him. Is he a real good friend of yours?"