Small Town Girl (28 page)

Her eyes crinkled with laughter. "Uh-huh. Tell me another one, big boy. Let's get back to the real question here—your mama is gonna hear about this. Do you care what your family thinks about you being up here?"

"Never paid them no never mind before," he admitted. He couldn't straighten out Jo's perception of herself while his mind was on her body—just as she figured. He could scarcely follow her conversation while her perfume filled his head, and his clenched hand ached for reasons besides torn tendons. "I'm trying to learn, but there are limits."

She aimed for the kitchen. "Okay, I can understand that. I didn't tell my mama that you're here. We all have our hang-ups. Want some coffee?"

Hell, no. But figuring she was telling him he couldn't have what he really wanted, Flint tried to be rational about it. They both had good reasons for resisting the electric rhythm pumping between them. They'd fallen in bed the first time in a burst of white-hot flame and no thought, and he'd embarrassed the hell out of her when his parents had shown up. So maybe her invitation to stay the night was just that.

Or maybe she wanted romance this time around. That scared the shit out of him. He couldn't make commitments, which left him wondering how he went about seducing a woman who knew his every move and would laugh at him if he tried romancing her. He settled on accepting the offer of coffee. "Sure."

She cast him a knowing glance but continued measuring beans.

Trying not to think of hauling Jo straight to bed, Flint stewed over what she'd said about herself and men hitting on her. His natural inclination was to punch out anyone who insulted her. Since there weren't any men present, and it was Jo doing the insulting, he was up a creek. He cleverly kept his trap shut. Maybe that's what romancing women was about—just listening.

He sat on the couch and removed his boots while Jo efficiently worked her way around the kitchen. "I like what you've done to the place," he finally took a chance on saying. What he really wanted to say was that he wanted to take her home with him, to his house. He liked her colorful nest, but it was small and airy and not quite real. He wanted her somewhere solid and permanent, like his cabin.

Jo laughed and threw him a naughty look that took in his flashy shirt and made his tight jeans tighter. "Yeah, the scenery is improving."

Well, that showed him the pointlessness of flattery. They'd both liked what they saw from day one. Sex wasn't their problem. It was all the other complications that had them tied in knots.

Unable to watch Jo and not touch, Flint got up to examine her music CDs. "I don't think we can open in the morning," he said without inflection. He hadn't wanted to correct her in front of others. The business was shot, any way he looked at it. He wasn't certain there was any purpose in borrowing to fix it up.

"Sure we can." She poured the coffee as fast as it brewed into the pot. "No air-conditioning, maybe." She shrugged. "But we're tough. We'll provide flyswatters until you get the windows in. How good are you at construction?"

"Not very, even when my hand was reliable. I'm real good at supervising," he added drily, putting a CD into the player. She came over to hand him a mug of whiskey-scented brew.

Women didn't normally make him nervous. Jo had him so spun around that he couldn't carry on an intelligent conversation. He was actually listening to her foolish optimism when he ought to be planning another means of supporting his kids.

Sipping her coffee, she lingered close enough for him to notice that she smelled of cologne and makeup and woman. Male instinct demanded that he take what he wanted, and the mature adult thing he was trying to learn abruptly took a leave of absence.

The music roared to life, but nothing could deflect his awareness of the woman temptingly within reach, studying her CD titles. It was a lot simpler thinking of Jo than the disaster that was his life.

"I know it's the end of the month and bills will be coming in," she continued the conversation that he wasn't following, "but if you hand out free food and coffee, everyone will pitch in to fix things up. Slim's an electrician. He can look at the wiring. He owes you. You can pay the bills when the insurance check comes."

He didn't want to think about bills and insurance. His fingers itched to play with the wild disarray of curls brushing the silk of her collar. He wanted to murmur sweet nothings in her ear and feel her arms circling his neck. He watched her slender throat and grew hard just watching her swallow. He'd promise her anything about now. "We can try," he agreed, not totally certain what he was committing himself to.

"Trying is what we do best down here." She set her coffee on the CD stand and flipped through the selection with a smile playing on her lips.

Flint couldn't tear his gaze from the curves of Jo's waist and backside in that formfitting leather as she bent over the shelf. She could wear a sack, and he would see through it. "This better be decaf if we're getting any sleep," he warned.

"Yeah, that's what I thought." She slid in a different CD.

She turned around, and a thrill shot straight to Flint's groin as her wise green cat eyes challenged his. One of his songs pounded from the speaker. To his amazement, he understood—she was showing him how she wanted to be romanced. His heart kicked a fast lick.

"No one's going to believe we just sat here all night and talked," he predicted, thankful Jo didn't need a lot of chatting.

"I agree with you on that point, too," she said with a grin. "Does this mean we're in agreement on more than we thought?"

"Doubt it." Flint set his cup next to hers. His appreciation for Jo's understanding ways went bone deep, but they still had mountainous issues between them. He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into the music with him. "I think it's just this one topic that we can count on, and that probably only lasts until the luster wears off."

Running his hand from her waist downward, he pulled her close, until their hips circled together. He could dance with an erection—for a while.

"If wearing off the luster will make it easier to work with you without wanting to jump your bones, let's polish the tar out of it," she agreed, following his lead without hesitation.

She wanted to jump his bones? Damn, but he'd known he liked the way she thought. Flint grinned down at her and whirled her across the floor.

He'd spent a lifetime confusing music and sex, but what Jo did to him was deeper, more intense, and far scarier—and he'd never wanted anyone or anything more in all his life.

He suspected polishing their luster would only deepen the beauty of their attraction, but he'd always been a risk taker.

Chapter Twenty-one

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"You live in an eagle's nest," Flint said with what Jo interpreted as wonder layered over male satisfaction.

The pounding beat of the band had died some time ago, but the lingering chatter of voices still drifted through the open windows from the street below.

They lay in her bed, with all her familiar possessions around her, and she still felt as if the world were new again. The heat of raw male warmed her. She touched her toes to his, and Flint scraped his muscled leg over hers to trap her ankle. She shivered in anticipation with merely that minor touch. Even in the aftermath of sex, her hormones skittered and collided and sang just lying there with their naked hips touching.

Or maybe it was her soft heart leaping with foolish joy.

"I like listening to the trees rustle at night," she murmured. "The owls hoot over the river. I always thought of the loft as a tree house, but an eagle's nest works."

"They logged the trees out by my cabin. It's sitting there on bare hillside. I'll have to tell my landlord to plant more trees. I like it up here."

Flint's voice rumbled over her as sensuously as his hand stroked up and down her arm. It would take one hell of a lot of polishing to wear off this luster if she could be aroused just by the sound of his voice—after they'd already had sex once. She turned on her side and ran her fingers down his hard chest, tickling his nipples the way she wanted him to touch hers.

"You won't stay there long enough to see the trees grow," she said, reminding herself as much as him that there wasn't any future in what they were doing.

"One day at a time," he agreed. Neither of them were talking about trees.

A shaft of moonlight spilled over the sharp angles of Flint's face, and Jo stroked his bristly jaw. She was experienced enough to read masculine desire in his eyes, understood when his gaze dropped to her breasts, and recognized the response between her legs. And still she couldn't resist believing she answered a yearning in him that was more than sex.

She threw her leg over his groin and settled where he wanted her—where she needed him.

Flint grabbed her hips and surged strong and deep inside her, and for this one night, neither of them worried about tomorrow,

"I don't remember the pig's hat having turkey feathers in it," Amy said, balancing boxes of muffins and studying Myrtle's chapeau on Saturday morning. "Chicken feathers, I could understand. But wild turkey? There must have been some partying here last night."

Helping carry boxes from Amy's car, Jo stopped to admire the selection of hard-to-find striped feathers. Three. She hadn't put them there. Flint must have had a busy morning. A warm spot settled in her midsection at knowing he'd guessed who had placed the first feather and that he'd appreciated the symbolism enough to copy it. In her experience, men didn't usually grasp her weird notions. "Guess someone couldn't find crow feathers," she answered enigmatically, heading for the cafe door.

Flint had pulled the plywood off the doors and windows before breakfast after Dave and George Bob had arrived with an old wooden door and a truckful of window sashes. Neither man had commented when Flint had run down the back stairs, tucking in his shirt, with Jo following behind him to start the coffee.

Putting Amy's muffins into the doughnut case, working behind the counter, Jo wanted to crow her joy. She settled for watching Flint as often as she dared without giving her foolishness away. She was a grown woman, not an infatuated schoolgirl. She didn't need to sigh over the studly way he lifted that heavy door without help, swinging it into place so the other men could mark the hinges. And she fought the urge to giggle when he glanced her way for approval as he did it. His knowing look burned all the way to her middle.

Silly, silly, silly, she scolded herself. But nature sure had its hooks in her. She didn't even question the wisdom of rebuilding the cafe if it wouldn't have any business soon. Flint exuded a confidence that rubbed off on everyone.

The arrival of his family distracted her. The boys begged to be given something important to do and kept sneaking peeks at Main Street, probably hoping for more news trucks. Jo grinned at the predictability of teenagers. She enjoyed teasing them, and they responded with grins so much like Flint's that she could easily fall in love all over again.

While Flint assigned tasks, Jo handed out coffee and muffins to anyone who showed up to help. She sent the boys upstairs to choose music to keep everyone entertained. They came back down making fun of her oldies, but she noticed Hank Williams and Patsy Cline erupted from the back room not much later.

The phone in Flint's office started ringing around nine. It could have been ringing all night for all she knew. With the band playing, no one would have noticed. And Flint wouldn't have been home to take his personal calls. With Flint's name attached, the news clip of the Mercedes, molasses, and chickens had rated national TV coverage.

By the third call, Jo sent Johnnie upstairs to retrieve her cordless phone and plug it into Flint's wiring so they could carry the receiver outside.

"Yeah, Travis, thanks. It looks worse than it is. Did you see those chickens?" Flint roared with laughter as he talked to still another of his Nashville friends.

Everyone continued working around him, but like Jo, they all knew
Travis
was the lead singer for the Barn Boys. Johnnie and Adam were the only ones who ignored the conversation. They'd grown up with famous people in their living room.

Martha Clinton frowned in disapproval and returned to scrubbing at the muddy floor. Jo pretended to stay busy washing down their new paneling. If Nashville had already come knocking, how soon would it be before Flint felt the call to return there? He was an extraordinarily talented musician who didn't belong behind a coffee shop counter.

Maybe the disaster was a good thing, saving her from heartbreak and providing Flint with an excuse to go back where he belonged. Maybe the band would give him enough money to have his hand fixed so he could play with them again. He could give her the cafe as his share of the lawsuit, and they'd both be happy.

She didn't feel real happy thinking about it.

"Sure, come on down. I can still tell you when your song sucks." Flint carried the receiver through the dining room and back to his office, oblivious of all the gazes following him. "I'll mark my calendar and hang around that day. Sure, sure. No problem."

The CD player blasted out a Barn Boys song and drowned the rest of the conversation.

" 'Hey, hey, hey,' " Jo sang along, swinging with the rhythm as she climbed a ladder to clean the top walls. Rather than accentuate the negative, she let new ideas spin madly in her mind. She had to take out her energy somewhere. " 'Don't go breaking my heart…' "

"Because like a worm, it will make two and multiply?" Flint's warm voice asked from the foot of the ladder.

She dropped her sponge on him. He wiped dirty water out of his eyes and still didn't quit laughing at her.

"Come down here and try that," he dared her.

Her libido did a happy jig in the sunshine of his eyes, but she remained where she was. "Give me the phone. I want to call Dot. I bet she knows half a dozen artists who wouldn't mind hanging their work on these walls. That will be even better than plates. You're not the only one who knows famous people around here."