Small Town Girl (11 page)

Those thoughts carried him safely through the room so he didn't focus too hard on the rhythmic swing of Joella's fringe over the sway of her hips. She laughed and touched people on the shoulder as she passed by. Flint suffered a mild resentment at watching male faces brighten everywhere her hand lit. With his newfound maturity, he squashed the negativity. No more bad-boy fistfights, he reminded himself. He had to get up in the morning and call the kids, and he didn't want to do it from jail. Joella was her own woman, not his, and he had no reason for jealousy.

To his surprise, she led him out the back door and up the fire escape. Summer thunder rolled in the distance, and the air was thick with humidity as she took a seat on the plank landing and doffed her fringed coat. The clingy red shirt blatantly emphasized her curves, and standing on the stair below her, Flint could see straight down her cleavage.

He eyed the narrow space beside her with misgiving. Sit and avoid staring at her breasts? Or fry in hell smelling her mouthwatering scent without nibbling her nape?

"Did my tenant move out or don't they mind people using their stairs?" he asked in self-defense. The rent wasn't a lot, but it covered some of his mortgage.

She flashed that taunting smile again, and he had to sit down or fall down.

He'd climbed his way to the top of the musical heap by using all the resources available to him and hanging on by his fingernails when necessary. Miss Joella's smile was a challenge to match any competition he'd faced. He took the seat offered.

"I'll give you my rent check in the morning. Charlie didn't mind waiting until the first weekend of the month after I got paid."

Flint gazed out at the heat lightning playing across the mountain until he fully comprehended this new slap in the face. "
You're
my tenant. If I fire you, you can't pay the rent, and I don't get paid."

Her voice filled with mock admiration. "You are quick, Mr. Clinton. On the other hand, you could also appreciate the convenience in the winter. Charlie stayed home snug and warm while I opened up for the macho men showing off their four-wheel drives."

Flint leaned forward with his forearms on his knees, trying not to get too close to the source of that sultry voice. He wanted to kiss the mockery away and make her purr, but that was one of those wrong turns he'd made the first time around, thinking he could control life with sex, as his counselor had so thoughtfully pointed out. He didn't think Joella was the type who could be controlled. Besides, he had other priorities these days.

"Business is bad in winter?" he asked nonchalantly.

"Once there's a snowpack down, we get the skiers on their way up the mountain, but, yeah, people don't have much reason to vacation here in winter. That's why we've got to find ways to bring in more jobs."

Flint nodded knowledgeably, fighting the growing fear in his gut. He'd known the opportunity had been too good to be true. "I looked at Charlie's books. He seemed to be doing okay." He'd hoped to do better.

"That was last year. The mill laid off half its workforce last Christmas. People living on nothing can't pay topic from the one we're out here to discuss. How much trouble are you in, Mr. Big Shot?"

He refused to let her scorn get under his collar. "None now. The law is done with me, and I'm setting out on a clean slate."

Joella caught a firefly and peered into her fist to admire its flash. Her casual acceptance of his statement reduced the last frustrating, humiliating years to an old song, encouraging him to continue. After today's tirade, he'd feared she would push him down the steps, but she apparently didn't believe in grudges.

"Melinda and I parted a few years back because I gave up trying to make her happy. I'd quit playing on the road when she complained about my traveling, but then she bitched about my songwriting income not being enough to buy the pretty things she liked."

"You don't have to tell me this part, if you don't want." She opened her fist and let the firefly go. "There's a reason I don't sing love songs."

Maybe someday, in his old age, he'd ask her about those reasons. She was a woman meant to be loved—by someone more stable than him.

"Smart girl, but I'm telling you this to explain what happened. We married young and in Just. The music business is lousy for relationships. My divorce lawyer talked her lawyer into taking a lump-sum settlement instead of draining me dry for the rest of my life. I figured I needed to be home for my sons. If I didn't tour, my income would decline. Paying her off from the big money I'd earned touring seemed a fair move to all concerned."

Jo was sorry she'd asked. Flint sounded casual enough, but she heard pain bleeding from every word. She'd known heartache. She could relate. She just didn't want to. But she'd started this, and he seemed to need to talk.

Besides, she was enjoying having the big hunk beside her. If Flint shifted half an inch, their hips would rub. His broad shoulders filled all the space, and she had to turn slightly to avoid bumping elbows. That position gave her a better picture of the way his muscles worked over his taut jaw. Despite his sexy charm, he was one unhappy man.

"You gave up a group like the Barn Boys for your kids?" she asked, pretty much in awe of such a sacrifice. She could see him up on that stage. He
belonged
there. No wonder he was unhappy.

"The money from the albums and touring was real nice, but I was just a backup guitarist. They're a dime a dozen. It's my composing talents that they appreciated."

She was starting to like sharing space with this complex cowboy who was all toughness and pain, even if she had vowed not to have any truck with men these days.

Besides, to prevent upchucking onstage, she hadn't eaten any supper, and the fight had gone out of her. "You figured you could stay home and write songs. That makes sense. So what went wrong?"

Given their closeness, it was kind of hard to miss his shrug. "Turns out I know the music business fine, but I don't understand diddly about people. I'd made a bundle over the years, socked away what Melinda didn't spend, but when I tried to raise the cash, I didn't have any. I had a music manager, a business manager, and a lawyer to keep up with investments and accounting statements. All I ever saw were the big dollars under assets. Turned out there were even bigger dollars called things like 'FICA Payable.' My business manager hadn't paid the Feds in years, and the cash didn't exist."

"I hired auditors and lawyers and sued, but there's no sucking blood out of turnips. And of course, the IRS came along with their hands out. By the time the Feds were done socking on penalties and interest and whatnot, they wanted trifle what I was worth. And I still had to pay off Melinda."

"Wow." Jo tried to imagine the mansions and cars he must have owned, but she couldn't, not any more than she could calculate the sum he'd had to pay. "That doesn't seem fair. If your manager stole the money, they should have got it from him."

"I owed it. I didn't pay it. I neglected my fiscal responsibility. That's how the law works. I had lots of lawyers explain it to me."

"Divorce lawyers, lawsuit lawyers, IRS lawyers." She counted up the woe and hit staggering sums. Just asking Fritz to send a letter to the IRS explaining her tips really were less than 10 percent had kept her in fear of jail for a year.

"And insurance lawyers," he added. "After the divorce, I had to go back on the road to pay my bills. I was getting by on no sleep some nights, operating on empty the rest, and drinking too much. About a year ago, I stupidly borrowed a friend's Harley after a few drinks and crashed it into an ice cream stand. Lucky for everyone concerned, it was closed, but people crawled out of the woodwork to sue me."

Oh, dang, and here she was thinking she'd found a man with a head on his shoulders. That's what happened when she fell into sexy eyes. "With all that going on, when did you have time to write RJ's music?" she asked with just a hint of scorn. She had no sympathies for drunks. She understood the hell they wreaked real well.

"We finished the song collection a couple of years ago, before I hit the road again." He didn't seem to mind her derision, as if he'd already dumped enough of it on his own head and was immune to more. "That collection was the one good thing to come out of that time." He settled into bitter silence.

"What happened to your wife and kids?" she asked, thinking of roaming daddies and abandoned kids. She knew how that felt.

He stared at the heat lightning in the distance without replying immediately. When he finally spoke, his voice was strained. "The night I got drunk? That was the night the cops called to tell me Melinda had died in a car crash. So like an idiot, I went out and did the same. Counselor said it was a form of self-destruction."

Shaken, Jo couldn't think of a thing to say. He'd just admitted to a selfish stupidity worse than anything her father had ever done. Or her mother. Instead of thinking of his kids' devastation, he'd thought only of his own.

A loud crack of thunder accented the pain in Flint's admission as he continued, "I was messed up pretty bad, in the hospital for weeks, in physical therapy for months. My parents had to hire estate lawyers to settle the mess Melinda left with her death. They came up and got the kids and took them home with them while I was in the hospital. I wasn't working, didn't have a home. They've been with my parents ever since. I've given up music and moved here so I can have them back."

I'm not feeling sorry for him
, she swore. She'd been hearing some version of this story her entire life. He'd effectively abandoned his kids, just as her father had abandoned her and Amy. Just as He-Who-Should-Rot-in-Hell had deserted her in Atlanta ten years ago and Ratfink Randy had skipped out. One day, Flint would hear the siren call of music and forget what he'd said here tonight. She was slowly accepting these things.

The thunder rolled louder, and Flint glanced up at a jagged streak of lightning on the mountain peak.

Jo let the thunder be her reply. The band down below struck up a slow tune, and the audience was singing along, probably to drown out Slim's nasal notes.

"Still trust me to find a lawyer for you?" Flint asked. His voice was so distant that he might as well have been standing at the foot of the mountain.

That he accepted his responsibility in his fate and hadn't hid his faults were strong points in his favor. He'd been square with her. Jo wanted everything in the open between them, so she returned the favor.

"My mama started binge drinking when I was little. At least she had the sense to never drive drunk." If he winced over that acid comment, she couldn't tell.

"My dad abandoned us to tour with some oldies group that's working Europe these days," she continued. "My first love was a lying talent scout who took me to Atlanta with promises of fame and fortune. I was eighteen. When we got there, he signed me up at a strip bar. I learned waitressing to earn the bus fare home."

She didn't bother repeating the whole humiliating scene that still had the power to wake her up, shrieking, in the middle of the night. She had pinned all her teenage hopes on becoming a singer like her father, of earning the fortune that would make her mother happy again. She'd won a regional beauty contest with one of her songs. He-Who had promised her a recording contract. She'd had huge stars in her eyes when he'd bought her a glitzy costume and taken her to a nightclub for her first paid performance.

And then she had stepped onto a real stage, in front of an all-male audience so shit-faced at that hour they'd instantly started screaming at her to take it all off. They'd been too busy crawling up onstage to grab her breasts and crotch to hear a note she sang—not that she'd managed more than a whimper before trying to run. He-Who had blocked the exit. After the crowd had torn off her meager costume, she'd really believed they would strip off a piece of her hide next. Eighteen and ignorant, nearly naked, she'd collapsed in hysterics right there in the spotlight and spewed out her guts on the club manager, who'd hauled her to her feet. The audience had roared with laughter and rage.

She'd been thrown out on the street, broke and friendless, to make her own way home.

Everyone in town knew the story, so she didn't have much to hide. She just figured she owed Flint after he'd bared his soul to her.

"Jeez," he muttered. Leaning his hands on the landing behind them, he stared out at the light display. "No wonder you told me to go to hell."

"I was politer than that," she reminded him. "The first time. Today, you tried to kill me." She laughed a little. "Yeah, maybe I did at that." He chuckled, a pleasant sound from deep in his chest.

"I think we may have the first partnership based on complete and total distrust."

She laughed out loud as she realized he probably was right.

Chapter Nine

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"How'd the game go last night?… You won? That's great."

Jo tried not to listen in on Flint's strained conversation with his sons on Saturday morning, but he was pacing behind the counter with his cell phone, talking loudly in nervousness. He seemed to have a strange notion that he was being helpful through the morning rush hour by staying out here instead of holing up in his office.

She needed to summon more antipathy for a man who'd deserted his kids when they'd needed him, but he was trying so determinedly to win them back that he was breaking her feeble heart.

"Who's he talking to?" Sally asked as Jo poured her a second cup of decaf. Her soft cow eyes were pools of sympathy. "He looks miserable."

"Apparently that's what kids do to you." Jo poured another cup for Amy at the same table. "Did Josh and Louisa get to see their dad this morning or did Evan have to go in to work?" Jo had always thought her sister had a real marriage, but lately, her newfound cynicism had been kicking in where her brother-in-law was concerned.

Amy poured sugar into her coffee and shrugged. "They're trying to get the samples out before the show. You know how it is."