“George Bob, so help me, if you don’t give Flint a good deal on that insurance, I’ll tell your mama about the time you took me behind the shed and talked me out of my panties.” Jo slid a donut and a coffee mug to her childhood nemesis.
George was three years older than her twenty-eight, and he looked every year of it. Tall and thin, he’d never been bad looking, but his nondescript brown hair had grown thinner, and now that she looked close, so had his mouth. He looked like a priggish stickler who sold insurance. When had they become their parents?
He shot her an annoyed look. “You were five and I was eight. This is business, Joella. A man has to make a living. Keep your nose out of it.”
“When pigs fly, Georgie-boy,” she sang, unfazed by his refusal. He’d remember her threat when the time came.
“Which reminds me, that blasted flying pig you talked me into is blocking the sign on my door. Why don’t you sweet talk your new employer into taking it?”
“Flying pig?”
Jo rolled her eyes as Flint used his amazing timing to walk up at the wrong moment. Familiarity hadn’t bred enough contempt yet, she reflected, nor driven out the memory of his mind-melting kisses. She’d woken up in the middle of the night sweating over a tasty dream of his buff chest all naked and propped above her.
She tried not to admire the way his short-sleeved shirt clung to his muscular biceps and his too-long hair brushed the collar, but every damned woman in here had taken notice. Even the blue-haired ladies had flirted when Flint walked by. And he smiled at all of them—just like he had at Jo that first night. And hadn’t done since.
“The flying pig is the very best one,” she told George, ignoring her boss. “It’s bound to win the prize. Move the pedestal.”
Jo sauntered on to the next customer. Both men watched in appreciation. She was wearing a narrow black mini-skirt and hot pink golf shirt under her apron today, color-coordinating with the café’s fifties colors. The apron hid nothing from the rear.
“She’s a bossy brat,” George Bob opined. “I don’t know how you put up with her.”
Flint gazed around at the customers occupying his tables. The ones remaining after rush hour were all men. “It helps to pay her,” he said noncommittally, sliding into the booth seat across from George. “I tried calling Charlie last night, but his wife wouldn’t let him come to the phone. Says he needs his rest, and worrying about this place won’t help him. So I’m out on this limb alone.” He produced a sheet of paper from his pocket. “I picked up a few estimates before I called you.”
George held out his hand. ‘Mind if I see them?”
Flint stuffed the folded paper back in his shirt pocket. “Give me your best offer, and we’ll work from there. I’m on a tight budget and have to work out the cost differentials.”
“Charlie never had enough coverage,” George asserted.
“I have no assets,” Flint countered. “Going broke paying too much insurance is a certainty. Getting sued isn’t.”
Well, actually, given past experience, getting sued almost was a certainty, but he wasn’t inclined to mention that. He’d decided to make one last call this morning before he started digging his own grave.
As George talked liabilities and assets, Flint watched his waitress greet a shorter, sensible version of herself entering the shop. The brunette in a blue suit held a kid in each manicured hand, and Joella crouched down in that breath-stealing skirt to hug them.
He almost missed his insurance agent’s quote when Jo stood with a sexy swirl, the little boy’s hand gripped in hers. Returning his wandering attention to business, Flint put on his good-ol’-boy grin and took the paper George pushed at him. “I’ll crunch the numbers and let you know.”
“You sure you don’t want a flying pig to go with that?” George asked in disgruntlement, sliding out of the booth. “I might even give you a discount to take it.”
“A purple cow, if you have one,” Flint replied agreeably, clueless about the joke but willing to pass it on.
“Damn good thing Jo didn’t think of cows.” Grumbling, George walked off, greeting the newcomer with a nod before departing.
“Hey, Flint, come meet my sister.” Jo poured coffee for her customers at the counter and nodded toward her almost-look-a-like.
Warily, Flint left the booth and held out his hand. “Just call me, Flint, ma’am. Howd’ya do?”
“Amy Warren. This is Louisa, and that’s Josh.” She indicated the kids with a harried nod. “Pleased to meet you, Flint. And bless you for letting Jo have Josh for a while. I knew Charlie would find a good man to take over. I have to run. I’ll bake you some muffins this afternoon.”
Flint blinked and wanted a televised replay of what had just happened here as Amy Warren picked up her daughter and rushed out. He’d bask in the woman’s approval, except he didn’t know what the heck he’d done to gain it.
“Here, take the kid while I get some more beans out of the back.” Jo shoved the boy’s hand into his.
Flint was left staring into solemn blue eyes with ridiculously long lashes. A grimy thumb popped into the kid’s mouth. He remembered his kids at that age. He’d give half his life to have that time back.
“You’re too old to suck your thumb,” he admonished, sounding like his mother.
The kid sucked harder.
“Does it taste good?” Flint deposited the boy on the counter with full intention of leaving him there and getting back to work.
The kid offered his wet thumb for tasting.
“No, thanks, I’m on a diet and had to give up thumbs. How about a donut instead?” He opened the donut case and selected a chocolate one.
The kid reached in and helped himself to a sticky one.
“Josh doesn’t like chocolate.” Jo closed the case as she passed by with the bag of coffee beans. “And now he’ll have sugar all over everything and be hyper for hours. Better get a paper towel.”
“Tell me again why I’m babysitting?” Flint reached for the towels. Sugary fingerprints already adorned his shirt front.
“Because Mary Jean just had a baby, and Peggy goes to bed if she sneezes, and Louisa has a doctor appointment.”
“Okay, that’s one inanity too many. I’ve got to work on the books.” Admiring the way Jo’s feathery earrings accentuated her pouty lips was sufficient to cope with her diarrhea of the mouth.
Hauling the chubby cherub out of the way of his breakfast crowd before the kid ate up the profits, he escaped to get the phone call off his agenda.
The office wasn’t bigger than a storage closet. He dropped Josh on a cracked overstuffed chair, handed him pencil and paper, and took a seat at his desk. Vowing to buy a cordless speaker phone to bring some piece of the twenty-first century in here, Flint dialed the number for his ex-manager’s office and set his feet up on the battered oak desk. Putting his big clodhoppers anywhere else involved endangering overflowing wastebaskets or kicking file drawers spilling yellowed invoices.
“Darla, put me through to Ned right now, or I’ll sue his pants off, and you’ll be out of a job,” he told the gum-smacking secretary who answered.
As soon as he heard Ned pick up the receiver, Flint launched into his tirade. “You lied to me again, Slick. The album is slated to hit the stores in August, and I have yet to see RJ’s approval for a correction on that cover.”
He tried not to sound as desperate as he felt. He’d worked his heart out on the tunes for the record company’s latest greatest star. He’d thought RJ was a friend. He’d given the lying, thieving bastard some of the best work he’d ever done. Maybe the last work he’d ever do. He had wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, not in a sleazy river of lawsuits and name calling between ex-friends and ex-managers.
“Flint, you’re bulldozin’ mountains out of cesspools, son. The cover is fine.”
“He left my name off! It’s damn well not fine, and you know it!” Flint roared.
Startled by Flint’s shout, the kid looked up so fast that he dropped his pencil. He puckered up, whether at the shout or the fact that the pencil had rolled under the desk, Flint couldn’t determine. Grimacing, he tried to maneuver the long curly cord of the phone around the tarnished brass accountant’s lamp to reach under the desk.
In a lower voice, Flint continued his rant. “Tell RJ if I don’t get credit on that album, I’m coming up there to cut him a new asshole.”
Ned started more of his backpedaling bullshit. Fed up, Flint let the receiver dangle and crawled beneath the desk to retrieve the pencil from the dust bunnies.
He had a real bad feeling about lying scum like RJ. He had an ulcer shouting lawsuit every time he thought about the lyrics on that scrap of envelope RJ had passed off as his. In his experience, any man who could rip off a friend would cheat his own mother. That writing wasn’t RJ’s.
Grabbing the pencil, he started backing out from under the desk.
“Hide and seek, now why didn’t I think of that?” called a melodious voice over his head. “The café has emptied out and I’ve come to retrieve Josh, but if you’re having fun—”
“What’s an asshole, Aunt Jo?” Josh asked.
Flint whacked his head against the desk coming up too fast.
All five feet, six inches of blonde bombshell beamed at him as he staggered up and fell into his desk chair, nursing his bruised head.
“Teaching the boy a new vocabulary, are we? How thoughtful.” Without missing a beat, she scooped up the dangling receiver and hung up on Ned, abruptly cutting off the whining—whether intentionally or not, Flint wasn’t about to guess. Joella looked like the kind who didn’t get mad, but got even.
“C’mon, Josh, let’s draw on the counter where Aunt Jo can help you with your letters.”
“He’s fine in here,” Flint protested, annoyed at being caught in fatherly incompetence with a kid who wasn’t even his own. His language skills had deteriorated from years of hanging out in bars.
Jo grabbed a new pencil from the desk and helped Josh out of the chair, ignoring Flint’s protest. “Did George Bob give you the go ahead for the back room?”
“I’m not sure it’s a wise idea to open up when I’m not—”
“Mary Jean is great with the customers, and she needs the tips. You’re not even paying her,” she pointed out. “She’s doing it for Eddie and the guys. If we had an espresso machine, you could make a fortune in the evenings.”
“I’m not paying her?” Shocked, Flint got up and followed her to the front. “I could have the feds down my throat for that. That’s all I need, one more fight with the fu—” He cut himself off before he completed that word.
“Nobody cares what we do up here,” she said with a dismissive wave. “As long as Mary Jean doesn’t complain, who’s to know? You’re not running Starbucks.”
“You have no idea how…frigging…wrong that is,” he yelled. “It’s that kind of lame-assed thinking that gets everybody concerned in deep shit.”
“Mommy says shit is a bad word,” Josh said, climbing up to reach the donut case. “Daddy says damn and he’s going to hell,” he continued in the ensuing silence.
Jo giggled and dried off a butt-ugly green dish from a stack she’d been hand washing. Flint rubbed his face. He wanted to back out of here as fast as his boots would carry him, but he had nowhere to run these days. Besides, she ought to be the one to go, not him. Knowing this was his place made him feel better.
“I’m already in hell, so I don’t reckon you ought to try out any bad words in front of your mama,” he advised, lifting the boy off the counter and back to a seat. “If you’re hungry, we have bananas.”
“Yeah, I wanna banana.” He looked up at Flint expectantly. “You got any little boys I can play with?”
“I have two boys. Adam is twelve and Johnnie is eleven. Maybe you’ll meet them when they come to visit.” He’d missed most of their childhoods, and at this rate, he’d miss their adolescence, too.
“You got any big boys I can play with?” Jo murmured, brushing past him to hand Josh an apple instead of a banana.
Her aphrodisiac cologne filled his head with images of rose petals, bubble baths, and tan lines. “Am I big enough?” He lifted one eyebrow suggestively. Out of self defense, he was already reverting to his old ways.
She slanted him a wicked look from beneath long dark lashes. “Oh, you’re big enough, all right. The question is, are you good enough?” she purred, running a finger down his chest and setting it on fire.
“Good ain’t hardly the word for it,” he promised.
Cursing inwardly that he’d let her push his buttons, Flint leaned against the counter at a safer distance, only to be distracted by the lift of Joella’s breasts as she reached for more dishes in the cabinet over the stove. He’d been within inches of having all that in his palms… He breathed a sigh of relief when the front door creaked open to let in a customer.
He had to be out of his mind to even consider discussing his ugly quest with Joella, but she was just the sort of person who would know RJ. He had to find out if his partner had plagiarized those lyrics they’d sold to the record company before he got his kids home and raised their hopes.
Flint waited until Jo finished pouring coffee for their customer. When she reached to take down a purple platter, he asked casually. “You know a guy called RJ Peters used to play around here?”
The platter dropped from Jo’s hand to hit the stove with a splintering crash. She stood there wide-eyed, not bothering to glance at the destruction. “Why d’ya ask?”
Wondering what the hell that was about, Flint checked to make certain Josh was still safely in his seat. Then he knelt down to pick up the pieces. He had about ten seconds to figure out if she liked the lying cheat or wanted RJ’s head smashed like the platter.
“I’m trying to make RJ live up to his obligations,” he explained, figuring he was already in deep shit and might as well dig deeper.
“Well, you find a shotgun and a lawyer, and I’ll do that for you.” Without another word of explanation, she left him picking up china while she grabbed Josh and headed for the door. “We’re going for a walk,” she called as she departed.
Well, hell, Flint thought as he cut his finger on a porcelain splinter. Looked like ol’ RJ had left an entire trail of shattered lives behind him. And at least one heart.