Jo anxiously watched the back room’s entrance while pretending everything was fine. She showed Johnnie how to hold the guitar chord for the opening number of their song and jerked around nervously when Adam hit the cymbals. She had no way of knowing when Elise would be done explaining all the legal papers to Flint, and she was just about to jump out of her skin in nervousness.
It didn’t help that all their friends and neighbors had started gathering back here as if they knew something special was going on. She ought to smack Amaranth Jane for whatever she was telling their customers. Or maybe it was Flint’s parents who’d started the rumors. After apologizing for missing the opening concert, they had arrived this morning to proudly arrange chairs front and center so they could hear their grandsons’ winning song.
Jo had thought Martha Clinton had come to kill her. Instead, she was sitting there like a queen royally acknowledging Parliament as everyone came up to speak with her. The woman was having a damned field day, while Jo stood in front of a growing audience, sweating. At least they didn’t have spotlights.
Would Flint understand what she was trying to tell him? If he meant to make her beg, she’d walk all over his face. But she suspected he was just being macho and protecting her by hiding what he was thinking. Men were goofballs.
He’d asked her to write songs with him. That was the hope she clung to. He had opened opportunities, but he hadn’t pushed her at Nashville or grabbed the chance to impress the suits and leave her behind, or any of those things she’d come to expect from the men in her life. He’d left her to make her own choices. She would love him for that if she wasn’t so worried that he’d pitch a fit when he realized the choice she’d made.
She didn’t want to be an entertainer. Martin had made it clear that’s where the money was and what he wanted from her. When she’d been eighteen, her eyes would have lit with stars, and she would have taken that road without a second thought believing fame and fortune meant success and happiness. She knew better now. Flint had shown her what happiness really was. She wanted—needed—the magic they shared together. Without it, no matter how successful she was, she’d only be a hollow shell painted in glitter.
A murmur rippled over the crowd, and Jo glanced up again.
Flint stood straight and tall in the doorway, his Stetson shielding his eyes. He still wore yesterday’s clothes, minus the tie. His suede jacket hung from broad shoulders over a black high-collared shirt with pearl cufflinks and silk-thin slacks that draped his narrow hips with more sophisticated sexiness than anything Randy had ever owned. Her heart stumbled when he located her.
***
Flint halted in the doorway of the back room and scanned the unexpected crowd. He found Jo on the stage with his sons, and he went all hot and cold at the sight.
She was wearing her Stardust apron with the Cinderella slipper. She wore her long hair in her usual funky ponytails and looked so spectacular that he almost rushed through the crowd to carry her off.
At some signal Flint missed, Adam shouted, “Ready, set, go!”
The drum crashed. The guitar squealed. And Jo greeted him with a smile as wide as a watermelon slice and so intimate that they might as well have been alone. His heart probably stopped right then, but his feet didn’t. They carried him down the aisle between the packed chairs to the stage and Jo. He didn’t even glance at the audience although he was vaguely aware half the town occupied the room and more were entering the back door as the Buzzards took over from his sons’ awkward introduction. The Sunday-after-church crowd was arriving.
Jo stepped up to the mike and, with only a momentary hesitation in front of the audience, announced, “This song is for one of the Good Guys.” Not waiting for applause, she held Flint’s gaze and swung into a low and seductive croon. “He’s all that I can ever be, all that I’ll ever want, all that I’ll ever need…”
Somebody shoved a chair in Flint’s direction, but he kept on moving toward the stage and the siren call of Jo—singing as if he were the only person in the room. He wanted her to be singing to him so much that he was sick with the need of it. One of the Good Guys. Not a badass anymore, even after he’d left her and the town stranded yesterday and all but kicked her out of his life. She understood?
It wasn’t until she let her voice rise and ring out with “He might not always be my friend, but he’ll always be my dad,” that Flint nearly sank to his knees in shock.
She was singing his sons’ song. She had stayed here so he could hear what they had written. He choked and halted near the stage as he tried to absorb his sons’ sentiments from the song. They didn’t think he was a full time jerk, the man who’d driven away their mother and deserted them? His kids were speaking through their song as he once had, showing him that music could be a gift when it was used right.
Johnnie shyly hobbled up to him. Flint draped his arm over his younger son’s shoulder and hugged him. He wasn’t a crying man, but his eyes were wet as Jo belted out the chorus one more time. Seeing Adam hovering behind the band’s guitar player, Flint beckoned for him to join them. Looking proud and embarrassed at the same time, Adam took his place on Flint’s left. Tall, with his dark hair falling in his face, he’d chosen a black sling for his wrist and looked like a pirate.
Flint knew all about meter and rhyme and market niches, but all the prosaics of the business flew out of his head, leaving only the thought that he was hearing the most beautiful, heart-rending piece he’d ever heard in his life. He may have done most everything wrong, but his sons were willing to forgive. If he died right this minute, it would be as a proud and happy man.
But he didn’t intend to die anytime soon, not when he’d just been offered the chance to have the sun and the moon and the stars. Instead of dodging the difficult and hiding his hurt behind attitude, he had to take the risk of falling flat on his mug in front of friends and family and an entire town.
He sure the hell was man enough to do what a man ought to do, no matter how high the danger that Jo would punch him in the nose and walk away.
This time, he wouldn’t give up what he loved without a fight.
***
Jo sobbed out the last note. Flint looked so stricken standing there in his Sunday hat, with his arms wrapped around his boys that she wanted to break down in tears and turn back the hands of time. The three of them looked good together, stalwart and strong, despite the cast and sling.
She smiled a little at that. Boys would be boys. She understood that just fine. But grown men now, that was another kettle of fish. She was just a wee bit shaky at her presumption.
She had no idea what was going through Flint’s head. She didn’t know if he had any notion of what she was telling him. So far, everyone had told her she was crazy.
And she was. She was so crazy in love that she was willing to risk it all, all over again. She had grits for brains. And a heart that desperately needed to love.
The music ended, and she didn’t know what to do. She’d said everything she knew how to say, in the only way she knew how to say it. She didn’t have any more brazen left in her. The audience was clapping and laughing and Flint was still standing there, staring at her as if she might disappear at any minute.
Like an ice cream cone. Or a miracle.
She wiped her eyes and smiled big at that, and he covered the last few steps between them in the blink of an eye. Hopping up on stage, he shoved the mike back in its stand without once tearing his gaze from her. Mesmerized, she tried to take him in all at once—the tired lines around his eyes, the bristles on his jaw, the tousled hair falling from beneath his hat, the smile that spread wider than hers as he hauled her into his embrace.
Jo wrapped her arms around Flint’s neck and clung, weeping into his broad shoulder as if she were a big baby. She didn’t ever want to be parted from him again.
“You’re the craziest woman I’ve ever met,” he whispered in her ear, “and I’m never letting you out of my sight. Life would be hell without you, so I guess I’ll have to follow wherever you go. Can I be your stagehand?”
She laughed and hiccupped and buried her face against his shirt. “I don’t want a stagehand. It was awful out there without you. Please don’t ever leave me alone like that again.”
He hugged her tighter, rocking her in front of an audience that had grown unusually quiet. “I don’t want to, baby, but that life out there means I can’t always follow you. But I love you, and I’ll keep at you until you’re ready to give up the glitz and settle down and marry a tame respectable businessman like me.”
She laughed again, sounding a little stronger this time. Lifting her head from his shoulder, she poured kisses over his face. “You’re about as tame as a grizzly after a long winter’s sleep. Don’t treat me like a dumb waitress, Flynn Clinton. I know a good man when I see one, and I know the difference between glitter and gold. And I’m not saying anything else in front of a whole audience of Nosy Parkers except I want a fern in the front window. I don’t know how to turn off a microphone.”
Laughter rang out behind them, and there was a hurried scuffling of feet and chairs. Flint turned around and glared, and their audience began to scatter. He glanced down at his sons who watched him wide-eyed. “Go get some rope. We’re hog-tying and keeping her.”
The kids and the remains of the crowd whooped in agreement.
“Say yes, Jo,” a voice that sounded like Hoss’s rang out. “You two would sure look purty up on stage together!”
“You better treat her right, Flint,” Dot cried out over the laughter, “or every woman in town will see you tarred and feathered!”
“And every man will be gunnin’ for your balls!” George Bob added.
Deciding he wasn’t pouring out any more of his guts for their amusement, Flint swung Jo into his arms and marched down the stage steps with her. Slim and the band struck a rowdy rendition of the wedding march. The crowd broke into yells and catcalls. Jo gasped, laughed, and grabbed his neck.
To Flint’s embarrassment, his parents stood beside the exit. His father gave him a thumbs-up. His mother looked concerned, but he understood where she was coming from now. Love and fear made a cranky combination sometimes. He’d have to hug her for her understanding some other time when he didn’t have an armful of hot woman.
With a weepy smile, his mother ushered the boys and their friends away.
Undeterred, Jo leaned back from his shoulder as he carried her up the stairs to her place. “I’m glad I don’t have an audience the first time I tell you I love you, but I expect they’ll hear it often enough after this. I love you, Flynn Clinton. What are you gonna do about it?”
“Marry you tomorrow,” he said promptly. “I can’t go shacking up with my kids around. I’m trying to atone for my mistakes, you know.”
He grew serious then, and Jo knew what was coming. She pressed her fingers over his lips before he could say it. “I’m being totally selfish,” she said. “I figure I might or might not find fame and fortune in the big world. But I’m a grown-up, and I understand that even if I find it, fame and fortune can’t keep me from being lonely and heartbroken. I’m a girl who needs her family. So I guess I’ll just have to find some other way of helping Mama and Amy because I want to stay here with you and your boys, if that’s okay with you.”
Flint crushed her in his arms and shoved open her unlocked door with his shoulder. “I’ll be there to help you take care of them. We’ll make beautiful music together. And you’ll still be rich and famous. You have the talent, and I’ll see that you get the recognition you deserve, if I have to build a studio in the back room to do it.”
Catching his face in her hands, Jo sealed their promises with a kiss.