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he knelt to examine the heavy panel. "But you only need help in the rush hours and weekends. Cheaper to do it yourself." Be still her heart, what was she saying? Work here every day with the hunk ?
    "Guess I can get the hang of it. I didn't catch that about the mill." He tinkered with the door hinges. "My daddy used to work out there. Is it closing?"
    Sighing, Jo poured a cup of coffee and took her morning break to watch the guitar player fix a dishwasher door that had been broken for a decade. Flint added a certain savoir faire that Charlie never possessed, she acknowledged, and she wasn't just talking about the muscular back beneath that tailored Ralph Lauren work shirt. Even after he gave up on the door and started emptying the load of clean dishes, Flint added his own touch by drying off the wet bottoms of the mugs before stacking them. And when he bent to empty the bottom rack, his jeans fit a sight better than Charlie's.
    "I prefer to play Pollyanna and believe the mill will survive."
    Flint polished a glass and actually glanced her way with approval, as if maybe she had a few brains instead of cooties. She let the look slide rather than resume their flirtation. She was writing off men, and especially male bosses. Naked cowboys, on the other hand… Wow! So not going there.
    "But people around here think it will close," he continued for her, his gaze momentarily igniting from the impact of hers before he returned to putting dishes away.
    Jo fanned herself with a towel. Maybe she'd be better off fired. "It's that kind of negative thinking that will close down the whole town," she groused. "A lot of people got laid off when the economy went south of the border. Tobacco doesn't make money anymore. Tourism dropped. A few stores closed. And everyone sees disaster where it isn't. If we'd just work harder to turn things around, we'd be fine."
    "Uh-huh." He looked at her as if she'd just sprouted wings. "You running for office?"
    "Put Sally's pig in the doorway," she said angrily. She hated being dismissed as if she were a dumb blonde. Maybe she wasn't highly educated, but she wasn't dumb . "Take down those moldering curtains. Buy an espresso machine to bring in tourists. Things will turn around if you give them a reason to do so."
    "Will that stop the mill from closing?" he asked. "And if it doesn't, how will I pay for that espresso machine if my customers are broke?"
    The question was obviously rhetorical. He put the last mug on the shelf and returned to his office.
    Not for the first time, Joella wondered if she could afford an apartment down in Asheville. Maybe Rita would share. She heard Hooters paid well. If she wasn't going to get any respect, she ought to at least get paid.
     
    Chapter Four
     
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    Trying to drive the encounter with Joella and his own personal demons out of his mind, Flint called his sons the instant he returned to the house he'd rented.
    The call thus far hadn't been very successful.
    "Mom, I have a great place out in the woods," Flint tried to say convincingly to the protective gargoyle keeping him from his kids. "The boys will love it."
    He didn't tell his mother that the log house he described with such enthusiasm had been built in the fifties and not updated since—no dishwasher, one and a half baths, and pink tile. At least he had a microwave. The boys could survive without a swimming pool for a weekend.
    He worked the spongy ball with his left hand, feeling the pain from the mending bones and unused tendons shooting straight up his arm.
    "If you're working, what will they do with themselves all day?" his mother asked with arctic frost. "Have you given that any thought?"
    "They can work with me. It's not as if I'm hauling coal. It will be good for them to get out from in front of the idiot box." He sank deeper into the leather recliner he'd saved from the auction that had divided all his