Barefoot Brides (10 page)

“W
here ya going?” Travis got out of his car and headed up the drive of the cottage on Dream Away Bay Court.

“I thought we weren't going to ask that question again until I faced my past and dealt with my old problems.” Jo did not break stride. She moved away from the house, one foot in front of the other, her head high and her eyes on her goal.

“We agreed not to ask where our
relationship
was going.” He met her by the back bumper of her car, folded his arms and cocked his head. His tanned face tensed. “But I think ‘where ya going?' is a perfectly valid question to be asking when I drop by and find you leaving your house with a suitcase in each hand.”

She lifted the smaller piece of luggage and fit it into the trunk. “All my unfinished business is in Atlanta, Travis.”

“Not
all
of it,” he reminded her, moving closer. He reached out to brush a lock of hair from her cheek. As his finger dragged along the sensitive skin, the soft blond curl wrapped around his knuckle.

Jo inhaled sharp and quick at his touch. When he did not move his hand away, she lowered her lashes and murmured, “I thought as a minister you were on the side of helping people
avoid
temptation.”

His gorgeous eyes sparkled. “Temptation?”

“You standing here looking adorable, hinting that there's something more between us and that I should stay and tend to it?” She gave his chest a light push as though shoving off from him, then bent at the knees to reach for the large suitcase still sitting in the drive.

“I don't know about adorable.” He smiled. “But I do know this.”

She froze, knees bent, hand open above the luggage handle. “What? What do you know, Travis?”

He leaned in again, whispering against her temple so that her blond hair trembled in front of her eyes. “That was no hint.”

“No?” She turned her head only slightly, but that was enough to put her eyes just inches from his. “Then what was it?”

“That was a promise.”

Her heart pounded so hard she felt it in her knees, her throat, her fingertips and even her lips as she asked, “A promise of what?”

“That there is something between us, Jo.” He did not move nearer but somehow his very words brought him so close she could feel the warmth of his breath. “Don't forget you have unfinished business here, too.”

Suddenly, warm breath or not, her skin tightened into a thousand tiny chill bumps. She grabbed the handle of her suitcase, gritted her teeth then hoisted it up. She wrestled it into the trunk, practically snorting from the mix of exertion and disenchantment. “Business.”

His feet never moved. He angled his shoulder back and opened his arms in resignation. “Bad word choice.”

“But exactly the right word for what stands between us and, well, finding the right words, as it were.” She readjusted the cases until they fit so snugly against each other that the drive wouldn't budge them. “You were right about that. I have so much business to attend to, personal issues and professional, that I can't do anything else until I've taken care of that.”

He nodded. “When are you leaving?”

“First thing in the morning.” She gave the back of her car a quick check to make sure she had everything. “I want to make sure Billy J is all right and not just run out on my mom and sisters.”

“How long will you be gone?”

“As long as it takes.” Jo reached for the trunk lid.

Travis beat her to it.

Their fingers brushed and his hand fit over hers.

Jo looked up and met his steady, open gaze. She could not say for certain what she hoped to find. Pride in her decision? Encouragement? A silent plea for her not to go?

No, none of those rightly captured the simple need in her.

She wanted…

He shut the trunk.

She wanted him not to just look at her, but to
see
her. She wanted him to acknowledge how much it had taken for her to make this first step. How far she had come already toward becoming the person she
could
be.

He studied her a moment.

“Any other questions?” she asked, secretly hoping the next thing out of his mouth would tell her everything that she wanted to know.

“Yes.”

Ask me if I'll miss you. Ask me if I will come back to you. Ask me if I love you.

“Why are you doing this now?”

Jo stood there, stunned.

He might as well have asked, “Who on earth
are
you?”

“Are you doing this because I told you to? Because you see it as a condition of you and I pursuing a relationship? Or are you—”

“If you must know, I'm doing it now because…”

Because she could not recognize herself in the picture of her family in the paper. Because while she had talked a big plan of helping local women, she didn't have the emotional, financial or street credibility to do so with her life in shreds. Because she made footprints in the sand that vanished at the first gentle wash of an incoming wave.

“I'm doing it now because today when Moxie got mad about everyone closing in on her at the Urgent Care Clinic, I realized that I was the one person who had no reason to actually be there. Nobody expected it of me, nobody needed anything from me.”

“Jo, you have to realize how important a part you play in everyone's—”

“You don't have to try to make me feel better about that, Travis.”

“I don't?” He didn't even try to hide his relief or show any embarrassment over the fact that she'd caught him outright trying to mollify her.

“No. Not anymore.” She looked at the cottage then at the car where she had just placed her suitcases, then at him. “As I stood there fighting off my inclination to feel sorry for myself I couldn't help comparing my situation to others around me and realizing how blessed I am.”

“Blessed?”

“For all the times I have struggled with jealousy of my older
and
—in one form or another—of my baby sister, right now I have the one thing Kate has always wanted and Moxie is now demanding.”

“I don't know what you're talking about,” he admitted.

“Freedom,” she said.

“Freedom?” he asked, still openly confused by it all.

“The choice about what I do with my life is in my own hands.” She held them out.

He looked down at her open palms as though he almost expected to find the answers to his questions there.

“Don't you see, Travis? Right now, with Kate in no position to ditch Mom and finally promising not to pull the Scat-Kat Katie routine again and me without any commitments here, now is the time to do what I should have done months ago but was too self-involved to try.”

“Go back to Atlanta?”

“Atlanta is only the first step,” she told him, feeling more sure of herself than she had in a very long time. Sure enough to speak aloud the thing she planned, the thing she hoped for, the thing that would finally make her her own woman, capable of finally following her dreams instead of hiding behind her fears. “I'm going to stand on my own two feet.”

K
ate fell, exhausted, onto the comfy old overstuffed couch in the front room of the cottage and shut her eyes. Rest, not sleep, was what she was after.

Rest from the prickly thread of tension that had run through her lifetime between herself and Jo and their mother. Rest from the new, even more prickly tension winding its way between all of them and Moxie. Rest from her worries about her commitment to stay in Santa Sofia and start a new business. Rest from the back-and-forth of her emotions about Vince and their future.

Will he ask me, won't he ask me?
She felt that a ten-year-old with her first crush, plucking petals from a daisy, had a better chance of discerning a useful answer than she did. Maybe if she asked him delicately? Wheedled him? Manipulated him ever so slightly and in the sweetest, most well-intentioned way? Or out-and-out issued him an ultimatum?

No. She knew better than that. She had a model for what it meant to love one another. Opening her eyes, she reached for her mother's Bible, which she kept on the table to read from each evening. The well-worn book fell open to the New Testament and Kate only had to flip a few pages to find 1 Corinthians, Chapter 13.

“Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy. It does not boast. It is not proud. It is not rude. It is not self-seeking.” That pretty much gave Kate her answer about trying to maneuver a proposal from Vince.

She read on. “It is not easily angered. It keeps no record of wrongs.”

No record of wrongs.
How much stronger, deeper, much more meaningful would all her relationships be if she applied that tenet to them? She thought of how she had punished herself since childhood for feeling she had not done enough to rescue Molly Christina. Of how Jo could never let go of her anger and her sense of being wronged and unloved because their father had left her behind and their mother and Kate had not needed her enough.

“Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” Kate looked up. Protects, trusts, hopes, perseveres. Were those words anyone would use to describe good ol' Scat-Kat Kate over the years? Hardly.

She read on silently until she came to the conclusion of the chapter. “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Even as she took comfort in the message, her thoughts tumbled over one another. So much had happened since they moved down here, yet so little had changed.

She glanced around the room that remained much as it had all those years ago when they came here for vacation. The pattern on the floral couch where she now sat had faded and worn almost threadbare in spots. The coffee table had a few more nicks in the edge and one of the legs wobbled if you put too much weight on that side. The coarse plaid upholstery, earth tones circa 1974, of the couch across the coffee table showed little sign of age. That, in and of itself, dated the thing. The fabric must have been made from some industrial strength synthetic not unlike the polyester pants suits her mom kept hanging in the closet, “just in case they come back in style some day.”

“Trust me, Mom, these are never going to come back in style,” she could hear perfectionist Jo assuring the pragmatic and sometimes penny-pinching Dodie.

Sometimes
penny-pinching? Kate gave her collar a shake to create a stir of air over her neck. She wanted to go crank the air-conditioning up but knew it would only bring the wrath of Dodie down on her head.

She shut her eyes and told herself not to think about the rising heat and humidity. She kicked off her lone shoe, wriggled the toes on her one uninjured foot and sighed, feeling cooler despite knowing that the temperature had not dropped a fraction of a degree.

If only she could shut out the constant chaos in her heart and mind so easily. If only…

“This house is too quiet.” Dodie pulled aside the dingy old curtain to peer out the front window, sighed then let it fall shut again.

Kate did not open her eyes. “Well, Mom, you were the one who wanted to move down here and live in our vacation cottage full-time.”

“Yes, but when I first came up with that idea, I expected some friends would move down here with me.” She came to the couch and plopped down on the end opposite Kate. “And then—”

Kate held her hand up to cut her mother off. She peered through one eye at her getting-grubbier-by-the-minute cast. “I
know
what happened next.”

One hospital stay, two surgeries, numerous doctors and countless bills later, Jo got the brilliant plan to come to their old vacation home for a long, uneventful recovery.

Except when had anything the Cromwell women tried to do in life been uneventful? She placed her hand on her forehead.

“I was going to say, then you girls found your true loves down here and decided to stay.” Dodie shifted her weight. The couch groaned then jostled Kate like a wave as the cushions redistributed their bulk.

Clunk. Clunk. Thump.

“Ahhhh.”

Kate did not have to look to know Dodie's bargain shoes, the ones that did not quite fit—“but for that price, you squeeze your toes in and hope the uppers stretch”—hit the floor. Then her feet came up to rest on the battered coffee table.

“You have, haven't you?” Dodie asked at last, sounding physically contented and comfortable but emotionally tentative.

That was a sound Kate knew by heart. In fact, she thought, that was the closest her mother ever came to sounding actually happy since the night Molly Christina had disappeared from their lives.

“Have what, Mom?” Kate knew what her mother was driving at but she wanted to play it out. Of course, Dodie wanted to know if Vince had proposed. Or, barring that, at least if Travis had made his intentions clear to Jo. Kate smiled. Some of the things that did not change gave her great peace of mind, she decided. A bit of maternal nosiness was one of those things. “Found our true loves?”

“Decided to stay put, Scat-Kat Katie.” The contentment all but left her mother's voice and apprehension subdued it to a quiet murmur.

Suddenly Kate's head hurt. She winced and turned her face away. “Mom, I asked you not to call me that.”

“That's not an answer.” Dodie gave Kate's ankle a nudge with her bare toe.

“It's not as though she has moved back to Atlanta. As soon as she gets her money issues sorted out there, she'll be back.”

“I wasn't asking you to speak for Jo, Kate.”

Kate. Not Scat-Kat Katie. She felt she had to dignify that concession with an answer. And she had one.

If she ever hoped to walk without a cane again, she would need at least two more surgeries. That meant more hospital time, a lot of recovery time and loads more bills. More bills meant she had to keep making money and the only way to do that was to honor her commitment to Lionel and the Urgent Care Clinic.

Yes, Gentry and Pera were taking Fabbie and moving to Miami. That very well meant that Vince might pick up and follow his family.
His
family.

Not hers.

Kate's family was all here in Santa Sofia—or would eventually be when Jo came back. Unless Vince did something to change the definition of what Kate considered constituted her family, this was where she belonged. Even if he did ask…well, she'd have to think about that later.

“Mom, as far as I know, I'm not going anywhere.”

“That's all I wanted to hear.” She gave Kate's leg a pat and sprang up from the couch.

Kate's eyes flew open in time to see her go clip-clopping toward the kitchen, trying to wriggle her feet into her too-small shoes as she went. “Where are you going?”

Dodie snatched up the car keys and her handbag. “See you later!”

“But, when will you—”

The slamming back door cut her off.

Kate tried to lumber up to her feet but the propped-up position of her injured foot hampered any speedy movement. “Wait a minute! Come back here! It's not right that you make me promise not to leave Santa Sofia then just up and—”

“Going someplace, Kate?” The back door swung open and a large, dark figure stepped into the brightly lit kitchen.

“Vince! What, are you in cahoots with my mom about something?”

“Cahoots?” He snorted a laugh and came into the front room, smelling of Florida sunshine, his hair windswept and his eyes gleaming. “Next I guess you'll ask me if I'm getting up to some kind of crazy shenanigans.”

“I would never ask any such thing!” she protested.

“Yeah?” He looked down at her, his smile hinting at piqued curiosity as he demanded to know, “Why not?”

“Because I always know that if you ever got up to any crazy shenanigans, I wouldn't
have
to ask you about them. I'd be right there beside you knee-deep in the mayhem.”

He laughed. “Now that is the measure of a true friend.”

Friend?
Was that how he thought of her? She wanted to ask but since she couldn't say for sure that she wanted to hear the answer, she pushed herself up into a more upright position and asked instead, “Did you see my mom as you came in? Do you know what she's up to? And if you don't, would you please run out there to see if you can catch her and—”

“Not much point in that.” He lifted his head as if listening.

Nothing. No car engine. No tires on the gravel drive.

Vince shook his head. “You mom is long gone.”

Kate laid her head back and covered her eyes with one hand. “Sometimes I think my mom was long gone before she ever even arrived!”

“Give her a break. She's in a hurry to go see Billy J.”

“Billy J? I thought they were running tests. Moxie asked that we stay clear until they finished.”

“Yep, she called me earlier today and gave the all-clear.”

“Called
you?
”

He nodded. “And I called your mom.”

“When?”

“Half an hour ago.” He picked his way around the coffee table then sat gingerly beside her, careful not to jar her foot. “She told me then she planned to take off to see him as soon as I could get here.”

“Get here?” Kate pointed to the floor beneath them. “She asked you to come over and do what? Babysit me?”

“She didn't hire me as a babysitter, Kate. She just didn't want to leave you stranded. I just didn't think you'd mind a couple hours alone with me.”

“Oh, no. That's great. I just…”

“What?”

She couldn't confess what she suspected—that her mother had gotten her to promise to stay in Santa Sofia because she knew Vince was on his way over. Mom knew about the situation with Gentry and his job. She knew Vince thought the world of his son and granddaughter, and might just be tempted to tag along if the young family moved to Miami.

Dodie had to fear that, given the choice, Kate would never let Vince go again.

What her mother didn't know was that Kate wasn't convinced she actually
had
Vince or that if he left, he'd ask her to come, too.

“Never mind. It was sweet of her, I suppose, in a very Dodie-esque way.” She smiled at him. “So what's the news on Gentry's job offer?”

Vince laced his fingers in his lap and cast his gaze down. “He and Pera want to go to Miami for a weekend to see if they even want to live there before he accepts any offers.”

She wanted to go to him, put her arms around his neck and tell him not to borrow trouble by assuming his son and beloved grandchild would move away for certain. But she couldn't move. For once Scat-Kat Katie couldn't move.

And she certainly couldn't offer advice about not borrowing trouble to anyone, not where family was concerned.

She let her shoulders sink back into the softness of a cushion and exhaled slowly. “When will they have time to go to Miami before the job is filled?”

“They won't.” He rubbed his hand up the back of his neck, still not meeting her eyes as he said, “Not unless they go this weekend.”

“
This
weekend?” That was fast. This was all happening
so fast.
She felt she'd just gotten her chance at love at long last and now it could all slip away. “As in two days from now?”

He nodded, moved his hand around to rub his knuckles under his chin and stared across the room. “They want me to watch Fabbie.”

“They do?”

She hated to seem skeptical, but Gentry and his wife had had a very stormy relationship up until a couple of months ago when Kate had come to town and played a part in helping Gentry accept his role as the man of the family. Until then Vince had made it easy for his son to avoid his responsibilities. He'd made excuses for him, bailed him out financially and generally allowed him to remain a kid for far too long. Pera knew all these things.