Barefoot Brides (6 page)

V
ince's house was small. It had probably once been a vacation home, built as little more than a place to sleep and change and eat, if that eating didn't require any fancy maneuvers or large appliances in the kitchen. It still had that feel to it. As if whoever occupied it had never really made it home. As if, at the end of a long tourist season, or if, given any reason at all to move along, whoever lived in the place could pack up and go in a matter of hours.

Yet Vince had clearly lived here a very long time.

Kate could tell that with just a glance through the living room. The coatrack hung inside the door at the perfect height for Vince to hang his handyman's tool belt when he came home after work. The furniture was clean but worn, a sure sign of a single dad now living alone who did not entertain much.

Then, there was the kitchen. Too small for a larger family to have put up with for very long, the door frame bore the marks of Gentry's growth year by year. Starting at age six.

Kate held her breath for a moment. Six. She'd known him at that age, at the size indicated by the mark on the door frame.

“Did you move into this place just after—” She cut herself off suddenly, embarrassingly aware what she blurted out next might stir up a whole hornets' nest of hard feelings.

“Just after you ran off?” he finished for her.

Ouch.
She dipped her head slightly and stared at her paper plate piled with fried samplings from the Bait Shack—Vince's “surprise” dinner arrangements. “I was going to say after we broke up.”

“Did we break up, Kate?” He pushed away his own plate, now just picked-over slaw, a corncob and grease stains. He appeared more thoughtful than anything else, but there was an edge to his words that challenged her. “That's not how I remember it.”

“We've gone over this before, Vince.” She took up his plate and laid it on top of hers, literally signaling an end to the meal and figuratively trying to tell him she had had enough of this conversation.

What was there to talk about anyway?

It had all happened so fast. Over the course of one long summer when Kate had come to stay at her family's summer cottage after college. Vince was older, already a father and widowed since six-year-old Gentry had been an infant.

He doted on the boy then. Still did, and he indulged and overprotected him. A habit he had only just committed to stop as he now saw it had done the kid more harm than good.

The romance between Kate and Vince had been brief but intense and before the summer had ended not only had Vince proposed but Gentry had begun to look to her as a mother figure.

A mother! Kate? Good ol' Scat-Kat Katie? The girl who had always blamed herself for not telling her mother immediately the night the girl's father had kidnapped baby Moxie? No way. She wasn't ready. Not to make that kind of leap for a relationship so new, so untried.

No, Kate was unprepared to accept the responsibility of marriage and motherhood. She feared her own shortcomings would bring more pain and disappointment to those she loved and that another child, Gentry, would suffer heartbreak and disappointment if she failed. Or rather, if she failed again.

That seemed a lifetime ago. Certainly most of Gentry's lifetime. If only Vince could move past it. If only he could believe how much she had grown.

“I can't keep going over the past.
We
can't. Not if we hope to build any kind of future together.”

“We can't fool ourselves and pretend it never happened, either, Kate. I don't know about you but I can't watch every word I say to try to skirt around the truth, and I don't think I can have a relationship where that is a requirement before we can build a future together.”

Kate raised her chin, ready to protest that she did not intend for them to skirt around the truth. Then she recalled how they had gotten into this conversation, when she had kept herself from stirring up the past. She bowed her head, shaking it, and laughed at the irony of it all.

“What's so funny?” he asked, his smile tentative but encouraging as he lowered his own head to try to duck down and find her gaze.

“I am,” she said. “
This
is.”

“Really?”

“No, not really,” she admitted. “It's just, you have to laugh sometimes, don't you? At all of this? At how hard we try not to hurt one another's feelings by not bringing up how much we hurt one another's feelings?”

“Did I hurt your feelings, Kate?” He tipped his head to one side as though honestly struggling to remember a specific incident or transgression. “You never told me that before. All those years ago, was it something I said? Something I did?”

“Yes.” They had been through this before, but not quite like this. Not in a quiet moment, just the two of them sitting over a dinner table talking like old friends. Talking as if whatever they said would not come between them but was just part of who they were, who they had been, who they hoped to be.

“What, Kate?” He reached out and took her hand in his, turning it over so that the palm rested upward. “What did I say? What did I do?”

“You said you loved me and you asked me to marry you.”

“I remember.” He stared at her a moment and when she didn't say more he stroked her hand from her wrist to her fingertips then looked her deep in the eyes and asked, “And that hurt your feelings and sent you running?”

“No.” She closed her hand and gave his strong fingers a squeeze. “That scared me witless and
that
sent me running.”

He held her gaze.

“I sent myself running,” she confessed. “I grew up in a family where nothing, not even love, it seemed, was permanent. I'd seen the devastation of a failed marriage and felt the anguish of losing one parent who left and losing a part of the parent who stayed behind.”

“You thought our marriage would fail?”

“It all felt so rushed.”

“You could have asked me for more time.”

“What about Gentry? Could I have asked him for more time? Could I have asked a six-year-old to hold his feelings in check, to not get his hopes up that he'd finally have his dream of a regular family until I was sure things would work out between us?”

Vince looked away at last.

He couldn't argue with that. The man had all but ordered his entire life around taking care of his son. He could not find fault with her for having done the same, no matter how much it had cost them both.

“But that was then.” She reached out and took his hand in both of hers. “And Gentry is a grownup with a baby of his own and I'm—”

“Anyone home? Dad? Your favorite grandbaby is in the house!” Gentry's voice startled them both.

Kate jerked her hands away.

Vince jumped up out of his seat. “We're in the kitchen. Come on in!”

He took a step toward the door, in a hurry to get to his son and grandchild, then paused, turned back, took Kate's hand again and kissed it. “We'll talk about this later, okay?”

It wasn't until she nodded and mouthed “okay” back to him that he let go of her and went through the door and into the living room to greet Gentry and Fabbie.

“Later,” she whispered. They would talk later. They would resolve old issues later. He would propose…
when?

“Soon.” Kate lifted her eyes to heaven and poured her heart into the simplest and most sincere prayer she could offer. “Please?”

“Look who's here, Fabbie!” Vince came back through the door carrying the dark-haired little girl who called him “Paw-Paw.”

“Hi, princess!” Kate gave the girl a wave. She would have liked to have taken the girl in her arms but because of her injured foot, they had all agreed they would teach the baby not to cling to, climb over or be held by Kate for now. It killed Kate, but Vince didn't seem to mind getting to hold the child whenever Kate was around.

To say he adored Fabbie would be totally undervaluing the concept of adoration.

“Hi, Gentry.” Kate leaned over and extended her wave to the young man she had, until a couple of months ago, always seen as a kid with big brown eyes, curly hair and a fragile heart she didn't dare break.

“Hey, Kate! If we'd have known Dad planned to drag you into this, we'd have made him come to our house to put less stress on you.”

Vince gave his son a nudge. “Having dinner with me at my house hardly qualifies as a stressful event.”

“I meant less stress on her foot because we'd just be across the street from her house.” Gentry laughed then gave his dad a wary look. “Though now that you mention it, you didn't cook, did you?”

“Bait Shack takeout.” Kate lifted the edge of one of the paper plates.

“Ah. Then, yeah, our house would have definitely caused less stress for Kate, for sure.” Another look to his dad, this time less wary and more wise to his old man's ways. “We actually have some
real
food in our fridge.”

It did her good to see the two of them together, and with little Fabbie grinning in delight between them.

Yes, Vince had mistakenly lived his life for Gentry and she had not helped that by running away instead of staying and dealing with her issues. But she was back now. Vince loved her, and she loved him. They could talk about their past and they would find a way to get beyond it, she just knew it.

“Anyway, I guess it's a good thing you guys are both here.” Gentry shifted his weight from one foot to the other. He looked down.

Vince tensed.

But then everything Gentry did seemed to make Vince tense, as though he must stand always at the ready to rush in to the kid's rescue.

Old habits die hard, she supposed.

“There's something I really think I need to tell you about this dinner.” When Gentry looked up, he seemed more sure of himself, more determined. He seemed to have grown up a little in those few seconds. “Dad, I, uh, tonight…it's not just about dinner. Pera's uncle wants to hire me for a really good job.”

Her gaze brushed over the hash marks on the door frame and she smiled. Gentry had become a young man who did not need his dad to bail him out or make excuses for him anymore.

Vince was free to make a real home at last. A home with her, she hoped.

“In Miami,” Gentry concluded. “If I take this job, Pera and the baby and I will be leaving Santa Sofia.”

Or maybe not,
Kate amended as she focused on Vince's stricken expression.

No matter what he had said about letting Gentry live his own life, she could see in that moment that the man had meant that in the context of living his own life within a few miles radius of this tiny little house, in this tiny tourist town, where there was no room for her, much less for the home she hoped to build with Vince here.

“I
t happened again.” Travis looked up. He smiled as he stretched his arms out, then up, then bent them in order to lace his hands behind his head.

Jo paused in the doorway to soak it all in. The awesome sight of the overworked, underpaid minister in his natural element, his office. “
What
happened again?”

“The
Sun Times
got something wrong.”

She crossed the threshold and craned her neck to try to catch a glimpse of the paper strewn over his beat-up, army-surplus, metal desk. “They ran another article about my family?”

“Nope.” He sat up and splayed one large suntanned hand over the open pages and gave them a twist so she could easily read along as he said, “Check out their weather forecast, though.”

She peered at the row of small cartoonish drawings depicting the expectations for each day of the week. “I don't—”

“See, right there for today?” He jabbed his finger on the picture. “Cloudy with no chance of sunshine.”

Jo tipped her head to one side, confused.

“And yet in you walk and my whole day is brighter.”

Jo responded to the sweet but corny line with an exaggerated roll of her eyes. Still, she suspected that the heat rising in her cheeks gave away just how easily she found herself charmed by the guy. Which was exactly the opposite of what Jo needed today.

She had promised herself to stop playing it safe. She wanted, no, she
needed,
to move forward, to get on with her life. She had so much she hoped to accomplish and so many things she had to deal with before she could even start.

“Weather forecasts notwithstanding, the
Sun Times
is one of the things I came here to talk to you about,” she said.

He closed the paper and sat back. “I already have a subscription.”

“I'm not
working
for them.”

“Oh.” Did she detect a hint of disappointment in his tone?

“I am, however, considering working
on
something for them.” And by
considering
she meant it was the last thing on earth she wanted to do.

“Oh?” Disappointment shifted quickly to curiosity.

“A letter to the editor on behalf of my family.”

“Uh-oh.”

Jo winced.

His response had neatly summed up the far-ranging run of emotions she'd felt when Kate had first asked her to take on the chore based on an idea said editor had planted in Moxie's head that Kate had heard of via Vince.

“I know.” She plunked into the olive-green faux-leather chair next to the desk and pouted. “I don't want to do it, really.”

“Then don't.”

She snapped her head up so quickly a puff of her blond bangs fell over her eyebrow and got snagged by her eyelashes. She flicked it away without taking her eyes off the adorable man with the extraordinary suggestions. “Really? You think I could? Or, um,
couldn't?
”

She tried to imagine defying her sister's plea to do this for the good of the Cromwell family. Ignore Kate's wishes? That definitely fell into the “not playing it safe” category.

He leaned toward her, his fingers intertwined atop the loosely folded
Sun Times.
“Are you asking
me
for permission to not do the thing you clearly do not want to do?”

He made it sound like a bad thing.

“Um, no?” she ventured.

He shook his head and gave the faintest chuckle. “Are you even listening to yourself, Jo?”

“Please!” She threw her hands up at last. She had come to him to help her write this letter and here he was trying to talk her out of it. “Enough with the questions already! You really have a thing for questions.”

“Just doing my job.”

“Giving people headaches?”

“Making people use their heads.”

“You see, now, I'd have thought as a minister your specialty would be more in the ‘using your heart' department.”

“Uh-uh. It's a common fallacy that spirituality manifested in the guise of traditional Christian faith comes from and is synonymous with pure, unempirical, ill-explored emotions, not involving critical thought or requiring intellectual application. It's just not so.”

“I got spirituality…blah, blah…Christian faith…blah, blah…emotions…just not so. The rest? You lost me.”

He laughed. “Smart people love God, too.”

“Oh!” She nodded and laughed a little, trying not to show her anxiety that her not having gotten what he meant, meant that she wasn't one of the smart people
he
meant. Jo had never felt dumb before but being around Travis rattled her. In a good way, but rattled her nonetheless.

“I just think…” He spread his hands as if about to launch into another lengthy diatribe then gave a shrug and through a crooked smile said, “That's all. I
think
and I always want to challenge others to do the same.”

“I have enough challenges right now, Travis, without turning a letter to the editor of the
Sun Times
into one, as well.”

“Yeah, but it's not
just
a letter to the editor. It's a letter to the
new
editor of the place you want to call home, written on behalf of your somewhat insulted family. If you don't go into that with your brain fully engaged, you're done for, Jo.”

“I
know.
That's why I came to you for your input about it.” She put her hand to her forehead and shut her eyes. “Suddenly, I wish I had sprained my wrist instead of my ankle, so I'd have an excuse not to use a pen or a keyboard.”

“Yeah. But if you'd sprained your wrist, you'd never have needed my help getting around and then…”

She peeked at him from under her hand. “And then what?”

“We wouldn't be where we are today.”

Stop playing it safe. If she truly meant that, she couldn't think of a better time to take that first big step than right now. “Where are we today, Travis?”

He gave her a pastor's grin, all wisdom and soothing amusement and not a spark of the mischief that usually passed between them. “Now you're asking hard questions.”

It was that grin that made her sit up and speak out. “Hard? I don't think so. It seems pretty straightforward to me.”

“Where are we?” he repeated, stretching out each syllable.

She didn't know if that was the mark of a thoughtful minister weighing the situation with utmost care or the age-old tactic of a typical cornered male who didn't want to blow a good thing with a girl but wasn't ready to discuss it head-on.

“To-oo-o-daa-ay.”

“Yes!” Stalling. Definitely stalling. He was the one trying to play it safe now. A couple of days ago she would have let him but he was the one who had told her to push herself, to go after her answers, to be smart. “Where are we today, Travis? Are we dating? Are we in a relationship? Are we just—”

He put his hands up to cut her off before she slapped a label on whatever was between them. “You know I have feelings for you, Jo.”

She exhaled. “That is such a nonanswer, Travis.”

“What do you want to hear?” He pushed away from the desk and stood, looking down at her. “That since the first time I saw you trying to come off cool and classy while hopping around on one foot that I couldn't stop thinking about you?”

“Yes,” she said quietly.

At last taking a chance that someone would find her worthy, that someone would love her, and demanding to be seen and acknowledged had paid off.

Travis took a step away. He put his back to her, rubbed his neck then turned and said, over his shoulder, “That when you came down to help me serve breakfast to the hungry and homeless of Santa Sofia I knew there was more to you than anyone, even your own family, suspected and I knew I could fall deeply in love with you?”

“Yes.” Quieter still. So quiet she couldn't hear her own voice above the pounding of her heart. The man saw her for herself. Not as the kid no one had any use for. Not as Kate's shadow or as Mike Powers's lackey but as Jo, who had something to offer, as the person she truly wanted to be.

He faced the large window overlooking the beach. “That the minute you began talking about starting a women's ministry here to help others get their lives on track even though you repeatedly refused to get your own house in order—literally and figuratively—that I knew we had no real future together?”

“Ye—No!” Jo felt slapped. Had he really said what she thought he said? “No future?”

He did not look at her. “You asked.”

“But I…Travis, I…”

“There are just way too many questions you can't answer right now, Jo.” He turned and placed his hand on the back of his chair. “Or won't.”

“Not about you,” she protested, still stunned. “I don't have any questions about you, about how I
feel
for you.”

“I just explained it to you, Jo. Emotion in and of itself is not a firm enough foundation.”

“Love is,” she murmured. “Isn't it?”

He did not answer that directly but instead simply told her, “You have a lot of unfinished business, Jo.”

“Are you talking about the questions you thought I should be asking myself? I thought those applied to my starting a ministry, not to our starting a relationship.”

“I mean the mess you have left behind you in Atlanta.”

“Mess? You mean the house?” She had bought the monstrosity when there was money to be made in renovation and quick resale.

Mike Powers, the Realtor she had worked for, had assured her it would be great investment, a fast flip, easy money.

Ambitious and wanting to make a name for herself in the real-estate game, she had sunk every dime she had into the deal. Then borrowed as cost overruns mounted. Now she had a house nobody could afford in an ever-sinking market.

Her whole life she had wanted to step out of her sister Kate's shadow and be noticed. The mess with the house made her want to crawl in a hole and hide.

“The house. The debt.” He never took his eyes off her. “Have you done anything about that at all?”

“Does pleading with God for a miracle count?” She held up her hand to stop him from replying to that. “I already know the answer to that.”

“Jo, it's not that I'm not attracted to you.”

“That's nice to know.”

“But as a spiritual leader and, basically, as a guy who knows how much emotional and mental effort it takes to try to change your life as drastically as you say you want to change yours—”

“I do. I do want to change my life, Travis.”

“You can't do that by simply selling your expensive shoes.”

Jo looked down at the simple sandals on her feet.

“Or by talking a good plan.”

“Or by writing a letter,” she mumbled. “I know.”

“Jo—”

She wanted to be angry with him but how could she be angry with the truth? Especially when it was the conclusion she had come to on her own that day on the beach. Her decision to stop trying to find the safety that had eluded her all her life wasn't about trying to force Travis to make a commitment. It wasn't about finally getting the nerve to stand up to Kate. It was about taking control of her own life. That's what Travis wanted her to do. If she pushed aside her hurt and disappointment and thought about it, she couldn't have asked for a more compassionate demonstration of his real feelings for her than that.

She had to honor that. She had to stand up for herself. Nobody was going to see her for herself until she did that. “I've got to face my problems. Find my answers.”

He nodded. “Once you do that, come back and ask me that question again, about where we are, where we're going.”

She stood. She wanted to say more but knew if she opened her mouth again, she'd burst into tears. So she managed a weak smile, raised her hand in farewell, turned and headed for the door.