by Annie Jones
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.
Chapter Seven
“It 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.
Chapter Eight
Moxie came sailing through the glass front door of the Urgent Care Clinic.
An eerie stillness radiated through the spotless green-and-white reception area amplified by the smell of disinfectant and the soft, incessant buzz and almost imperceptible flicker of the fluorescent lights overhead. The place rarely kept busy, except for late-night weekends and tourist season when things could get downright chaotic. But most of the time, like today, even the intake worker tended to wander off on personal errands, take long lunches or plug herself in to her MP3 player and tune out the world. Moxie didn’t know where the rest of the staff was today, only that Dr. Lionel Lloyd had been sitting at the receptionist’s desk twirling back and forth in the squeaky blue chair.
“Once burned. Twice shy. Isn’t that how the saying goes?” she asked as she stopped directly in front of him.
“You’ve been burned?” Lionel came rushing around the desk toward her, his disheveled lab coat flapping.
“No. No, not literally burned. Metaphorically.” Out of sheer force of habit she met him not with a sweet kiss but with a quick visual once-over.
The man had never learned to make himself presentable and often went off to work looking more like an unambitious mad scientist than a serious medical professional. She reached out to straighten his collar. When she tugged on it from one side, the sleeve on that side jerked up. When she tried to pull the lapels together, the collar bunched up again. She frowned.
“What’s wrong?”
You’re a grown man. Everyone in town has us on the path to matrimony and yet every time I see you I can’t help but think of you more as some kind of fixer-upper than as my home sweet home. That’s what’s wrong. Moxie twisted her mouth to one side and looked him over again and said merely, “I’m not sure.”
He slid his glasses off and cleaned the lenses with his hastily tied tie as he asked, “You’ve been metaphorically burned but you’re not sure what’s wrong?”
“Hmm?” She looked him in the eye at last. She’d been in the clinic for five minutes and this was the first time she’d looked into the eyes of the man she supposedly loved. And all she could think was…
When she had looked into Lionel’s eyes, her mind had instantly flashed to yesterday’s encounter with R. Hunt Diamante.
She stiffened. “Nothing’s wrong.”
“But you said—”
“I’m just mad at my sister, that’s all.” That wasn’t all.
“Your sister. I still can’t get used to you saying that.”
“Welcome to the club.” She rubbed her temple, but that didn’t ease the tension tightening like a band around her head. She wanted to lay the blame for her discomfort on her sisters and newly found mother, but in truth they were just one more brick in the wall Moxie felt rising up around her, closing her in.
Jo, Kate, Dodie, the infamous and fatherly Billy J, even Lionel, all added to the sense that she was quickly losing the independence she had asserted over her own life as a teenager. “Ever since m
y foster mom left Dad and me, I always felt a certain amount of pride in knowing I could take care of myself.”
He slid his glasses back on and peered at her. “Dad?”
She didn’t know if her remark confused or intrigued him.
Intrigued, she decided, though the way the man couldn’t seem to even manage to roll the sleeves up on his lab coat presented a strong case for confused. He had a point, either way, because up until recently she usually referred to her foster father as Billy J when talking about him to other people, especially around Santa Sofia where that’s how absolutely everybody knew him. But now it seemed more important to identify him in the way she felt about it. Now that her whole story had unfolded about her birth father having taken her and eventually given her away and with the arrival of…
“And now I have these people,” she went on as she attacked his uneven sleeve situation.
“Your sisters.”
“Yes. I have these sisters.” She unrolled the right sleeve of his wonky lab coat and began turning it up, trying to keep the fabric from bunching. “And a mother that I never even knew about. But they knew about me, you see?”
“I suppose so.”
As she spoke her emotions got the better of her and with every word she uttered the sleeve got higher and more crumpled. “And so they have all these expectations, they want me to step into this…this…”
“Role?”
Moxie had been thinking trap or perhaps strait-jacket. But for this discussion’s purposes…
“Okay, role. The role of Molly Christina, baby sister. The little lost lamb who’s been found again and should be grateful to be back in the fold again.” She moved the left sleeve and tackled it with the same fervor as the right one, propelled by her escalating emotions. “Except I don’t want to be in the fold. I want to be free.”
“Moxie!” He shook his arm to free himself of her nearly manic coat-sleeve-rolling. In seconds he had shaken the fabric loose and began trying to no avail to smooth it out as he said, “What does all that have to do with being burned?”