Barefoot Brides

by Annie Jones

  “Only I got here first.” Yes, it came out sounding childish, but Jo didn’t care. She did not miss a step, just swept onward clutching her grocery bag and satchel in one hand and her keys and phone in the other. She still had so much left to do before people started showing up. If people started showing up.

  She had worked so hard, spending money she didn’t really have in order to get this place ready, but with no promise she would have any interest at all any time soon. Still, she had to try. She had to take care of things. She glanced down at the phone again then at Brittney, tagging along behind her. “Mike’s arrangements for you to practice on this open house were made before I came back. Now—”

  “No, they weren’t.”

  Jo froze. “What do you mean?”

  “Brittney and I talked to him this morning and Mike said we should come ahead and do the open house. He mentioned you were all religious and wouldn’t work on a Sunday so it wouldn’t step on your toes.”

  “Step on my toes?”

  “Yeah, I thought that was a weird thing to say, too. I mean, if you aren’t even here, how could we step on your…Hey, great shoes!”

  Jo glanced down at the peep-toe black with white trim Italian leather pumps she had slipped on just to give her a confidence boost for this open house. She’d found them among her things in the storage unit she and Kate and their mom had rented for things they hadn’t been able to get to Santa Sofia yet. She hadn’t gone there looking for shoes or for remnants of her life in Atlanta. She’d gone to see what she could make use of to decorate the house, but when she’d seen the neat little stacks of boxes, all sporting the labels of really expensive shoes, she’d given into temptation and donned a pair.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, not above pointing her toe and rolling her ankle to one side to show every angle of her prized footwear.

  “You must have made a ton of money doing this.” Brittney’s eyes glittered with newfound respect.

  “Uh-huh.” She let out a nervous but pleased-with-herself laugh. No harm in taking credit for years of hard work, she thought.

  “Then why’d you leave?”

  Jo pulled her foot in, took a breath and reached for her satchel. “Because while I may have made a ton of money, I lost a whole lot more than that.”

  “Yeah, the stories about this money pit are, like, legendary.” The girl retreated to clear the way for Jo to walk past.

  Jo stopped and met this Brittney eye to eye. “When I said I lost more I didn’t mean money. Oh, not that I didn’t lose a lot of that. Technically, because I’m in debt, I’m still losing money on this property.”

  “That’s lousy luck.”

  “I don’t believe in luck, Brittney. Everyone thinks I was blindsided by the foundering housing market, but I got in this mess all by myself.”

  “Talk around the office is there are others you could blame.”

  “No.” Jo shook her head. “I have to take responsibility. I got greedy, and not for money. I got greedy to be somebody.”

  “You?” She looked completely baffled by the revelation. “You are somebody. You were, like, in magazines and on billboards.”

  “That wasn’t me, Brittney.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “Not the real me.” Jo put her hand to her chest. “The real me is a geeky, lonely kid who just wanted people to like her. If not like her then at least notice her.” She put her hand on the shoulder of the pretty young woman. “Not that I think you’ll understand that.”

  The girl’s whole demeanor softened toward Jo. Her gaze dropped for a second, she fiddled with her hair before looking Jo in the eyes and saying, “Oh, I understand.”

  “You do?”

  “I worked as a receptionist for a competing Realty company ever since I got out of high school. When you’re a receptionist you kind of become invisible to people, especially successful people and stressed-out people. You probably don’t know how that feels.”

  Jo couldn’t recall ever feeling any other way. Oh, wait, yes, she could.

  When Travis looked at her.

  “You’d be surprised what I know, Brittney.” She gave the girl’s shoulder a squeeze then dropped her hand.

  She smiled a bit shyly then raised one shoulder in a halfhearted shrug. “Anyway, when you’re invisible like that, people say things in front of you like you weren’t even there.”

  Jo nodded.

  “You see their mail. You know who calls them and how often.” She licked her lips and glanced out the still-open front door nervously. “You figure out things.”

  “Ah.” She was trying to tell Jo something. She suddenly felt bad about her private joke about that lone marble. “What have you figured out, Brittney?”

  “That you’d better watch out for Mr. Powers.”

  That sent a chill through Jo from her scalp to her peep-toed toes. “What do you—”

  “Hey, what’s going on?” The other Brittney came in with her own grocery bag dangling from her arm.

  “Turn around,” the Brittney in front of Jo told the Brittney behind her. “We’re not staying.”

  “We’re not? Why not?” The other one wanted to know.

  “Because it’s not our house to show.” Brittney pointed firmly toward the door.

  “But this was going to be our lucky break.” The protest came back over the sound of a plastic grocery sack crinkling.

  “I don’t believe in luck.” Brittney looked directly at Jo. “We were sent out here for some reason that had nothing to do with getting a break. In fact, I think we’ve been used, Britt.”

  “So? That’s part of the game, right?”

  “If we want to get into real estate, we should take responsibility for ourselves and do this right.”

  “We did it right.” The protest took on a whiny tone.

  “Oh, come on!” Brittney put her hands on her slender hips. “I worked six weeks as a receptionist for Powers Realty then the big boss says he thinks I can do more, he hires you and two weeks later with only a few hours of training we’re showing the business’s biggest problem property?”

  The other girl’s eyes narrowed. She tipped her heart-shaped chin up. “He said we could be somebody.”

  Jo looked at the girl in front of her and smiled. “Does he have that printed on his business cards?”

  Brittney giggled.

  “Thanks, kiddo.” Jo set her things on the floor, stepped forward and gave the young woman a quick hug. “I won’t ask you to tell me more. You still need a job in the morning.”

  “I will. But that doesn’t mean I won’t start looking for another one as soon as I can.” Brittney hugged her back.

  “If you need shoes to give you confidence for the job hunt, give me a call.”

  Brittney pulled back and shook her head. “Those are cool but I think they come at too high a price.”

  “Smart girl,” Jo whispered. She stepped back and watched the young woman go by. When the pair of them reached the door, she called out. “If it wouldn’t jeopardize your job to tell me—nobody is going to show up for this open house, are they?”

  She paused and looked at her friend. She gnawed her lower lip for a moment then squared her shoulders and said, “People could show up. Mike had us put signs up all over today.”

  “All over but he didn’t run print ads or get it in the paper. Weird, huh?” the other girl offered.

  Mysterious phone calls taken outside the office. Receptionists promoted to Realtors-in-training for one poorly executed open house, hers.

  When she arrived and messed up his plan, Mike suddenly came up with some money to firm up his claim of partnership on the deal. Not to mention that whole cake nonsense. Jo looked around. “I don’t suppose either of you brought that cake here that he had you go get Friday?”

  “That’s another weird thing,” the newer girl volunteered. “He had us put it in the break room and when it got down to just a couple pieces and globs of leftover icing, he took it away.”

&nbs
p; Jo nodded. “The pieces are coming together now.”

  “The pieces of the cake are coming together?” Britt asked Brittney. “I don’t get it.”

  “You’re better off not getting it for now,” Brittney assured her. “We have to go.”

  “You girls go on. I’ll man the open house.” Jo kicked off her shoes.

  Brittney gave her a look of surprise at that.

  “I have a lot of questions. I plan to stay here until I get my answers.” Jo smiled and shrugged. “I might as well be comfortable. Those shoes just don’t fit me anymore.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  One hour into the two-hour open house and not a single house hunter. Not even the usual neighbors dropping in to snoop around out of boredom or curiosity. Jo had expected as much.

  Mike did, too. In fact, he had planned for it.

  It had only taken her a few minutes to put the pieces of his latest scheme together.

  Jo walked through the empty shell of a house. They’d bought it for way less than cost when the home owner had declared bankruptcy after living in it less than a year.

  “What a steal,” Mike had said. “It needs work but has good bones. Just a few tricks and tweaks and we rake in a big, easy profit.”

  “A steal,” Jo murmured. She ran her hand along the door that led from the kitchen to the basement steps. For the first time since she’d made the deal last spring, she noticed the faint pencil marks on the door frame.

  Daddy. The slash a few inches higher than Jo’s head.

  Mommy. About Jo’s eye level.

  Zoey. Not quite to Jo’s waist.

  Jakers. Eight inches? She didn’t know if Jakers was a baby or the family pet.

  It didn’t matter, really. The key word in the whole equation was family.

  “A steal,” she murmured again. They hadn’t made a steal of a deal, they had stolen a home. A home from Daddy, Mommy, Zoey and even Jakers. Forget the good bones of the house; like financial vultures they had picked clean the bones of a family. For no other reason than their shot at raking in a big profit using tricks and tweaks.

  Sure, the family had to bear the responsibility of whatever choices or actions led to the point of such loss, but Jo could not excuse her part.

  She thought of Moxie for a moment. Basically they did the same kind of work. Only Moxie helped families find homes, helped her beloved hometown keep the families it needed to stay viable. Moxie bought and sold and rented property that she looked after herself because she cared about the people and the places.

  Jo could have done the same. Or something close to it. Plenty of Realtors stayed out of the house-flipping business. Why didn’t she?

  Why are you doing what you are doing? Who are you trying to serve?

  The essence of Travis’s questions to her. He said she must answer those things before she could start a ministry at the chapel or before they could begin their life together.

  Why had she done what she did, pursued the fast buck, often at someone else’s expense and sometimes with less than the best intentions regarding a fast resale?

  Jo was good at her work. She was a good Realtor. But house flipping? She had never done anything illegal. Or even unethical, really. But she should have held herself to a higher standard, to be a good Christian. Except, back then, she hadn’t really understood what that entailed.

  She had just wanted to impress Mike, to be somebody in his eyes. In anyone’s eyes.

  How could she have let her own insecurities lead her so far away from the truth she had always claimed to know? How could she have forgotten?

  She was always someone in God’s eyes.

  No matter what shoes she wore. How much money she made. Who loved her, or noticed her or even ignored her. She was always someone in God’s eyes.

  Which led her to the next question.

  Who are you trying to serve?

  Jo closed her eyes. Up until probably these past few days she had still been trying to serve her own needs, enslaved to her own fears. But once she had gotten here, once she had thrown herself into the work in this house, once she had looked at Brittney this morning and understood that everybody feels invisible and unloved at one time or another, it all changed.

  She let her fingertips linger on the slash marks a moment longer. “Wherever they are, Father, be with this family and bless them.”

  She opened her eyes and blinked away the tears pooling above her lashes. She sniffled and went into the living room to find her shoes where she had left them.

  That day on the beach she had fretted about not leaving footprints, not mattering. Now it all seemed so clear. Once she accepted how much she mattered to God she stopped worrying about leaving her mark. Once she placed her trust fully in the One who made the sand and the tide she’d no longer try to make people see her and start living in a way so that people saw God in her.

  Yes. That was her answer. Her unfinished business wasn’t this house, it was herself.

  She reached for her phone and hit redial for the last caller. The call went straight to voice mail.

  “Travis.” She spoke softly but clearly in hopes that when he picked up, the message would come through in more than words. “Thank you,” she whispered. “Thank you for getting me to come back to Atlanta and take a long, hard look at, well, everything. I think I have my answers now. For that alone, I’ll always love you.”

  Love?

  Jo startled at her own admission. She pulled the phone away from her ear, pressed the end call button and stared down at the dark screen. What had she done?

  She knew she loved Travis, of course. Her mom knew, and Kate and Moxie. Actually, probably the whole town of Santa Sofia had reached that conclusion, perhaps even Travis himself. But she hadn’t said it aloud to anyone yet.

  She rubbed the pad of her thumb over the buttons. She could call back, claim the call had gotten cut off and give some kind of addendum or qualifier to her profession. For that I’ll always love your…supersupportive, really great…method of…helping people to…

  “Fall totally, completely and undeniably in love with you.” Jo spoke to the phone in her hand as though Travis himself were standing there. Or more aptly, as though he weren’t. “Might as well face it, I said it. I meant it. If I called back I’d probably—”

  “Say it again?”

  Jo spun around to find Travis Brandt standing in the open doorway. Stunned, she could only murmur, “Make things worse.”

  “Uh-uh. Love doesn’t make things worse, Jo. Not real love.” He smiled.

  Jo had missed that smile. It was the sun breaking over the beach after a starless, stormy night.

  Say something, she told herself. Something wonderful and witty and poignant and perfect.

  “Hi,” she whispered.

  “Hi, yourself.” He looked around. “Can I come in?”

  She swept her arm out the way she might invite a prospective buyer in. “It’s an open house.”

  “Best kind,” he said, coming toward her. “Don’t you think?”

  “Guess it depends on who walks through the door.” She sank her teeth into her lower lip and watched as he approached her in his relaxed, confident way.

  He came to her, reached out and stroked his fingers over her cheek, saying nothing.

  Her lower lip slid from under her teeth. She tipped her head back. “It depends not just on who comes to your open house, but also why they came.”

  He lowered his head, his unwavering gaze searching her eyes.

  Jo started to go up on her tiptoes to receive his kiss, then hesitated and put her hand on his chest. “Why did you come here?”

  “I thought asking questions was my department.” He leaned closer again.

  Again she withdrew, just slightly. This time she turned her head so that his kiss fell on her temple. “Travis?”

  He sighed and took a half step backward, his hands still on her arm and waist. “I told you. I missed you. I couldn’t wait to see you.”

  She
kept silent for a moment.

  “Don’t believe me?”

  “Oh, I believe you all right. I just couldn’t help thinking…”

  “What?”

  “That you’ve always seen me, Travis. From the first time we met you didn’t just see a failed perfectionist with her hair all a mess and a freshly sprained ankle.”

  “Well, I could hardly miss that part.”

  “Yeah, but you also saw past it. That’s why I thanked you in my voice mail. Why I thank God for bringing you into my life. You saw me not just as I was, but also as God wanted me to be. Because of that, I’ve actually started to become that person.”

  “It’s not my handiwork, Jo.”

  She reached up and touched his face. “I have so much to tell you, Travis.”

  He turned his head and kissed her fingertips. “You’ve already told me the most important thing.”

  She gazed up at him earnestly. “That I’ve found my answers?”

  “That you love me.” He curled his fingers around her hand on his face, moved it away and leaned down. When his mouth was only inches away from hers he murmured, “I love you, too, Jo.”

  Heat flooded her cheeks. Her heart raced. “You do?”

  He answered with a kiss.

  “What are you doing in our house?” The strange man’s booming voice startled them apart.

  “Your house?” Travis looked from the man, woman and child standing in the doorway to Jo. “I thought this was your house.”

  “Are you the other buyer?” The woman clutched the child in her arms closer. Her head practically swiveled to look from Jo and Travis to the man standing next to her. When she spoke again her words came out in a panicked rush. “He said he had other buyers. I told you it wasn’t a ploy. Nobody would be that awful, to know how much we want this house and make up another buyer just to drive the price up.”

  Jo’s head swam. She felt sick to her stomach. “By he, you don’t mean Mike Powers, do you?”

  “Yeah.” The man kept one hand on his wife’s shoulder but his attention riveted on Jo. “Is that who you are working with, too? He pressed us to write a contract on the place last week, but we felt we had to pray about it. I guess you think that’s kind of silly.”