by Annie Jones
She should say something about needing her rest and calling it a night, she thought.
She took another sip of coffee then stared into the black liquid splashing against the inside of her cup.
Finally, Travis leaned back against the kitchen counter and folded his arms, not tightly, just laid them across his chest, his cup all but swallowed in one of his hands. “You had regular winter renters here for a long time, didn’t you?”
“The McGreggors.”
“The McGreggors,” he echoed as if the name had been right on the tip of his tongue. As if he had known them almost as long as her family had.
Only he couldn’t have.
“Mr. McGreggor died almost a decade ago and his wife, Ora, went to a nursing home a few years ago.” Jo folded her arms to mirror him in a not-so-subtle way of letting him know she had seen right through his so-called natural charm right down to the oldest of sales tricks. “You were still in broadcasting around that time. So you couldn’t possibly have known them.”
“Ora and her only daughter stopped coming to Santa Sofia four years ago. But her last winter, she was an avid supporter of the Traveler’s Wayside Chapel.” He rested the heel of his empty hand next to the deep old soapstone sink. He crossed his long legs at the ankle and looked up then all around the room, leaving the impression he had stood in that very spot before, probably with Ora McGreggor. “Only knew her the one year and hadn’t thought of her in a long, long while. Did you know her well?”
“No, not well.” She tried to picture the couple and their child, or had they had a dog they’d treated like a child? Jo couldn’t say for sure. “The McGreggors were some kind of distant relation on my mother’s side. That’s how they came to rent the cottage for the winter. They called her to ask about it or she called them to offer…. Something like that. It worked out because with them here every year, neither Kate nor Mom nor I felt anxious about the condition of the cottage, even after we stopped coming to it in the summers.”
“Why did you stop coming here?”
Because Kate wanted to. And whatever Kate wanted, the whole family did.
That was the simple answer. But as is the way of most simple answers, it was, in fact, really very much more complex than that.
“We stopped coming because…” It wasn’t any of his business, this business of how she felt unwanted even in her own family. Of how her wishes hadn’t mattered when Kate the Great spoke. It wasn’t his business and it wouldn’t matter in the long run and…and the last thing she wanted to reveal to this man was how unimportant she felt to the most important people in her life.
Still, she had to say something, so she told a shorthand version of the story, one that cut her out of the mix entirely. Which struck her as painfully appropriate. “We stopped coming because Vince Merchant broke Kate’s heart.”
“Really?” He set his cup aside and straightened out of his casual slouch by the sink.
“Or she broke his. Honestly, I can’t tell you which. Like I said, I was practically a kid.”
“So they have a history?” He looked through the open doorway, past the dining room and into the front room where all that showed of Kate was her cast propped up on Mom’s good table and one hand dangling out from a snarl of covers. “Definitely an undercurrent there this afternoon but I thought it had more to do with Vince trying to cover for his son not showing up with your groceries.”
“Gentry? I can’t believe he’s old enough to drive.”
“Oh, he’s old enough to do a lot more than driving.” Travis chose that moment to rub his eyes, effectively concealing any further clues to what he meant by that. “Anyway, very interesting about your sister and Vince. Curious to see how that plays out.”
“Plays out?” It just now hit Jo. Vince and Kate. After all these years, they had crossed paths again. That totally changed everything. For the good or for the bad, they were not in the situation now that Jo had expected them to be in when she’d proposed this trip.
“Yeah, plays out. Who knows? They may rekindle the old flame.”
He was right. Kate might want to stay here now more than ever.
“Or Kate might want to run out of here faster than a…a Scat-Kat-Katie.”
“A what?”
“Nothing.” Jo shook her head then frowned. “Weren’t we talking about something interesting before we got onto why we stopped coming to the cottage?”
“Interesting? Not much. Just the McGreggors.” He looked into his cup and chuckled. “Of course, that Ora was pretty interesting. A real pistol.”
“Do you happen to know, was she the one responsible for all those tacky souvenirs in the rock garden?”
“She gave me the impression those had some connection to your family.”
Jo frowned.
“Or I could have heard her wrong. I don’t recall any details, just that even in that last winter down here that Ora was a force to be reckoned with. I’m glad you reminded me of her.”
“I remind you of Ora?” There were worse things he could have said. Ora McGreggor had always gladly given reports on the old place’s upkeep, from new cracks in the foundation to missing shingles on the roof—which she would have personally climbed out on to check on. Travis was right. Ora was a pistol, to say the very least.
“Talking to you reminded me about her,” he corrected, then paused, stroked his chin and cocked his head. “But now that I see you in this light…”
“Hey!”
He chuckled. “Seriously. I liked that ol’ gal. Liked her from the moment I saw her. She had a fire in her, you know? A fire to serve the Lord as well as her fellow man.”
Jo wanted to ask why that would possibly remind him of her but she couldn’t bring herself to tarnish Travis’s memory of Ora, or his kind opinion of Jo.
So it wasn’t a trick. The man was, indeed, naturally charming. He remembered people’s names and things about them, even ones he hadn’t known long or well. People mattered to him. But did some people matter to him more than others?
Jo gazed up at him for the first time in several minutes.
He met her gaze. “So, did you know any of your other renters?”
She unwound her rigid arms and pressed her shoulders back, lacing her fingers together in her lap.
Cute. Kind. No tricks. If the man were a house, she could sell time shares in him for every week of the year, even in a market like Santa Sofia.
“Jo?”
“Hmm?”
“I asked you a question.”
“Did I answer?” Her head cocked to one side. She could sell time shares in him, but why would she want to share a guy like that with anyone?
“No, you didn’t answer.”
“What?”
“My question.” He set his coffee cup down.
Jo startled. She blinked. She replayed the conversation, or lack of one, in her mind. She probably blushed. She certainly stammered.
She had let this get completely beyond her control and she had to rein it in, get it back on track, focus on her goal. And to do it now while she still had Travis all to herself.
“Did you know any of your other renters?” he asked, for at least the second time.
“Um, no. Maybe. I don’t know. Mom might have. Or Kate. Like I said, I stopped coming here the summer after I graduated from high school, so I was a kid, mostly.” She tried to prevent her imagination from dwelling on the possibilities—Travis all to herself. Just to stare at the guy. Listen to his voice.
Ply him for information. An edict from an earlier ambition wedged its way in through her flustered confusion.
“But my mother probably got to know them. Or made a point of not knowing them. You never know when who you know and what you don’t know will come in handy, after all. You know what I mean?”
He gave her a patently fake scowl and shook his head. “No, I don’t.”
She laughed, yes a bit more than she should have. But then, it came easily now, here, with him. And before she could overthink that, she seiz
ed control of the situation again. “So, you say there is a younger element looking to buy homes in the Santa Sofia area?”
“Did I say that?” He appeared genuinely puzzled.
“You said people who had come here as kids were returning now. Wanting to give their own children the same kind of happy memories, I suppose?” Suppose nothing. She was hoping like mad this was the case. Nostalgia sold like crazy. And if ever there was a house packed to the rafters with nostalgia—and maybe a little crazy—this was it.
“Yeah. I guess. Some. We had a few families like that attending services at the chapel this past summer.”
“Title holders or lessees?”
“Methodists, I believe.”
Jo huffed. “What I was driving at—”
“I know what you were driving at.” He held his hand up. “Jo, don’t kid yourself. I know what you’re up to here.”
In other words, while she had sat there quietly sizing him up and fighting the urge to sit, stare and perhaps drool over him, he’d done the same with her. Only he didn’t sound as enthralled with the conclusions he had reached. She adjusted her ankle, clenching her jaw against the renewed rush of pain that caused and asked, “Up to? You make me sound so sneaky.”
“Aren’t you?” He held his finger and thumb close together, adding, “Little bit?”
How do you answer a question with the truth when the truth is the last thing you want somebody to learn about you? Jo sat there, sulking and silent.
He leaned forward just enough to chuck her under the chin then spell it all out for her. “You’re obviously trying to weasel information out of me. And I suspect, given the opportunity, you’d take it a step further and ask me who I know who might want to buy a place like, oh, say this very house.”
Jo pursed her lips. She wanted to say something. But she was unable to deny his keen observation, and given his tone, unwilling to concede his implication. Sneaky? Weasel?
“Admit it, Jo. If I hadn’t stopped you just now, you’d have followed the line of questioning just as I said.”
She tipped her head to, sort of, acquiesce without actually owning up to anything.
“And when I told you the truth, that I’m just a nobody servant of God who has an efficiency apartment over the lone Sunday-school classroom in a church-owned sliver of Santa Sofia beachfront property, you’d have taken another tack. Probably asked me if the chapel had ever considered shelling out for a parsonage for me. Or if they had a program to buy homes for widows and orphans.”
He didn’t sound angry as he said it, just earnest.
And maybe a little bit hurt.
“So?” he asked.
“So?” She wondered what, exactly, he expected of her. “You want me to stop you right there and deny it all?”
“Quite the contrary.” He pulled the chair out across from her, hesitated, then sank into it. Not formal like a minister about to enter into a counseling session but kind of lazy-like lounging, legs sprawled and hands behind his head, like a friend open and ready to listen. “I want you to spill it all. If you want to.”
“Spill?”
“Tell me what’s going on. What you’re really up to and why. And most of all, how can I help?”
“Help? A minute ago you sounded as if you wanted to do anything but help me sell this house.”
“Not help you sell it. Help you do the right thing, even if that includes selling it.”
“Fair enough.” Not that she had asked him for that kind of help or that measure of fairness. But here they sat. They had sized one another up and were still here, able to meet one another’s gaze.
Finally it was his eyes that made her do it. Spill it all. Confess. Say simply, “I’m in a fix.”
“A fix?”
“A pickle.” She tried again.
“A pickle?”
“Is there an echo in here?” It was a cornball old gag but it worked to break the tension in the room.
Travis dropped his constant, caring gaze long enough for Jo to catch her breath and regroup.
She looked out into the front room.
Kate moaned, moved slightly, then fell back into her soft, buzzing snore-breath-snore pattern.
Jo swallowed to clear her throat, then raised her eyes to Travis and began again. “I made a mistake.”
“And?”
She took a deep breath, allowing her shoulders to rise and fall before she summed it up succinctly. “And now I have to fix it.”
With his brow lined in concern, he studied her a moment then asked, “Selling your family’s summer cottage will fix it?”
“Fix the financial part of it.”
“Ahh. Debt.” His expression relaxed.
“Not just debt. Not buying too many expensive shoes or unpaid student loans, Travis. This is business debt.”
“Business debt is worse?”
“Business debt comes with strings.” In her case, yards and yards of string. Knotted up and tangled with years of rock-bottom self-esteem and dreams of a girl who’d never felt wanted. “And there are other people involved. There are consequences that go beyond whatever problems it raises for me.”
“Jo, whatever it is, you can just say it outright to me.”
She believed his words, so she told him. “There’s a man involved.”
“A man?” He tipped the chair up on two legs, tilting his head back to stare at the ceiling. “A…lover?”
“No! I mean, a…We’re not…I don’t…Not that he hasn’t made overtures…but I couldn’t. Not until…”
“Until?”
She liked this man too much to sit here and blurt out the M word—marriage—in front of him. Sure, he was a minister and he would understand, laud her even. But forever after he also would not be able to look at her without thinking, That’s the girl who just wants to get married. That kind of message sent men running in the opposite direction.
Still, she couldn’t lie to him. So she decided, in one blinding, rash moment, to tell him the greater truth behind her choice. “I led him on, just a little, because I knew I wasn’t going to just fall into bed with him and…and I wanted him to like me.”
The chair legs came down hard on the old floor.
Jo braced herself for the ridicule she felt was due her.
“Jo. I’d tell you that you should know better but…”
“But you don’t know me, Travis. I’m the girl that nobody ever wanted. Me. Just for myself.”
“I find that very hard to believe.”
She did not respond to his comment, just forged on with her story. “So when Paul Powers singled me out at work and made a big deal about grooming me for partnership, I felt special for the first time in my life.”
“Because he put the moves on you?”
“Because he saw something in me that nobody else ever bothered to notice—that I was there!”
“Trust me on this, Jo. He was not the first person, nor will he be the last, to notice you are here.”
“Was that a compliment? I honestly can’t tell.”
He just shook his head. “And then?”
“Then ninety days ago—”
“Ninety days?” He seemed amused at the exactness of her recollection.
“Roughly ninety days. In just under three weeks it will be ninety days. I know that because it was part of a contract negotiation.”
“You two had a contract?”
Jo nodded. “For a flip.”
“A what?”
“A flip. You know when you buy a broken-down house cheap, go in and fix it up and resell it before the first payment is due and make a bundle.”
“Ahh.”
“Well, I’d done it a few times and had some really good outcomes.” Jo paused to relive the waves of fear she had felt when she’d signed those contracts, the thrill of the chase to get the work done in time, the pride she felt at seeing her bank account rise with each sale. And how, when Paul Powers had noticed her success and picked her as his protégé, she had final
ly felt as if she mattered to someone. “So Paul came to me with this opportunity. High risk, but potential for a major payoff.”
“Or a major loss.”
She conceded as much with a single nod. “The deal is, I sank everything I had into this project, and it hasn’t been enough.”
“Why didn’t you go to your boss to help you out?”
“I did. He said I’d made my bed and I could just lie in it. He wanted no part of it, or me.” Tears filled Jo’s eyes. She tipped her head back to keep them from falling onto her cheeks. The humiliation of Paul Powers’s reaction still stung all these weeks and all these miles away.
Though she could not see him, she heard Travis shifting his weight. She imagined him gritting his teeth at her girlish insecurity. She felt so ashamed.
“Jo?”
“What?” She still could not look at him.
“If the house you’re flipping and your financial problems are both in Atlanta—” he spoke with a quiet intensity that showed kindness if not sympathy as he finished his question “—why are you in Santa Sofia?”
She dropped her hands onto the table, thought for a moment, then admitted, freely, “Because this is where I believe my answers lie.”
“Oh, really?” He slipped his hands from behind his head and rested them on the table, near hers.
“When she retired, Mom put Kate and me on the deed. At first she did it for inheritance and estate reasons then later—when the house stopped being rented—”
“After they built the highway project,” Travis interjected.
“Yes, that makes sense. That’s what precipitated it, only we no longer had Ora down here to tell us that. Anyway, when the rental money wasn’t paying for her vacations anymore, Mom came to think of this house as our family nest egg and told us it was here for all of us to use as we saw fit.”
“And you see fit to cash in on it and hope to find a way to make them see things your way?”
“Don’t make it sound so ugly. This is how the real world operates.”
“Don’t lecture me on how the real world operates. I know it all too well. I get what it means to live from deal to deal, to make more money than you deserve then spend it as if it were your birthright to live like Solomon. I know how scary it can be to be the one everyone is looking at, some waiting for you to do greater things. And just as many or more expecting you to fail.”