The Barefoot Believers (14 page)

“Great.” He stood back and looked over his handiwork. And maybe a little bit more than his handiwork. “I have to say, even with your whole head covered by a towel and your swollen ankle propped up on a chair between us, I thought you were pretty cute. But this head-exposed, ankle-bandaged look really works, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“She had a towel over her head?” Vince asked in a whisper meant to be overheard.

“Shh.” Kate pressed her finger to her lips and leaned forward, clearly not wanting to miss a word.

Jo ignored them both, asking Travis, “You like this look better, huh?”

He pointed to the open space between where they stood and the couch. “Show me a runway walk so I can be sure.”

Jo placed the tips of her crutches down, swung her body forward then stopped short. “Hey! I thought you were a minister! You're not supposed to ask a girl to go parading around in front of you like a swimsuit model!”

“So, I can be sure you know how to use those crutches?” He waggled his fingers to demonstrate walking. “Wouldn't be very nice, or neighborly, or much of a Christian act to saddle you with something without making sure you can use them properly.”

“Oh. Yeah. Of course.”

It was a delicate balance. Not the walking with crutches. But trying to strike the right chord with the former sports celebrity turned…minister…turned medical-equipment deliveryman.

Jo moved over the old carpet, trying not to make a million mental notes about her options—replacing it, shampooing it, tearing it up and hoping for hardwood underneath—for flooring as she did.

“Have you used crutches before?” Travis asked.

“No.”

He crooked his smile up on one side “Well, you're a real natural at it. Very coordinated. Almost graceful.”

If she were doing pretty much anything else—painting, cooking, even walking in a brand-new pair of super high heels—she'd have found that compliment charming—a bit awkward, given the source, yet still charming.

But said about walking on crutches? Just the idea of being a natural at that, graceful, even, made her pause. And pausing made her stumble.

In a single footfall, Travis stood beside her, one large hand spread across her back, the other helping to stabilize the crutch she had clunked down at an odd angle.

“Talk about awkward,” she said, her head down, trying to will her feet and the tips of her walking aids to all work together.

“Were we talking about awkward, Ms. Cromwell?” Travis asked.

“Jo,” she said softly. “Call me Jo.”

“Jo?” He said it as if the name didn't quite fit right in his mouth. Or maybe he thought it didn't fit right with her.

“As in the middle sister in
Little Women,
” Kate called out by way of explanation. Kate always rushed to tell people this insignificant tidbit because, like so many things in Jo's life, even her name came in Kate's shadow.

Little Women
had been their mother's favorite old movie, so she had named her first daughter Katharine, after Katharine Hepburn, and when Jo had arrived—Jo was supposed to have been a boy to appease their father—Mom had hit upon the idea of naming her this boyish name, which was the character Hepburn had played in the movie. So, if one were the kind to analyze things too closely, and Jo was that kind, one could say that Kate was the real deal and Jo was merely an extension of her. And of her father's disappointment at not having a son.

“Jo.” Travis tried the name again.

From his mouth, the name didn't sound like a synonym for a second-rate castoff. She responded immediately. “Yes?”

“I like it,” he said.

“Thank you.”

“And as for talking about awkward?” His hand resting so lightly on her back it felt as fleeting as his breath, he nodded and finished up, “I thought we were talking about grace…Jo.”

Jo looked up. Right into a pair of soft brown eyes focused on her. Not her sister's shadow. Not her father's disappointment.

Her.

Just her.

All her life she had wanted to see that look from someone who mattered. Who thought
she
actually mattered, if only as another person. She'd wanted it so badly that more than once she had made a pest of herself to her family and a fool of herself in questions of the heart. That yearning had dominated her actions for so long that she hardly knew how to do anything but seek that elusive affirmation.

And now it had come to her unbidden.

Without strings from him or manipulations on her part.

Travis Brandt had gone out of his way to do something kind—
for her.

Her first impulse was to push him away. Then to make a joke, a caustic remark, an outright insult if she had to, to prove to him his lack of judgment for singling her out. If only he knew what had been going on in her mind, what had brought her to Florida.

Jo shivered and tore her gaze away from his, murmuring, “Grace. Yes. Grace. We were talking about that.”

Suddenly the word took on a deeper meaning. Grace, not unlike the kindness and attention Travis had shown her, came undeserved, and often when one least expected it.

The mishmash of thoughts in Jo's mind troubled her. Yet they also reassured her.

“You steady now?” Travis released his hand on her crutch while his other hand still hovered close at her back. “Don't want you taking a tumble and twisting that other ankle.”

“Steady?” She glanced into his eyes and wanted to shout at him
No! How could I be steady with you standing right there, looking at me like…like you actually care who I am and what I do?
“I, uh, yes. I don't think I'm in any danger of twisting my other ankle.”

“Yet,” Kate piped up clearly for Travis's benefit. Then she turned to Vince and smiled. “But given the crazy expensive stilts she wears for shoes, I'd say that other ankle is living on borrowed time at best.”

“Spoken like a regular grumpy old woman who picks out her shoes for comfort,” Jo retorted, knowing Kate would actually take the remark as something of a compliment.

“Hey, careful who you call
old,
baby sister. Don't make me have to prove you wrong by announcing both our ages. I'll do it. Right here. Right now.”

Jo was not fussy about her age. In a few years, she might feel differently. But for now she could not count herself among the fluttering females who felt the subject of age too delicate to discuss in front of “gentlemen callers.” But she was the kind of woman who did not want personal information broadcast by her snarky big sister in front of a potential business contact. That was her only reason for backing down, she told herself, business.

“I amend my comment. You are not a grumpy old woman. You are merely a grumpy woman. Who thinks she is so smart for her choice in footwear but hasn't stopped to consider that her clunky, ugly lace-up granny shoes didn't protect her from getting hurt any more than my adorable heels did me.”

“Huh?” Vince looked from Kate to Jo to Kate again.

“I followed it.” Travis stood back and stole a peek at Jo's lone pink fluffy house shoe. “The most sensible shoe in the world won't save the foot of a scatterbrained wearer.”

“That's ri—hey!” Under normal circumstance Jo might have taken a playful swing at his arm, but out of fear of making one wrong move and falling on her face—thereby proving him right about the scatterbrained jab—she simply stamped her crutch and narrowed her eyes. “I thought you brought me these as an act of Christian charity, not because you thought I was too loopy to get around without help, Mr., um, Pastor? Rever—”

“Travis.”

“Travis.” She settled on the name quite easily. Too easily perhaps, which made her feel the need to ask, “But in a professional capacity, I should call you…?”

“Travis.” His tucked his hands into his pockets, making his untucked shirttail crumple up. His shoulders shifted. “Everybody just calls me Travis.”

Vince snorted his opinion of that. “I know some people who have called you a few other things, when they think about you just walking away from the life every guy dreams of having.”

Travis shrugged but did not try to justify his choice or the opinions of other men.

How could he let that go so readily? Why did he not want to claim and enjoy the fame his hard work and accomplishments had brought him? Jo could not understand it. “But you do have the title, right? You didn't get ordained off the Internet or something?”

“No, I didn't get ordained off the Internet.” Travis chuckled. “I have my doctorate and am a dually ordained and recognized member of the clergy.”

“B-but people just call you Travis?”

“Why not? That's my name.”

“But you earned that title. It says something about you.”

“Yes, I'm sure it does. But, really, the kind of work I do, it's not
about
me. It's about who I serve.”

“Don't you want the respect you're owed? Don't you want…” What was she doing? She'd gotten completely off track. She'd made this small thing personal, showing a little too much about her own feelings and not showing enough respect for his. She repositioned her hands on the handles, blew a blast of air through her lips and laughed, just the right amount this time, as she looked into those wonderful brown eyes. “Don't you want to take me to get those groceries?”

“Groceries?” Travis said it as if it were some kind of foreign word to him. Or at least a foreign concept.

Jo glanced at Kate. “Didn't that caretaker lady send you here to help us get groceries?”

“Caretaker lady?” Again a look from Travis that said,
No hablo nonsense.

“Moxie,” Vince explained.

Jo leaned on the crutches. “Yeah, that's the one.”

“No, I came of my own volition. Just to bring you these.” Travis tore off a loose piece of the decorative crepe paper.

He'd come
just
for her. She'd known he'd come to do this for her. That had touched her. But to know he had come
just
for her? That level of personal attention from a stranger? That…frightened her.

Not because she thought there was anything icky or out of line about the gesture from Travis but because…because she couldn't imagine why anyone would do that for her.

“I talked with this Moxie over an hour ago.” Kate picked up her cell phone and looked at it briefly. “The connection was bad but I know she got the message that we needed help and she was going to send someone.”

“So if she didn't send Vince and she didn't send Travis, who did she send?” Jo wondered aloud. “And how long do we have to wait for him or her to show up?”

“Him,” Travis said quietly, and pointedly, to Vince. “As to how long you may have to wait for him—”

“It's not important. Travis and I are both here now.”

“I think it is important.” Jo hopped around until she could see clearly out of the still-open door. “We trusted this woman with our home, with our mother's finances. And now we have a hole in our porch and someone she hand selected who hasn't shown up? Those are not signs of a responsible caretaker.”

“None of this is Moxie's fault.” Vince stepped forward, the way a man steps in front of a cowering dog to prevent the cruel owner from hurting it.

And odd reaction, Jo thought. Some might say an overreaction, unless Vince had something personal at stake with this…this Moxie.

“How can you be sure?” Kate demanded.

“We both know Moxie. Everyone in town knows her. She's a great kid. Hard worker. If she said she'd do something, rest assured, she upheld
her
end of the deal.”

Now Travis sounded a bit too protective of the girl. Why that mattered to Jo, or why it even registered with her at all, she could not say. After all, the only thing she had in mind for this man was a possible business proposition.

She looked at Travis's face, then at the crutches he had given her, muttering under her breath, “Just for me,” then the firm reminder, “just business.”

Kate looked at Jo. The unspoken agreement that passed between them pretty much said,
I won't force the issue if you won't.

“I guess it could all be a simple misunderstanding,” Kate conceded.

“You two did have a hard time hearing each other,” Jo said.

“Bad signal,” Kate explained to Vince.

He nodded, though the wariness had not left his expression.

“And didn't you say there was a lot of background noise?”

“Yeah. She was at—”

“Billy J's,” both Travis and Vince said in almost the same breath.