Barefoot Brides (11 page)

She knew that without Vince's enabling, Gentry might have worked harder to make their marriage work from the very start instead of seeing it as one more thing he could walk away from if it proved too hard. It might even be a reason one of her own relatives had suddenly turned up with a job offer, to create space between father and son and make a place for their own little family to flourish.

Pera loved Vince. But she knew he had spoiled Gentry almost to the point of ruining his life. Of course, she wouldn't think the man could do the same for Fabbie in a couple of days, but Kate had a hard time thinking she'd reward him for his past transgressions by setting a precedent of him taking the child on his own for extended stays.

“Are you sure about that? You're going to watch Fabbie by yourself for a whole weekend?”

“Sure they…No.” He finally looked up at her and grinned sheepishly. “Actually, Pera wants to take Fabbie with them, but Gentry feels like they won't get as much done with the baby along.”

“Get as much done with the baby along?” She folded her arms. “Did he have a little gleam in his eyes when he said that?”

“Absolutely.” Vince laughed. “Maybe if everything works out, I'll have a second grandchild to babysit soon enough.”

Kate laughed, too, only not with her whole heart. A second grandbaby. Another reason for him not to stay in Santa Sofia. Or, if he did stay, for him not to need any further distractions from his family obligations.

“Anyway, the way Gentry sees it, they aren't really leaving Fabbie with me alone. They're leaving her with us.”

“Us?”

“Oh, yeah, didn't I tell you that part yet?” He put his arm around her.

“Oh, no.”

“What?”

“You are up to some crazy shenanigans!”

“And you're up to them right there with me, Kate.” He gave her a squeeze. “I hope.”

If she had any sense, she'd push his arm away, hoist herself up off this couch and storm off to teach him that he couldn't just assume she would go along with whatever he promised people on their behalf. Not unless he put a ring on her finger first.

And even then he'd still better ask her first before making a weekend-long commitment for her.

Either she didn't have any sense or the old Scat-Kat had begun to fade for certain. Because Kate did not fly off the handle or even scootch over an inch on the couch. She snuggled close, tipped her head so that she could look into Vince's eyes and said softly, “I'm listening. What didn't you not tell me yet?”

“The only way Pera will agree to going away is if she knows you're helping to take care of Fabbie.”

“Doesn't trust Grandpa not to spoil the kid rotten?”

“She's seen my handiwork with Gentry. I have a reputation of being a little indulgent.”

Kate smiled. It was good to hear him admit it. “And it's good to see Gentry trying to let go of Fabbie just a little.”

“Yeah. I think that's healthy.”

“Me, too.”

“He's setting a good example.”
For you.
She didn't say it but she didn't have to. “I know this is tough, to see him considering moving so far away.”

“I know the job of a parent is to give your kid wings, but Miami sure is a far-off place for him to fly.”

“Look on the bright side. Maybe they won't like it.” The second the words came flying out, she slapped her hand over her mouth. Too late, of course. But if her renewed relationship with Vince had taught her anything, it was…

Hmm. What
had
she learned from falling head over heels in love with Vince again?

Kate lowered her hand slowly.

Love.
She
loved
Vince.

And Fabbie.

And Gentry and Pera.

And her mother and sisters.

And she wanted all the best for them, no matter what. That meant putting her own desires and fears aside.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

“Okay. You can count on me. I'll help you take care of Fabbie this weekend.” What happened after that, she'd leave up to the Lord.

T
he bell over the door at the
Santa Sofia Sun Times
jingled to announce Moxie's arrival at ten minutes after nine.

Clink-clunk. Clink-clunk.

As a local businessperson she'd heard the dented brass bell hundreds of times. Thousands, maybe. But never before had she felt it resonate through her.

Clink-clunk. Clink-clunk.

It was the sound her anxious but wary heart would make if it were a bell. Her cheeks flushed at the sheer corniness—and dead-on accuracy of the description—of her response to crossing the threshold into the office of R. Hunt Diamante.

Call me Hunt.

“Hunt,” she whispered at the recollection of his request. She had come to see Hunt today. On business, of course, and she was…puzzled.

Puzzled and alone.

The
Sun Times
had occupied the same building forever. Well, Moxie remembered the offices here forever, it seemed. Or at least since third grade when an elementary-school field trip made her aware that the neat little bundle that arrived on the doorstep every morning came out of an office in Santa Sofia and was written by citizens of the town.

Not much had changed about it since then. Not outwardly. Venetian blinds still hung in the plate-glass window, casting slatted shadows over the pocked but polished wooden floors of the lobby. The receptionist's area was still not much more than a square hole cut in the paneled wall. All sorts of awards, commendations, subscription rates, photos of Little League teams the paper had sponsored and the old journalistic adage Never Assume in plastic and metal frames covered the wall. Even though bits of the gold paint had chipped away the dots on both of the
i
's and at a good portion of the
u, Santa Sofia Sun Times
was still on the front door in Old English script. Whenever the news or the so-called reporting of it got too bad for locals to handle, they liked to point out the missing bits of the
u,
which made the letter look like an
i,
without a dot—like the other
i
's in the name—and make the same old corny joke.

“Went down to complain to the
Sun Times
about their paper and found they'd changed the name to the Sin Times and figured I better not get caught hanging out around a place like that!”

Maybe it wasn't just a joke, Moxie found herself wondering. Maybe nobody came down to the
Sun Times
offices anymore. But Hunt still worked here.

Didn't he?

“Hello?” she shouted into the stillness of the dusty old office.

Nothing.

No shuffling of feet from the unseen back offices toward the front. No clackity-clack of fingers running over a keyboard. No phone ringing. No human voices chatting to each other, much less calling out to her that someone would be right with her.

“Peg?” she called out for the woman who had worked at the
Sun Times
since—as Peg herself liked to put it—since we hammered the headlines into stone tablets with a rock and a bone chisel. “Peg? Y'all in the back? If you're in a meeting, I can come back.”

No answer.

Moxie took a step closer to the unoccupied front desk, aka the hole in the paneling. She opened her mouth to call out again then paused, unsure
what
exactly to call out.

Peg clearly was not here.

She knew the other reporters, sort of, but not on a first-name basis. If she did call to one of them and they showed up, what would she say? That she wanted to see Hunt?

Moxie drew in a deep breath then leaned in, trying to peer through the opening in the wall. The lights were on. The computer, off. The red light on the answering machine blinking.

This all felt so wrong.
Spooky.

Except Moxie did not believe in spooks. She pretty much figured most odd or mysterious events had a perfectly reasonable man-made solution. Her own life story seemed evidence of that.

Still, the empty office did set her nerves on edge. She strode forward and reached out to pick up the phone. Maybe she should call—

R-r-r-r-r-ring.

Moxie just about jumped out of her skin. Her heart thumped hard and fast in the hollow of her throat.

R-r-r-r-r-ring.

By the second ring she had calmed down enough to realize this call might offer some insight into what was going on around here. Or at least it would give her someone else to help try to piece things together.

R-r-r-

Wham.

Boom. Boom. Boom.

A door somewhere in the back of the building slammed shut. Heavy footsteps falling in long, running strides drowned out the last jingle of the phone.

A muffled, “Yeah, what is it?”

Moxie tipped her head, more trying to confirm the identity of the speaker than to listen in on the content of the conversation.

“I can't answer that…No. No. I can't…I don't know…Look, I'm sorry, lady, but I gotta go…Yeah. Yeah. You do that…Okay. All right…Thanks…Goodbye.”

A moment of silence followed by a mild but descriptive curse word.

“Hunt?” As she called his name, she stretched up on her tiptoes as if that would give her voice the extra oomph it needed to reach the man and let him know she was there. “Is something wrong? Is there anything I can do to help?”

“I've never been so happy to hear anyone's voice in my life!”

Moxie couldn't help but smile. It wasn't a profession of love, or even like, which was the most appropriate level of affection either of them should feel toward the other given the short amount of time they had known one another and the circumstances of their, well, circumstances.

He was happy to hear her voice. That was enough for now.

“I'm just so glad you came back, Peg.” He came to a stop, looked around, then laced his arms defensively over his puffed-up chest. “You're not Peg.”

“I'm not Maxine, either, though you have called me that.” Her smile went from high beam to fog lights to completely off in the length of time it took her to complete that sentence.

“They did it.” He strode to the door, opened it, looked to the north, then to the south, then directly across the street. “They actually did it.”

“Who did what?” she asked, following his line of vision.

He frowned. Then, still totally distracted, he turned and headed for the door that led to the back offices.

Moxie didn't know what else to do but follow. “Whatever is going on here, I'd like to help.”

He came to a halt beside the receptionist's office and finally fixed his gaze fully on her face. His harried expression softened slightly. “I believe that, Moxie.”

“Good.” She took a deep breath. A connection, at last.

He spun on his heel and marched into the small cubicle where Peg usually sat greeting people and directing phone calls.

Again, Moxie followed. “But I can't help with anything if I don't know what's going on.”

He frowned at Peg's desk.

She moved in front of him, glanced at the desk and found it so clear of paper that she didn't think it would hurt for her to hop up and sit on it.

Hunt didn't so much as blink at her seating choice.

That he accepted the fact that she felt so comfortable in his new domain made her feel good. She folded her hands with a clap in her lap, crossed her legs at the ankle, then let them swing just a little. “Okay, so tell me. Who are
they
and just what did they actually
do?
”

“The newspaper staff.”

“Randall, Joyce, Mel and—”

“And Peg. Yeah.” He laid his finger on the patch of beard along his chin.

The gesture, along with the deepening lines in his forehead, made him look lost in thought. A man weighing his options, considering his next move.

She studied his somber, dark eyes made darker by the circles beneath them. He hadn't been sleeping well. The pallor of his usually rich olive skin told her he probably hadn't eaten well, either. It didn't hurt that conclusion that she'd seen the greasy junk he had piled on his plate at the Bait Shack.

This was not a man who acted on impulse. Not a man ruled by emotions. When he had gotten out of the car or offered to take her father to the hospital, that had come from who he was, not how he felt about her or her father or the situation. He saw what needed to be done and responded. Now he was trying to formulate the proper response to this new predicament. It obviously had no clear-cut right answer.

“Hunt?”

“Hmm?”

“What did they do?” She repeated the question without a trace of impatience.

His whole face pinched; he rubbed his temple and shook his head. “They walked out on me.”

Moxie let out a long, low whistle.

He chuckled at that, then added quietly, “Thanks.”

“For what?”

“Not immediately asking me ‘what did you do to deserve that?'”

Moxie smiled. “Every story has more than one side. Surely you've learned that as a journalist.”

He nodded in appreciation. “And I guess you've learned it by having your life story butchered by a so-called journalist?”

“Hmm. I hadn't thought about that. I'd have said I learned it in my work in property management.”

“Ah!”

“
And
from living my life's story. Not the version in the
Sun Times,
by the way. Each member of my family has his or her take on what happened to this point and has their own opinions about what should happen next.”

“Don't get me started on family.” He turned then sat on the edge of the desk and rubbed his hands over his face.

“Started? I don't even know
how
to start talking about family. Up until I reconnected with the Cromwells the only family I had to cope with was my dad and a foster mother who didn't really want to be any kind of mother.”

“Tough going.”

“I guess. It made me who I am, though, so there's that.”

He gave a short, empathetic snort. “That's one way of dealing with a…um…unique family dynamic.”

“Unique? Kidnapped baby raised by kindly strangers within miles of birth family's vacation home? That's so common Hallmark has its own section in the Mother's Day cards for it.”

He laughed outright. “I meant my unique family.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah.”

“No, not ‘oh' as in ‘oh, I get it.' ‘Oh' followed by a big, fat question mark.” She drew the punctuation in the air to, well,
punctuate
her comment. “Or, as my decidedly more Southern-sounding sisters and birth mother might say, ‘do tell!'”

Another laugh, accompanied by a shake of his head. “I have enough to deal with, what with my whole staff walking out. I don't have the time or the energy to go into some sad old song and dance about the black sheep struggling to prove himself to…well, you know.”

She didn't know and she
wanted
to, but clearly he didn't feel like going into details. Moxie sighed and pushed herself up and off the desk. “Okay, I get it. You're preoccupied. Too preoccupied to do a little business?”

“Business?”

“I promised to run an ad in the next issue of the
Sun Times,
remember?”

He placed the heels of his hands on the edge of the desk and braced his arms straight on either side of his body. He didn't budge from the spot where he was leaning back to rest. “Much as I appreciate you keeping your promise, I can't do the same with my staff gone. I can't promise I'll even get an issue out this week.”

“Oh, surely they'll come back.”

“I don't know. They were awfully mad.”

Moxie bit her lower lip.

He narrowed his eyes at her. “You want to ask, don't you?”

She squirmed.

He started to smile, reined it in, then let it ease over his lips.

He sure was awfully cute when he smiled.

“Okay.” He shut his eyes and chuckled softly. “Ask.”

How could she phrase this delicately? She scooted close enough to press her shoulder to his, then leaned forward to look at him square in the eye. “What did you do to make them mad enough to walk out?”

He drew in a deep breath. His eyes darted to one side for only a second before his gaze locked on hers. The weight of his problems showed in his posture, his expression, even his deep, weary tone, and he exhaled slowly then shook his head. “I told them the truth.”