Barefoot Brides (12 page)

“A
d revenues? That's what this is all about?”

“Not
all
about. It's not
that
simple.” He stood and strode across the room and into the hallway. He looked down it first one way and then the next, gesturing with both hands as he said, “Cost of paper is up. Cost of production. Electricity. Water. Gas for delivery.”

“All things the
Sun Times
newspaper staff would totally understand.” She pushed up off the desk and followed him as far as the doorway. There she stopped, folded her arms and cocked her head and challenged him. “I can't believe they'd walk out over hearing a few cold, hard facts.”

He scrunched up his face like a kid caught trying to get away with not having told the whole story. “Yeah, well, maybe it wasn't just the facts that were cold and hard.”

“You have my attention.”

“I just…I didn't intend to say it. Not the way it came out.” He pretended to pick at something on the paneled hallway wall, then leaned against it, his arm straight and his palm flat. “But the longer we sat in the staff meeting troubleshooting—”

“Troubleshooting?” Moxie held her hand up to stop him right there. “You mean problem solving?”

He let his arm go lax, just a tiny bit. That put his face closer to hers, not in a threatening way but in a way that implied he did not like being corrected and he didn't plan to back off his original phrasing. “Troubleshooting. Problem solving. Same thing.”

“I beg to differ, Mr. Editor in chief.”

He dropped his hand from the wall and stood with his shoulders back and his expression skeptical but not closed off. “I'm listening.”

“Troubleshooting means you are looking for trouble, usually with a double-barreled rifle loaded with buckshot approach.”

He tipped his head momentarily to the right. It wasn't a nod of agreement, but it let her know he was on board with her theory and willing to hear more.

“Problem solving, on the other hand, means you know what the issues are and you are looking for resolutions, looking for a way to get out of trouble.”

“I never thought of it that way.” Then he rubbed the bent knuckle of his index finger over his narrow beard and chuckled, his eyes narrowed onto her face. “You always this smart?”

“No.” Moxie didn't know why she immediately denied it. There was nothing wrong with a girl being smart and Moxie was. Then again, if she kept to the absolute truth, she wasn't always smart. And frankly, this man could come up with recent and very vivid examples of her, um, lack of intellect. “But I have run my own businesses since I was sixteen years old. I picked up a thing or two along the way.”

“Sixteen. Wow. When I was sixteen…” He stared off into space, shook his head then asked, “So where were your parents then? Were you supporting yourself?”

“My foster mom had just left. Billy J was a wreck—yes, even more so than he is now.” She answered the obvious question before he could even pose it.

He laughed, then added, “I don't know him well, but from what I do know, I like the man.”

“Me, too,” she said softly. “Of course, I love him, but I also like him. You know what I mean?”

More staring off into the distance, his dark eyebrows furrowed. “Not everyone can say that about their family. They love them but they also like them.”

She considered delving into the wistfulness behind that statement then decided a man not swayed by emotion who had already told her more than she suspected he planned to might find that kind of question too intrusive.

“To answer your question—” she directed the conversation away from his issues “—I had a great home and the whole town of Santa Sofia looking out for me. And the Bait Shack provided more than enough financial security.”

“I noticed that with all the economic downturn around here, it still seems pretty busy.”

“People have to eat,” she said. “They come from all over, and tourists still think it's worth their while to get off the highway to eat at the Bait Shack. It's a sort of landmark. My dad's success helps the whole town.”

“And a newspaper, for example, should be different because…?”

“Because it
can
be,” she told him.

“And the business you've been in since you were a kid?”

“I help people put a roof over their heads, make a home. Those that have problems realizing that dream, I work with. I serve the community as much as I can,
because
I can.”

“And therefore you should.”

“Don't give me that tone, not from a guy who played the—” she pulled her shoulders up, put on a somber scowl and pretended to stroke an imaginary Pharaoh-like beard “‘—I am taking you to the hospital because it's the right thing to do not because you're taking out an ad' card.”

“All right. All right.” He laughed and held up both hands. “Guilty. You're all about the altruism and I'm a die-hard capitalist.”

“Look, Hunt, I am just a good person trying to live my faith.”

He did not flinch. “I understand.”

“Really?”

“I may not qualify as a poster boy for the churchgoing crowd but I am a man of faith, Moxie.”

She got the feeling he did not say that out loud often. Not out of shame but because he was the kind who didn't think you should have to proclaim it for people to know it.

“I'm hardly a shining example all the time myself.” That made Moxie want to come clean. “And as for my business being all about altruism? I went into business for myself because I'd figured out that summer that no matter how much money or how many kind folks you have in your life, basically, a person has to learn to rely on themselves. So I wasn't supporting myself so much as I was taking care of myself.”

“That's a pretty harsh lesson for a sixteen-year-old to take.”

“I guess you're never too old to learn something new. I'm trying to do that, especially where my new family is concerned.”

He studied her in silence.

She squirmed, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. “What?”

“Nothing. Just thinking that I want to be like you when I grow up.”

“You look like a man fully growed to me,” she teased, then felt her cheeks burning. She hadn't meant that as flirtatious as it had come out. “I mean, you're clearly adult, mature, responsible.”

He laughed. “Yeah. Tell that to my family.”

“Family.” She shook her head.

“Yeah. It's because of them, because of my family, I said what I did. It's their philosophy. Not mine. Well, maybe it's mine. I thought it was, now I just don't know.”

“Well, I certainly don't know. Maybe it would help if you'd tell me what you're talking about.”

“I'm talking about what I said to the staff. What I told them that made them walk out.”

Moxie held her hand out to coax him to spill it.

His shoulders rose and fell. He shook his head then exhaled and straightened his back as he faced her and said, “I told them that all media is first and foremost a business.”

“Really? Not even a passing reference to the nobility of the fourth estate? To the duty of the free press to inform the public, shine a light on injustice and wrongdoing?”

“Some people would say that the only form of media that does that anymore is the hero of a graphic novel.”

“I think there are plenty of people who would disagree with that, from Miz Nancy who runs the Christian bookstore down the road to the local talk radio station to your very own newspaper staff.”

He huffed at the mention of his wayward workforce.

Moxie went on, undeterred. “I'd say they all could cite examples of how different forms of media have helped people, changed lives even.”

“Look, I was just trying to tell it to them straight,” he huffed. “I don't know for sure how things work in Santa Sofia, but I'm guessing the banks around here won't let you write a check on the satisfaction of having championed a noble cause.”

She hesitated then conceded his point with a halfhearted shrug and a nod.

“No matter the goal, none of it can happen if the media doesn't make a profit, right?”

Another nod.

“For a newspaper, that profit comes from ad revenues first and to some degree sales and subscriptions. I told my staff that.”

“Which they obviously knew all along, so—”

“And then I added the proverbial last straw. Something that might as well be my family's motto.” He looked away from her. “Media accomplishes more by gaining affluence than by giving insight.”

“Wow.” Moxie tried to process all that and found herself torn between disagreeing with that premise with all her might and with asking him, “That's your family philosophy? Media exists to make a profit, not to serve the community?”

“
Everything
exists to make a profit. If it doesn't…” He jerked his thumb over his shoulder in the classic sign for throwing a player out of the ball game.

“And the
Sun Times
isn't making enough of a profit, so according to your upbringing…?” She repeated his gesture.

He didn't confirm anything, just said matter-of-factly, “Something has to give. Rates have to go up.”

“You'd have the whole town on your doorstep complaining.”

“Complaints I could take. The landslide of canceled subscriptions, that would make the few advertisers we have left walk? That I can't accept.”

“What about cutbacks?”

“As of this hour, staff's down to just me.” He held both hands out, his arms wide to showcase his singularity. “That might help.”

“They'll come back after they cool down.”

“Then what do I do? Ask them all to take a pay cut or to decide among themselves which one I fire?”

She saw his point. “What if you just get more advertisers?”

“I've been all over town. Everybody says they'll take an ad next week, next month, next…editor.” He looked like a lost pup as he said that.

“Aww.” Moxie stuck her lower lip out in a show of sympathy. “You think it's personal?”

“Don't you?”

She thought about it a moment then shook her head. “I think it's regional.”

“What?”

She smiled, quite pleased with herself that she had, at that instant, done a little problem solving of her own and had a solution in mind that just might turn things around. “It's a Southern thing.”

“Are you saying they won't take ads out with me because I'm a Yankee?”

Moxie laughed. “To quote someone I have recently come to admire, it's not that simple.”

“You admire me?”

“Better than that,” she replied. “I see potential in you.”

“To do what?”

“Grow up to be like me.” She gave him a pat on the arm and turned to head toward the lobby. “If you ever hope to accomplish that
and
problem solve about how to be the kind of paper your staff and this town needs, not to mention put yourself in good stead with the local advertisers, you have to start where I did.”

“The Cromwells?” He took a tentative step behind her.

“No, silly.” She gave him a look over her shoulder, reached for the door and swung it open for him to pass through. “Billy J's Bait Shack Seafood Buffet. Where you are going to get a lesson in service that will serve
you
well for the rest of your life.”

J
o stepped through the door of Mike Powers Realty, shut her eyes and sighed. It felt like slipping into a pair of custom-fit ridiculously high-priced Italian pumps. It pinched a little and had almost no practical application in her real life, but, man, she looked great doing it.

“Jo!”

“You're back!”

“Love your hair short like that!”

“Florida living looks good on you, girl!”

Jo acknowledged every greeting and comment but she did not let them deter her from her objective. She had come here to clean up the mess she'd made of her finances in the name of ambition. There was no way to do that without directly confronting…

“Jo Cromwell, Super Realtor!”

“Mike?” She jerked to a halt.

“The prodigal has returned.”

Prodigal? Jo hugged her handbag close, her shoulders high. She took a step back. Is that what Mike thought of her? That she had run off to Florida to squander money and misbehave, leaving him and everyone here to take up the slack at work? That was so far from the truth she didn't know what to say, except, “I'm hardly a prodigal.”

“Oh? You are all
churchy,
though. Prodigal, that's from the Bible, right?”

“Yes, but…”

“I knew it. I've sat through a few Sunday-school classes in my life. After taking off and living it up for a while, when the prodigal came back, everybody celebrated!”

“Well, not
everybody
celebrated,” she corrected him, thinking of the son who had held a grudge against his returning brother. Is that how Mike felt? Did he really believe she had gone off to “live it up”? She opened her mouth to ask him directly, but he had stopped listening to anything but the bark of his own orders.

“Kelley, order pizza!” He stabbed a finger in the direction of his administrative assistant. Then twisted around to the row of desks in the large main office. “Brittney S.? Brittney B.?”

“Yes, sir!” Two almost indistinguishable twenty-somethings jumped up from their seats. Their eager eyes fixed on the charismatic businessman who signed their paychecks. They didn't even try to hide the fact that they thought Mike “hung the moon”—as Dodie would say to describe that level of blatant adoration.

“Call Beakman's Bakery and order a great big chocolate…” He turned and looked at Jo questioningly.

Jo tried to show him she had no idea what he was actually asking her by raising her hands and shaking her head.

“Right! Too messy.” He turned to the girls again. “Yellow cake, white icing. A big one.” He spread his hands apart to indicate the proper size. “Sheet cake.”

The girls nodded.

One paused and turned to look at him with her purse raised.

“Please don't spend a dime for my sake,” Jo urged Mike, even though her message was aimed at the girl.
Don't let this slick-talking man push you into putting the cost of this totally unwarranted celebration on your credit card with the promise of reimbursement at a later date.
“I'd feel terrible knowing anyone had used her expense account on my account.”

Mike paused. His cool expression seemed to hide a thought process that Jo could not quite discern.

Had he caught on that she was projecting her own issues about how he had manipulated her into financing their supposedly “joint” business venture onto the young women? Or maybe he was calculating how much it would cost compared to how much he expected to gain from whatever scheme he had brewing behind that smooth, flawless smile of his.

“Get some money out of petty cash.” He pointed to his administrative assistant's impressive desk, which sat just outside his office door.

Brittney S. followed through on Mike's directive and reported to his assistant with her hand out.

“Don't skimp,” he told the woman looking to him for confirmation that he genuinely meant for her to dole out cold, hard cash. “Oh, and Brittney?”

“Yes?” Both girls looked up.

“Make sure they write on top of it in great big swirly letters.” He raised his hands, fingers spread wide and wriggling to emphasize just how expansive and just how swirly he wanted the printing on the cake. “Welcome Home, Jo!”

“Home?” Jo whispered. She had lived in Atlanta since she graduated from college but she did not think she had ever thought of it as home. She certainly would never describe this office with that term. Mike, of all people, knew that.

Jo put her hands on her hips. “Why are you doing this?”

“Because we missed you.” He smiled, his arms still extended. “Can't an old friend do a little something special to show how much he missed you and, uh, to say ‘good to see you, no hard feelings'?”

Jo shook her head. She wanted to tell him that standing there like that with his perfect brown hair and pearly white teeth and power-red tie he looked more like a smarmy game-show host than a sincere old friend. Instead, she stood her ground and insisted, “If you really want to show me how much you missed me, cake is not the way to do it.”

“It's not?”

“You know it's not.”

The Brittneys came hurrying back toward him, cash in hand. They looked so pleased and so eager to please the charismatic and commanding Mike Powers.

Jo remembered how that felt.
Felt.
Past tense. Standing here now, she no longer had even an inkling of those old feelings. “If you really want to make amends with me, you can start by putting your intentions in something more permanent than icing.”

“Jo, I don't…I hope you don't think…There's no need for that kind of…” He made a series of indefinite gestures to accompany his incomplete thoughts. Then he paused, plastered his practically patented Mike Powers supersalesman grin on his face and cocked his head.

Jo did not budge.

Still smiling, he called out to the girls without taking his eyes off Jo. “Have them put the company logo on that cake, okay?”

“Instead of Welcome Home, Jo?”

“
With
Welcome Home, Jo.” His gaze never left Jo's face but some of the falseness fell away from his expression as he said, “Might as well have something we can write off as a business expense. If I like the way this looks, I can use one like it at my next open house. Just some handy knife work and Welcome Home, Jo becomes just plain Welcome Home.”

That was more like the Mike she knew. “I'm not coming home, Mike. Atlanta is no longer my home. I just came back to deal with some unfinished business here.”

“Oh?”

“So this whole cake idea—”

“I like that. A cake that says Welcome Home at every open house.” Mike snapped his fingers at the employee nearest to the door and shouted, “Go after them! Don't have Jo put on the cake. Have the logo the full size of the cake but keep Welcome Home in swirled script.”

“Mike, this isn't necessary.”

“No, but it's a nice touch for an open house, don't you think? Especially a big one like we have coming up Sunday afternoon.” He motioned toward her, then pointed to himself, then her again.

“We? I've been out of state for the past two…” She jerked her head up. “What house are you showing Sunday afternoon?”

“Oh, I'm not showing a house.
You
are.”

“You can't have scheduled me to show a house this Sunday. Until I called an hour ago and said I was coming in, you thought I was in Florida!”

“Actually I had planned to let the Brittneys take it, but now that you're back, I think you should do the honors, don't you?”

“Honors?” Jo could hardly think of a word less suited to this situation. “There is nothing honorable about all this, Mike. I come back to town to try to get my life in order and minutes after I walk through the door you expect me to start working for you again?”

He tipped his hand to acknowledge her skepticism. “You're not working
just
for me. You stand to benefit from this open house, too, in theory. Not that anyone even comes by for a lookie-loo on that place anymore…”

“What place, Mike? Which house are you talking about?”

“Ours, of course.”

“Ours?”

“Yeah, you know, the one we bought as partners?”

“I know which house you're talking about.” She should—it had practically brought her to the brink of bankruptcy and now it threatened the future she was trying to forge in Santa Sofia. “It's the partnership angle I'm a little hazy on.”

“That was always
our
deal, right from the git-go.”

“Our deal done on
my
money,” she reminded him, giving him her most withering glare.

“Like I said, partners.” He gave her a pat and turned away. “Let me know when the cake gets here.”

“Mike!” Jo had a very bad feeling about all of this. She hadn't even been by the house yet. She had no idea what kind of shape it was in. “I don't want cake!”

“Why not?”

Because she wanted answers. “Well, for starters I thought you just said you wanted it for Sunday when I'm apparently showing my house.”

“
Our
house.”

Jo gritted her teeth. Her whole life people had looked past her and done end runs around her as though she did not even matter. She had let that dominate her decisions until she had backed herself into a corner. She had come back here to bust out of that corner and that old way of thinking. She might as well start now. “
My
house, Mike.”

“Jo, let's be reasonable about this.”

“Reasonable? You want reason when you're the one holding an open house for a property that isn't even yours to sell for potential buyers that don't even seem to exist?”

“Well, now, a little dose of reality here, Jo. You did go off and leave the place in a pretty rough state.”

Actually the place had left her in a pretty rough state.

“If you've really come here to see about unfinished business, maybe you should start by putting the finishing touches on that house.”

She started to protest then caught herself. All this time she had fretted and stewed about all the money she still owed, but she hadn't given much thought to the money she already had invested—or the money she might recoup if she actually could sell that place. Maybe Mike had done her a favor by allowing the Brittneys to practice holding open houses with her property. The marketing part was done, all she had to do was…everything else.

“Maybe I'd better get over there as soon as possible. I have a whole lot of work to do before Sunday afternoon.”

“That's the spirit.” He gave her a friendly punch in the arm. “When life gives you lemons, make hay while the sun shines.”

He got her to laugh, which she knew was his goal all along. Jo always went all gushy for a guy who made her laugh. The image of Travis flashed through her mind, all sun-kissed and…kissable.

She wondered what he was doing right now and if he missed her. Probably not. He was a busy man.

“Anyway, like you said, lot of work to do before Sunday.” Mike's voice intruded on her thoughts. “There's a term for it. C'mon, you know. Use the day? It's in the Bible.”

“Use the day? In the Bible?”

Mike had never shown any interest in her faith before and now he'd brought it up a couple of times. While she wanted to ask him about that, her mind had already rushed ahead trying to piece together what he meant by “use the day.” “I think the verse you're thinking of is—”

“Carpe diem.”

“Mike, that's not in the Bible.”

“Seize the day!” He appeared so proud of himself. Too proud to let a little thing like being wrong deter him.

“That's Latin.”

“Yeah, yeah. Like the Bible.”

“No. Latin like…” Jo jerked her head up. If she had been in a comic strip, a lightbulb would have appeared over her head. “Like something else you liked to quote whenever I questioned your methods of selling house. Caveat emptor.”

“Caveat? Naw.” He tugged on her elbow to direct her into his spacious office. “If I said that, I'm sure I meant it as a joke, Jo.”

“It's not an expression intended as a joke, Mike. It's intended as a warning.” She reluctantly went along with his gentle urging to move into a private space.

How could she have worked for this man? How could she have gone into deal after deal with him, buying and reselling houses? How could she have had a crush on a man like Mike, then think a man like Travis could love her?

He shut the office door. “It's intended as a reminder, Jo. That each man—or woman—is responsible for his or her own choices.”