The Barefoot Believers by Annie Jones

Author:Annie Jones
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Steeple Hill
Published: 2008-09-19T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

“That felt like the longest day of my life.” Jo slumped into a wooden kitchen chair with leatherette padding on the back and seat.

Travis stacked the leftovers from their meal in the refrigerator, moving the newly stocked milk, eggs, lunch meat, fruit and vegetables around to accommodate the large white to-go box from the Bait Shack Seafood Buffet.

Jo let out a sigh that was more like a moan, or a moan that was almost a sigh. Anyway, she made a sound that she thought summed up her weariness and frustration then went to work trying to elevate her throbbing ankle.

Before she could maneuver her leg more than a foot off the kitchen floor, Travis had slid his hand under her knee, gently bending and raising her leg as he scooted the other chair up to provide a resting place for her foot.

“Thanks.” She nodded.

He nodded right back, saying nothing as he let his hand linger, lending support a moment longer than the situation really warranted.

“I’m okay,” she said, finally able to straighten her leg, in a crooked, tense, ready-to-yank-it-out-of-harm’s-way sort of way.

He stepped back.

She missed the warmth of his touch immediately. So she asked a totally pointless question, hoping to keep him from making some excuse and heading out the door. “Coffee?”

“Don’t mind if I do. I didn’t get any work done today for the chapel. I’ll be up late playing catch-up.”

Jo should have felt bad about that but she didn’t. Whatever he had done, he had done because he wanted to. He was a grown man, after all.

After all, before all, and all in all!

A real live, grown-up, wonderful man, who was, at this moment, making coffee in the kitchen of the house she had heretofore only associated with childhood and childlike hopes, dreams and memories.

There had never been a man in this kitchen that she knew of. Oh, wait, Vince Merchant.

Jo glanced toward the front room where Kate had sacked out on the couch already. Poor Vince. They had barely gotten back from the buffet, after a side trip to the grocery, and eaten their considerably cooled-off meal when Kate couldn’t endure it any longer. She’d had to have one of her pills.

Kate had fought off the pain as long as she could, but with her tummy full for the first time today, the doctor in her had taken over and she’d taken her meds. And conked out within a half hour. Not that she’d made a lot of sense during the last fifteen minutes of that half hour. So that had given her less than fifteen minutes to talk to Vince after more than fifteen years apart.

Kate was going to kick herself in the morning.

A fate that Jo determined would not befall her. Travis was here. They were alone at last. She was going to make the most of it. By pumping him for information, of course.

She put one elbow on the table and watched Travis move about the kitchen gathering the goods he had just helped stash away.

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