Barefoot Brides Read Online Free Page A

holster to make sure everyone present knew he hadn’t arrived empty-handed. “We the first ones here for the Bible study or, uh, whatever?”
    â€œWe’re the only ones here.” Jo held out her hands to show she had come unarmed, as far as bringing her Bible or any study materials were concerned. The sandals she had removed when she decided to pass the time waiting for her sister by walking along the beach dangled from her fingers. “I had originally asked you to come over hoping you’d come help me convince Travis of the need for this kind of thing.”
    â€œ What kind of thing?” Moxie asked.
    â€œThat’s part of the work I need to do, to come up with a plan or a mission or…I don’t know.” Jo felt a little silly. No, she felt a lot silly. Travis was right, maybe she had come at this with good intentions but little else. “At least I have a name. I thought we’d call ourselves the Barefoot Believers.”
    â€œThe what?” Moxie lifted one foot and shook the sand from the sole of her flip-flop.
    â€œIt symbolizes humility and a sense of…equality. You know the kind of group where you don’t feel you have to have the right clothes…or the right shoes…or any shoes at all, to feel comfortable.”
    â€œComfortable doing what?”
    â€œI don’t know.” Jo slipped the straps of her sandals down to her wrist and used her free hand to sweep back the coarse blond curls from the back of her neck and sides of her face. “To be like Travis, for example.”
    â€œYou want to be like Travis or you want to be liked by Travis?” Moxie’s eyes, so familiar and yet so enigmatic, flashed in a teasing challenge.
    â€œNothing wrong with wanting to be like Travis.” Jo stood her ground. “He’s accomplished. He’s focused. He’s substantial.”
    â€œNot to mention gorgeous.” Moxie feigned a big ol’ goofy, doe-eyed sigh. “Except, of course, to me. He’s too…” She crinkled up her nose. “Too beachy for me.”
    â€œWhat’s that supposed to mean?” Jo snapped.
    â€œYou know, sun-kissed hair, cloudproof outlook.” Moxie waved her hands around as she spoke. “Too tan, too relaxed—”
    â€œSo you’d prefer someone pale and tense?” Jo blurted out in a tone that was neither sweet nor sisterly and entirely too defensive of a man who had yet to make his intentions toward her clear. “Is that what you see in Dr. Lionel Lloyd? You have a marked preference for pasty nervous types?”
    â€œTan or pale, that doesn’t matter.” Moxie took it all in stride. “I’ve had enough of that ‘when the going gets tough the tanned go fishing’ beach-attitude growing up with my dad, thank you very much.”
    â€œI thought the quote was ‘when the going gets tough the Weatherbys go fishing.’” Jo cocked her head.
    â€œThat’s exactly what I’m talking about,” Moxie agreed. “Travis Brandt is just a cuter, cooler, Christian-ier version of my dad.”
    Jo opened her mouth to protest, not because she knew it to be a misrepresentation but because she wanted it to be with all her heart—especially when a vision popped in her head of Travis with a gut, a hat and a parrot feather.
    Moxie forged on before Jo could get out a word. “Tense, I can do without, but I don’t know, more intense? I could give that a whirl, I suppose.”
    â€œIntense? Not a term I’d use for Lionel.” Jo frowned then whispered, “Fits Travis, though.”
    Accomplished. Focused. Substantial. Beachy but intense. Jo wanted to know what she had been thinking when she believed she could be more like him.
    That was a notion she had best give up—go back to her original thought. Sweetness. Sisterly-ness. Being who her mother wanted her to be. Right?
    She wished she could talk to either of her