The Barefoot Believers by Annie Jones

investigation into the mystery house.”
    â€œOnly if you want to put this one on the market.” It was out before Jo had thought through the comment, but once it had slipped through her lips she determined to use it to her advantage. She narrowed her eyes on Kate’s face, watching for even the slightest positive reaction to the idea.
    â€œSell the cottage?” Kate raised her head and made a sweeping survey of the place. “Hmm.”
    And just that fast, she turned away, leaving Jo with no more insight into her sister’s thoughts than…well, than Jo ever had into her sister’s thoughts.
    Kate made her way out the door.
    Jo took care of business in the bathroom. Real business. Even as she saw to her own hygiene, she made mental measurements, eyeballing every inch for cracks, peeling paint, chipped tiles. She snapped on the faucets and the shower head, checking both the pressure and the water quality. All good.
    â€œUgh, but the colors,” she muttered under her breath as she made one last scan. “If I were going to do this right, I’d have to gut this place just to make it borderline presentable.”
    Just then she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror. “Talk about borderline presentable!”
    She tugged and pushed and fluffed and smooshed her hair, trying to even it out. She did not succeed.
    â€œPick me, pick me, pick me,” she muttered her would-be motto. “Yeah right.”
    Rumpled, slept-in clothes.
    Positively gruesome-looking ankle.
    Hair like a decades-old doll’s, ratty and mashed into a mess on one side.
    Pick her? For what?
    Nobody would want her. Not like this. No one had ever wanted her, really. All the old fears ricocheted around her thoughts. Heading here, being here where she felt she might find some answers and where she had known mostly happiness, they had not plagued her for a whole day. Now, standing here in a bathroom that might well keep her from making that quick sale she needed, and looking, well, the way she looked?
    â€œDon’t do this,” she told herself.
    At least she could take some solace in the fact that she didn’t know a soul in town and wasn’t going to run into anybody that she needed to impress.
    â€œHello?” A deep voice rang through the house from the back door.
    Masculine. Decidedly so. And…strangely familiar.
    Jo froze, her hands gripping the back of the chair until all the color drained from her fingers. “Who…Who is that?”
    â€œYou don’t know me, ma’am. My name is Travis Brandt. I’m the—”
    â€œTravis Brandt? The Travis Brandt?”
    â€œThe only Travis Brandt standing at your back door, yes.” He still sounded every ounce as dreamy as he had seemed on TV.
    â€œOf course I know who you are!” Travis Brandt. A bona fide blast from the past. A former college football hero turned pro, his name had been known throughout the South. With his great looks, powerful voice and a way of wrapping words in a Southern accent so rich it made your teeth ache, he’d gone into sportscasting, rising quickly through the larger markets on his way to taking a spot at whatever major network he chose.
    Only he didn’t chose. He’d just…dropped out of sight one day. People had speculated on the reasons for a time but then had forgotten about the man.
    He’d had it all and now…
    â€œYour sister said to call out first and make sure that you were decent.”
    She took a quick glance in the mirror again. Decent? That might be a bit too optimistic.
    Jo had to do something and quick. She needed to make a good impression on this man, or at least not scare him off.
    After all, Travis Brandt was just the kind of man she could sell a house to—fast. Or barring that, the kind of man who might know people who would want to invest in a business deal, giving her the funds to fix up the place for a slice of the profit when she flipped the