If the Shoe Fits

by Sandra D. Bricker

  She especially enjoyed the exchanges between the pastor and his wife. Their mutual love and respect almost crackled in the air around them, and it trickled down to even the tiniest parts of the church.

  “Julianne?” Beth Rudd said as she walked up behind her at the bathroom sink after dinner wrapped up.

  Julianne tugged a paper towel from the dispenser and dried her hands with it as Beth said, “I was talking to Maureen. And, well … you really aren’t attracted to him in the least?”

  “Who?”

  “Will!”

  “Attracted to Will?” she clarified. “That would almost be like incest, Beth! Will is my best friend. You don’t cross over lines like that one.”

  “For goodness’ sake, why not?” she asked through the reflection in the mirror, fussing over her helmet of ebony hair. “I’d have given just about anything if Jimmy and I were friends from the start. It took us years, and no small amount of turmoil, to find that part of our marriage.”

  Julianne’s amused chuckle was cut short when the bathroom door slipped open and Linda Barnes poked her head inside. “Are you riding with us?” she asked Beth.

  “I’ll be just another minute,” Beth replied with a nod. Turning to Julianne, she said, “The reason I’m asking is … I don’t want to step on any toes. You know what I mean?”

  “Not entirely,” Julianne admitted with a smile, and she tapped the used towel down into the bin. “What are you getting at?”

  “I was thinking of setting up Will and my younger sister, Alison. You remember, you met her at the Christmas pageant?”

  Julianne thought back and shrugged. “I’m sorry. That was such a crazy night. I had twenty-seven crazy junior choir kids to look after.”

  “Oh, well, Alison has just broken up with her boyfriend of three years, and I know Will and Holly split last year. Anyway, she’s just not meeting any nice Christian men, and I was thinking … if you wouldn’t mind …”

  “Oh! Well, of course not!” she replied, stunned. “It’s not like that with Will. Really. I mean, fine. Go ahead.”

  “Really?”

  “Sure,” she said with a shrug. “Yes. I mean, if Will wants to.”

  “Oh, I think the two of them will be perfect for each other!”

  Julianne hated to admit to the little scratch of irritation she felt right in the hollow of her chest at the thought of Will being set up with someone. She wondered why, but recalled how long it had taken to get a handle on his devotion to Holly. Whatever the source of the irritation, it settled in as if it might plan on staying awhile.

  That Vandella’s had developed a following among the legal community over the years went a little sour for Julianne as she exited the ladies’ room just in time to find Lacey James standing with Will near the front door.

  “Ready to head out?” she asked Will as she reached them.

  “Oh, William, you don’t have to leave just yet, do you?” Lacey asked him as if Julianne hadn’t entered their airspace.

  “I do. I’m in court first thing.”

  “Oh, how disappointing.”

  “You take care, Lacey,” Will said kindly, and he turned to Julianne. “Ready?”

  “More than.”

  She had to run to catch up to him at the crosswalk.

  “What’s up with you? Did she get to you?”

  “Who?” he asked as the light signaled them to cross.

  “Lacey!”

  “Lacey? No,” he said, shaking his head. “She’s all right. She gets to you way more than she gets to me.”

  “Oh. Well, could you slow down? I can’t keep up with you!”

  He glanced down at her four-inch heels and grimaced. “Well, they’re not much for walking, are they?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Then don’t make me run, Will.”

  He paused and looked at her seriously before his face melted down to a smile that cut straight to her heart. “Sorry.”

  “You know what? Let’s head down to The Wall,” she suggested. “Can we?”

  Will didn’t respond with anything more than a shrug, but he changed course, up the street toward the river.

  One of her favorite places in the area, Julianne came to The Serpentine Wall as often as she possibly could. A huge construction of what looked like perfect concrete stairs leading straight down into the Ohio River, she and Will had been going there together for years. Whether for a quick lunch, or a jam-packed Fourth of July celebration for fireworks over the river, it was one of their most beloved spots. They’d been seated right there on the third stair from the top, in fact, when they planned the opening of the law partnership.

  A party seemed to be going on at one of several riverboats moored at The Wall, and lively Dixie music wafted gently up toward them from the river below.

  “You’re not yourself tonight,” Julianne commented once they’d settled into their regular spot. “Please tell me you’re not having second thoughts about going into business with me, Will. I want you to know—”

  “No,” he interrupted. “You know better than that.”

  “Well, I thought I did. But you’re behaving so strangely. Like someone kidnapped your dog.”

  “I don’t have a dog.”

  “Maybe that’s the problem. You want me to get you a dog, Will?”

  “You’re all the family pet I need,” he quipped.

  “Smarty pants.”

  After a moment, Julianne looked into Will’s glazed eyes. She saw something unusual there, something she didn’t think she’d ever seen before.

  “Talk to me. What is it?”

  “Ah, nothing. Too many taquitos,” he remarked with a lopsided smile.

  “Come on, Will. Don’t joke. If there’s something on your mind—”

  “You know what’s on my mind?” he interjected. “I’m exhausted. Let me enjoy a few minutes with my best girl, and then we’ll head out and I’ll get some sleep.”

  With both hands on her shoulders, Will guided her around until she faced the river. The water glistened like glass under a perfect, full silver moon, the kind of moon a girl made wishes on. The kind of moon that caught those wishes like stardust and held on to them until the time was right.

  “I wish I could sleep until noon tomorrow,” she said on a sigh.

  “Me, too.”

  “Hey, you were a killer in there today,” Benton Rhames declared as he hurried to board the elevator behind Will, slipping in just before the doors slid shut.

  “You had your chance to settle before you dragged your client into litigation, Bent. I gave you every opportunity.”

  “Blah, blah,” he replied as the steel doors yawned open. “I’ll see you on appeal.”

  “New day, same decision, my friend,” Will told him.

  “No mercy. I’ll remember.”

  On the walk over to the office, those words spun around inside Will’s mind several times.

  How could it be, he asked the Lord, that You could have created me to be such a formidable opponent in the courtroom and yet such a lame excuse for a hunter on the field of romance?

  “Talk to me,” Jules had said to him the night before down on The Wall, but he hadn’t even spent a moment trying to summon the words. Because those words were buried deep, covered over with layers upon layers of excuses and justifications and, truth be told, fear.

  He’d known her since they were kids, but it had taken him until freshman year of high school to work up the courage to ask her to LaRosa’s for pizza.

  She’d looked like an angel that night. Her honey blonde hair hung halfway to her waist back then, and she’d curled it up into wavy spirals of spun silk and golden threads of light. She’d been waiting outside her house when he’d walked across the lawn to pick her up, and the lamp on the porch backlit her as if she were posed for a portrait. She looked to Will like one perfect white candle standing on the steps of a cathedral, and he remembered losing the air from his lungs when he saw her there. He supposed he’d fallen in love with her
long before that moment, although he didn’t get around to admitting it to himself for a good many years. He’d never been quick on the draw when it came to love.

  Will let a chuckle escape from his throat as he crossed the lobby and pressed the button to summon the elevator to go up to their new offices on the seventh floor. Julianne had remained the pristine portrait of perfection hanging on the wall of his life, the bar against which all other women were measured.

  You couldn’t just yank a painting off the wall and take it for a spin, after all. Once he went that direction with Julianne, there would have been no turning back. Gambling with a friendship as important as theirs wasn’t an option, and so the dice were simply packaged away, the wheels of chance forever silenced. Friendship with Julianne: a sure thing. Love? A risk with too high a cost, if they lost. Holly had been the one and only woman who ever came close; but that ended in disaster, too.

  Will punched the panel before him once more, and this time the elevator doors glided shut.

  “Seven’s a good number in the Bible, isn’t it, Will?” Julianne had exclaimed when she’d originally found the office for rent on the seventh floor. “It’s a sign, Will! It has to be.”

  Julianne saw signs from God around every corner of the world, Will thought with a smile. Every song on the radio was a message just for her, every rainbow a handwritten note to her from Him, posted on the sky like one of those sticky notes framing the screen of her computer.

  If he were to read the map of their relationship in the Language of Julianne, Will believed he might certainly come away convicted of their ultimate destiny, the great State of Meant-to-Be, in the County of the Land of Soul Mates. All the signs were there, if one were the type to look for them.

  And Julianne had always been the type.

  So why had it never crossed her mind? She had prayed about everything from going to law school to teaching the kids at church how to sing when she clearly could not hold a tune herself. So why hadn’t He ministered to her or even whispered into her ear about Will?

  Or perhaps You have, Lord.

  Will’s heart thumped at the possibility as he recalled how drastically she had changed after those few dates they had in high school. Cold sweat beaded on his forehead and both palms. But … what if he weren’t the only one feeling it? What if, all these years later, Julianne had actually, on occasion …

  Don’t be ridiculous! She’s still searching.

  And just for an instant, the idea burned at his insides like a bad case of indigestion. Maybe she just needed to be shown the general direction in order for her to ponder the actual journey. He wouldn’t have to let on the intensity of his feelings, just the possibility of their focus.

  “Why don’t we go out on a date,” he might suggest to her casually. “No pressure, or expectations. Just a date, to see if there’s something here.”

  The appeal of the idea was alarmingly refreshing, like an ad he’d once seen for a chocolate and peppermint candy where the partaker was blown backward off the side of a cliff.

  Will wondered for a moment if he’d begun to mentally unwind. He hadn’t entirely decided yet when he opened the office door, greeted by a frantic Julianne excitedly hopping from one foot to the other, squealing incoherently.

  “I’m … so glad … you’re … back!” she cried.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, looking at Phoebe over Julianne’s shoulder.

  “He called!” Julianne sang. “He called!”

  “Who?”

  “Paul Weaver,” Phoebe stated, and Julianne backed up like a rush of wind had driven her.

  “That’s his name. Paul Weaver.”

  Will didn’t know what to say. He just looked at her expectantly, nodding tentatively, awaiting the rest of the story that might fasten it all together.

  “Paul Weaver,” she repeated insistently. “The angel.”

  The angel.

  “With the dog?”

  The dog.

  “The work boot? And the toolbox?”

  The—Oh … no.

  “He saw the ad!” she cried. “And he’s coming here at six o’clock today!”

  “Six o’clock,” Will repeated, and he glanced at his watch.

  In two hours.

  “Two hours,” she squealed. “Come on!”

  She tugged Will’s sleeve and started for the door.

  “Where?” he asked, confused.

  That’s right. We’ll just leave Phoebe to meet him. She can return his toolbox, fall madly in love, and ride off with him into the sunset. And—

  “I need new shoes!” she cried. “I can’t meet him in these shoes!”

  And with that, Julianne snatched Will’s briefcase from his hand and flung it at the sofa across from Phoebe’s desk.

  “We’ll be back in an hour,” she declared, and she yanked Will behind her as she headed toward the office door.

  “Oh, no, I won’t, Jules,” he said while pulling his arm from her grip. “You’re on your own. I draw the line at shoe shopping.”

  And in the radiant glow of yellowish light from the candelabras in the foyer, the knight bowed at the waist. “Pleased to make your acquaintance, fair maiden.” Her heartbeat thumped in her ears, and her breath caught in her throat as she forced out the words. “The pleasure is mine, my Prince.”

  “I’m here about my tools.”

  “Yes,” Julianne managed to croak. Her hand popped up and she pressed two fingers gently against the hollow of her throat. “I … uh … I have brothers so I know how expensive a toolbox like that can be. I’m so glad you saw the ad.”

  “Well, I appreciate it,” Paul Weaver told her, and when her gaze met his, Julianne felt the blood rush to her cheeks at the sight of those blue eyes of his. “I guess I should give you a reward or reimburse you for the ad or something like that. What do you think is fair?”

  She shook her thoughts away from his impressive chiseled jaw and the perfect curl of the wayward lock of sandy hair that brushed his forehead.

  A date or two, perhaps a diamond eventually …

  “No!” she exclaimed. “No, no. That’s not necessary. No.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure,” she said, motioning to the chair angled toward the corner of her desk. “Have a seat, will you?”

  “Oh, I can’t stay. I just—”

  “Please. Just for a minute.”

  He shrugged and folded into the chair. “I guess if you’re a lawyer, you don’t really need a reward from me, do you?” With a nod toward her computer monitor, he added, “That’s an interesting filing system you have there.”

  Julianne narrowed her eyes for a moment before glancing at the layers of sticky notes that had piled up on top of one another around the frame of her screen. Her lips curled into a broad smile. “Oh. Yeah, I like to make notes of reminder.”

  “It looks like you need a shovel to dig through them. I don’t think that would help me remember any one thing.”

  She grimaced before diverting the conversation. “Anyway, about your toolbox. I just did what anyone else would do in that situation. Tell me, how did it turn out for the dog you rescued that day?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know?”

  “Well, I mean, I dropped him off at the emergency vet clinic over on Taylor Mill, but what happened to him from there, I don’t know.”

  “Oh.”

  Julianne tried to imagine how he could have gone to the trouble of rescuing the dog and getting him to a clinic, but never followed up to—

  “I was headed out of town on a job that afternoon,” he said, and she sighed.

  “Oh, of course! That’s why you don’t know. You were called away, and you couldn’t—”

  “Well, I really do have to go,” he told her. “If I could just get my toolbox?”

  “Oh. Right.” Julianne stood up, and Paul followed suit. As she rounded the desk and stood in front of him, she realized for the first time that he towered a good
six or eight inches above her 5’6” frame. “You’re very … tall,” she observed, looking up into his steel-blue eyes.

  “Six-four,” he said with a nod. “My tools?”

  “Oh. They’re in the supply closet. I’ll just …” When she headed toward the door of her office and he didn’t follow, Julianne rolled her hand at him. “Come with me.”

  Paul trailed her out into reception where Phoebe straightened to full attention and Will stood curiously in the doorway to the conference room.

  “Everyone,” she said, tugging open the door to the supply closet. “I’d like you to meet Paul Weaver. He’s the angel of mercy I told you all about the other day. Paul, this is my business partner, Will Hanes. And our executive assistant, Phoebe Trent.”

  It took no longer than seven seconds for Julianne to retrieve the boot, but when she reemerged, Paul stood there fidgeting like a lone lobster in the tank at King Wok.

  “Ah, you found my boot, too!” he exclaimed, seemingly relieved to be thrust out of the spotlight. He took it from Julianne and tucked it under his muscular arm. “That’s great. I didn’t think there was any shot of getting this back.”

  “Well,” she groaned as she lugged the toolbox out of the closet and clanked it down at his feet, “I couldn’t leave it lying there in the street.”

  Paul picked up the forty-pound monstrosity as if it was the plastic Tonka version she’d gotten both of her nephews at Christmas, and he gave her a nod as he headed for the door. “Nice to meet you all,” he said. “And thanks again.”

  “Well … uh … Wait!” she managed, and Paul turned back and pressed the full weight of his spectacular eyes down on her meager 120-pound frame. “I … I’ll … walk you to the elevator … is … what I’ll do.”

  Julianne snatched the work boot away from him and clutched it with both arms.

  “You don’t have to,” he said, gazing at his lost-again boot.