Shoe Strings

 
    Chapter 1
    Every second of the last ten years disappeared when Angelita
Barros drove up to her boutique and saw her father fingering the shoes she’d
created, the same shoes that were making waves in the industry where names like
Manolo Blahnik and Jimmy Choo were synonymous with style and fashion. One look
was all it took and she knew everything she’d built since the day he’d thrown
her out of the house--her business, her success, her sanity--meant
nothing.   How dare he, after
everything he’d done, after everything he hadn’t done, come trespass on the
life she’d built despite him?
    There was gray in his hair now, just a dash around the
temples, and she saw a paunch around his beltline that hadn’t been there
before, but everything else was the same.   After all these years, she’d recognize Davi Barros anywhere.   But what was he doing inside her
store?   Her shoes were fun, frilly,
and fabulous, the tag line Atlanta Wears magazine
intended to use in their upcoming spread.   From flip-flops to low-heeled sandals to drop dead gorgeous three-inch
heels, Angelita Feet was becoming the brand everybody wanted and the brand she
wanted everyone to know about.   Everyone but him.  
    Lita watched him smile at Sophie, her business partner and
best friend, the only one who knew the sordid details of her past.   To Sophie, Davi was no more than a
stranger, a customer who deserved the best.   If only Lita could warn her, tell her to
throw him out, tell her not to reveal a single detail of her life to the man
responsible for nearly crushing it.   But she couldn’t risk exposing herself, so she peeled out of the parking
lot and headed north, instead of south toward the airport and her planned
vacation to Florida.   Sophie
wouldn’t tell her father anything, even if she didn’t know who he was.   She’d never give a stranger, or the
father she knew Lita hated, any personal information.   But if he’d shown up at her shop after
ten years of no contact, her father was up to something.   Damn.   Her beach vacation, in the span of
seconds, had become a thing of the past.   But where should she go?
    Just drive, she told herself as she pulled onto I-85 and
kept on going, past Atlanta’s affluent Buckhead community, beyond the edges of
its perimeter highway and out beyond the teeming suburbs.   She drove and drove until her need for a
clear-cut plan forced her off the interstate.   What now?   
    She pulled into a gas station and decided a clear plan
called for a clear head and that meant caffeine.   She purchased a large coffee and, back
inside her car, pulled up a map of the southeast on her phone.   Where could she hide for awhile until
she figured out what to do?   A
Google search for mountain cabins in the Southeast brought her to a Web page
advertising two cabins for rent by the week or month in western North
Carolina.   Owner Calvin Bloodworth
answered on the second ring and the singsong melody of his voice sounded as
peaceful to Lita as his description of the brook that ran through the property
and the stunning bird’s-eye view the cabins offered.  
    Both cabins were available, as early March was before the
official summer crunch, but only one was ready for occupancy.   As the first caller of the season, Lita
could rent the smaller cabin for as long as she liked.   Since she’d chucked all common sense out
the window when she peeled out of her boutique parking lot, she agreed to a
two-week rental with an option for more.   What better place to hide and figure out what her father was up to than
a spot that promised the extremes of both quiet nature and adventure at a leisurely
pace?   Could it really only take
two-and-a-half hours to get a lifetime away?  
    It wouldn’t be such a big deal to change her plans and stay
away a week or so longer than she’d planned.   The photo shoot for Atlanta Wears had taken two days and nearly twenty hours
to complete.   Angelita Feet was on
the brink of expansion.   Where she’d
once thrown herself into work after losing the most important thing in her life,
now she needed to come up for air.   Her exhaustion, the looming decisions about her company, and her
inability to design over the last few months had prompted her getaway.   The reemergence of her estranged father
simply meant a spontaneous change in plans.
    She took the exit into the tiny riverfront town of Sequoyah
Falls and wound her way through the old-fashioned two-block