Tattered Innocence (2 page)

The aroma made her mouth water.

Jake bit into a piece of fish and cast his
eyes toward the awning shading them. A moan of pleasure escaped as
he chewed.

She twisted curls up off her neck to let the
breeze off the Intracoastal dry the sweat as she popped a scallop
into her mouth. She sat back to savor the Dolphin’s magic and
Jake’s improved mood.

Jake sprinkled the basket, and salt danced
on the grease paper. “Why do you want to crew on
The Smyrna
Queen
?”

Rachel gazed at tiny whitecaps the wind
kicked up on the water. “I want to taste the salt spray on a long
tack. I want to live the ocean’s moods—summer squalls, flat as
glass without a breath of wind, even the big blows. I want water
between me and—New Smyrna Beach.” She wished she could bite back
the words. Jake didn’t need to know she was running.

Jake cocked a brow.

Don’t ask.

He shrugged and leaned his elbows on the
rough wood of the table. “
The Smyrna Queen
is a
sixty-eight-foot ketch. She was built thirty-one years ago,
according to her plumbing fittings.”

Rachel stared at the pale hair curling on
Jake’s forearms, willing him not to notice how desperate she was.
“How big is your crew?”

Jake flattened his lips. “Two. Captain,
first mate.”

“Two people can sail a sixty-eight-foot
boat?”

“I billed the cruises as ‘hands-on,’ so
we’ll get help from the guests. Besides, I rigged her to be sailed
by two people when necessary.” Jake wiped his mouth and tossed his
napkin onto the table. “The
Queen’s
booked through the end
of the year, mostly five-day vacation cruises starting two weeks
from today.”

“You filled your cruises in this sleepy
little town? Amazing.”

“I majored in marketing.”

“I majored in boredom.” The defense
mechanism to hide her dyslexia and lack of college kicked in before
she realized she’d spoken, and she cringed.

Jake’s fingers drummed again on the planks
of the table. “Does crewing bore you?”

“I haven’t been this wowed since an
accordion player marched up the center aisle at church.” Had she
come down with Tourette’s? If she didn’t put a lid on her sarcasm,
she’d sabotage the interview.

Jake’s eyes iced over. “Another church
girl.”

She lifted one shoulder. Her stomach
quivered with panic. After all her lip, would she lose the job
because she’d grown up in church? That was almost laughable. If
anyone was a poster-girl for bad choices, she was.

Jake stared at her as if she were a rotting
fantailed mullet.

She squirmed on her bench, feeling like he
could see inside her. See that she’d let her innocence go too
easily. That she’d never recover the five-and-a-half-year-old who
pressed her gooey, newborn brother in chubby arms against her
Cinderella T-shirt.

He blew out a breath. “Fifteen wannabes
bailed over the phone when they heard cooking was part of the job.
What about you?”

“I have a shoe box full of yellow ribbons
from 4-H cooking competitions.”

“Yellow?”

Take it or leave it.
She was trying
to shove her way out of something she shouldn’t have flirted with
in the first place. But if Jake wouldn’t be shoved….

He shifted on his bench. His eyes darted
around the deck and the tiki bar. The door banged behind a man with
a white ponytail and an earring hooked through the brown leather of
his ear.

“All the bunks are rented out except for my
cabin.”

Rachel’s gaze snapped to Jake’s. “So, if I
want this job—” Across the deck two teens she recognized from the
high school plunked down. Rachel lowered her voice to a whisper. “I
have to sleep with you? I thought I’d heard all the lines from
B―”

“I’m talking about a job—nothing more.” His
eyes darkened to granite. His look said she’d sprouted cystic acne
and two hundred pounds. “You’d have to share a small cabin with me,
but you would have your own sleeping area and as much privacy as
possible. Do you want the job or not?”

Well, okay, then, as long as we
understand each other
. But he’d made her mad. “I told you on
the phone I wanted the job.” She forced the hard edge out of her
voice. “I haven’t changed my mind.”

He let out his breath. “If I hire you,
you’ll need to plan the week’s menu, grocery shop―”

“I think I know all the steps in cooking.”
What was with her passive-aggressive mouth? This job would give her
a clean start. But part of her clawed for Bret.

He eyed her. “I’ll let you know about the
job.” He stood, tossed bills on the table for the tip, and walked
away.

She watched his back lumber around the
corner of the building, a wrestler leaving the mat. All the air
released from her lungs. Who had pinned whom?

Rigging thrummed against each mast in the
steady wind. Rachel glanced over her shoulder and down the pier.
Did the sun catch on the bumper of a moving car? Her hand went to
the silver heart on a chain around her neck. She shaded her eyes
and squinted through the bobbing boats out to the blacktop.

The chain dug into the flesh on the back of
her neck.

No. Bret probably didn’t even know she’d
quit at the high school.Why would he come after her? She swallowed
the disappointment stuck in her throat and continued walking out
the graying boards of the dock.

Beyond, clouds raced across the
Intracoastal.

She scanned the boats lining the pier for
the
Smyrna Queen
. There. Her eyes stopped at bold black
letters on a freshly painted aqua hull four slips ahead. She took a
step closer. Then two. Was she really going to do this? Her
duffel’s cord knifed into her shoulder, and she shifted the bag. If
only it were as easy to dislodge the still-raw sin inside her.

Her gaze flicked up the mismatched aluminum
and wood masts and down over the
Smyrna Queen’s
wide middle
and boxy cabins to the chipping rust-red paint beneath her
waterline—a biker-chick dressed for the prom. The merest hint of
comfort fluttered under her ribs. In some weird way, the boat’s
less than pristine condition reminded her of herself.

Rachel squared her shoulders and stepped
aboard, half expecting the
Queen
to belch motor oil and
hemp. But there was only the sway of the deck under her feet—and a
cradling of sorts, as though the
Queen
, too, recognized
their kinship.

Voices drifted from beneath the cockpit tarp
in the center of the boat. Rachel stopped beside the aft cabin, not
wanting to interrupt. Jake leaned against the main cabin ten feet
from her. His corkscrew blond curls didn’t fit his brooding
expression, the same one he’d worn for her interview. A faded
O’Neill T-shirt with a hole ripped in one sleeve hugged him as if
he’d been wearing it since his teens. It wasn’t a bad look, but she
couldn’t drum up any appreciation for a guy who’d been rude every
time she’d spoken to him.

A vein pulsed in Jake’s neck as he spoke in
low tones to a young woman whose henna hair Clairol would pay
thousands to reproduce. “But I thought you showed up today, on what
was supposed to be our wedding day, because you reconsidered.”

Thin brows knitted in the woman’s
heart-shaped face. She wrung milky, manicured hands, then ran a
knuckle under the mascara of her lashes. Her pink earrings—the
exact shade of her silk blouse—bounced when she moved. She reminded
Rachel of a perfect porcelain doll swathed in layers of pink
petticoats.

Rachel shifted her weight from one foot to
the other. Should she clear her throat to let them know she’d come
aboard? Across the finger pier, a Willie Nelson lookalike stood in
his companionway, shoving an inner tube into a bike tire.

Jake’s gaze bore into the woman. He ran the
back of his hand across her cheek. “I love you, Gabrielle.”

The anguish in Jake’s voice yanked Rachel
out of her pain and into his in the space of a breath. She edged
toward the stern, wanting to be anywhere but listening to this
conversation. She stood inches from the aft cabin hatch, but if she
slid it open, she’d call attention to herself.

Part of her brain registered Gabrielle’s
silence. If Gabrielle loved Jake, she’d say it now. The seconds
ticked by. Rachel stared at the South of the Mouth Café boat,
anchored at marker thirty-five across the Intracoastal, then bent
over her duffle bag and stuck one hand through the opening as if
digging for something vital. Jake had only hired her four days ago.
Would his drama jeopardize her job?

The corner of the greeting card she’d tucked
into her duffle at the last minute poked the tender skin on the
inside of her wrist. A teaspoon of relief eased through her. At
least she didn’t have to give up her memories.

She wouldn’t let Ms. Hot Rollers elbow her
out.
God, I need this job.
It wasn’t really a prayer, but
she knew, as surely as her name was Rachel Luann Martin, God wanted
her far away from New Smyrna Beach this summer and far away from
the high school in the fall.

“Tell me you’ll think about getting back
together.”

Rachel cringed at the desperation in Jake’s
voice.

“I—I can’t.” Gabrielle’s words sounded
brittle like the thin edge of an icemaker cube. She gazed toward
the squatty, stone Washington Street Bridge. “I’ve dreamed of
becoming a teacher since I was a little girl. When I was a child,
Sister Sheila let me make Popsicle houses on the corner of her desk
during lunch. She invited me and Paola to the convent for supper
and board games. She made up for Mother’s aloofness—”

“I thought your mother was just that way
with me.”

Gabrielle shook her head. “I’ve always
wanted to do that for other kids.” Her chin turned back toward
Jake. “I’m not ready to give up teaching.”

“That would be a challenge, but not an
insurmountable one.”

Gabrielle laid a hand on Jake’s arm. “I’ve
always been afraid I’d turn out cold like Mother. Maybe I have. But
I can’t marry you. I don’t feel like you do. I’m sorry, Jake. More
sorry than you can imagine.” Her voice rose at the end with
hysteria. She gripped Jake by the arms and kissed him. Jake’s hands
came up to grab hold of her, but Gabrielle jerked away. “Goodbye,
Jake. I’m leaving for Arizona—home. Now.” The heels of her sandals
clicked across the deck and down the finger pier. She marched,
stiff shouldered, down the dock.

“Stow your gear in the aft cabin.” Jake’s
terse voice veered Rachel’s gaze to his.

He glared at her and mashed his ball cap
further down till it shielded his eyes from her. He moved through
the fore cabin companionway, a red bandana trailing from the pocket
of his faded jeans.

“So, I still have the job?”

“Congratulations.” Jake disappeared into the
main cabin. Sarcasm hung in the air like the sulfur smell of
mangrove.

Humid air puffed at her as a speedboat
barreled by. She did the tiniest two-step before the lump lodged
back in her throat. She heaved open the wooden hatch of the small
cabin at the stern of the boat. The smell of fresh paint hung in
the gloom, and she felt for a light switch. An energy-saver bulb
slowly warmed the cabin with light.

To port a full-sized bed tapered toward the
stern with the shape of the boat. She tugged open the bins under
the bed and found them full of neatly folded clothes, shoes, towels
and linens.

Under the starboard chart table that had
been converted into a bunk, she discovered an empty bin. She
up-ended her duffle. A privacy curtain had been strung between deck
and bunk.

She peeked into the shower and head on the
port side. Like Jake’s bins, everything looked shipshape. At least
the guy wasn’t a slob.

She popped open the closet opposite the
head. Suits. She slipped a finger under a lapel and read Hugo Boss
on the inside breast pocket. Why would a ship’s captain have a
closet full of Hugo Bosses?

She eyed the three-foot walkway separating
their bunks. Between Jake’s angst and her own, nothing would
threaten her black and blue virtue.

She found Jake in the dining nook with his
head in his hands.

“I’ve got the menu planned, and I’m going to
Winn Dixie. I need money.”

Jake didn’t move.

Okay, so he needed to chill. She didn’t
think her heart could take watching the guy full-on bawl.

Her gaze swung to the
Queen
’
s
U-shaped galley opposite the dining nook. Beside a porthole, wire
baskets of onions and apples swayed in sync with the gleaming
stainless gimbaled stove and the rock of the boat. Her eyes flitted
over the double sink corroding around the faucet, gold
refrigerator, and green dishwasher. She opened the cupboards and
took mental note of the supplies on hand.

She turned back to Jake. Beside him on the
table lay an envelope and a pink card with a flower on it. Jake’s
shoulders moved as he sighed, but he didn’t look up.

Rachel wandered toward the bow, glancing at
the bunks built into the hull—each sported privacy curtains like
the one around her bed. Benches lined the cabin below the bunks.
Beyond them, she found the head and shower on either side of the
cabin, followed by staterooms. She pushed open a door. A
double-wide bunk tucked under the deck, graced by white eyelet
shams and sunflowers splashed on forest green fabric. A breeze
wafted through the porthole. Nice.

She combed fingers through her mass of
wind-blown ringlets, an attempt to fit into the tidiness she saw
everywhere on this boat. The flutter she’d shoved down when she
first laid eyes on the
Smyrna Queen
wafted to the
surface.

She stopped at Jake’s elbow. “So, do you
need anything from the grocery?”

Bloodshot eyes looked up at her. “Beef
jerk-
y.”