Tattered Innocence (21 page)

He took a seat across from her and folded
his hands. “We’ve worked well together. I’m not going to let one
kiss ruin that.”

She stared at the scar on his thumb, wanting
to trace the shiny pink skin with her finger and ask him how he got
it.

His breathing amplified in the cabin.
“Talk.”

“You’re still in love with Gabrielle.”

His eyes widened. “I’m not.”

“How do you know?”

“Because I—” Uncertainty flitted across his
face.

Rachel sipped from her cup. “I rest my
case…. Anyway, this is crazy—your talking procreation to keep me
crewing for you.”

“It was marriage.”

“Whatever. I’m not desperate. I’m only
twenty-four. A marriage based on a minor league attraction that
didn’t deliver—”

“Minor league?” The anger in his eyes bore
into her and pinned her to the bench. “You know what got to me
first? The freckles on your cheeks and across the bridge of your
nose.”

What did her freckles have to do with
anything?

“The day I dug sand out of your eye, I saw
those freckles I’d first noticed during your interview… and I
wanted to kiss you.”

The intensity she’d seen yesterday tumbled
with Jake’s anger. “But I felt like I was cheating on Gabs, even
thinking
about kissing someone else. Then, you fell asleep
in my arms. And it seemed… right.” He held his hands out and let
them drop helplessly on the table. “Very right.”

Her fingers stretched toward his, but her
palms stayed glued to the table.
I love you
vibrated in the
air trapped in her throat.

“That kiss was probably the best kiss of my
life. Incredible. I’m sorry it didn’t deliver for you.” His voice
was tight, controlling his anger, but she felt its sting.

Absolutely the best kiss of my life.
But she refused to be the girl Jake settled for because he couldn’t
have Gabrielle. “I have one word for you.” She breathed in the
steam from her tea and released it. “Rebound.”

Jake’s jaw dropped open. “That’s it? You
won’t even consider us? You couldn’t kiss me like that and not l…
have feelings for me.”

“It doesn’t matter what I feel. You need to
decide whether you’re over Gabrielle. Then, we’ll talk.” She slid
off the bench, needing to get out of the cabin before she hurled
herself at his chest. “I’ll see you Monday for the next sail.” She
jogged up the steps and slid the hatch open.

Rachel stuffed her belongings into two
duffle bags. She sat on the floor between them and sobbed silently
over her empty bin until she’d expelled enough pain to wash her
face and exit the boat.

Maybe moving out would help her make the
final break. She’d pack a bag for each of the next two weeks—then
it would all be over.

Working for Jake, waiting for him to
eventually get over Gabrielle, was too stupid, even for her. And
Gabrielle’s crumbs would never be enough.

On the pier, Jake took the duffels and
walked beside her, lips pinched into a tight line. If he noticed
she’d packed more than usual, he didn’t mention it.

He leaned his forearms on the open window of
her car, his hands dangling between her and the steering wheel. “I
don’t want you to quit. Think about it for another couple of
months.” His eyes, inches from hers, looked bleak now that his
anger had run out. “Give me your answer in January.”

She’d agree to anything to keep from
bursting into tears. And she probably owed him more than two weeks’
notice anyway. Besides, two months with Jake sounded a whole lot
better than two weeks. She nodded, not trusting herself to
speak.

He didn’t move.

Rachel memorized the tousled, yellow-white
hair, the eyes deepened with emotion to chocolate. She shifted into
reverse—forcing Jake to stand up.

Jake’s words tumbled through the window as
she pulled away from the curb. “You’re wrong. It’s not a
rebound.”

Jake peered at the green water through the
cracks in the finger pier as he shuffled. His gaze drifted to the
Queen’s
waterline. He stopped, his stomach sinking, and
shook his head.

“What’s wrong with you, boy?”

Jake startled at the sound of Leaf’s
voice.

Leaf stepped off the
Escape
beside
him. “You look like someone stepped on your last jelly bean.”

Even one of Gramps’ sayings couldn’t take
the edge off today. “That run to the hurricane hole must have pried
the buckling fiberglass loose from the hull. I’ve got to haul her
ASAP or the hull will rot.” He knelt to get a better look. “The
damn motor won’t start. And Rachel quit.”

“No way!” Leaf’s wrinkles rearranged
themselves into a mask of disbelief. “What happened?”

“Drama. I’ve got two months to talk her out
of it.” Jake stood. “Help me sail the
Queen
to the boatyard
this afternoon?”

“You got it.” Leaf shivered and pulled the
hood string tighter on his ratty sweatshirt. “There must be
something else I can do—Hey, I can get my hands on some Florida
grow—”

“I’m not smoking your weed.”

“You need to take your mind off your
troubles. And who said anything about it being mine?”

Jake crossed the gangplank onto the
Queen.
“Just come aboard at three. I can’t handle the boat
alone.” He descended into the aft cabin. Yanking Rachel’s bins
open, he stared at the painted boards of the hull and swore. He
felt as empty as the bins. He dropped the lids and they clattered
shut, rankling like Gabs’ rejection all over again.

He headed for his desk, through the door
into the engine room. A new engine could cost ten thousand dollars,
and God only knew how much to install—more than he had in the bank.
And that wasn’t even counting the hull work. He sank into his chair
and dropped his head into his hands.

What would Gramps do in this situation?

Pray.

Rachel said he was good at praying. The
proof would be in whether he got an answer.

Outside, the storm dwindled to spitting
gusts of rain against Rachel’s bedroom window. Inside, her heaving
sobs subsided to intermittent hiccoughs from her diaphragm.

She felt like Raggedy Ann ripped down the
middle. Half of her knew she’d done the right thing. The other half
wanted Jake on any terms. She burrowed deeper under the quilt and
inhaled the
Queen’s
musty, salty scent from her
sweatshirt.

She closed her eyes and tried to imagine
what she’d be doing now if she’d stayed in Jake’s arms after their
run to the hurricane hole. She’d shake a pan of popcorn on the
stove while Jake tinkered with the engine, kicked it, tinkered,
kicked, and cursed the day he bought the rust bucket.

Jake would get the engine to turn over or he
wouldn’t. They’d talk about how much money the business lost this
week. She’d brush a kiss across his lips and tell him everything
would work out. Surprise, then a smile would break out in his eyes,
white sun slicing through the clouds.

She flopped over, turning her back on the
fairy tale, and the bed creaked its complaint. If she’d stayed in
Jake’s arms, she might have had sex—because she was just like Mama.
But she’d refused to take that chance. She wasn’t getting crushed
under a three-hundred-pound anvil of remorse. Not again. Never
again. She sat up and scooped the sea of wadded tissues into the
trash can.

The text message alert chimed from her
phone. Jake’s name shone in the window. Her heart raced as she
flipped open her phone.

Queen in dry dock, hull issues. No cruising
4 at least a week. Will let u know. Queen w/o water & u. Just
wrong.

Jake watched Keenan jump off the five-gallon
resin can, hoist his sander onto a shoulder, and saunter toward
him. He hadn’t seen Keenan since the teen boys’ cruise, but hiring
him turned out to be one of Jake’s smarter business decisions. The
kid grew on him. He was beginning to see through Keenan’s tough
exterior.

“Hey, man, dude, thanks for the job. I’m,
like, learning a skill.”

Jake smiled, remembering. “My old man taught
me how to patch a hull the winter I turned seven. We refinished my
Gramps’ eight-foot pram as a surprise. Gramps taught me how to sail
that boat.”

Keenan scratched his chin. “I guess you
could say my dad taught me to sail. He wrote a check for me to
cruise on the
Queen
.” Keenan switched on his sander and
pressed it to a spot of buckling fiberglass several feet from Jake.
“Never met him,” he said over the drone of the machines.

“His loss. Every kid deserves a dad.” Jake
jammed his sander against the hull, pissed at Keenan’s faceless
father.

A slide show of remodeling projects he’d
helped Gramps with clicked through his head—skills that came in
handy refitting the
Queen
. But even Gramps didn’t fill the
hole Dad left. Jake strained to remember his father. Dad’s chain
smoking and cryptic comments surfaced first. Then, a wisp of a
memory floated to the present, Dad pacing the floor with a
screaming baby in his arms. Pink. It must have been Nikki.

Maybe Jake would have been a teen like
Keenan—smoking weed and headed nowhere fast—if he hadn’t caught
from Dad and Gramps that a man sucks it up and does the right
thing. Maybe he could give Keenan a little of what Gramps gave him.
And Rachel could keep on pointing Keenan in the right direction
with her own brand of smart-mouthed encouragement.

He needed to tell Rachel they made a good
team. His thumb had hovered over her speed-dial number at least
once a day. He needed to tell her the boatyard hauled the
Queen
and let him do the repair work himself for sixty-eight
dollars a day dry dock rental. Replacing the engine injectors—that
dribbled rather than sprayed fuel into the cylinders—would come in
under a thousand dollars, that God answered his prayer. He had a
dozen other things to say to her, but he had to talk to Gabs
first.

Rachel gave the porch swing a push, jerking
it back into motion. “And Jake brought up marriage.”

Cat jammed both feet to the porch floor and
stopped the swing. “You’re kidding me!”

“Nothing to get excited about. It’s not
going to happen. After having a front row seat to Jake and his ex’s
goodbye, I can’t imagine Jake moving on—at least, not anytime soon.
Watch TV. Look at couples we went to school with. The relationship
after a long one is always a short dead-end.”

Cat huffed. “You love the guy. Let it
happen.”

“Daddy always brags how he snagged Mama on
the rebound. He thought he married up. You know, married a woman
prettier than he rated.”

“Your point is?”

“Has my mom ever really loved my dad? Or did
she marry on the rebound and regret it all these years?”

“Where do you get this stuff? I look at my
mom and think, eew, how did she ever kiss my dad with all his nose
hair, much less produce me?” Cat shook her head. Her hair flung out
like ropes and settled back into straight lines.

“Remember my catching Mama holding hands
with that creep with the black Corvette?”

Rachel pinched the bridge of her nose. “I
got Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from seeing—”

“More like Post
Dramatic
Stress
Disorder.”

“Just because you graduated from nursing
school doesn’t mean you know everything. I started having those
nightmares after Hall’s birth. I was only five and a half, and I’d
seen all that blood. I woke up lots of nights screaming that Mama
died. I used to give her my Flintstone vitamins. Even now, I still
make the appointments for her annual physicals.”

She shifted to face Cat. “After Fat Neck—and
Mom’s going on an eleven day ‘vacation’—the dreams changed to Mom’s
running away in his black ‘Vette.”

Cat squeezed Rachel’s arm. “That was a long
time ago, and your folks stayed together.”

“Mama could still be in love with her high
school boyfriend. She had an affair with him.”

“Ask your mom about it and stop tormenting
yourself.”

“Would you want to discover your parents’
marriage was a lie?”

Cat cupped Rachel’s face in her hands.
“Everybody makes mistakes. You’ve always been way too hard on
yourself. You’re beautiful, intelligent. Why is it so difficult to
believe a guy could love you?” Cat’s hands dropped to her lap,
leaving a residue of hope on her cheeks.

Rachel shook it off. She hadn’t heard from
Jake since he’d texted over a week ago.

Rain forced them to knock off early, and
Jake sent Keenan home for the night.

Jake fired up the oven to warm the
cabin.

He slouched back into the dining nook.
Hopefully, the plastic tarp he’d duct-taped over the patches would
keep them dry.

The galley light cast a glow across the
table. Rain sheeted against the decks. The
Queen
sat
unnaturally still, straight-jacketed into place by the jack
stands.

He pushed away the remains of a pan of mac
and cheese, and scrolled down his phone contact list. Was the fact
he hadn’t deleted Gabs’ number proof he still loved her? If he had
any loyalty, he
would
love Gabs now. He’d thought he would
love her for the rest of his life, but six months out, he’d changed
girls with the ease of a chameleon changing colors.

For weeks after Gabs dumped him he’d
subsisted on Honey Nut Cheerios, went to Winn Dixie when he ran out
of cereal or milk—the way he should have grieved for Gramps. Rachel
thought some coal of love for Gabs remained to fan back to life.
Somehow, the thought failed to generate enthusiasm.

He pressed
send
before he could talk
himself out of it.

One ring and Gabs’ voice said, “Jake,” in
his ear, lancing open the memory of her face, scent, the soft feel
of her in his arms.