Tattered Innocence (30 page)

It would be so easy to step into his arms
and cry it out. But that privilege was one in a thousand she’d just
turned down.

Jake kicked the leaves as he hiked beside
Rachel. Every so often, he watched her unsheathe a hand from her
mitten and palm the tears from her cheeks.

She stumbled for what seemed like the tenth
time since they’d started down the rocky slope.

He caught her arm. “I dragged you out here.
You’re tired. Let me give you a hand.”

She stared at him while a bird who had
forgotten to fly south chirped. She opened her hand, and he grabbed
hold.

She tripped and clenched his fingers, her
need oozing primal salve onto his beat-up ego. It wasn’t like
Rachel to show weakness. Maybe her emotions were affecting her
body, but at least she needed him on one level.

Her chin lifted toward the sweep of the
trail out of the canyon. She groaned, broke free, heading for a
limestone slab.

“No resting.” He caught her bicep and turned
her toward the trail. “I’ll never get you moving again.” A hand at
the small of her back, he propelled her along the path as they
plodded upward. “Concentrate on lunch. The parking lot is at the
top of this hill.”

“A happy thought.”

The only one.

Why had he ever thought marrying a woman
with status would make a difference in his life? What he needed,
couldn’t live without, was the woman he loved. He couldn’t picture
a future without Rachel working by his side, spurring him to become
the best version of himself.

He glanced at her. Tears glistened in her
eyes, deepening the brown. Delicate freckles dusted the bridge of
her nose and the tops of her cheeks. Dark curls spilled around a
pink headband. She was easily the most beautiful woman he’d ever
kissed.

The thrust of Rachel’s
no
nicked him
again, piercing deeper this time. Third strike. He squared his
shoulders. But the game wasn’t over yet.

Rachel stood in front of security at the
Indianapolis Airport shifting from one foot to the other while
Nikki hugged Jake good-bye. “Thanks for everything,” she said to
the family. She injected energy she didn’t feel into the words. “I
had a great time.” At least the words were true. It wasn’t
anybody’s fault but her own that she’d rejected Jake’s real
proposal.

Nikki tugged Jake down and kissed his head,
then reached for Rachel and pulled her into a hug. “I hope I get to
keep you for a sister.”

Rachel shot Jake a helpless look over
Nikki’s shoulder.

His sister stood on tip-toe and kissed
Rachel’s temple.

Rachel hugged her a second time. Who could
not fall in love with Nikki? “Why do you guys go around kissing
each other’s heads all the time?”

Nikki laughed, the sound of air wafting
through a wind chime. “It’s our family secret code for
I love
you.”

Rachel’s stomach went queasy, and her eyes
flicked to Jake’s.
You love me? You’ve been telling me you loved
me all this time?

Jake’s gaze bore into her, his eyes
narrowing in challenge.

Oh.

Rachel stared through the windshield of her
empty car at a swaying palm in the marina parking lot. The bile of
telling Jake she was quitting rose in her throat. She swallowed.
Just because Jake believed he loved her didn’t mean he wasn’t
rebounding. An educated guess said Jake couldn’t say the words
because he was still attached to Gabrielle.

When she’d pelted Daddy with questions after
she got home from the airport last night, he’d said, “Ask your
mother. It’s all up to her.”

Rachel had been relieved to find Mama still
camped out in the storage room until she relayed Dad’s comment.

“Your father said that? Fine. Just fine.
We’ll get divorced, then.” Mama had stormed out the door, slamming
it so hard, the glassware rattled in the boxes stacked in the
corner.

Rachel took a shuddering breath and stepped
out of the car onto the asphalt of the marina parking space.

Squaring her chin, she pushed open the pier
gate. Her tennis shoes squeaked a rhythm across the boards as they
had a hundred times before. She clutched her keys in her sweatshirt
pocket against the familiar fear of dropping them through a crack
into the murky Intracoastal.

Jake sat back on his heels and squinted into
the sun at Rachel as she halted opposite him on the finger pier.
Aqua paint dripped from the brush in his hand. He’d painted the
deck-level stripe around the hull from the bow to the cockpit.

She met his eyes, gazed at the condos
dotting Bouchelle Island beyond his shoulder and back at him.
“Jake, I...” She mashed her folded arms into her waist. “I’m
quitting.”

The color drained from his face. He laid the
brush across the top of the paint can and stood, wiping aqua onto
the already splotched paint rag.

“What are you talking about?”

“You asked me to wait till January to quit.
It’s New Year’s Day.”

“Don’t do this. Please.”

“I have to.”

He fired the paint rag at the deck. “This
isn’t about the job. It’s about you and me. I have one question
that deserves an honest answer.”

She froze as still as the piling she stood
beside, her heart thumping in time with the water lapping against
the
Queen
.

“Do you love me?”

Rachel’s eyes moved from the hair curling
under his baseball cap to the paint smeared T-shirt hanging loose
at his hips and back to his eyes. One word. One little word that
could change the course of her life.

“I heard you tell Bret you loved me months
ago.” He pushed his hands into the pockets of his jeans, not taking
his eyes from her. “Well?”

Heat rushed up her neck, flooding her face.
“You overheard me?”

“Is it true?”

A boat engine rumbled to life somewhere in
the marina. The steady churn of water droned in the distance.

“Do we have to talk about this now?”

“We should have talked about it weeks ago.
It’s a simple answer. Yes or no?”

January sun heated her scalp, shoulders, the
backs of her jean-covered legs.

Rachel opened her mouth.
I love you
trembled on her tongue.

Footsteps sounded on the dock. She
turned.

Gabrielle—with a blue blanket cradled in her
arms—slowed to a stop in front of the
Queen
. Her eyes,
narrowed with determination, clamped on Jake.

Jake’s mouth dropped open.

Oh, God.
Rachel gripped her
stomach.

Gabrielle smiled tentatively at Jake and
swished past Rachel on the narrow pier, as though she didn’t see
her. Rachel glimpsed a tiny tousle cap, pale eyelashes asleep on
pink cheeks.

Peering over the baby, Gabrielle’s eyes
flitted back and forth across the gangplank. She positioned the
heel of her pump on the ribbing and pressed the infant against her
chest as a speedboat barreled past the end of the dock. She sped
across the gangplank, releasing her breath when her feet landed on
the deck in front of Jake.

The speedboat’s wake smacked the
Queen’s
hull, and she rocked.

Gabrielle shoved the baby into Jake’s chest
and grabbed the coaming with one hand. “He’s yours.”

Rachel’s feet carried her away from the
Queen
, Jake holding his son, imprinting into her like the
day Hall was born.

Jake’s eyes didn’t move from the child. He’d
forgotten her presence and their interrupted conversation.

Better for her to slip away unnoticed. She
didn’t belong there in the middle of Jake and Gabrielle’s drama any
more than she had the day Gabrielle stormed off the
Queen
last Spring.

This time Rachel would leave.

She glanced back at Jake stepping over the
coaming, his back to her. She watched to see if he would turn away
from Gabrielle to look down the dock for her.

He didn’t.

Each step wrenched her apart, her body
straining toward land, her heart lashed to the
Queen
’s deck.
Jake.

Jake grabbed the bundled baby Gabs thrust at
him, shock coursing through his body at the contact. His baby, a
boy, she’d said. He numbly stepped over the coaming, his knees
bending with the sway of the deck.

Gabs sunk onto a cushion.

He took in her creamy skin, soft hair, cut
shorter than the last time he’d seen her, his brain misfiring like
the
Queen
’
s
faulty engine injectors.

A pale stain marred the lapel of her white
suit like a badge of motherhood. His gaze fell back to the boy
grunting and squirming in the crook of his arm.

“He’s yours, Jake. I’ve never slept with
anyone else.” She smoothed her slacks with her palms.

He perched on the coaming and ran a knuckle
across the baby’s cheek.

Body heat crept through the blanket. Blue
eyes peered out. The baby kicked the blanket open, and Jake stared
at the small arms and legs encased in terrycloth, perfectly formed
fingers. The tiny chest swelled and contracted as the baby
breathed.

His son. He felt as though he’d been shot
with a taser. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“It’s complicated.”

“I would have married you with or without
the baby.”

She shook her head. “I… I couldn’t…
then.”

Then? He was too rocked to figure out what
she meant. His gaze settled back on the baby. “What’s—my
son’s—name?”

“Nathan Millhouse Murray.”

“Millhouse after your father. Murray?”

“It seemed like the right thing to do. We
can change it—”

“No.”

The baby let out an angry-kitten cry and
Jake tensed. He jiggled the baby while Gabrielle dug in the diaper
bag, but Nathan only howled louder.

Gabs’ face went chalky, pinched. She tossed
the bag aside.

“Give him to me.” She took the baby, turned
her back on Jake, and faced him again, the baby’s head pressed to
her breast.

Though Gabs’ jacket and blouse hid her skin,
Jake heard the surreal sounds of his child’s hungry sucking. On the
rare occasion he’d stumbled into a breastfeeding relative, she’d
been draped in a blanket and he’d beat a hasty exit. Embarrassment,
shock, and something warm he didn’t want to examine coursed through
him. Why hadn’t she gone below to feed the baby?

He glanced up and saw Leaf watching with
rapt attention, a half-peeled orange in his hand.

Rachel and the conversation Gabs had
interrupted flopped back into his shell-shocked mind. He scanned
the pier where she’d been standing. Gone. He felt like half of him
had been lopped off.

If Rachel had any second thoughts about
turning down his proposal or quitting, Gabs’ appearance had killed
them. If Rachel loved him, she was melting down right now. If she
didn’t, she was relieved to be done with him. Either way, he
couldn’t do anything about Rachel until he worked things out with
Gabs.

Jake turned back to Gabs. Dark half-moons
hammocked her eyes, and her hair had deflated.

“When did you get in?”

“I came straight from the airport.”

She disconnected the baby, and his gaze flew
to the Passtime Princess, tied up behind the Dolphin View
Restaurant. When he dared a glance, she had covered herself, the
baby balanced on her shoulder as she rubbed his back.

The kid let out a belch any guy would be
proud of, and Gabs shifted him into the bend of her opposite
arm.

Jake popped up. “Have you got luggage?”

“Oh, I forgot. I left it in the dock cart
just inside the gate.” Her hand fiddled with a catch on her bra
through the material of her blouse.

Feeling like a perv, wanting a glimpse and
not wanting one, he stepped over the coaming. Skin baked across the
top of the open paint can on deck. He strode past the can, tallying
the loss of a gallon of marine paint, and double-timed off the
finger pier to the dock.

Three monster suitcases and some kind of
portable crib were crammed into the dock cart. How long was she
planning on staying? He searched the parking lot for Rachel’s car,
a fish knife clawing into his gut, but it wasn’t there. The sooner
he and Gabs hashed things out, the sooner he could track Rachel
down.

He wasted enough time to make sure Gabs had
finished feeding… his son. Even though he’d held Nathan, the baby
seemed like a Star Trek hologram. Not real.

He glanced at Gabs before he bent to hammer
the lid onto the paint can with the back end of a screwdriver. Her
blouse buttoned and tucked into her slacks, she leaned against the
coaming with her eyes closed. The baby slept in her arms.

“Where are you staying?”

Her eyes cracked open. “Here?”

“Fine. I don’t have a booking till next
week. When are you going back to Arizona?”

“I bought a one-way.” She shrugged. “My
mother and I get along better when there’s plenty of space between
us.”

You’re staying?
“What are we going to
do? You’ve obviously had more time to think about this.”

“It’s best for Nathan to grow up with both
his parents.”

Jake recognized the firm set of her lips
that he’d forgotten, the look that said whatever her plan was,
she’d dig in and not budge. “Of course, he needs both his
parents.”

Gabs’ eyes nailed him to the cabin. “Marry
me.”

Rachel stared at the magenta dregs of the
day dusting the ocean. The roar of the waves chanted that Jake
would never be hers. A proposal wasn’t something that came with a
rain check in case you changed your mind. The finality of never
seeing him again, never touching him clamped down on her chest
until only shallow breaths wheezed in and out.

Jake had what she wanted most in the world—a
baby. And he had what he’d wanted—Gabrielle. God’s payback for the
Bret debacle turned out to be even more excruciating than she
expected. Every centimeter of her body ached with it.