Tattered Innocence (24 page)

The realization that Bret had planned to
abandon, not only two small kids, but a pregnant woman, snuffed out
any twinge of attraction Rachel might have felt at seeing him
again.

Jake’s fingers wove through hers.

They climbed the steps and settled onto the
top row of the bleachers in the half-empty gym.

Bret took a seat near the floor in front of
them with the baby on his lap, the toddler between him and his
wife.

“Want to move? Go home? We don’t have to
stay.”

She glanced at Jake. The bile of shame rose
in her throat. How could Jake stand her, someone who’d threatened a
marriage and the future of three children? Rachel tugged her hand
toward her lap, but Jake held on.

“Bret needs to know you’re off limits to
him.”

Her eyes dampened. A lump lodged in her
throat. The warmth of Jake’s hand wrapped around her heart,
cauterizing the guilt as she stared at the back of Bret’s
family.

“Bret dredge up old emotions?”

“Shame. Self-loathing.”

“I don’t see what you did that was so bad.
I’ve done the same and don’t feel bad about it.”

Her eyes swerved to his.

He shrugged. “You slept with the guy. I had
sex with Gabs. Gramps would have said that was wrong. But six weeks
from the wedding? Come on.”

“You didn’t steal someone’s heart from their
spouse and kids.”

“What? Bret was an innocent bystander?”

“It was half Bret’s fault, but I should
never have kissed him the first time.”

“My point is, any guy who’s willing to walk
away from his kids has got a lot more guilt on his shoulders than
you do.”

“But I’m ashamed.”

Jake searched her eyes. “I thought you said
God forgave you.”

“Yeah, but I feel lousy. Maybe it didn’t
take.”

He grabbed her chin between his thumb and
forefinger and turned her face toward him. “I don’t see you as
guilty.” His eyes lasered into the place where guilt lived. His
lips touched down on hers, gentle, purifying.

The pep band launched into the school fight
song as the boys jogged onto the court.

Jake dropped his hand from her face,
siphoning dry her guilt. She felt light. Clean. Her gaze darted to
the back of Bret’s head, but no guilt oozed back.

Jake jumped up and YMCA-waved till Keenan
saw them and waved back.

He sank thigh-to-thigh beside her on the
bleacher seat, even though no one sat within five feet of them. One
hand found hers, the other went to his mouth for a shrill
whistle.

Rachel squeezed his fingers.

Jake swiveled toward her.

“You really helped.” Even after Jake’s
little rebound ran its course, she’d get to keep this
after-the-rain-clean—a gift that bore God’s fingerprints.

A couple hours later, Jake pulled up to
Newport Sound Apartments and leaned across Rachel as Keenan
clambered out of the car. “Have you got time to help me pull the
Queen’s
fore john tomorrow afternoon?”

“Yeah.”

“Call you later, man.”

Jake sat up, inhaling Rachel’s scent as the
door shut. He slipped his arm around her before she could think
about scooting away, a high school move worthy of Keenan’s awe. He
squeezed her arm through the thick fabric of his letter jacket he’d
lent her when they stopped at Dairy Queen.

He heard Rachel’s sharp intake of breath and
pulled onto Tenth Street. “You’ve got a gift—how you encouraged
Keenan.”

“I was good cop to Bret’s bad cop with the
swim team.”

A welder’s torch of jealousy seared through
his gut.

“And still oblivious. You encouraged Keenan
to play ball, and tonight, to hang tough. You pushed me to talk
about getting past Gabs—which was a good thing for me
and
heiress Maddy. You suggested swim lessons to Quill.”

“What about your giving Keenan odd
jobs?”

Jake turned down Faulkner. “Quit deflecting.
I’m trying to tell you that you did a good job tonight.”

“We did a good job.”

Jake pulled the Explorer up in front of
Rachel’s house and killed the engine. “I’d like to keep it that
way.”

She scooted toward the door, easing her
shoulder from his grasp. “Thanks. I had fun tonight.” She reached
for the door handle.

“Stay there.” He jumped out of the car and
strode around to open her door. Rachel’s feet hit the ground inches
from where he stood with one hand on the door and one on the
car.

Streetlight glinted off her glossy lips, and
he leaned in, already tasting them in his mind. The alarm in her
eyes stopped him. “Man, Rachel you look like you’re going to freak
out—like after I kissed you on the
Queen
.

“That kiss was… crazy.”

Jake fought to keep a straight face, but a
grin broke through. “Crazy good.”

The wariness dimmed, but didn’t leave her
eyes.

He stepped back, swallowed his
disappointment, and dropped his hand from the door. “Geez, Rae, you
can relax. I’m not kissing you when you look at me as if I’m a
serial rapist.”

“You’re a lousy mind-reader. When you kissed
me in the gym, I felt… absolved.”

Soft lips pressed against his cheek. Then
she ducked under his arm.

The car door thunked shut under his hands.
He leaned against the car and watched her move up the walk.

Rachel turned toward him in the halo of the
porch light, buttoned into his letter jacket as if she belonged to
him. She smiled and lifted a hand.

“See you Monday.” Frustration roughened his
voice. The public kiss was fine, but hardly enough. It only made
him hungry for more.

“Coming about!” Rachel swung the
Queen’s
bow into the wind toward a vanilla moon.

Guests scrambled out of the way of the boom.
Jake yanked down the flapping mainsail hand-over-hand. Two retired
executives furled it into the sail cover. Jake jogged forward to
anchor.

Rachel could be doing fifteen different jobs
right now, but she banked the memory of the fluid way Jake moved
about the deck in the lunar glow. Who was this Jake who didn’t bark
orders? He’d thrown her off balance all week. Not that he’d been
anything but professional on the job—only a few public touches. But
he tuned in to her. Hovered.

The guests littered her with good-nights as
they filed through the companionway until only she and Jake
remained aboveboard.

Jake strode toward her, down the bouncing
deck with his loose-jointed sailor’s gait. He stopped where she
perched on the coaming, and pushed up the cuffs of his long-sleeved
T-shirt. “Come down to the office. I want to show you the
Queen’s
financial records.”

She followed him into the aft cabin. “It’s
your boat, your money—none of my business.”

“You did half the work.”

“Whatever.” She climbed into the dark cabin
and heard Jake shut the hatch behind them. As she groped for the
light switch, he ran into her. She felt his hand on her waist, his
knee bumped against the back of her leg, and his chest connected
with her back. A shiver shot through her and her mind slipped back
to the kiss they’d shared here—the lava of wanting and being needed
scalded through her.

She flipped on the light. The kiss
evaporated, but not the need.

Jake bent over her as she sat in his office
chair, and ran a finger down the expenses column in the ledger.

No way could she speed read along with
Jake’s finger. Her eyes focused on one entry as he talked about
expenses, operating costs, and profit margin.

“Wow. They must mix gold dust in the marine
paint.”

“We can’t afford to go cheap on the hull and
have to haul her early.”

Jake looked at her from inches away, and she
had to make herself concentrate on what he was saying instead of on
his lips.

“The old girl is a money sieve. It will take
two years to save enough money to replace the engine. I hope it
lasts that long.”

He turned his attention back to the ledger
and she relaxed.

Half an hour later, Rachel yawned and rubbed
her temples. She pushed away the ledger and spreadsheets scattered
across the desk. Leaning back in Jake’s office chair, she closed
her burning eyes.

Every night this week, he’d found her before
he went to bed and said good night and pecked her forehead as if
she were his kid sister. Sweet and weird at the same time.

Thank God tonight was her last night on the
Queen
for the week. Hopefully, she’d have three nights of
dead-to-the-world slumber before the next cruise.

Jake perched on a corner of the desk.

“So far you’ve turned a modest profit.
Fifteen thousand dollars will be reinvested in the
Queen’s
upkeep, repairs, fuel, and docking next year. You paid me a chunk,
but you still eked out a living.” She opened her eyes. “Right?”

“Yeah. Unfortunately, nobody’s getting rich
off this business.” Jake stood and stretched, his muscles straining
the cotton of his shirt, revealing a swatch of his stomach she
hadn’t seen since summer. “But it’s
we
who made the
profit.”

She seriously needed to get out of the
engine room before she did something she’d regret. “So, write me a
check for my half.”

“I could do that,” Jake said, as if he
wasn’t talking about thousands of dollars. “But I’d rather take you
on as a partner, not just in operations, but the whole business.”
His gaze speared her. “What do you say?”

“You’re crazy. You supplied the capital,
remodeling, planning, marketing, sailing expertise—”

“I want you as a partner. And—” He
stopped.

“And?”

“I trust you.”

What had he almost blurted?

“You want me to crew next season.” The
waspish tone in her voice would fend him off. He couldn’t find out
how much she wanted to crew for him.

A muscle clenched in his cheek. “We’ll talk
about it some other time.”

Reaching across her, he stuffed the ledger
onto the shelf over the desk and anchored the elastic cord over it.
She wheeled the chair away from the desk, and he shoved the
spreadsheets into a drawer. This Jake, she knew.

“I’m quitting January First.” Four weeks. If
she didn’t, she could get stuck like Daddy in a marriage that never
should have happened.

She expected Jake to stomp off to bed, but
he halted in front of her chair. He stared at her, hurt warring
with the anger in his eyes. “We’re not discussing this now.” He
bent toward her. His lips branded her hairline with a kiss that
singed any hope of a peaceful night’s sleep.

Jake woke with a start. Moonlight shown
through the portholes. He listened to the water slosh against the
hull, the rigging tap-tap-tapping in the breeze. There it was—the
scratching sound that woke him. He’d have to go topside to check
things out.

He glanced at Rachel, asleep three feet away
in her bunk where she had been most nights for the past six months.
He’d nearly told her he wanted her for a business partner and a
wife in the same breath tonight. Would she have shot him down on
both counts instead of one?

Good thing he’d stopped himself in time.

A moonbeam fell across dark tendrils of her
hair spilling in every direction across the white of the pillow.
Thick lashes lay on her cheeks, peaceful compared to the jumbled
sleeping bag she’d nearly wrestled out of during the night. Her
lips parted. Even breaths flowed with the rise and fall of her
chest. His eyes stopped on her sweatshirt where it pulled taut
across her breasts.

Kicking off his sleeping bag, he threw his
legs over the side of the bunk. He raked his gaze from her body and
grabbed a jacket, his mind dancing around an educated guess of what
lay under Rachel’s sweatshirt. Time to go topside to check on the
Queen
.

Jake tugged on the anchor rope, studied the
rigging, and walked the deck. No problems. He shrugged. With any
luck he’d have four more hours of sleep. He climbed back into the
cabin.

He eyed an inert Rachel and froze.

She had rolled to face the hull, exposing
six inches of skin. The pale smoothness stretched across her back
and the beginning curve of her hip. If he moved three inches to the
right, he’d see the softness of her stomach for the first time.

His breath stilled in his chest. His fingers
flexed.

He pivoted away and exited the cabin through
the engine room, all hope of sleep gone.

At the sound of Jake’s gruff voice nearby,
Rachel’s head popped up from the sandwiches she assembled on the
galley counter.

His bloodshot eyes skewered her from the
companionway. “Hurry lunch, would you? It’s after one. We need to
get underway to make anchorage
b
efore
dark.” He washed his hands and stacked the sandwiches on a plate.
He turned toward the steps.

“Wait,” Rachel said.

He faced her as she reached for a bag of
chips in the overhead bin. His gaze honed in on her chest. “Screw
this.” He headed up the steps.

Rachel peered at
New Smyrna Beach--Shark
Bite Capital of the World
silk-screened across her T-shirt. Was
he mad because the slogan was bad for business?

He’d been as surly this morning as he was
when she first started working for him. Only now he shredded her
emotions. The kiss on her forehead notwithstanding, he must still
be ticked about her rejecting his ridiculous business partnership
idea.

Had anger killed his infatuation as quickly
as it had sprung up?

Oh God, I’m not
ready for it to be
over yet. I’m begging you for Jake’s rebound to last four more
weeks.
Perfect timing would be for Jake’s crush to die the day
she quit. Then everyone would be happy. She’d have four weeks of
being “in love” to last her the rest of her life. And Jake could go
on to find his soul mate, whether that was Gabrielle or someone
else.