Tattered Innocence Read online

  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.”

  She stared at him, not sure whether he really wanted her to buy beef jerky or if he was calling himself a jerk.

  He pulled a debit card from his wallet, and handed it to her. “Two, six, four, one.”

  Jake stared at the pink flap on the envelope Gabrielle had given him as the dregs of his hope died. If there was one thing he’d learned about Gabs, she h
ad a will stronger than epoxy. She’d climbed into her Beemer and was probably halfway to the Panhandle by now.

  Part of him wanted to believe she broke up because she thought she was too good for him, too rich—that he was knocking his head against the six-foot thick Plexiglas wall between blue collar and white he’d banged against his whole private school career. But status and money meant nothing to her. She could live on a teacher’s salary the rest of her life and be content.

  She flat out didn’t love him. Pain had encapsulated in him like he’d swallowed a plastic prize bubble from the arcade. Today’s closure lanced open the bubble. Anger oozed into his body, propelling him out of the dining nook and onto his feet. He yanked the companionway steps up and wrenched the engine room door open.

  Was that Gabrielle’s scent? He inhaled deeply and realized it was the candle in a glass jar she’d left behind. He’d never burn it. Fire hazard.

  He grabbed the candle from the catchall nailed to the bulkhead, tossed it in one hand, and hurled it as hard as he could through the engine room door. It skimmed the engine and shattered against the planking over his workbench, spraying glass in all directions.

  He ducked through the doorway as the candle galumphed to the edge of the bench and fell to the floor. He slammed the wax glob against the bulkhead with his boot. The cloying smell of flowers filled the cabin.

  Rachel jostled the paper grocery bags on the finger pier in front of The Smyrna Queen to get a better grip.

  Jake swabbed the teakwood deck, his chest slicked with sweat. He glanced up and narrowed his eyes.

  He was surly―and better looking than he had a right to be. She tapped her foot on the finger pier, balancing the two bulging grocery bags. “Didn’t your mama teach you anything?”

  “What?”

  “Be a gentleman.”

  Jake blew out his breath and dried his hands with the T-shirt hanging from his waistband. He crossed the gangplank and grabbed the bags out of her arms.

  “The meat and fish are in these. They need to go into the freezer.”

  Silence.

  “Jake,” she said to his back.

  He stopped halfway across the cockpit, but didn’t turn back.

  “Because Gabrielle ditched you doesn’t mean you’re a jerk.”

  Jake glared across the Queen’s deck at her. “You don’t know squat.”

  She whipped the slim package of beef jerky out of her back pocket and fired it at his head. “Be a jerk, then.”

  Jake’s eyes widened before the missile beaned him on the head and ricocheted to the galley below. He stared at her for a full second. A smile tugged at one corner of his mouth, the first she’d seen since she met him.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t mess with me. I’ve got a brother just like you.”

  She pivoted and walked up the finger pier, thoughts of Hall stinging her as if she’d smacked into a jellyfish. When had she last seen her brother? Even though he’d been a senior at the high school, they hadn’t spoken in months. He barely accepted her congratulations at graduation.

  “My baby,” she’d called Hall as she clutched him to her after Mama delivered him on the kitchen floor. With Mama and Daddy at work all day and Granny too tired in her seventies to chase a little boy, Rachel had relished mothering Hall. He’d never balked at the mother-son quality of their relationship—until Bret.

  Jake swiped the mop across the Queen’s weathered teak deck, shaking his head at Rachel as she disappeared into the conglomeration of sun-baked car hoods along Riverside Drive. She’d actually distracted him from Gabs for thirty seconds.

  He glanced at Leaf under a makeshift awning on the next boat and almost called him Gramps, like he had a hundred times. But the only things Leaf had in common with Gramps were his age and a penchant for saving electricity. He liked the old guy, but not how he resurrected grief he didn’t want to feel.

  Leaf’s ponytailed head bobbed. “I like your new girl.”

  Jake smiled in spite of himself. “You would.”

  Leaf pulled an orange out of a dirty plastic Winn Dixie bag and tossed it to Jake. “Found these today on my rounds.” The guy cruised the neighborhoods on his rattletrap Schwinn, looking for free food.

  “Hang on.” Jake jogged down the companionway and back up. “Catch.” He tossed the beef jerky into Leaf’s bony hand. “Trade you.”

  Leaf squinted at the ingredients. “Stuff’s poison.”

  “Stuff’s protein. Eat it.”

  Rachel walked toward them, her arms loaded with grocery bags. He should tell her about the cart at the end of the dock she could use to carry supplies. Naw. More interesting to see what she’d say when she found out. He grinned as he watched her stride up the pier.

  Details he hadn’t intentionally recorded paraded through his mind as he sloshed the mop back into the bucket. Rachel spoke an octave lower than Gabs. Sitting across from her at the Dolphin View, he’d noticed her eyes, like her hair, were brown, flecked with gold. She came across confident, but freckles dusted the tops of her cheeks and nose with vulnerability.

  She’d convinced him that she loved sailing. But she wanted out of New Smyrna Beach, too. What was that about? He glanced up at Rachel’s angular frame and riotous curls as she pushed through the gate at the end of the pier. He shrugged. The girl was Gabs’ polar opposite. Good.

  Leaf motioned his head toward Rachel as she headed up the dock with another load of groceries. “You should be grateful to have her.”

  “Yeah. But I’m not.”

  Chapter 3

  Jake had barked orders for the three days since Rachel started working for him. She should be ticked. Instead, she wanted to thank him for chasing away a thousand thoughts she didn’t want to think. Since sunup, they pinged around the boat doing last minute chores. The menu had been posted, bunks made, the electric and water lines disconnected.

  Rachel stuffed the last sail cover into a nylon bag and tossed it into the bin under the port cockpit bench, her last task completed. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her arm. Sadness crawled back into her chest.

  The old man on the sloop in the next slip pared a mango with his pocket knife and flipped peels into the water one at a time.

  I don’t have to be happy about doing the right thing. But at least I’m one step closer to the sister Hall used to be proud of. She blinked, and for a moment, she was sprinting beside a kindergarten Hall, helping him balance on his two-wheeler for his first solo after the training wheels came off. Sprinting away from Bret was one last thing she could do to launch Hall into life.

  In the wait for their guests’ arrival, like the pause between the pep band’s tuning and the first note of the fight song, Rachel peered over her clipboard at Jake. He rubbed a smudge off the ship’s stainless steel wheel with the hem of his T-shirt, grief and determination welded on his face. For a moment, his pain dislodged hers.

  A speeding Boston Whaler buzzed past their stern, belching exhaust. Its wake jostled the Queen and clanged rigging against her masts. Rachel glanced toward the pier. A boy, maybe a second grader, climbed over a dock box, then shimmied up a light pole. His tow-headed little sister plunked somebody’s clam shell collection into the Intracoastal with her toe. Her laugh rattled the longing for a child inside Rachel like a noisy sheet of aluminum foil.

  Rachel’s gaze followed the children on their Family Circle exploration of the pier. Behind them, a tall man with a white buzz cut, who might have played college basketball forty years ago, strode up the dock with an olive-skinned woman in a poodle skirt. She pushed up oversized, red plastic glasses on her nose and squinted at the Queen’s name.

  The man turned up the finger pier. “Whoa kids. Hold up. This is where we get off.”

  The woman followed him, keeping her gaze laser-beamed on the kids.

  The man stepped aboard, and Jake held out his hand. “Welcome aboard the Smyrna Queen.”

  “Lyle and Angela Rosebrock.” He shook Jake’s hand and tossed a grin t
oward the children. “And miscellaneous progeny.”

  “Jake Murray.”

  Rachel nudged an elbow into Jake’s ribs.

  “And first mate, Rachel Martin.”

  Rachel waved at the children who stood on the finger pier. “You must be Katie and Cole.” She’d read the twelve names on the passenger list so many times she had them memorized.

  Katie nodded shyly. “Mamaw, will you hold my hand so I can get on the big boat?”

  Her grandmother laughed. “After skating up and down these docks like a hellion, now you’re scared?”

  Cole lay on his stomach and hung his head and ankles off either side of the finger pier as if he wanted to examine the barnacles growing on the pilings under the dock.

  Rachel held her hand toward the girl.

  Katie bunny-hopped across the gangplank, all fear gone.

  Rachel didn’t want much, a couple of kids like these. Or three or four. She swallowed hard. “Come on, Cole, I’ll show you the engine.”

  Cole’s legs stopped kicking up and down, but his chin still hooked over the edge of the pier.

  Rachel talked to the crown of his head. “You’ll want to make sure the Queen is seaworthy for her first cruise. We’ll have to flip the steps up to get to the engine room. Not my favorite job.” When Cole peeked up, she shrugged. “You can flip the steps if you want.”

  Cole scooted his legs under him and popped up in one motion.

  Can I keep these two? Rachel tamped down the longing in her chest. At twenty-three, she had decades left for having babies. Never mind the years she’d already waited since tucking in Hall.

  “What?”

  Rachel’s head popped up at the unfamiliar voice.

  A brown ball of a man lumbered up the finger pier. “I’m on the maiden voyage?” His mock horror dissolved into a gale of laughter. He took the hand Jake offered. “George is the name.”

  “You don’t have to worry about the Queen’s seaworthiness. She used to run drugs. Bought her at auction. She’s a tough old bird.”