Tattered Innocence Read online

  Jake grasped the jacket.

  She licked the salt off her lips and shouted, “I’m getting the harness for you!”

  “No! Get below where you’re safe.”

  The wind wiped the scowl from his face and the breath from her lungs.

  She scrambled back through the hatch and slammed it with a bang, irked that Jake refused to let her take care of him like she did everyone else in her life. If she knew where Jake kept the blasted safety harness that tethered him to the boat, she’d make him wear it.

  She panted, catching her breath. She might be able to tolerate his self-sufficiency if he didn’t make things worse by trying to take care of her.

  When her breath slowed, she launched into “Boom Chicka Boom,” motioning for the boys to join in.

  Pete rolled his eyes. “This is lame.”

  “Fine. You pick the next song.”

  “Right.”

  Rachel bent toward his snowy head. “Go ahead, think about the Queen going down.”

  Pete’s face turned chalky under his tan. “Chicka rocka chick a rocka chicka boom…” He added his baritone to the others.

  Half-way through Let It Be, the boat pitched. A snapshot of the Queen, her masts pointed toward the ocean floor, darted through Rachel’s mind. She shivered, and swallowed hard.

  Jesus— It was all the prayer she could conjure.

  A wave smacked the hull with such force that Rachel lunged for a grip on the dining table. Her eyes darted around the cabin looking for splintering wood. “God!”

  “God bless America…”

  Not yet. She didn’t want to die.

  The only time she’d been this close to life and death had been at age five when she’d witnessed Hall’s birth.

  Mama lay on the kitchen floor, her head rolling from side to side, eyes crazed with pain, clamped-down screams ripping from her chest. Hall slid into Rachel’s arms, the one true miracle she’d ever seen. As the lady paramedic pried Hall from Rachel, a bloody blob half the size of Hall oozed out of Mama. Rachel cried hysterically that Mama was dying till the man paramedic carried her into the living room. He talked in a calm voice until she heard his explanation of the placenta. He smelled of Little Debbie oatmeal cakes and cigarettes before they were lit.

  The boys sang Cobra Starship now.

  Other than helping Hall grow up, she’d accomplished nothing significant in twenty-three years. And she couldn’t die disconnected from Hall. She had to face him whether or not he knew about Bret.

  Keenan’s teeth came down on his lip.

  Rachel shot him a small smile of encouragement she didn’t feel.

  The boat rolled sharply starboard. Her fingernails dug into the wooden ridge that lipped the table.

  Two seconds of quiet before the Queen tossed to port filled with the sound of someone emptying his stomach behind the door of the head.

  Rachel glanced at her watch. Only thirty minutes had gone by.

  A few seconds passed before she realized the pitching had ratcheted down, the squall blown over as suddenly as it had descended. Rachel’s muscles slackened. Blood flowed into her knuckles. She held her breath, straining to hear Jake’s footfall. At last she heard movement above.

  Thank You, God.

  If she could just hold it together for a few more minutes….

  Popcorn. It would return the boys to a sense of normalcy. Her mind slipped into autopilot, her emotions stacked on each other, a Jenga tower about to topple. She lit the stove and spilled oil into a puddle in the bottom of the Dutch oven. Minutes later, she absently tumbled the corn into a plastic bowl and watched Nigel’s ink-black fingers close around the white kernels. The bowl wove around the cabin from hand to hand, and she started a second batch.

  Leaving Keenan in charge of popping the corn, Rachel numbly climbed topside to find Jake.

  The anchor chain clattered through the chock as Rachel approached the foredeck.

  Jake’s soaked T-shirt melded to his skin. He grabbed the genoa and squinted at her. “Everybody okay below?”

  The deck vibrated with the rattling of the chain diving downward. “Yeah.” Rachel stepped onto the cabin and held the sail bag for Jake. “You?”

  Jake nodded.

  “The Queen?”

  “Mainsail blew, shredded beyond repair.”

  “I see. I’m sorry.” Rachel ran her eyes the length of the Queen. Hopefully, the mainsail was the only casualty.

  She should help Jake with the rest of the sails, but her thin veneer of control ebbed away as the Queen bobbed in the short swells. Tears pooled in her eyes, blurring Jake’s puttering on the bow. Liquid spilled down her cheeks before she made it into the darkness of the aft cabin.

  Jake paused at the base of the mainmast, staring at the remains of the mainsail fluttering in the soft breeze. A new sail would wipe out his reserves. He had to succeed—to make Gramps proud.

  He sighed and headed to the bow, running his fingers over every fitting, checking for damage.

  Gramps left him money to refit the Queen, and he had a nice chunk of savings, but neither of them had imagined what a money sieve she’d be.

  His grandfather had started with a feed store outside Indianapolis, bought the neighboring farm, gutted the barn, and turned it into a restaurant. Later, he dug a lake, stocked it, charging a fee per fish. He rented out the house and outbuildings to an Amish furniture shop, a bulk food store, and a bait store. In the summer, people paid to swim and hold family reunions at the lake.

  Jake had inherited Gramps’ entrepreneurial bent and work ethic. But those wouldn’t be enough if the Queen bled him dry.

  The hatch above Rachel slid open and she bit back a sob. She didn’t look up. It could only be Jake. Gray-white, after-the-storm light bathed the cabin.

  “You okay?”

  What could she say—huddled on her bunk, clutching a pillow to her chest? A hiccough escaped.

  Jake swung into the cabin. He motioned with his head. “Come here.” His hands reached for her.

  Rachel lifted wet eyes to his and slid off the bunk into his arms.

  Jake rubbed her back. “It’s okay. Let it out.”

  The moisture from Jake’s sodden shirt seeped through hers as she cried.

  “The storm’s over. We’re all safe.” He stroked her hair.

  He smelled of rainwater, sea, and sweat. His arms felt like heaven.

  Rachel quieted against his shoulder, the last sobs shuddering through her like aftershocks. She felt his chest expand and contract. His breath warmed her scalp behind her ear.

  Jake’s taking care of her felt a whole lot better at the moment. She drew away from him and sniffled. “How did you learn to do that?”

  He reached for dry clothes out of his bin. “Do what?”

  Rachel scooted onto her bunk. “To—to let a girl cry.”

  Jake grinned at her, clothes in one hand. “I have a sister and a mom—I had Gabs.”

  Gabrielle. The dampness of her shirt chilled her skin. She inhaled, a sob stuck in her chest.

  Jake struggled out of his sopping T-shirt and glanced at Rachel. He turned his back on her, feeling weird. He’d been shirtless around her a dozen times and not given it a second thought, but he’d never held her, never seen her cry, never buried his nose in her hair. Those tiny, pale freckles he couldn’t see till he was right next to her got to him, like her brown eyes, dilated and swimming in emotion.

  He was used to holding Gabs, yet Rachel being nearly his height hadn’t seemed awkward. Nothing about holding her felt foreign. The giving and receiving of comfort had been as natural as sailing together. It wasn’t something he had to think about. Until now.

  He’d be an idiot to jeopardize their whole working relationship. The success of his business depended on keeping her as first mate and cook. He couldn’t afford for their relationship to blow up in his face like the mainsail had.

  He entered the head and changed into dry shorts, whacking his elbow on the bulkhead. He slammed out of
the cubicle, yanked on a dry sweatshirt, and jogged up the steps trying not to look at Rachel curled in a Banana Boat beach towel on her bunk.

  His elbow smarted. The Queen sucked down his capital like she’d never be sated. And Rachel had just morphed into a whole new problem.

  The storm had jarred something loose in Rachel. She wasn’t ready to die. She didn’t even know what her purpose for existing was.

  Its fury spent, the ocean bounced Rachel as she bellied across the bowsprit and lay still in the dark. She peered into the water searching for phosphorescence in the current. Jake snored softly in the aft cabin, and the teens in the main cabin slept with the oblivion of little boys after a grand adventure.

  Jake’s saying she must have been a good coach had stuck to her like soggy Rice Krispies dried to the galley counter. She didn’t know if she wanted to teach, but maybe she could enroll in a college class. Just one. She’d keep it a secret in case she failed. Maybe Hall would read the textbook aloud for her to listen to on her iPod like he had when she was in high school. If he wasn’t totally disgusted with her.

  She especially didn’t want to die disconnected from God. Bits of Jesse’s talk from the last bonfire ran through her head.

  She gazed across the small whitecaps illumined by the moon. “I’ve done a royal job of running my life lately, haven’t I?” The warm wind carried her words away. What had she been thinking messing with Bret? That God wouldn’t notice?

  She took a deep breath. A blanket of regret settled across her like dew on the deck. When she was a little girl, she pictured God stepping out of a country song to scoop her, giggling, into his arms. The picture buoyed her. “Scoop me up again, Daddy.”

  A memory flitted through her mind of scooping toddler Hall off the kiddie slide after he’d bitten a kid on the butt going up the ladder. The other kid wailed, and she’d dragged a fuming Hall, kicking and screaming, to the bench for a time out. She’d given him her best elementary school lecture about not hurting others, and she’d sat beside him for the entire time out. She hadn’t loved him any less because he’d sinned.

  She wondered if God had jogged her memory so she’d understand how He felt about her now. Thanks, Daddy.

  Back on her bunk, she watched moonlight play on Jake’s whiskers. His bare chest rose and fell with the rhythm of his breathing.

  Gabrielle was crazy for ditching him.

  Rachel reached for her flashlight and Jake’s Bible she’d borrowed from the shelf in his office. Even though she’d memorized I John 1:9 long ago, she wanted to run her finger over the letters as if touching them would complete the absorption of their truth. If we admit that we have sinned, He will forgive us our sins. He will forgive every wrong thing we have done. He will make us pure.

  She clicked off the flashlight. A flip chart of the times she spent with Bret and wished she could forget paged through her head. A tear trailed into her hair, and she wiped it away with her palm. Mentally, she flung the chart out to sea.

  Curled around the worn leather of the book, her body relaxed.

  Tomorrow they would drop the boys off at sea camp. She and Jake would have two solid days on the Queen. Alone.

  Wakefulness tugged at Jake until he gave up forcing himself back to sleep. He opened his eyes. Six-twenty-five a.m.

  Rachel, who usually looked like she’d wrestled her sleeping bag all night, slept peacefully under a flap of the bag, a bare shoulder and knee poking from her basketball uniform. Her hair spilled over her pillow, tidy, as though she hadn’t moved all night. She lay in a fetal position with Gramps’ Bible clutched to her chest.

  Even without this picture, he knew Rachel and Gramps would have liked each other. His gaze fell on her slightly parted lips, the crease between her breasts, the edge of her sports bra showing at the neck of her jersey, a long leg, bare toes. His eyes veered north for a second tour of duty and slammed into Gramps’ Bible. This morning’s shower had better be cold.

  Rachel bit the top off a leftover corn dog as the sun set into the trees on the Key. With the boys safely deposited at sea camp, blessed quiet reigned aboard the Queen.

  Jake climbed out of the main cabin. She held a finger to her lips and pointed toward the sky with the stick from her corndog. Orange and purple fingers stretched across a graying blue canvas.

  Jake set an open can of pork and beans on the bench beside him. He propped his feet beside her and folded his hands behind his head to watch. A seagull swooped down and nicked the water.

  What would it be like if Bret were sitting here instead of Jake? Rachel pulled her T-shirt down over her knees like a cocoon. No word from him in months. Of course, his love had been a lie. Water lapped the hull as the last tinge of pink disappeared from the sky.

  Jake spooned beans from the can into his mouth with two fingers. “I hate to admit it, but you’re a better crewman than Gabs ever would have been. Selling her on sailing was like talking her into buying a four-by-four pickup. But you’re a natural sailor.”

  Jake’s praise watered her perennially shriveled self-esteem. “Really?”

  “You don’t make me fire up the generator to run your blow dryer. The guests like you. Great people skills.”

  Okay, now the praise was making her uncomfortable. “And I thought my only asset was my long fingers.” She held them out for Jake to admire in the moonlight. “Maybe I should take up smoking to show them off.”

  And if sarcasm counted as humor, she was dang near hilarious.

  Jake rubbed his chin. “I guess you’re kind of attractive—in an off-beat sort of way.”

  “Bret said I was beautiful.” Rachel clapped her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that out loud.”

  Jake upended the can in the moonlight and shook the last of the beans into his mouth. “Mmmmpf. I’ll take a better look in the daylight.” A chuckle rippled through his words.

  “Don’t bother.”

  Chapter 10

  Heat seeped through the dew-dampened sheet wrapped around Rachel. The cockpit bench felt like rock through the thin plastic cushion. She tugged the curls stuck to her neck and rolled onto her side, refusing to open her eyes to the morning sun toasting her cheek. A few more minutes.

  Something nudged her sheet-encased leg.

  “Yo, sleepyhead.”

  She slit gritty eyes. Her mouth tasted like the inside of a rusty sardine can. Lead fishing sinkers weighed down her body—like every morning. “Leave me alone.”

  Jake sat in the cockpit eating a bowl of cereal, an amused smirk on his face. “Don’t you want to hit the island before it gets really hot?”

  She creaked to a sitting position and glared at him from under half-mast eyelids. “No way.” Her hair had to look like Cousin It with his finger in a socket. She wadded up the sheet, stuffed it under her arm with her pillow, shot a cursory glance at the scraggly island that had fascinated her last night, and descended into the aft cabin. She slammed the hatch behind her.

  By the time Rachel climbed on deck, freshly scrubbed, with her hair tamed into a ponytail, wearing clean cut-offs and a pink T-shirt, the sun had arced overhead.

  She found Jake propped in the shade of the cockpit frowning over his grandfather’s Bible.

  She stepped into the cockpit cradling a cup of the coffee Jake brewed for her every morning. “I thought you were over religion.”

  “Jesse said to let God run you. Sounds a lot like what Gramps used to say.”

  “You went back to the bonfire?”

  “Yeah, more than once. A lot to think about.” Jake shrugged. “What if God wants you to do something you don’t want to do?”

  Sunlight shot up from the wavelets like a thousand tiny mirrors.

  “It’s weird, but I really believe God wanted me to sail on the Queen. And I love it. What if His plans are satisfying?” She wanted to freeze this moment. Happy.

  Jake stared at her for a long time, as though he’d find the answers he sought in her eyes. “I wish I’d heard this sooner—from someone
younger than seventy. I might have kept Gabs.”

  He stood, dug in his pocket, and tossed two granola bars into her lap. “Let’s head for the island before it gets any hotter.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Jake rounded the tip of the island and slammed into Rachel. “Tell me when you’re stopping.”

  “Watch where you’re going.”

  They stood, gazing at a finger-shaped island they hadn’t seen from the Queen. Bedraggled trees listed haphazardly in the hot breeze.

  “Do you see the sandbar connecting the two islands?” Rachel took off at a run. “Let’s cross it!”

  Jake sped after her through the ankle-deep water covering the sandbar. “Race you!”

  They fell onto the small beach—first Jake, then Rachel—laughing and gasping for air.

  He eyed Rachel as she pried off one soggy sneaker, then the other. He’d actually had to sprint to beat her. The girl was fast.

  He brushed shells aside and laid back to watch blue sky through a canopy of pine needles. A breeze fluttered the needles. He tossed a shell toward the water.

  Rachel propped on one elbow and faced him. “What’s up with the Hugo Boss suits in the closet? I was hunting for my old sneakers and saw the suits again….”

  “Left over from my other life. I climbed Disney’s corporate ladder for six years out of college. Marketing. I did okay.” He might still be socking away his pay checks in land-locked Orlando if Gramps’ will hadn’t specified his inheritance could only be used to buy a boat.

  “Obviously, since you got the Queen booked solid out of the gate.”

  Jake stared up through the pine boughs. “Gramps and I talked about running a charter sailing business since I was a kid and we used to sail on his lake all summer.”

  “Do you miss Disney, Hugo Boss suits?”