Tattered Innocence

by Ann Lee Miller

  Jake tossed a smaller anchor off the stern.

  Even if they bounced in the storm, they wouldn’t hit bottom. She felt the tug of the transom anchor taking hold and sank to her knees in gratitude. Warm tears ran down her face.

  Jake dropped a hand on her shoulder. His chin tucked into his chest, eyes closed. A line dangled in one hand, the rest of the coil hung on his shoulder. “Amen.” He bent to stow the rope on the cleat beside her, his fingers trailing across the back of her slicker as he moved.

  She shivered.

  She surveyed the sails that had been lashed and stuffed like half-made beds around the boat. She hauled herself onto the aft cabin and furled the partially stowed mizzen sail into its sleeve, her teeth chattering in the blowing rain.

  Jake snapped the sail cover over the mainsail. “Go below and get dry. I’ll finish topside.”

  Warm at last in dry jeans, sweatshirt, and wool socks, Rachel yanked a brush through her matted hair. She stood in the amber glow of the battery-fueled bulb and listened to the rain beat on the aft cabin.

  Wind, softened by the trees, rocked the Queen.

  Jake emerged from the head, rubbing dry his hair. He dropped the towel around his shoulders on top of an ancient University of South Florida sweatshirt and grinned.

  Something that warmed her more than thick socks and a hoodie crackled between them. Her heart thudded.

  His grin widened as he held her gaze.

  The bare bulb backlit his tangle of curls. “We did it.” He flung his arms open to her.

  Rachel stepped into his smile, noticing for the first time a sliver of a scar at the edge of his bottom lip.

  Arms that hauled sails up the masts, wrestled little boys into their bunks, and flung across rumpled sheets in sleep closed around her.

  She breathed in the clean laundry scent of his sweatshirt. This is where I belong.

  He leaned back, laughing. His lips found hers, eager, celebrating man conquering wind.

  He tasted of brine, and his skin smelled like rain. Her fingers curled into the muscles laced across his back. The rightness of the kiss wiped out so many wrong kisses from Bret.

  The celebration ebbed, spilling kaleidoscope colors through her that intensified to violet. The kiss morphed into reaching and yielding, two people fusing into one.

  Her name ripped from his throat in a ragged whisper. His irises, circled with a ribbon of brown, darkened and bored into her as if he’d funneled all the passion he held for the Queen, his Gramps, and Gabrielle to some pinpoint deep inside her.

  His fingers spread against her waist, pressing her closer, and he kissed her again.

  Her mind whirled in the sweetness of the kiss. The Queen swayed, intensifying the sensation of lightheadedness, and she clung more tightly to Jake. Yearning, bonding, upheaval, coming home, whipped through her as though the hurricane raged inside her body and not fifty miles offshore. The kiss pushed her over some precipice—falling and falling out of control, to a place she couldn’t scrabble out of like she had with Bret.

  Then, Bret’s cocktail of lust and anguish pricked her conscience. Before the thought fully formed, her palms jutted against Jake’s chest, a gut reaction, and she thrust him away.

  He fell back on his bunk. “What was that for?”

  She spun away from him and swayed off balance. She grabbed the wooden ridge of her bunk, her breath coming in short gasps. If the Bret episode hadn’t convinced her—and Jake—she was a slut, the cocktail of passion still swilling her body did. Why hadn’t she had the sense to hold back some of herself. At least she’d have her dignity now. She had to get out of there.

  Mindlessly, she grabbed her backpack from the bin under her bunk. She reached for her toothbrush in the head and dropped it into the pack, shoved in her purse and a few clothes. She fished her phone and charger from their spot tucked against the hull. Shouldering the pack, she grabbed her basketball. The voice in her head chanted, You’re weak just like your mother.

  Behind her, Jake’s silence screamed.

  Rachel slid open the hatch. “Take me ashore or you’ll have to swim for the dinghy when you need it.” She climbed out of the cabin into the rainless air.

  The weather, like her mood, had changed. Sun forked through the clouds and glinted off the slick deck making the threat of a hurricane seem as remote as Jake’s loving her—or Bret’s loving her, for that matter.

  Jake followed her aboveboard. “Where are you going? You can’t walk back to your car. The marina must be fifteen miles from here.”

  Rachel clambered into the dinghy, dropping her basketball.

  It gave a sad bounce and rolled to the center of the boat.

  “My aunt lives out here, a mile tops.”

  Jake stood on the deck above her and scanned the wooded shoreline closest to their anchorage. He untied the dinghy from the Queen and dropped into the boat. “You going to tell me what you’re hacked off about?”

  Rachel stared over his shoulder. She wasn’t angry about the kiss. Mortified? Yes. Overwhelmed by the mammoth emotions Jake stirred? Check. Listening to the sound of her heart cracking in half? Pretty much.

  Jake jammed the oars into the oarlocks and maneuvered the boat toward shore. He rowed hard, his mouth set in a grim line.

  As they approached the muddy, sloped shore, Rachel braced herself for the boat’s slam into the bank.

  At the last minute, Jake threw the oars into the boat and grabbed an overhanging tree branch. The dinghy slid to a stop.

  Rachel peered at the ten-foot climb up the muddy bank. She hoisted herself out of the boat and struggled up the incline using spindly trees for hand and footholds. As she neared the top of the slope, the basketball slipped from under her elbow and snaked its way down to the water. Jake scooped it up and planted a foot on the muddy slope, holding the ball up toward Rachel.

  As she reached for it, Jake jerked it out of her reach. “Tell me. What are you running from?”

  “You. Isn’t that obvious?”

  “You’re afraid of me? What? You think I’m going to hurt you?” He tossed the basketball into the bottom of the boat with a huff of disgust.

  Only my heart. “Something like that.”

  “Rae, come down here and talk about it. Then, if you still want to go, you can.”

  A squirrel darted from tree to tree, his tail floating behind him.

  “I’ve slept in the same room with you for months. Don’t you think you can trust me?”

  It was herself she didn’t trust. She moved up the bank.

  “You were running when you met me. But I’m not Bret. It was just a kiss. Not a big deal. Come on, get back in the dinghy.”

  Rachel clamped her lips together. Sure, no big deal. Right.

  Jake knifed the oars into the smooth water of the cove as he watched Rachel disappear over the rise of the bank. Solitude draped his shoulders like a twenty-pound overcoat. Terrors crouched in the cavern of his chest—hurricane winds blasting the Queen against the trees, Rachel, gone like Gabs.

  He’d struck out trading up at Gilford Prep, the Tri Delts in college, and Gabs. Now he’d run off someone from his own social strata. Maybe he should try picking up girls outside Walmart. He slammed Rachel’s basketball against the side of the dinghy with his foot.

  He had no claim on Rachel. She was free to walk anytime. Even in the middle of a hurricane. And maybe it was better if she did. How was he supposed to know kissing her would make him want to throw out all the plans he’d made for his life? All the love he’d felt for Gabrielle.

  He rowed—dig, heave, replace. Dig, heave, replace. Dig, heave, replace—the rhythmic expulsion of energy raked off the top layer of his ragged emotions.

  He should have gone with the instinct that told him kissing Rachel would screw up their working relationship. All he wanted was to go on kissing her. Instead, he might lose one of the closest friends he’d ever had and a superb crewman. Brilliant.

  As he neared the Queen, the wind screeched through th
e rigging. Right now he needed to survive this hurricane. Alone.

  That night he lay in his bunk in the dark conserving the marine battery. Wind whistled through the cove, clanging the rigging overhead. He popped up and peered out the porthole to see if the Queen dragged anchor. The National Weather Service had downgraded Kendra to a tropical storm as she veered northeast back into the Atlantic.

  Tell that to the wind.

  If Rachel were here, they’d swap histories to get through the storm. Since meeting Hall last week, he wanted to know the rest of her family. He wanted to know everything about her—like why the cartwheels over a C minus? But he didn’t know if he’d get the chance to find out. And he couldn’t envision the business thriving without her.

  He sighed, feeling again Rachel’s angles melt into him in their kiss, all softness and heat. Of course, he wanted her—wanted her now, just remembering the kiss. Any guy would respond to a kiss like that. But that didn’t mean he’d lose control. Geez, didn’t a year of good behavior with Gabs count for anything? Too many years of good behavior before that? She didn’t have to run away from him. And a world-class kiss was nothing to be embarrassed about.

  He had kissed Gabs hundreds of times, but she’d only dished out teaspoons of herself. All of Rachel came through her kiss—her heart, body, trust, essence.

  The kiss had been a spontaneous celebration of their dangerous run along the coast. But it morphed into more the instant his lips touched hers—connecting them deeper than the physical, deeper than he wanted to connect. Could they rewind to friendship?

  He sat up and tossed his sleeping bag to the stern, all hope of sleep abandoned. Who was he kidding? The only way a kiss like that could be satisfied was in bed.

  Chapter 18

  Wet drops shook loose from a pine growing at the top of the bank and trickled down Rachel’s arm, chilling her as much as facing Jake. She watched the back of his head as he rowed toward where she stood on the bank.

  When Aunt Winnie had finally come home from buying out Winn Dixie, Rachel had tried to sleep in her guest room as the storm outside subsided and the one inside ramped up.

  Something deep in her had latched onto Jake in that kiss. The passion in his eyes, in his voice, when he said her name, had eclipsed Bret’s pale imitation. But she could only imagine two choices—Jake still in love with Gabrielle or Jake on the rebound.

  A balled-up sweatshirt of a cloud passed overhead blotting out the sun’s heat.

  Wind rustled the pines that canopied her on the bank. In her head they chanted the basketball cheer, R-E-B-O-U-N-D, rebound!

  Jake coasted toward her in the dinghy, looking over his shoulder at the muddy shore beneath her feet.

  She stopped the bow with her foot and clomped into the center of the boat. The dinghy rocked, and she grabbed Jake’s shoulder, her fingertips digging into his collarbone and yesterday’s desire.

  She climbed past him and took a seat in the stern, her hand disconnecting from his shoulder. She pressed her palm into her stomach, smashing down the memory.

  His stony gaze focused on her.

  Jake deserved an explanation. “Hall called me irresponsible for ditching you in the middle of a hurricane threat.” Her brother’s words from yesterday’s call still rankled. As if they had switched places, now she was the child and Hall, the parent.

  A muscle jumped in Jake’s cheek as he rowed. “We’ll sail the Queen home today.”

  “I’m sorry. Hall was right. My meltdown could have endangered you and the Queen.”

  Jake measured her with his eyes, not breaking the tug and glide rhythm of his strokes.

  She fixed her gaze on a day’s growth on his jaw.

  She hugged her knees to her chest. She’d thought she loved Bret, but she’d only obsessed over him. How could she trust her judgment now? It didn’t matter. By the time she figured out what she felt, Jake’s rebound would be over. Sticking around had sounded a lot more doable before Jake’s kiss. Now it felt like masochism.

  She filled her lungs and released the air, gathering the strength to say the words she needed to say. She opened her mouth. Closed it.

  She had to do this to survive. She cleared her throat. “I’d like you to hire a replacement for me.”

  The oars halted in mid air. The color drained from Jake’s face as water from the paddles dripped concentric circles into the lagoon. “You’re quitting over one lousy kiss?”

  Lousy? She folded her arms across her chest, bravado lifting her chin. “I think it would be best.”

  “Not for me. And you love the Queen, sailing. You’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion. Look, I won’t kiss you again. I’ve been not-kissing you since Bret sailed.” He raked the oars through the water, jerking the dinghy forward. “I don’t want you to quit.”

  He’d wanted to kiss her since Bret sailed with them? Warmth carbonated under her ribs, but the cynicism Bret had generated doused it. “Doesn’t matter. I’m still quitting.”

  “You’re worried about being off the playing field—not getting any closer to marriage and babies?”

  Rachel shrugged one shoulder. Let him think that if he wanted.

  Jake pursed his lips, his brows lifting. “I liked kissing you—maybe we could—” He pulled an oar into the boat, and motioned between them. They coasted up behind the Queen.

  “Are you whacked? You’d marry me to keep me crewing for you? Forget it. If that’s the best offer I ever get, never mind.” She swung up the transom ladder. “Or did you just offer sex and babies?” Gloom swallowed her as she descended into the aft cabin.

  “Yeah, I’m all about sex.” Jake’s sarcasm knifed into the musty-salty air of the cabin. “What do you take me for?” He shook his head.

  Jake hurled the painter rope against the Queen’s transom and cursed. The rope sunk into the murky water. The last thing he needed was a second proposal thrown in his face.

  He yanked the painter into a soggy mess in the bottom of the dinghy and shoved away from the Queen. He rowed for the mouth of the lagoon, steam to burn.

  And why had Rachel been pissed? So what if it was spur of the moment? Wouldn’t most girls take a proposal as a compliment? Apparently, Rachel wasn’t most girls. She couldn’t even recognize one, much less be happy about it. He was so over her issues.

  He heaved the boat into the waterway. A stiff wind blew against his back, and his mind emptied of everything but the strain of his muscles as he leaned and pulled against the current. His deltoids, biceps, and triceps burned from exertion. The wood of the oars rubbed angry blisters into his palms. He twisted to peer at the three-foot ocean chop looming at the head of the waterway in the Atlantic.

  That stupid kiss. Yet, he couldn’t quite wish it away. A hundred times in the past twelve hours, the kiss had replayed in his head leaving a citronella coil of sweetness and heat, burning to a center glow in his gut.

  Anger spent, he circled back toward the lagoon and pulled the oars aboard. The dinghy drifted toward the cove, propelled by the elements. What was wrong with marrying Rachel? The more he thought about it, the better he liked the idea. They’d worked together like a team from the start. Friendship sprouted. Then, attraction.

  When she’d said she was quitting, it felt like the rending of the mainsail all over again. No way could he let Rachel walk away. Not without the fight of her life.

  Rachel snapped the last sail cover into place, bracing against the Queen’s bounce in her slip.

  The National Weather Service may have downgraded Hurricane Kendra this morning, but wind still buffeted New Smyrna Beach as if she hadn’t gotten the memo.

  Jake’s hand closed around her sweatshirt sleeve. “We need to talk.”

  Now they had to talk, after sailing up the coast without a word—anticipating each other’s next move like a well-rehearsed dance?

  The wind flung Jake’s curls away from his face.

  She focused on the utility lines looped over his shoulder. “I want to get into dry clothes.�
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  “Fine. Meet me in the dining nook in five.”

  Breaking out of his grasp, she headed for the aft cabin. The sooner they talked, the sooner she could pack her stuff and leave. She’d have to give him two weeks’ notice, maybe longer if he couldn’t fill the position immediately. At least with leftover hurricane rain and wind, they wouldn’t be sailing this week.

  The scent of hot raspberry tea from the cup steeping on the table wrapped around her as she slid onto the dining bench. Jake’s attention to detail—her details—warmed her like the cup in her hands. She spooned in sugar from the Tupperware container Jake set on the table.

  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.”