Tattered Innocence (11 page)

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.”

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?”

Jake barked a bitter laugh. “Corporate work
sucked me dry. I should have gone into business with Gramps after
college,”
when I promised.
The regret that chased him
twenty-four-seven pitched him to his feet.

Rachel had a knack for splitting him open,
and he’d already said more than he wanted.

Rachel took the hand Jake held out to pull
her up from the pine shaded tip of the island. She stilled, locked
onto Jake’s light brown eyes inches away. Short ringlets fell
across his forehead. She unclenched her fingers from his hand with
a start and bent to retrieve her shoes.

Jake took off at a run. “Race you back to
the dinghy!” Sand kicked up from the heel of his shoe—into her
face.

“Hey!” Rachel blinked, but the sand stayed
lodged in her lower lid. She turned away from the wind and tugged
at her eyelid—no use.

She plodded across the sandbar, around the
island, and up to the dinghy.

“What took you so long?”

“You kicked sand in my eye.”

“Sorry—”

She climbed into the stern. “I could drown
in all that sympathy.” She hated being attracted to a guy who
wasn’t interested. One who hadn’t paid enough attention to her
looks since she came aboard to have formed an opinion about whether
she was pretty or not.

Ten minutes later she bent over the sink in
the aft head splashing water into her eye. “Jake!”

Silence.

“Jacob Murray!” she yelled louder.

Feet pummeled the deck at her shoulder. Jake
popped into view. “What?” He breathed hard, climbing down the
ladder into the cabin.

“I’ve rinsed my eye over and over, and I
can’t get the sand out.”

“I thought you were dying in here.”

Rachel poked out her bottom lip. She didn’t
care if she sounded childish. “It’s your fault.”

He tilted her chin down with his thumb.
“Here.” He tugged first at her upper lid, then the lower.
“Hmmm.”

His breath smelled like apple.

She studied the green rim around the brown
of his irises.

Don’t
even
go there! A
couple of hours ago he said he wanted Gabrielle back.

He leaned past her, his shoulder brushing
her arm, and soaked a washcloth in the sink. “No wonder you can’t
wash it out; you’ve got a sandbox down there.” He started to bring
the washcloth toward her face.

“What are you doing?”

Jake huffed. “Cleaning out the sandbox.”

Rachel jabbed her finger at the washcloth.
“With
that?
”

“Trust me.”

Jake’s hand cradled Rachel’s jaw while he
trolled the cloth through her lower lid the way he’d seen his mom
do with his kid brother. But all he thought about was how her skin
felt under the pads of his fingers. He wondered how her lips would
taste if he kissed her.

He dropped his hand from her face.
“Rinse.”

Rachel cupped water into her eye, raised her
head from the sink, and blinked several times. “It’s fine. Thanks.”
Water dripped off the ends of her lashes and her chin. Her lips
pressed together as she stared at him.