Tattered Innocence (12 page)

What was he
thinking
? He tore his
gaze away from Rachel’s lips and slapped the washcloth into her
hand. He’d convinced himself he’d never get over Gabs, and less
than three months after she rejected him, he fixated on physical
contact with Rachel.

His eye caught on the silver heart that lay
against her pink T-shirt below the collar. He’d seen it so many
times he doubted she ever took it off. Had the guy she had gotten
mixed up with given it to her? Another reason to keep his
distance.

He dredged the half-eaten apple from his
pocket, jammed it into his mouth, and hiked up the ladder. Anything
to get his head back on straight. He felt like he’d betrayed
Gabrielle
.

After a final salute to the sea camp
director, Jake threaded the
Queen
through the buoy-dotted
inlet to open water.

With a wary eye on Nigel at the wheel and
Keenan manning a sheet line, Jake scooted onto the aft cabin with
his rope splicing supplies.

Rachel paused beside him. “You’re going to
chew your bottom lip off. The boys can sail the
Queen
. You
taught them well.”

Jake shot her a
yeah-right
look.

Rachel shook her head. “I can see you riding
shotgun teaching your kids to drive. It won’t be pretty.”

Jake grunted. Rachel longed for kids, but he
didn’t want to think about them. If he and Gabrielle had stayed
together, children would have been part of the deal. Dad’s death
had carved a chunk out of him. He’d been eight, way too young to
lose his father. Having kids of his own would have filled in the
hole somehow.

Rachel stepped up behind him on the cabin
and jammed her knuckles methodically into the flesh across his back
and into his shoulder blades.

He tensed.

“I used to do this for the swimmers before a
race.”

He sat mannequin-still, her thumbs rubbing
flash fires of desire into his muscles.

He wanted Gabs. Not Rachel. For an instant,
as if his brain stuttered, he couldn’t remember Gabs’ face.

“You’re not cooperating. You’re supposed to
relax.”

Jake shook off her hands. “You don’t know
everything the boys could do wrong.”

Rachel glared down at him. “Yes, I do.” She
swatted him in the ribs and turned back to the jib she had been
mending. “Fine. Give yourself a migraine.”

Rachel didn’t know which skewered her more,
that Jake might think she was coming on to him or that he wouldn’t
let her take care of him. His rejection stabbed her like the thick
needle she pierced through the sailcloth of the jib. She had only
been trying to help him relax, not seduce him. She took care of
people better than she did anything else.

Wound too tight, Jake needed to relax.
Laugh. Both her strong suits, but he didn’t want her help.

Even Hall, who had always needed her, had
inched away from needing her through his teen years. And she’d
widened the gulf by stepping toward Bret.

The coarse thread slipped from the eye of
the needle, and she poked it back through, dragging a memory with
it.

Hall had been three, and Rachel nine, when
the tip of his pinky had nearly been severed in the hinge end of a
door. Granny wrapped his hand in a clean dishtowel and rushed them
to Bert Fish Medical Center emergency room, then the hand surgery
clinic in Daytona Beach.

Hall’s sweaty body smashed against her in
the back seat. “Hurts.” His eyes pled with her to make the pain go
away.

She patted him. “It will feel better soon.
We’re almost there.”

Hall still clung to her, no sign of the
three doses of knock-out medicine taking effect, when the rumpled
doctor entered the operating room.

The doctor’s eyes darted at his watch, to
Hall, then stopped on Granny. “I can’t give the little guy any more
meds, and I’ve got a nurse out today. Can you hold him still while
I reattach his finger?”

Granny blanched.

No one had told them Hall’s finger had
actually been cut off.

“I can do it,” Rachel piped up.

“Rachel,” Hall said, his good hand
tightening into a death grip around her wrist.

Rachel pushed her shoulders back. “I can do
it. Really. I delivered him—in the kitchen.”

Granny nodded, reaching for the arm of a
metal chair to steady herself. “It’s true.”

The doctor let out a huff of frustration.
“Okay, fine. Ma’am, why don’t you take a seat in the waiting room.
Get a drink of water.”

Granny squeezed Rachel’s hand and wobbled
through the doorway.

The doctor pinned her with a look. “You’re
sure? I can’t have you fainting when I’m in the middle of stitching
up your brother.”

“I’m sure.” She jutted her chin toward him
as if her stomach weren’t already churning with pictures of Hall’s
delivery.

Repulsed and fascinated at the same time,
Rachel’s gaze darted from the deep gash at the quick of Hall’s nail
to his frightened eyes. She held his free hand, turned her back on
the doctor swabbing the finger orange, and leaned across Hall. Her
body shielded Hall from seeing the needles laid out on the tray and
gave her leverage to hold him down if needed.

“Hall, the doctor is going fix your finger,
but it’s important that you keep very still till he’s finished.
Okay?”

Hall nodded.

She smiled to reassure him, while underneath
the word
reattach
marched back and forth. Behind her, she
sensed rather than heard the doctor’s small movements under the
canopy of breaths moving in and out of his lungs.

“You’re doing great, Hall,” she whispered as
if her voice would disturb the doctor’s concentration.

Hall’s eyes flicked across her face, wide,
trusting, filling her with the euphoria of being needed.

The doctor cleared his throat and startled
her. “How are you, sissy? Holding up?”

What? Did he think she’d faint like Granny?
“I’m fine.”

Hall squirmed, and she pressed her ribs
against him. “Just a little longer. Think about riding your Big
Wheel down to the corner. We’ll do that when we get home.” Love for
him washed over her, and she wanted to feel like this always.

She kept Hall distracted by reciting
The
Cat In the Hat
from the arsenal of books she’d memorized before
her dyslexia diagnosis.

“Okay, that does it.” The doctor’s voice
seemed to bellow over hers.

Rachel stood up straight and beamed at Hall.
“All fixed.” She spun around and saw that the doctor had casted
Hall’s arm to the elbow. Her eyes widened.

The doctor smiled. “Just so he doesn’t
disturb the finger. Good job, sissy.” He shook her hand as if she
were an adult, shooting warm feelings in every direction.

Rachel sighed, the carbonation of memory
bursting and dying, as she glanced at Jake yanking rope through a
pulley. Tomorrow she’d track down Hall. They were long overdue for
a heart-to-heart.

Rachel kicked a pine cone with the toe of
her sneaker. It tumbled across her brother’s path on the church
camp athletic field. She darted an uneasy glance at him.

Hall scooped the cone up and drop-kicked it
fifteen feet onto the laundry steps. “So, what-up? I haven’t seen
you all summer, then you text you’re stopping by.” His voice was
subdued, so unlike Hall’s extrovert personality.

Rachel sank down onto the weathered board
steps of the laundry feeling like she wore a T-shirt with
I had
sex with Bret Rustin
silk screened across the front. “A big
blow last week made me think about what’s important.”

Hall sat on the top step, so she had to
twist and look up to see him. He quirked a brow, his blue eyes
somber, intense.

“You. You’re important to me,” she said.

Until Bret, Hall had been the most important
person in her life. Taking care of him had given her purpose. She’d
made a point of seeing Hall every day at the high school, but when
things heated up with Bret, she saw her brother less and less,
afraid he’d sense what was going on.

Hall dropped down beside her. “What’s really
up?”

His gaze bore into her and she chewed on her
bottom lip. Did he find out somehow? Small town. Small school.
Hall’s school.

Behind her, washing machines thumped, a
button or zipper clinked in a dryer every few seconds. She glanced
over her shoulder through the open door into the empty room. She
dragged in a breath. The fresh scent of dryer sheets contrasted
with her sin. “I did something I’m not proud of, something I don’t
want to tell you about.”

He stared at her, his expression unreadable.
“And you’re here because?”

“It’s the reason I’ve stayed away. Even last
semester when I was still working at the school, I backed away from
you. I’m sorry.”

Hall gathered a handful of pine needles off
the porch and tossed them onto the ground. “Sorry for what you did
or because you’ve been a stranger?

“Both,” she blurted. “I asked God to forgive
me. I quit…doing things.”

Hall blew out a long sigh and dropped the
remaining pine needles to the ground. The tightness around his
mouth softened a fraction. “Good.”

“You’ve always looked up to me. I didn’t
want to give up that position.

“Then, you shouldn’t—never mind. It doesn’t
matter now.” He stood. “I have to get back to my cabin. The kids
will be coming back from arts and crafts.”

He knew. He had to know. She and Bret had
been so careful. How did it get out? She pushed up off the step and
reached for Hall’s arm. “Hall, I’m sorry. Will you forgive me?”

Hall pulled away. “You don’t even know what
you’re apologizing for. Look, I don’t have time to get into this
now.”

Pain seared through her ribs and knifed her
stomach. She and Hall had never been separated like this. And it
was her fault. “Then tell me what I need to apologize for.”

Hall’s jaw clenched as he stared at her.
“Things you do affect other people. You could have thought about
how this was my senior year. How gossip flies around this town. You
think I liked overhearing in the locker room that my sister is a
ho?”

Rachel clutched her stomach and sucked in a
breath.

“A married man—with kids. What were you
thinking?”

“I wasn’t.” The croak came from the back of
her throat. She folded her arms and held his gaze. She was the
older sibling and she’d act like it. “Anything else I need to
apologize for?”

“You’re the spiritual one. Made me memorize
Bible verses. Told me to pray when I hit a rough patch. Were you
bogus?”

“No! You know I wasn’t.” Her fingers dug
into the flesh of her arms. “Will you forgive me for embarrassing
you in front of your friends at school—for letting you down?”

Hall stared hard at her.

On the far side of the athletic field, kids
moved in clumps, taller counselors dotting the groups. Shouts and
laughter filtered across the grass.

Hall shook his head. “I gotta go.” He turned
away from her and took a step.

“I quit seeing him in May.”

Hall paused, then dug his hands into his
pockets and kept walking.

Rachel bent over a tray, arranging cold cuts
for this afternoon’s cruise, asking herself why Hall hadn’t come to
her for the truth. The oscillating fan she’d parked in the cockpit
blew puffs of heavy, eighty-seven-degree air at her. She mopped her
forehead with the crook of her arm and glanced across the finger
pier at Leaf napping in a muscle shirt and bike shorts under the
shade of his Bimini.

Would she have let things go as far as they
did with Bret if she’d known how Hall would be hurt? Usually, he
wasn’t a grudge holder, but who knew how long he’d been tormented
by the gossip. Had Hall defended her pathetic honor with his fists?
He’d obviously believed the rumors.

God had forgiven her. He sat beside her in
time out. He loved her. She was going to get through this.

Movement on the finger pier caught her eye,
and her gaze panned upward. Almost-colorless angel hair curled on
muscular legs. Tanned hands slid into the pockets of Dockers
shorts, belted and topped with a snug polo. A nearly-buzzed head
topped milky blue eyes leveled at her.

Her breath caught in her throat. Blood
siphoned from her face and she folded her arms over the clench in
her stomach.

Bret.

The storm had shredded the mainsail and
Jake’s resistance to Rachel. He cranked open his window, downed the
last two inches of cold coffee from the Circle K cup, and tried to
tear his mind away from her.

He eased off I-95 onto the New Smyrna Beach
exit ramp. The back hatch window thumped against the protruding
sail. Thank God he’d bagged the used sail from Second Wind Sails in
Fort Lauderdale for under a thousand dollars.

Rachel was another matter altogether. Ever
since she cried in his arms he’d been putting out brushfires of
desire. Well, he’d stop-drop-and-rolled
m
ore than once, and he had a list of reasons to keep
it up.

For starters, he wasn’t doing anything to
screw up their working relationship. Rachel was into some toxic
guy. And he still felt singed from Gabs. If he couldn’t have the
woman he loved, maybe he’d look for a girl from her world.

He could almost see Gramps shaking his head,
a smirk on his lips. “See how that works for you, boy,” he would
have said.

Jake wheeled into a marina parking slot and
slammed the Explorer door a little too hard.

Rachel squinted at Bret from under the tarp,
her breath coming in soft gasps.

“Hello, Rachel.”

“What are you doing here?”

Bret took the gangplank in two strides. “I
couldn’t get you out of my head.” He stepped over the coaming into
the cockpit—too close—and dropped his duffle on the bench.