Tattered Innocence (23 page)

She fished out her softest, pale blue jeans
and an emerald sweater to match the earrings, then spritzed on
something Avra had given her that smelled better than Ivory soap.
The last time she’d been this dressed up she’d interviewed with
Jake.

Downstairs, her cousin-in-law, Cisco, lay
nearly comatose on the living room floor next to Avra and a stack
of math papers she was grading. Hall, his blond spikes tipped in
orange this month, set a glass on the dining room table from the
stack he carried. Daddy, MIA behind the newspaper in his recliner,
peeked around an edge and winked at her.

Just this once, could they not embarrass
her? She glanced through the living room sheers to watch for
Jake.

He pulled up in front of the house, and she
slipped out to meet him before anyone could tease her.

He shut the Explorer door. The hand holding
his keys stopped halfway into his jeans pocket. “Wow.” His gaze
meandered her body from head to deck shoes and back to her eyes,
taking so long he could have noted green socks, mascara, and
earrings in two shades of blue.

Her cheeks heated. She’d read that look of
male appreciation on Bret, but Jake’s didn’t make her feel
guilty.

Jake shoved his keys the rest of the way
into his pocket. “You never wear your hair down on the
Queen
.” He reached out and fingered a curl.

Her scalp tingled.

“You’re beautiful
.
And for the
record, I thought so the night we dropped the boys off at sea camp,
but I’d already spilled more than I wanted to.”

She spun toward the house, a nervous laugh
escaping. “You clean up pretty well yourself. Come meet my every
living relative.”

Jake caught her wrist.

She squinted into the sun at him.

“I’m interested in you, Rachel, more than
friendship. I stayed away from you to think while the
Queen
was in dry dock. I don’t have everything figured out, but things
don’t have to be awkward between us.”

Warmth pooled under her ribs while she
stared at him. Blinked. What could she say?
Thanks so much? I’m
glad you think so?
She ducked through the screen door, breaking
the contact. “Everybody, this is Jake.”

Jake grinned. “Thanks for letting me invite
myself to Thanksgiving. I didn’t want to eat peanut butter and
jelly.”

Hall stopped spinning a kitchen towel into a
rattail in the dining room. “Hey, Jake.” He whipped the towel at
their cousin Kurt’s lanky leg.

Kurt jumped and armed himself with a
fork.

Rachel shot them the Look of Death.

Daddy chuckled. He put the paper down and
shook Jake’s hand.

“My dad, Stuart,” Rachel said.

Hall nailed Kurt with the towel.

Kurt roared and dove around the table for
Hall.

Rachel pointed. “The one with the fork is
Kurt.”

Kurt darted a glance at them from his
stand-off with Hall, the dining room table between them. “This is
the first guy you’ve brought to a holiday.” He peered at Jake. “If
he can stand you, marry him—quick.”

Rachel fired a couch pillow at Kurt’s head.
“You are so dead.”

Kurt caught the pillow before it hit the
table.

“What’s with you guys? I told you Jake is my
boss.”

Avra introduced herself, then Cisco yawned
and angled up on one elbow to shake Jake’s hand. “Here, I’ll tell
you what Uncle Stuart asked me.” Cisco ticked off one finger at a
time. “Are you tight with Jesus? Can you root for the Bucs? Do you
love Avra?”

Jake laughed. “I guess I like Avra okay for
having met her two seconds ago.”

In the middle of the laughter, Mama came out
of the kitchen and hugged Jake as if he were her future
son-in-law.

Jake had to think she wanted to bag him as a
husband. Rachel flopped into the Papasan chair. “Sign me up for
Swapping Families
on reality TV.” Outside, she heard car
doors slamming. The rest of Avra’s family. She was in for the
longest holiday of her life.

Jake settled onto a living room chair to
wait for Avra and Cisco to clear the table so he and Rachel could
wash the Thanksgiving dishes. The rest of Rachel’s relatives
sprawled in a tryptophan daze in front of
It’s a Wonderful
Life
.

Rachel sat on the floor close enough to
touch. He leaned a knee against her shoulder. Maybe her
obliviousness would hold and she wouldn’t notice. He didn’t mind an
excuse to touch her, but he didn’t want to come on like a runaway
Mack truck and freak her out again. They both wanted the same
things out of life. He just had to play out his hand and not rush
her.

Avra slipped a plastic grocery bag over the
turkey platter and disappeared into the kitchen. Mom used grocery
bags instead of plastic wrap to save money, too. An Ebenezer
Scrooge vision of his family enjoying their holiday bird at the
kitchen table flashed through him, spearing him with unexpected
homesickness.

He’d been so focused on becoming part of
Gabs’ world that he’d pushed his family out of his mind the whole
time they dated, and now he did it from habit.

His sister had texted
Happy Thanksgiving.
We’re eating at 6. Wish u were here.
A veiled plea for him to
call. He’d phone tonight, keep the
Queen’s
schedule open
Christmas week, and go home. Maybe that would perk Mom up. She’d
taken the broken engagement hard, and she’d still sounded down the
last couple of times they’d spoken.

Rachel’s father dozed in his chair. On the
couch, her mother teased Hall about being twitterpated with his
girlfriend. Kurt’s long legs spilled from the Papasan chair, his
thumbs jabbing at his phone keypad. Avra’s parents and another
brother debated the Christmas menu, something about chicken and
yellow rice.

Jake felt like he was at Aunt Zoni’s and
Uncle Zeke’s with his cousins.

Last year he’d eaten Thanksgiving dinner
with Gabs’ family on linen tablecloths at the Grille at Riverside.
He’d felt on edge, like he had to impress them—exactly how he’d
felt at Gilford Prep. Why had he thought he’d belong once they
married?

He rubbed his palms against the worn
upholstery of the chair arms. Listening to Jimmy Stewart’s
dissatisfaction with his financial status stoked his own. He didn’t
miss the corporate world, just the salary. The
Queen
looked
a lot more lucrative on paper than in real life where repairs,
weather, and the whims of tourism governed her income.

Rachel shifted position, and her upper arm
nudged his calf, setting off a chain reaction. His gaze dipped to
the view down her sweater, and his body went full-alert.

Yeah, he wanted her—and her friendship and
business partnership—more than he’d ever wanted to belong to the
club. He needed to chill. Coming off a broken engagement, he had
marriage on the brain. Rachel needed to recover from Bret, too.

She broke the contact.

I am a total whack job—thinking honeymoon,
and the girl isn’t even comfortable with bodily contact insulated
by wool, denim, and a family of chaperones.

Cisco shouldered the kitchen door open, a
stack of plates in his hands. “Rachel, Jake, you’re on.”

Rachel moaned.

Jake held a hand out to her as he stood.
“Come on. We haven’t washed a dish together in almost a month.”

She deposited her long, smooth fingers in
his and rolled her eyes. When she stood, her fingers released, but
he hung on.

“Enjoy.” Avra darted a look at their clasped
hands and smirked as she and Cisco passed them in the dining
room.

The kitchen door swung closed, separating
them from Rachel’s family.

“I told my family my
boss
was coming
to dinner.” Rachel yanked her hand free. “And this is not helping.
I am so over their amusing themselves at my expense.” Dark brown
eyes connected with his.

“Hall probably tipped them off. He pegged me
in two minutes the day you brought him by the
Queen
.” Jake
ran water in the sink, squirted in detergent. “I was ticked.
Thought Hall was some guy you were interested in until he said you
were his sister.”

She stared at him blankly, then a tiny smile
started in her eyes and melted down to her lips. She took the sauce
pan from his hands and rinsed it.

They fell into companionable silence as they
had a hundred times before.

Rachel reached for a dry towel hanging on
the stove door. “I’m sorry—the Jesus thing Cisco said.”

“I’m not the heathen you think. Cisco sees
me at the bonfire enough. Yeah, it was a little awkward. But at
least your family’s expectations are on the table.”

“Come on, you’re not serious. That fight
after the hurricane was hardly a proposal.”

He sprayed the soap bubbles off the turkey
roaster and grinned. “Guess you’ll know for sure if I ask
again.”

Her eyes widened and she ducked down to set
a cookie sheet in the cupboard.

He submerged a mixing bowl and swiped the
sponge around it. He’d give a gallon of top-of-the-line marine
paint to know what she was thinking. And he knew just how to find
out.

Rachel tensed as Jake turned from the
kitchen sink and faced her, toe to toe.

He took the damp kitchen towel and dried his
hands, flooding her with that unnerving
you’re-the-center-of-my-universe look.

“This was just about the best Thanksgiving
ever. Thanks for coming back to the hurricane hole, for
reconsidering quitting.” His arms closed around her. “I’m grateful
for you.”

Her chin dug into his shoulder, and her arms
slunk around him without asking permission from her brain. This was
her Caffè Mocha. Words bottled up in her throat. Jake’s rib cage
expanded and contracted between her splayed hands and her
chest.

The door from the dining room banged open,
springing her chin from his shoulder.

Hall breezed in. “Uh. Sorry. I was just
getting the keys. Going to Jusinia’s. Happy Thanksgiving.”

“No problem,” Jake kissed her hair and
released her. He reached a hand toward Hall. “Same to you.”

They shook hands.

“I better go first because I parked you in,”
Jake said.

“Yeah, thanks.” Hall grabbed his keys off
the hook by the door.

The backdoor shut after Jake went out.

Before Hall could follow him, Rachel pinned
her brother against the wall with a palm to his chest.

“Whoa! What’s the matter with you?” Hall
said.

“What did you tell everybody about me and
Jake? They’re treating him like a future in-law. I’ve never been so
mortified in my life.”

Hall smirked. “Yeah, you looked real
mortified thirty seconds ago.”

She dropped her hand. “I’m serious. We’re
just friends.”

“Yeah, but he’s been into you for a long
time.”

“How do you know?”

“I have eyes. Ears.” Hall clattered out the
door. “Later, Sissy.”

Hall sounded normal enough, but something
still felt off between them.

She slumped into a chair, not knowing what
to do about Hall or Jake.

What was the lifespan of a rebound, anyway?
Jake hadn’t exactly said he’d propose, but almost. A time-lapse
photography sunflower of excitement grew in her chest. She squashed
it down. Easier for Jake’s attraction to die before he proposed
than for her to have to say no again.

Rachel’s hand quivered in Jake’s calloused,
foreign grip as he threaded them through the throng of familiar
teens toward the brick gym. If she’d thought ahead about how it
would feel to be thrown back into the sea of eyes staring at her,
she wouldn’t have come.

“Hi, Ms. Martin,” a fifty-pounds-lighter
Sassy McQuen said.

Rachel waved at her former swim team charge
as the girl cast a curious glance at Jake.

Rachel got the girl talking about this
year’s season—anything to keep from wondering whether Sassy knew
she and Bret had been an item. When Sassy returned to her friends,
Rachel pulled some ones out of her back pocket.

Jake waved her away. “I got it.”

This felt like a date. The way he’d been
funneling all his attention into her since the day he caught her
mowing the lawn had tossed them into awkward. Yeah, she liked it—a
lot—but her brain kept telling her his mini-crush would flame
out.

Jake propelled her toward the open glass
doors, and she took a deep breath, fortifying herself against all
the gossip that bred like fungus in the school.

Inside the building, she nearly walked into
Bret who stood against the cement block wall, a squirming
one-year-old gripped under his arm. His eyes clamped on hers. From
the scowl on his face, he’d been watching them through the
glass.

Out of the corner of her eye, she recognized
Bret’s pregnant wife standing in line at the concession stand.
Beside her a pre-school boy clung to the counter and walked up the
wall with his feet.

She wanted to turn and run—away from Bret,
the likely possibility that his wife had heard about her, from the
guilt that sloshed in her stomach every time she moved.

Jake pulled her closer and ducked his mouth
to her ear. “This is for Bret.” His lips touched down on her
temple.

In the space of a second, warm pressure of
Jake’s lips radiated all the way inside to where the guilt swam.
The soft pressure ended, leaving her starved for more—acceptance,
absolution, love. She didn’t know what to call it. “Thanks,” she
whispered.

“Anytime.” Jake nodded at Bret as they
passed him. “Rustin.”

Not daring to look at either of them, she
heard the smile in Jake’s voice. Arm in arm they made a beeline for
the gym doors and across the glossy basketball court.

At the bleachers, her eyes skimmed back to
the door and smacked into Bret and his family.

Bret’s gaze caught hers.