Born Innocent Read online

  Both dogs dropped their hind ends to the ground and looked up at her with expectant, trusting interest.

  She tried not to let them see her long sigh of relief. “Stay,” she instructed with great gravity.

  She calmly walked past them, and though she heard one of them whine hopefully, they stayed where they were. She went up to the porch, and when she got there she strode right up to the door and pounded on it decisively.

  No one answered.

  “Joe?” she called, her voice sounding eerie and strained in the silence. “Joe!”

  Except for more whining from one of the dogs, no answer came. She tried the doorknob. It wouldn’t turn.

  About five feet to either side of the door were long double-hung windows, similar to the ones in her cottage at the motel. Claire inspected the one on the right, and saw that it was firmly latched from the inside. Curtains of some dark material were drawn across it, so she couldn’t see in.

  She approached the other window, her sneakers making the old porch boards squeak. It was screened, curtained and latched, like the first. She jiggled the frame of the screen, anyway, and saw that to remove it from the outside she would have to bend the frame.

  Sighing, she turned toward the yard again, where the pair of dogs waited and her shiny, new van looked out of place among the derelict equipment Joe kept there.

  Everything was locked up. No one answered her calls. She supposed there wasn’t much else to do here.

  But then she thought about the back entrance; maybe it would be unlocked. So she followed the porch around, jarring screens and checking for latches as she went, and finally trying the back door to find it securely bolted against her, too.

  She was stymied. Short of breaking in, what more could she do? She descended the steps at the back of the house and walked around through the weeds to her van.

  The dogs whined. She said, “Okay. Come.” They wiggled over, like a pair of huge puppies, and gratefully received a few pats and strokes and gentle words.

  From where she stood, she could see nothing of what went on behind the windows on either side of the front door. The shadows of the porch completely obscured them from her view. Still, she felt that Joe was watching her, that he was in there, though he wouldn’t come to the door—just as he hadn’t answered any of the number of messages she’d left on his answering machine in the past few days.

  The dogs looked sleek and well fed. Someone was taking care of them. Who else could it be but Joe?

  “Sit,” she told the dogs again. They didn’t even hesitate this time, but dropped to their haunches in the dirt at her feet.

  She turned and opened the driver’s door of her van, then felt under the seat for the heavy-duty flashlight. When she had it in her hand, she went to the back of the van, where she kept a little toolbox and a pair of work gloves. She pulled on the gloves, told the dogs once more to stay, and approached the steps to the porch again.

  She melted into the shadows by the door, walked right up to the window on the left, and pried the screen out enough to bend it and then wrench it free of the sash. She lifted the flashlight—and shattered the glass of the bottom pane, grimacing a little at the way the splintering glass cut through the ghostly silence, which seemed to lie like a stifling blanket over the neglected house.

  She took a few moments to carefully break off the shards that remained in the frame, so she wouldn’t injure herself climbing in. Then, when no sharp fragments were left to cut her, she laid her gloves on the porch, lifted her leg over the sill and went in, shoving the dusty, dark curtain out of her way.

  “Come on in, Claire. Don’t let my dogs—or a locked door—stop you.”

  At the sound of Joe’s taunting voice, Claire froze, straddling the window. She peered through the darkness at the room she’d half entered. But she couldn’t see a thing. It was pitch black, except for what looked like the red glow of a lighted cigarette several feet away.

  Joe helped her then, by flicking on a floor lamp. She blinked at the sudden brightness. But her eyes quickly adjusted, and she found herself staring at him.

  He was stretched out on a frayed couch not ten feet away from her, wearing a faded flannel shirt and a pair of old black jeans with busted-out knees. The shirt was unbuttoned, and the lamplight gleamed on the washboard-hardness of his bare belly. She couldn’t see his eyes; he’d shielded them from the glare of the lamp with the back of the hand that held the cigarette. But she didn’t need to see them. She knew he was studying her as she hovered, half in, half out, of his living room. She watched, not sure what to do next, as the smoke from his cigarette trailed lazily up toward the watermarked ceiling.

  Feeling ridiculous, but too far down this particular road to turn back, she swung her other leg over the sill and faced him. “What’s going on?” She dared to take a step toward him. “I called and called. Why didn’t you answer the phone, or the door?”

  He didn’t bother to sit up, though he did grant her a slight shrug. “Well, gee, Claire. I guess you could say I just wasn’t in the mood for company.”

  She ignored his sarcasm. “Why not?”

  “None of your business.” He gestured with a quick flick of his head toward the broken window behind her. “Now get lost. You can just... slip out the way you came.”

  She stood firm. “You’ve been alone long enough.”

  He chuckled, then, a sound so cold she shivered in response to it. “What are you up to, Claire? I hope you aren’t here to tell me again how you can’t live without me. I thought we’d settled all that the last time you begged me to take advantage of you.”

  She shook her head and kept her face calm. But down inside her she knew hurt. It was cruel of him to bring up her old foolishness after all this time. Six years ago, after the second time she’d humiliated herself and begged him to love her, she’d decided enough was enough. She’d come to grips with the fact that Joe Tally was never going to give her love a chance.

  She’d stayed away from him for a couple of years. Then, slowly, they’d started coming into contact with each other again, sharing an occasional game of pool over at O’Donovan’s, stopping to exchange greetings and personal news when they passed on the street. They’d developed a new kind of relationship; she thought they had become friends. And that was why she was here: to help a friend.

  She decided it was necessary to make her true motive clear. “No, Joe. You don’t have to worry.” She forced a rueful chuckle of her own. “I’m over you. You’re safe from me, I promise you.”

  He gave her a half grin, and she dared to hope he was relaxing his guard a little. “Glad to hear it,” he muttered, and dragged on the cigarette.

  “But I thought,” she hurried on, “that over the last few years, we had become friends.”

  He exhaled, and flicked his ash on the scuffed hardwood floor. “You did, huh?”

  “Yes. I did. I still do.” She spoke more strongly, “I am your friend, and I’ll always be your friend—no matter how hard you push me away.”

  He was quiet for a moment, watching her. And then he lazily sat up and stubbed out the cigarette in an ashtray on the coffee table in front of him. She stared at him, thinking that he looked grim, tired and rumpled, but in spite of the open beer can beside the ashtray, not drunk.

  He swung his long legs to the floor and looked down at his bare feet for a moment. Then he looked at her again. He sighed. “I’m fine, okay? You’ve seen for yourself. Now you can go.”

  She bit her lip, reluctant after going so far with this, to leave without some understanding of why he’d chosen to withdraw from the world for a week. She asked, hesitantly, “Is it... about Mexico?”

  He looked away. “Get lost. Go now.”

  She knew a little surge of triumph. At last she was getting somewhere. “It is Mexico, isn’t it?” The last time she’d talked to him, a couple of weeks before, he’d mentioned that he was heading down to Mexico the next day to track some kid, barely eighteen, who’d skipped bail. “Oh, J
oe,” she coaxed. “What happened there? Is it... that boy you told me about?”

  “Get out. I’m warning you.”

  “Oh, Joe, please...”

  He looked at her again. And his eyes had changed. Now they were the eyes of a wolf as it measures its prey. “What is it with you, Claire? What’s it always been with you?”

  Claire stared at him, wondering what had gone wrong. She’d only wanted to help, but her questions about Mexico had triggered something ugly in Joe. Now the gloomy room seemed to vibrate with menace. She held her ground and insisted, “I’m your friend. I only want to help.”

  He shook his head, a grin worthy of the wolf he resembled curling the corner of his mouth. “You just won’t get the message about me, will you?”

  “Joe, I...”

  He stood up.

  “I...” Her throat closed up, and her mouth went dry as she watched him step around the coffee table and close the distance between them.

  Oh, Lord. He was so... dangerously beautiful, with his whipcord-lean body and that sinuous way of moving he had. She tried not to stare at the hard muscles of his belly, which seemed to constitute a sort of sexual taunt, clearly displayed as they were between the open plackets of his shirt. Something inside her was shifting, going liquid.

  “How many years,” he was asking too softly as he came toward her, “have I protected you...from me?”

  “Joe?” she asked his name, hoping for reassurance.

  She got none. He demanded again, in a voice of velvet and steel, “How many?”

  She stared into those eyes that burned her through the darkness, and she had to swallow before managing on a husky sigh, “About twenty.”

  He stopped coming toward her only when he stood so close she could feel his breath on her upturned face. She could smell him, the cigarettes and the beer, too, and his sweat. In another man, these things might have repelled her. But not in Joe. Never in Joe. She looked into those strange wolfish eyes and saw pure emptiness, flat deadness. At first. But then she looked harder, and beneath the emptiness, she saw despair.

  “What happened in Mexico?” Somehow, in a hollow whisper, she got the question out.

  “You’re so innocent,” he muttered, and his amber eyes seemed to devour her. “So damned naive, even after all these years.” “No.”

  “Yes.”

  She shook her head. It seemed very important right then that he see more of her than he was letting himself see. “No. I’m not innocent. I’m not.”

  “Then what?”

  She swallowed and tried to explain. “I...try to keep trusting. I try to keep my faith, in the world, and in people. But nobody’s innocent, except on the day that they’re born.”

  He made a low, cynical noise in his throat. “You’re innocent,” he said again. “You’re damned naive.”

  There was no convincing him. And it wasn’t really important, anyway, she could see now. He’d accused her of naivete to distract her. She was through being distracted. “Think what you want,” she advised in a whisper. “But tell me about Mexico. Tell me, Joe. That boy—”

  ‘ ‘You just won’t let it go, will you?”

  “No. Tell me.”

  “Fine.” He gave her the truth then, never taking his eyes from hers. “He’s dead.”

  “Oh, no...” She reached for him.

  “Don’t.” He stepped back.

  She dropped her arm. “What happened?”

  His broad shoulders seemed to slump. He dropped into the one easy chair in the room, a brown corduroy chair as tattered and worn as the couch. Then, in a weary voice, he gave her the explanation she’d been seeking.

  “He’d skipped his bail to run drugs, and then got in the way of a deal going down. I got there too late to do much good. The kid was gut shot, done for. I held his head in my lap and watched him die. I’ve been sitting in this house since I got back, wondering what the hell point there is to a world where a dumb kid gets murdered just because he’s in the way. In a world like that, there’s no damn room for innocence. All innocence can do is get you killed.” Joe dropped his head on the backrest and stared at the ceiling.

  Claire thought of the dead boy and wondered about the boy’s family. She felt her eyes filling, though she knew that tears wouldn’t help. “Oh, Joe. I’m so sorry.”

  He rolled his head enough to capture her gaze. “Yeah. I know. You feel for all the idiots in the world, don’t you, Claire?” He chuckled, a tired, wry sound. “You’re something. Really something.” He lifted his head then. And he stood up once more. He took the few steps to stand before her again.

  Claire watched him, sensing another shift in him, but not quite sure what the shift would mean.

  “You’re good,” he said, when he was so close that half a step would have brought their bodies into intimate contact. “A good person, and maybe a strong one, too. A damn special thing.” He raised his hand, then dropped it. “Hell,” he muttered darkly, and she understood his struggle with himself. He was trying not to touch her.

  He lost the fight. He raised his hand again and very gently smoothed a strand of her hair back over her shoulder, his rough thumb whispering along her jawline in one achingly tender stroke.

  The touch was all it took. The touch showed her everything. It put a cruel mirror up to her sacred, central lie, the lie she’d been faithfully telling herself for six years now.

  She looked in the mirror his touch showed her and the lie faded away to mist and she was looking at the hard truth.

  She loved Joe Tally. She had never stopped loving Joe Tally. She would always love Joe Tally. Until the day God took her breath for good.

  He was watching her, his tawny eyes seeming to see it all. “Tonight, I’m not up to protecting you.”

  Her voice seemed to know what to say, though she had no awareness of framing the words. “I know. It doesn’t matter. I can take care of myself. I’m not as innocent as you keep saying.”

  “Oh, no?”

  “No. You need me. You need a... human touch. A woman’s touch, to get past that dead boy. In the morning, you’ll feel better. And you don’t have to worry. In the morning, I’ll go.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.” His voice was ragged. She heard the hope in it—and the raw need.

  “Don’t underestimate me, Joe. I know more than you think.”

  “I have nothing for you. God, Claire. Tonight I don’t even have what it takes to do the one favor I’ve always done you... to send you away.”

  “You couldn’t send me away tonight, anyway. I’m staying.”

  He stared at her. “Damn, you, Claire. Go now or—”

  “Shh.” She dared to touch his lips. “It’s okay.”

  The touch did it. With a soft oath, he reached for her. She melted against him—and then felt his wince when she touched his shoulder.

  She pulled back. “You’re hurt....”

  “Just a flesh wound.”

  But she had to see. She carefully guided the open shirt off his shoulders to the floor, and found a clean gauze bandage, which looked white as snow against his tanned skin.

  Joe looked at the bandage and then at her. “I swear. It’s okay. The bullet passed right through the meat. I’m taking good care of it.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Absolutely.” He took her head between his hands and tipped her face up to his. “But are you sure?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tonight.” It was a rough vow, spoken sweet and low against her parted lips. “And never again. You’ll go back to your nice, sane life tomorrow morning. We’ll... stay away from each other, from now on. We’ll cut it clean. Agreed?”

  She stood on tiptoe, inviting his kiss. He nibbled on her parted lips a little, hungrily. But he insisted again, “Agreed?”

  She nodded, as much as she could with her head cupped between his hands. “Agreed.” A single tear escaped the corner of her eye. He caught it as it trickled back toward her hair, brushing it gently with his th
umb.

  And then, murmuring some dark, hot promise, he covered her lips with his own.

  Chapter Four

  The shock of knowing his mouth after all the years of yearning and denial held Claire utterly still for a moment.

  She moaned in hungry joy and lifted her arms to clasp him as close as he was holding her. She ran her greedy hands all over his bare skin, feeling the hard beauty of lean muscle and the shape of the long bones beneath, cautious only of the bandage at his shoulder.

  And as she touched him, he was touching her, burning her with his rough and tender hands, making urgent sounds, sounds of need and promise at the same time. He felt along her neck and down to the buttons of her shirt, fumbling with them, parting them, and pushing the shirt away to the floor to join his own.

  He sighed and clasped her bare waist, as if learning the slim shape of it. She moaned in pleasure as his hand traveled up to cup the fullness of her breast, which was still bound by her bra.

  He stood back from her, just a little, so he could work the front clasp. It came undone and fell away. He caressed her naked breasts, groaning a little, as she was, in discovery and delight. He held them, lifted them, and looked into her eyes. Then, slowly, he lowered his head.

  She clutched him close as his mouth found her nipple and he sucked on it, bringing it to a peak of sweet sensitivity, then moving to the other one.

  Claire let her head fall back, and felt his arm behind her waist, supporting her. She was glad for the support. If he hadn’t provided it, she would have slid in boneless delight to the bare floor at their feet. He went on kissing her breasts for the sweetest eternity, and as he did, he worked at the fastening of her jeans, unsnapping and unzipping and then sliding the jeans down, along with her panties, to the floor at her feet. She kicked off her sneakers to aid him.

  Then, feeling the cool air of the room touching her everywhere he wasn’t, Claire realized she was naked. Naked in Joe Tally’s arms. It was her oldest, most forbidden fantasy.

  And for this one night of all nights, it was real.