Born Innocent by Christine Rimmer Read Free Book Online

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