Read Born Innocent for Free Online Page B

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, Joe,” 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