“You deserve someone who jumps,” she says. “Boots and all. No hesitation.”
My throat goes tight. I blink hard and focus on the grilled cheese, which is now smoking.
“Your sandwich,” Harold says gently.
“I know.”
They leave ten minutes later. Harold pats my shoulder at the door. Grandma Hensley adjusts her hat, climbs into the golf cart, and says, “I’ll expect updates,” like she’s my case manager and not an eighty-seven-year-old woman in a sixty-dollar sun hat.
I throw away the grilled cheese, make another one, and eat it standing at the counter while staring at the wall and thinking about goosebumps.
Delilah texts the next morning.
Delilah:Yacht tour today! Levi and I will be at the marina by ten. I want to walk through the ceremony space, the reception layout, and the bridal portrait locations. Also I heard Paul jumped into theocean for your son’s stuffed animal and took his shirt off on the dock? I need details immediately.
Me:Who told you?
Delilah:Grandma Hensley called me before I finished my morning coffee. She used the word “progressing.” I need context.
Me:There is no context. He rescued Stomper. He happened to be wearing a white shirt. That’s the whole story.
Delilah:Emma. “He happened to be wearing a white shirt” is not a sentence an unaffected person writes.
She’s not wrong. I’m not unaffected. I’m so affected I couldn’t sleep last night. I lay in my bow bedroom with the windows open and the water rocking underneath me and I kept thinking about the way his skin felt under my fingers. Warm. Solid. The goosebumps spreading out from my touch like a wave—like his body was answering a question I hadn’t asked yet.
I need to focus. I have a yacht tour. I have a wedding to photograph. I have a career to build and three children to feed and an ex-husband arriving in days and I do not have time to be thinking about Paul Spencer’s chest.
Hischest, though.
Focus.
The yacht is even moreoverwhelming from the inside.
Delilah and Levi lead the tour. Lottie is with me because Jenna offered to watch Millie on the houseboat, and there was no way Aidan and the twins were staying behind once they heard the word “yacht.” So now all three boys are aboard and Lottie has given up containment in favor of damage control. Justin is somewhere below deck because Paul sent him to check a mechanical issue with the stabilizers. He didn’t know we’d all be here. He’s going to be thrilled.
The grand salon takes my breath away. Floor-to-ceiling windows that look out over the water. White leather seating curved around a low glass table. A bar along the far wall with lighting that turns the bottles into jewels. The ceiling is paneled in pale wood, warm and golden, and the whole space glows.
“This is where the reception will be,” Delilah says, spreading her arms. “Dancing here, bar here, dessert table along thatwall. I’m doing the flowers in white and green—gardenias, white roses, trailing ferns. Nothing too structured. I want it to feel like the ocean came inside.”
I’m already framing shots in my head. The bar with the bottles backlit. The windows reflecting the sunset. The dance floor catching the glow from the ceiling panels. This room is going to photograph like a dream.
“The light in here at golden hour,” I say, half to myself. “Delilah, this is going to be stunning.”
“I know.” She grins. “Wait until you see the staterooms.”
The master stateroom has a king bed, a sitting area, and a bathroom with Italian marble and a rainfall shower that’s bigger than my galley. Lottie stands in the doorway and stares.
“This shower has more square footage than my entire bathroom,” she says. “I’m going to need a minute.”
“The guest staterooms are smaller,” Delilah says.
“Smaller than this? So just regular obscene instead of cartoonishly obscene?”
“Basically.”
We climb to the sun deck. This is what I’ve been waiting to see. Open air, the whole marina spreadout below us—Paul’s dock office, the fishing boats in their slips, my little houseboat looking even smaller from up here. The ocean stretches out on one side, the boardwalk and town visible on the other. The hot tub gleams in one corner. A built-in bar runs along the port side. And at the bow, where the deck narrows to a point, there’s an open space that looks out over nothing but water.
“The ceremony is here,” Delilah says, standing at the bow. The wind catches her hair. Behind her, the sky is doing that thing where it’s so blue it looks painted. “Semicircle of chairs facing the water. Aubrey wants the aisle down the center. I’ll build a floral arch—gardenias and trailing greenery—right here at the point.”
