Chapter 19
NINETEEN
EMMA
I’m in the galley making a grilled cheese for Aidan—who is currently telling Millie the Stomper rescue story for the fourth time, each retelling more dramatic than the last—when there’s a knock on the screen door.
Jenna is in her room with the door closed and her earbuds in, which is her natural state.
Lottie’s twins are on the dock with Aidan’s fishing net, doing something that will probably require an apology later.
Grandma Hensley is standing on my deck. Harold is behind her, hands in his pockets, looking like a man who’s been told to stay quiet and is barely managing it.
“Emma, dear.” Grandma Hensley steps inside without waiting for an invitation because Grandma Hensley treats all doors as suggestions. “I wanted to check on you.”
“I’m fine. Just making lunch.”
“Of course you are.” She settles onto the bench at the galley table like she plans to stay through dinner. Harold stays by the door, leaning against the frame, and there’s something in his expression—a warmth, a knowing quality—that makes my stomach tighten.
“We were on the yacht,” Grandma Hensley says.
“Oh. Nice. How was the tour?”
“The tour was lovely. Four staterooms. Italian marble in the master bath. A champagne cooler that I think Harold is already plotting to use.” She folds her hands on the table. “We also had a very clear view of the dock.”
My spatula stops moving.
“From the upper deck. Beautiful sightlines. You can see the whole marina from up there. Every slip. Every piling. Every man who jumps into the water fully clothed to rescue a stuffed elephant.”
Harold coughs. It’s not a real cough. It’s the kind of cough a man produces when he’s trying not to laugh and losing.
“I don’t know what you —”
“Emma.” Grandma Hensley gives me the look. The one that says I have been alive for eighty-seven years and I did not survive this long by being fooled. “I watched the whole thing. Harold watched the whole thing. The jump. The rescue. The shirt situation.”
“The shirt —”
“Don’t play coy, dear.”
She’s right. My brain has been replaying that particular moment on a continuous loop for the last twenty minutes and shows no signs of stopping.
“He jumped in for Stomper,” I say, focusing on the grilled cheese like it requires brain surgery. “It was a nice thing to do.”
“It was more than nice. That man didn’t hesitate. He didn’t calculate. He didn’t check the water temperature or take off his boots or do any of the things Paul Spencer normally does before making a decision. He just jumped.”
“Because Aidan was upset.”
“Because Aidan is yours.” She says it simply.
Like it’s a fact she’s been observing for months and has only now decided to state aloud.
“That man treats your children like they’re his own.
He’s been doing it since you docked here.
And today he proved it in front of the entire marina—or at least in front of me and Harold, which is functionally the same thing. ”
Harold nods from the doorway. “She’s not wrong.”
“You don’t have to back her up on everything.”
“I’m not backing her up. I’m corroborating. Ask any fisherman—two witnesses makes it fact.” He winks at Grandma Hensley. She ignores the wink with composure like she’s been ignoring Harold Spencer’s winks for longer than I’ve been alive.
“And then,” Grandma Hensley continues, because she is not finished and will not be finished until she is good and ready, “there was the matter of the first aid.”
“I put a bandaid on a scrape.”
“You put a bandaid on a shirtless man while standing close enough to share a heartbeat. I may be eighty-seven but my eyes work fine. Neither of you moved for a solid thirty seconds afterward.”
The grilled cheese is burning. I should flip it. I don’t.
“Grandma Hensley. It was a cartoon whale bandaid.”
“The whale is irrelevant. What matters is that you two stood on that dock like the rest of the world had disappeared.” She leans forward. “Harold had to physically stop me from applauding.”
“You were watching the whole time?”
“Harold brought binoculars.”
I look at Harold. Harold shrugs. “I keep them on the boat for birdwatching.”
“You were birdwatching.”
“There was a pelican.”
Grandma Hensley pulls out her notepad—the one that says Detective Notes in sparkly gel pen on the cover—and flips to a page that already has today’s date written at the top.
“I’m documenting this for the record,” she says. “Paul Spencer. Jumped into ocean for child’s stuffed animal. Removed shirt on dock. Subject and Emma Mills stood motionless for approximately thirty seconds post-bandaid application. Status: progressing.”
“Please don’t write that down.”
“Already written.” She closes the notepad. Tucks it into her purse. Pats my hand across the table. “Sweetheart. I’ve been watching people fall in love in this town for sixty years. I know what it looks like. And I know what it looks like when someone is too scared to admit it.”
Her voice shifts. Not teasing anymore. Tender. The way she sounds when she talks about her late husband, or about Mads, or about the baby that’s coming.
“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 the ocean 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.
His chest, though.
Focus.
The yacht is even more overwhelming 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 that wall. 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 spread out 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. ”