“Carissa Knight. She was fantastic to work with.”

“I bet,” Amy said. She stood and watched the images flash up on the wall as Jack went back and forth, culling the slides down to just a few from each set. “It looks like the two of you really connected.”

“Do I detect jealousy, my queen?”

“Of course not… who am I kidding. Yes. Should I be jealous? In a few of those, the look she is giving you… I’m sure she is a professional and everything, but those look like the eyes of a woman that is in love with the person she is looking at… and you are the person she is looking at.”

“I’m almost done here. Any thoughts on dinner?” Jack asked, changing the subject.

“I was thinking of Smitty’s. How about if I go grab it while you finish up.”

“That would be wonderful,” Jack replied.

He’d been grateful that Carissa hadn’t come up again, but he had known that the conversation was going to take place. He owed it to his wife to tell her what had happened. But he wasn’t ready for that quite yet.

***

As he rolled out of bed on Tuesday morning, he looked out over the bay and stood in the sun shining through the floor-to-ceiling windows. After a couple of days of editing and making contact sheets, he really enjoyed being in the sun. It was like a recharge.

He turned and looked at his wife, still asleep. He couldn’t help but smile at her as he watched her. He leaned over and kissed her forehead and then slipped into a pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt so he could go downstairs and make breakfast.

He and Amy had a busy day planned. He needed to spend a little time in the darkroom while she went into work for a half-day. Then, they were going to get everything packed for their trip. After dinner with the family and a little party for Amy, they were flying out to Vancouver for the cruise. He was looking forward to the time with his wife.

“I’ll take two scrambled, and a little bacon if there is any available,” Amy said, silently slipping up behind him and wrapping her arms around him as she kissed the back of his neck.

“You keep doing that and everything will be burned,” he laughed. “But that’s ok with me…”

“We wouldn’t want that,” Amy said as she dropped a few pieces of bread into the toaster.

They finished making breakfast together, then sat down across from each other in the breakfast nook. She watched him as he took a drink of his orange juice.

“So, are you going to tell me what’s on your mind?” she asked after a few minutes.

“This isn’t going to be easy,” he said quietly.

“Something going on between you and that model?”

“No… but things were a little dicey.”

Amy stared at him. She was on the verge of tears with her husband telling her he “almost” cheated on her.

“Amy, I promised you that I wouldn’t keep secrets from you. I love you. Only you. Always.”

It was largely as I described (not in Monday’s excerpt… but before that in the book). It was rough… outrageously rough. Nobody fell off the boat, though. And the only red-headed beauty was my wife. But the idea was planted for that part of the story. I actually started writing it while we were still in Kauai.

The second part of the story, which involves a runaway bride was written before that vacation. The excerpt from Wednesday was written before the one from Monday. I had written large parts of both stories, but they both seemed incredibly incomplete and I didn’t know what they needed.

Until I figured out that what they needed was each other.

Over Spring Break, we took a short cruise to Mexico from Miami. One afternoon, while I sat on the Promenade deck, I started feeling out how they could be combined into one story. The characters were very compatible and fit together nicely. I did have to change the Hawaii story to first person and rewrite a bunch of it to accomplish that, but the actions were already laid out.

I haven’t tried writing a full novel in first person, so this became an experiment in that, as well. Writing like that has presented me with new challenges. For one, writing for the female characters has forced me to change my thinking. I know that I will have a lot of revisions when those chapters get to my beta readers… and I’m VERY thankful for the beta readers.

There are two chapters that are written in third person… they are kind of like interludes. The prom and the wedding. There might be another of those third person chapters, since I feel like the book needs another change, and just a little more content before it is done.

“Jax?” I said, my voice hitching in my throat. It had been a decade since I last saw him. And a million miles since I had broken his heart. I had feared I had broken him.

Trim was no longer a word I would use for him. Even in his logo polo, he was obviously cut. I could see tattoos peeking out on the top of his left arm, and around his collar on the left side. He had a thin beard, like he’d not shaved for a couple of days, then trimmed it to perfection. But the most striking thing was his eyes. They held a fire… an intensity that had never been there before. What they didn’t hold was the happiness I’d come to associate with him. They were like blue ice, burning into me.

“Crys… what are you doing here?” he asked, accusation in his voice, as if my presence was only meant to torment him.

I was the one that had left him at the altar but seeing him had me wondering how I could have. I had tried to convince myself there was no other way, and that he’d wronged me by not letting me explain myself. He shut down all contact the moment I made a mistake. He ran from the life we had together… that we were looking forward to… escaped to someplace unknown to anyone that would talk to me. He’d never completely escaped my mind, though, although I had managed to usually confine him to a dim corner. No longer. His eyes accused me and burned me and held me.

“I moved here to launch our new brand. What about you?” I said, matching his tone.

“I ended up here a few years ago. I’ve built a life.” There was still accusation in his eyes. I could see the anger and pain flash in his eyes as he replied to me. “Look, if you don’t want to work with me, I can try to recommend someone else. I would hate for this to be too awkward for you.”

I had trouble recognizing his tone. I thought I knew everything about him, but I couldn’t tell if he was sincere or mocking. His response knocked me back. The last thing I expected was for him to have any regard for my feelings. I was sure that he assumed I had no regard for his, not after the way I left. But then I could feel his pain subsiding… replaced by anger. And something else. Fear. I thought about the budget we had for this photoshoot. Was he more afraid of me or not getting the job? “Did Kate communicate a shot list to you? I just got the email from her and haven’t had a chance to really go over it,” I asked, pushing our personal history aside for a moment. I was still stunned by seeing him and didn’t know what else to do.

“I don’t have a specific list,” he replied. “I know what pieces she likes, and I have seen the mockups for the marketing, so I can piece together what you need. Should I put that together for whoever you use to replace me?”

“I don’t want someone else, Jax. I would rather work with you. I trust you.” I want you to trust me, I didn’t say.

He nodded once and settled into the seat across from my desk and I returned to mine. I pulled up the email from Kate, my boss, and reviewed it while Jax sat across from me, pointedly not looking at me. After scanning the email, we spent the better part of an hour talking over the next steps. He let me know that he would be at the venue the next day to begin shooting. It would be exteriors if the weather was nice, interiors if it wasn’t. He would be ready to start about six in the evening, which was around the time the regular staff left, and gave me a list of what needed to be done for him to be ready.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Jax,” I said, leaning across the desk and offering my hand. He barely touched it when he shook it, then turned and walked stiffly out of my office.

“Miss Lake,” Tish said, walking back through the door a moment after he left, “the decorator wanted to speak with you if you have a moment.”

“Please tell him to catch me tomorrow morning. I’ll be in around nine. Right now, I need to get a few things done,” I snapped.

“Yes ma’am,” Tish said, backing out the door.

Perhaps my voice was a little too harsh. I had always tried to foster a casual atmosphere and barking at my assistant wasn’t helping. But I needed her out of my office before the tears came. Of all the things for which I had prepared, seeing Jax… and my reaction to seeing him… was not one. I needed her to leave me because I knew the tears were coming. I couldn’t hold myself together for one more moment.

An hour later I glanced up at my wall clock and noted that it was half-past five. “Miss Lake, there is a call from the photo studio,” I heard over the intercom.

“Thanks, Tish, I’ll take it.”

I tapped the speaker button on my phone. “Yeah, Jax. What do you need?” I asked.

“Crystal, this is Beth Mason… I’m Jax’s business manager. We actually met…”

“Beth, yeah… Prom… thirteen years ago. Wow.” That explained a lot. They had always been close, and I couldn’t blame her for swooping in when I left.

“Yeah. Anyway, I wanted to talk with you for a minute. About Jax. And this job.”

“Sure, Beth.”

“He needs this. He is ready to quit because he doesn’t want anything to be weird, but he really needs this shoot. I think you owe it to him to keep it on track. I don’t know what’s going on in your life, but after what you put him through you need to convince him that he is the person for this job.”

That was when I saw her… ok, I had seen her before we even got onto the boat, and I knew where she had been almost every minute since. I wasn’t trying, but she was hard not to notice. Flaming red hair, tall, sleek and slender; dressed more for a beachy dinner out than for hanging out in the splash zone for a few hours. She wore filmy pants that were glued to her from the spray, and a wrap around her top that was similarly elegant, but simple. She didn’t look like she belonged there, but her smile rivaled the sun as she looked around excitedly. Like me, it looked like she was on vacation with her family. Her green eyes had drawn me in the first time I saw them, just before we boarded the boat. They were in contrast to her smooth, alabaster skin. She had a delicate nose with the slightest turn up, and pouty lips I thought begged to be kissed. She was simply the single most beautiful girl I’d ever seen. And she was so far out of my league that I knew all I could ever do was admire her from afar.

But in the next moment, what I was seeing was her feet flying up in the air and over the side of the boat. It looked like she had been trying to get her sister to shoot a picture of her with a whale tail in the background… then the boat lurched, flipping her over the side.

I tore off the light shirt I was wearing loose over my t-shirt, and pointed toward her, yelling “Man overboard,” to the captain. In three steps I was diving off the rail next to me, flying over the side of the boat, overshooting her as she floated back along the side of the boat. I saw she had been stunned by the fall and came up coughing salt water before disappearing under the waves again. I turned in the water and dove down to grab her. I wrapped an arm around her, just as I had learned and practiced in Scouts, and kicked toward the surface.

I wasn’t driven by heroism, or even the chance to help specifically her. It was instinct. Had it been anyone else on the boat, I think my reaction would have been the same. There was a person in trouble, and I was able to help.

She struggled in my grip, trying to push herself higher out of the water when we broke the surface. I held her tight, knowing people in her situation often panicked. She elbowed me in the eye as she struggled against the terror of drowning. The strike knocked me back, but I kept my arm locked around her. A moment later I grabbed the life ring that had landed only an arm’s reach away.

“Easy,” I told her. “I have you. Hold onto this. Do you know how to swim?”

She shook her head, her eyes still wide with shock and fear. She looked like she was still trying to figure out what had happened. Her struggling slowed.

“Just relax. I’ll pull you to the boat,” I said to her.

I had to pry one of her hands from me and put it on the ring. As we swam, I felt something brush under me, one of the whales we had been watching. She screamed when she felt it brush her foot. I stopped kicking my legs and pulling the ring, and wrapped my arms around her again. She let go of the ring and clutched to me as if I were the only thing between her and death, and I guess in that moment I might have been… although we were in no real danger from the whales.

“It’s just a whale,” I said quietly. “They won’t swallow us like Jonah. We’re ok. Are you with me?”

She nodded and loosened her grip on me, allowing me to start pulling her toward the boat again after putting her hand back on the life ring. She turned and looked at me, still not totally releasing me, then unloaded the complete contents of her stomach right in my face. I dipped under the water after catching all the vomit and rinsed it away without missing a beat. I had been too shocked to react any other way. Luckily, I closed my eyes and had the presence of mind not to breathe as she puked at me. I tried to play it off and ignore it when I resurfaced. I knew she had to be embarrassed, and I didn’t want to add to her discomfort… just like I wouldn’t want someone to pile on me for something I couldn’t control.

As we got close to the back of the boat a crew member was folding down one of the platforms at the back of the catamaran that they used when people snorkeled, to allow them to more easily climb onto the boat. He leaned down with his hand out. I pushed her to the platform and then helped her from the water as the crewman lifted her up. A moment later I followed onto the platform and up onto the back of the boat, now just as wet as my little brother. Applause broke out from those that were able to see her climb back onto the boat in front of me. She was swept away by her parents and her sister, all crying and hugging her. She looked back at me for a moment and smiled, embarrassment evident… then she was gone.