Page 55 of The Glass Dolphin

“It sure can.”

“He says he doesn’t care about having kids, but with AJ, and Kelli, and El…” She trailed off, but Maddy couldn’t have another baby. Not only did she not want to, she actually couldn’t carry one. “He’s younger than me,” she whispered.

“Which only makes him hotter,” Robin said with a grin.

Maddy allowed herself to laugh with her. “He’s really good to me.” She met Robin’s eye, hoping the other woman knew that Maddy didn’t just mean he was nice to her. Or that he was good in bed. He was nice to her, and he was good in bed, but what she meant was something much…deeper.

Robin took her hand and clasped it tightly in her own. “I’m not the expert on divorce,” she said. “Alice has been through it. Kelli too. Laurel, even. But having listened to them over the years, I do know one thing—when he stops beinggoodto you, then you know there’s a problem.”

Maddy nodded, and she drew in a long, energizing breath. “Okay, the cake.”

“Yes,” Robin said, immediately focusing back on her binder. “Let’s go over the cake. Now, I know you said you didn’t want anything outlandish…”

* * *

Later that evening,Ben held her hand steady as Maddy climbed the last rungs of the ladder. “Whew,” she said, her breath almost steaming in front of her. “That was harder than I thought.”

Ben wrapped her up tightly in his arms and swayed with her. Or maybe that was just the boat swaying where he’d tied it to a private dock. When she’d seen his boat there—not a Coast Guard boat, but just one of his smaller, personal vessels, she’d freaked out.

You drove that on the ocean?

It was nice today, he’d said.

It’s nighttime.

He had an answer for everything.I’m not planning on driving it at night.

Whose dock is this?

I got permission.

Maddy had given him the evil eye for a solid minute before he’d started laughing.Let’s go eat dinner, he’d said, and they’d come back up the path to The Glass Dolphin. She’d lingered there, the idea of staying on his boat with him until tomorrow morning almost too much for her stomach to handle.

Even now, she considered only staying for a few minutes, then calling a ride and catching the last ferry back to Rocky Ridge. She could see the twinkling lights of The Glass Dolphin up the beach and on the overhanging rocks. She wondered if anyone could see them.

“It’s so dark out here,” she murmured.

“Yeah.” He backed up and let go of her. “Stay here, and I’ll go get the blankets.” He jogged across the boat a few steps and went down the narrow set of stairs. He had to turn his shoulders sideways to do it, and Maddy wrapped her arms around herself, suddenly feeling very small and very alone beneath the vastness of the sky.

The ocean didn’t have street lamps on it, and when she turned her back on Diamond Island, all she could see for miles and miles and miles was darkness. Pitch-black, pure darkness.

Ben’s footsteps came back up, and she turned toward him. He carried a mountain of blankets, and she went to relieve him of some of them. “I got it,” he said, but he dropped them unceremoniously in the middle of the deck.

Then he reached down and spread out a thick, fluffy blanket. He dropped to his knees and puffed up the others around the edges, then dragged a couple of pillows into the nest. Ben looked up at her, and the soft light from the land shone on his face. “Come on, sweetheart,” he said softly.

Maddy lay down with him, feeling instantly warm and safe and secure in his arms. “There’s no moon tonight,” she whispered.

“Which is why I’m here with the boat,” he whispered back. She couldn’t feel the hardness of the deck beneath her, and the wind had died too, cutting above them as the sides of the boat shielded them.

She gazed up into the drape of darkness overhead, finding the stars easily as they pricked the night with their light. Ben nuzzled her neck and kissed his way across her collarbone, his eyes nowhere near the stars.

Maddy didn’t mind, because she wanted to match the rhythm of their love-making to the soft undulation of the water rocking the boat. Ben obviously had the same idea, and she finally gave up on getting any stargazing done and turned to meet his hungry lips.

“I love you, Madeline,” he whispered against hers. “Do you still want to marry me?”

“Yes,” she whispered back.

“You’re sure?”

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