Page 42 of Comeback
We could smell the ribs cooking as Jack rowed us back to the boat.
“Mmm!” Mackenzie shouted, sniffing at the air. “I can smell the ribs, Mommy.”
“Smells good, doesn’t it?” I asked her.
“Yup.”
“Hear that?” I asked Jack, poking a finger into his muscled side. A wave of relief crashed over Jack’s face. He looked so cute, all worried about making the day perfect.
We climbed aboard the yacht and Jack tended to his ribs, mopping them with sauce before covering them again. “Another hour or so,” he said.
Needing relief from the sun, I kicked my feet up and settled on the boat’s lounge. Mackenzie followed me and laid her head in my lap.
“Mommy, I’m hungry,” she whined.
“It’ll be another hour or so, sweetie,” I said. I dug into my bag for a snack to tide her over.
“What are we gonna do? I’mbored,” she said.
“We’re going to relax,” I told her.
But Jack emerged with a fishing rod in hand. “Hey, Mack, you wanna go fishing with me?”
She jumped out of my lap and into action. “Yeah!”
The two went to the back of the boat and sat on the rear deck platform. Jack let his legs dangle into the water, and Mackenzie sat in his lap. I watched from the lounge as he gave Mackenzie her very first fishing lesson and helped her cast into the water.
A few minutes later, the two of them cranked the reel and Mackenzie squealed with glee. “Mommy, I caught a fish! Mommy, look!”
“Her first fish is a yellow perch,” Jack said as the two climbed the steps to the lounge, a small fish dangling from the fishing line. “Better take a picture, Emma!”
I pulled out my cell phone and snapped a picture of the two of them: Jack, shirtless and kneeling next to Mackenzie, his giant, manly hands wrapped around her tiny shoulders. She had the cutest, proudest smile as she pinched the fishing line between her fingers, holding up the four-inch fish.
Then Jack kissed the fish, andsomehowconvinced Mackenzie to do the same, before they said bye-bye to the little guy and set him free in the water.
“Can we do it again?!” Mackenzie yelled, jumping up and down in excitement.
“Sure thing,” Jack chuckled. He turned and shouted at me. “I think she’s got the fishing bug, Emma.”
I snapped a few more candid photos of the two of them with their backs to me as they sat together and fished off the back of the boat.
He’s a total dream guy,I thought, sighing contentedly to myself. I slid back into the couch. But before I put my phone back in my bag, I had a sudden urge to pinch myself to see if all this reallywasa dream.
I checked over my shoulder, my heart nervously racing as I broke the captain’s rules. I kept my phone low and out of sight as I opened the browser and typed,Jack Hathaway hockey player,into the search engine.
I let out my first breath of relief—the search yielded over a million results.
Jack Hathawayreally wasa professional hockey player.
But was this Jack Hathaway the same asmyJack Hathaway?
I immediately clicked onimages, and let out a bigger breath of relief. Endless action photos of thisJack Hathaway,myJack Hathaway, skating around the ice in all his hockey gear, loaded onto my screen. It was undoubtedly him. He was telling the truth.
Thank God.
“Hey, Emma! She got another!” Jack suddenly yelled, as Mackenzie laughed and clapped her hands. “Look! It’s a bass!”
“That’s great!” I yelled back, scrambling to hide my phone from him.
