Page 37 of The Love Rematch
“He’s a lost cause,” the producer says and puts her hand across the door Emily was about to duck inside with an armful of fresh towels.
“I feel so bad. The poor guy.”
“I do, too.” The words are made completely unconvincing by the mirth twinkling in the woman’s eyes.
“No, you don’t.”
“Okay, fine. I don’t.” Nina shrugs, offering a rueful smile. “This is reality TV gold. But I can assure you, the network won’t let us air more than five minutes of this absolute disaster of a date, and we have enough footage for that already. So, you have two options. Continue to run up and down the stairs watching after a guy you’ve barely spent half an hour with and will probably only spend another half an hour with before you give him the boot, or grab a mimosa, lie in the sun, and bask in an hour of unexpected downtime on us. The PAs can handle him. We paid for a morning on this yacht, and unfortunately for Kevin, the senior crew fully intends to enjoy it. In about fifty-five minutes, we’ll be back at the dock. The choice is yours.”
Emily hesitates for an admirable half-second before turning longingly toward the bar. A champagne flute already waits on the polished wood, orange juice and champagne bubbling.
“Good choice,” Nina whispers.
A stewardess leads her to a lounge chair on the main deck. Emily flops onto the cushion and takes in the sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean. The salty air is familiar. The crashing waves and the wind in her hair remind her of home. But this rich blue color is almost too beautiful to be real. So Emily sips her drink and breathes the scene in.
The next fifty-three minutes are the best fifty-three minutes she’s had in a month, and that might be the very reason she’s single.
Men aresomuch work.
Take her father, for example, whom she loves dearly and can’t help thinking about as the yacht races over the water, stirring up memories of her youth. The man can remember every single detail of an investigation, but ask him where his shoes are? Or his keys? Or his fill-in-the-blank household object? And he’ll stare at you blankly before muttering a curse. Gifts have never been his forte. Emily usually steps in for her mother’s birthday and their anniversary, plus Christmas and Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day. He needs dinner served every night and lunch packed for work—god forbid the chief of police learn how to make a freaking sandwich. And her mother does it happily despite having her own business to run.
Emily can’t do that.
She won’t.
And the men she meets never seem to get it. They don’t understand that starting her own business means late nights working, and a reliance on takeout, and an inability to makethemthe biggest priority in her life. They stare at her blankly when she starts talking about her designs, as if jewelry is a fleeting hobby and not the passion at the core of her personality. They aren’t interested inher, but in the image of her they made up in their own heads, some ideal she can never quite meet. And that’sbeforeshe goes deeper, before she even thinks of telling them the messy truth.
Only one man ever saw her clearly.
Only one man ever loved her forher.
And then he left.
Just like that, Emily’s Jake-free day is ruined. His mocking look comes to the forefront of her thoughts, the slow perusal of her cheerleading costume followed by a smarmy raise of his brow, as if he still knew her better than anyone else in the world, as if he still had any right to call her out.
Sure, she felt absurd in pigtails as a grown-ass woman.
Sure, the initial thought of wearing the outfit had her in hives.
Sure, she hated every second of the date and was playing it up for the cameras and for the guys who all gave up so much to be there with her.
But—
Wait a second.
Emily freezes mid-mimosa, a sudden realization striking. She downs the rest of her drink, then stands. The dock is already in view, which means she has less than five minutes before the cameras start rolling again. She finds Nina in two.
“Did you know Kevin gets seasick?”
“I think it’s pretty obvious. He’s been barfing for like an hour.”
“No.” Emily shakes her head. “Before, when you were organizing the dates, did you know Kevin gets seasick? Did you know this would happen?”
“Oh…” The producer swallows, winces, offers a weak smile. “I didn’t—”
“Did Jake?”
Nina scrunches her brow. “What?”
