Smooth Sailing. Lori Wilde

up any room he walked into and now here was Jackie telling him that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. “So let me get this straight. You’re breaking up with me because I’m too much fun to be around?”

      “Precisely.”

      “I’ll work.”

      “Prove it.”

      “How?”

      “Go do something useful.”

      “Like what?”

      “I don’t know. Find someone to help. Find something bigger than yourself to be a part of. Figure it out.”

      “If I do that, will you give me a second chance?”

      “Jeb—”

      “Please,” he said, “don’t cut off all hope.”

      She sighed. “All right. I’ll give you a year. If you can get involved with something meaningful and prove to me you’ve changed, we’ll see.”

      “You won’t regret it,” he said, but she’d already turned back to her research materials.

      The first thing he’d done was change the name of his boat to Second Chance, even though it was supposedly bad luck to change the name of a boat. The very next day, Hurricane Sylvia had churned up the Atlantic and a few days later slammed into St. Michael’s. Bad luck for St. Michael’s, but Jeb had taken it as a sign and he’d headed out to help rebuild the devastated island.

      Jeb smiled smugly. Jackie had given him a much-needed wakeup call, and she was going to be so impressed at how he’d changed.

      He shut off the lights, blew out the candles and stood on the deck in the moonlight. He was damned proud of what he’d done. He’d gone from thinking only of himself to putting others first, and he was so grateful to Jackie for setting him on this path. He couldn’t wait to tell her about it.

      Bed. It was time to go to bed, but he didn’t have the energy to head down to his bunk on the lower deck.

      He stretched, yawned, completely exhausted. His eyelids were heavy. He walked to the blue-and-white-striped bridge hammock, stretched out, cupped his head in his palms and stared up at the stars.

      “I’m coming home a changed man, Jackie,” he murmured and instantly fell into a deep sleep.