He pointed toward my door. “Back in there, lady. You need sneakers and a sweatshirt.” I huffed and rolled my eyes like a teenager before turning and heading back to my room. When I came down the stairs, he was leaning his back against the banister with his hands in his pockets, looking relaxed and delicious. He was wearing jeans, a thicker black jacket, and his plain black baseball cap. He looked dangerous, and then he flashed me a dimple and it all went poof. No more danger. He grabbed my hand and pulled me toward the door.

“Where is everyone?” I asked.

“Everyone who?” he asked without turning to look at me. We passed the front desk and Jamie shot his hand up in a wave. “See ya, George.” The same man who was working behind the desk the night before waved to us.

“Who all is going sailing?”

He stopped in the parking lot as we approached his truck and turned toward me.

“It’s just you and me.” He hesitated, searching my face. “Is that okay?”

“Yes, I just don’t understand why you made such a big deal about dinner if you already had plans to sweep me away tonight?” I said, fluttering my eyelashes coquettishly.

“Dinner is intimate. This is sport. It’ll be fun.” He opened the passenger door. I hopped in. Chelsea sat on the sidewalk, glaring at us. He turned and spotted her. “You have to stay here, girl.” And then he pointed toward the inn. “Go lay down on your bed.” Her head dropped as she walked away slowly. She knew exactly what was going on.

As we turned onto the main road, I rolled down the window and stuck my head out, letting the wind dry my hair. Jamie turned up the radio.

“Who is this?” I shouted.

“The Amazing. It’s a song called ‘Dragon.’ ”

“It sounds old.”

“It’s not. What are you doing, crazy girl?”

“What does it look like, genius? I’m drying my hair.”

He laughed, shaking his head. I closed my eyes and felt the wind whip my long hair all over. I listened to the music and let the lowering sun beat down on my face. When my hair was adequately dry, I rolled the window up and Jamie turned down the music.

“All right, Katy, we need to talk about a few things.”

“Yes, because I have questions, too.”

“Well, first of all, I need to talk to you about the diabetes.” There were two rectangular canisters sitting between us on the truck seat, one orange and one black, both about the size of a sunglasses case. “The black case has my meter and insulin, and you won’t need to worry about that because I can do that myself. When my blood sugar is high and I need insulin, I’m usually alert. When it’s low, I can take these glucose tablets or drink some juice.” He held up a bottle of glucose tablets. “If it gets really low, I get groggy. If it gets too low, there’s a chance I could pass out.” My eyes got huge. He glanced over at me. “I’ve never passed out, but I’ve gotten really low. If I pass out, you’ll need to give me that shot in the orange case. It’s a glucagon kit.” He looked over quickly and then returned his gaze to the road. “Kate, are you okay?”

“Yes. Where do I inject you?” He pointed to his ass and grinned. “Of course it would have to be there.”

“I don’t think you’ll need to worry about it, but since we’ll be on a boat, I thought it was important to tell you.”

“Are we going on R.J.’s boat?”

“It’s my boat.” He snickered.

“Yesterday, when you gave me the ride up the driveway, you called R.J. a douche.” He didn’t respond. I let a few moments go by. “Jamie?”

“He can be, but he wasn’t himself in that interview. I think it was a case of paranoia, to be honest with you.”

“He had a funny way of showing it . . . by hitting on me?”

Shaking his head back and forth, he said, “I know, he was an idiot. R.J. usually tries to do the right thing, but sometimes it just backfires.”

I quietly watched Jamie for a few minutes and studied his tattoos as he turned the steering wheel.

“Where did you get your tattoos? They all look different.”

“I’ve gotten them all over the world. I traveled a lot after college.”

“They’re really interesting. Not typical at all. Do they mean anything?”

“Yes. Some do.” He looked over, wearing a small, sad smile, so I decided to drop the subject.

“Where are we going, exactly?”

“We’re sailing out of Sausalito. That’s where I keep my boat. We’re almost there.”

The sun was moving lower in the sky and the air was much cooler when we stepped onto the docks in Sausalito. “There she is.” He pointed to what looked like a thirty-foot standard keel sailboat. When I got closer, I noticed that it was an older boat with beautiful, polished wood decking, sleek lines, and a very tall mast.

Once we reached the boat, Jamie immediately started unhooking cords and coiling up lines on the dock. He unhooked the safety cable and stepped on board easily, then turned and held out his hand for me. “Step up on the block there, Katy, and then onto the boat. You can have a seat. I need to get a few things ready.” He gestured toward a bench in the cockpit behind the large steering wheel. I watched as he removed covers from the rolled-up sails, hooked lines, and then removed the door leading into the bedroom below. He went down the ladder and then returned a few moments later with a blanket and red wine in a stemless glass.

“Here you are. It’s going to be really chilly out on the water.”

“I feel so spoiled. Is this what you do for all the ladies who visit R. J. Lawson Winery?”

“Hardly,” he said as he continued setting things up and tugging at lines. “I usually sail with Guillermo, sometimes Susan or her son. I don’t really like going out alone, but I’ll go on short runs with just Chelsea once in a while.”

“Cute. She hates me, by the way.”

“Maybe she’s jealous of you.”

“Are we really having this conversation about a dog?”

“She’s like a person. You said it yourself.”

“True. So tell me about the boat. How long have you had it? How long have you been sailing?”

“I learned how to sail as a kid with my dad up north, but it wasn’t until last year that I had a boat of my own. I restored this beauty. I bought her for fifteen hundred dollars last year and spent three months bringing her back to life.”

“Why am I not surprised? What’s her name?”

“Heartbeats.”

“Why?”

“You’ll see.”

The sun was setting behind the Golden Gate Bridge. To say it was picturesque would be a gross understatement. I was in awe. Jamie backed the boat out of the slip and then moved forward out of the channel to the open water.

“Katy, what do you know about sailing?” His back was to me.

“Nothing. I’ve never even been on a sailboat.”

“You’re kidding. Please tell me you know how to swim.”

“Of course I do.”

“Well, I don’t think you’ll want to swim in this water, but it’s good that you know how. The life vests are under your seat just in case, and there’s a little emergency beacon and radio that you can turn on if something happens to me.”

“That sounds very scary.”

“Everything will be fine.”

“What shall I call you? Captain Jamie?”

“Or Captain Fantastic. Either one will do.” He turned to me and smiled.

Once we were in the open water, Jamie stepped aside and said, “Okay, your turn to steer.”

“Me?” I said with a shriek.

“Yes, I need to raise the sails. We’re going to turn into the wind. See the arrow up at the top of the mast?” He pointed up.

“Yes.”

“It’s always pointing in the direction that the wind is coming from. If the arrow is pointing directly to the bow of the boat, then you’re in irons; you’re driving directly into the wind. That’s what you want to do if you need to stop the boat—just turn the boat into the wind. Okay, now take the wheel.” He put his arm around my shoulder, bending close to my face, and pointed. “See that buoy in the distance?” I nodded. “Just steer the boat in that direction. That’s your heading. I’ll get the sails up and then we’ll kill the engine, my favorite part.” He jumped up on the tiny decking space and held the safety cords as he walked along toward the sails. He removed some ties and quickly raised the mainsail and then returned to the cockpit. Standing right behind me, I felt him bend close to my ear and then I heard him inhale deeply. He put his hands over mine and turned the wheel about forty degrees to the right until we were heading right for the Golden Gate Bridge.