Free Last Chance Proposal by Barbara Deleo

reminder that Jonty can’t be pushed too hard, but it was my decision to make, so the fault’s mine.”
    “It’s okay. It can be scary in the dark.”
    Jonty had his face turned to Louis.
    Cy spoke to her, but obviously his words were for his son, too. “I talked to Jonty about what happened last night, and I said that what made me most proud was that he gave it a go. He was more ready than I was to try something new, so my motto for the next few weeks is giving things a go, including taking the boys out on the yacht like I promised. Want to come?”
    “Um, no thanks.” She dragged sunglasses from her head to her face. “I’ve got too much to do today. You have fun, though.” She cast a look at the choppy waves. “It’s pretty windy out there.”
    “We’ll have to wait until your mum gets back, Louis. We need two adults on the yacht.” Cy laid his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “We can go another time.”
    Louis scuffed his toe in the sand. “No point waiting for mum, then,” he said with a scowl. “She gets seasick in the tub.”
    All three male faces turned to Ellie and her heart fell. Somewhere inside, her body remembered the gentle sway as she’d stood on the yacht’s deck, the way the teak beneath her feet warmed her whole body, but after the last time on Cy’s yacht…
    “What about the pukeko? Doesn’t someone need to stay and look after him?” she said.
    “We’ve built a makeshift coop,” Cy said, “so it can run on grass instead of getting sore feet in the box.”
    She could hardly say she didn’t know how to sail. Cy knew she could handle a boat as well as he could. But she needed a little more time away from him to get her fantasies under control. If she risked being in close quarters before she had that locked down, she might do something irrevocable, like kiss him for real this time.
    “The turkey!” she said. “The pavlova and shelling the peas. Who’ll get all that ready if I go sailing? We’ll end up eating cereal for Christmas dinner.”
    “It’s early,” Cy said, throwing her a grin. “We can be back by lunchtime. It’d be nice to have you with us.”
    Ellie looked down at Jonty. The little boy’s face was impassive as usual, but for some reason she couldn’t look away. And couldn’t say no.
    “All right,” she said, giving Cy a reluctant grin. “But I need to be back by lunchtime if we want to have any Christmas, okay?”
    Cy clapped his hand on Louis’s shoulder. “Excellent.”

    Half an hour later they were at the jetty where Cy’s uncle would bring the yacht from its mooring. Louis and Jonty explored the beach, while Ellie and Cy brought the last of the gear down from the car. When everything was waiting in a huge pile, Ellie kicked her flip-flops off, dug her toes into the cool sand, and looked out to sea.
    “It’s been so long since I’ve been to the island.” She took off her sunglasses so she could see everything more clearly and put them on the ground, too. The wind had dropped and there was a gentle breeze. The boys were hunting through piles of driftwood at the high tide line. She kicked at the dry sand. “I wonder if that old shipwreck’s still visible off the north side.”
    “I can’t wait to get out there.” Cy was standing, hands on hips, looking out to sea.
    The day stretched in front of them. Relief that there was no lasting damage after last night and the thought that she’d be spending the morning with her oldest friend fizzed through Ellie’s blood. In an unexplainable surge of energy, she threw her hands down on the sand and kicked her legs up in the air in a handstand. But her balance was all wrong and she ended up falling in a heap on the sand, laughing.
    “What in the hell was that?” Cy stood with his hands low on his hips. “You were about the best at handstands I’ve ever seen. What happened?”
    She picked herself off the sand and stood up. “I got old, that’s what happened. And my center of gravity’s probably