All Chapters of Return to Her First Love: Chapter 11 - Chapter 17

Maddie woke from her afternoon nap – a luxury that she decided she could really get used to if she wasn’t careful – then prepared to go back down to the dock and try her luck fishing again.She pulled her hair up again, throwing on a baseball cap for good measure, then made her way back out to the end of the dock. She rigged another worm on her hook, cast out, set her line, and settled in to wait.Just as the sunlight was beginning to fade, the end of Maddie’s pole dipped sharply.Hah! Got one!She reeled in quickly, but the line stripped out. She set her teeth and tugged back against the brutal force pulling the top half of her rod toward the water.Whatever it is, it’s strong, she realized, and paid out just a bit of slack so the line wouldn’t snap under the strain before slowly reeling it back in again.She lowered the angle of her pole, then jerked sharply upward to make sure the hook was set. This caused whatever had swallowed her bait to thrash about even more, and she struggled

“What?” she managed, as she stared at his wedding band. “I thought… you have on…”“Yes, I still wear it,” Mason told her. “But I lost Laura and our daughter Abagail in a car crash six years ago.”The revelation buckled Maddie’s knees and she sank down on the couch beside him.“Oh, Mason, I’m so sorry,” she whispered. “What happened?”“Cement truck driver that was too busy texting to pay attention to traffic, and he hit them so hard our car wound up completely underneath his truck.”Maddie paled as tears began to trace down her cheeks.“They’d only been gone from the house about twenty minutes or so,” he murmured, his blue eyes bright with pain from the memory.“Laura was headed to her sister’s house for a birthday party. I couldn’t go, I was on call for work. Sure enough, my phone rang, and I headed into the office. When I got to the main intersection at the end of our subdivision, I noticed emergency crews everywhere, and then I noticed our car…” his voice, thick with emotion, traile

When she returned to Flower Mound three days later, the first place Maddie went was to Kathy’s house.“How was the cabin? Relaxing, right?”“Yes. And no,” Maddie answered cryptically.At the first sign of Kathy’s brow furrowing in confusion, Maddie sighed and said, “Got coffee? There’s a lot to share.”“Sure thing. Come on,” Kathy said and led her into the kitchen.Mugs filled, they sat at Kathy’s kitchen table.“Now,” Kathy began once she’d passed the sugar, “spill it. What happened down there?”“I ran into someone I haven’t seen in years, Kathy. It was… surreal.”“In a good way or a bad way?”A twinkle appeared in Maddie’s eye.“Well, for starters, Mason Gentries is even more of a hottie than I remembered. He’s a lot taller now, too. Six foot, at least.”“Let me guess. He’s dreamy,” Kathy teased.“Definitely. And the spark between us was instant. I’ve never wanted a man so much in my life.”“I’m not hearing a downside here, Maddie.”“Well…” she paused, remembering as she sipped her

Maddie signed in, took her name tag and peeled the paper off the back so she could affix it to her dress just under her right collarbone. Then she turned and walked into the ballroom.“Wow,” Maddie murmured under her breath as she stepped back in time. She recognized some faces, not others, and it amazed her to see all the people she’d last been around twenty years before.“Maddie? You made it! I’m so glad!” a woman screeched as she barreled toward her.***From the other end of the room, Mason’s ears perked up when he heard Maddie’s name called out. He scanned the crowd looking for her.Beverly Bennett touched his arm, pouting that the richest man in the room wasn’t paying full attention to her.“Mason, dear,” she started to say, but he cut her off.“Excuse me, please,” he murmured and began to weave his way through the crowd, looking for Maddie.***“Hey, Stacie,” Maddie managed to say before she found herself in a bone-crushing hug from a very inebriated former classmate.“I was te