The Only One

by Lauren Blakely

  I grab that free hand from my chest and grip it, wrapping my palm over her tight fist. Both her hands are in mine, and I won’t let her go. “I didn’t ever want you to feel stupid. Not then. Not now. So, no more games. No more pretending—”

  She jumps in, the vein in her neck beating hard as her pitch rises. “You want to know why I didn’t say ‘I’m your Penelope’? Because I waited for you, Gabriel. You promised you’d show. You said how much you wanted to see me again. I stood outside that fountain for two hours. Hoping. And you never emailed. I never heard from you. Not a peep. Not that day. Not the next. Not once through all the years. Do you have any idea how much that hurt?” Her voice breaks, as if she’s a heartbeat away from tears. “Why would I think anything other than you got what you wanted from me in Barcelona and then didn’t want to see me again?”

  The sheen in her beautiful brown eyes tells me exactly how much it hurt. My actions didn’t just wound her. They cut her deeply. “That was the last thing I ever wanted to happen,” I say in a rush.

  But my words hardly register as she raises her chin higher and pushes against my chest with our joined hands. For a moment, it occurs to me that she might run. I don’t want her to escape, but I’m not the kind of a man who’s going to force her to stay.

  I let go of her hands. She doesn’t slip away from me, though. Instead, she grips my shirt, fisting the fabric near my collar, her eyes blazing. “Then tonight you take me out and you romance me, and you make me realize why I fell for you in the first place. And I don’t want to feel stupid again when you don’t show up.” A pair of tears slide down her cheeks, and her voice turns impossibly soft, but she doesn’t look away. “Because it’s happening again. I’m starting to fall for you all over again.”

  Cupping her shoulders, I lean in and kiss away one tear, then the other. “It is my greatest regret,” I whisper against her soft cheek. “All I wanted was to see you again. I wanted it so much.”

  Her anger drifts away, like smoke. “Why didn’t you show?”

  Taking a breath, I back away to meet her gaze. “In retrospect, it’s kind of a funny story.”

  Chapter Eight

  Gabriel

  She’s wedged against the iron fence, and I’m inches away.

  She waits for me to explain my absence, and she probably expects a tragedy. Something worthy of the movies. Or a Nicholas Sparks novel.

  But there’s no terrible misfortune here. No fire. No mother who hid handwritten letters. No horrific accident that prevented me from writing.

  Just fate. Just life. Just a stupid mistake made by my twenty-four-year-old self in a fit of rampant frustration. I’m going to sound like an idiot when I tell her. But fuck, that’s the cost. I blurt out, “I threw my phone.”

  She scowls, her eyes registering surprise. “You threw your phone?” she asks, like it will make more sense if she repeats it.

  “Yes. And I know I should probably have some dramatic explanation, like my grandmother died, or my mother was taken ill, God forbid. But those aren’t the reasons.”

  Her expression softens. “I’m glad they’re okay. They are okay, right?”

  I nod. “Yes, everyone is fine and good and ridiculously healthy. My sister is married and has twin boys. My brother is engaged. And my mother is retired from teaching now.”

  “Because of you?” she asks, tilting up her chin.

  “Yes. Because of me. I take care of them now. But the point is,” I say, pausing to take a breath, “I wanted to see you again more than nearly anything. I had the job in New York working at a restaurant. My cousin in Miami had connected me with the restaurant—it was run by his friend. And the morning you left, I found out my work visa was denied.”

  Her eyes widen. “Oh no.”

  I close my eyes briefly and pinch the bridge of my nose, recalling my frustration as I’d stared at the official government letter denying my application. Hot anger had seared my blood that morning a decade ago.

  When I open my eyes, I tell her what I learned when I went to the mailbox in the building where I sublet my room. “You’d gotten on your plane, and I finally checked the mail. I don’t think I checked it once when you were with me. I was…” My lips twitch, then I add, “otherwise occupied.”

  A smile tugs at her lips, too, and I continue.

  “I opened the mailbox, and there was my beautiful letter from the government. I was sure it would be my visa. My permission to go to the States and work there. I even kissed the stupid envelope, thinking it contained all the good news in the world. I’d wanted the job badly. For the money and the opportunity, and then to see you. It seemed like a done deal,” I say, desperation coloring my tone, just remembering that tense anticipation. “The people who ran the restaurant had assured me the visa would work out. They’d requested others for chefs that had gone through successfully, and they were sure they’d get one for me. I had the job, and they’d gotten plenty of other work visas approved without a problem. And at last, mine had arrived.”

  Her eyes cloud with sadness, and I reach for her hand again. This time, we link fingers, and it feels like magic and desire all at once. But there’s so much more to say, so I keep going. “I rushed back up the steps to my crummy little studio, which was hardly crummy anymore because it was where I’d spent those nights with you, and I slid my finger under the seal and opened the letter.” My shoulders sag. “Denied. Work visa denied. I was so fucking mad. And then I tried to call you.”

  She tilts her head, her eyebrows rising in question. “You did?”

  “Of course,” I say, confidently. “I called you before I called my cousin.”

  “I must have been on the plane,” she says, her voice soft, as if she’s tripping back in time, too. Then a new realization seems to hit her. “Oh God. Even if you left a message I would never have gotten it. All I had was that little temporary flip phone for traveling. And it stopped working as soon as I left the country.”

  “Exactly. Because everything was different ten years ago.”

  “We didn’t have smart phones.” It’s as if we’re both reminding each other of the different time in which we met. “You couldn’t just live in New York and call a friend in Paris. Skype wasn’t a thing we used regularly.”

  Penelope and I had exchanged cell numbers when we’d met so we could be in touch for those few days when she was in Spain. But her phone had been a temporary one, set up on a European carrier for local calls and emergencies.

  “There was no way for me to call you once you left Spain,” I say, but we weren’t stupid. We’d planned for this when we’d exchanged emails and then picked a time and place in New York to meet. “You didn’t have your new cell yet. You were going to buy one when you returned to the States. We’d talked about how by the time you were set back up in the U.S., I’d be there. Seeing you again.” I choke out a bitter laugh at the sheer irony.

  “I thought that, too,” she says, looking at me from under her lashes. Her wide eyes are earnest now, and the anger that whipped through her minutes ago seems to have faded into the night. “But what about email? Why didn’t you email me and tell me what happened with the job? I’d have understood.”

  “This is the part of the story that is funny, but only in retrospect,” I say, taking a deep breath. “When I reached your voicemail, and it was just a recording saying this number is no longer a working number, or whatever it said, that only intensified my frustration. I didn’t have the job. I wasn’t going to the U.S. And I couldn’t reach you to tell you, so I threw my phone against the wall.”

  She blinks and furrows her brow. “That’s an intense reaction.”

  “I’m not a guy with a temper, Penelope. You have to know that, but I wanted to see you again so badly, and when I couldn’t reach you I threw the phone.”

  “I’ve been known to toss a hairbrush at the wall myself. But does that mean you punished your phone since it couldn’t reach my phone?” she asks, a note of playfulness returning to her voice.


  “Yes. But I actually punished myself.” I gulp and spit out the full magnitude of my stupid mistake. “Because your email was stored in the contacts in my phone.”

  “Oh God,” she says with a gasp. Her eyes float closed, and she wobbles. I grip her hand tighter as she speaks softly. “That’s why you never emailed me.” She swallows, her lips quivering, then she opens her eyes. “And I didn’t email you afterward because I was so upset when you didn’t show.”

  I take her other hand in mine, holding both now. “I hated not being able to reach you. I half wish I could tell you I had your email on a piece of paper, and while I stirred a saucepan on the stove it fluttered out of my pocket, caught fire, and burned, and I desperately tried to save it, tossing buckets of water on the fire, but was left with only the charred remains of something at Hotmail.”

  A rueful smile tugs at her lips. “PenelopeJ5261 at Hotmail. It was the worst email address.”

  I laugh and nod. “That is the worst. You need to be Penelope at Gmail this time, please.”

  Her eyes shine with a new sort of happiness. “That sounds much better. But I’m PennyJones at Gmail.”

  I tap my temple and repeat her address. “Saved.” I take a beat then return to the topic at hand. “But don’t you see? I tried to tell you I wasn’t coming. I wanted to email you. That was the only way I had to reach you then to tell you I wouldn’t be making our date at Lincoln Center. My God, as soon as my phone hit the wall and clattered to the floor, I ran over, crouched down, and tried desperately to fix it,” I say, the memory of my attempts to play phone technician flashing before my eyes. “Alas, telephone repair was never in my skill set. But you have to know, I hated that the job fell through, and more than that, I hated the thought of you going to the fountains to wait for me. It was like fate was laughing at me, and I hated that I couldn’t see you or reach you. That whole day I thought about it. I pictured you. I saw you there, and it tore me up.”

  “Me, too,” she whispers, and tears slip from her beautiful eyes again. This time, I don’t kiss them away. I let her cry, because I sense she needs it. “I thought you stood me up.”

  “Of course you did. What else would you think?” I say, my voice gentle.

  She swallows. “But you did try to reach me. You tried to tell me.”

  “I wanted desperately to reach you, to let you know I wasn’t going to be there. That New York wasn’t in the cards for me.”

  “Gabriel,” she says, her voice like a confession. She lets go of my hands and places her palms on my chest. Her touch is electric and flares through my body. “I deleted your email a few days later. I threw out all your photos. I could have written to you, and I never did. I was so hurt when you didn’t show, but I’m so, so sorry now.”

  I lean into her and dust a kiss on her forehead. “I’m sorry, too. I tried to call you at work.”

  “You did?” she asks, pulling back to look in my eyes.

  I nod. “I remembered the name of your bank. Smith and Holloway. I found it through international information. I called when you were supposed to be starting, and the receptionist seemed a bit scattered.”

  Penny laughs. “She was. She was always mixing up messages.” Then her mouth falls open. “Oh God. No. No. You left me a message at work, too?”

  “I did,” I say, and a surge of pride courses through me. Because now she knows how hard I worked to reach her.

  She shakes her head. “It was like this running joke with the receptionist and her garbled messages. She quit shortly before I did. She hated it, too.” Her expression shifts, as if she’s remembering something else now. “Wait. You said something about throwing your phone on your reality show. I watched a clip a few days ago. You made a comment about it when you lost the salad hoedown or something?”

  I groan. “Hey. There was no salad hoedown on the show. I would not have participated in a salad hoedown.” I do tuck that name away—Salad Hoedown—since I want to tease Tina that it would make a good name for a band. “But yes, the producers asked if I was frustrated after losing a round of the bruschetta battle or whatever it was called. But losing that didn’t come close to how pissed I was knowing I’d lost the way to contact you.”

  Soft fingers travel up the back of my neck. Then her hands are in my hair, and her lips are wonderfully near to mine as she says, “I’m sorry I said those things about you being the sexiest chef like it was a bad thing. I was hurt, and I lashed out. Forgive me?”

  “There’s nothing to forgive,” I say, because her hands are on me again and all is right in the world.

  She tosses me a seductive grin. “Besides, you are the sexiest chef, so can you just shut up and kiss me now?”

  That I can do.

  Raising a hand, I slide my thumb along her bottom lip, and she shudders. I’m done with words, done with talking. I only want to touch her again. Her lips part and her breath feathers over the pad of my thumb. It feels like anticipation. Like a deep and potent need.

  She’s the one who got away, and she’s now returned. My lips brush hers, and the world stills. For the briefest second, I don’t want to move. All I want is to savor this sliver of time—this most perfect of moments when I kiss her again.

  For weeks, even months after she’d left, I longed for her. I’d asked myself how it was possible that we could spend only three days and nights together and yet I wanted her deep in my bones, far into the corners of my heart. As her lips seal against mine, and her fingers thread through my hair, the answer comes to me.

  It arrives in the way I cup her jaw in one hand, in the glide of her mouth, soft and gentle over mine. It’s self-evident in how she opens for me, her tongue darting out eagerly.

  We fit, like we were meant to be.

  Like we are the blueprint for kissing, handed down from on high. We are the lovers who make others jealous. We are the ones who connect so incredibly well that everyone wants what we have. I sensed it the day I met her. I felt it the first night I took her home. I was certain when I made love to her.

  Penelope Jones drives me wild just by being her.

  My free hand finds her hip, and I tug her against me, closing the remaining distance. Her slim body molds to mine, and that’s more proof of why this woman captivated me from the second she walked into my restaurant the other day. Because my Penelope has been indelibly etched in my mind for ten years. Now, with her body angled to mine, my body remembers her.

  She murmurs, and it’s like a match to kindling. The sparks inside me roar as lust surges in my veins and, well, in other parts, too. I want her. I ache for her. My head spins, dizzy with desire that’s lived through the years. Set on a low flickering flame, like a blue light, it’s now hot and fiery once more.

  Chapter Nine

  Penny

  My feet don’t touch the ground. Gravity has no hold on me. I’m floating, falling, gliding.

  My brain short-circuits as Gabriel kisses me, his lips both wonderfully familiar and fantastically new. My skin sizzles everywhere. Just everywhere. There’s no part of me untouched by this kiss. It’s consuming in every sense of the word. My mind is awash in endorphins, my heart hammers madly with happiness, and my body aches with an almost debilitating pleasure.

  My fingers lace through his hair. And yes, his hair is softer than I remember. It’s thick and lush, and I can’t stop touching it. I can’t stop kissing him. I don’t want to break this connection now that we have it back.

  I dreamed for so many nights of kissing him again, even as I fought against it. Still he visited me late at night in my fantasies. Hope was the cruelest torment, and it lasted so damn long.

  And all those times I hoped, it was for this.

  Him wanting me again.

  He deepens the kiss, his lips claiming mine, his mouth owning me. Closeness is all I wish for, and he gives it to me, his lean, tall frame aligned to mine, his chest pressed to me, his erection hard as a rock against my hip. I’m barely aware of where I am, whether we’re alone, if it’s day or night. A
ll I know is I want him to take me again, to have me, to make love to me.

  I want him to strip me naked, kiss me all over, down my thighs to my knees, nipping my ankles, then back up again, settling between my legs.

  I moan loudly into his mouth as my panties dampen. He swallows my sounds, and he’s voracious, as hungry as an animal in the way he can’t seem to stop kissing me. I think we might be as close to fucking as two people who are kissing can be. Quite possibly we’ve crossed some sort of line of public decency as I slam my body against his.

  Thankfully it’s New York, and no one cares that our arms and hands are tangled up in each other, or that I grind my hips against him, seeking his hard-on to fill the wild ache inside me. My body is empty and needy, and I’m dying for him to return me to the kind of ecstatic bliss I’ve only ever known with him.

  He could fuck me here against this railing and I’d go along with it. I want him that much. I’m about to break the kiss and say take me home now when the faint sound of a dog’s breathing reaches me through the haze of wanting.

  My eyes flutter open in time to see an older woman walking a Papillon, and the sight snaps responsibility into focus.

  “Shortcake,” I say as I wrench apart from Gabriel.

  “Hmmm?” His face is flushed and his eyes are dark and hazy.

  “My dog. I need to go. To let her out and take her for a short walk. She’s been alone for hours.”

  My comment seems to take a few seconds to register, then he nods. “Of course. I understand.”

  Somehow, we manage to separate from our fully-clothed almost-screw, and I smooth a hand over my shirt and then my hair.

  “Penelope,” he says, his voice low and smoky.

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not letting you go again.” He licks his lips then says, “Penny,” as if he’s adjusting to the name I use now.