The One Love Collection

by Lauren Blakely

  I nod. “You’re right. They are.”

  I love how our lives have meshed. We’ve had dinner and evenings out with Kristy and Tyler, and the two of us have played pool with her gang of friends, too. She’s no pool shark, though. She still can barely knock in a ball. Seems every time I try to teach her, we get distracted.

  No complaints there.

  No complaints anywhere.

  In fact, as my eyes scan the reception room, I can only think of one thing that would make my life better. This.

  Maybe it’s too soon. It’s definitely unplanned. But the second the idea touches down, it takes hold and digs roots. And I know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it needs to be our next step.

  I cup her cheek in my hand. “Marry me.”

  She startles and wrenches back. “What?”

  “I love you madly. I want to be with you always. We should get married.”

  She blinks, parts her lips, and speaks slowly, each word taking its time. “Are you really proposing to me right now?”

  I laugh, mostly at myself. “Yeah. I am.” Then I brush a kiss to her lips. “I didn’t plan this. I don’t have a ring. But I’ll take you shopping tomorrow. All I know is I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want this,” I say, casting my gaze around the room, “for us. Forever.”

  I hold her face in my hands and look into her eyes. They’re shiny, and she licks her lips. And then, I propose. “I love you. God, how I love you. I want to marry you. Will you marry me?”

  Abby

  I’m not a girl who dreamed of a man getting down on one knee in a horse-drawn carriage. I’ve never expected a shiny ring presented in a champagne glass.

  All I’ve ever hoped for is this kind of love.

  I have it, and I have so much more.

  And that’s why his unexpected and unplanned proposal is perfect for us. It comes from his heart, and that’s how I answer him—from mine.

  There is only one answer.

  “Yes.”

  THE END

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  Did you enjoy getting to know Simon’s buddy Tyler? Eager to find out about his plans to win back the woman of his dreams? Be sure to check out THE HOT ONE, available everywhere!

  And if you liked the sexy single dad in THE SEXY ONE, you’d probably enjoy THE KNOCKED UP PLAN, available everywhere!

  Acknowledgments

  Thank you so much to my amazing readers, as always! Big love to my husband, my children, my family and my dogs. I am grateful for the guidance of Michelle Wolfson and KP Simmon, as well as the insight into the story from Jen McCoy, Kim Bias and Dena Marie. Lauren Clarke works editorial magic and Karen Lawson is a goddess of precision. Thank you to Kelley, Candi and Keyanna. Thank you to Helen for the stunning cover, and Lauren Perry for the photography. Thanks to that sexy man on the cover for having a beautiful body! The lovely Nelle L’Amour helped me with the French and gave a beautiful quote. And thanks to my friends who keep me sane, though that’s up for debate admittedly, every day.

  The Hot One

  To Karen. For one note that mattered so much.

  His Prologue

  Technically, I didn't drop my drawers the first time I saw her again. Just my balls.

  The ones in my hands. Juggling balls.

  Here’s how it went down. Picture a Sunday morning in Central Park. A perfect summer day. The grass was green, the breeze was warm, and I’d just spent the last few hours getting acquainted with turtles and frogs at the children’s zoo because I’m an awesome uncle. And Carly’s one cool seven-year-old.

  The kid loves all creatures, but especially the ones that jump and crawl, so I took her to the enchanted forest part of the zoo. When we finished, she tugged on my shirt sleeve, batted her hazel eyes, and asked ever so sweetly for an ice cream cone.

  Like I stood a chance at resisting her. C’mon. She’s my cousin’s kid, which technically makes her my first cousin once removed, but uncle is what I am for all intents and purposes. And clearly she gets her charm from our side of the family.

  With her hand in mine, we strolled across the grass near the running path, hunting for the nearest ice cream dealer.

  And then Carly did that thing little kids do.

  She shrieked for what seemed like absolutely no reason. Next, she pointed to an impossibly tall dude wearing a beret while juggling two Rubik’s Cubes, two orange balls, and a small green beanbag.

  “He can do five, Uncle Tyler!” Carly shouted, her eyes going wide.

  “Five isn’t too shabby,” I said with a shrug.

  She turned to me with a questioning stare. “I’ve never seen you do five.”

  “That’s because I haven’t shown you all my tricks yet.”

  “Can you really juggle five balls?”

  I scoffed. “Please, I can do that with my eyes closed.”

  I didn’t put myself through law school juggling for nothing.

  Just kidding.

  You can’t put yourself through law school juggling anything but insane class schedules and lack of sleep.

  Carly arched an eyebrow. So did the juggler, as he kept up the cascade of his quintet. Show-off.

  “I want to see. Show me,” Carly urged.

  Yeah, Carly’s a chip off the old block. She’s all about challenging me, and I’m all about rising to the challenge.

  The stick-thin guy with the beret raised his chin. “Have at it, man.”

  With clockwork precision, he let the balls fall out of orbit and into his palm. Next, the Rubik’s Cubes. Then the beanbag. He stepped closer, handed me the objects, and flashed a crooked, put-your-money-where-your-mouth-is grin.

  Game on.

  Packs of runners jogged along, cyclists wheeled over the black asphalt, and rollerbladers whizzed by on the concrete. With my feet parked hip’s width apart, I stood at the edge of the grass getting a feel for the items, weighing them, and then one, two, three, four, five, I whisked each one up into the air in a high oval arc. Round and round, in a perfect five-ball cascade.

  Carly clapped, then demanded more. “Yes, now close your eyes!”

  I groaned. What was I thinking? Juggling with eyes closed is fucking hard. But I could pull it off for a couple seconds. My special skill. I obliged my niece’s request, pulling off a few quick blind ovals. Five seconds later, after I’d shown off that particular party trick, I opened my eyes.

  And I saw a vision from my past.

  A blond beauty, with long legs, a lovely round ass, and a high ponytail swishing back and forth across her shoulders. She ran along the path in tiny orange let-me-peel-them-off-with-my-teeth-pretty-please running shorts. And that face. Dear Lord, the stunning face of an angel. High cheekbones. Deep brown eyes that saw me like no one ever had. Those red lips, shaped like a bow. Fuck me, the things she could do with those lips. The things I taught her to do with that sinful mouth.

  Delaney sure as hell knew how to use it, and I don’t just mean in the bedroom. We used to talk about anything and everything when we were together in college. Days with her. Nights with her. Best time of my life. That woman was full of spark. Full of fire. So damn passionate. And look at her now.

  Jesus Christ.

  It had to be illegal to be that smoking hot.

  She wasn’t alone. She ran with two other chicks and a couple dogs.

  As for me? Mister fast on his feet, quick with a word, never met a situation he can’t talk his way out of? Scratch all that right then and there. Because I dropped the cubes. I dropped the beanbag. And I dropped the orange balls in a pile of wreckage at my feet.

  My jaw fell, too.

  But the best part? All that came out of my mouth was a muffled Hey.

  Yep. Eight years later and I could only utter a monosyllable.

  Height of my mother-fucking unbrilliance.

  She rolled her eyes and shook her head as she trotted past me. Over her shoulder, she called out, “How’s the jug
gling working out for you now, Tyler?”

  Oh, zinger, how you slay me.

  The lady won.

  The lady killed it.

  “Great. I kept it up,” I shouted.

  She gave herself away for a sliver of a second, and if I were in court, I’d have known then I had her. She let her gaze linger far too long. Giving me that patented you-were-in-my-fantasies-last-night look I knew so well, her eyes roaming down my face, my chest, and yeah, there, right fucking there, to her favorite part.

  She loved that part.

  But this wasn’t a courtroom battle.

  Because when she cast her pretty brown eyes to my niece, I saw Delaney adding up the years and computing possibilities. “Looks like you sure did,” she said, deadpan all the way.

  She snapped her gaze from me, zeroed in on the path in front of her, and sprinted.

  With her friends and the dogs flanking her, she tore past and left me in the dust with my balls, my jaw, and my composure lying in the dirt at my feet.

  To say I’d been thinking of her every day for the last eight years would be a lie. To say I’d gone those eight years without ever once thinking of her would be an even bigger fib.

  But I sure as hell didn’t expect to run into her one fine Sunday morning in the park. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t ready. And my first thought was to catch up and explain that I hadn’t ditched her to have a kid. Closing the distance would have been easy. I can run like the wind. I can put one foot in front of the other and hoof it. But I had my favorite person with me, and no way was I going to drag Carly in a chase after a girl I once loved like the sun.

  Still, I tried.

  I grabbed Carly’s hand and yelled. “Delaney!”

  She didn’t even turn around, and soon she was a speck rounding the bend.

  I suppose, in retrospect, the last words out of my mouth when I dumped her shouldn’t have been, “It’s too hard to juggle classes and you.”

  Her Prologue

  I’m cursed.

  There’s no other explanation for this thing that happens to me every time I get close.

  I’m not talking about horseshoes close, either.

  I mean every single time I take the rabbit out for a ride.

  The bunny makes it clear it needs a certain stallion to get over the hump.

  Do bunnies even like horses?

  I don’t know, but it pisses me off that my traitorous body seems to need one man, and one man only, to fly off the cliff.

  I don’t ask for this kind of sexual haunting. Hell, I don’t even believe in ghosts. But the ghost of boyfriends past has been inhabiting my fantasies for years. I try like hell to rely on Henry Cavill, Chris Hemsworth, or Michael Fassbender. I mean, really. Michael Fassbender. And we all know what he’s packing.

  But nope.

  My brain won’t bend to his Fass.

  I’ve learned to stop fighting it. I just go with it when my ex pops into my solo flights. I grit my teeth and bear it, and let him join Bunny to take me to the magic land. Then I turn off the pink toy, tuck it into the drawer, and drift asleep, satisfied, but also not.

  That’s been my life for the last year and a half. The biggest and littlest Os come with double-A assistance. So Bunny and I have gotten a lot closer. Sometimes, we make it a double.

  And in the mornings, I pretend I didn’t get off to Tyler Fucking Nichols.

  That man.

  That cocky jerk who broke my heart.

  But even if he inhabits my naughty imagination, I do take some solace in knowing I’m over Tyler. I’m so over the way he ended things eight years ago. I’ve moved on, thank you very much. This is purely a physical possession, nothing more. Hell, it’s not really a surprise that my mind wanders to his particular talents, given the way he owned my body when we were younger. But I sure do wish he’d stop crashing my BYOB— that’s bring your own batteries—parties.

  One Sunday morning, I stumbled upon the key to exorcising him.

  Here’s how it all went down.

  I popped out of bed, washed my face, brushed my teeth, pulled my hair into a ponytail, and tugged on my running shorts.

  A little later, I met up with my good friends Penny and Nicole at the entrance to Central Park, and we began our training run for a 10K race we’re doing in a few weeks. I figured it would be just another morning jog, followed by a plate of two eggs, any style, with a strong mug of green tea at my favorite sidewalk café, The Charming Breakfast Spot.

  Instead, I saw him.

  Juggling.

  Of all things, the man was juggling.

  The spitting image of irony.

  At the edge of the grass by the running path, he spun five objects in an oblong blur with the most adorable little brown-haired girl by his side. Who looked just like him.

  And in the blink of an eye, I seethed.

  I ached.

  As I ran, I broiled. I went from zero to sixty miles per hour of hurt in mere seconds. All I could think was the bastard had found a way to juggle in the end. I couldn’t believe he’d moved on so easily after me. And he didn’t just rebound to another girlfriend. He leveled all the way up to fatherhood.

  The worst part? The absolutely, completely, horrifically unfair part? He was still so goddamn handsome, with that chestnut hair I wanted to run my hands through, that square jawline I could have touched all night, those lips made for kissing me everywhere.

  In last night’s unbidden appearance in my mind, he sure as hell had. He’d been my first in that department; he was still the best.

  At that, and at everything.

  Look, any woman who says she doesn’t rate her lovers is a liar. She might not have a whiteboard with a numbered list or a diary with rankings. But we all know who rocked our world and claimed our bodies.

  He was the one for me. Top of the list. End of the line.

  But no more.

  Tonight, I’d kick him out of my head, no matter what it took.

  “Look,” I hissed to my girls. “It’s Tyler ‘the Juggler’ Nichols.”

  Penny’s amber eyes went round as moons as her mouth fell open. She jerked her head to Tyler. “Holy smokes, he is hot,” she whispered, as she ran with her little Chihuahua trotting beside her.

  I could have tripped her for that. But I loved her too much, and her little dog, too.

  “He’s not hot,” I muttered, as I breathed hard from our pace.

  But Tyler Nichols was indeed a specimen, just like he’d been when we were in college. From the day we met in an advanced poli-sci seminar, the man hooked me, he lined me, he sinkered me. He was my best friend, my boyfriend, my most fearsome competitor, my greatest ally, and my first love.

  Then he broke my heart, and a few weeks after that, my ego shattered when he finished me off at a debate tournament.

  That was devastating . . . and yet, at the same time, it wasn’t. But before I could linger on the ways my future shifted during the tumultuous end of my senior year of college, the present shifted, too. When Tyler opened his eyes and met mine, the expression in his was priceless. He blinked, then recognition flashed in those dark-brown irises.

  He was clearly shocked to see me, and yet, he also seemed excited. Like he was gazing upon his favorite work of art. The way he stared at me almost made me think I was a regular attendee at his private one-man shows.

  And if that was the case, the man could eat his heart out.

  This time, I was going to have the words. All of them. All the hurt and sadness morphed into something beautiful and wholly necessary—the right words at the right time. “How’s the juggling working out for you now, Tyler?”

  As I ran past him, he uttered a strangled string of words. “Great. I kept it up.”

  “Evidently,” I said, locking my stare briefly with his pretty little girl.

  I looked away, and I thanked the lucky stars that I finally had all I needed to eject him from the driver’s seat of my fantasy life. Even as he called my name, I kept running.

 
Leaving him far behind, where he belonged.

  If I had to go on a Tyler starvation diet, I’d sign up right then. Because no way, no how, was I getting off anymore to a man who’d fathered someone else’s baby.

  Good-bye, Tyler Nichols curse.

  It ended today.

  1

  Delaney

  I sink into the wooden chair at the mint-green table at our favorite sidewalk café and turn to my two closest friends—dark-haired Penny and redheaded Nicole. Penny leashes her little dog, Shortcake, to the leg of her chair, while Nicole ties up her Irish setter mix, Ruby.

  “I can’t believe he has a kid,” I say, still in shock that Tyler had turned down the procreation path so quickly.

  Penny shakes her head, surprise registering in her eyes. “He’s so young to have one, too.”

  Nicole laughs as a busboy delivers a pitcher of water and four glasses. We’re regulars, and he knows our drill. Nicole thanks him as he pours. She offers a glass to her dog sprawled at her feet under the table. “Right,” Nicole says, her voice thick with sarcasm, as Ruby laps up the drink with loud slurps. “Because age has so much to do with his ability to deliver sperm to a waiting egg during one of the numerous times he let some loose from his body.”

  She’s right, of course, and now I want to know all the details. “I wonder if he met her right after me? The kid looked, what, six? Seven? And we split eight years ago. Do you think it happened right away? After college? Before he went to law school? He barely even waited after he split up with me,” I say, dragging a hand through my ponytail as the questions tumble free in a rush. “I haven’t seen him or talked to him since we split. I didn’t even know he was in Manhattan.”

  “And is he married now?” Penny asks. “I’m dying to know, since I saw the way he looked at you.”

  I latch on to her words. “How did he look at me?”