“I like the way you think.” I flop next to her. She takes that as an offer to lick my face. As she sweeps her tongue across my cheek, I laugh.
And the laughter feels good.
It reminds me that life is good, and love is good, and that maybe I shouldn’t be quick to close the door. Just because I’ve been hurt before doesn’t mean it’ll happen again. Just because we fought doesn’t mean we’re through. Love isn’t all or nothing. It’s a million variations, and some days are better than others. Some are luminous, and others are muted, but none of them mean the end. I’d assumed Gabriel’s absence for the last two hours meant we’d reached the finish line. But maybe it just means he needed to cool off.
Like Shortcake is doing.
I tug her close and kiss her sweet little butterscotch face. “I love you,” I tell her, and she responds with a speed-round of kisses.
“She has the right idea.”
I sit bolt upright when I hear his voice.
“Hi,” I say, and I push my hands on the ground to stand. But he’s faster, and he parks himself next to me. He holds a small white paper bag, the top folded over.
“I’m sorry,” he says, contrition in his voice and etched deep in his eyes.
“I’m glad, because you really were being unfair,” I say, my voice soft—but strong, too, as I speak my piece. “You didn’t want to know about the past. You said as much.”
His smile is rueful. “I know, love. I know. Because I want you all to myself, and that’s not fair.”
“But you have me, Gabriel. Don’t you know that?”
“I do.” His eyes plead with me. “Forgive me.”
“Of course.” My lips twitch. “And I’m sorry, too.”
He tilts his head. “What are you sorry for? I was the asshole.”
Laughing lightly, I say, “Because I never mentioned Gavin.”
He shakes his head and places a hand on my arm. Shortcake scoots between us and licks his forearm, working on the map of Europe. He strokes her head, and damn if that sight doesn’t just slay me. “No, my love. You’re not required to give me your dating résumé. It was ridiculous for me to react that way—like a jealous ass.”
My lips curve into a grin. “Weirdly, I like your jealous side. Well, some of it,” I amend.
He laughs. “Which part?”
I angle my body closer to his. “The part that makes you want me all to yourself.”
“But that’s all of me,” he says, as my dog raises her snout and sniffs the white bag. “And that’s why I want to apologize. I reacted badly because I think of you as all mine. Since I was your first.” As he says it, everything makes sense. His comments. His reactions. His possessiveness.
“You feel an ownership of me?”
He nods. “I suppose I do. But that’s not fair. I know ten years passed, and of course you’ve had other relationships. It’s foolish of me to think you’ve only ever been with me, even if that’s what the jealous fool in me wants. But it’s not fair for me to expect you to have detailed every relationship for me. Especially since I pretty much told you at the museum that I preferred to think of you as having no history.” His grin is wry and his tone self-deprecating.
I reach for his hair, playing with the ends. “I’ve dated some over the years, but mostly I’ve been focused on dogs, and work, and my friends. I’m not someone who sleeps around. And you also need to know, I was never engaged to Gavin. I thought that he might propose, but he didn’t, and if he had, I’d have said no. I left him because he was a cheater. He had affairs left and right.”
Gabriel sneers. “Ass. He’s unworthy of any woman.”
“But that’s not the biggest reason why it ended.”
His brow furrows. “Why did it end?”
I tiptoe my fingers up his hair. I love his long hair—the lush, soft strands, the sexy, rock-star look of him. “I didn’t love him deeply. I didn’t love him at all, actually.”
“No?”
I shake my head and lower my voice. “My heart was given a long time ago, in Park Güell. No one else has ever come close,” I say, and this is the true vulnerability. This is my heart on the line.
He presses his forehead to mine and sighs deeply, happily. Then he whispers, “It’s only ever been you, Penny.” He pulls back, runs the pads of his fingers across my chin, and meets my gaze. “You’re the only one for me.”
I lean in to kiss him but he holds up a finger. “I bought you a little something.”
“You did?”
“When a man messes up, he should always bring a woman a gift. He should say he’s sorry, he should give her a gift, and there’s one more thing he should do. But first…this.” He opens the small, white, paper bag, reaches in, and takes out an even smaller bag.
Of caramels.
“Your favorite candy. You told me so the day we met. It has always reminded me of you.”
I beam. It’s just candy, but that’s the point. It’s candy because he’s sorry, and because he’s with me, and because that’s what you do when you’ve hurt the one you love. Then you move on. You keep going. You put it behind you.
“Take a bite,” he says, reaching for a wrapped candy from the bag. “I like the way you taste with caramel on your tongue.” He strokes his chin. “Scratch that. I always like the way you taste.”
He curls his hand around mine and kisses me deeply. It tastes like the past, like the present, and like all our tomorrows.
But I’m wildly curious about something he left unanswered, so I break the kiss and tap his shoulder. “What’s the third thing a man should do when he’s messed up?”
He rises, reaches for my hand, and pulls me up. “Why don’t we go back to your place, and I’ll show you.”
And that night at my home, that’s when he gives me more orgasms than I can count.
All things considered, I think I came out okay from this little tiff in the park. As the night blurs to an end, and the early light of the dawn peeks through the blinds, we fall asleep at last—him, me, and Shortcake, who’s wedged herself between us.
Epilogue
Gabriel
Two months later
The clock tells me it’s nearly six in the evening. We have plans for dinner and to see a show. I’ve been here for ten minutes, since I arrived early.
The fountains beat out a watery rhythm behind me. A chill seeps through the air as the shorter days and longer nights bear down on New York City.
I wait for her. Briefly, I flash back to how she must have felt waiting and think how hard it must have been for her.
I know how hard it was for me to be on the other side of the world.
When I spot her walking up the steps, I stop rewinding to the past. Tonight, we write a new story.
My gorgeous Penny wears a short, black jacket, cinched at the waist. And heels, always heels. And does she ever look stunning with her lovely legs on display. Her hair falls long and loose, and my mind forms a fantastic image of curling those strands around my fist later.
But now is not the time for such thoughts.
As she nears me, she grins. I cross the final distance to her and take her in my arms. I say nothing—I simply kiss her. I can’t resist. She melts against me, and that’s what I want. Always and forever.
When we separate, she gives me a breathy hello.
“Good evening to you,” I say as my hand travels up the front of her jacket to her collar, where a splash of red fabric shows. “Red dress?”
She shrugs sexily. “Seemed fitting since you asked me to meet you here,” she says, tipping her head toward the fountain.
I take a breath. “I wanted us to have a chance to do this part over, too. The fountain part. To have what we didn’t have here the first time,” I say, my eyes locked with hers. Her lips part slightly. “Now that we’re together again, I believe it was meant to be this way, and we were meant to meet a second time. I believe if we’d been here ten years ago, we’d have messed up our chances somehow. Made mistakes. Been too young and fo
olish.”
A smile spreads across her face. “Maybe we’d each have done things to push the other away. Maybe we’d have lost each other.”
My heart lifts, knowing she understands me. She gets me. “What if we needed those years apart so we could get it right the second time around?”
Her eyes shine with happiness, and I’m sure mine do, too. “I think we’re getting it right. Don’t you?”
Taking her hands in mine, I drop to one knee. Her eyes widen, and she whispers my name. It sounds heavenly on her lips and I’m hopeful—so damn hopeful—she wants this as much as I do. I take the ring from my pocket and hold up a brilliant, emerald-cut diamond.
“Let’s get it right for always. Forever. Will you marry me?”
Tears fall from her eyes, and she drops to her knees, too, wrapping her arms around me. “Yes, yes, yes.”
Penny
Sometimes heartbreak happens for a reason. Sometimes hurt does make us stronger. At the time, I couldn’t have imagined that this place—the most romantic spot in all of Manhattan—could be anything but the epicenter of all my regret. Now, as a gem sparkles brightly on my finger and the lights twinkle around us while the fountains spray merrily in the twilight sky, we start a brand new tale. A happily ever after that unfolds in front of us.
“I always hoped somehow I’d see you again,” I tell him through my tears.
“My love, you’re going to do more than see me. You’ll see me every day now.”
“That sounds like fate to me.”
Yes, some things were meant to be.
THE END
* * * *
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Full Package
By Lauren Blakely
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I’ve been told I have quite a gift.
Hey, I don’t just mean in my pants. I’ve got a big brain too, and a huge heart of gold. And I like to use all my gifts to the fullest, the package included. With the crazy stuff I deal with all day long at work, the one thing I want at night is to give a woman the time of her life, both in and out of bed.
But then I find myself stuck between a rock and a sexy roommate, which makes for one very hard…place.
Because scoring an apartment in this city is harder than finding true love. So even if I have to shack up with my buddy’s smoking hot and incredibly amazing little sister, a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.
I can resist Josie. I’m disciplined, I’m focused, and I keep my hands to myself, even in the mere five-hundred square feet we share. Until the one night she insists on sliding under the covers with me. It’ll help her sleep after what happened that day, she says.
Surprise—neither one of us sleeps.
And even though we agree to return to roomies-without-benefits, I quickly realize I want more than someone to split the utilities with. Now all I want is to spend every night—and every day—with my gorgeous roommate.
Did I mention she’s also one of my best friends? That she’s brilliant, beautiful and a total firecracker? Guess that makes her the full package too.
What’s a man stuck in a hard place to do?
* * * *
Read on for chapter one from FULL PACKAGE, a standalone romantic comedy from Lauren Blakely, available in January 2017!
Chapter One
I have a theory that it takes the human brain at least three tries to fully process something when it’s the opposite of what you want to hear.
Take now.
I’m on the third attempt.
Even though I can clearly hear the words the woman on the phone says, I’m sure if I repeat them in the form of a question, she’ll eventually say what I want her to say. “I lost the apartment?” I try again, because soon the bad news she’s serving up will magically morph into something good. Like if a rice cake turned into pizza. Preferably a cheese pie with mushrooms.
Because there is no fucking way the leasing agent is telling me this.
“The landlord had a change of heart,” she says once more, and the sweet one-bedroom in Chelsea slips through my fingers.
I grit my teeth and suck in a breath as I pace outside the emergency room entrance at the hospital. The sidewalk is clogged with other doctors, too, as well as nurses and paramedics, not to mention visitors. I move away from them, walking along the brick exterior during this short break in my day. “But this is the fifth time a place has fallen through,” I say, doing my best to keep my tone even. I don’t have a temper. I don’t get angry. But if I were to, this might be the reason. Because Dante was wrong. Finding an apartment in New York City is the tenth circle of hell. It’s the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, too.
Consider my luck so far in this impossible quest: the first apartment went bust when the landlord changed her mind. The second time, the place was rented to someone in the family. The third pad had termites. You get my drift.
“It’s a tough market right now,” Erica, the leasing agent, says. I gotta give her credit. She’s been trying to find me four walls and a floor for more than a month. “I’ll look again to see if there are any new available options.”
“Thanks. My sublease is up so I’m going to be homeless soon.” I turn around and pace back toward the entrance. Buying a place isn’t an option. I’ve still got medical school debt, and doctors don’t make bank the way they used to. Especially, not first-year ER docs.
She laughs. “I doubt you’ll be homeless. Be
sides, I’ve told you, the couch at my place has your name on it. Come to think of it, so does the bed, if you know what I mean.”
I blink. I do know what she means. I just wasn’t expecting to be propositioned by my leasing agent at two in the afternoon on a Wednesday.
Or a Thursday. Or a Friday. Basically, on any day.
“Thanks for the offer.” I rein in my surprise because I thought she was married. And not just the regular kind of married, but the happily kind.
“You let me know, Chase. I make a great ceviche, I’m incredibly neat, and I wouldn’t even charge you a dime. We could work out some other form of payment,” she says with a purr.
And my leasing agent has now officially requested that I be her boy toy. Fuck. Time to grow a beard. I know I look young for my job, but young enough to be asked to be a sugar-boy? I turn to the glass window of the hospital and consider my face. Clean-shaven, hazel eyes, light brown hair, chiseled jaw . . . Damn, I’m quite a specimen. No wonder she propositioned me. Maybe I should take her more seriously.
Even though I have zero interest in serving as anyone’s sex slave, her offer is borderline tempting because I’m at the end of the line. I’ve scoured Craigslist and everyplace else, but I might as well give a kidney for a one-bedroom—that’d be easier than finding a pad in this city.
You know all those TV shows where the perky twenty-something advertising assistant nabs a swell apartment with a flower planter, bright purple walls, and a reading nook on the Upper West Side? Or when the wet-behind-the-ears dude with an entry-level post at a magazine lands a swank bachelor pad in Tribeca?
The Only One: A One Love Novella Page 12