Maybe that strength was forged years ago when I was in Europe, or perhaps when he left me at the fountain.
“Those are absolutely beautiful,” he says, staring at the deep pinks and rich purples on my skin. His voice is rough, like it was when he was kissing me, when he’d grow more and more turned on.
“Thank you,” I whisper, my voice like a feather.
“How long have you had them?”
I raise my fingertips to the lily, tracing it. “The lily is new. Only a few months old. The others I had done several years ago.” I swear I can hear a rumble in his throat, like a low, needy groan as I touch the ink. The way he stares is almost unabashed, as if he’s not ashamed to look at me like this, with desire in his eyes. Because that’s what I see.
There are no two ways about it.
I want him still.
And he wants me.
This me.
I don’t know why it didn’t register before. Maybe because I was still too shocked. Maybe I’m a fool with him. But this is a date. He asked me—Penny—on a date. He hasn’t once talked about the event like he’d said he wanted to. He didn’t ask me here to this romantic restaurant with its soft music and low lights to talk about work.
My heart speeds up, and the hair on my arms stands on end.
We haven’t spoken of the picnic, or anything else but each other. And now he looks at me as if I’m the next serving of this meal.
The trouble is I don’t know what to make of the fact that he asked me out. Does it affirm that he’s a playboy who simply gobbles up women? Or does it mean I’m special? And is that what I want out of tonight? To be desired? For him to take this new me home? Or is it for him to know that I’m the same woman who fell for him and that I can’t get him out of my mind years later?
The questions plague me, tugging my certainty in opposite directions. My bravado slinks away.
Soon enough, the waiter clears our plates, and when he leaves, I say thank you to Gabriel.
“No. Thank you,” he says.
“For?”
“For having dinner with me.” The sentiment sounds completely earnest. As far as I can tell, he’s been honest with me the entire meal. I can’t last much longer without telling the truth. I’m not this person. I want to be the kind of woman who is open and honest, even when I don’t know the score. I have to be true to me.
“Dinner was amazing. All of it,” I say, and that’s the whole truth.
“But if memory serves, you said you’re not satisfied until you have dessert.”
Chapter Seven
Gabriel
As she eats the crème brûlée, that sense of déjà vu slams back into me, like a punishing wave. I try to keep my head above water and cling to the present, but I’m a man shuttled back and forth in time. I can’t shake off the past.
I thought I’d succeeded, that I’d followed Tina’s advice and gotten to know Penny for Penny, and I have. To be sure, Penny is completely captivating. She’s hooked me, and I want to see her again, to talk to her again, to get to know her more.
But as these thoughts lead me on, I’m like a dog yanked behind by a leash. Someone is tugging me in the other direction.
Even as I try desperately to maintain my footing in the most wonderful first date I’ve had in ages, I can’t hold on. I succumb to the wave, sinking under.
* * * *
I was taken with her the moment I sat down at the table next to hers at the café on a street corner in Barcelona. Her warm eyes met mine, and I wasn’t able to look away, so I didn’t. When her almond cake arrived, she arched an eyebrow, and said, “You’re admiring my dessert.”
I laughed. “I don’t think it’s the dessert I’m admiring. But I have been hoping you’d want company to help devour it. May I join you?”
She nodded and I moved to her table. She picked up her fork and said, “It’s made with caramel—my favorite. And it’s divine. By all means, let’s devour.”
“I’m a big believer in the consumption of sweets.”
“We have a saying in America. Eat dessert first,” she said.
I lifted my fork and took a bite of the Tarta de Santiago. “I like this saying. Can you appoint me a temporary American?”
She tapped my shoulder, something that shouldn’t have turned me on, but somehow it did. “There. Done. By the power vested in me, I’ve declared you able to eat dessert first.”
“I must tell you a secret. I already possessed the ability,” I said, and she laughed, a pretty sound, like bells.
And I was halfway to hooked. Maybe it was her confidence. She seemed a few years younger than me, but there wasn’t a shred of shyness or insecurity about her. Her wit was intoxicating, and so was her beauty.
When we finished the almond cake with the caramel layer on the bottom, I was certain of two things—I didn’t want to let her get away, and I needed to see her again. “May I take you to dinner?” I asked.
She said yes.
But we didn’t wait till dinner. We spent the afternoon together, wandering around the city, strolling through the side streets, ducking into the churches and buildings and seeing the sights she wanted to explore.
All the while, I learned more about her. That she’d studied European History in college, that she’d loved traveling across the continent these last few months, and that she was looking forward to her job on Wall Street at Smith and Holloway Bank when she returned to the United States.