“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.