Penelope looked at him as if she’d forgotten he was there. “Huh?”
“What is it? What’s wrong?”
His concern broke her trance. Unable to find the words, Penelope lifted the phone so he could read it himself:
Penny, I know this is probably a lost cause. You probably won’t see this one, either. But if you do get this, you have to know I’ve been trying to contact Bonnie for weeks. I need to see her. I need to talk to her. I need to tell her how much I love her. Please help me.
Felix
Finn stared back at her, as dumbfounded as she was. He, however, came to his senses a lot faster.
“Nope. Not right now. Not at this moment. This is our time together. This isn’t happening,” he declared with obvious annoyance.
“But Finn….”
“I just ordered almost everything on the menu that I thought you might possibly like. So right now, I’m having dinner with my girlfriend. We're going to stuff ourselves and drink the rest of that flat champagne, as well as the fresh bottle I ordered. Then, and only then, will we discuss what to do about this. It’s been weeks. A few hours isn’t going to make a difference.”
He had her at the word girlfriend. As much as she wanted to fix everything for Bonnie, she was not going to hurt Finn in this moment to do it. “Okay.”
“Bonnie can—wait, what? Okay?”
She nodded, enjoying throwing him off. Slipping past him, linking her fingers in his, she towed him along back towards the couch and the food.
In her defense, she really thought she did quite well. She drank three glasses of champagne and ate more food than she thought possible. How could she not when he was feeding it to her? Enjoying her pleasure at every bite. She lasted almost two hours before she finally mentioned the email again.
A look of resignation settled on his face. He knew they couldn’t ignore the subject any longer. “All right, grab your phone. Let’s take a look.”
She dug for it amongst the rumpled covers on the bed, where he’d thrown it when they’d exited the bathroom while he tidied up the remains of their feast.
Still new to the pleasure of being close to him, feeling like she’d never grow tired of it, Penelope cuddled into his arms, where they could read through it together.
“Well, you know him. What do you think?” Finn asked.
“Honestly. I think this explains a lot. I told you, none of this was like him. I don’t know what happened. But if Bonnie was angry, she might have….”
“Cut him off,” Finn finished for her.
Which prompted an idea. Penelope exited the email and began searching through her phone, quickly confirming her suspicions. “She blocked him.” A memory hit her like a slap on the face, and all the pieces came together. “From the beginning. She borrowed my phone the first day she arrived. I knew it was weird that she didn’t have hers. She must have blocked himright then from… I’d say everything. Except she wouldn’t have thought of my work email. I don’t even know how he got it.”
“Sounds like it took him a while. And it sounds like he’s desperate.” Finn hugged her closer as he said it, as if imagining the idea of losing her. “So, what do you think? What do we do?”
“I think I at least have to give him a chance to explain, right?”
“Fair enough,” Finn agreed, even as her thumbs started flying over her phone, typing out her response.
“Don’t explain for him, though. Don’t put your thoughts in his head. Let him tell you what happened so we can decide what’s next.”
She felt his chuckle as he saw her deleting most of what she’d already written, starting again. This time, she made sure to be concise and to the point.
“Is that us good for tonight? We’ve done what we can, right?” Finn asked hopefully.
Penelope shut off her phone, turned the ringer to silent, and dropped it on the table. “Yes.”
The sky had grown dark, and the sound of rain gently tapping could be heard. It was past the time for exploring the forest. The window showed only their reflection now, making it clear to Penelope what Finn was doing as his hands moved down her bathrobe to untie the knot there.
Chapter 15
Penelope’s eyes did not want to open. She was having the loveliest dream and could feel it fading away from her. She tried to hold onto it, to remember the details, only to have them slip from her grasp as the waking world around her began to intrude.
