One Perfect Night

By Christiane France

Paul knew Nico was special the moment they exchanged that first glance at Termini station in Rome late one hot summer afternoon. Paul was on his way back to London and when it was announced the departure of their train had been cancelled and travel temporarily suspended, they decided to have dinner together while waiting for further information.

Early next morning, when Nico found a flight cancellation and took off, all Paul knew was Nico’s first name.

Two years later, Paul hasn’t forgotten Nico, and when they meet again at another train station in London, the chemistry is still there. Nico believes Fate has brought them back together, and he’s ready to close his eyes and jump into a relationship. But two years is a long time, and Paul thinks they should slow down. There’s more to a relationship than chemistry alone. They need to first check the water, and then take it one step at a time.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Christiane France
• Release date: Sep 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781536505962

Book preview

One Perfect Night

I don’t know what made me glance in that particular direction at that precise moment. The important thing is, I did, and there he was, sitting on a bench a little farther down the station platform—a man I’d met just one time and never forgotten. The man with the sexy dark eyes and beautiful smile who still haunted my dreams and even kept me awake on occasion.

He looked exactly like the Nico I remembered, but was it him? Or was it someone with the same general appearance, added to the fact I was on the platform of another railway station on another boiling hot late summer afternoon waiting for yet another train?

The man was too far away for me to be one hundred percent certain. After two years, even if I were closer, how could I be sure? A voice in my head urged me to move nearer and make sure, but I stayed put. In two years people changed and memories blurred. If it had been two months, fine, I might have taken a chance. No way did I want to make a complete idiot of myself by rushing over and saying, Hi, remember me? to a complete stranger.

A porter pushing a cart loaded with packages stopped right in front of where I was sitting, blocking my view. When I looked again, the man had disappeared. The only occupants of the bench now were a woman and her dog.

Maybe it was Nico, and maybe not. Whoever it was, he’d gone, and it should have put an end to my wondering. I should’ve been grateful for the reprieve and let it go. Instead, I berated myself for not finding out one way or the other. I’d had the perfect opportunity. It would have taken no more than a minute or two for me to walk down to the far end of the platform, given whoever was on the bench a casual glance as I passed, and walked back. If I’d imagined the likeness and it was someone else, no big deal. My curiosity would have been satisfied and that would have been the end of it.

Or would it?

If it had been Nico, I knew the chances of him recognizing me after all this time were nil. It had happened too long ago.

And supposing it had been him and he did remember, then what?

Other than suffering major embarrassment by trying to bridge a two-year gap with meaningless small talk, I couldn’t think of a single thing. We knew virtually nothing about one another. We had absolutely nothing in common—except for that one perfect hot summer night we’d spent together in a cheap hotel room hardly bigger than a shoe-box, fucking our brains out.

If I’d known Nico’s last name, what he did, where he worked, or even where he lived, I might have had stood a chance at tracking him down. As it was, all I knew was his first name and that he’d been desperate to get to Brussels to attend to some personal business. What was so urgent about it, he’d never said.

I had no idea why my memories of that night continued to linger. I wasn’t one of those lonely people who had no life and nothing better to do than relive stuff like that. I had plenty of friends, a job I loved, and Nico wasn’t the first or the only man I’d slept with. I’d had other lovers before and after I’d met him, all memorable to some degree and none totally forgotten. Maybe it was because our one-night affair had been so intense, so full of emotion, the foreign setting like a clip from a romantic movie, and Nico so different from anyone else I’d known.

Whatever the reason, I still remembered every moment of that night in perfect detail. The restaurant we’d gone to for dinner as well as the tacky hotel room with the faded blue-flowered wallpaper. The walls had been damp to the touch and the paper starting to become unstuck and curl back at the seams. I could still see the floors with the cracked and broken black and white tiles, and the rickety, thrift-shop furniture. Most of all, I remembered the two of us in that creaky old double bed tangled up in flimsy sheets damp with our sweat and the evidence of our love-making.

The lighting had been dim, consisting of a forty-watt bulb covered with a fly-spotted lampshade, and the bathroom European basic. One corner of the room was taken up with a sink, a bidet, a sliver of soap and a small, thin towel, along with a notice on the wall to the effect there was a shower and toilet down the hall.

The facilities had been the furthest thing from my thoughts as I followed Nico into that room. He’d locked the door, taken me in his arms and... There had been no hesitation, no fumbling. One minute we were kissing, our tongues hard and thrusting—he’d tasted of the wine we had with dinner and the sage in the Saltimbocca. The next thing, our clothes had magically disappeared and we were on the bed. His dick was in my mouth and mine in his and then that breath-stealing moment when I thought I couldn’t hold on as long as another millisecond, and he’d—

I took a deep breath. I even remembered the weird smell of mildew overlaid with cum.

My body began to react, and I pushed the picture from my mind. Nico and I met, we shared a few hours together, then he went his way and I went mine. It was over. Done. Finished. And wishing it could have been different wouldn’t change one damn thing.

I took out my mobile, scrolled through the messages and dealt with the most important, then contacted the office to let them know I was on my way back. I’d missed the last train to London by a hair and it would be another half hour