When my best friend Taylor gifted me a vacation at a resort owned by his grandparents, the last thing I expected was to bond with a man seventeen years older.

Tate was also vacationing alone.

He’d come to Midnight Key to clear his head and reevaluate his life.

I’d come to get over my high school sweetheart who’d dumped me.

I’d spotted the brawny, tattooed Adonis in the lobby on the first day and thought he had to be someone’s hot dad.

But then we matched on an app that paired single men and women by proximity.

The problem was? At nineteen—almost twenty—I’d lied and said I was twenty-nine.

Tate outed me on our first date, and I fessed up to my real age.

But we continued to run into each other.

And eventually we found our connection was too magnetic to deny.

While we agreed to only use first names and to part ways at the end of the trip, I’d really fallen for Tate.

I never forgot him and knew he was the one who got away.

Remember that guy friend who gifted me the trip?

Well, four years later, Taylor got married.

He’d been estranged from his dad for years, though recently they’d reconnected.

What I didn’t know was that the man I’d had that torrid affair with at the resort would be standing next to Taylor in the receiving line.

My dream man Tate? Was Taylor’s father.

She grew up in Boston with five older brothers and spent most of her twenties as a television news anchor. Penelope resides in Rhode Island with her husband, son, and beautiful daughter with autism.

With millions of books sold, she is a 21-time New York Times bestseller and the author of over forty books. Her novels have been translated into over a dozen languages and can be found in bookstores around the world.