Page 50 of The Roman Holiday Rule

Once it’s paid (My part was almost a hundred euros. Pranks are expensive, kids), we stand outside on the sidewalk, facing each other. He adjusts the strap of his blueprints tube.

It’s not like we’re in a private spot, but all the city sounds around us—birds trilling, Vespas growling, and people chattering—might as well not exist. He’s giving me the same focus he showed the first time we met, like I’m all that matters right now.

That quality is really going to getmehim in trouble someday.

With a jolt, I remember Katie, and everything fizzing in me goes flat. How have I let myself enjoy his company, do a photo shoot,touch him, when I know he’s engaged? How hashebeen okay with that? He must not be the guy I thought he was.

I take a step back. “I have to go, I’m already late meeting Gia at the museum.”

“Yeah.” His gaze sweeps over me, and he fills his lungs. “Oh, by the way, I think this belongs to you, Lexington.” He presses something small and cold into my hand and folds my fingers around it. With a tight smile that’s almost self-conscious, he waves and walks away.

I watch him go, frozen, until he’s rounded the corner. Only then do I open my hand to examine what he’s put there and gasp.

It’s my lira.

Twenty-Eight

Mark

Like a fool,I played all my cards. She should have no doubt in her mind where I stand with her.

But the way her expression hardened and she stepped away, breaking that promising moment, means either she hasn’t forgiven my pessimism about her trip or this sparring we fall so easily into doesn’t ignite her the way it does me.

My phone rings, and I check the caller. Dad. Already?

I answer and he asks, “What’s wrong?”

My hello must have sounded as dejected as I feel. “What do I do if I mess up with someone? Like, potentially ruined our relationship, even if my intentions were good?”

There’s a long silence. “You’re asking the man who hasn’t spoken to his father in thirty-five years? I’m obviously not an expert.”

My heart sinks. He’s telling me it’s probably too late for both of us.

Except the crack in his voice when he says the words.

He must wish, deep down, that things weren’t beyond repair with Nonno. That gives me hope.

And then he says, “What I was calling to tell you is that I looked some things up, made a few phone calls, and I think I have a marblesource that might be a match, but it’s hard to say without having seen the mosaic in person. This is a chance of a lifetime restoration—not just an old villa, but a mosaic reconstruction with the international preservation society’s eyes on it. Not to mention getting to work with you.Ifyou can get the bid for this job—” He takes a deep breath, as if summoning courage to speak the next words. “I’m in.”

Twenty-Nine

Lexi

I standin the street,the lira from Mark resting on my palm. The hole for the necklace chain is on the coin, and the dolphin shape is rubbed almost flat by years of me running my thumb over the familiar bumps. Without a doubt it’s the lira Mom gave me on my tenth birthday, but I can’t imagine why or how Mark came to have what I threw in the fountain.

Oh. Warmth floods my body. The policeman at Trevi Fountain. Mark climbed into the water to get it. That was forme.

Hands shaking, I thread the coin on the chain and clasp it around my neck again. The cool metal rests against my throat, its weight comforting and familiar.

“I think this belongs to you, Lexington.”

Mark retrieved it for me. Something tight and controlled in me melts, although I’m not sure it should.

I rest against the building behind me, letting the rough sunbaked bricks steady me. I can’t stop touching the lira, can’t convince myself that my loss has been reversed.

Just when I began to think he wasn’t the good guy I thought he was, he goes and does something like this.

He’s so...