She pulled the phone out of her purse and saw “Blocked” on the screen.

“Rylann Pierce.”

A familiar male voice spoke.

“I can’t believe how good it is to hear your voice again.”

Rylann rolled back on the bed, unable to conceal her surprise.

“Jon.”

Twenty-three

RYLANN LOOKED OVER at the clock on her nightstand and did the math. Rome was seven hours ahead of Chicago. “It’s after two o’clock in the morning for you.”

“So it is,” Jon said cheerfully. “I just left a friend’s party. There’s a woman in the Rome office, also an expat, who introduced me to some locals. We were celebrating…well, come to think of it, I have no clue what we were celebrating. It’s a fun group.”

“I’m sure it—”

He kept right on talking. “One of the guys has a brother who owns a vineyard in Tuscany where we hang out on weekends. You’d love it, babe. The main house is gorgeous. It’s this eighteenth-century villa that’s been renovated and is set right into these green, rolling hills. Molto bello.”

Rylann blinked.

Oh, boy.

Putting aside the fact that Jon was babbling and suddenly breaking out the Italian, she’d caught the “babe” he’d slipped in there. As she knew well from the three years they’d dated, that could mean only one thing.

She’d just been internationally drunk-dialed.

“It sounds like Italy has turned out to be everything you’d hoped it would,” she said, still trying to shake the sleep from her head. This conversation had suddenly become very surreal.

“Not everything.” He sighed dramatically. “The party was at an apartment not far from the Piazza Navona. I left before the others and just started walking. Before I knew it, I was standing at the Bernini fountain, looking at the trattoria with the yellow awning that we loved so much when we came here together. Do you remember?”

Yes, she did. After a two-day sightseeing whirlwind that had included the Roman Forum, the Vatican, the Spanish Steps, and the Coliseum, they’d decided to take a break. The following day they’d slept in, found a restaurant for lunch, and sat at an outdoor table for hours while talking, people watching, eating good food, and drinking wine. Afterward they’d gone back to the hotel and made love. “I remember. Although that seems like a long time ago now.”

“Yeah. A lot of things seem like they were a long time ago.” He changed the subject. “So? How have you been?”

First an e-mail, now he was drunk dialing her. No clue what was going on with her ex these days, but it was probably time she figured it out. “Jon. No offense but…what are you doing? Are we really going to have this conversation at two o’clock in the morning?”

“We are not having this conversation at two o’clock in the morning. It’s only seven p.m. for you,” he said cutely.

Rylann thought it was best not to mince words. If for no other reason, the economically frugal government-salaried lawyer in her was very conscious of the fact that this call was costing him a pretty Euro per minute. “Why are you calling?”

“Can’t a man say hi to an old friend without it being a federal offense?”

She assumed the pun was intended. “I got the e-mail, remember? We’ve already done the ‘Hi’ thing.”

“I just wanted to see how you’re doing, Ry. From your response you seemed okay, but who can tell anything over e-mail?”

Rylann ran one hand through her hair. Perhaps, because she and Jon had agreed not to talk after the breakup, it was inevitable that this conversation would occur at some point. People liked to have closure. “I’m doing well. I think Chicago is going to be a good fit for me.”

“I’ve kept in touch with Keith, Kellie, Dan, and Claire,” Jon said. “They tell me that they’ve only traded a couple e-mails with you since you left San Francisco. When I heard that, I got a little worried.”

Ah, now she had a better sense of what was going on here. She’d gotten so swept up in her new life in Chicago that she’d pushed aside, perhaps too quickly, her old one. This had not been entirely unintentional. Keith, Kellie, Dan, and Claire had been their “couple” friends, and after she and Jon had broken up, the whole dynamic had been thrown out of whack. Sure, she’d given it the college try, she’d even met the girls for drinks a few times during the four months she’d still lived in San Francisco after the breakup. But mostly, Kellie and Claire kept asking if she’d talked to Jon after he’d left for Rome—a subject she hadn’t been keen to revisit umpteen times. Especially since the answer had been no.

“I’ve been busy with work, that’s all,” Rylann said. “But you’re right—I should give them a call.”

“They’re worried that you’re sitting in Chicago, wallowing in misery.” Jon chuckled. “They even have these romantic notions that you’ve been pining away, thinking about me. So I can e-mail them and say that you’re officially a-okay?”

His tone was light and jesting, but Rylann wondered if she heard an unspoken question there. “I’m fine. Truly.”

“They’ll be relieved to hear that. You remember how nosy those guys can get.” His tone remained casual. “And of course the next thing they’ll ask is whether you’re seeing anyone. So the answer to that would be…?”