“You have good news?” he asked before I even had the chance to say hello.

“I do.”

“Are you going to share it with me?” He laughed, and I heard it coming from just outside the apartment.

I jumped off the couch and ran to the front door, swinging it wide open. “What a nice surprise!”

He pushed the phone into his back pocket and stepped inside, eyes hungrily moving over me. Capturing my lips quickly, he pushed us up against the door, giving the pedestrians outside a bit of a show.

They hooted and hollered, but Marcello wasn’t deterred. Until a bucket of ice water named Daisy breezed into the living room, dousing us thoroughly.

“Please do me a favor next time you sexually maul my best friend. Close the door so the neighborhood kids aren’t scarred for life,” she teased, whacking him on the rear with her clutch.

He looked just the tiniest bit embarrassed but snapped out of it quickly. Following up a quick kiss with a pat on my ass, he pulled me over to the chair, where he sat and indicated for me to drop into his lap.

“Now, tell me your news,” he said, rubbing small circles on my back.

Daisy was watching us curiously. Though she knew the details about us, knowing and seeing were totally different things.

Overcome with the urge to kiss him, I held his face and laid one on him that had Daisy whistling. I couldn’t help it. I was bursting with joy. Hope, love, everything in that moment, thanks to the new job offer.

And being able to stay in Italy longer. With him.

“Wow, you two, get a room. Wait until Fiona gets a load of this,” she said, dropping that little nugget.

“Fiona? What about her?”

“Have you checked your phone at all?”

I pulled my phone out of my pocket and sighed. I’d disabled texting to avoid the roaming charges. “Three hundred texts? What the hell?”

I’d missed an entire conversation with Daisy and Fiona Bradford, our friend from Boston College who flew circles around Daisy with her crazy travel schedule. I wasn’t sure if she actually had a mailing address outside her office anymore. A field producer with the Travel Channel, she explored the world in a way that I could only dream of. Time zones were a bitch for us normally, but now with Daisy and me sharing one and her God knows where, we never actually got to talk in real time all that often. “Summarize your War and Peace–size text conversation for me, please.”

“You first. Tell us your news.”

With Daisy holding my hand and Marcello’s arm wrapped my middle, I had the most comforting sense of being anchored. That tether that I was looking for was present and I couldn’t wait to see where this could lead.

“I’m glad that you’re both here for me to tell you this. Maria unexpectedly came by the villa today. She wanted to check out my work, and praise the hell out of my mad skills, of course.”

“Of course,” Daisy echoed.

“She thanked me again for coming on board, and then . . . she offered me another restoration job here in Rome!”

Daisy vaulted off the couch onto my lap, making us a Daisy, Avery, Marcello sandwich. She kissed both of my cheeks and held them, her green eyes sparkling.

“I am so fucking proud of you! Goddamn, girl, good for you! Hell, good for us, right, Marcello?” she joked, slapping him on the arm.

Marcello moved, making Daisy slide unceremoniously off his lap and onto the floor.

“Hey!” She laughed. “You could have just said, ‘Daisy, move. I need to ravish my woman.’ ” She walked off into her bedroom singing, “Avery and Marcello, kissing in a tree . . .”

And kiss me he did. He dipped me, leaning me back over the arm of the chair, and kissed me like I was a nurse and he was back from war. Soundly, thoroughly, and enough to make me forget that Daisy was twenty feet away.

“I guess you’re happy I’m staying a bit longer,” I gasped, holding on to his hair while his lips moved to my neck.

“So much that I can barely wait to show you. For hours.”

WITH DAISY BACK IN TOWN, I didn’t feel right about having Marcello stay over. I felt a little strange about just putting it right under her nose, so to speak. Not to mention, I could get a little loud when the things and the parts and the sighs and the . . . yeah, I could get a little loud. So with an overnight bag packed, Marcello and I headed out to his place.

On the Vespa. I was so Rome.

It felt right, zipping through the night streets behind him on the scooter, arms wrapped around him tightly, cheek pressed firmly against his back, breathing in the scents of the city and Marcello.

We headed toward Via del Corso, where the street was impossibly even more narrow, the buildings pressing in on all sides. Clothing hung on lines stretched between windows, balconies were piled high with flower pots and tiny herb gardens, and everyone was out on the street after dinner, enjoying a gelato, a grappa, a chat. We zipped quickly into a spot, Marcello taking my hand to help me down and not letting it go as he led me through the walkways thick with people. Turning down a side street, he tucked me into his side, slipping my bag over his shoulder as he cuddled me close.

“So this is your street,” I said. His fingers played with my hair as we walked, twisting it around one finger then the next. “How long have you lived here?”

“Let’s see . . . about four years? The last place I lived was over by the office, much smaller place. I would have been embarrassed to bring you there. It was very much a, what do you call it? A bachelor’s digs?”

“Bachelor pad,” I corrected, loving the feel of his fingers in my hair. It was never the big grand gestures that got me, it was the little things. That’s what made me over the moon for this guy.