Chapter 1
Elise
Elise Johnson stepped out the front door of her rented apartment on Via dei Capocci and took in the sounds of the neighborhood around her.
A week into her stay in Rome, she had grown accustomed to the rhythms of the city. She was used to the bustle of foot traffic on the quiet little street that was currently her home. She was used to the neighbor who sang as he hung his laundry, used to listening to him from her bedroom window. She had fallen into a pattern.
She never wanted to leave.
Her feet took her in the same direction as before. Just down the street and around the corner, her favorite little coffee shop had set its tables out on the sidewalk for the day. Elise went inside to buy her breakfast.
The clerk’s face lit up when he saw her.
“Elise!” he said, his strong accent making her name sound like a song. His English was impeccable, but she still sometimes found him difficult to understand. “So good to see you this morning!”
“Good to see you too, Gianni.” He had been the closest thing she had found to a friend since coming to Rome. She visited his coffee shop two or three times a day.
“The usual?” he asked her.
She nodded. “Your cappuccinos are the best around,” she told him. “No one in Italy or America makes them any better.”
Gianni laughed happily. “You hear that?” he called to a few of his patrons. “The American woman likes my cappuccinos.”
Elise was never exactly sure whether Gianni was enjoying her company or making fun of her. It might have been a little of both. Whichever the case might have been, she had found that she didn’t much mind. It was good to be able to count on talking to someone every day, even if it was just the man who made her coffee.
Her parents had been staunchly against her coming to Rome on her own. “You must have a girlfriend who wants to go with you,” her mother had protested.
Elise knew that she probably could have talked her friends into the idea, but it would have put too great a financial strain on any of them.
“I’ve been saving up for this trip since college,” she told her mom. “Over ten years. Nobody else I know has that kind of money sitting around, or if they do, they’re planning to use it for something else.”
Her father had been even more difficult. “A young woman shouldn’t travel alone,” he said gruffly.
“Dad,” Elise protested. “That’s such an antiquated idea.”
“I’m not being sexist. I’m thinking of your safety.”
“I’ll be perfectly safe,” she said. “I do live in a city, you know.”
“Albuquerque isn’t the same thing as Rome,” he said. “Besides, you speak the language here. Being a foreigner will make you a target.”
In the end, of course, she had decided to make the trip despite their protestations. These two weeks in Rome had been her dream as long as she could remember, and she wasn’t about to let the fact that she didn’t have a convenient traveling companion stand in the way of making that dream a reality.
Gianni handed her the cappuccino. “Will I see you this afternoon?” he asked her.
“You can count on it.”
She planned to spend the day exploring the city, as she had every other day since she had been here, but by late afternoon she would return to Via dei Capocci, passing Gianni’s shop on the way. She would watch the sun set from her apartment balcony and prepare dinner from the ingredients she had purchased at the bodega nearby.
It really is a fairy-tale life, she thought as she stepped out of the coffee shop.
She was glad to be here, even though she was on her own, but she had to admit that having someone to share it with would have been nice. It would have been wonderful to have someone in her life to remember these experiences with when they were over.
At least she would always have the photos.
She stopped on the sidewalk, fumbling with the zipper on her purse, fighting to retrieve her phone so she could take a picture of the street and perhaps post it to her social media account.
Just as her hand closed around her phone, though, she felt a tug at her shoulder.
At first, Elise thought she had simply dropped her bag. It slid down her arm, and she grabbed for it, trying to catch it.
A young man—a teenager—raced past her.
And suddenly Elise realized that her bag was gone. He had pulled it right off her arm as she’d stood there.
She shoved her phone into her pocket and ran after him. “Hey!” she yelled. “Stop that man! Thief! Help!”
The people around her stopped and stared. She had no idea whether they could understand what she was saying. Maybe they just thought she was a crazy American.
She ran faster, but the boy had too much of a head start, and he was faster than she was. She wouldn’t be able to catch him.
He rounded a corner.
He was gone.
Elise stopped and doubled over, clutching a stitch in her side. She rested her hand on the phone in her pocket.
At least I still have this, she thought. At least he didn’t get everything.
But that was small comfort. Elise had had about four hundred euros in her purse, not to mention her passport and credit card. To be without it now was no small dilemma.
This wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been traveling alone.
She didn’t know if it was true, but she couldn’t stand the thought of her father saying that to her when she told him what had happened. And she knew that he would. Instead of this trip being about all the wonderful adventures she had had, her family would make it about her poor judgment in coming to Rome by herself.
She felt like crying.
“Excuse me,” a voice interrupted her thoughts.
She looked up. A man stood in front of her. He was tall, with light brown hair and bright green eyes, and there was something about him that stood out from all the other people she had interacted with over the past few weeks.
Elise tried to keep her face neutral as she took in just how gorgeous he was. She didn’t want to be caught staring.
“You’re an American,” she said.
“I think this is yours,” he said, holding out her purse.
She gasped and grabbed it. “You stopped the thief!” she cried.
“Too late, I’m afraid,” he said ruefully. “He had already gotten away with most of the cash. When he saw me coming, he dropped your bag on the sidewalk and ran off. He dropped a few bills, but most of it is gone.”
“That’s fine,” Elise said fervently. She pawed through her bag quickly and saw that her passport and the wallet containing her driver’s license and credit card were still there. “If all he got is cash, I consider myself lucky.”
She looked up at the man. “Thank you for stopping him,” she said. “I don’t know what I would have done if he had gotten away with my passport.”
“That could have been a disaster,” the man agreed. “You’re an American, too, aren’t you?”
She nodded. “I’m Elise.”
“Lucas,” he said, holding out his hand.
She returned the handshake. His grip was firm, but not unpleasant.
“What brings you to Rome, Elise? Business or pleasure?”