Chapter 10
Ten
Lexi
I plow (in a gracious, feminine manner, obviously) through the guests, down the stairs, and onto the patio.
I am second-in-command here, and I don’t have time to stand around waiting on other people’s phone calls.
I instruct the volunteers to turn on the twinkle lights and the remote-controlled battery-operated lanterns around the property, and then I check that the place cards have been arranged on the two long dinner tables under a massive orange-and-white-striped tent.
I happen to see Mark’s name on the second table near Ms. Accardi, sufficiently far from me.
One of her top students ever. Sure. Because the kind of guy who flirts in airports when he has a girl elsewhere is the kind who will brown-nose-charm a professor for his own means.
He could have mentioned this Katie a bit sooner.
I gave him the perfect opportunity, asking about his family when we were looking at his picture on the plane.
Someone calls my name, and I search the crowded patio area. Anna Leone, the famous Italian-American pop singer with waist-length, dark hair, rushes to me, dragging a young man behind her. “Lexi! We made it!”
We double-cheek kiss. It took me ages to convince her to perform for the festival—I had her agent print up statistics of her popularity in Rome and everything. I can’t blow her off now that she’s here. “Thank you so much for coming. How was your flight?”
“Rerouted because of a storm, so we had two days in London.”
“Welcome to international travel,” the guy with her says, his voice wry and hinting of experience. “Always leave a few buffer days in the schedule.”
He’s preaching to the choir.
Anna introduces the man as her friend Joseph, and we chat for a minute until a hand curls around my elbow and a rough voice says, “I’m sorry. I need Ms. Walker for a few minutes.”
“You don’t—”
Before I can finish my objection, Anna winks at me and they wave Mark and me off.
Fine. I have things to say to Mark if he wants to force conversation. Lots of things.
Mark leads me off the well-trafficked patio, around the waist-high wall, and into the citrus garden. Sharp-scented lemons growing plump on the trees brighten the night air.
He spins me to face him and folds his arms. “We weren’t finished. You’re at a private reception for the participants of a citywide art festival next week. How did you get in?”
The nerve, to assume I don’t belong just because I’m a visitor to Italy.
Indignation flares in my chest. I could tell him that I’m the daughter of the artist whose work is at the center of the festival.
That the festival exists because of my mom’s painting being dedicated to the city.
That would put him in his place. But something about Mark makes me want to keep this fight on my own terms. My merits versus his assumptions.
“I co-organized it. It was my idea, and I’ve been working long-distance with the festival director for months.
Gia and I are like this.” I show him my fingers twisted together. “Technically, you are my guest.”
He’s lucky I let him through the door.
I might have put two and two together when I learned his full name from the luggage claim forms this afternoon except Gia and I split the communication with the festival participants. I got A-L.
“You’re the event planner? That means this uncomfortable suit is your fault.”
Okay, I’ll admit my first blinding thought on seeing him upstairs was that nothing could trump the sight of Mark in a dark suit. My brain does weird things in shock mode.
No worries. I recovered from that madness. We are back on track.
To prove it, I give him a once-over. I’m not so sure why he’s uncomfortable—it’s expertly tailored to fit his broad shoulders and long limbs. Anyway, the point is, I’m unmoved by both the suit and that trademark side-smile he depends on to win people over.
To clarify, my emotions are unaffected. Mentally, his wry teasing triggers the unfiltered version of Lexi. The sarcastic one with the random Star Wars quotes I keep hidden from everyone else. “The logic is strong with this one.”
He groans, long and low. “Are you misquoting on purpose as some kind of torture?”
“That’s the movie line.”
He takes a deep breath and raises his eyebrows. His half-amused, half-annoyed expression says, What am I going to do with you? and in this moment, my motivation to win our bet rises so high I can’t even see the top of it. I’ll show him what he’ll do with me: lose. That’s what.
“It’s the force, not the logic. You either know Star Wars or you don’t. I don’t even understand how you exist in the in-between—context-appropriate quotes at your fingertips but slightly wrong every single time.”
I plumb the deep well of self-discipline to restrain from scowling. Details are my thing. And now Mark is telling me my grasp of details is bogus, just like he did with my plan for Italy.
That poor woman he talked to on the phone, I assume his fiancée. I wonder if Katie knows he’s a dream-crusher. Not yet, I’m guessing. Mark’s voice was soft and tender with her, and his question about honeymoon ideas held teasing affection, not the skepticism he’s reserved for me.
We’re still enjoying a frown-off when someone rings a bell from the balcony.
One thing I’ve noticed about Mark, for good or bad, he overfocuses on things, seeing the world through a narrow camera lens.
The way he doesn’t react or even glance toward the villa where Gia is announcing we have ten minutes before the program starts, I know he’s oblivious to everything else around him except our conversation, the same way he talked to me in Boston with all his attention.
Katie should tell him that when he does that, it makes women think—whatever. Not my problem.
I clasp my hands together, cool and professional. “As we established earlier, I’m on the job. That’s my cue for a sound check at the mics.”
He lifts the thick-papered, gilded program from his pocket and flicks it around to face me, lifting his eyebrows. “Ah, I’m assuming this game was also your idea, Miss Competitive?”
He’s still playing this push-and-pull game we have going, but I ignore it because the artwork on that program jolts me to my core.
A hot air balloon with gray, green, and white stripes.
The same clouds I traced with my finger in Logan airport on the envelope my mom painted in the hospital.
The one I’ve kept safe in my nightstand drawer for over a year.
For the second time in twenty-four hours, I grab his wrist—and yes, that will stop happening, I swear—and stare at the program, frozen. “Where did you get this?”
He doesn’t take his eyes from me, searching my face as if to find the reason for this sudden shift, and points behind me with the arm I’m not gripping. “At the entrance, when I presented my ticket.”
Seconds before the first guest walked in, I’d handed the box of hot-off-the-press programs to the woman stationed at the door, but there hadn’t been time to look at them for myself.
What I see now in Mark’s hand is impossible.