I turn to him, my heart racing. “I meant the book idea, too.”

It’s true, but it’s not the only thing leaving me breathless at the moment.

“I want to write something you’re excited about,” Noah says. “Something you’d want to read, even if it wasn’t your job.”

“I’ll read anything you write,” I tell him, putting my editor’s voice back on. “But, if you can write this book in the next eight weeks, I’ll have the added bonus of it still being my job to read it, too.”

“I can,” Noah says with such easy confidence, I let myself believe him. “And now you can say yes.”

“Say yes?” I ask.

“To Italy. The launch. I’ll get the manuscript to you before you leave. You can edit it in time to celebrate with a glass of champagne on the plane.” He turns to me. We’re standing very close.

“How will you celebrate?” I ask.

“I have my ways.”

“But what if—”

“If the book falls apart,” he says, “and you need to cancel, I’ll take the blame for it with the Italians.”

I know that should have been what I was thinking. But in the space of two seconds, I imagined planning this trip then canceling it, and it was my heart, not the Italians’, that felt broken.

Don’t break my heart, I want to tell him, but that would be weird, right?

“Can I ask why it matters to you that I go on this trip?” I say.

“Because Positano is part of your story,” he says. “You should go see what it means. If this were a novel, Positano would change your life.”

“If this were a novel, I’d edit that last line out,” I say, our faces just inches apart. “The foreshadowing’s too on the nose.”

Noah smiles his slow, luxurious smile.

“And I would beg you to keep it in,” he says, “at least until you read the last chapter.”

“And I’d say, then you’d better get writing.”

Chapter Fifteen

“Next up is our summer Noa Callaway title,” Patrisse, our marketing director, says into the microphone at Peony’s April sales conference.

It’s been three weeks since Noah and I took our fateful walk in Central Park, three weeks since we landed on the brilliant idea for his eleventh love story. Three weeks of intensely productive writing time—I hope. And three weeks since I started planning my trip to Positano.

My plane tickets are booked. I’m flying into Naples in just over a month. Noa’s Italian publisher is treating me to a suite at Il Bacio hotel, and Bernadette has agreed to give me a few more riding lessons to prepare me for the Amalfi Coast highway.