Leonardo walked barefoot through his house with a glass of bourbon in each hand. Whenever he was in the states, he always opted for bourbon rather than wine, choosing to go with a famous drink native to the country he was in. Ever since their night together in front of the fireplace a couple of days ago, Stella had cooled to him. He could feel the distance between them even when they were in the same room together, and he needed to know why. If she was homesick, all she needed do was say so and, if she wanted him there, they could relocate together to her place in Connecticut to finish out his vacation. It didn’t matter to him where they were, he simply enjoyed being with her.

Glancing around the great room, he didn’t spot her but then he noticed a glow coming from his cracked open office door on the far side of the room. Instead of calling out to her, he padded silently over the hardwood floor and then tapped on the door to his own office. Even though it was his space, he had no intentions of intruding, but what he saw stopped him in his tracks.

Stella was sitting at his L shaped desk with her laptop open and its screen visible from the doorway. When he knocked, she gave a startled jump, and then immediately tried to close the various windows she had open before finally giving up and closing the laptop’s lid altogether.

“What’s that about?” Leonardo asked. The words “Romano del Mare” had burned themselves into his retinas from the glaring computer screen within the dimly lit room, not so much because they had been so bright but because he was determined to put that part of his life behind him. Everything about it was like an open wound to him. He had failed that monastery so many times over. As the eldest grandson, he wished that his grandfather had entrusted him with the resort’s management instead of signing it over to a management company, one that ultimately ran it into ruin. Then, when he realized that something wasn’t right about the way the property was being handled, he should have put aside his own pursuits to build a Romano chain of hotels and turned his attention to the place he’d visited so many times as a child under his grandparent’s care. His father had died young and his mother had been absent in his life, but the old monastery and his grandparents had always been there. It sliced like a dagger in his stomach that he had failed it.

“Why can’t you leave that alone?” Leonardo challenged, his voice coming out harsher than he had intended. But it was a true testament to the anger that roiled inside of him. “You agreed, it was best left in the past.”

Stella’s lips thinned and she crossed her arms over her chest as she slouched down in his office chair. She seemed unmoved by his demand to know why she couldn’t leave the past in the past.

“What’s been up with you? You’ve barely spoken to me in two days… now this. I thought we were having a good time here.” Anger was quickly turning into the bitterness of betrayal. He’d come here to get away from all of that. She was the one who had invaded his privacy, his sanctuary, and now she felt justified to sit there and… what, judge him? How could she even begin to understand the loss that he was struggling to come to terms with? The only way he could find peace within it all was to give himself the space he needed to let go of what was beyond his control. Some battles cost too much to fight regardless of whether you won. Couldn’t she see that? It was better to walk away.

“This”—Stella motioned to her closed laptop—“is why I came here. The Romano del Mare needs people! If it gets closed down to be some empty, dusty ruin for people to walk past and view behind velvet ropes, she’ll never be the glorious place that she once was. I see it now. I get it. I didn’t understand it before when I was sitting at my desk halfway around the world writing that cease and desist argument. I did this. I messed things up, and I have to try to fix it! I don’t want ten or fifteen years to slip by with my biggest regret in life being that I stood by and did nothing when there was still a chance to set things right!”

Leonardo shook his head. He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “So this”—he waved a hand in the direction of her computer—“was what it was all about. You didn’t come here to see me or to be with me, you just needed to soothe your own conscience. It was never about me. It was only about using me.” Bile wanted to crawl up his throat and coat his mouth with the extreme distaste he felt for Stella within that moment. “I’m not doing this, not again. I told you that within minutes of you showing up—uninvited—on my doorstep. I told you that I was putting it all in the past. Nothing has changed! There comes a time when you have to cut your losses and walk away, and the Romano del Mare has reached that point! It’s a lost cause!”

Stella stood from Leonardo’s desk chair. She was tiny before him, but her spirit was bold. He hated that—even then—he found her undeniably to be the most beautiful woman he had ever known. But she’d used him again. The first time was when she tried to seduce him into letting her have her own way with the resort’s design, no doubt to further her own career. And then this time she’d tracked him down halfway around the world to rub salt in the wounds that she herself had created.

“It’s not a lost cause,” Stella said in a voice that was both pleading and confronting. “I wrote the argument that was used to rezone the Romano del Mare, and I can build an argument to refute it. I know I can, but I need your help.”

“No, no way. Go back to your boss. Tell him the game is up, whatever it is that you two are trying to play. It’s done. It’s over. I quit. You’ve gotten your way, now it’s time to move on.”

“Boss? There’s no boss. There hasn’t been since two weeks before you turned your back on everything. He wanted me to move forward with the cease and desist weeks ago, but I refused. I made excuses to delay at first, then finally he told me to do it or I was fired.” She shrugged. “You can figure out the rest… All of this. This work, this effort, it’s been to protect you and to protect the Romano del Mare. I knew that if I could get you to make concessions toward the Preservation Society’s design plans that it would make it harder for them to take any action against you or the resort. But,” she shrugged, “when you decided to stay with your original design of covering up almost all of the natural elements within the monastery, I knew it was throwing the door wide open for their lawyers to win whatever case that they wanted to push.” She shook her head. “Leonardo, I’m sorry. I tried to tell you. I tried to help you, I just didn’t know how to get you to consider a way that might have worked for everyone involved.”

Leonardo couldn't believe what he was hearing. That she couldn't see past the resort and her own agenda was proof that she operated by only what was in front of her face, and that was a luxury he didn't have. Too many lives depended on every decision he made. Every time he said yes or no to anything pertaining to Romano International, his mind reeled at the real-life implications for people he might only meet once or twice in his lifetime. They were unseen but not forgotten, not by him. “Do you really think everything is that simple, that the only people that exist within this situation are me, you, the resort and the Preservation Society? Are you that naive? By going with your plans the Romano Hotels were poised to lose millions all around the world. I wouldn’t have liked that. My brothers wouldn’t have liked it. But the people who would have been devastated by it are the career employees who have been working for me and my family for years. People would have lost their livelihoods, Stella, and sometimes in areas of the world where there weren’t any better jobs around. Your short-sightedness almost cost hundreds of people more dearly than you could ever know.”

Shock registered on Stella’s face. “I didn’t know…”

“Of course you didn’t. All you could see was what was right in front of your face and nothing past it or to the side. I don’t have that luxury.”

Stella shook her head. “No, there has to be a way. The monastery is almost a thousand years old.”

“Stella…” There was a warning in Leonardo’s voice. “Put it in the past and let it go or let me go. You can’t have us both.”

Stella’s cheeks turned pink and she blinked several times as her mouth opened and closed. Finally, in a voice that Leonardo almost didn’t hear, she said, “I’ll pack my things.”

When she walked out of the room, Leonardo wanted to grab for her and pull her into him, but he forced himself not to. They were at an impasse, and it was time for him to take his own advice.

It was time for him to let Stella go.