Not today…” Leonardo spotted Stella walking across the parking lot toward the Romano del Mare’s front entrance. She was dressed in jeans that hugged low on her hips and a colorful t-shirt that outlined her body with even the barest of encouragement from the wind. To top the ensemble off, she wore her hair in pigtail braids down both sides of her face with their ends resting on her collar bones.

He adored seeing her, but it was too much. He’d just escaped a meeting to get some fresh air and solitude. Inside, his lawyers were continuing to wage their fight against the preservation laws, and an all-out yelling match was underway as differing opinions of what he should do warred with each other. He did not need Stella’s gentle nudges on top of that. Not today.

Turning away and stepping toward the large, double, ornate doors of the monastery’s front entrance, he pretended not to see her.

“Leonardo.” The call of her voice was something he could not ignore. It reached inside of him and held him tight, just as strong as if she’d put her hands on him.

He looked over his shoulder and then turned to face her. “Stella,” he called back to her in greeting. He started to force a smile but then was surprised when there was no need to force it. It came all on its own.

“You’re here on a Saturday?” she asked as she reached him. Leaning up on tiptoes, she gave him a kiss on the cheek in greeting. “At least you’re not wearing a suit today,” she teased, giving him a wink.

“Hmmm, you’re the reason I’m here.”

Stella tilted her head and looked at him quizzically.

Pointing his thumb over his shoulder, he said, “The lawyers are inside… arguing, trying to figure a way past the preservation laws.”

Stella’s brows went up and her smile brightened. “Then they are doing what they love to do! But… it’s Saturday, and I want to do what I love to do, too.” She took his hand in hers and held onto it in a flirtatious way that had the tension easing from Leonardo’s shoulders with each passing second. The headache that had been trying to latch on gave up as well.

“You don’t want to run headlong into the middle of them and fight your battle?”

“No, not today. I… I like you, Leonardo. A lot.”

Leonardo’s heart stumbled over itself. He hadn’t had a girl come straight out and tell him she liked him since he’d been a young boy. Her unabashed candor was unnerving, and he felt all of his defenses crumbling away because of it.

“Whatever it is that is developing between us, I don’t want the fighting and maneuvering that’s going on inside of that building to be a part of it,” Stella continued with a somber sincerity in her eyes. “I’d rather us give us room to find out who we are together without all the added baggage. I want that to be separate from…,” she paused, then smiled shyly, “whatever this is.”

Leonardo was speechless, and he felt the weight of the world—or at least part of it—lift from his shoulders. Capturing her other hand, he bent low and kissed the backs of both her hands. Then, when he stood, he stepped close enough to feel her heat. He slipped his hand behind her head as he bent to kiss her lips, then he smiled as he felt her breath hitch and saw her eyes flutter. It seemed that it was her turn to be speechless, but she regained her composure quickly.

“There’s a path,” she said with a voice that was unnecessarily breathy. Reaching behind her, she pulled a hiking map out of her back pocket and then stepped back so that she could unfold it between them. “I’ve been hiking the trails in the area since I got here, and I’d like to follow this one.” She pointed to the map and traced her finger over a thin-lined route. “It looks like the path starts on the Romano del Mare’s property, and I’ve been keeping an eye out for it but I haven’t been able to find it. Do you know where it is by any chance?”

“Se,” Leonardo said. He hadn’t let his eyes travel from her face for even one second. She was far more interesting and beautiful than any map. It was too bad that any fling that they would have would be temporary. They were both globe hoppers, going to the different corners of the earth for their differing businesses. It was only that the stars had aligned just right that they were both here now. But knowing that it was temporary made it easier not to hold anything back. He could love her, then they could part, and she would remain forever perfect in his memories. It was sweeter this way, and would never be marred by life’s damaging stresses that pull and twist people into shapes no longer recognizable as them.

“Good! Could you point me in the right direction? I don’t want to interrupt what you’ve got going on.”

“No.”

“No?”

“No. It is far too complicated. Come with me.” Leading her by the hand, he guided her around the end of the building and began the trek up toward the pool. Once there, he pointed down a gentle slope where a well-worn path clearly began.

Stella laughed and then challenged him. “You said it was complicated.”

“Yes, my feelings about going back inside of that building with those lawyers is very complicated.” He said it deadpan, but then smiled as her own smile crinkled her eyes at his little joke. “Come on.”

“You’re going with me?” she asked, her voice full of surprise.

“Se,” he said as he led them down to where the path began. It was a path that he’d travelled often as a boy, every time he’d visited with his grandparents, and he looked forward to seeing it through her fresh eyes.

The walk was nice, and they stopped at various spots so that Leonardo could point out the history of the land they travelled on. The path was winding and sometimes hugged the cliffs overlooking the sea and at other times dipped to circle around the base of hills. Stella marveled at a small oasis of sorts that had grown up around a natural spring at the bottom of a valley. She waded in it barefoot before becoming captivated by a beautiful, yellow-flowering cactus further up the trail.

It was almost an hour before they reached the trail’s end at the opening of a secluded, private beach. At the path’s edge was a faded, hand-painted sign. Stella sounded out the words as a light blush crept its way into her cheeks. “Does that say what I think it says?”

“Hmmm?” Leonardo said, pretending to not have noticed the sign until that moment. “Ah yes, it’s a topless-only beach.”

Stella leaned and craned her neck as she looked down the path at the open expanse of cliff-sided beach. “But there’s nobody there.”

Leonardo shrugged. “Rules are rules…”

A mischievous light turned on in Stella’s eyes. “Rules? Is that the way it is?”

Leonardo shrugged again, doing his best to act nonchalant, but there was nothing he could do to stop his growing smile.

“That’s a pretty old sign. I wonder if whoever made it is even still around…” The look she gave him said that she was pretty sure the sign’s creator was standing right in front of her. “Maybe it was made by some over-eager, hormonal teenager?”

Leonardo gave her his best wounded look. To be found guilty—when he was—did nothing to reward the ingenuity his teenage-self had shown. Turning his attention to the sign, he said, “But to withstand the weather after so many years, it is a good sign, no?” That was as far as he got, though, in his argument of defense of his younger self—for when he’d returned his gaze to Stella it was to find her stripping her top off. Underneath she wore a bra that was so sheer that it emphasized her lovely bits oh so much more than hid them. The sight of her instantly sent heat to that part of himself that had ached to be introduced to her since the first day he’d seen her.

“Rules are rules,” she said as she backed away from him in the direction of the beach. She had her shirt waded up in her hands and tossed it onto a nearby bush.

Following her at a pace that matched her own, Leonardo stripped his shirt off and threw it to the side. “You do not fight fair…” He didn’t know what battle it was that she was fighting in this moment, but it made no matter. Whatever it was, she was winning.