Stella pulled her favorite fluffy blanket closer around her where she sat curled up on the couch. It had been the one she’d always liked to snuggle up in when she was sick as a kid, and she hadn’t been able to bear the thought of letting it go after she got her new heart. Instead, she’d had it vacuum sealed, and she’d tucked it away with the hope that she’d never need it again. And, while life had not always been easy even after getting a new ticker to put some spring back into her step, she’d managed to get by all these years without it… until now.

Scooping a huge spoonful of Ben & Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough ice cream into her mouth, she sighed as she let it slowly melt. On the tv in front of her played Working Girl with Melanie Griffith opposite Harrison Ford, a story about a woman with vision who’d had to lie about who she was to get anyone to take her ideas seriously.

“You tell ‘em, girl!” Stella spouted off at the screen as Melanie’s character pitted herself against her crooked boss. If she’d had a foam toy to throw at the screen, she would have.

Next to her on the couch sat her laptop, open but untouched for hours. That was because she’d spent the last eight hours scouring through every available posting worldwide with any office even slightly resembling a preservation society.

“How could I have been so clueless,” she lamented. She’d been wrong about the Romano del Mare. She’d thought she’d known so much, had thought that she understood everything that she’d needed to understand, but it wasn’t until she had visited the monastery and had seen its halls and how much vibrancy even just having the workers there brought to it that she’d realized the ancient place needed people. It needed to be lived in, not passively idolized by people looking at its crumbling structure in books or walking over its grounds on a day tour.

She’d messed up, and now she had no way of making it right. On top of that, she didn’t have a job and any inquiries she’d made with other agencies had quickly soured as soon as they’d learned her name. Her ex-boss had been calling all of the agencies up and muddying the waters, making her unemployable, she was sure of it—but she didn’t know how to prove it or how to do anything about it.

Her phone beeped with an incoming text. Checking it, she saw that it was from Luciana, Gianpierre’s girlfriend. “Have you heard from him yet?”

Stella had told Leonardo’s family that she’d seen him and that he was fine, but she didn’t tell them any more than that until she’d finally confessed to Luciana that she and Leonardo had had a fight to end all fights. Their romance was dead. When she’d told Luciana, the lovely woman who had captured Gianpierre’s heart wouldn’t accept it. She’d said the Romano men were hard-headed but made up for it by being unfalteringly warm-hearted. But Stella knew that that only meant that Luciana didn’t know Leonardo at all. That man’s heart was as cold as a dead fish.

Then why do you miss him so much?

Picking up her phone, she texted Luciana back, “No. Nothing.”

Luciana sent back “*hugs*” plus added a heart.

Stella huffed another heart-aching sigh and then took another bite of her ice cream. She felt like a teenager devastated to find out that the boy she’d had a crush on didn’t like her back. Her chest hurt, physically hurt. She’d rubbed at her scar until her chest was pink, but it hadn’t helped at all. She fantasized about getting drunk just so that she’d have something to blame it on when she drunk-dialed Leonardo to both give him a piece of her mind and to break down in sobs at how much he’d broken her heart. Ben & Jerry’s ice cream and every romantic comedy she could find were the only things stopping her from doing just that.

A knock sounded at her apartment door, and Stella froze mid-chew with the spoon halfway down to the ice cream container. Things could have gotten worse, she realized. She could now be having auditory hallucinations.

The knock sounded again, this time a little bit louder and a little bit longer.

Stella got up from the couch so fast that Ben & Jerry was knocked on the floor, forgotten, and then she tripped with her feet tangled up in her blanket. She didn’t take a moment to see if she was okay, but instead kicked it off as fast as she could and scrambled back up to her feet so that she could run headlong to the door.

Putting her eye up to the peephole, she was stunned to see a very tired Bianca standing in her hall. Of course, the woman was as stunning as ever, tired or not.

Sliding the door’s chain lock open and then turning two deadbolts, Stella threw her door open. “Bianca!” Without waiting for an invitation, she threw her arms around the woman and pulled her in for a tight hug. There was a slight hesitation of awkwardness from Bianca, but then she gave Stella a warm hug back.

Pulling away but keeping her hands on Bianca’s arms, Stella asked in a rush of breath, “Is Leonardo okay? Are you okay? Is Leonardo okay?” She blushed, knowing she’d asked about Leonardo first and twice, but she hadn’t been able to keep the words from tumbling out of her mouth.

Bianca’s eyes dropped away and she looked as though she was embarrassed. Finally, she said, “I’m not allowed to give you any information about him.”

“What?” Stella’s hands fell away from Bianca. Her voice was full of hurt and rejection. There was no masking it.

“No, I am sorry. But, I have brought you these.” Bianca motioned down the hallway and Stella stuck her head out through the door to see what she was waving at. She gaped at the sight of a large, burly man pushing a mover’s dolly in front of him. On it was piled four very heavy looking boxes. And behind that man were three more men, each one with a dolly loaded down with boxes. “They are from Leonardo’s computer along with historical papers from the Romano del Mare’s own vaults. Stella,” Bianca said, pulling Stella’s attention back to her, “there are originals in those boxes, some of them hundreds of years old. You must be very careful, and you must return these files to me. Do you understand?”

Stella mutely nodded her head.

“When you’re done with them, you call me. Wherever I am, I will fly here and get the papers back from you. Capisciu?”

Stella nodded her head, letting Bianca know that she did understand. She stepped out of the way as the men filed through her door and unloaded the heavy boxes. Thinking quickly, she instructed them to set all the boxes side by side along the wall instead of putting them on top of each other. As strong as the men were, she could see their muscles bunch as they moved the boxes around and she didn’t want to run the risk of toppling them over and spilling all their contents on the floor.

The men left just as they’d come, without uttering a word, but Stella caught Bianca’s arm before she left. Possibly there was no one who knew Leonardo better than his assistant. “Is there anything you can tell me, anything at all?” Stella hated the pleading need that was in her voice, but she was too far past caring what anyone thought of her. If she could only hear Leonardo’s voice again or feel the brush of his fingers on her cheek, she could once more feel whole.

Bianca shook her head and started to walk away but then stopped. Pursing her lips, her eyes moved about as if she were searching for just the right words to say. “He would whistle in his office when no one was around while you were there, and he doesn’t whistle anymore now. And,” she added with a stern, steely gaze, “I did not say that, capisciu?”

“Capisciu,” Stella said, throwing her arms around the woman for another hug, but this time her heart was light with hope. Not only was she getting a second chance to save the Romano del Mare but Leonardo’s cold-fish heart had some life left in it after all.