Soldier, Hero...Husband?

And no wonder Justin had said to Connor, when he gave him this assignment, “Hey, when is the last time you had a holiday? Take your time in Monte Calanetti. Enjoy the sights. Soak up some sun. Drink some wine. Fall in love.”

Justin really had no more right to believe in love than he himself did, but his friend was as bad as his mother in the optimism department. Justin had even hinted there was a woman friend in his life.

“And for goodness’ sake,” Justin had said, “take a break from swimming. What are you training for, anyway?”

But Justin, his best friend, his comrade in arms, his brother, was part of the reason Connor swam. Justin, whose whole life had been changed forever because of a mistake. One made by Connor.

So giving up swimming was out of the question, but at least, Connor told himself grimly, he wouldn’t be falling in love with the woman in front of him. After having felt her pressed against him, and after having been so aware of her in every way this morning, it was a relief to find out she was married.

“Grazie, Signora Rossi,” he said, trying out clumsy Italian, “for providing me with accommodation on such short notice. You can reassure your husband that I will not begin every morning by attacking you.”

His attempt at humor seemed to fall as flat as his Italian. He spoke three languages well, and several more not so well. Connor knew, from his international travels, that most people warmed to someone who attempted to use their language, no matter how clumsy the effort.

But his hostess looked faintly distressed.

And then he realized he had made his worst mistake of the day, and it wasn’t that he had accidentally propositioned her by mispronouncing a word.

Because Isabella Rossi said to him, with quiet dignity, “I’m afraid my beloved husband, Giorgio, is gone, signor. I am a widow.”

Connor wanted to tell her that she of all people, then, should not believe a wedding was a symbol of love and hope and happy endings.

But he considered himself a man who was something of an expert in the nature of courage, and he had to admit he reluctantly admired her ability to believe in hope and happy endings when, just like his mother, she had obviously had plenty of evidence to the contrary.

“I’m sorry for your loss,” he offered, grudgingly.

“My husband has been gone six years, and I miss him still,” she said softly.

Connor felt the funniest stir of something he did not like. Was it envy? Did he envy the man this woman had loved so deeply?

Stupid jet lag. It seemed to have opened up a part of him that normally would have been under close guard, buttoned down tight. Thoroughly annoyed with himself and his wayward thoughts in the land of amore, Connor turned from Signora Isabella Rossi, scooped up the tray and went into his room. Just before he shut the door, her voice stopped him.

“I provide a simple dinner at around seven for my guests, when I have them,” she said, suddenly all business. “If you could let me know in the mornings if you are requiring this service, I would appreciate it.”

Connor, a man who was nothing if not deeply instinctual, knew there was some dangerous physical awareness between them, a primal man-woman thing. Eating her food and sitting across a table from her would not be an option.

On the other hand, he did not know the lay of the land in the village, and he would have to eat somewhere today until he figured that out. Besides, Isabella Rossi had shown she was unusually astute at reading people. He did not want her to know he perceived her as such a threat that he was willing to go hungry rather than spend more time with her.

“Thank you,” he said, keeping his tone carefully neutral. “That would be perfect for tonight. I hope the rest of your day goes better than it began, signora.”

CHAPTER TWO

ISABELLA STOOD IN the hallway, feeling frozen to the spot and looking at Connor Benson, balancing the tray of food she had provided for him on the jutting bone of one very sexy, very exposed hip. She felt as if she had been run over by a truck.

Which, in a sense, she had. Not that Connor Benson looked anything like a truck. But she had been virtually run down by him, had felt the full naked strength of him pressed against her own body. It had been a disconcerting encounter in every way.

His scent was still tickling her nostrils, and she was taken aback by how much she liked the exquisitely tangy smell of a man in the morning.

Now she’d gone and offered him dinner. Everyone in town knew she occasionally would take in a lodger for a little extra money. She always offered her guests dinner. Why was it suddenly a big deal?

It was because her guests were usually retired college professors or young travelers on a budget. She not had a guest quite like Connor Benson before. In fact, it would be quite safe to say she had never met a man like Connor Benson before.

“I hope my day goes better, too,” she muttered, and then added in Italian, “but it is not looking hopeful.”

This man in her house, who stood before her unself-conscious in his near nakedness, was the antithesis of everything Isabella’s husband, Giorgio, had been.

In fact, Isabella had grown up in Florence and walked nearly daily by the Palazzo Vecchio, where the replica of Michelangelo’s statue David stood. The statue represented a perfection of male physique that had filled the frail Giorgio with envy, and at which she had scoffed.

“Such men do not exist,” she had reassured Giorgio. She had swept her hand over the square. “Look. Show me one who looks like this.”

And then they would dissolve into giggles at the fact the modern Italian male was quite far removed from Michelangelo’s vision.

And yet this nearly naked man standing in the doorway of the room she had let to him made Isabella uncomfortably aware that not only did perfection of male physique exist, it awakened something in her that she had never quite felt before.

That thought made her feel intensely guilty, as if she was being disloyal to her deceased husband, and so she rationalized the way she was feeling.

It was because she had been pulled so unexpectedly against the hard length of him that her awareness was so intense, she told herself.

Her defenses had been completely down. She had just been innocently putting his breakfast beside his door when he had catapulted out of it and turned her around, making her stumble into him.

And now her whole world felt turned around, because she had endured a forced encounter with the heated silk of his skin, stretched taut over those sleek muscles. She had been without the company of a man for a long time. This kind of reaction to a complete stranger did not reflect in any way on her relationship with Giorgio! It was the absence of male companionship that had obviously made her very sensitive to physical contact.

It didn’t help that Connor Benson was unbelievably, sinfully gorgeous. Not just the perfection of his male form, but his face was extraordinary. His very short cropped light brown hair only accentuated the fact that he had a face that would make people—especially women people—stop in their tracks.

He had deep blue eyes, a straight nose, high cheekbones, a jutting chin.

He was the epitome of strength. She thought of his warrior response to her outside his door, that terrifying moment when she had been spun around toward him, the look on his face, as if it was all normal for him.

There was something exquisitely dangerous about Connor Benson.

The thoughts appalled her. They felt like a betrayal of Giorgio, whom she had loved, yes, with all her heart.

“I’ve become pathetic,” Isabella muttered to herself, again in Italian. A pathetic young widow, whose whole life had become her comfy house and the children she taught. She found love in the mutual adoration she and her students had for each other.

Why did it grate on her that her houseguest had known she was a schoolteacher? What would she have wanted him to think she was?

Something, she realized reluctantly, just a little more exciting.

“I’m sorry?” Connor said.

She realized she had mumbled about her self-diagnosis of being pathetic out loud, though thankfully, in Italian. She realized her face was burning as if the inner hunger he had made her feel was evident to him.

Well, it probably was. Men like this—powerfully built, extraordinarily handsome, oozing self-confidence—were used to using their looks to charm women, to having their wicked way. They were not above using their amazing physical charisma to make conquests.

He’d already told her how he felt about weddings, which translated to an aversion to commitment. Even she, for all that she had married young and lived a sheltered life, knew that a man like this one standing before her, so at ease with near nakedness, spelled trouble, in English or Italian, and all in capital letters, too.

This man could never be sweetly loyal and uncomplicated. Connor Benson had warned her. He was not normal. He was cynical and hard and jaded. She could see that in the deep blue of his eyes, even if he had not admitted it to her, which he had. She would have been able to see it, even before he had challenged her to look for details to know things about people that they were not saying.

“I said be careful of the shower,” she blurted out.

That exquisite eyebrow was raised at her, as if she had said something suggestive.

“It isn’t working properly,” she said in a rush.

“Oh?”

“I’m having it fixed, but the town’s only plumber is busy with the renovations at the palazzo. I have to wait for him. Now, I’m late for work,” she choked out, looking at her wristwatch to confirm that. Her wrist was naked—she had not put on her watch this morning. She stared at the blank place on her wrist a moment too long, then hazarded another look at Mr. Benson.

The sensuous line of Connor Benson’s mouth lifted faintly upward. The hunger that unfurled in her belly made her think of a tiger who had spotted raw meat after being on a steady diet of flower petals.

Isabella turned and fled.

And if she was not mistaken, the soft notes of a faintly wicked chuckle followed her before Connor Benson shut his bedroom door.

Outside her house, Isabella noted the day was showing promise of unusual heat. She told herself that was what was making her face feel as if it was on fire as she hurried along the twisted, cobbled streets of Monte Calanetti to the primary school where she taught.

Yes, it was the heat, not the memory of his slow drawl, the way ma’am had slipped off his lips. He sounded like one of the cowboys in those old American Western movies Giorgio had enjoyed so much when he was bedridden.

Really? The way Connor Benson said ma’am should have been faintly comical. How come it was anything but? How come his deep voice and his slow drawl had been as soft as a silk handkerchief being trailed with deliberate seduction over the curve of her neck?

She thought of Connor Benson’s attempt at Italian when he had tried to assure that her mornings would not begin with an attack. That accent should have made that comical, too, but it hadn’t been. She had loved it that he had tried to speak her language.

“Buongiorno, Signora Rossi. You look beautiful this morning!”

Isabella smiled at the butcher, who had come out of his shop to unwind his awning, but once she was by him, she frowned. She passed him every morning. He always said good morning. But he had never added that she looked beautiful before.

It was embarrassing. Her encounter with Connor Benson this morning had lasted maybe five minutes. How was it that it had made her feel so uncomfortable, so hungry and so alive? And so much so that she was radiating it for others to see?

“Isabella,” she told herself sternly, using her best schoolteacher voice, “that is quite enough.”

But it was not, apparently, quite enough.

Because she found herself thinking that she had not told him anything about his accommodations. She could do that over dinner tonight.

Isabella was never distracted when she was teaching. She loved her job and her students and always felt totally present and engaged when she was with the children. Her job, really, was what had brought her back from the brink of despair after Giorgio’s death.

But today, her mind wandered excessively to what kind of meal she would cook for her guest.

Candles, of course, would be ridiculous, wouldn’t they? And they would give the wrong message entirely.

She had not made her mother’s recipe of lasagne verdi al forno for years. Food, and finally even the smell of cooking, had made Giorgio sick. Isabella was shocked at how much she wanted to cook, to prepare a beautiful meal. Yes, lasagna, and a fresh loaf of ciabatta bread, a lovely red wine. School in many places in Italy, including Monte Calanetti, ran for six days instead of five, but the days were short, her workday over at one. That gave her plenty of time to cook the extravagant meal.

So, on the way home from school, she stopped at the grocer’s and the bakery and picked up everything she needed. She had several beautiful bottles of wine from Nico’s Calanetti vineyard that she had never opened. Wine opened was meant to be drunk. It had seemed silly and wasteful to open a whole bottle for herself.

From the deep silence in the house, Isabella knew that Connor was not there when she arrived home. Already, it occurred to her she knew his scent, and her nose sniffed the air for him.

She began unloading the contents of her grocery bags in her homey little kitchen. She considered putting on a fresh dress. One that would make him rethink his assessment of her as a schoolteacher. It was then that Isabella became aware that it wasn’t just the idea of cooking that was filling her with this lovely sense of purpose.

It was the idea of cooking for a man.

She stopped what she was doing and sat down heavily at her kitchen table.

“Isabella,” she chided herself, “you are acting as if this is a date. It’s very dangerous. You are out of your league. You will only get hurt if you play games with a man like Connor Benson.”

She was also aware she felt faintly guilty, as if this intense awareness of another man—okay, she would call a spade a spade, she was attracted to Connor Benson—was a betrayal of the love she had had with Giorgio.

Everyone kept telling her it was time to move on, and in her head she knew they were right. Six years was a long time for a woman to be alone. If she did not make a move soon, she would probably never have the children she longed for.

But no matter what her head said, her heart said no. Her heart had been hurt enough for this lifetime. Her heart did not want to fall in love ever again.

Slowly, feeling unreasonably dejected, she put everything away instead of leaving it out to cook with. She would bring anything that would spoil to school tomorrow and give it to Luigi Caravetti. He was from a single-parent family, and she knew his mother was struggling right now.

She opened a can of soup, as she would have normally done, and broke the bread into pieces. She would invite Connor to share this humble fare with her when he arrived. She needed to go over things with him, make clear what she did and did not provide.

It wasn’t very much later that he came in the front door. She felt she was ready. Or as ready as a woman could ever be for a man like that.

“I have soup if you would like some,” she called out formally.

“Grazie, that sounds great.”

Isabella wished Connor would not try to speak Italian. It made her not want to be formal at all. It made her long to teach him a few words or phrases, to correct his pronunciation. She listened as he went up the stairs. She heard the shower turn on. Her mind went to the memory of touching that perfect body this morning, and something shivered along her spine. It was a warning. If she was smart there would be no language lessons with Connor Benson.

A little while later, he came into the kitchen. Oh, God. He was so big in this tiny room. It was as if he took up all the space. Her eyes felt as if they wanted to go anywhere but to him.

But where else could they go, when he was taking up all the space?

He was freshly showered. He had on a clean shirt. He smelled wonderful. His hair was dark and damp, and towel roughened. He had not shaved, so his whiskers were thick, and she could almost imagine how they would feel scraping across a woman’s skin.

“I hope you don’t expect homemade,” she said. Her voice sounded like a croak.

“I didn’t expect anything at all, ma’am.”

There was that ma’am again, slow and steady, dragging across the back of her neck, drugging her senses.

“Isabella.” Her voice sounded like a whisper. “Please, sit.”

He took a seat at her table. It made her table seem ridiculous, as if it had been made to go in a dollhouse.

“Isabella,” he said, as if he was trying it out. Her name came off his tongue like honey. She wished she had not invited him to call her by it.

“It smells good in here,” he said conversationally and then looked around with interest. “It’s quaint, exactly what I would expect an Italian kitchen to look like. That stone wall must be original to the house.”

She felt tongue-tied but managed to squeak, “Don’t be fooled by its charm. This house is three hundred years old. And it can be quite cranky.”

“I think I noticed the crankiness in the shower just now,” he said.

“I warned you about that.” She did not want to be thinking about him in the shower, again.

“No big deal. Woke me up, though. The water was pouring out and then stopped, and then poured out again. I’ll have a look at it for you, if you want.”

“No,” she said, proudly and firmly. She did not need to give herself the idea there was a man she could rely on to help her. “You are a guest in this house. I have already called the plumber, but I’m afraid with the renovation at the villa, my house is not a priority for him.”

“I don’t mind having a look at it.”

Some longing shivered along her spine, which she straightened, instantly. “Signor, this house is three hundred years old. If you start looking at all the things wrong with it, I’m afraid you will not have time to do the job you came here to do. So, please, no, I can manage.”

He looked faintly skeptical about her ability—or maybe the ability of any woman who was alone—to manage a three-hundred-year-old house, but wisely, he said nothing.

She dished out soup from the stove, gestured to the bread, took a seat across from him. She felt as if she was sitting rigidly upright, like a recent graduate from charm school.

“Relax,” he said softly, “I won’t bite you.”

She was appalled that her discomfort was so transparent.

“Bite me?” she squeaked. She was also appalled at the picture that sprang to mind. And that it involved the cranky shower!

“It’s American slang. It means I won’t hurt you.”

Wouldn’t he? It seemed to her Connor Benson was the kind of man who hurt women without meaning to, and she didn’t mean by attacking them outside the bedroom door in the morning, either. He was the kind of man who could make a woman think heated thoughts or dream naive and romantic dreams that he would not stick around to fulfill.

“This morning excepted,” he growled.

“You didn’t hurt me!”

“Not physically. I can tell you’re nervous around me now.”

She could feel the color climbing up her face. She wanted to deny that, and couldn’t. Instead, she changed the subject. “How was your day?”

“Uneventful,” he said. “I met with Nico and had an initial look around. It’s a very beautiful village.”

“Thank you. I like it very much.” Her voice sounded stilted. What was wrong with her? Well, she’d married young. Giorgio had been her only boyfriend. She was not accustomed to this kind of encounter. “Would you like wine?”

“I’m not much of a drinker.”

“You might like to try this one. It’s one of Nico’s best, from his Calanetti vineyard.”

“All right,” he said. She suspected he had said yes to help her relax, not because he really wanted the wine.

The wine was on the counter. Isabella was glad her back was to him, because she struggled with getting it open. But finally, she was able to turn back and pour him a glass. She could feel a dewy bead of sweat on her forehead. She blew on her bangs in case they were sticking.

He sipped it carefully as she sat back down. “It’s really good. What would you say? Buono?”

“Yes, buono. Nico’s vineyard is one of the pride and joys of our region.” She took a sip of wine. And then another. It occurred to her neither of them were eating the soup.

Suddenly, it all felt just a little too cozy. Perhaps she should not have insisted on the wine. She took rather too large a gulp and set down her glass.

It was time to get down to business. “I will provide a simple supper like this, Mondays to Saturdays, the same days that I work. On Sunday, I do not. I provide breakfast every day, but I don’t usually leave a tray by the bedroom door.”

“I wouldn’t risk that again, either,” he said drily. She had the uncomfortable feeling he was amused by her.

“It’s not a hotel,” she said sternly, “so I don’t make beds.”

“Understood.” Did he intentionally say that with a military inflection, as if he was a lower rank being addressed by a superior? Was he perceiving her as bossy?

Given how she wanted to keep everything formal between them, wouldn’t that be a good thing?

“I also do not provide laundry service.” Thank goodness. She could not even imagine touching his intimate things. “I have a washing machine through that door that you are welcome to use. There is a laundry service in the village if you prefer. Except for sheets, which I do once a week. I provide fresh towels every day.”

“I can do my own sheets, thanks.”

“All right. Yes. That’s fine. The common areas of the house are yours to use if you want to watch television or cook your own meals, or put things in the refrigerator.”

The thought of him in her space made her take another rather large and fortifying sip of the wine.

“I don’t watch television,” he told her, “and I’m accustomed to preparing my own meals. I don’t want you to feel put out by me. I can tell it is a bit of an imposition for you having a man in your house.”

He was toying with the stem of his wineglass. He put it to his lips and took a long sip, watching her.

She tilted her chin at him, took a sip of her own wine. “What would make you say that? It’s no imposition at all, Signor Benson.”

Her heart was beating hard in her throat. He shrugged and lifted his wineglass to his lips again, watched her over the rim.

She might as well not have bothered denying it was any kind of imposition for her. She could feel her discomfort snaking along her spine, and he was not the kind of man you could hide things from.

“Connor, please,” he said. “We’re not very formal where I come from.”

“Connor,” she agreed. He had caught on that she was being too formal. Didn’t he know it would protect them both? But she said his name anyway, even though it felt as if she was losing ground fast. She was using his first name. It felt as though she was agreeing, somehow, to dance with the devil.

But the question was, was the devil in him, or was it in her?

“And where are you from?” she asked. This was to prove to him she was not at all formal and stuffy and could hold a polite conversation with the best of them. She hoped it would not appear as if she was desperately eager for details about him, which she was not! She still had not touched her soup. Neither had he.

“I’m from Texas,” he said.