Passionate Calanettis: Soldier, Hero...Husband?

And she was even more pleased when she opened the parcel and slipped the fabric from the tissue paper. So tiny! How could it possibly have cost so much money? Still, she hugged the scraps of fabric to her and went to try the new suit on. It was no more a swimsuit than the lime-green bikini today had been.

But she had given herself permission, with that first bold choice of a bathing suit, to start exploring a different side of herself. More feminine. More sexy. Deeply alive within her own body. Deeply appreciative of herself as a woman, and of the power that came with acknowledging this new side of herself.

Isabella was choosing the bathing suits of a woman who wanted a man to be very aware she was a woman. Not to just tease him, but to let him know he was not going to be able to shunt her aside so easily, just because he’d switched from a date to swimming lessons.

She thought of the way Connor had been swimming when she left Nico’s garden area—like a man possessed, or at the very least, like a man trying to clear his head—and allowed herself the satisfied chuckle of someone who had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.

Still, when she heard him come in later, pack his bags and leave, she avoided him. Already her house felt empty without him. If she went and saw him, she was not at all certain she could trust herself not to beg him to stay.

She would not beg him to stay, but she was not above making him sorry he had left.

The next day at the pool, she wore the same oversize caftan out onto the deck. Connor was in the pool tossing a blue flutter board into the air and catching it, pretending he’d barely registered her arrival.

But when she dropped the caftan, he registered her arrival—he missed his catch on the kickboard.

If it was possible, her new bathing suit, black and shiny, was even skimpier than the one she had worn yesterday. She really took her time getting into the water, savoring the scowl on his face.

When she reached the bottom stair, he shoved the kickboard at her and snapped some instructions.

“Aren’t you even going to say hello?” she asked, petulant.

“Hello,” he snapped.

“Your new accommodations must not be very nice.”

“What would make you say that?”

“You seem like you haven’t slept well or something. You have grumpy lines.” She touched the sides of her own mouth to show him where. He stared at her mouth. His grumpy lines deepened.

“We’re going to work on your kick today.” And so they did. There was a lot less touching this second day of instruction. It was shameful how disappointed she was by that. He announced the session was over from the opposite end of the pool. Isabella was fairly certain this was to discourage thank-you kisses.

Though, even without the kiss, his swimming seemed even more furious when she left than it had the day before.

The third day, another bathing suit had arrived. It was not a bikini. It was a leopard-patterned one-piece with a plunging neckline and the legs cut very high. It was so racy—and not the competitive swimming kind of racy—that Isabella actually debated not wearing it at all.

But she was so glad she had when they sat side by side on the pool deck, legs dangling in the water for lesson number three. His mouth set in a grim line, Connor demonstrated the arm movements for the front crawl. Really? Him showing off his arm muscles like that was no more fair than her showing off in her bikini!

They ended the lesson in the water. With him at her side she managed to swim across the width of the shallow end of the pool, once on her back and then once on her front.

The only reason he touched her at all was because she swallowed some water and came up choking. He slammed her on the back a few times before ordering her back to work.

When she emerged from the cabana, she noticed that Connor was churning up enough water to create a tidal wave.

The fourth day, not wanting it to be too obvious she was enjoying driving him crazy, she put the lime-green bikini from the first day back on. He got her into the deep end. He taught her to tread water, arms doing huge swooping circles, legs bicycling.

“You don’t work hard at it,” he warned her. “You relax. It’s something you should be able to do for a long, long time.”

And then he made her do it for half an hour, treading water right beside her without ever touching her. Once again, when she left he was covering the pool in length-eating strokes.

The fifth day, she arrived at the pool in her newest bathing suit. It was too bad he’d left her house and she’d refused his money. It would have helped her afford all these suits.

This one was a simple black one-piece, a tank style. The most suitable for swimming, it made the light come on in his eyes just as the others had done.

“Today,” he announced, “we’ll do a quick review of everything we have learned, and then we’re done.”

Done. Isabella thought of that. No more seeing him every day, unless she caught glimpses of him in the village, going about his business. Her life would be as empty as her house.

And then the wedding would come and go, and he would be gone from Monte Calanetti for good. Forever.

She got in the water and stood at the bottom of the stairs.

“Don’t stand there gripping the rail like that,” he snapped. “You’ve come farther than that.”

The tone! As bossy as if she was some green recruit he had authority over. A beach ball, rolling around on the deck, pushed by the wind, plopped in the water beside her. On an impulse, she picked it up and hurled it at his head.

He caught it easily and squinted at her. For a moment she thought he was going to ignore her protest of his high-handed ways. But then he tossed the ball high in the air and spiked it at her. She swiveled out of the way with a little squeal. The ball missed her, and then she grabbed it. She threw. He dived under the water.

Connor resurfaced and grabbed the ball. He threw it hard. She, who a week ago had been afraid to get her face wet, ducked under the water. She came up and grabbed the ball. He was swimming away from her. She waded in after him, threw the ball when he stopped. It bounced off his head.

“Ha-ha, one for me,” she cried.

He grabbed the ball and tossed it. It hit her arm. “Even. One for me, too.” He swam right up to her, his powerful strokes bringing him to her in a breath. He grabbed the ball and let her have it from close range. “Two for me.”

“Oh!”

Just like that, all the tension that had been building between them for a week dissolved into laughter. They were playing. The last lesson was forgotten, and they were like children chasing each other around the pool, shrieking and laughing and calling taunts at each other.

And then she missed a throw and the ball bounced onto the deck. Neither of them bothered to get it, and now they were just playing tag without the ball between them. The air filled with their hoots of laughter. She tagged him with a shove and swam away. He came after her hard and splashed her, then tagged her and was off. She knew she couldn’t possibly catch him, and so he was letting her shove him and splash him.

An hour went by. They were breathless, the air shimmering with their awareness of each other.

Reluctant for it ever to end, Isabella finally gave in first and hauled herself up on the deck and lay there on her tummy, panting, exhausted. A shadow passed over her. He was standing above her.

Isabella was aware she was holding her breath. He had moved out of her house to avoid her. But then, after a moment, he lowered himself to the deck, on his stomach, right beside her. He wasn’t touching her, but he was so close she could feel a wave of warmth coming off the outer part of his arm.

He closed his eyes, and she unabashedly studied him. She could see how the water was beading on his skin, droplets tangled in his eyelashes, sunlight turning them to diamonds. She could see the smooth perfection of his skin, the lines of his muscles, the swimmer’s broadness of his shoulders and back.

She had never, ever been more aware of another human being than she was of Connor, lying beside her. She sighed with something that sounded very much like surrender, and closed her eyes.

* * *

Lying there on the pool deck beside Isabella, Connor felt as if the whole world came to a standstill. When danger was near, he always felt this—his senses heightened until they were almost painful. And he felt it again right now, as he had never felt it before.

He could feel the gentle Tuscan sun on his back and the heat rising up through the pool deck and warming every cell of his skin. He could hear the birds singing, but more, he could separate their songs, so he could hear each one individually. She sighed—a contented sound like a kitten’s mew—and he could feel the puff of air from that sigh touch his lips, as life-altering as her kiss had been.

He could smell the flowers that bloomed in abundance around the pool, the faint tang of chlorine and most of all Isabella. The spicy scent had been washed away and replaced by an aroma that was dizzying in its feminine purity.

He had only one sense left to explore. He opened his eyes and gazed at Isabella stretched out on the pool deck. Her hair hung thick and wet and luxurious down the narrowness of her back. Her black bathing suit clung to her like a second skin, caressing the curve of her back and the swell of her firm buttock. Her skin was as flawless as porcelain. The roundness of her cheek was pressed into the deck, and her lashes were so thick and long they cast a faint shadow there. Her lips had not a hint of lipstick on them, and yet they naturally called to him, full and plump and sensuous.

As if she sensed him studying her, she opened her eyes. He unabashedly threw himself into the color of them—it felt as if he was swimming in cool pools of sun-filtered greens and golds and browns.

A few days ago, he had gone to the chapel at the palazzo. It had been strictly work. If he was a bad guy, where would he hide? What were the weak places both in the chapel and around it? He’d taken some pictures and made some notes of the exterior and then moved inside.

Logan Cascini, the project manager for the whole restoration, had come up to him. Connor had been touching base with Logan on and off since he arrived, and there was an affinity between the two men.

“You have to see what has complicated my life today,” Logan had said wryly.

“That’s gotta be a woman,” Connor had muttered.

“That sounds like the voice of experience,” Logan said, raising a quizzical eyebrow.

“Show me your complication,” Connor said, not following Logan’s implied invitation to elaborate.

“This is the final wall we’re working on. We’re just pulling off that old wood paneling.”

Connor followed Logan over to a side wall of the church. The workmen were absolutely silent, their normal chatter gone.

As they uncovered it, Connor, who considered himself no kind of art lover, had stood there, frozen by the beauty of what he was seeing revealed.

“It’s a fresco,” Logan supplied, “probably centuries old, and probably by one of the lesser Renaissance painters.”

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” Connor said when he could find his voice. The fresco was the Madonna and child. The expression on the Madonna’s face was so infused with love that Connor could feel an uncomfortable emotion closing his throat.

“And like all beautiful women,” Logan said, “she is complicated.”

“Now you sound like the voice of experience.”

For a moment something pained appeared in Logan’s eyes, but then he rolled his shoulders and ran a hand through his hair. “You don’t find something like this and just keep on as if it’s normal. I’ll have to notify the authorities. Depending what they decide, the wedding could be delayed.”

Connor had let out a long, low whistle, loaded with the sympathy of a man who knew firsthand how the unexpected could mess with a guy’s plans.

Then, taking one more look at the fresco, he had said goodbye to Logan and left the chapel.

Now, days later, lying side by side at the pool with Isabella, with the sun warming their backs, he was feeling that again.

Paralyzed by almost incomprehensible beauty. When Isabella saw how intently he was looking at her, she smiled and didn’t look away. Neither did he.

The danger he was in came to him slowly. He’d tried to fight this attraction every way that he knew how. He’d tried to create distance. He’d tried to nip it in the bud. He’d even moved out of her house.

But still, he was falling in love with Isabella Rossi. Or maybe he already had. That was why he had felt such an urgent need to cancel that date, to get out from under the same roof as her. It was why he was in this state of heightened awareness and had been for days. The fact that he could see beauty so intensely was connected to what he was experiencing with this woman.

She reached out and touched his shoulder, and again, because of his heightened awareness, he felt that touch as though he had never been touched before, had never felt so exquisitely connected to another human being before.

“I’ve gone from being terrified of the water to loving it,” she said huskily.

“I know, you have been a great student.” He was the wrong man for a woman to love. He had always known that. His childhood had left him wary of relationships, and his choice of work had suited that perfectly. He had told himself he was protecting women from the potential for loss, but in fact he had been protecting himself.

Because he’d always known only the bravest of women could handle what he was dishing out.

True, he wasn’t in active service anymore. But what had just gone down in Azerbaijan was plenty of evidence he still had his knack for finding danger.

It seemed to him this little slip of a woman lying on the deck beside him was the bravest of women.

“Connor?”

“Huh?”

“I’ve never had that before, what I had just now.”

“What?”

“Just fun,” she said. “Just good old-fashioned fun. Even when I was a child, Giorgio was my best friend. He couldn’t run and play like everyone else, and so I stayed with him. We read and drew pictures, but I’ve never really had this. Just to let go of everything, to play until I’m so out of breath I feel as if I can’t breathe.

“I mean, I do it with my students. I have fun with them, but it’s not the same. I have to be the adult. I have to maintain a modicum of control. I don’t ever get to be this carefree.”

His awareness of her deepened yet again. Her beautiful eyes were sparkling with tears.

“So, thank you,” she said. “I’m never going to be able to thank you enough. Never.”

His awareness of himself deepened, too, but not in a good way. An unexpected element inserted itself into the pure and sizzling awareness of the moment. Connor suddenly felt ashamed of himself. He’d backed out of that date out of pure terror of what she was doing to him. He’d left her house because he couldn’t trust himself around her without wanting to taste her lips again.

But when he’d challenged her to embrace what terrified her, she had done it in a heartbeat. She had shown incredible bravery.

And now she was telling him she’d never had fun. That fooling around in the swimming pool was the most fun she’d ever had. She’d given her whole life to looking after others. Her husband, and then the kids at school.

It seemed to Connor he was being given an opportunity to do something good. Maybe the best thing he’d ever done. It wasn’t about whether or not he was comfortable. It wasn’t about that at all. That feeling that maybe he was falling for her deepened in him. Didn’t that call him to be a better man? Didn’t it ask him to be more than he had ever been before. Braver? Stronger? More compassionate?

“You know that date I canceled?” His voice was so low it came out sounding like a whisper.

She went very still.

“You want to give me another chance?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice low, too, as if they were in a church. “Yes, I do.”

“What about tomorrow night?”

“That would be perfect.”

* * *

Isabella looked at her bed. It was covered with every single item of clothing that she owned. She had tried on the red dress and then taken it off. He’d already seen it. It wasn’t the message she wanted to give. Nothing was the message she wanted to give.

Suddenly, frustrated, exhausted from trying things on and ripping them back off, she threw herself down on the bed, falling backward into the heap of clothes. Isabella lay there, staring at the ceiling.

She thought back over their week of swimming lessons. There had been the most delicious sense of getting to know Connor, of connecting with him. There had been the most delicious awareness of him physically, a yearning to touch him and taste him that was astonishingly powerful. That small kiss had shown her what was going on between them was like riding a wild horse. It wasn’t going to be controlled.

She had never felt that for Giorgio.

A stab of guilt pierced her heart. And she had a terrible moment of self-awareness. Giorgio, despite the fact he was dying, had been the safest choice she could make. He had been her friend, and she had loved him as a friend.

But that other kind of love? The kind that was filled with passion and excitement? Hadn’t she known from the time she was a little girl that that kind was unpredictable and hurtful and destructive?

Connor would never be unfaithful. After you knew him for ten minutes, you knew that of him. That he was a man of complete honor.

But he had pitted his formidable strength against the wrongs of the world. He had warned her that he sought out danger, and that he found it. She had seen that for herself when she had caught the tail end of that news clip out of Azerbaijan.

To allow herself to love Connor Benson would be to open herself up to pain such as she had never felt, not even when she was a little girl and had seen her father in a café with a woman who was not her mother.

From the second she had spotted him, Isabella had begun working on an elaborate story: it was someone from work. It was a friend. It was a cousin. And then her father had leaned forward and kissed that woman on the mouth with unmistakable passion.

Then there had been the different pain: watching Giorgio die, every day a series of losses for him, and for them, until she was feeding the man she married baby food from a spoon.

And so, this week Isabella had tackled one of her fears. She had learned to swim. And she had deliberately fanned the fire she had seen in Connor’s eyes.

But without considering the consequences. In a way, she had won. He had given in. He had asked her out again after canceling the first time. But was she really ready to open herself to more pain?

Isabella realized, sadly, she had used up all her bravery. She did not have any left. She certainly did not have the kind left that you would need to go on the wild ride that was love.

Not with a man like Connor Benson.

The next morning, she caught up with him on the edge of town. She had known he would be there, heading out for his early morning swim.

“Connor.”

He swung around and looked at her. His smile held as much promise as the sun that was just beginning to touch the rooftops of Monte Calanetti.

“I’m sorry. About tonight?”

His smile faded.

“I can’t. I realized I have a previous obligation.”

He cocked his head at her.

She should have thought of the previous obligation before now! She blurted out the first thing that came to her head. “My students are putting on a skit for the spring fete. I’m not ready. The costumes aren’t finished. I haven’t started the props.”

He was looking at her quietly.

“So, clearly a date is out of the question. For right now.”

And in a while, he would be gone, anyway. If she could just hold off for a few more days, she would be what she most liked to be. Safe. She would leave that woman she had been introduced to in Nico’s swimming pool behind, a memory that would fade more with each passing day, and then week, and then year.

Besides, neither of them had addressed where a date would be leading—down that dark road to heartbreak? There were so many different routes to get to that destination.

So, if she should be so pleased with herself that she was taking control of a situation that had the potential to get seriously out of control if she let it, why did she feel so annoyed that instead of looking dismayed that she had canceled their date, he looked downright relieved.

“Is it the swimming lessons that put you behind the eight ball?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “What is this? Behind the eight ball?”

“Have you ever played pool?”

“Isn’t that what we just did all week?”

He threw back his head and laughed. Oh, of all the things he could have done, that was the worst. It filled her with an ache to live in a state of playful days of hearing him laugh. But of course, given what he did for a living, that was unrealistic.

There would be far more days of waiting for him, of anxiety sitting in her stomach like a pool of acid, of uncertainty and fear.

“In America, we play a variation of billiards called pool. Guys like me who spend ninety-nine percent of our lives bored out of our skulls become very good at it. There’s a game in pool called eight ball,” he said. “The eight ball is black. You can only touch it when it’s the last ball on the table, otherwise you lose. So, if it gets between you and the ball you are aiming at, you are in a very difficult predicament. That’s what ‘behind the eight ball’ means.”

“What about the one percent?” she asked. She didn’t care about the eight ball.

“Huh?”

“You spend ninety-nine percent of your life bored out of your skull—what about the one percent?”

“Oh, that.”

She waited.

He grinned at her, devil-may-care. “It’s one percent of all hell breaking loose.” He held that smile, but she saw something else in his eyes, as if he held within him shadows of every terrible thing he had ever seen.

“And that’s the part you love, and also the part you pay a price for.”

He did not like it when the powers of observation that he had encouraged her to hone were turned on him.

“Weren’t we talking about you?”

“Yes, we were,” she said. “I think that would be an accurate description of how I feel right now, behind this eight ball. I have much to do, and not enough time to do it.”

“My fault. Because of the swimming. I’ll help you get ready for your skit. I’m winding down on the recon for the wedding anyway. I’ll be wrapped up in a couple of days.”

And then he would be gone.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“YOU WON’T LIKE IT,” Isabella said with all the firmness she could muster. “You won’t like helping me. I’m making paper sunshine cutouts.”

Connor laughed again, but she could hear a faint edge to it. “Lady, my life has been so full of things I didn’t like it would make your head spin.”

Again, that hint of the dark places he had been that he carried within him. “What is this, make your head spin?”

“I’ll explain it to you over paper sunshines.”

Isabella was ashamed of her weakness. She could not give up what he was offering. She could not give up an opportunity to spend time with him. It seemed to her that she had caught a glimpse of his world when they went swimming. Now she had an overwhelming desire to see how he would react to hers.

No doubt with utter boredom. But at least it was not a date, that event that was so loaded with romantic expectation and foolish hopes.

“All right,” she said stiffly. “Come after school. Class gets out at one.”

“Okay,” he said. He sauntered away, into the magic of Monte Calanetti’s dawn, whistling. Whistling! It confirmed that he was not the least distressed that she had canceled the date. The exact opposite, in fact.