Passionate Calanettis

CHAPTER THREE

CONNOR RETREATED TO his room, annoyed with himself. He was not generally so chatty. What moment of madness had made him say yes to that wine? And why had so very little of it made him feel so off balance?

Intoxicated.

Maybe it hadn’t been the wine, but just sharing a simple meal with a beautiful woman in the quintessential Italian kitchen, with its old stone walls and its deep windows open to the breeze, that had brought his guard down.

He had told Isabella things he had not told people he’d worked with for twenty years. Justin knew about his hardscrabble upbringing on the wrong side of Corpus Christi, but no one else did.

The soft look in Isabella’s eyes as he had told her had actually made him feel not that he wanted to tell her less, but as though he wanted to tell her more, as if his every secret would be safe with her.

As if he had carried a burden alone for way too long.

“Stop it,” Connor snapped grimly at himself. He acknowledged he was tired beyond reason. You didn’t unload on a woman like her. She, cute little schoolteacher that she was, wouldn’t be able to handle it, to hold up to it. She’d buried her husband and that had sent her into full retreat. That’s why someone so gorgeous was still unmarried six years later.

So there would be no more wine tastings over supper that loosened his tongue. No more suppers, in fact. Tomorrow, rested, his first duty would be to find a nice little place to eat supper every night.

With none of the local wines. That one tonight had seemed to have some beautiful Tuscan enchantment built right into it.

And if avoiding her at dinner proved to be not enough defense, he would go in search of another place to stay.

Not that he wanted to hurt her feelings.

“The Cat does not worry about people’s feelings,” he said, annoyed with himself. What he needed to do was deal with the exhaustion first. He peeled off his clothes and rolled into bed and slept, but not before grumpily acknowledging how hungry he was.

Connor awoke very early. He knew where he was this time. Again, he could hear the sounds of someone trying to be very quiet. He rolled over and looked at his bedside clock.

Five a.m. What the heck? He had the awful thought Isabella might have gotten up so early to make him breakfast. That made him feel guilty since he knew she had a full day of work to put in. Guilt was as unusual for him as worrying about feelings. Still, he needed to tell her not to bother.

He slipped on a pair of lightweight khakis and pulled a shirt over his head, and went downstairs to the kitchen.

She had her back to him.

“Isabella?”

She shrieked and turned, hand to her throat.

“Sorry,” he said, “I’ve startled you again.”

She dropped her hand from her throat. “No, you didn’t,” she said, even though it was more than obvious she had been very startled.

“Whatever. I think we’ve got to quit meeting like this.”

The expression must have lost something in the translation, because she only looked annoyed as she turned back to the counter. “I just wasn’t expecting you to be up so early.”

“I wasn’t expecting you up this early.”

“I’m preparing for the spring festival,” she said. “I have extra work to do at school.”

“And extra work to do here, because of me?”

She glanced over her shoulder at him, and then looked quickly back at what she was doing, silent.

“I wanted to let you know not to fuss over me. A box of cereal on the table and some milk in the fridge is all I need in the morning. And coffee.”

“I’ll just show you how to use the coffeemaker then—”

He smiled. “I’ve made coffee on every continent and in two dozen different countries. I can probably figure it out.”

She looked very pretty this morning. Her hair was scraped back in a ponytail. It made her look, again, younger than he knew her to be. The rather severe hairstyle also showed off the flawless lines of her face. She had on a different sleeveless dress, and her lips had a hint of gloss on them that made them look full and faintly pouty.

“All right then,” she said, moving away from the coffeemaker. “So, no breakfast?”

“I don’t need supper tonight, either. I’m kind of used to fending for myself.”

And he did not miss the look of relief on her face.

So he added, “Actually, I probably won’t need dinner any night. Instead of letting you know if I won’t be here, how about if I let you know if I will?”

The look on her face changed to something else, quickly masked. It only showed him the wisdom of his decision. The little schoolteacher wanted someone to look after, and it would be better if she did not get any ideas that it was going to be him!

“I actually like to swim before I eat anything in the morning. This is the perfect time of day for swimming.”

“It’s not even light out.”

“I know. That’s what makes it perfect.”

Whenever he could, Connor had begun every morning of his life for as long as he could remember with a swim. That affinity for the water had, in part, been what made him such a good fit for the SEALs. But when he left the SEALs, it was the only place he had found where he could outrun—or outswim, as it were—his many demons. Despite Justin’s well-meaning advice to take a rest from it, Connor simply could not imagine life without the great stress relief and fitness provided by the water.

“You’ll wake people up.”

“Actually, Nico invited me to use the pool at his private garden in the villa, but I’d prefer to swim in the river.”

“The river? It’s very cold at this time of year.”

“Perfect.”

“And probably dangerous.”

“I doubt it, but I already warned you about men like me and danger.”

“Yes, you did,” she whispered. “There’s a place on the river where the boys swim in the summer. Would you like me to show it to you?”

“You aren’t trying to protect me from danger, are you, Isabella?” he asked quietly.

“That would be a very foolish undertaking, I’m sure,” she said, a little stain that confirmed his suspicions moving up her cheeks. “It’s hard to find, the place where the boys swim. That’s all.”

“Yes, please, then, show it to me,” he heard himself saying, though he had no doubt he could find good places to swim all by himself. He didn’t want to hurt her pride. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”

And so he found himself, with dawn smudging the air, painting the medieval skyline of Monte Calanetti in magnificence, walking down twisting streets not yet touched by the light beside Isabella to the river.

And enjoying the pink-painted splendor of the moment way more than he had a right to.

* * *

Isabella contemplated what moment of madness had made the words slip from her mouth that she would show Connor the way to the river. By getting up so early, she’d been trying to avoid him this morning.

Instead, she was walking through the still darkened streets of Monte Calanetti with him by her side.

And despite the pure madness that must have motivated her invitation, she would not have withdrawn it had she been given a chance. Because that moment, of unguarded impulse, had led to this one.

It was unexpectedly magical, the streets still dim, the brilliance of the dawn that was staining the sky above them not yet reaching into the cracks and crevices of the town. The occasional light was blinking on in the houses and businesses they passed.

Isabella was intensely aware of how it felt to have this man walk beside her. He was so big, his presence commanding. He had gone back up to his room for a moment, and when he came down he carried a small black bag and had a white towel strung around his neck.

He had a way of walking—shoulders back, stride long and confident and calm—that gave a sense that he owned the earth and he knew it. Isabella had never felt unsafe in Monte Calanetti, but she was aware, walking beside him, of feeling immensely protected.

“I can’t believe the light,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

“It’s part of what makes Tuscany famous, that quality of light. Artists throng here for that.”

“How would you say this in Italian?” he said, making a sweeping gesture that took in everything—the amazing light and the twisting streets, still in shadows, dawn beginning to paint the rooflines in gold.

She thought a moment. Wasn’t this exactly what she had longed to do and had decided was dangerous? The morning was too beautiful to fight with herself, to be petty about what she would and wouldn’t give. She would give him a few words, nothing more.

“In tutto il suo splendore,” Isabella said.

He repeated it, rolling the words off his tongue. Mixed with his drawl and the deepness of his voice, it was very charming.

“And the translation?” he asked her.

“In glory.”

“Ah,” he said. “Perfect.”

After that neither of them attempted conversation, but the quiet was comfortable between them as they moved down the narrow streets. It gave a sense of walking toward the light as they left the last of the buildings behind and followed the road past the neat row of vineyards that followed the undulating green of the hills.

“There it is,” she said, finally, pointing at the ribbon of river that had become visible up ahead of them. “When you come to the bridge, turn right and follow the river. You’ll see a tire suspended on a rope where the boys swim.”

“Thank you. Grazie.”

“You’re welcome.” She should have turned back toward the town, but she did not. She recognized a reluctance to leave the simple glory of this moment behind. He must have felt that, too.

“Come with me.” His voice was husky.

Come with him? Where?

“Swimming?” she asked. Her voice felt very squeaky. It felt as if he had asked something far graver. To tangle their lives together, to follow the thread of magic that had led them through the town in the enchanted light of early morning.

When he said nothing, she rushed to fill the silence. “I couldn’t possibly. I don’t know how to swim. The water will be cold. I—I—I don’t have proper bathing wear.”

“Don’t come this far and not at least put your feet in the water.”

It felt as if he was saying something else altogether. He was inviting her to wake up instead of sleeping. He was inviting her to really live instead of going through the motions of living.

“I have to tell you a little secret,” she confessed. “I’ve never learned to swim because I am a little bit afraid of the water.”

“All the more reason to say yes instead of no,” he said.

It occurred to her Connor Benson was that kind of man. Being with him would challenge you to be more than you had been before. She had always been perfectly content with who she was before!

“Maybe another time,” she said uneasily.

“Putting your feet in the water is the first step to swimming, to overcoming that fear.”

“It’s not as if it’s a crippling fear—it’s not as if it changes my life,” she said defensively, already sorry she’d confided in him that she was afraid.

“Fear can be a gift,” he said, his voice calm and low. “It can show you that you are in very real danger. But an irrational fear can change your life in ways you don’t even understand. If you give in to it, it can expand. So, one day you’re afraid of swimming, the next you’re afraid of everything.”

Did he see her as afraid of everything? And how much truth was there in that? She looked at the safe little world she had created for herself. Maybe, even if it was annoying, maybe he was right. She needed to stretch just a tiny bit out of her comfort zone.

What would it hurt to get her feet wet?

“All right,” she whispered, and was rewarded with a tentative smile. The smile put the dawn to shame and warned her exploring new territories and experiences was always going to be fraught with hidden dangers.

That’s why she had chosen life as a schoolteacher in a small town. Her choices had given her a life with a reassuring sameness to everything that made her feel safe and secure.

Though in this amazing dawn, she saw things in a new and less flattering light. Had she allowed herself to become utterly boring? Apparently. Apparently she had become the kind of woman who you could tell in a single glance was a schoolteacher.

They came to the bridge and stood on it for a moment. The water was flowing underneath it like liquid gold, stained by the rising sun. They stood there in silence, watching morning mist rise off the vineyards all around them.

“Everyone should know how to swim,” he said sternly, as if he was deliberately moving away from the magic of the shared moment, as if he was making sure she was not mistaken about his motivations in asking her to join him.

“Really? Why?”

He frowned at her, as if the question was too silly to deserve an answer.

“Most of the world’s population, including you, lives near some sort of body of water. You could be in a boat that capsizes. You could fall in.”

“I suppose,” she agreed, but looking at him, she recognized what was at his very core. He protected people. It was more than evident that was his vocation and his calling. His shoulders were huge and broad, but broad enough to carry the weight of the whole world?

He broke her gaze, as if he knew she had seen something of him that he did not want her to see. Connor moved off the bridge and found a path worn deep by the feet of hundreds of hot little boys over many, many years.

The path was steep in places, and her footwear—a pair of flimsy sandals, fine for town—was not very good for scrambling over rocks.

“Oh,” she gasped at one point, when she nearly fell.

He turned, took it all in in a breath, and his hands found her waist and encircled it. He lifted her easily over the rough spot and set her down. But his hands remained around her waist for just a hair too long, and then he turned away just a hair too quickly.

Her sensation of being with a man who would protect her with his life, if need be, strengthened.

It made her feel exquisitely feminine to be the one being looked after, for a change. Giorgio had never looked after her. It had always been the other way around.

A touch of guilt rippled along the perfect mirrored surface of the morning. But it evaporated like the mist rising all around them as they arrived at the swimming hole. Her awareness of Connor seemed to fill up every crack and crevice in her, just as sunlight would be filling every crack and crevice as it poured into the town.

The river widened here, gurgling on both sides of a pool that was large and placid. A tree leaned over it, and from a sturdy branch, a tire swung on a frayed rope.

Connor kicked off his shoes and shucked his trousers and his shirt and stood before her much as he had yesterday, totally unself-conscious in bathing trunks that were the same cut and style as his underwear had been, and every bit as sexy. He bent over his bag for a moment and fished out something that he held loosely in his left hand.

He stepped to the water’s edge.

“Is it cold?” she asked.

“Oh, yeah,” he said with deep pleasure. He reached back his right hand for her. “It’s a bit slippery.”

Crazy to accept that invitation, but really, it was much too late to stop accepting the crazy invitations now. She kicked out of her sandals and reached out. His hand closed around hers, and he tugged her gently to the water’s edge. She was not sure anything in her entire life had felt as right as accepting the strength of that hand, feeling it close around her own, with a promise of strength and protection.

“The first step to swimming,” he encouraged her.

She stuck a toe in, shrieked and pulled it back out swiftly. She tried to loosen her hand from his, but he just laughed and held tight until she put her toe back in the water.

“Come on,” he said, patiently. “Just try it.”

And so, her hand held firmly in his, she stepped into the icy cold water and felt her eyes go round. The mud on the bottom oozed up between her toes.

It felt wondrous. She didn’t feel the least bit afraid. He tugged her hand and smiled. What could she do? She could say yes to life. Isabella bunched up her skirt in her other hand and lifted it. The morning air on her naked thighs felt exquisite. She saw his eyes move there, to where she had lifted her skirt out of the water, and felt slightly vindicated by the flash of deep masculine heat she saw in them. That was not the look one gave a boring schoolteacher.

He led her deeper into the water—it crept up to her calves and to her knees—and he smiled at her squeal that was part protest and mostly delight. And then she was laughing.

The laughter felt as if it was bubbling up from a hidden stream deep within her; it had been trapped and now it was set free.

Connor was staring at her, and his gaze added to the sense of heightened awareness. She was entering another world, a foreign land of sensation, his hand so warm and strong guiding her, the cold water tugging on her feet and her bare calves, licking at her knees, storming her senses. She was not sure she had ever felt so exquisitely and fully alive.

Something sizzled in the air between them, as real as getting a jolt from a loose wire. Connor Benson was looking at her lips. She allowed herself to look at his.

A knife-edged awareness surged through her. If she took one tiny step toward him, she knew he would kiss her.

Was this what she had given up when she had chosen Giorgio? Was this what her mother had tried to tell her she would miss? The thought was an unexpected dark spot in the brightness of her unleashed spirit.

She felt the laughter dry up within her, and Isabella let go of Connor’s hand and took a step back instead of toward him.

“What?” he asked.

She backed away from his touch, from the exquisite intoxication of his closeness. It was clouding her judgment. It was making her crazy.

Ma sei pazzo, she chided herself inside her own head, backing away from the delicious craziness that beckoned to her.

But he did not allow her to escape. For every step back she took, he took one forward, until she was up against the slippery bank and could not move for fear of falling in the water. He came to her and lifted her chin, looked deeply into her eyes. “What?” he asked again, softly.

She could feel the strength in his hands, the calm in his eyes. She could smell the scents of him and of the morning mingling. She could lean toward all of this...

But she didn’t.

“Nothing,” she said. “I have to go. I can’t—”

Can’t what? she asked herself. Enjoy life? Be open to new experiences? She broke away from his gaze—a gaze that seemed to know all her secrets, to strip her of everything she had regarded as truth before. She gathered her skirt, shoved by him, waded up the river to where it was easy to find the bank and left the water.

“You can use my towel to dry off your feet,” he called.

She did that. She grabbed his towel and her shoes and found a dry place on the bank to sit and towel off her feet.

She dared to glance at him. He stood, watching her. He was so extraordinarily attractive, those strong legs set in the water, the morning light playing with the features of his face, so comfortable in his own skin. Italians had an expression about men like this.

Sa il fatto suo.

He knows what he is about. He knows himself.

And then this man who knew himself so well, who knew his every strength and his every weakness, lifted a shoulder, dismissing her. He dipped the mask and snorkel he held in his left hand into the water. He slipped them on, resting them on his forehead. Then he casually saluted her, adjusted the mask and snorkel, and dived neatly into the water and disappeared.

She held her breath. Where on earth had he gone? It seemed as if he could not possibly be down there for that long without something having happened. Was he tangled in a branch under the water? Had he hit his head on a rock?

But then the water broke, at the far edge of the pool, where faster water fed it. He broke the surface, and without looking back began to swim against the current.

It would always be like this if you were with a man like him, Isabella told herself sternly. You would always wonder what danger he had managed to find.

And still, she could not tear her eyes away from him. She watched in utter amazement as Connor propelled himself through the water. His strength and his grace were utterly awe-inspiring. It was as if there was no current at all, his body cutting through the water at high speed. If she didn’t know better, she would think he had flippers on, but no flippers had come out of that bag. She watched him swim until he reached a bend in the river, swam around it and disappeared.

She finished drying her feet and put her shoes on. It was harder navigating the tricky path back to the bridge without him.

But it was what she had to do. She had to navigate without him—she had to go back to the way her life had been before they took that walk into a world of enchantment, this world where fears evaporated like the morning mist was evaporating under the Tuscan sun.

Isabella had to be who she was before.

A few minutes did not alter the course of an entire life.

But she of all people should know that was not true, because the entire course of her life had been altered the second she had said I do to Giorgio.

And it felt like the worst kind of sin that these few minutes this morning had filled her with regret, for the first time, at what the choice to say those words had made her miss in life.

But one thing about saying that to Giorgio? If she ever did say those words to a man again—and that was a big, big if—it would be to one who would grow old with her.

And there would never, ever be a guarantee of that with a man like Connor Benson.

* * *

The river was amazing to swim in, and Connor quickly made morning swims a part of his Monte Calanetti routine. His time in the military had made him move toward a structured approach to life. He loved routine and order. From firsthand experience, Connor knew when the world turned to chaos—which it could do in the blink of an eye—that was when an investment in discipline paid dividends.

And so now he developed a schedule for his days. He rose early, before Isabella was up, walked to the river and swam against the current in the cold water until his muscles ached but his mind was sharply clear and focused.

It was all working out quite nicely. By the time he returned, Isabella had left for work.

Isabella. The clear mind made Connor uncomfortably aware, especially after that magical morning together, that this time Isabella could well be the chaos waiting to unfold in his life.

And that kind of chaos was way more dangerous than the sudden crack of a sniper’s rifle, or a bomb going off on the side of the road.

Oh, she seemed innocent enough, the last place a man would expect chaos to come from, but that would be a man who had not felt her hand close around his, who had not heard her unexpected shriek of delighted laughter split the silence of the morning as her toes touched ice-cold water. That would be a man who had not, for one crazy, glorious moment, looked at her lips and wanted to taste the promise of them, wanted to see if they tasted like the nectar of life itself.

The answer was simple. No more dawn encounters. No more walking through streets so quiet he could hear her dress swishing against her bare legs, no more putting his hands around her narrow waist to lift her over the rocky parts of the trail. No more wading in icy cold water with her. No more encouraging her to explore the world of sensation.

And especially no more looking at the sweet plumpness of her lips!

A man—one not as disciplined as Connor knew himself to be—could live to see the light that had come on in Isabella’s face that morning by the river.

And so, he was avoiding her. And his avoidance had helped him develop a routine that he was comfortable with. There were no more tongue-loosening little chats over wine, and no more shocking morning encounters in the hallway or kitchen, and most of all, no more morning strolls through a predawn town.

Isabella seemed to enjoy routine as much as he himself did, and so it was proving easy to avoid her. He, an expert on figuring out people’s habits, had her routine down pat in no time. It fit perfectly with his lifestyle.

By the time he returned from his early morning swims, Isabella was gone. He used the kitchen and did his laundry when she was at school. A lot of his work could be done on his computer, and he took advantage of her absence and the coolness on the lower floors of her house to do that when she was not there.

When she was at home in the evenings, he went out to eat and did reconnaissance. It was cooler then, anyway, and he made sure never to be back until her house lights—and her bedroom light, which he could see from the street—were out.

Even with all that effort, it was hard to ignore the fact he was sharing a house with a woman. No, it seemed his avoidance strategy had made more awareness, not less, tingle along his spine. Her little touches were everywhere in that house: an exquisite painting, a fresh vase of flowers, the smell of toast and coffee in the morning. Her scent was in the air.

And by now it had become apparent to him that all the while he was congratulating himself on his avoidance strategy, the truth was it was so successful because she was avoiding him!

By the fifth day of living under her roof, after succeeding with zero encounters of the Isabella-in-person kind, Connor was not at all sure what his success meant, because he was fairly certain he had never been more aware of another person.

Connor came into the house. It was much earlier than he usually arrived in the afternoon, but he felt a need to change clothes before he went and found a place to eat tonight. It had been another scorching day in Monte Calanetti and he thought he might head to the river for the second time that day.

He paused and listened. Had he managed to get in before she got home from school?

Today, for the first time, he realized he had not been successful in avoiding sharing the house with his appealing roommate. He could hear the one and only shower running upstairs.

Well, that was okay. He would nip into his room and get his swim things and a change of clothes. Isabella wouldn’t even know he’d been in the space. The thought of bumping into her in the hallway, fresh out of the shower, made him hurriedly gather his swim things from his room.

His escape was nearly complete when the sound of an explosion, followed by a woman’s shriek of terror, came from the bathroom. There was a loud thunk.

And then there was the worst thing of all.

Complete and utter silence.