Passionate Calanettis

CHAPTER FIVE

ISABELLA STARED AT CONNOR. He should take her on a date? But was that his head or his heart talking? Because the way he said it, it was almost as though he hoped to get her out of his system.

“You should?” she asked.

“Sure. I mean, if you’d like to.”

There was something very endearing about seeing this big, self-assured, superconfident Texan looking so unsure of himself.

“I’d like to,” she said softly. “I’d like to, very much.”

And then it seemed slightly and wonderfully ridiculous that they turned and walked home together.

Only it didn’t seem ridiculous when his hand found hers.

It felt not as if she was going to go on a real date for the first time in her life, but as if she was coming home.

* * *

“I’ve gone and done something really stupid,” Connor whispered into his phone.

“Huh? Who is this?”

“Justin, it’s me.”

“Connor?”

“Yeah.”

“What the hell is going on?”

“There’s this girl.”

Something relaxed in Justin’s tone. “This better be good—it’s two o’clock in the morning here.”

Connor contemplated that. Was there one rational thing left in him? No, that’s why he was consulting his friend. That’s what SEALs did when they were in a pickle, they relied on each other.

“She’s not really a girl. A woman.”

“Uh-huh?”

“I asked her out.”

“That sounds like it’s worthy of a two a.m. phone call.”

“The thing is, I didn’t really ask her out for me. I asked her out for her. She’s a widow. She married really young. She’s missed a lot. She’s never been on a real date before.”

Silence.

Connor sighed. “I’m the wrong guy for this, aren’t I?”

Silence.

“I mean, I’m just the wrong guy to try and show her how it can be.”

“How what can be?”

“You know.”

“You’ll have to spell it out for me. I’m having that two-o’clock-in-the-morning brain fart.”

“How it can be, uh, when two people like each other. A lot.”

“You mean falling in love?” Justin asked. He sounded wide-awake now.

“No!” Connor had to backtrack. He was sorry he had admitted liking her. A lot. His mission was one of altruism, and he wanted to make Justin understand that.

“I mean maybe falling in love,” Connor said carefully, “just not with me. I just want to show her life can be fun. I want to show her she’s missed something, and not to be afraid to embrace it. That it is not too late for her.”

“From the embracer of all things romantic,” Justin said wryly.

“You’re not helping! I guess I want to show her what she should be looking for in a guy. Not me. I mean, I’m leaving. I’m here for the short term only. But if I could just give her an idea how a date should feel.”

“Very altruistic.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

Justin sighed. “Okay. Ask me a specific question, and I will try to help you with it.”

“What should I do with her on a date? I was thinking dinner and a movie.”

“So, basically the same thing you’ve done on every single date you’ve ever been on?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.”

“What does that mean?” Connor demanded. “I hate it when you say hmm like that.”

“It just seems to me if you’re trying to show her life is good, and trying to encourage her to embrace the great adventure, and trying to show her what a good date would feel like, you should put a bit more thought into it.”

“I’ve been thinking of nothing else!”

“Just a sec.” Connor could hear Justin talking to someone, the sound muffled as if he had stuck the phone under his pillow. Connor was pretty sure the other voice was feminine. He strained his ears. Justin came back on a moment later.

“Be original. A picnic in the moonlight. Something like that.”

“That is the hokiest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Well, then, don’t ask.”

“Okay, I won’t.” And Connor contemplated the fact that Justin was with someone. Justin really was getting on with his life. It occurred to Connor that the wheelchair Justin used was holding Connor back more than it was his friend.

“Don’t hang up, Connor. The red line is going off.”

The red line. That was the dedicated line for emergencies for their company.

Justin came back on the phone. His voice was completely different, the sleep stripped from it. This voice, crisp, take-charge and take-no-prisoners, was a voice Connor recognized. He was a warrior now, and Connor shifted into that role easily, aware he was far more at ease with this than the places of the heart that he had very nearly gone to.

“How long would it take you to get back to Azerbaijan?”

Connor was already opening a different screen on his phone, looking up flights. “I could be in Baku in under six hours if I can make the connections.”

“A vulture has landed. Go.”

A vulture had landed. It was their code for a bad guy, known to them. In a similar code, Justin and whoever was on the ground in Azerbaijan would text the details to Connor’s phone as they had them. Connor was aware as he threw things in his bag that he felt a sense of purpose and mission. This was the world he moved in with absolute ease. This was where he belonged.

He scrawled a note for Isabella, sent a quick text to Nico and slipped out the door, back into the comfort of all that was familiar.

It was ironic just how safe danger made Connor Benson feel.

* * *

Isabella was aware, as soon as she woke up the next morning, that Connor was gone. She could feel his absence in the house, as if some energy that was necessary to life was gone.

She found his note on the kitchen table but was not comforted by it. Was it convenient that he was suddenly called away at the same time things were taking a turn between them? Was he deliberately cooling things off?

Isabella nursed the hope that he would call, and it increased her tension when he did not. He was cooling things off.

Still, she could not believe it was possible to miss Connor so much. In the short time he had been part of her life, his presence had made a big impact on her household without her really realizing it at the time. There was something about having a man in her house—even though they had mostly avoided each other—that made her feel safe. That in itself was not really rational—he had attacked her the very first day.

So, no, her acute sense of missing him had very little to do with a sense of safety. Maybe even the opposite. There was a sense that very unsafe things could unfold between them. And that made each day have a delicious sense of anticipation.

She looked at his note, over and over, trying to glean any emotion from it, trying to discern which way the compass was swinging. His handwriting was no surprise, strong and bold. The message was to the point: “Called away on business. Will pay for my room for days I am not here. Please hold for my return.”

Given their middle-of-the-street conversation of the night before he had written that note—given his invitation to go on a date—it seemed very impersonal and businesslike. He had signed it only with his first name, no term of endearment.

What would she expect? Love, Connor. No, definitely not that. Hugs? That was laughable. How about best wishes? Or can’t wait to see you again?

Despite all her misgivings, Isabella could feel herself anticipating his return like a child anticipating Christmas, even though she chided herself not to.

He had asked her on a date. If he followed through, she wondered what he had in mind. She felt excited about it, when really, that was the most unsafe thing of all.

Or maybe she really did not know the first thing about safety. Because she turned on the news one night, and it was focused on Azerbaijan. Normally, Isabella did not watch the news, and she would have flipped by the station. But tonight, she recalled that first morning Connor had said that was where he was coming from. Was that where his business had called him back to?

And indeed, the story was about an incident that had happened at the World Food Conference. Members of an unnamed private security organization had apprehended someone who had made threats against one of the delegates. Details were sketchy, and there was no footage. Had Connor’s company been involved? Her gut said it had been.

When the story was over, Isabella shut off the TV, but she sat there until the room grew dark, thinking about what she had seen.

She was aware her stomach was in a knot. She was aware that this would be the reality of tangling your life with a man like Connor Benson.

Six days after he departed, a knock came on her front door. It was dinnertime, and Isabella was not sure who would come calling at that hour.

She swung open the door to see Connor standing there.

He looked so wondrously familiar. Her heart began to pound unreasonably. Her anxiety about the kind of work he did left her in a rush of warm relief to see him standing there, so obviously unharmed.

“Oh!” she said. She could feel herself blushing as she stepped back from the door. “You didn’t have to knock. You live here.”

He cocked his head at her, lifted a brow.

“I mean, you’re a guest here. I want you to feel you can come and go as you please.”

“I know that, but I also knew you didn’t know when I would be back. I didn’t want to startle you. Again.”

She regarded him. His face was deeply etched with exhaustion. But there was something else there, too. It was as she had suspected when she read his curt note—he had bought himself some time and now he seemed remote, as if they wanted different things. It was as if he had thought about that late-night meeting in the street and decided he wanted something different than what she wanted. He wanted them to be strangers. She wanted them to be friends.

Or more than friends?

Her anxieties were realized. Isabella could feel the excitement that had been building about his return leaving her like air hissing out of a pricked balloon.

“Come in,” she said. “It’s hot outside. Are you hungry?”

He hesitated. Isabella had the feeling they were not back at square one, they were somewhere even before square one. Was he going to pretend he had never even asked her on a date?

“Come eat,” she said, more forcefully than she intended. She felt as if she did not want to give him room to retreat, physically, to his room, or emotionally, away from her.

She suspected it was because Connor was a soldier, and he responded to the command in her voice. He dropped his bag inside the door and followed her into the kitchen. He took a chair at the table, and she moved to get him some of the pasta she had made for her own dinner. Now, passing it to him, she could see even more clearly the exhaustion in the lines of his face. His mouth had a stern set to it, as if smiling was foreign to him.

She felt guilty. Whatever he had just come from, it had been hard, and it had taken a very obvious toll on him. What was she thinking, making this all about her?

“Where have you been?” she asked, lowering herself in the seat across from him.

“Just a job.”

“Ah. Azerbaijan?”

He frowned at her.

“The World Food Conference?”

“The conference is over now. Everything went fine.” He dug into the pasta like a starving man. It did her heart good to see him eat like that, even if he was doing it to avoid her.

“I saw something about it on television one night. Was there some kind of threat made against some of the delegates?”

His voice was cool, it didn’t invite probing. “Everything went fine,” he repeated.

“Someone was apprehended.”

“Really?”

“Really. By the private firm that looked after security for the event.”

He lifted his eyebrows at her. So what?

“Were you in danger?” she asked him softly.

He lifted a shoulder. “Not particularly.”

She knew then that he had been in danger, and that he shouldered the dangers of his job with the ease of long practice. This was not a man you could be timid with. This was not a man you could beg not to go to his world because it would soothe something in you. She found she had more courage than she ever would have believed. Because she felt proud of him, and in awe of his strength.

“Ah, Itus,” she said. “Ever humble.”

He looked up from his plate, lifted a brow at her. “What do you know about Itus?”

“I know in Greek mythology, he is the god of protection.”

“It’s just a name,” he said. “My business partner, Justin, named the company. He picked that name. I am not a Greek mythology kind of guy.”

“I wonder if your business partner was thinking of you when he chose that name.”

Connor frowned, uninviting, but she went on anyway.

“Because Itus was very like you,” she said quietly.

“Me?” He snorted, self-deprecating.

“Yes, you.”

“In what way?” Connor had a bemused look on his face.

“He was a mortal boy, only seventeen when he was chosen to protect the god Apollo. He was given two swords, and he became so good with them that he beat the god Ares in a sword fight, though he would not boast about it. Apollo wanted to make him a god, and Zeus agreed, possibly because he did not want any more of his gods beaten in sword fights with mere mortals. Itus refused the honor. He did not feel he was worthy, but Apollo insisted and made him eat the food that would make him immortal.”

Connor actually cast a wary glance down at his pasta.

“Then Apollo released him from his duties, and Itus now spends his days protecting the innocent from those who would do them harm.”

“Look—” he set down his utensils, very deliberately “—Isabella, there is no use thinking there is anything the least romantic about me. Or what I do. It’s hard, dirty, dangerous work—”

“You forgot lonely,” she said quietly.

“—and it makes me a poor choice for a companion. No, not a poor choice. The worst choice. I should have never asked you out on a date. It was stupid and frivolous.”

She felt the sharp bite of disappointment, but she was not totally unprepared for it. The crispness of his note had hinted this might be coming. At the same time, she could see it was the result of the events he had just come from that made something so simple as going on a date seem frivolous to him.

“I’ve decided,” he said, his voice curt, “a date between us is out of the question. I mean, we are living together under the same roof for two more weeks. It’s just way too awkward.”

“I agree,” she said soothingly.

That seemed to pull him up short. He regarded her suspiciously and then continued, “I mean, if I’m going to spend time with you, I should make it count. I should teach you something useful.”

She found herself gazing at his lips, thinking she had an idea or two what she’d like Connor Benson to teach her. “What would that be?”

“I should teach you how to swim.”

“Instead of a date,” she clarified.

He nodded vigorously. “It’s not good to go through life with fears.”

“Ah.” It seemed ironic that he would say that when it was more than apparent he might have a fear or two about the date he had asked her on. She decided now might not be the best time to point that out to him.

“Once you know how to swim,” Connor said seriously, “it gives you confidence and courage in dealing with all kinds of things that come up in life.”

But not dates. Again, Isabella bit her tongue to keep herself from saying it out loud. So, her Itus did not want to date her, but he still wanted to protect her, or give her some tools to protect herself.

“Someday I believe you will have children,” he continued sternly. “You can give them no greater gift than comfort in the water.”

She could argue with him, of course. It seemed unlikely she would ever have children. But if she did, it seemed to Isabella there were all kinds of gifts parents gave their children, and that the greatest of those was love, not swimming lessons.

But he was in full retreat, and she had a feeling that the mention of the word love would probably push him right out her door and out of her life, so she bit her tongue again. It was probably good to learn this tongue-biting skill. You would need it a great deal around a man like him.

“I would be deeply appreciative if you would teach me how to swim,” Isabella said.

He looked at her, wary of her demure tone.

She smiled back at him, though she had to bite her tongue, yet again, to keep from laughing out loud. She could so clearly see he was terrified of going on a date with her. His terror made her feel powerful and attractive and sexy. She had never really felt those things before. It was worth facing her own terror of the water dead-on.

A swimming lesson? He didn’t know what he was letting himself in for. In fact, Connor Benson had no idea that he was teaching her already, all about the nature of confidence and courage.

“When should we start?” she asked, sweetly. “And where?”

“I’ll arrange with Nico to use his pool,” Connor said. “An hour, every afternoon from tomorrow, Monday to Friday, should give you the basics.”

“I can learn to swim in five days?”

“Well, you won’t be trying out for the Italian swim team, but you’ll have some basic skills you can practice.”

“Thank you,” she said, lowering her eyes from his so he would not see the glee dancing in hers. When she looked back up, Connor was eyeing her suspiciously. Then he pushed back from the table and left the room.

“Things are improving between us,” she said softly to herself. “I managed to feed him something before he ran away this time.”

He probably hadn’t considered that little detail when he was planning swimming lessons. No, Connor had probably not given a single thought to how hard it was going to be to run away from her in a swimming pool, especially since she had no love of the water. She’d be clinging to him like a barnacle to the bottom of a boat.

But there was another problem. Where, in a tiny place like Monte Calanetti, on such short notice, was she going to find the right bathing suit for this? Obviously she would have to make do with what she could find for tomorrow.

But he’d said it would take a week.

It was so much better than a date! A whole week.

She went into her office and shut the door. She flipped on her computer and typed the words she wanted into the search engine. Then she narrowed the search by putting in the necessary delivery dates.

By the time Isabella was done, she felt extremely naughty. The way she had felt in the red dress should have been fair warning to her, and to Connor, both.

Isabella Rossi liked feeling naughty.

* * *

As Connor was waiting in the water of Nico’s beautiful pool, Isabella came through the back gate and gave him a quick wave before ducking into the cabana beside the pool.

He was pleased to note she looked particularly understated today in a longish skirt in a dull shade of beige and a baggy blouse in the same color. Her glossy hair was pulled back tightly, and she was carrying a large book bag that she was hugging to her chest. Really? She looked more like a nerdy student than the teacher.

He surveyed the pool while he waited for her. It was nestled in the garden grotto behind the house, and the pool had been made to look like a pond. Ferns trailed fronds in the water, and there was a small waterfall at one end of it.

Lovely as it was aesthetically, it was not really a pool for serious swimming, but it was large enough to do a few strokes, plus it had a deep end. It was about the furthest thing from the pools he had done SEAL training in, but it would do for an introduction to swimming basics.

Connor was feeling enormously pleased with himself. Teaching Isabella how to swim—instead of going on a date—had been a brainstorm. Swimming, after all, was useful. Tackling an irrational fear was useful. When he left this place, he would leave her with a skill that would be practical to her for her whole life. He would leave her with a sense of herself that was different than what it had been before. That sounded quite a bit better than leaving her with the heartache that a date promised.

She was staying here in this idyllic little village in Tuscany, and he was leaving, so what was the sense of exploring the sparks that were flying between them?

Isabella came out of the cabana. She had taken her hair out of the elastic when it would have been more sensible to leave it in. She had on an enormous poncho-like caftan that covered her from her head to her toes. It had hideous wide stripes in a crazy array of colors. It reminded him of pictures he had seen of what people wore to music festivals in the ’60s.

When she stood on the deck he was at eye level with her feet. Her toenails were painted lime green, and as odd a choice as that was, he had to admit it was adorable, and a little less nerdy than the rest of her ensemble.

“What’s that thing?” he asked her. He noticed that her face had been scrubbed free of makeup, probably in preparation for her swim.

“What thing?”

“That thing you’re wearing.”

She looked down at herself. “Oh. My swim cover.”

He had to bite back a smile. She had to wear a swim cover to get from the cabana to the pool? The walk might have been twenty yards.

“Well, how about if you take it off and get in the water.”

She hesitated. He could see the pulse beating in her throat. She looked past him at the water and gulped.

“Believe me, you can’t swim with it on.”

“Oh,” she said, as if he was breaking world news to her. Isabella reached for the zipper, and closed her eyes. Because she was afraid of the water? Or was she sweetly shy about being seen in her swimming suit?

She bent over to get the zipper undone. Her swim cover was still doing its job. Covering. The zipper stuck partway down, and she tugged and tugged, but nothing happened. Suddenly, in frustration, she gave up on the zipper and pulled the caftan from her shoulders. As she was freed from the bulky covering, it slid down and settled in a lump at her waist.

Connor stared helplessly.

Her eyes locked on his. He looked away, focusing on those little green toenails, not sure he wanted her to see what he was thinking. She pushed the caftan away from her waist and it floated to the ground, at his eye level, creating a puddle that looked like a burlap bag around her little monster-toed feet.

He was left looking at the length of her lovely legs. Then she stepped out of the fabric puddle and kicked the covering aside.

Connor reminded himself he had seen her in a transparent shower curtain. And a red dress that had made his mouth go dry. Whatever this was, it could not be any worse than that. Isabella was a practical schoolteacher. She would know how to pick a good bathing suit.

Having thus reassured himself, Connor cocked his head upward to see more than her feet and her legs. His mouth fell open. He gulped. He snapped his mouth shut so that the practical schoolteacher would not guess how much she was rattling his world.

A swimming lesson? Whose dumb idea had this been?

She was wearing one of the tiniest swimsuits he had ever seen, if you could call that scrap of fabric—three scraps of fabric—a swimsuit. Isabella was wearing a string bikini in an amazing shade of lime green that made her skin look as golden as the sand at a beach in New Zealand, Kaiteriteri, that he had visited once. Her dark hair spilled over that golden expanse of skin, shiny and beautiful.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. Her tone was all innocence, but he wasn’t fooled. No woman put on a bathing suit like that without knowing exactly what she was doing!

Suck it up, he ordered himself. He’d seen her in a shower curtain. Nothing could be worse than that. Except this was worse than that. It was worse, even, than the red dress.

Isabella Rossi, village schoolteacher, nerdy girl, was smoking hot!

“Wrong?” he choked out, not willing to give her the victory. “What could possibly be wrong?”

“I don’t know. You have a look on your face.”

“A look on my face?” he demanded.

“Mmm. Like you’ve been smacked with a frozen fish.”

He wiped whatever look he had on his face off. He felt as though he’d been smacked, all right, and not with a frozen fish. Smacked with awareness of her. He had the ugly feeling she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. In fact, Connor had the ugly feeling that she might be toying with him.

He forced himself to find his voice. It had to be addressed. “You really should have left your hair up.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

What was he doing talking about her hair? He needed to tell her the bathing suit wasn’t going to work. At all. “You don’t want to get it in your face.”

“I’m not planning on getting my face wet.”

“You have to get your face wet. To swim.”

She didn’t look the least convinced. She dismissed him with a little wave of her hand. “Oh, well, maybe next time I’ll get my face wet.”

Address it, he ordered himself. “Uh, that bathing suit—”

“Yes?” Her voice was husky.

“—is really nice.”

Now, that he had not meant to say. At all. Isabella was beaming at him.

“—but, it isn’t, er, really made for swimming.”

Unless he was mistaken, and he was pretty sure he was not, the little minx was lapping up his discomfort.

“It’s called a bathing suit,” she said stubbornly.

“Maybe it’s for sunbathing. I mean, if you were to dive in the water with that thing...”

His voice trailed away.

“I’m not planning on diving today, either,” she informed him primly.

Wait a minute. Who was in charge here? He suspected, in that bathing suit, she was. “Well, I wasn’t planning on that, either, but—”

“The bathing suit will have to suffice,” she said. The schoolteacher voice was very at odds with the drop-dead gorgeous woman standing in front of him. “Selection—”

Seduction? No, no, she’d said selection, not seduction.

“—is very limited in Monte Calanetti at this time of year. I ordered some other things on the internet. They should arrive soon.”

How soon was soon, he wanted to demand. Maybe they could postpone.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” Isabella said, “You already said it’s not as if I’m training for the national swim team.”

She had him there. He wanted to teach her enough to hold her own if she fell out of a boat. Or in the river. Or got carried away unexpectedly by a current. He wanted to teach her enough that being around water did not make that pulse go crazy in her throat, like a rabbit being chased by dogs. The way it was now.

Was that because she was about to get wet? Or was it because she was trying out her bold new self on him?

Connor considered, again, postponing. He glanced at her face. A tiny little smile was playing across her lips before she doused it. She was toying with him!

“Get in the water,” he snapped. The sooner she was covered up with anything, including water, the better. If the bathing suit fell off, or melted, they’d deal with that when it happened. Just as they had dealt with the shower catastrophe.

But really, how much could one man take?

Isabella stuck her toe in and yanked it back out. She made a face. She hugged herself, either not as confident in the skimpy suit as she wanted him to believe or suddenly aware that she was tackling something she was afraid of.

“I can’t just jump in,” she decided.

She could sit on the edge of the pool, reach out and put her hands around his neck... Connor gave himself a shake. This was going to be quite hard enough! “There are stairs at that end.”

She looked where he was pointing and saw the stairs entering the pool at the shallow end. She eyed her dropped caftan for a second, as if she was considering putting it back on for the short walk to the stairs. Or putting it back on and fleeing.

Instead, she tilted her chin up and went over there, wiggling her hips self-consciously the whole way. It gave Connor plenty of opportunity to study how much of her was not covered by those skimpy green scraps of fabric. It also gave him plenty of opportunity to set his face into a mask of indifference.

At the top of the stairs, she repeated the put-one-toe-in-and-withdraw-it procedure. Still in the water, he slogged his way over to that end of the pool and stood close to the bottom of the stairs.

“At this rate we are still going to be here tomorrow,” he groused out loud, instead of saying what he really wanted, which was get in the water, dammit.

She held up a hand, a very Italian gesture that warned him not to hurry her, and then Isabella proceeded to get into the water with painful slowness.