Passionate Calanettis

CHAPTER SIX

AS CONNOR WATCHED, Isabella got on the first stair leading into the pool. She was acting as if the world was tilting and her life depended on her hanging on to the handrail.

The world was tilting, and Connor felt as if his life depended on her getting in the water. With the water at her ankles, she paused there, allowing him to wallow in the full impact of that bathing suit. Was that a piercing, right below her belly button? Was his jaw clenched?

“The easiest way is just to jump in,” he told her. Yes, definitely clenched. He deliberately relaxed it.

“Never let it be said I’m easy.”

He contemplated her. Her command of English and all its nuances and slang was not good enough for her to have meant that the way it sounded. Though the beautiful young widow was probably about the furthest thing from easy that he had ever met.

She went down one more step. Now she was up to her knees. She had both hands on the handrail. Her knuckles were white.

“I thought the water would be warmer,” she said.

“It’s perfect.” His jaw was clenching again.

She wrinkled her nose, letting him know their ideas of perfect were different, which would be a very good thing for him to keep in mind, because a bathing suit like that made a man think he could make anything work out, even against impossible odds.

And the odds were impossible. Everything about them was different. He was large, she was tiny. He was powerful, she was fragile. He was cynical, she was innocent. They were culturally a million miles apart. He’s seen colleagues fall for the seemingly exotic girls of foreign lands. It never worked.

He tried to hold those thoughts as, finally, Isabella was at the bottom of the steps, up to her cute little belly button in water. It was a little dark mole under her belly button, not a piercing. He was not sure which was sexier.

Isabella was still holding onto the handrail as if her life depended on it. He tried to remember why he had thought getting her in the water would be easier on him. It was not.

“Let go of the handrail and walk over to me,” he said.

“Not yet.” Her voice had a little quaver to it.

And that changed everything. Because it reminded him this wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about recalculating impossible odds. It was about her, giving her a few tools to deal with the harsh realities of life. And he could not let her scanty little bathing suit distract him from that. That’s one of the things he was trained to do. Sift through information very quickly, ignore the distractions, focus on the mission.

So he crossed the distance that remained between them and pried her hand, ever so gently, off the handrail. He placed himself right in front of her and held out his other hand. She hesitated and then placed her hand in his.

Their hands joined as they faced each other, they were like two dance partners who had never danced together sizing each other up. It occurred to him this was going to be like no swimming lesson he had ever given before.

“Don’t even look at the water,” he said softly. “Just look at me.”

Her eyes fastened on his face as if she was drowning and he was the lifeline. Her gaze was as disconcerting as the bikini. Maybe more so. It made the mission waver a little more.

“See?” he said, forcing himself to speak, keeping his voice soft, and taking a step back, “No danger. No crocodiles. No chance of falling over a ledge. No current to sweep you away.”

No danger. Ha-ha. Her hand, small but strong in his, felt like one of the gravest dangers he had ever encountered. Had he really thought getting her in the water was going to be better than watching her on the deck?

Now, added to his physical awareness of her hands in his, she was so close to him he could smell that spicy perfume that was hers and hers alone. It felt as if he was being swept away by the absolute trust in her eyes fastened on his, the way she was holding his hands. She took her first tiny step through the water toward him.

He backed up. She took one more. He backed up two. And then they were doing a slow waltz through the water. He was careful to stay in the shallows, even though it wasn’t nearly deep enough to help him deal with the worst of the distractions. Was that tiny bathing suit top sliding sideways just a touch?

Connor repeated his command to himself.

Suck it up.

“See?” he said softly. “It’s not so bad, is it? Just stay in the moment. Don’t think one thought about what could happen.”

She actually closed her eyes. A tiny smile touched her lips. He ordered himself not to look at her lips and definitely not to think about what could happen. Connor felt the purity of the moment—water on his skin, her hair shining in the sun, her small hands in his, the rapturous look on her face—seducing him.

Somehow, he’d had this utterly foolish idea that he was going to pretend she was a raw recruit and be able to keep professional distance from her as he taught her the basics of swimming. He was not sure how he had deluded himself. He had never had that much imagination. He’d always prided himself on being such a realist.

“The water does feel amazing on my skin,” she breathed. Her eyes remained closed in wonder.

Connor cleared his throat. “So now you’ve seen the water in this end of the swimming pool holds no danger to you,” he said, trying desperately to stick to the business at hand and not think one single thought about her skin. “So, let’s try the next step.”

Her eyes flew open and that pulse in her throat picked up tempo. “What is the next step?”

“I’d like you to learn the water will support you. Human beings are buoyant. They float.”

She looked doubtful about that—the pulse in her throat went crazy.

“Isabella, you will float.”

“I’m scared.”

“I know.”

His life’s work had presented him with this situation, again and again. He’d had plenty of encounters with people, civilians, who found themselves in difficult situations. Families who, through no fault of their own, found themselves in war zones. Hostages, in the wrong place at the wrong time, who didn’t know the rule book, who had spent their entire lives blissfully oblivious to the fact there was a rule book.

Connor had led people from burning buildings, evacuated the terrified, navigated the fear of others in a thousand different ways. He’d dealt with people who were scared. He did it all the time.

He excelled at this: at infusing his abundance of confidence and calm into panicky people through his voice and his actions.

It felt different this time, way too personal, as if that enemy called fear was hovering at the edges of his own awareness. But that was his fault, not hers, bikini notwithstanding. He took a deep breath, gathered himself, formed a plan.

“I’m going to stand beside you,” he said quietly, “with my hands like this. You are going to lie down in the water, on your back, and let my hands support you.”

“Oh, God,” she said in Italian. “I don’t think I can. Could we just walk around some more? I was getting the hang of that. Walking in water. I think it’s biblical.”

“I think that may be walking on water.”

“It’s good enough for me. For today.”

“Swimming lessons, heavy emphasis on the swimming.”

“My hair isn’t right. And the bathing suit won’t work. You already said that.”

“We’ll figure it out. Together.”

Together. He did not excel at figuring things out together. It had been his greatest weakness with the SEALs. He was not a good team player. He had a tendency to go maverick. The last time he had done it, against orders, Justin had followed him...

“Are you all right?” Her hand, wet, warm, was on his cheek.

He shook his head. How was it she could see what no one else ever saw? “Yeah. I’m fine.”

She didn’t move her hand. He didn’t move it, either. He had to stop this craziness. He shook his head again, trying to be all business. But droplets of water flew off his hair and rained down on her face, emphasizing the compassion there.

“Lie down in the water.” His voice had a snap to it, like a flag caught in the wind.

Isabella’s hand dropped to her side, but Connor could feel the warmth of it on his face as if it still rested there.

“No, I—” She twisted and looked at the stairs.

“Trust me,” he said in that voice, firm, the voice of a man who was used to being in charge of everything, including the safety of others.

She dragged her eyes back from the staircase and looked at him for a long moment. Her eyes, with the water reflecting in them, looked more green than gold.

“Okay,” she whispered.

“So just lean back,” he coaxed her.

She leaned back an inch.

“Maybe a little more.”

She leaned back another inch, so stiff-spined she looked like a tree bending over. He sighed and moved into her swiftly, before she could guess what he was going to do. Maybe he didn’t even know what he was going to do himself until he had done it.

He scooped Isabella up and held her against his chest.

“Oh,” she sighed with surprise. She would have weighed about as much as a feather under normal circumstances. With the water taking most of her weight, it was like holding a puff of air.

Except that her skin was warm and sensual, like silk. She blinked up at him and then twined her arms around his neck.

What part of the Swimming 101 manual was this in? he demanded of himself. He pried her fingers from around his neck and put her away from his chest, supporting her body on his hands, at right angles from his own.

“Okay,” he said. His voice was faintly hoarse, not completely his talking-a-hostage-away-from-the-bad-guy voice. “Just relax. That’s it. Now straighten out your legs. I’ve got you.”

Tentatively, she did as he asked, her forehead wrinkled with anxiety as she gave herself over to the water. Her hair floated out in the water around her face, like dark silk ribbons. The small of her back was resting securely on his hands. Her skin was warmer than the water, and he felt a primal awareness of her that he did not want to feel.

At all.

“You’re a bit tense,” he told her. He heard the tension in his own voice and took a deep, steadying breath. “Relax. I won’t bite.”

“Yes,” she said. “So you’ve said.”

“Focus on your breathing. Put your hands on your tummy—no, you don’t need them, I’ve got you—and breathe until you feel your tummy rising instead of your chest.”

Shoot. Did he have to mention her chest just as his voice was returning to normal?

“This is quite amazing,” she said after a moment.

“Amazing,” he agreed. His jaw was starting to hurt from clenching his teeth so tightly. “So, just try moving your legs a bit. Kick.”

She did a little kick.

“Very good,” he encouraged her. “Harder, both of them.”

She kicked tentatively. And then harder. The splash hit him in the face, which seemed to motivate more strenuous kicking on her part. She giggled.

That giggle helped him turn a page. Connor pretended to be worried about getting wet, ducking the worst of the splash while never letting her go. She giggled some more.

“Now straighten your legs out. Think of a pair of scissors opening and closing and kick like that. That’s perfect. That’s why it’s called a scissor kick. Now, instead of just standing here, I’m going to let the kick propel you. I’ll move with you, though. You see how it works? Your legs are amazingly strong.”

What he meant was that everyone’s legs were amazingly strong, that this particular movement used the gluteus maximus, the largest muscle in the human body, but he didn’t clarify, since she looked so pleased. And there was no denying her legs were amazing!

He supported her and guided her until she had kicked around the pool in a large circle.

“Now,” he said, “my hands are still here, but I’m moving them away from you, so you can see it’s the water supporting you, not me.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

She glared up at him.

“Don’t be nervous. The water’s only three feet deep here. You can stand up at any time. Just relax. I’m going to—”

“No! Don’t let go of me. I’m not ready.”

He’d heard it again and again, looking into the eyes of a terrified civilian who was being asked to do something that required more of them than had ever been required before.

“Yes, you are,” he said, “you are ready.”

Slowly, he slid his hands out from underneath her. Her eyes grew wide, and then she got nervous, and her body folded at the center, legs and head going up, abdomen and torso going down, under the water.

“Ahh,” she yelped.

His hands were floating inches below her, and so he supported her again, very quickly.

“Try and keep your body stiff.”

“I thought I was supposed to relax!”

“Well, relaxed stiffness.”

“There is no such thing.”

“Maybe not in Italian. There is in English.” He managed to say it with a straight face.

She smiled in spite of herself, and then he let her go, and she tried again. Again, she got nervous and began to fold; again he used his hands to steady her. The third time, she got it. She kicked on her own and he shadowed her.

“Am I swimming?” she demanded. “Am I swimming all by myself?”

He smiled at her enthusiasm, and she seemed to realize she was swimming, unaided, on her back. The realization ruined it, of course. This time he wasn’t quite quick enough, and her head went under the water. She came up sputtering, her hair spilling rivulets of water down her golden skin. She grabbed for him and clung to him.

He realized he was enjoying that way too much and put her away from his chest, though he allowed her to hang on to his forearms.

“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked her.

She shook water from her hair. “No,” she said, surprised and then delighted. “No, it was fine. I just held my breath when I went under.”

There was a moment when people reached deep inside and found out who they really were that was awe-inspiring. It could happen as you sneaked them across a border or pushed them out of a plane, or it happened in those moments, large and small, when people required just a tiny bit more of themselves.

And so it could happen just like this, a woman in a swimming pool on a warm spring day when everything seemed suddenly infused with a light that was not the sun.

It was always an amazing thing to be a part of this moment. She was grinning ear to ear, which increased Connor’s sensation of basking in the light. He had to force himself to move away from that moment and back on task.

“And that brings us to part two,” Connor said. “For some reason, people have a natural aversion to getting their faces wet.”

“I told you not today,” she said. The grin disappeared.

“Let’s just ride this wave of discovery,” he suggested.

For a moment, she looked as if she intended to argue, but then, reluctantly, she smiled again. “All right. Let’s ride this wave.”

Both of them had said it—let’s. Let us. Us. A duo. A team. Sheesh.

“So, before you dunk again, we’re going to work on getting your face wet,” Connor said. There it was again, slipping off his tongue naturally. We. “Lie on my hands again, this time on your stomach.”

She flopped down on her stomach, and he supported her, his hands on the firm flesh of her belly. “Good. Now put your face in the water and blow air out of your mouth. Make bubbles. The more the better. Think of yourself as a motorboat.”

Whatever reservations she might have had up until this point now disappeared. Isabella gave herself over to learning to swim with unreserved enthusiasm. With Connor supporting her stomach, she blew bubbles and then they added a scissor kick. She managed a few kicks without any support before she went under and came up laughing.

Isabella laughing.

Isabella soaking wet, in the world’s skimpiest bathing suit, laughing.

It was probably one of the most dangerous moments of Connor’s entire life, and he had had a life fraught with danger.

It wasn’t dangerous because she was so beautiful, or even because she had lost her self-consciousness and she was so sexy in her teeny bathing suit. It wasn’t dangerous because she was finding her inner resources of courage and strength.

No, what made the moment beautiful was her joy. What made the moment astounding was the serious expression gone from her face and the sorrow completely erased from her eyes. No matter what the danger to himself, Connor was glad he had given her this moment.

“I think that’s probably enough for today,” he said gruffly. “We’ll start some basic arm work tomorrow, moving toward a front crawl. And we’ll do work on your legs with a kickboard. By the end of the week, you’ll be swimming across this pool by yourself.”

“Really?”

“You are a complete natural.”

“I am?” she asked, so pleased.

“Absolutely.”

“What an amazing afternoon.” She cocked her head at him. “What do the American teenagers say? Awesome!”

She was standing facing him. She leaned a bit closer. He had plenty of time to move away from her. But somehow he didn’t, frozen to the spot, like a deer in headlights, not able to back away from where awesome could take them.

She stood on tippy toes. Her body, slippery and lithe, came in contact with his in a far different way than it had when he was using his arms to buoy her up in the water. She kissed him, a tiny brushing of their lips.

He, of all people, knew how little time it took to change everything. A millisecond. The time for a bullet to find its way from rifle to target, the time for tires to crunch across the trigger device on an explosive, the time for a school to go from rooms of laughing children to completely engulfed in flames. He, of all people, knew how quickly everything could change.

But maybe he hadn’t known this: as quickly as you could be sucked into darkness and everything could shatter around you, just as quickly you could be thrust toward the light, propelled into a world that promised love was stronger.

Love? He felt furious with himself, and not too happy with Isabella, either. But then she was backed away from him, still laughing, that delightful, carefree, water-over-rocks laughter, as if she had no awareness at all how badly she had just disrupted his well-ordered world.

“Thank you, Connor. I can’t wait for tomorrow.”

And then she walked away from him, through the water, by herself, the woman she had been an hour ago—clinging to the handrail and then to him—gone forever.

Isabella got out of the pool without the benefit of the stairs. She put her hands on the deck and levered herself out, wiggling her bottom at him in the process. And then, free of the pool, she gathered up that voluminous caftan but didn’t put it on. She scampered across the deck to the cabana, not once looking back.

Thank goodness she did not look back. Because she would have seen him, still standing in the water, stunned by the power of that one tiny little brush of lips. To change everything.

The man he had been an hour ago might have been gone forever, too. Because the thing about a kiss like that? It opened a door. It opened a door that was pretty darned difficult to wrestle shut again once it had been opened. It changed everything in subtle ways.

Connor sucked in a deep breath. He said a word under his breath that he would never say in Isabella’s presence. He dived under the surface of the water. His momentum carried him to one end of the pool. Though there was hardly room to get going, he began to do furious laps, butterfly stroke.

But by the time Isabella emerged from the cabana, he was aware that swimming had not defused what he was feeling. Even that most challenging stroke did not begin to burn off the fire that brush of her lips against his had stoked within him.

CHAPTER SEVEN

ISABELLA CONTEMPLATED THE fact that she had kissed Connor Benson. Really, as far as kisses went, it had been nothing. A peck. A thank-you.

But even in Italy, where people were passionate, a thank-you kiss might normally be placed on the cheek, not the lips.

Connor’s lips looked so firm. And yet, giving under the pressure of hers, they had felt soft and pliable. His lips had tasted of something, but she wasn’t sure what. It had been pure, like holding out your tongue to catch raindrops.

Heaven. That’s what they had tasted of. The problem was, after tasting something like that, a person could spend her life in pursuit of it. It had really been a foolish thing to do, reckless, especially with them living under her roof together.

But in that moment, after the lesson, she had just felt so bold, so ready to do just as he suggested, to ride the wave of discovery instead of fighting it. It had been wonderful tackling the water, doing something she had always been afraid of. It had made her feel free in a way she never had before.

From the moment she had chosen that bathing suit over the far more conservative ones available, even with the limited selection in Monte Calanetti at this time of year, Isabella had felt she was saying yes to life.

The swimming lesson itself had made her feel so alive and so bold and as if the world and this day were plump with possibilities instead of just one day following the next, safe and routine.

Isabella came out of the cabana and saw that Connor was swimming like a man possessed. The stroke he was using was amazing, his powerful arms and shoulders lifting his torso and propelling him out of the water as if he had been shot out of a cannon.

He noticed her, she was not sure how, and he stopped and stood up. He folded his arms over the lines of his chest. Her awareness of him rippled through her like a current that could sweep her away.

“I forgot to tell you, I found another place to stay,” he said.

She knew instantly he was lying. He hadn’t found another place to stay. He had tasted the reckless danger, too, as soon as her lips had touched his, and decided to find different accommodations.

He was acknowledging something was going on between them. Something more powerful than he could control. And even though he had told her to ride the wave of discovery, he was not prepared to do that himself.

She held her breath. Was he going to cancel swimming?

“I’ll see you tomorrow. And I’ll pay you for your place for the agreed dates.” he said. He dived back under the water before she could let him know she was not going to help him assuage his guilt by allowing him to pay her for a room he wasn’t going to occupy.

Isabella had never really felt this before: an acute awareness of her feminine power.

She walked home by herself, aware that the buoyancy of the water seemed to have infused her. Even though Connor had said he was moving out, her steps were light, and she felt as if she was walking on air.

She got home to discover a parcel had been delivered. It was one of the bathing suits she had ordered online, from Milan. She was pleased it had been delivered so quickly, that overnight delivery had meant just that.

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.