Passionate Calanettis

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.

He was very punctual, and Connor Benson showed up just as her students were swarming out the door of her classroom. He looked like a ship plowing through the sea of bright blue uniforms. Luigi Caravetti, who always had too much energy, was walking backward, catcalling at one of the girls.

Connor sidestepped him easily, but at that very moment, Luigi swung around and smashed into him.

Connor barely moved, but Luigi fell down. With absolute ease, Connor went down on his haunches, helped the little boy up, picked up the homework Luigi wouldn’t do anyway and handed it back to him. Luigi said something to him and then wound up and kicked Connor in the shin and ran off before Isabella could reprimand him.

Rubbing his shin, he turned to her and grinned ruefully.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “Luigi is a bit of a handful. What did he say to you?”

“I don’t know. He said it in Italian. I’m beginning to pick up a few phrases, so I think he told me to watch were I was going. And then he switched to English.”

“He doesn’t know any English.”

“Ah, well, there’s a universal word that all little boys—and most big ones—love to use.”

“Oh! I will speak to him tomorrow.”

“No, that’s okay. He kind of reminded me of me at that age. And if I was going to guess something about him? No dad in the picture.”

Again, Isabella was taken by Connor’s incredible powers of observation. “That’s true. In fact, his poor mother had to get a court order to keep the father away from them. He’s not, apparently, a very nice man. But still, Luigi is troubled about it all. Children are always troubled about difficulties between their parents.”

The last of the children clattered down the stairway to the main floor of the school, and they were cloaked in sudden silence. Then Connor Benson was in her classroom.

“So,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels, “this is your world.”

“Ninety-nine percent boring,” she told him. “One percent all hell breaking loose.”

Connor gave her an odd look that she interpreted as you don’t have a clue what all hell breaking loose looks like. But then he shrugged it off, as if he had given himself a mental order to lighten up. “I’m going to guess that one percent is largely your little Luigi.”

“You would be guessing right.”

“Nobody asked me what I was doing here when I came in,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“When I came in and asked for your classroom, no one at the office asked me what I wanted or what I was doing at the school. They didn’t even ask to see identification.”

“Obviously we are in need of a security expert!” she said brightly, but he didn’t seem amused. She became more serious. “We haven’t experienced the kinds of problems here that you have in America.”

Did he mutter yet under his breath? He removed his hands from his pockets and turned away from her and wandered around her classroom. At first she thought he was looking at drawings and pictures, and she was pleased that he was curious about her world. But then Isabella realized that Connor actually seemed to be looking for something else. She was not sure what.

He stood at the front, taking note of both the doors into the room. Then she saw him go to the windows, open the lock on one. He slid the window open and leaned out, looking at the ground.

He came to the table at the back, where she had the project laid out. He seemed faintly uneasy, but he lifted a sun with the hole in the center and put his head through it, attached the elastic around his chin.

She had planned to be so reserved, professional, accepting his help as a volunteer, but nothing more. Instead, she giggled at the picture this big self-assured man made with his face poking through a hole in a cardboard sunshine. The wall came tumbling down as she joined him at the art table at the back of the room.

How could he wear that silly thing with such aplomb? That’s what confidence did, she supposed. “Boys are sunshine,” she said.

“And girls?”

She picked up a pink flower and put her head through the center of it and attached the elastic. “Girls are flowers.”

He smiled at her, but she still thought she detected faint uneasiness in him. Well, was that so unusual? Many men seemed uneasy in classrooms. The furniture was all in miniature, after all. The spaces were too tiny for most men, and Connor was even larger than most men.

“These are done,” Isabella said, resting her hand on one stack, “but we have seven sunshines remaining to cut out and thirteen flowers. The children drew their own, but the cutting part can be quite difficult for little hands. The cardboard is a bit thick.” She gave him a pair of scissors.

He sank into one of the little chairs. She actually wondered if it would break under his weight.

“That doesn’t look very comfortable.”

“I’m used to discomfort.” Connor picked up a particularly messy-looking sun drawn on yellow construction paper.

“Luigi’s?” he guessed.

She lifted a shoulder—yes.

When they had been swimming, that task had occupied them and filled the space between them. There had been no need for conversation on a personal level.

Now, tongue caught slightly between his teeth as he tried to fit his hands in the little scissors, Connor said, “So, tell me everything.”

“What?”

“Where you grew up, how many kids are in your family, what your favorite color is and what your most secret dream is.”

Again, she had the feeling he might be trying to distract her from some uneasiness he was feeling. Still, she was happy to do that and so, with his encouragement, she talked. It was amazingly comfortable sitting at the little table, cutting with little scissors, the sun pouring in around them. She marveled at how good it felt to be with him like this, at ease, and yet not at ease the way she had been with Giorgio.

With Connor, something sizzled in the air between them. All that time in the pool together had increased her awareness of him, and that did not change now that they were sitting in her classroom, in chairs too small for them, fully clothed.

She answered all his questions except one.

He didn’t miss that, of course.

“And is there a secret dream?”

She thought of the way she had felt when she had learned Marianna was pregnant. Happy for Marianna, of course, and yet...

“No,” she croaked.

His scissors stopped moving. He looked across at her. “There is,” he said.

“I’ve given up on the secret dream thing.”

“Ah.” He obviously did not believe her, but he didn’t press. They finished all the costume pieces, and he helped her build a simple set.

How could it be both so easy and so difficult to be with him? He came into her world of paper and glue and paint as easily as she had gone into his world of water. And he did the same thing to it.

An existence that had seemed mundane suddenly sparkled. There was laughter everywhere.

Except as he got ready to leave. He was suddenly very serious. “Can you request a different classroom?” he asked.

“What? Why?”

He shrugged and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You should just ask for one on the first floor, if you can.”

“I like this one,” she said, feeling stubborn.

“I’m sure you do. Unless there’s a fire.” His voice, which had been laughter filled only moments ago, was suddenly very grim.

Now, a few days after they had begun, they stood back from her completed set, costumes and props. The set was lightweight cardboard so that it could be moved easily to the village square the day of the fete.

She sighed with contentment. With his help, it was so much better than anything she could have ever done alone.

He stood beside her. “It’s done to your satisfaction?”

“Yes. A whole two days before the fete. I am officially out from under the eight ball.”

“That’s good,” he said. “Because now we can have our date.”

She slid him a look. He was covered with splotches of blue paint from painting the sky. He had a relaxed smile on his face.

She was so aware of him. It was dangerous. But she had no fight left in her. She did not want to fight anymore. She wanted to see what would happen between them.

Even if it was the most dangerous thing of all.

“Did you have something in mind?” she asked. Her voice sounded like a mouse squeaking.

“Oh, yeah,” he said.

“What?” She hoped he would say something safe, something not that different than watching television at her house. A movie, maybe.

“I want to surprise you with it.”

“How do I know what to wear for a surprise?” she asked.

“Anything you wear will be fine.”

Did he not understand women at all? “If you could give me a hint,” she suggested.

“It will have something to do with the chapel.”

“The chapel?” Isabella could not imagine what he had in mind. The last time she had seen it, the chapel had looked like a construction site, surrounded by scaffolding.

“Trust me.”

“All right.”

“I’ll pick you up just before eight.”

“All right.”

It was complete surrender, and she knew it. And looking at his face, so familiar to her now, she realized it was a surrender for him, too. It was a surrender to what had been building between them like a thunderstorm on the horizon.

Looking at his face, Isabella wondered when exactly this had happened. When had he come to feel beloved to her?

Had it been as he painted the sky on cardboard or cut the head hole from yet another sunshine? Or had it been before that, when he had drawn her into the swimming pool and taught her to embrace what frightened her most?

Maybe it was before even that. Maybe it had begun that morning they had walked through the dawn to the river and she had felt the mud ooze up between her toes.

Or maybe it had been from the very first moment, when she had put his breakfast outside his door and been assaulted by him in her own home, the beginning of the waking up that had led to this: how she loved her life with Connor Benson in it.

It was a warm evening, so Isabella wore a simple white sundress of eyelet cotton, with narrow straps and a ribbon at the waist and a wide skirt. It did not sing the siren song that her red dress had, but it showed off her coloring and her figure, and it was more her, somehow. It was as if, with Connor, she was exploring herself and slowly arriving at what that really was.

She saw she had chosen exactly the right ensemble when he arrived at her door. She could see it in his eyes even before he told her that she looked beautiful. Connor looked extraordinary. She had always seen him looking quite casual. Tonight he was in pressed dark slacks and a cream-colored linen dress shirt.

He went down her narrow walk before her and held open a car door. It was a very sleek, sporty car.

“Did you have a car before?” He hadn’t ever parked one when he lived with her.

“I had one at my disposal, if I needed it. I prefer to walk. It gives me a better sense of a place. You notice more.”

“Is this the car you had?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I traded up.”

“Why?” she whispered, looking at the sleek gray convertible with awe.

“It seems to me, my lady, you have missed a few things on the road to romance. Your man wants to show you new worlds and impress you.”

Her man? On the road to romance? Was she really ready for this? Isabella could barely breathe as he held open the door for her. It seemed like a long step down into the low-slung sports car, and he took her hand and helped her. She settled back in a deep leather seat.

The car was a dream to ride in, and she loved the way Connor handled it in the narrow streets. There was nothing about him, she realized, that was inclined to show off. And yet he was obviously extremely confident and capable handling the very powerful car. She loved the way one hand rested lightly on the wheel, his other on the knob of the gearshift. The ride seemed over way too soon. When she reached for the door handle, he gave her a meaningful look and she let her hand fall away.

He opened the door for her and then went around to the trunk and opened it as well. He looped the handle of a large wicker basket over his left arm and offered her his right. She threaded her arm through the crook of his elbow and they went up the well-worn path to the palazzo’s chapel.

It was as she had remembered, almost completely engulfed in scaffolding.

“It must be American,” she said out loud.

“What?”

“A date at a construction site.”

“What? Italians don’t date at construction sites?” He shook his head, teasing her. “I thought you people had perfected the romantic gesture.”