Soldier, Hero...Husband?

by Cara Colter

  “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.

  “Conn
or.”

  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.