by Cara Colter
Isabella turned and fled.
And if she was not mistaken, the soft notes of a faintly wicked chuckle followed her before Connor Benson shut his bedroom door.
Outside her house, Isabella noted the day was showing promise of unusual heat. She told herself that was what was making her face feel as if it was on fire as she hurried along the twisted, cobbled streets of Monte Calanetti to the primary school where she taught.
Yes, it was the heat, not the memory of his slow drawl, the way ma’am had slipped off his lips. He sounded like one of the cowboys in those old American Western movies Giorgio had enjoyed so much when he was bedridden.
Really? The way Connor Benson said ma’am should have been faintly comical. How come it was anything but? How come his deep voice and his slow drawl had been as soft as a silk handkerchief being trailed with deliberate seduction over the curve of her neck?
She thought of Connor Benson’s attempt at Italian when he had tried to assure that her mornings would not begin with an attack. That accent should have made that comical, too, but it hadn’t been. She had loved it that he had tried to speak her language.
“Buongiorno, Signora Rossi. You look beautiful this morning!”
Isabella smiled at the butcher, who had come out of his shop to unwind his awning, but once she was by him, she frowned. She passed him every morning. He always said good morning. But he had never added that she looked beautiful before.
It was embarrassing. Her encounter with Connor Benson this morning had lasted maybe five minutes. How was it that it had made her feel so uncomfortable, so hungry and so alive? And so much so that she was radiating it for others to see?
“Isabella,” she told herself sternly, using her best schoolteacher voice, “that is quite enough.”
But it was not, apparently, quite enough.
Because she found herself thinking that she had not told him anything about his accommodations. She could do that over dinner tonight.
Isabella was never distracted when she was teaching. She loved her job and her students and always felt totally present and engaged when she was with the children. Her job, really, was what had brought her back from the brink of despair after Giorgio’s death.
But today, her mind wandered excessively to what kind of meal she would cook for her guest.
Candles, of course, would be ridiculous, wouldn’t they? And they would give the wrong message entirely.
She had not made her mother’s recipe of lasagne verdi al forno for years. Food, and finally even the smell of cooking, had made Giorgio sick. Isabella was shocked at how much she wanted to cook, to prepare a beautiful meal. Yes, lasagna, and a fresh loaf of ciabatta bread, a lovely red wine. School in many places in Italy, including Monte Calanetti, ran for six days instead of five, but the days were short, her workday over at one. That gave her plenty of time to cook the extravagant meal.
So, on the way home from school, she stopped at the grocer’s and the bakery and picked up everything she needed. She had several beautiful bottles of wine from Nico’s Calanetti vineyard that she had never opened. Wine opened was meant to be drunk. It had seemed silly and wasteful to open a whole bottle for herself.
From the deep silence in the house, Isabella knew that Connor was not there when she arrived home. Already, it occurred to her she knew his scent, and her nose sniffed the air for him.
She began unloading the contents of her grocery bags in her homey little kitchen. She considered putting on a fresh dress. One that would make him rethink his assessment of her as a schoolteacher. It was then that Isabella became aware that it wasn’t just the idea of cooking that was filling her with this lovely sense of purpose.
It was the idea of cooking for a man.
She stopped what she was doing and sat down heavily at her kitchen table.
“Isabella,” she chided herself, “you are acting as if this is a date. It’s very dangerous. You are out of your league. You will only get hurt if you play games with a man like Connor Benson.”
She was also aware she felt faintly guilty, as if this intense awareness of another man—okay, she would call a spade a spade, she was attracted to Connor Benson—was a betrayal of the love she had had with Giorgio.
Everyone kept telling her it was time to move on, and in her head she knew they were right. Six years was a long time for a woman to be alone. If she did not make a move soon, she would probably never have the children she longed for.
But no matter what her head said, her heart said no. Her heart had been hurt enough for this lifetime. Her heart did not want to fall in love ever again.
Slowly, feeling unreasonably dejected, she put everything away instead of leaving it out to cook with. She would bring anything that would spoil to school tomorrow and give it to Luigi Caravetti. He was from a single-parent family, and she knew his mother was struggling right now.
She opened a can of soup, as she would have normally done, and broke the bread into pieces. She would invite Connor to share this humble fare with her when he arrived. She needed to go over things with him, make clear what she did and did not provide.
It wasn’t very much later that he came in the front door. She felt she was ready. Or as ready as a woman could ever be for a man like that.
“I have soup if you would like some,” she called out formally.
“Grazie, that sounds great.”
Isabella wished Connor would not try to speak Italian. It made her not want to be formal at all. It made her long to teach him a few words or phrases, to correct his pronunciation. She listened as he went up the stairs. She heard the shower turn on. Her mind went to the memory of touching that perfect body this morning, and something shivered along her spine. It was a warning. If she was smart there would be no language lessons with Connor Benson.
A little while later, he came into the kitchen. Oh, God. He was so big in this tiny room. It was as if he took up all the space. Her eyes felt as if they wanted to go anywhere but to him.
But where else could they go, when he was taking up all the space?
He was freshly showered. He had on a clean shirt. He smelled wonderful. His hair was dark and damp, and towel roughened. He had not shaved, so his whiskers were thick, and she could almost imagine how they would feel scraping across a woman’s skin.
“I hope you don’t expect homemade,” she said. Her voice sounded like a croak.
“I didn’t expect anything at all, ma’am.”
There was that ma’am again, slow and steady, dragging across the back of her neck, drugging her senses.
“Isabella.” Her voice sounded like a whisper. “Please, sit.”
He took a seat at her table. It made her table seem ridiculous, as if it had been made to go in a dollhouse.
“Isabella,” he said, as if he was trying it out. Her name came off his tongue like honey. She wished she had not invited him to call her by it.
“It smells good in here,” he said conversationally and then looked around with interest. “It’s quaint, exactly what I would expect an Italian kitchen to look like. That stone wall must be original to the house.”
She felt tongue-tied but managed to squeak, “Don’t be fooled by its charm. This house is three hundred years old. And it can be quite cranky.”
“I think I noticed the crankiness in the shower just now,” he said.
“I warned you about that.” She did not want to be thinking about him in the shower, again.
“No big deal. Woke me up, though. The water was pouring out and then stopped, and then poured out again. I’ll have a look at it for you, if you want.”
“No,” she said, proudly and firmly. She did not need to give herself the idea there was a man she could rely on to help her. “You are a guest in this house. I have already called the plumber, but I’m afraid with the renovation at the villa,
my house is not a priority for him.”
“I don’t mind having a look at it.”
Some longing shivered along her spine, which she straightened, instantly. “Signor, this house is three hundred years old. If you start looking at all the things wrong with it, I’m afraid you will not have time to do the job you came here to do. So, please, no, I can manage.”
He looked faintly skeptical about her ability—or maybe the ability of any woman who was alone—to manage a three-hundred-year-old house, but wisely, he said nothing.
She dished out soup from the stove, gestured to the bread, took a seat across from him. She felt as if she was sitting rigidly upright, like a recent graduate from charm school.
“Relax,” he said softly, “I won’t bite you.”
She was appalled that her discomfort was so transparent.
“Bite me?” she squeaked. She was also appalled at the picture that sprang to mind. And that it involved the cranky shower!
“It’s American slang. It means I won’t hurt you.”
Wouldn’t he? It seemed to her Connor Benson was the kind of man who hurt women without meaning to, and she didn’t mean by attacking them outside the bedroom door in the morning, either. He was the kind of man who could make a woman think heated thoughts or dream naive and romantic dreams that he would not stick around to fulfill.
“This morning excepted,” he growled.
“You didn’t hurt me!”
“Not physically. I can tell you’re nervous around me now.”
She could feel the color climbing up her face. She wanted to deny that, and couldn’t. Instead, she changed the subject. “How was your day?”
“Uneventful,” he said. “I met with Nico and had an initial look around. It’s a very beautiful village.”
“Thank you. I like it very much.” Her voice sounded stilted. What was wrong with her? Well, she’d married young. Giorgio had been her only boyfriend. She was not accustomed to this kind of encounter. “Would you like wine?”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“You might like to try this one. It’s one of Nico’s best, from his Calanetti vineyard.”
“All right,” he said. She suspected he had said yes to help her relax, not because he really wanted the wine.
The wine was on the counter. Isabella was glad her back was to him, because she struggled with getting it open. But finally, she was able to turn back and pour him a glass. She could feel a dewy bead of sweat on her forehead. She blew on her bangs in case they were sticking.
He sipped it carefully as she sat back down. “It’s really good. What would you say? Buono?”
“Yes, buono. Nico’s vineyard is one of the pride and joys of our region.” She took a sip of wine. And then another. It occurred to her neither of them were eating the soup.
Suddenly, it all felt just a little too cozy. Perhaps she should not have insisted on the wine. She took rather too large a gulp and set down her glass.
It was time to get down to business. “I will provide a simple supper like this, Mondays to Saturdays, the same days that I work. On Sunday, I do not. I provide breakfast every day, but I don’t usually leave a tray by the bedroom door.”
“I wouldn’t risk that again, either,” he said drily. She had the uncomfortable feeling he was amused by her.
“It’s not a hotel,” she said sternly, “so I don’t make beds.”
“Understood.” Did he intentionally say that with a military inflection, as if he was a lower rank being addressed by a superior? Was he perceiving her as bossy?
Given how she wanted to keep everything formal between them, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
“I also do not provide laundry service.” Thank goodness. She could not even imagine touching his intimate things. “I have a washing machine through that door that you are welcome to use. There is a laundry service in the village if you prefer. Except for sheets, which I do once a week. I provide fresh towels every day.”
“I can do my own sheets, thanks.”
“All right. Yes. That’s fine. The common areas of the house are yours to use if you want to watch television or cook your own meals, or put things in the refrigerator.”
The thought of him in her space made her take another rather large and fortifying sip of the wine.
“I don’t watch television,” he told her, “and I’m accustomed to preparing my own meals. I don’t want you to feel put out by me. I can tell it is a bit of an imposition for you having a man in your house.”
He was toying with the stem of his wineglass. He put it to his lips and took a long sip, watching her.
She tilted her chin at him, took a sip of her own wine. “What would make you say that? It’s no imposition at all, Signor Benson.”
Her heart was beating hard in her throat. He shrugged and lifted his wineglass to his lips again, watched her over the rim.
She might as well not have bothered denying it was any kind of imposition for her. She could feel her discomfort snaking along her spine, and he was not the kind of man you could hide things from.
“Connor, please,” he said. “We’re not very formal where I come from.”
“Connor,” she agreed. He had caught on that she was being too formal. Didn’t he know it would protect them both? But she said his name anyway, even though it felt as if she was losing ground fast. She was using his first name. It felt as though she was agreeing, somehow, to dance with the devil.
But the question was, was the devil in him, or was it in her?
“And where are you from?” she asked. This was to prove to him she was not at all formal and stuffy and could hold a polite conversation with the best of them. She hoped it would not appear as if she was desperately eager for details about him, which she was not! She still had not touched her soup. Neither had he.
“I’m from Texas,” he said.
“I thought the accent was like that of a cowboy.”
He laughed at that. His laughter was deep and engaging, relaxing some of the constant hardness from his face, and she found herself staring at him.
“Ma’am—”
“Isabella,” she reminded him.
“Isabella—”
Him saying her name, in that drawl, made her feel the same as if she had drunk a whole bottle of wine from the Calanetti vineyard instead of taken a few sips out of her glass.
Well, actually, her glass was empty, and so was his. He noticed, and tipped the wine out over both their glasses.
“Most people hear that drawl and automatically lower my intelligence by twenty points or so.”
“I can tell you are a very intelligent man,” she said seriously.
“I was just trying to make the point that regional accents can lead to judgments in the United States. Like you thinking I’m a cowboy. I’m about the farthest thing from a cowboy that you’ll ever see.”
“Oh! I thought everybody from Texas was a cowboy.”
He laughed again. “You and the rest of the world. I grew up in a very poor neighborhood in Corpus Christi, which is a coastal city. I started picking up a bit of work at the shipyards when I was about eleven, and occasionally cattle would come through, but that’s the closest I came to any real cowboys.”
“Eleven?” she said, horrified. “That is very young to be working.”
Something in his expression became guarded. He lifted a shoulder. “I was big for my age. No one asked how old I was.”
“But why were you working at eleven?” she pressed.
For a moment, he looked as though he might not answer. Then he said quietly, “My mom was a single parent. It was pretty hand-to-mouth at times. I did what I could to help.”
“Was your mom a widow?” she asked. She and Giorgio had not had children, though she had wanted to,
even with Giorgio’s prognosis. Now she wondered, from the quickly veiled pain in Connor’s face, if that wouldn’t have been a selfish thing, indeed, to try and raise a child or children without the benefit of a father.
“No,” he said gruffly. “She wasn’t a widow. She found herself pregnant at sixteen and abandoned by my father, whom she would never name. Her own family turned their backs on her. They said she brought shame on them by being pregnant.”
“Your poor mother. Her own family turned away from her?” She thought of her family’s reaction to the news she was going to marry Giorgio.
Life has enough heartbreak, her mother had said. You have to invite one by marrying a dying man?
Isabella could have pointed out to her mother that she should be an expert on heartbreak, since Isabella’s father, with his constant infidelities, had broken her heart again and again and again. One thing about Giorgio? He was sweetly and strongly loyal. He would never be like that.
But it had seemed unnecessarily cruel to point that out to her mother, and so she had said nothing. And even though they were not happy with her choice, Isabella’s family had not abandoned her. At least not physically.
Connor lifted a shoulder. “My mother is an amazing woman. She managed to keep me in line and out of jail through my wild youth. That couldn’t have been easy.”
“I’m sure it was not,” Isabella said primly.
He grinned as if he had enjoyed every second of his wild youth. “Then I joined up.”
“Joined up?”
“I joined the navy as soon as I was old enough.”
“How old is that?”
“Seventeen.”
She drew in her breath sharply.
“I served in the regular navy for two years, and then I was drawn to the SEALs.”
“SEALs? What is this?”
“It stands for sea, air, land. It’s an arm of the navy. Combat divers.”
She could tell there was a bit more to it than what he was saying.
“And your mother? Was she heartbroken when you left her to join the military?”