by Cara Colter
Then there was harmless gossip about who was getting married and divorced and who was burying parents. And, of course, in an Italian village, what was loved more than a pregnancy?
Nothing. But with each pregnancy revealed, Isabella felt happy and yet crushed, too. She did not think envy was an admirable emotion, and yet the thought of someone holding that beautiful, wiggling, warm bundle of life filled her with a terrible sense of longing for the life she did not have. And would probably never have. Not now.
“Have you heard? Marianna is pregnant.”
Again Isabella’s happiness for Marianna was laced with her own sense of loss. She listened halfheartedly as the circumstances around Marianna’s pregnancy were placed under the microscope of the small, close-knit village. They were not ideal.
Italy was still mostly Catholic, and small towns like Monte Calanetti were very traditional. A pregnancy without the benefit of marriage still raised eyebrows. There was some conjecture around the table about how Marianna’s brothers, the staunchly conservative Angelo and Nico, might have reacted to news of a pregnancy.
After it had been discussed to death, it was all put aside and a decision was made.
“We will have to have a baby shower.”
This was announced with a sigh of pure happiness and murmurs of delight from the other women. A baby in Italy was always seen as a blessing.
For some reason that made Isabella think of Connor talking about the abandonment of his mother by his father. Marianna’s beau looked like the kind of man who would stand by her no matter what. Angelo and Nico, while they might rage and wring their hands, would never turn their backs on their own blood. Never.
Isabella wondered if that was the root of Connor wanting to protect the whole world—a little boy wanting to protect his mother. The thought made her heart ache for him. Not that she wanted to spoil this evening with one single thought about her houseguest!
Though Isabella was careful with the wine, some others were not, and the jokes became quite ribald and the laughter loud. The gathering was around a torch-lit courtyard, and after the dinner the tables were cleared away for dancing, and a live band came out.
The dress made Isabella feel different, less repressed and more carefree. To her astonishment, men she’d known for years were lining up to ask her to dance, and she soon felt as if she was flushed with as much excitement as the young Valerie.
It was after one in the morning before she realized how late it was.
“I have to work in the morning!”
She refused an offer to be walked home, and instead went down the darkened streets by herself. Partway home, she realized her feet ached from all the dancing, and she slipped off her shoes and went barefoot.
A little ways from her house, she saw a figure coming toward her. She knew from his size and the way he carried himself exactly who it was, and she felt her heart begin to race.
But his walk was different, purposeful, the strides long and hard, like a gladiator entering the arena, like a warrior entering the battlefield.
He stopped in front of her and gazed down at her. His eyes were flashing with cold anger.
“Where the hell have you been?”
“Scusi?”
“You heard me.”
“I told you I was at a birthday party,” she said.
“Well, I assumed a child’s birthday party, and I thought it would be over at a decent time.”
“What’s it to you?” she snapped, angry at his high-handed manner, angry that he thought he could treat her like a child on the night she felt sexy and adult.
Her tone was louder than she intended. In fact, both their tones might have been louder than they thought. A light came on in a window above the street.
Connor stepped back from her, ran a hand through his hair and looked away. “You’re waking the neighbors,” he said, glancing up at that window.
“Me?” she said, unrepentant.
“Us,” he conceded.
“Well, I have an excuse—boiling cauldron of repressed passion that I am, I am now shrieking like a fishwife in the streets. What’s yours?”
“Good question,” he said.
“You rescued me this afternoon. That does not put you in charge of my life!”
“You’re right,” Connor said. The anger had faded from his face. Instead, he looked faintly confused. Her own annoyance at him ebbed away a little bit.
“Are you out here looking for me?” she asked, astounded.
He could barely look at her, but he nodded.
What remained of her anger drained away. “But why?” She remembered thinking earlier tonight, with the news of Marianna’s pregnancy, of the burden he had placed on himself of looking after the whole world. She remembered wondering if the first person he had felt protective of was his mother.
Almost against her will, something in her softened toward him.
“Hell, I started thinking about you bumping your head. It can be such a tricky injury. I should have checked more for signs of concussion.”
“You were worried about me,” she said. It was not a question.
“It’s just that you’d had quite a bang on the head, and you were dressed like that, and I started thinking you might not be making the best decisions.”
“I’m thirty-three years old!”
“But you’d had a head injury. And you said you were lonely... I thought you might be...” His voice trailed away uncomfortably.
She looked at him silently. She should be insulted. He thought she might be what? Getting carried away with the first man who looked at her with avarice? But poor Connor looked tormented. His expression stole her indignation away from her.
“Vulnerable,” he continued.
That was so true. She did feel very vulnerable. But it seemed he felt vulnerable, too.
“It’s not that you wouldn’t make good decisions under normal conditions,” he said hastily. “But a bump on the head can cause confusion. Alter judgment slightly. I’m sorry. Am I making a fool of myself?”
“No,” she said softly, “you are not. I am quite touched by your concern for me.”
“I’m not sure it’s rational,” he said. “It’s just that, unfortunately, I’ve just seen a lot of people get themselves in trouble before they know what’s happened to them.”
“I wasn’t in trouble. But the party wasn’t for a child. Not really. For a sixteen-year-old. It’s a big deal in Monte Calanetti. Almost like a wedding. A meal and dancing. The party could go on all night.”
“I hate it when I act from emotion,” he said gruffly.
“Do you?”
He stepped one step closer to her. He lifted her hair off her shoulder with his hand. “What are you doing to me?” he asked huskily. “I feel as if I’m not thinking straight.”
“Ah.”
“I find you very beautiful. It’s hard for a man to think straight around that.”
“It’s just the dress,” she said.
“No, Isabella, it’s not.”
“It’s not?”
“There’s something about you that makes me think with my heart instead of my head.”
“Oh, dear,” she said, and her tone was playfully mocking.
“Here’s what I think,” he said firmly, as if he had it all figured out.
“Yes?”
“I should take you on a date.”
CHAPTER FIVE
ISABELLA STARED AT CONNOR. He should take her on a date? But was that his head or his heart talking? Because the way he said it, it was almost as though he hoped to get her out of his system.
“You should?” she asked.
“Sure. I mean, if you’d like to.”
There was something very endearing about seeing this
big, self-assured, superconfident Texan looking so unsure of himself.
“I’d like to,” she said softly. “I’d like to, very much.”
And then it seemed slightly and wonderfully ridiculous that they turned and walked home together.
Only it didn’t seem ridiculous when his hand found hers.
It felt not as if she was going to go on a real date for the first time in her life, but as if she was coming home.
* * *
“I’ve gone and done something really stupid,” Connor whispered into his phone.
“Huh? Who is this?”
“Justin, it’s me.”
“Connor?”
“Yeah.”
“What the hell is going on?”
“There’s this girl.”
Something relaxed in Justin’s tone. “This better be good—it’s two o’clock in the morning here.”
Connor contemplated that. Was there one rational thing left in him? No, that’s why he was consulting his friend. That’s what SEALs did when they were in a pickle, they relied on each other.
“She’s not really a girl. A woman.”
“Uh-huh?”
“I asked her out.”
“That sounds like it’s worthy of a two a.m. phone call.”
“The thing is, I didn’t really ask her out for me. I asked her out for her. She’s a widow. She married really young. She’s missed a lot. She’s never been on a real date before.”
Silence.
Connor sighed. “I’m the wrong guy for this, aren’t I?”
Silence.
“I mean, I’m just the wrong guy to try and show her how it can be.”
“How what can be?”
“You know.”
“You’ll have to spell it out for me. I’m having that two-o’clock-in-the-morning brain fart.”
“How it can be, uh, when two people like each other. A lot.”
“You mean falling in love?” Justin asked. He sounded wide-awake now.
“No!” Connor had to backtrack. He was sorry he had admitted liking her. A lot. His mission was one of altruism, and he wanted to make Justin understand that.
“I mean maybe falling in love,” Connor said carefully, “just not with me. I just want to show her life can be fun. I want to show her she’s missed something, and not to be afraid to embrace it. That it is not too late for her.”
“From the embracer of all things romantic,” Justin said wryly.
“You’re not helping! I guess I want to show her what she should be looking for in a guy. Not me. I mean, I’m leaving. I’m here for the short term only. But if I could just give her an idea how a date should feel.”
“Very altruistic.”
“Are you being sarcastic?”
Justin sighed. “Okay. Ask me a specific question, and I will try to help you with it.”
“What should I do with her on a date? I was thinking dinner and a movie.”
“So, basically the same thing you’ve done on every single date you’ve ever been on?”
“Yes.”
“Hmm.”
“What does that mean?” Connor demanded. “I hate it when you say hmm like that.”
“It just seems to me if you’re trying to show her life is good, and trying to encourage her to embrace the great adventure, and trying to show her what a good date would feel like, you should put a bit more thought into it.”
“I’ve been thinking of nothing else!”
“Just a sec.” Connor could hear Justin talking to someone, the sound muffled as if he had stuck the phone under his pillow. Connor was pretty sure the other voice was feminine. He strained his ears. Justin came back on a moment later.
“Be original. A picnic in the moonlight. Something like that.”
“That is the hokiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
“Well, then, don’t ask.”
“Okay, I won’t.” And Connor contemplated the fact that Justin was with someone. Justin really was getting on with his life. It occurred to Connor that the wheelchair Justin used was holding Connor back more than it was his friend.
“Don’t hang up, Connor. The red line is going off.”
The red line. That was the dedicated line for emergencies for their company.
Justin came back on the phone. His voice was completely different, the sleep stripped from it. This voice, crisp, take-charge and take-no-prisoners, was a voice Connor recognized. He was a warrior now, and Connor shifted into that role easily, aware he was far more at ease with this than the places of the heart that he had very nearly gone to.
“How long would it take you to get back to Azerbaijan?”
Connor was already opening a different screen on his phone, looking up flights. “I could be in Baku in under six hours if I can make the connections.”
“A vulture has landed. Go.”
A vulture had landed. It was their code for a bad guy, known to them. In a similar code, Justin and whoever was on the ground in Azerbaijan would text the details to Connor’s phone as they had them. Connor was aware as he threw things in his bag that he felt a sense of purpose and mission. This was the world he moved in with absolute ease. This was where he belonged.
He scrawled a note for Isabella, sent a quick text to Nico and slipped out the door, back into the comfort of all that was familiar.
It was ironic just how safe danger made Connor Benson feel.
* * *
Isabella was aware, as soon as she woke up the next morning, that Connor was gone. She could feel his absence in the house, as if some energy that was necessary to life was gone.
She found his note on the kitchen table but was not comforted by it. Was it convenient that he was suddenly called away at the same time things were taking a turn between them? Was he deliberately cooling things off?
Isabella nursed the hope that he would call, and it increased her tension when he did not. He was cooling things off.
Still, she could not believe it was possible to miss Connor so much. In the short time he had been part of her life, his presence had made a big impact on her household without her really realizing it at the time. There was something about having a man in her house—even though they had mostly avoided each other—that made her feel safe. That in itself was not really rational—he had attacked her the very first day.
So, no, her acute sense of missing him had very little to do with a sense of safety. Maybe even the opposite. There was a sense that very unsafe things could unfold between them. And that made each day have a delicious sense of anticipation.
She looked at his note, over and over, trying to glean any emotion from it, trying to discern which way the compass was swinging. His handwriting was no surprise, strong and bold. The message was to the point: “Called away on business. Will pay for my room for days I am not here. Please hold for my return.”
Given their middle-of-the-street conversation of the night before he had written that note—given his invitation to go on a date—it seemed very impersonal and businesslike. He had signed it only with his first name, no term of endearment.
What would she expect? Love, Connor. No, definitely not that. Hugs? That was laughable. How about best wishes? Or can’t wait to see you again?
Despite all her misgivings, Isabella could feel herself anticipating his return like a child anticipating Christmas, even though she chided herself not to.
He had asked her on a date. If he followed through, she wondered what he had in mind. She felt excited about it, when really, that was the most unsafe thing of all.
Or maybe she really did not know the first thing about safety. Because she turned on the news one night, and it was focused on Azerbaijan. Normally, Isabella did not watch the news, and she would have flipped by
the station. But tonight, she recalled that first morning Connor had said that was where he was coming from. Was that where his business had called him back to?
And indeed, the story was about an incident that had happened at the World Food Conference. Members of an unnamed private security organization had apprehended someone who had made threats against one of the delegates. Details were sketchy, and there was no footage. Had Connor’s company been involved? Her gut said it had been.
When the story was over, Isabella shut off the TV, but she sat there until the room grew dark, thinking about what she had seen.
She was aware her stomach was in a knot. She was aware that this would be the reality of tangling your life with a man like Connor Benson.
Six days after he departed, a knock came on her front door. It was dinnertime, and Isabella was not sure who would come calling at that hour.
She swung open the door to see Connor standing there.
He looked so wondrously familiar. Her heart began to pound unreasonably. Her anxiety about the kind of work he did left her in a rush of warm relief to see him standing there, so obviously unharmed.
“Oh!” she said. She could feel herself blushing as she stepped back from the door. “You didn’t have to knock. You live here.”
He cocked his head at her, lifted a brow.
“I mean, you’re a guest here. I want you to feel you can come and go as you please.”
“I know that, but I also knew you didn’t know when I would be back. I didn’t want to startle you. Again.”
She regarded him. His face was deeply etched with exhaustion. But there was something else there, too. It was as she had suspected when she read his curt note—he had bought himself some time and now he seemed remote, as if they wanted different things. It was as if he had thought about that late-night meeting in the street and decided he wanted something different than what she wanted. He wanted them to be strangers. She wanted them to be friends.
Or more than friends?
Her anxieties were realized. Isabella could feel the excitement that had been building about his return leaving her like air hissing out of a pricked balloon.