“I’m glad your mother found happiness.”
“Me, too, though her luck at love has made her think everyone should try it.”
“And shouldn’t they?” Isabella found herself asking softly.
He rolled his shoulders, and something shut down in his face. “A man who seeks danger with the intensity and trajectory of a heat-seeking missile is not exactly a good bet in the love department. I’ve seen lots of my buddies go down that road. They come home cold and hard and damaged. Normal life and domestic duties seem unbearably dull after the adrenaline rush of action.”
“That sounds very lonely,” Isabella offered. And like a warning. Which she dutifully noted.
Connor studied her for a moment. Whatever had opened between them closed like a door slamming shut. He pushed back from the table abruptly. “Lonely? Not at all,” he insisted coolly. “Thank you for dinner.”
But he hadn’t eaten dinner. After a moment, she cleared his uneaten soup off the table and cleaned up the kitchen.
Really, he had let her know in every way possible that any interest in him would not be appreciated.
After putting her small kitchen in order, she retreated to her office. She hesitated only a moment before she looked up navy seals on the internet. She felt guilty as sin doing it, but it did not stop her.
It was actually SEALs, she discovered, and they were not just combat divers. Sometimes called Frogmen because they were equally adept in the water or on land, they were one of the most elite, and secretive, commando forces in the world.
Only a very few men, of the hundreds who tried, could make it through their rigorous training program.
Isabella could tell from what she read that Connor had led a life of extreme adventure and excitement. He was, unfortunately, the larger-than-life kind of man who intrigued.
But he had told her with his own words what he was. Cold and hard and damaged. She was all done rescuing men.
Rescuing men? something whispered within her. But you never felt you were rescuing Giorgio. Never. You did it all for love.
But suddenly, sickeningly, she just wasn’t that sure what her motives had been in marrying a man with such a terrible prognosis.
And fairly or not, looking at her husband and her marriage through a different lens felt as if it was entirely the fault of Connor Benson.
Even knowing she had been quite curious enough for one night, she decided to look up one more thing. She put in the name Itus Security. There was a picture of a very good-looking man named Justin Arnold. He was the CEO of the company. Beside his picture was one of Connor, who was the chief of operations. There was a list of services they offered, and a number of testimonials from very high-profile clients.
Their company was named after the Greek god of protection, Itus, and their mission statement was, “As in legend, Itus is sworn to protect the innocent from those who would do them harm.”
Intrigued, she went and read the mythology around Itus. A while later, Isabella shut off the computer and squared her shoulders.
A month. Connor Benson was going to be under her roof for a month. After one day, she was feeling a terrible uneasiness, as if he could, with just his close proximity, change everything about her, even the way she looked at her past.
“I have to avoid him,” she whispered to herself. And it felt as if her very survival depended on that. She went to bed and set her alarm for very early. She could put out his breakfast things and leave the house without even seeing him tomorrow. There were always things to do at school. Right now, she was preparing her class to perform a song and skit at the annual spring fete, and she had props to make, simple costumes to prepare.
She had a feeling with Connor under her roof and her badly needing her schoolroom to hide out in and something to distract from the uncomfortable feelings she was experiencing, she was about to produce the best song and skit the good citizens of Monte Calanetti had ever seen!
CONNOR RETREATED TO his room, annoyed with himself. He was not generally so chatty. What moment of madness had made him say yes to that wine? And why had so very little of it made him feel so off balance?
Intoxicated.
Maybe it hadn’t been the wine, but just sharing a simple meal with a beautiful woman in the quintessential Italian kitchen, with its old stone walls and its deep windows open to the breeze, that had brought his guard down.
He had told Isabella things he had not told people he’d worked with for twenty years. Justin knew about his hardscrabble upbringing on the wrong side of Corpus Christi, but no one else did.
The soft look in Isabella’s eyes as he had told her had actually made him feel not that he wanted to tell her less, but as though he wanted to tell her more, as if his every secret would be safe with her.
As if he had carried a burden alone for way too long.
“Stop it,” Connor snapped grimly at himself. He acknowledged he was tired beyond reason. You didn’t unload on a woman like her. She, cute little schoolteacher that she was, wouldn’t be able to handle it, to hold up to it. She’d buried her husband and that had sent her into full retreat. That’s why someone so gorgeous was still unmarried six years later.
So there would be no more wine tastings over supper that loosened his tongue. No more suppers, in fact. Tomorrow, rested, his first duty would be to find a nice little place to eat supper every night.
With none of the local wines. That one tonight had seemed to have some beautiful Tuscan enchantment built right into it.
And if avoiding her at dinner proved to be not enough defense, he would go in search of another place to stay.
Not that he wanted to hurt her feelings.
“The Cat does not worry about people’s feelings,” he said, annoyed with himself. What he needed to do was deal with the exhaustion first. He peeled off his clothes and rolled into bed and slept, but not before grumpily acknowledging how hungry he was.
Connor awoke very early. He knew where he was this time. Again, he could hear the sounds of someone trying to be very quiet. He rolled over and looked at his bedside clock.
Five a.m. What the heck? He had the awful thought Isabella might have gotten up so early to make him breakfast. That made him feel guilty since he knew she had a full day of work to put in. Guilt was as unusual for him as worrying about feelings. Still, he needed to tell her not to bother.
He slipped on a pair of lightweight khakis and pulled a shirt over his head, and went downstairs to the kitchen.
She had her back to him.
“Isabella?”
She shrieked and turned, hand to her throat.
“Sorry,” he said, “I’ve startled you again.”
She dropped her hand from her throat. “No, you didn’t,” she said, even though it was more than obvious she had been very startled.
“Whatever. I think we’ve got to quit meeting like this.”
The expression must have lost something in the translation, because she only looked annoyed as she turned back to the counter. “I just wasn’t expecting you to be up so early.”
“I wasn’t expecting you up this early.”
“I’m preparing for the spring festival,” she said. “I have extra work to do at school.”
“And extra work to do here, because of me?”
She glanced over her shoulder at him, and then looked quickly back