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