Passionate Calanettis: Soldier, Hero...Husband?

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As Connor was waiting in the water of Nico’s beautiful pool, Isabella came through the back gate and gave him a quick wave before ducking into the cabana beside the pool.

He was pleased to note she looked particularly understated today in a longish skirt in a dull shade of beige and a baggy blouse in the same color. Her glossy hair was pulled back tightly, and she was carrying a large book bag that she was hugging to her chest. Really? She looked more like a nerdy student than the teacher.

He surveyed the pool while he waited for her. It was nestled in the garden grotto behind the house, and the pool had been made to look like a pond. Ferns trailed fronds in the water, and there was a small waterfall at one end of it.

Lovely as it was aesthetically, it was not really a pool for serious swimming, but it was large enough to do a few strokes, plus it had a deep end. It was about the furthest thing from the pools he had done SEAL training in, but it would do for an introduction to swimming basics.

Connor was feeling enormously pleased with himself. Teaching Isabella how to swim—instead of going on a date—had been a brainstorm. Swimming, after all, was useful. Tackling an irrational fear was useful. When he left this place, he would leave her with a skill that would be practical to her for her whole life. He would leave her with a sense of herself that was different than what it had been before. That sounded quite a bit better than leaving her with the heartache that a date promised.

She was staying here in this idyllic little village in Tuscany, and he was leaving, so what was the sense of exploring the sparks that were flying between them?

Isabella came out of the cabana. She had taken her hair out of the elastic when it would have been more sensible to leave it in. She had on an enormous poncho-like caftan that covered her from her head to her toes. It had hideous wide stripes in a crazy array of colors. It reminded him of pictures he had seen of what people wore to music festivals in the ’60s.

When she stood on the deck he was at eye level with her feet. Her toenails were painted lime green, and as odd a choice as that was, he had to admit it was adorable, and a little less nerdy than the rest of her ensemble.

“What’s that thing?” he asked her. He noticed that her face had been scrubbed free of makeup, probably in preparation for her swim.

“What thing?”

“That thing you’re wearing.”

She looked down at herself. “Oh. My swim cover.”

He had to bite back a smile. She had to wear a swim cover to get from the cabana to the pool? The walk might have been twenty yards.

“Well, how about if you take it off and get in the water.”

She hesitated. He could see the pulse beating in her throat. She looked past him at the water and gulped.

“Believe me, you can’t swim with it on.”

“Oh,” she said, as if he was breaking world news to her. Isabella reached for the zipper, and closed her eyes. Because she was afraid of the water? Or was she sweetly shy about being seen in her swimming suit?

She bent over to get the zipper undone. Her swim cover was still doing its job. Covering. The zipper stuck partway down, and she tugged and tugged, but nothing happened. Suddenly, in frustration, she gave up on the zipper and pulled the caftan from her shoulders. As she was freed from the bulky covering, it slid down and settled in a lump at her waist.

Connor stared helplessly.

Her eyes locked on his. He looked away, focusing on those little green toenails, not sure he wanted her to see what he was thinking. She pushed the caftan away from her waist and it floated to the ground, at his eye level, creating a puddle that looked like a burlap bag around her little monster-toed feet.

He was left looking at the length of her lovely legs. Then she stepped out of the fabric puddle and kicked the covering aside.

Connor reminded himself he had seen her in a transparent shower curtain. And a red dress that had made his mouth go dry. Whatever this was, it could not be any worse than that. Isabella was a practical schoolteacher. She would know how to pick a good bathing suit.

Having thus reassured himself, Connor cocked his head upward to see more than her feet and her legs. His mouth fell open. He gulped. He snapped his mouth shut so that the practical schoolteacher would not guess how much she was rattling his world.

A swimming lesson? Whose dumb idea had this been?

She was wearing one of the tiniest swimsuits he had ever seen, if you could call that scrap of fabric—three scraps of fabric—a swimsuit. Isabella was wearing a string bikini in an amazing shade of lime green that made her skin look as golden as the sand at a beach in New Zealand, Kaiteriteri, that he had visited once. Her dark hair spilled over that golden expanse of skin, shiny and beautiful.

“Is something wrong?” she asked. Her tone was all innocence, but he wasn’t fooled. No woman put on a bathing suit like that without knowing exactly what she was doing!

Suck it up, he ordered himself. He’d seen her in a shower curtain. Nothing could be worse than that. Except this was worse than that. It was worse, even, than the red dress.

Isabella Rossi, village schoolteacher, nerdy girl, was smoking hot!

“Wrong?” he choked out, not willing to give her the victory. “What could possibly be wrong?”

“I don’t know. You have a look on your face.”

“A look on my face?” he demanded.

“Mmm. Like you’ve been smacked with a frozen fish.”

He wiped whatever look he had on his face off. He felt as though he’d been smacked, all right, and not with a frozen fish. Smacked with awareness of her. He had the ugly feeling she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. In fact, Connor had the ugly feeling that she might be toying with him.

He forced himself to find his voice. It had to be addressed. “You really should have left your hair up.”

“Oh? Why’s that?”

What was he doing talking about her hair? He needed to tell her the bathing suit wasn’t going to work. At all. “You don’t want to get it in your face.”

“I’m not planning on getting my face wet.”

“You have to get your face wet. To swim.”

She didn’t look the least convinced. She dismissed him with a little wave of her hand. “Oh, well, maybe next time I’ll get my face wet.”

Address it, he ordered himself. “Uh, that bathing suit—”

“Yes?” Her voice was husky.

“—is really nice.”

Now, that he had not meant to say. At all. Isabella was beaming at him.

“—but, it isn’t, er, really made for swimming.”

Unless he was mistaken, and he was pretty sure he was not, the little minx was lapping up his discomfort.

“It’s called a bathing suit,” she said stubbornly.

“Maybe it’s for sunbathing. I mean, if you were to dive in the water with that thing...”

His voice trailed away.

“I’m not planning on diving today, either,” she informed him primly.