Passionate Calanettis: Soldier, Hero...Husband?

True, he wasn’t in active service anymore. But what had just gone down in Azerbaijan was plenty of evidence he still had his knack for finding danger.

It seemed to him this little slip of a woman lying on the deck beside him was the bravest of women.

“Connor?”

“Huh?”

“I’ve never had that before, what I had just now.”

“What?”

“Just fun,” she said. “Just good old-fashioned fun. Even when I was a child, Giorgio was my best friend. He couldn’t run and play like everyone else, and so I stayed with him. We read and drew pictures, but I’ve never really had this. Just to let go of everything, to play until I’m so out of breath I feel as if I can’t breathe.

“I mean, I do it with my students. I have fun with them, but it’s not the same. I have to be the adult. I have to maintain a modicum of control. I don’t ever get to be this carefree.”

His awareness of her deepened yet again. Her beautiful eyes were sparkling with tears.

“So, thank you,” she said. “I’m never going to be able to thank you enough. Never.”

His awareness of himself deepened, too, but not in a good way. An unexpected element inserted itself into the pure and sizzling awareness of the moment. Connor suddenly felt ashamed of himself. He’d backed out of that date out of pure terror of what she was doing to him. He’d left her house because he couldn’t trust himself around her without wanting to taste her lips again.

But when he’d challenged her to embrace what terrified her, she had done it in a heartbeat. She had shown incredible bravery.

And now she was telling him she’d never had fun. That fooling around in the swimming pool was the most fun she’d ever had. She’d given her whole life to looking after others. Her husband, and then the kids at school.

It seemed to Connor he was being given an opportunity to do something good. Maybe the best thing he’d ever done. It wasn’t about whether or not he was comfortable. It wasn’t about that at all. That feeling that maybe he was falling for her deepened in him. Didn’t that call him to be a better man? Didn’t it ask him to be more than he had ever been before. Braver? Stronger? More compassionate?

“You know that date I canceled?” His voice was so low it came out sounding like a whisper.

She went very still.

“You want to give me another chance?”

“Yes,” she said, her voice low, too, as if they were in a church. “Yes, I do.”

“What about tomorrow night?”

“That would be perfect.”

* * *

Isabella looked at her bed. It was covered with every single item of clothing that she owned. She had tried on the red dress and then taken it off. He’d already seen it. It wasn’t the message she wanted to give. Nothing was the message she wanted to give.

Suddenly, frustrated, exhausted from trying things on and ripping them back off, she threw herself down on the bed, falling backward into the heap of clothes. Isabella lay there, staring at the ceiling.

She thought back over their week of swimming lessons. There had been the most delicious sense of getting to know Connor, of connecting with him. There had been the most delicious awareness of him physically, a yearning to touch him and taste him that was astonishingly powerful. That small kiss had shown her what was going on between them was like riding a wild horse. It wasn’t going to be controlled.

She had never felt that for Giorgio.

A stab of guilt pierced her heart. And she had a terrible moment of self-awareness. Giorgio, despite the fact he was dying, had been the safest choice she could make. He had been her friend, and she had loved him as a friend.

But that other kind of love? The kind that was filled with passion and excitement? Hadn’t she known from the time she was a little girl that that kind was unpredictable and hurtful and destructive?

Connor would never be unfaithful. After you knew him for ten minutes, you knew that of him. That he was a man of complete honor.

But he had pitted his formidable strength against the wrongs of the world. He had warned her that he sought out danger, and that he found it. She had seen that for herself when she had caught the tail end of that news clip out of Azerbaijan.

To allow herself to love Connor Benson would be to open herself up to pain such as she had never felt, not even when she was a little girl and had seen her father in a café with a woman who was not her mother.

From the second she had spotted him, Isabella had begun working on an elaborate story: it was someone from work. It was a friend. It was a cousin. And then her father had leaned forward and kissed that woman on the mouth with unmistakable passion.

Then there had been the different pain: watching Giorgio die, every day a series of losses for him, and for them, until she was feeding the man she married baby food from a spoon.

And so, this week Isabella had tackled one of her fears. She had learned to swim. And she had deliberately fanned the fire she had seen in Connor’s eyes.

But without considering the consequences. In a way, she had won. He had given in. He had asked her out again after canceling the first time. But was she really ready to open herself to more pain?

Isabella realized, sadly, she had used up all her bravery. She did not have any left. She certainly did not have the kind left that you would need to go on the wild ride that was love.

Not with a man like Connor Benson.

The next morning, she caught up with him on the edge of town. She had known he would be there, heading out for his early morning swim.

“Connor.”

He swung around and looked at her. His smile held as much promise as the sun that was just beginning to touch the rooftops of Monte Calanetti.

“I’m sorry. About tonight?”

His smile faded.

“I can’t. I realized I have a previous obligation.”

He cocked his head at her.

She should have thought of the previous obligation before now! She blurted out the first thing that came to her head. “My students are putting on a skit for the spring fete. I’m not ready. The costumes aren’t finished. I haven’t started the props.”

He was looking at her quietly.

“So, clearly a date is out of the question. For right now.”

And in a while, he would be gone, anyway. If she could just hold off for a few more days, she would be what she most liked to be. Safe. She would leave that woman she had been introduced to in Nico’s swimming pool behind, a memory that would fade more with each passing day, and then week, and then year.

Besides, neither of them had addressed where a date would be leading—down that dark road to heartbreak? There were so many different routes to get to that destination.

So, if she should be so pleased with herself that she was taking control of a situation that had the potential to get seriously out of control if she let it, why did she feel so annoyed that instead of looking dismayed that she had canceled their date, he looked downright relieved.

“Is it the swimming lessons that put you behind the eight ball?” he asked.