Passionate Calanettis: Soldier, Hero...Husband?

She frowned at him. “What is this? Behind the eight ball?”

“Have you ever played pool?”

“Isn’t that what we just did all week?”

He threw back his head and laughed. Oh, of all the things he could have done, that was the worst. It filled her with an ache to live in a state of playful days of hearing him laugh. But of course, given what he did for a living, that was unrealistic.

There would be far more days of waiting for him, of anxiety sitting in her stomach like a pool of acid, of uncertainty and fear.

“In America, we play a variation of billiards called pool. Guys like me who spend ninety-nine percent of our lives bored out of our skulls become very good at it. There’s a game in pool called eight ball,” he said. “The eight ball is black. You can only touch it when it’s the last ball on the table, otherwise you lose. So, if it gets between you and the ball you are aiming at, you are in a very difficult predicament. That’s what ‘behind the eight ball’ means.”

“What about the one percent?” she asked. She didn’t care about the eight ball.

“Huh?”

“You spend ninety-nine percent of your life bored out of your skull—what about the one percent?”

“Oh, that.”

She waited.

He grinned at her, devil-may-care. “It’s one percent of all hell breaking loose.” He held that smile, but she saw something else in his eyes, as if he held within him shadows of every terrible thing he had ever seen.

“And that’s the part you love, and also the part you pay a price for.”

He did not like it when the powers of observation that he had encouraged her to hone were turned on him.

“Weren’t we talking about you?”

“Yes, we were,” she said. “I think that would be an accurate description of how I feel right now, behind this eight ball. I have much to do, and not enough time to do it.”

“My fault. Because of the swimming. I’ll help you get ready for your skit. I’m winding down on the recon for the wedding anyway. I’ll be wrapped up in a couple of days.”

And then he would be gone.

CHAPTER EIGHT (#u1ac93c0d-dddf-5ad4-bd10-ad41f498d5b5)

“YOU WON’T LIKE IT,” Isabella said with all the firmness she could muster. “You won’t like helping me. I’m making paper sunshine cutouts.”

Connor laughed again, but she could hear a faint edge to it. “Lady, my life has been so full of things I didn’t like it would make your head spin.”

Again, that hint of the dark places he had been that he carried within him. “What is this, make your head spin?”

“I’ll explain it to you over paper sunshines.”

Isabella was ashamed of her weakness. She could not give up what he was offering. She could not give up an opportunity to spend time with him. It seemed to her that she had caught a glimpse of his world when they went swimming. Now she had an overwhelming desire to see how he would react to hers.

No doubt with utter boredom. But at least it was not a date, that event that was so loaded with romantic expectation and foolish hopes.

“All right,” she said stiffly. “Come after school. Class gets out at one.”

“Okay,” he said. He sauntered away, into the magic of Monte Calanetti’s dawn, whistling. Whistling! It confirmed that he was not the least distressed that she had canceled the date. The exact opposite, in fact.

He was very punctual, and Connor Benson showed up just as her students were swarming out the door of her classroom. He looked like a ship plowing through the sea of bright blue uniforms. Luigi Caravetti, who always had too much energy, was walking backward, catcalling at one of the girls.

Connor sidestepped him easily, but at that very moment, Luigi swung around and smashed into him.

Connor barely moved, but Luigi fell down. With absolute ease, Connor went down on his haunches, helped the little boy up, picked up the homework Luigi wouldn’t do anyway and handed it back to him. Luigi said something to him and then wound up and kicked Connor in the shin and ran off before Isabella could reprimand him.

Rubbing his shin, he turned to her and grinned ruefully.

“I’m sorry,” she said, “Luigi is a bit of a handful. What did he say to you?”

“I don’t know. He said it in Italian. I’m beginning to pick up a few phrases, so I think he told me to watch were I was going. And then he switched to English.”

“He doesn’t know any English.”

“Ah, well, there’s a universal word that all little boys—and most big ones—love to use.”

“Oh! I will speak to him tomorrow.”

“No, that’s okay. He kind of reminded me of me at that age. And if I was going to guess something about him? No dad in the picture.”

Again, Isabella was taken by Connor’s incredible powers of observation. “That’s true. In fact, his poor mother had to get a court order to keep the father away from them. He’s not, apparently, a very nice man. But still, Luigi is troubled about it all. Children are always troubled about difficulties between their parents.”

The last of the children clattered down the stairway to the main floor of the school, and they were cloaked in sudden silence. Then Connor Benson was in her classroom.

“So,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets and rocking back on his heels, “this is your world.”

“Ninety-nine percent boring,” she told him. “One percent all hell breaking loose.”

Connor gave her an odd look that she interpreted as you don’t have a clue what all hell breaking loose looks like. But then he shrugged it off, as if he had given himself a mental order to lighten up. “I’m going to guess that one percent is largely your little Luigi.”

“You would be guessing right.”

“Nobody asked me what I was doing here when I came in,” he said.

“Sorry?”

“When I came in and asked for your classroom, no one at the office asked me what I wanted or what I was doing at the school. They didn’t even ask to see identification.”

“Obviously we are in need of a security expert!” she said brightly, but he didn’t seem amused. She became more serious. “We haven’t experienced the kinds of problems here that you have in America.”

Did he mutter yet under his breath? He removed his hands from his pockets and turned away from her and wandered around her classroom. At first she thought he was looking at drawings and pictures, and she was pleased that he was curious about her world. But then Isabella realized that Connor actually seemed to be looking for something else. She was not sure what.

He stood at the front, taking note of both the doors into the room. Then she saw him go to the windows, open the lock on one. He slid the window open and leaned out, looking at the ground.

He came to the table at the back, where she had the project laid out. He seemed faintly uneasy, but he lifted a sun with the hole in the center and put his head through it, attached the elastic around his chin.