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He supported her and guided her until she had kicked around the pool in a large circle.
“Now,” he said, “my hands are still here, but I’m moving them away from you, so you can see it’s the water supporting you, not me.”
“No.”
“Yes.”
She glared up at him.
“Don’t be nervous. The water’s only three feet deep here. You can stand up at any time. Just relax. I’m going to—”
“No! Don’t let go of me. I’m not ready.”
He’d heard it again and again, looking into the eyes of a terrified civilian who was being asked to do something that required more of them than had ever been required before.
“Yes, you are,” he said, “you are ready.”
Slowly, he slid his hands out from underneath her. Her eyes grew wide, and then she got nervous, and her body folded at the center, legs and head going up, abdomen and torso going down, under the water.
“Ahh,” she yelped.
His hands were floating inches below her, and so he supported her again, very quickly.
“Try and keep your body stiff.”
“I thought I was supposed to relax!”
“Well, relaxed stiffness.”
“There is no such thing.”
“Maybe not in Italian. There is in English.” He managed to say it with a straight face.
She smiled in spite of herself, and then he let her go, and she tried again. Again, she got nervous and began to fold; again he used his hands to steady her. The third time, she got it. She kicked on her own and he shadowed her.
“Am I swimming?” she demanded. “Am I swimming all by myself?”
He smiled at her enthusiasm, and she seemed to realize she was swimming, unaided, on her back. The realization ruined it, of course. This time he wasn’t quite quick enough, and her head went under the water. She came up sputtering, her hair spilling rivulets of water down her golden skin. She grabbed for him and clung to him.
He realized he was enjoying that way too much and put her away from his chest, though he allowed her to hang on to his forearms.
“That wasn’t so bad, was it?” he asked her.
She shook water from her hair. “No,” she said, surprised and then delighted. “No, it was fine. I just held my breath when I went under.”
There was a moment when people reached deep inside and found out who they really were that was awe-inspiring. It could happen as you sneaked them across a border or pushed them out of a plane, or it happened in those moments, large and small, when people required just a tiny bit more of themselves.
And so it could happen just like this, a woman in a swimming pool on a warm spring day when everything seemed suddenly infused with a light that was not the sun.
It was always an amazing thing to be a part of this moment. She was grinning ear to ear, which increased Connor’s sensation of basking in the light. He had to force himself to move away from that moment and back on task.
“And that brings us to part two,” Connor said. “For some reason, people have a natural aversion to getting their faces wet.”
“I told you not today,” she said. The grin disappeared.
“Let’s just ride this wave of discovery,” he suggested.
For a moment, she looked as if she intended to argue, but then, reluctantly, she smiled again. “All right. Let’s ride this wave.”
Both of them had said it—let’s. Let us. Us. A duo. A team. Sheesh.
“So, before you dunk again, we’re going to work on getting your face wet,” Connor said. There it was again, slipping off his tongue naturally. We. “Lie on my hands again, this time on your stomach.”
She flopped down on her stomach, and he supported her, his hands on the firm flesh of her belly. “Good. Now put your face in the water and blow air out of your mouth. Make bubbles. The more the better. Think of yourself as a motorboat.”
Whatever reservations she might have had up until this point now disappeared. Isabella gave herself over to learning to swim with unreserved enthusiasm. With Connor supporting her stomach, she blew bubbles and then they added a scissor kick. She managed a few kicks without any support before she went under and came up laughing.
Isabella laughing.
Isabella soaking wet, in the world’s skimpiest bathing suit, laughing.
It was probably one of the most dangerous moments of Connor’s entire life, and he had had a life fraught with danger.
It wasn’t dangerous because she was so beautiful, or even because she had lost her self-consciousness and she was so sexy in her teeny bathing suit. It wasn’t dangerous because she was finding her inner resources of courage and strength.
No, what made the moment beautiful was her joy. What made the moment astounding was the serious expression gone from her face and the sorrow completely erased from her eyes. No matter what the danger to himself, Connor was glad he had given her this moment.
“I think that’s probably enough for today,” he said gruffly. “We’ll start some basic arm work tomorrow, moving toward a front crawl. And we’ll do work on your legs with a kickboard. By the end of the week, you’ll be swimming across this pool by yourself.”
“Really?”
“You are a complete natural.”
“I am?” she asked, so pleased.
“Absolutely.”
“What an amazing afternoon.” She cocked her head at him. “What do the American teenagers say? Awesome!”
She was standing facing him. She leaned a bit closer. He had plenty of time to move away from her. But somehow he didn’t, frozen to the spot, like a deer in headlights, not able to back away from where awesome could take them.
She stood on tippy toes. Her body, slippery and lithe, came in contact with his in a far different way than it had when he was using his arms to buoy her up in the water. She kissed him, a tiny brushing of their lips.
He, of all people, knew how little time it took to change everything. A millisecond. The time for a bullet to find its way from rifle to target, the time for tires to crunch across the trigger device on an explosive, the time for a school to go from rooms of laughing children to completely engulfed in flames. He, of all people, knew how quickly everything could change.
But maybe he hadn’t known this: as quickly as you could be sucked into darkness and everything could shatter around you, just as quickly you could be thrust toward the light, propelled into a world that promised love was stronger.
Love? He felt furious with himself, and not too happy with Isabella, either. But then she was backed away from him, still laughing, that delightful, carefree, water-over-rocks laughter, as if she had no awareness at all how badly she had just disrupted his well-ordered world.
“Thank you, Connor. I can’t wait for tomorrow.”
And then she walked away from him, through the water, by herself, the woman she had been an hour ago—clinging to the handrail and then to him—gone forever.
Isabella got out of the pool without the benefit of the stairs. She put her hands on the deck and levered herself out, wiggling her bottom at him in the process. And then, free of the pool, she gathered up that voluminous caftan but didn’t put it on. She scampered across the deck to the cabana, not once looking back.
Thank goodness she did not look back. Because she would have seen him, still standing in the water, stunned by the power of that one tiny little brush of lips. To change everything.
The man he had been an hour ago might have been gone forever, too. Because the thing about a kiss like that? It opened a door. It opened a door that was pretty darned difficult to wrestle shut again once it had been opened. It changed everything in subtle ways.
Connor sucked in a deep breath. He said a word under his breath that he would never say in Isabella’s presence. He dived under the surface of the water. His momentum carried him to one end of the pool. Though there was hardly room to get going, he began to do furious laps, butterfly stroke.
But by the time Isabella emerged from the cabana, he was aware that swimming had not defused what he was feeling. Even that most challenging stroke did not begin to burn off the fire that brush of her lips against his had stoked within him.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u1ac93c0d-dddf-5ad4-bd10-ad41f498d5b5)
ISABELLA CONTEMPLATED THE fact that she had kissed Connor Benson. Really, as far as kisses went, it had been nothing. A peck. A thank-you.
But even in Italy, where people were passionate, a thank-you kiss might normally be placed on the cheek, not the lips.
Connor’s lips looked so firm. And yet, giving under the pressure of hers, they had felt soft and pliable. His lips had tasted of something, but she wasn’t sure what. It had been pure, like holding out your tongue to catch raindrops.
Heaven. That’s what they had tasted of. The problem was, after tasting something like that, a person could spend her life in pursuit of it. It had really been a foolish thing to do, reckless, especially with them living under her roof together.
But in that moment, after the lesson, she had just felt so bold, so ready to do just as he suggested, to ride the wave of discovery instead of fighting it. It had been wonderful tackling the water, doing something she had always been afraid of. It had made her feel free in a way she never had before.
From the moment she had chosen that bathing suit over the far more conservative ones available, even with the limited selection in Monte Calanetti at this time of year, Isabella had felt she was saying yes to life.
The swimming lesson itself had made her feel so alive and so bold and as if the world and this day were plump with possibilities instead of just one day following the next, safe and routine.
Isabella came out of the cabana and saw that Connor was swimming like a man possessed. The stroke he was using was amazing, his powerful arms and shoulders lifting his torso and propelling him out of the water as if he had been shot out of a cannon.
He noticed her, she was not sure how, and he stopped and stood up. He folded his arms over the lines of his chest. Her awareness of him rippled through her like a current that could sweep her away.
“I forgot to tell you, I found another place to stay,” he said.
She knew instantly he was lying. He hadn’t found another place to stay. He had tasted the reckless danger, too, as soon as her lips had touched his, and decided to find different accommodations.
He was acknowledging something was going on between them. Something more powerful than he could control. And even though he had told her to ride the wave of discovery, he was not prepared to do that himself.
She held her breath. Was he going to cancel swimming?
“I’ll see you tomorrow. And I’ll pay you for your place for the agreed dates.” he said. He dived back under the water before she could let him know she was not going to help him assuage his guilt by allowing him to pay her for a room he wasn’t going to occupy.
Isabella had never really felt this before: an acute awareness of her feminine power.
She walked home by herself, aware that the buoyancy of the water seemed to have infused her. Even though Connor had said he was moving out, her steps were light, and she felt as if she was walking on air.
She got home to discover a parcel had been delivered. It was one of the bathing suits she had ordered online, from Milan. She was pleased it had been delivered so quickly, that overnight delivery had meant just that.
And she was even more pleased when she opened the parcel and slipped the fabric from the tissue paper. So tiny! How could it possibly have cost so much money? Still, she hugged the scraps of fabric to her and went to try the new suit on. It was no more a swimsuit than the lime-green bikini today had been.
But she had given herself permission, with that first bold choice of a bathing suit, to start exploring a different side of herself. More feminine. More sexy. Deeply alive within her own body. Deeply appreciative of herself as a woman, and of the power that came with acknowledging this new side of herself.
Isabella was choosing the bathing suits of a woman who wanted a man to be very aware she was a woman. Not to just tease him, but to let him know he was not going to be able to shunt her aside so easily, just because he’d switched from a date to swimming lessons.
She thought of the way Connor had been swimming when she left Nico’s garden area—like a man possessed, or at the very least, like a man trying to clear his head—and allowed herself the satisfied chuckle of someone who had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Still, when she heard him come in later, pack his bags and leave, she avoided him. Already her house felt empty without him. If she went and saw him, she was not at all certain she could trust herself not to beg him to stay.
She would not beg him to stay, but she was not above making him sorry he had left.
The next day at the pool, she wore the same oversize caftan out onto the deck. Connor was in the pool tossing a blue flutter board into the air and catching it, pretending he’d barely registered her arrival.
But when she dropped the caftan, he registered her arrival—he missed his catch on the kickboard.
If it was possible, her new bathing suit, black and shiny, was even skimpier than the one she had worn yesterday. She really took her time getting into the water, savoring the scowl on his face.
When she reached the bottom stair, he shoved the kickboard at her and snapped some instructions.
“Aren’t you even going to say hello?” she asked, petulant.
“Hello,” he snapped.
“Your new accommodations must not be very nice.”
“What would make you say that?”
“You seem like you haven’t slept well or something. You have grumpy lines.” She touched the sides of her own mouth to show him where. He stared at her mouth. His grumpy lines deepened.
“We’re going to work on your kick today.” And so they did. There was a lot less touching this second day of instruction. It was shameful how disappointed she was by that. He announced the session was over from the opposite end of the pool. Isabella was fairly certain this was to discourage thank-you kisses.
Though, even without the kiss, his swimming seemed even more furious when she left than it had the day before.
The third day, another bathing suit had arrived. It was not a bikini. It was a leopard-patterned one-piece with a plunging neckline and the legs cut very high. It was so racy—and not the competitive swimming kind of racy—that Isabella actually debated not wearing it at all.
But she was so glad she had when they sat side by side on the pool deck, legs dangling in the water for lesson number three. His mouth set in a grim line, Connor demonstrated the arm movements for the front crawl. Really? Him showing off his arm muscles like that was no more fair than her showing off in her bikini!
They ended the lesson in the water. With him at her side she managed to swim across the width of the shallow end of the pool, once on her back and then once on her front.
The only reason he touched her at all was because she swallowed some water and came up choking. He slammed her on the back a few times before ordering her back to work.
When she emerged from the cabana, she noticed that Connor was churning up enough water to create a tidal wave.
The fourth day, not wanting it to be too obvious she was enjoying driving him crazy, she put the lime-green bikini from the first day back on. He got her into the deep end. He taught her to tread water, arms doing huge swooping circles, legs bicycling.
“You don’t work hard at it,” he warned her. “You relax. It’s something you should be able to do for a long, long time.”
And then he made her do it for half an hour, treading water right beside her without ever touching her. Once again, when she left he was covering the pool in length-eating strokes.
