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“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 Nico and had an initial look around. It’s a very beautiful village.”
“Thank you. I like it very much.” Her voice sounded stilted. What was wrong with her? Well, she’d married young. Giorgio had been her only boyfriend. She was not accustomed to this kind of encounter. “Would you like wine?”
“I’m not much of a drinker.”
“You might like to try this one. It’s one of Nico’s best, from his Calanetti vineyard.”
“All right,” he said. She suspected he had said yes to help her relax, not because he really wanted the wine.
The wine was on the counter. Isabella was glad her back was to him, because she struggled with getting it open. But finally, she was able to turn back and pour him a glass. She could feel a dewy bead of sweat on her forehead. She blew on her bangs in case they were sticking.
He sipped it carefully as she sat back down. “It’s really good. What would you say? Buono?”
“Yes, buono. Nico’s vineyard is one of the pride and joys of our region.” She took a sip of wine. And then another. It occurred to her neither of them were eating the soup.
Suddenly, it all felt just a little too cozy. Perhaps she should not have insisted on the wine. She took rather too large a gulp and set down her glass.
It was time to get down to business. “I will provide a simple supper like this, Mondays to Saturdays, the same days that I work. On Sunday, I do not. I provide breakfast every day, but I don’t usually leave a tray by the bedroom door.”
“I wouldn’t risk that again, either,” he said drily. She had the uncomfortable feeling he was amused by her.
“It’s not a hotel,” she said sternly, “so I don’t make beds.”
“Understood.” Did he intentionally say that with a military inflection, as if he was a lower rank being addressed by a superior? Was he perceiving her as bossy?
Given how she wanted to keep everything formal between them, wouldn’t that be a good thing?
“I also do not provide laundry service.” Thank goodness. She could not even imagine touching his intimate things. “I have a washing machine through that door that you are welcome to use. There is a laundry service in the village if you prefer. Except for sheets, which I do once a week. I provide fresh towels every day.”
“I can do my own sheets, thanks.”
“All right. Yes. That’s fine. The common areas of the house are yours to use if you want to watch television or cook your own meals, or put things in the refrigerator.”
The thought of him in her space made her take another rather large and fortifying sip of the wine.
“I don’t watch television,” he told her, “and I’m accustomed to preparing my own meals. I don’t want you to feel put out by me. I can tell it is a bit of an imposition for you having a man in your house.”
He was toying with the stem of his wineglass. He put it to his lips and took a long sip, watching her.
She tilted her chin at him, took a sip of her own wine. “What would make you say that? It’s no imposition at all, Signor Benson.”
Her heart was beating hard in her throat. He shrugged and lifted his wineglass to his lips again, watched her over the rim.
She might as well not have bothered denying it was any kind of imposition for her. She could feel her discomfort snaking along her spine, and he was not the kind of man you could hide things from.
“Connor, please,” he said. “We’re not very formal where I come from.”
“Connor,” she agreed. He had caught on that she was being too formal. Didn’t he know it would protect them both? But she said his name anyway, even though it felt as if she was losing ground fast. She was using his first name. It felt as though she was agreeing, somehow, to dance with the devil.
But the question was, was the devil in him, or was it in her?
“And where are you from?” she asked. This was to prove to him she was not at all formal and stuffy and could hold a polite conversation with the best of them. She hoped it would not appear as if she was desperately eager for details about him, which she was not! She still had not touched her soup. Neither had he.
“I’m from Texas,” he said.
“I thought the accent was like that of a cowboy.”
He laughed at that. His laughter was deep and engaging, relaxing some of the constant hardness from his face, and she found herself staring at him.
“Ma’am—”
“Isabella,” she reminded him.
“Isabella—”
Him saying her name, in that drawl, made her feel the same as if she had drunk a whole bottle of wine from the Calanetti vineyard instead of taken a few sips out of her glass.
Well, actually, her glass was empty, and so was his. He noticed, and tipped the wine out over both their glasses.
“Most people hear that drawl and automatically lower my intelligence by twenty points or so.”
“I can tell you are a very intelligent man,” she said seriously.
“I was just trying to make the point that regional accents can lead to judgments in the United States. Like you thinking I’m a cowboy. I’m about the farthest thing from a cowboy that you’ll ever see.”
“Oh! I thought everybody from Texas was a cowboy.”
He laughed again. “You and the rest of the world. I grew up in a very poor neighborhood in Corpus Christi, which is a coastal city. I started picking up a bit of work at the shipyards when I was about eleven, and occasionally cattle would come through, but that’s the closest I came to any real cowboys.”
“Eleven?” she said, horrified. “That is very young to be working.”
Something in his expression became guarded. He lifted a shoulder. “I was big for my age. No one asked how old I was.”
“But why were you working at eleven?” she pressed.
For a moment, he looked as though he might not answer. Then he said quietly, “My mom was a single parent. It was pretty hand-to-mouth at times. I did what I could to help.”
“Was your mom a widow?” she asked. She and Giorgio had not had children, though she had wanted to, even with Giorgio’s prognosis. Now she wondered, from the quickly veiled pain in Connor’s face, if that wouldn’t have been a selfish thing, indeed, to try and raise a child or children without the benefit of a father.
“No,” he said gruffly. “She wasn’t a widow. She found herself pregnant at sixteen and abandoned by my father, whom she would never name. Her own family turned their backs on her. They said she brought shame on them by being pregnant.”
“Your poor mother. Her own family turned away from her?” She thought of her family’s reaction to the news she was going to marry Giorgio.
Life has enough heartbreak, her mother had said. You have to invite one by marrying a dying man?
Isabella could have pointed out to her mother that she should be an expert on heartbreak, since Isabella’s father, with his constant infidelities, had broken her heart again and again and again. One thing about Giorgio? He was sweetly and strongly loyal. He would never be like that.
But it had seemed unnecessarily cruel to point that out to her mother, and so she had said nothing. And even though they were not happy with her choice, Isabella’s family had not abandoned her. At least not physically.
Connor lifted a shoulder. “My mother is an amazing woman. She managed to keep me in line and out of jail through my wild youth. That couldn’t have been easy.”
“I’m sure it was not,” Isabella said primly.
He grinned as if he had enjoyed every second of his wild youth. “Then I joined up.”
“Joined up?”
“I joined the navy as soon as I was old enough.”
“How old is that?”
“Seventeen.”
She drew in her breath sharply.
“I served in the regular navy for two years, and then I was drawn to the SEALs.”
“SEALs? What is this?”
“It stands for sea, air, land. It’s an arm of the navy. Combat divers.”
She could tell there was a bit more to it than what he was saying.
“And your mother? Was she heartbroken when you left her to join the military?”
He smiled wryly. “Not at all. Once she didn’t have to expend all of her energy keeping me fed and in line, she married a rich guy she cleaned for. She seems deliriously happy and has produced a number of little half siblings for me.”
“You adore them,” Isabella guessed.
“Guilty.”
“I’m glad your mother found happiness.”
“Me, too, though her luck at love has made her think everyone should try it.”
“And shouldn’t they?” Isabella found herself asking softly.
He rolled his shoulders, and something shut down in his face. “A man who seeks danger with the intensity and trajectory of a heat-seeking missile is not exactly a good bet in the love department. I’ve seen lots of my buddies go down that road. They come home cold and hard and damaged. Normal life and domestic duties seem unbearably dull after the adrenaline rush of action.”
“That sounds very lonely,” Isabella offered. And like a warning. Which she dutifully noted.
Connor studied her for a moment. Whatever had opened between them closed like a door slamming shut. He pushed back from the table abruptly. “Lonely? Not at all,” he insisted coolly. “Thank you for dinner.”
But he hadn’t eaten dinner. After a moment, she cleared his uneaten soup off the table and cleaned up the kitchen.
Really, he had let her know in every way possible that any interest in him would not be appreciated.
After putting her small kitchen in order, she retreated to her office. She hesitated only a moment before she looked up navy seals on the internet. She felt guilty as sin doing it, but it did not stop her.
It was actually SEALs, she discovered, and they were not just combat divers. Sometimes called Frogmen because they were equally adept in the water or on land, they were one of the most elite, and secretive, commando forces in the world.
Only a very few men, of the hundreds who tried, could make it through their rigorous training program.
Isabella could tell from what she read that Connor had led a life of extreme adventure and excitement. He was, unfortunately, the larger-than-life kind of man who intrigued.
But he had told her with his own words what he was. Cold and hard and damaged. She was all done rescuing men.
Rescuing men? something whispered within her. But you never felt you were rescuing Giorgio. Never. You did it all for love.
But suddenly, sickeningly, she just wasn’t that sure what her motives had been in marrying a man with such a terrible prognosis.
And fairly or not, looking at her husband and her marriage through a different lens felt as if it was entirely the fault of Connor Benson.
Even knowing she had been quite curious enough for one night, she decided to look up one more thing. She put in the name Itus Security. There was a picture of a very good-looking man named Justin Arnold. He was the CEO of the company. Beside his picture was one of Connor, who was the chief of operations. There was a list of services they offered, and a number of testimonials from very high-profile clients.
Their company was named after the Greek god of protection, Itus, and their mission statement was, “As in legend, Itus is sworn to protect the innocent from those who would do them harm.”
Intrigued, she went and read the mythology around Itus. A while later, Isabella shut off the computer and squared her shoulders.
A month. Connor Benson was going to be under her roof for a month. After one day, she was feeling a terrible uneasiness, as if he could, with just his close proximity, change everything about her, even the way she looked at her past.
