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“Oh,” she gasped at one point, when she nearly fell.
He turned, took it all in in a breath, and his hands found her waist and encircled it. He lifted her easily over the rough spot and set her down. But his hands remained around her waist for just a hair too long, and then he turned away just a hair too quickly.
Her sensation of being with a man who would protect her with his life, if need be, strengthened.
It made her feel exquisitely feminine to be the one being looked after, for a change. Giorgio had never looked after her. It had always been the other way around.
A touch of guilt rippled along the perfect mirrored surface of the morning. But it evaporated like the mist rising all around them as they arrived at the swimming hole. Her awareness of Connor seemed to fill up every crack and crevice in her, just as sunlight would be filling every crack and crevice as it poured into the town.
The river widened here, gurgling on both sides of a pool that was large and placid. A tree leaned over it, and from a sturdy branch, a tire swung on a frayed rope.
Connor kicked off his shoes and shucked his trousers and his shirt and stood before her much as he had yesterday, totally unself-conscious in bathing trunks that were the same cut and style as his underwear had been, and every bit as sexy. He bent over his bag for a moment and fished out something that he held loosely in his left hand.
He stepped to the water’s edge.
“Is it cold?” she asked.
“Oh, yeah,” he said with deep pleasure. He reached back his right hand for her. “It’s a bit slippery.”
Crazy to accept that invitation, but really, it was much too late to stop accepting the crazy invitations now. She kicked out of her sandals and reached out. His hand closed around hers, and he tugged her gently to the water’s edge. She was not sure anything in her entire life had felt as right as accepting the strength of that hand, feeling it close around her own, with a promise of strength and protection.
“The first step to swimming,” he encouraged her.
She stuck a toe in, shrieked and pulled it back out swiftly. She tried to loosen her hand from his, but he just laughed and held tight until she put her toe back in the water.
“Come on,” he said, patiently. “Just try it.”
And so, her hand held firmly in his, she stepped into the icy cold water and felt her eyes go round. The mud on the bottom oozed up between her toes.
It felt wondrous. She didn’t feel the least bit afraid. He tugged her hand and smiled. What could she do? She could say yes to life. Isabella bunched up her skirt in her other hand and lifted it. The morning air on her naked thighs felt exquisite. She saw his eyes move there, to where she had lifted her skirt out of the water, and felt slightly vindicated by the flash of deep masculine heat she saw in them. That was not the look one gave a boring schoolteacher.
He led her deeper into the water—it crept up to her calves and to her knees—and he smiled at her squeal that was part protest and mostly delight. And then she was laughing.
The laughter felt as if it was bubbling up from a hidden stream deep within her; it had been trapped and now it was set free.
Connor was staring at her, and his gaze added to the sense of heightened awareness. She was entering another world, a foreign land of sensation, his hand so warm and strong guiding her, the cold water tugging on her feet and her bare calves, licking at her knees, storming her senses. She was not sure she had ever felt so exquisitely and fully alive.
Something sizzled in the air between them, as real as getting a jolt from a loose wire. Connor Benson was looking at her lips. She allowed herself to look at his.
A knife-edged awareness surged through her. If she took one tiny step toward him, she knew he would kiss her.
Was this what she had given up when she had chosen Giorgio? Was this what her mother had tried to tell her she would miss? The thought was an unexpected dark spot in the brightness of her unleashed spirit.
She felt the laughter dry up within her, and Isabella let go of Connor’s hand and took a step back instead of toward him.
“What?” he asked.
She backed away from his touch, from the exquisite intoxication of his closeness. It was clouding her judgment. It was making her crazy.
Ma sei pazzo, she chided herself inside her own head, backing away from the delicious craziness that beckoned to her.
But he did not allow her to escape. For every step back she took, he took one forward, until she was up against the slippery bank and could not move for fear of falling in the water. He came to her and lifted her chin, looked deeply into her eyes. “What?” he asked again, softly.
She could feel the strength in his hands, the calm in his eyes. She could smell the scents of him and of the morning mingling. She could lean toward all of this...
But she didn’t.
“Nothing,” she said. “I have to go. I can’t—”
Can’t what? she asked herself. Enjoy life? Be open to new experiences? She broke away from his gaze—a gaze that seemed to know all her secrets, to strip her of everything she had regarded as truth before. She gathered her skirt, shoved by him, waded up the river to where it was easy to find the bank and left the water.
“You can use my towel to dry off your feet,” he called.
She did that. She grabbed his towel and her shoes and found a dry place on the bank to sit and towel off her feet.
She dared to glance at him. He stood, watching her. He was so extraordinarily attractive, those strong legs set in the water, the morning light playing with the features of his face, so comfortable in his own skin. Italians had an expression about men like this.
Sa il fatto suo.
He knows what he is about. He knows himself.
And then this man who knew himself so well, who knew his every strength and his every weakness, lifted a shoulder, dismissing her. He dipped the mask and snorkel he held in his left hand into the water. He slipped them on, resting them on his forehead. Then he casually saluted her, adjusted the mask and snorkel, and dived neatly into the water and disappeared.
She held her breath. Where on earth had he gone? It seemed as if he could not possibly be down there for that long without something having happened. Was he tangled in a branch under the water? Had he hit his head on a rock?
But then the water broke, at the far edge of the pool, where faster water fed it. He broke the surface, and without looking back began to swim against the current.
It would always be like this if you were with a man like him, Isabella told herself sternly. You would always wonder what danger he had managed to find.
And still, she could not tear her eyes away from him. She watched in utter amazement as Connor propelled himself through the water. His strength and his grace were utterly awe-inspiring. It was as if there was no current at all, his body cutting through the water at high speed. If she didn’t know better, she would think he had flippers on, but no flippers had come out of that bag. She watched him swim until he reached a bend in the river, swam around it and disappeared.
She finished drying her feet and put her shoes on. It was harder navigating the tricky path back to the bridge without him.
But it was what she had to do. She had to navigate without him—she had to go back to the way her life had been before they took that walk into a world of enchantment, this world where fears evaporated like the morning mist was evaporating under the Tuscan sun.
Isabella had to be who she was before.
A few minutes did not alter the course of an entire life.
But she of all people should know that was not true, because the entire course of her life had been altered the second she had said I do to Giorgio.
And it felt like the worst kind of sin that these few minutes this morning had filled her with regret, for the first time, at what the choice to say those words had made her miss in life.
But one thing about saying that to Giorgio? If she ever did say those words to a man again—and that was a big, big if—it would be to one who would grow old with her.
And there would never, ever be a guarantee of that with a man like Connor Benson.
* * *
The river was amazing to swim in, and Connor quickly made morning swims a part of his Monte Calanetti routine. His time in the military had made him move toward a structured approach to life. He loved routine and order. From firsthand experience, Connor knew when the world turned to chaos—which it could do in the blink of an eye—that was when an investment in discipline paid dividends.
And so now he developed a schedule for his days. He rose early, before Isabella was up, walked to the river and swam against the current in the cold water until his muscles ached but his mind was sharply clear and focused.
It was all working out quite nicely. By the time he returned, Isabella had left for work.
Isabella. The clear mind made Connor uncomfortably aware, especially after that magical morning together, that this time Isabella could well be the chaos waiting to unfold in his life.
And that kind of chaos was way more dangerous than the sudden crack of a sniper’s rifle, or a bomb going off on the side of the road.
Oh, she seemed innocent enough, the last place a man would expect chaos to come from, but that would be a man who had not felt her hand close around his, who had not heard her unexpected shriek of delighted laughter split the silence of the morning as her toes touched ice-cold water. That would be a man who had not, for one crazy, glorious moment, looked at her lips and wanted to taste the promise of them, wanted to see if they tasted like the nectar of life itself.
The answer was simple. No more dawn encounters. No more walking through streets so quiet he could hear her dress swishing against her bare legs, no more putting his hands around her narrow waist to lift her over the rocky parts of the trail. No more wading in icy cold water with her. No more encouraging her to explore the world of sensation.
And especially no more looking at the sweet plumpness of her lips!
A man—one not as disciplined as Connor knew himself to be—could live to see the light that had come on in Isabella’s face that morning by the river.
And so, he was avoiding her. And his avoidance had helped him develop a routine that he was comfortable with. There were no more tongue-loosening little chats over wine, and no more shocking morning encounters in the hallway or kitchen, and most of all, no more morning strolls through a predawn town.
Isabella seemed to enjoy routine as much as he himself did, and so it was proving easy to avoid her. He, an expert on figuring out people’s habits, had her routine down pat in no time. It fit perfectly with his lifestyle.
By the time he returned from his early morning swims, Isabella was gone. He used the kitchen and did his laundry when she was at school. A lot of his work could be done on his computer, and he took advantage of her absence and the coolness on the lower floors of her house to do that when she was not there.
When she was at home in the evenings, he went out to eat and did reconnaissance. It was cooler then, anyway, and he made sure never to be back until her house lights—and her bedroom light, which he could see from the street—were out.
Even with all that effort, it was hard to ignore the fact he was sharing a house with a woman. No, it seemed his avoidance strategy had made more awareness, not less, tingle along his spine. Her little touches were everywhere in that house: an exquisite painting, a fresh vase of flowers, the smell of toast and coffee in the morning. Her scent was in the air.
And by now it had become apparent to him that all the while he was congratulating himself on his avoidance strategy, the truth was it was so successful because she was avoiding him!
By the fifth day of living under her roof, after succeeding with zero encounters of the Isabella-in-person kind, Connor was not at all sure what his success meant, because he was fairly certain he had never been more aware of another person.
Connor came into the house. It was much earlier than he usually arrived in the afternoon, but he felt a need to change clothes before he went and found a place to eat tonight. It had been another scorching day in Monte Calanetti and he thought he might head to the river for the second time that day.
He paused and listened. Had he managed to get in before she got home from school?
Today, for the first time, he realized he had not been successful in avoiding sharing the house with his appealing roommate. He could hear the one and only shower running upstairs.
Well, that was okay. He would nip into his room and get his swim things and a change of clothes. Isabella wouldn’t even know he’d been in the space. The thought of bumping into her in the hallway, fresh out of the shower, made him hurriedly gather his swim things from his room.
His escape was nearly complete when the sound of an explosion, followed by a woman’s shriek of terror, came from the bathroom. There was a loud thunk.
And then there was the worst thing of all.
Complete and utter silence.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u1ac93c0d-dddf-5ad4-bd10-ad41f498d5b5)
WITHOUT EVEN THINKING, doing what came as naturally to him as breathing, Connor threw down his things and ran into the hallway, straight toward the now silent bathroom.
“Isabella? Are you okay?”
There was no answer. He pounded on the door. There was still no answer. He tried the door. It was locked.
“Isabella?”
When there was still no answer, he put his shoulder to the door. The old wood cracked with ease and the door fell open.
He was hit in the face by water. He threw his hands up over his face and peered out between two fingers. Water was spewing out of the pipe where the showerhead had been, going in every direction, drenching the walls in water. The showerhead was on the floor under the sink.
Isabella was on the floor, soaked. The shower curtain had been ripped from its rod, and it was draped across her naked body. Turning his back to the spraying water to protect her from the worst of it, he crouched down beside her. Her head was bleeding and a lump was already rising.
“Isabella,” he said, touching her wet arm.
She opened her eyes, dazed. Her brows knit as she looked at him in confusion.
“I—I—I don’t know what happened.”
“I think the showerhead blew off and hit you.” He rose quickly, turned off the water at the handle, and then crouched back beside her.
“Please don’t tell me, ‘I told you so.’” Her eyes were wide on his face, all those greens and golds mixed together like the shades of an exotic flower.
“I won’t.”
“I should have let you fix it when the plumber wouldn’t come. Didn’t want to be dependent.” Her voice was slightly slurred. It sounded like a bit of a confession. Her eyes suddenly widened even more. “Are you in my bathroom?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
She went very still. If it was possible, she grew whiter. “Am I naked?” she whispered.
“Ah, I’m afraid so.”
“I have never been so mortified.” She clenched her eyes shut as if she was hoping when she opened them this would all go away.
“Now we’re even,” he said, trying valiantly to put her at ease. “Though I think I’ve mentioned before that we should stop meeting like this.”
She groaned weakly—at his attempt at humor or because of pain and humiliation, he wasn’t so certain.
“We’re not even,” she decided. “We’d be even if you had ever been embarrassed about being unclothed, which I suspect you never have been.”
He didn’t say anything.
“In your whole life.”
He still didn’t say anything.
“Have you?” she demanded.
“Uh, well, you’re not exactly unclothed. You must have pulled down the shower curtain when you came out of the shower enclosure. You’re decent.”
