Cara Colter - Passionate Calanettis - Soldier, Hero...Husband?

“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.

“I have to avoid him,” she whispered to herself. And it felt as if her very survival depended on that. She went to bed and set her alarm for very early. She could put out his breakfast things and leave the house without even seeing him tomorrow. There were always things to do at school. Right now, she was preparing her class to perform a song and skit at the annual spring fete, and she had props to make, simple costumes to prepare.

She had a feeling with Connor under her roof and her badly needing her schoolroom to hide out in and something to distract from the uncomfortable feelings she was experiencing, she was about to produce the best song and skit the good citizens of Monte Calanetti had ever seen!

CHAPTER THREE

CONNOR RETREATED TO his room, annoyed with himself. He was not generally so chatty. What moment of madness had made him say yes to that wine? And why had so very little of it made him feel so off balance?

Intoxicated.

Maybe it hadn’t been the wine, but just sharing a simple meal with a beautiful woman in the quintessential Italian kitchen, with its old stone walls and its deep windows open to the breeze, that had brought his guard down.

He had told Isabella things he had not told people he’d worked with for twenty years. Justin knew about his hardscrabble upbringing on the wrong side of Corpus Christi, but no one else did.

The soft look in Isabella’s eyes as he had told her had actually made him feel not that he wanted to tell her less, but as though he wanted to tell her more, as if his every secret would be safe with her.

As if he had carried a burden alone for way too long.

“Stop it,” Connor snapped grimly at himself. He acknowledged he was tired beyond reason. You didn’t unload on a woman like her. She, cute little schoolteacher that she was, wouldn’t be able to handle it, to hold up to it. She’d buried her husband and that had sent her into full retreat. That’s why someone so gorgeous was still unmarried six years later.