Soldier, Hero...Husband? Read online

  “A good thing,” he assured her.

  She looked skeptical.

  “You’re very tidy. And organized.” He gestured at the tray beside his door. “And thoughtful, closing the shutters so I could sleep in. So, I figured some profession that required compassion. A teacher. Or a nurse. But the dress made me lean toward teacher. Your students probably like bright colors.”

  He was talking way too much, which he put down as another aftereffect of jet lag. She was nibbling her lip, which was plump as a plum, and frowning at him.

  “It’s like a magician’s trick,” she said, not approvingly.

  “No, really, it’s something everyone can do. It’s just observing details.”

  She looked as if she was considering having another long, hard look at all of him, as if he had invited her to play a parlor game. But then, wisely, she decided against it.

  Connor glanced at the tray set so carefully by his door, more proof of a tidy, organized, caring personality. It was loaded with a carafe of coffee and rolls still steaming from the oven. There was a small glass jar of homemade preserves and a large orange.

  The fact he had guessed right about her being a teacher did not alleviate his annoyance with himself over this other stupid error. He’d heard someone sneaking around, all right—sneaking his breakfast into place so as not to disturb him.

  “Thank you,” he said, “for taking me in on such short notice. I should have made arrangements for a place to stay before I arrived, but I didn’t think it was going to be a problem. When I researched it, there seemed to be lots of accommodations in the village.”

  “There are many accommodations here, and usually there would be more availability,” she offered. “Today looks as if it will be an exception, but it is usually not overly hot in May. That makes it the preferred month for weddings in Tuscany.”

  Weddings.

  “Ah, signor,” she said, and the fright had finally melted from her and a tiny bit of playfulness twinkled in her eyes. “You are right! Sometimes you can see things about people that they don’t tell you.”

  “Such as?”

  “Even though you are here to help with the royal wedding, you do not like weddings.”

  What he didn’t like was being read as easily as he read other people. Had he actually encouraged this observation? He hoped not.

  “What makes you say that?” he asked.

  “Just a little flinch,” she said, and for a moment he thought she was going to reach over and touch his face, but she thought better of it and touched the line of her own jaw instead. “Right here.”

  Her fright had brought out his protective instincts, even though he had caused it. Her power of observation, brought out with just the tiniest of suggestions, was somehow far more dangerous to him. He noticed she had ignored his invitation to call him by his first name.

  “I’m not exactly here to help with the wedding,” he said, just in case she had the absurd notion he was going to be arranging flowers or something. “My company, Itus, will be providing the security. I’m going to do reconnaissance this month so all the pieces will be in place for when we come back at the end of July. Though you are right on one count—weddings are just about my least favorite thing,” he admitted gruffly.

  “You’ve experienced many?” She raised an eyebrow at him, and again he felt danger in the air. Was she teasing him, ever so slightly?

  “Unfortunately, I have experienced many weddings,” Connor said.

  “Unfortunately?” she prodded. “Most people would see a wedding as a celebration of all that is good in life. Love. Hope. Happy endings.”

  “Humph,” he said, not trying to hide his cynicism. Over his years in the SEALs, lots of his team members had gotten married. And with predictably disastrous results. The job was too hard on the women who were left behind to fret and worry about their husbands. Or worse, who grew too lonely and sought someone else’s company.

  He was not about to share his personal revelations about the fickle nature of love with her, though. Around a woman like her—who saw weddings as symbols of love and hope and happy endings—it was important to reveal nothing personal, to keep everything on a professional level.

  “My company, Itus Security,” Connor said, veering deliberately away from his personal experiences, “has handled security for some very high-profile nuptials. As a security detail, weddings are a nightmare. Too many variables. Locations. Guests. Rehearsals. Photos. Dinners. And that’s before you factor in Bridezilla and her entourage.”

  “Bridezilla?” she asked, baffled.

  Some things did not translate. “Bride turned monster over her big day.”

  His hostess drew in a sharp breath. “I do not think you will find Christina Rose like that,” she said sternly. “She is an amazing woman who is sweet and generous and totally committed to her country.”

  Connor cocked his head at her. He was hopeful for any inside information that might prove useful to the security detail. “You know her?”

  She looked embarrassed all over again, but this time there was annoyance in it, too. “Of course not. But her husband-to-be, Prince Antonio de l’Accardi, is a member of a much-loved royal family. That has made her a very famous woman. I have read about her.”

  “Well, don’t believe half of what you read. No, don’t believe any of what you read.”

  “So, you don’t believe in weddings, and you are a cynic, also.”

  “Cynic is an understatement. I think you might have picked up I was a bit of a battle-hardened warrior when I treated you like an assassin instead of just saying good morning like a normal person would have,” he said.

  There. Letting her know, right off the bat, he was not a normal person.

  “Well, I choose to believe Christina Rose is everything she appears to be.” Her eyes rested on him, and he heard, without her saying a word, And so are you.

  Connor lifted a shoulder, noting that his hostess had a bit of fire underneath that angelic first impression. It didn’t matter to him what the future princess’s personality was. It would be her big day, laden with that thing he was most allergic to, emotion. And it didn’t matter to him what his hostess’s personality was, either.

  “Believe me,” he muttered, “Christina Rose will find a million ways, intentional or not, to make my life very difficult.”

  But that was why he was here, nearly two months early, in the Tuscan village of Monte Calanetti. Not to save the world from bad guys, but to do risk assessment, to protect some royals he had never heard of from a country he had also never heard of—Halenica—as they exchanged their vows.

  That was his mission. The lady in front of him could fill his life with complications, too, if he was not the disciplined ex-soldier that he was. As it was, he was not going to be sidetracked by a little schoolteacher in a flowered dress, no matter how cute she was.

  And she was plenty cute.

  But if that proved a problem, he would just keep his ear to the ground for another place to stay. He’d survived some pretty rough living arrangements. He wasn’t fussy.

  “Thank you for breakfast,” he said curtly, moving into emotional lockdown, work mode. “Please thank your mother for providing me with a place to stay on such short notice, signorina.”

  “My mother?”

  “Signora Rossi?”

  A tiny smile, pained, played across the beautiful fullness of her lips.

  “No, signor. I am Signora Rossi. Please call me Isabella.”

  So he had made another mistake. A small one, but a mistake, nonetheless. Looking at Isabella, after she made that statement, he could see, despite his finely honed powers of observation, he’d been wrong about her. She was not as young as her slender figure and flawless skin had led him to believe. She might have been in her thirties, not her twenties.

/>   No wonder Justin had him on wedding duty. Connor was just making mistakes all over the place.

  And no wonder Justin had said to Connor, when he gave him this assignment, “Hey, when is the last time you had a holiday? Take your time in Monte Calanetti. Enjoy the sights. Soak up some sun. Drink some wine. Fall in love.”

  Justin really had no more right to believe in love than he himself did, but his friend was as bad as his mother in the optimism department. Justin had even hinted there was a woman friend in his life.

  “And for goodness’ sake,” Justin had said, “take a break from swimming. What are you training for, anyway?”

  But Justin, his best friend, his comrade in arms, his brother, was part of the reason Connor swam. Justin, whose whole life had been changed forever because of a mistake. One made by Connor.

  So giving up swimming was out of the question, but at least, Connor told himself grimly, he wouldn’t be falling in love with the woman in front of him. After having felt her pressed against him, and after having been so aware of her in every way this morning, it was a relief to find out she was married.

  “Grazie, Signora Rossi,” he said, trying out clumsy Italian, “for providing me with accommodation on such short notice. You can reassure your husband that I will not begin every morning by attacking you.”

  His attempt at humor seemed to fall as flat as his Italian. He spoke three languages well, and several more not so well. Connor knew, from his international travels, that most people warmed to someone who attempted to use their language, no matter how clumsy the effort.

  But his hostess looked faintly distressed.

  And then he realized he had made his worst mistake of the day, and it wasn’t that he had accidentally propositioned her by mispronouncing a word.

  Because Isabella Rossi said to him, with quiet dignity, “I’m afraid my beloved husband, Giorgio, is gone, signor. I am a widow.”

  Connor wanted to tell her that she of all people, then, should not believe a wedding was a symbol of love and hope and happy endings.

  But he considered himself a man who was something of an expert in the nature of courage, and he had to admit he reluctantly admired her ability to believe in hope and happy endings when, just like his mother, she had obviously had plenty of evidence to the contrary.

  “I’m sorry for your loss,” he offered, grudgingly.

  “My husband has been gone six years, and I miss him still,” she said softly.

  Connor felt the funniest stir of something he did not like. Was it envy? Did he envy the man this woman had loved so deeply?

  Stupid jet lag. It seemed to have opened up a part of him that normally would have been under close guard, buttoned down tight. Thoroughly annoyed with himself and his wayward thoughts in the land of amore, Connor turned from Signora Isabella Rossi, scooped up the tray and went into his room. Just before he shut the door, her voice stopped him.

  “I provide a simple dinner at around seven for my guests, when I have them,” she said, suddenly all business. “If you could let me know in the mornings if you are requiring this service, I would appreciate it.”

  Connor, a man who was nothing if not deeply instinctual, knew there was some dangerous physical awareness between them, a primal man-woman thing. Eating her food and sitting across a table from her would not be an option.

  On the other hand, he did not know the lay of the land in the village, and he would have to eat somewhere today until he figured that out. Besides, Isabella Rossi had shown she was unusually astute at reading people. He did not want her to know he perceived her as such a threat that he was willing to go hungry rather than spend more time with her.

  “Thank you,” he said, keeping his tone carefully neutral. “That would be perfect for tonight. I hope the rest of your day goes better than it began, signora.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  ISABELLA STOOD IN the hallway, feeling frozen to the spot and looking at Connor Benson, balancing the tray of food she had provided for him on the jutting bone of one very sexy, very exposed hip. She felt as if she had been run over by a truck.

  Which, in a sense, she had. Not that Connor Benson looked anything like a truck. But she had been virtually run down by him, had felt the full naked strength of him pressed against her own body. It had been a disconcerting encounter in every way.

  His scent was still tickling her nostrils, and she was taken aback by how much she liked the exquisitely tangy smell of a man in the morning.

  Now she’d gone and offered him dinner. Everyone in town knew she occasionally would take in a lodger for a little extra money. She always offered her guests dinner. Why was it suddenly a big deal?

  It was because her guests were usually retired college professors or young travelers on a budget. She not had a guest quite like Connor Benson before. In fact, it would be quite safe to say she had never met a man like Connor Benson before.

  “I hope my day goes better, too,” she muttered, and then added in Italian, “but it is not looking hopeful.”

  This man in her house, who stood before her unself-conscious in his near nakedness, was the antithesis of everything Isabella’s husband, Giorgio, had been.

  In fact, Isabella had grown up in Florence and walked nearly daily by the Palazzo Vecchio, where the replica of Michelangelo’s statue David stood. The statue represented a perfection of male physique that had filled the frail Giorgio with envy, and at which she had scoffed.

  “Such men do not exist,” she had reassured Giorgio. She had swept her hand over the square. “Look. Show me one who looks like this.”

  And then they would dissolve into giggles at the fact the modern Italian male was quite far removed from Michelangelo’s vision.

  And yet this nearly naked man standing in the doorway of the room she had let to him made Isabella uncomfortably aware that not only did perfection of male physique exist, it awakened something in her that she had never quite felt before.

  That thought made her feel intensely guilty, as if she was being disloyal to her deceased husband, and so she rationalized the way she was feeling.

  It was because she had been pulled so unexpectedly against the hard length of him that her awareness was so intense, she told herself.

  Her defenses had been completely down. She had just been innocently putting his breakfast beside his door when he had catapulted out of it and turned her around, making her stumble into him.

  And now her whole world felt turned around, because she had endured a forced encounter with the heated silk of his skin, stretched taut over those sleek muscles. She had been without the company of a man for a long time. This kind of reaction to a complete stranger did not reflect in any way on her relationship with Giorgio! It was the absence of male companionship that had obviously made her very sensitive to physical contact.

  It didn’t help that Connor Benson was unbelievably, sinfully gorgeous. Not just the perfection of his male form, but his face was extraordinary. His very short cropped light brown hair only accentuated the fact that he had a face that would make people—especially women people—stop in their tracks.

  He had deep blue eyes, a straight nose, high cheekbones, a jutting chin.

  He was the epitome of strength. She thought of his warrior response to her outside his door, that terrifying moment when she had been spun around toward him, the look on his face, as if it was all normal for him.

  There was something exquisitely dangerous about Connor Benson.

  The thoughts appalled her. They felt like a betrayal of Giorgio, whom she had loved, yes, with all her heart.

  “I’ve become pathetic,” Isabella muttered to herself, again in Italian. A pathetic young widow, whose whole life had become her comfy house and the children she taught. She found love in the mutual adoration she and her students had for each other.

 
Why did it grate on her that her houseguest had known she was a schoolteacher? What would she have wanted him to think she was?

  Something, she realized reluctantly, just a little more exciting.

  “I’m sorry?” Connor said.

  She realized she had mumbled about her self-diagnosis of being pathetic out loud, though thankfully, in Italian. She realized her face was burning as if the inner hunger he had made her feel was evident to him.

  Well, it probably was. Men like this—powerfully built, extraordinarily handsome, oozing self-confidence—were used to using their looks to charm women, to having their wicked way. They were not above using their amazing physical charisma to make conquests.

  He’d already told her how he felt about weddings, which translated to an aversion to commitment. Even she, for all that she had married young and lived a sheltered life, knew that a man like this one standing before her, so at ease with near nakedness, spelled trouble, in English or Italian, and all in capital letters, too.

  This man could never be sweetly loyal and uncomplicated. Connor Benson had warned her. He was not normal. He was cynical and hard and jaded. She could see that in the deep blue of his eyes, even if he had not admitted it to her, which he had. She would have been able to see it, even before he had challenged her to look for details to know things about people that they were not saying.

  “I said be careful of the shower,” she blurted out.

  That exquisite eyebrow was raised at her, as if she had said something suggestive.

  “It isn’t working properly,” she said in a rush.

  “Oh?”

  “I’m having it fixed, but the town’s only plumber is busy with the renovations at the palazzo. I have to wait for him. Now, I’m late for work,” she choked out, looking at her wristwatch to confirm that. Her wrist was naked—she had not put on her watch this morning. She stared at the blank place on her wrist a moment too long, then hazarded another look at Mr. Benson.

  The sensuous line of Connor Benson’s mouth lifted faintly upward. The hunger that unfurled in her belly made her think of a tiger who had spotted raw meat after being on a steady diet of flower petals.