Soldier, Hero...Husband?
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Cara Colter
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Chapter One
CONNOR BENSON AWOKE with a start. It was dark. And it was hot. Where was he? Somalia? Iraq? Afghanistan? Wherever he was, it was so secret, even his mother didn’t know.
That feeling tickled along his spine, a sense of imminent danger. It brought him to red alert. Still not knowing exactly where he was, he was suddenly extremely focused, on nothing and everything. Each of his senses was so wide-open it was almost painful.
The tick of a clock somewhere in the room seemed explosively loud. Connor could feel the faint prickliness of the bedclothes against his naked skin, and he could feel a single bead of sweat slide down his temple. He could smell the residue of his own sweat and aftershave, and farther away, coffee.
Another sound rose above the ticking of the clock and the deliberate steadiness of his own breathing. It was a whispery noise just beyond this room, and as unobtrusive as it was, Connor knew it was that sound that had woken him. It was the sneaky sound of someone trying to be very quiet.
Connor tossed off the thin blanket and was out of the bed in one smooth movement, from dead asleep to warrior alert in the time it took to draw a single breath. The floor was stone under his bare feet and he moved across it soundlessly. His nickname on his SEAL team had been “the Cat.”
At six foot five, every inch of that honed muscle, his comrades didn’t mean a friendly house cat, either.
They meant the kind of cat that lived like a shadow on the edge of the mountains, or in the deepest forests and the darkest jungles, where men were afraid to go. They meant the kind of cat that was big and strong and silent. They meant the kind of cat that could go from relaxed to ready to pounce in the blink of an eye. They meant the kind of cat that had deadly and killing instincts.
Those instincts guided Connor across the room on silent feet to the door that had a faint sliver of light slipping under it. His movement was seemingly unhurried, but his muscles were tensing with lethal purpose.
Though most people would have detected no scent at all, when he paused on his side of the door, just under the aroma of coffee, Connor could taste the air. He knew someone was on the other side of that door. He also knew they were not directly in front of it—a hint of a shadow told him someone was to the left of the door. It was not a guess. His muscles tautened even more. His heart began to pick up the tempo. Not with fear. No, there was no fear at all. What he felt was anticipation.
Adrenaline coursed through his veins as Connor flung open the door.
He was nearly blinded by sunlight in the hallway, but it didn’t stop his momentum. He hurled himself left, at the figure, back to him, rising from a crouch beside his door well. His hands closed around slender shoulders.
Slender?
A scent he had not noticed before tickled his nostrils.
Perfume?
His mind screamed, Abort! It was too late not to touch, but not too late to temper his considerable strength. Instead of taking the culprit to the ground, he used the existing momentum to spin the person skulking outside his door toward him. The force of the spin caused a stumble, and as luscious curves came in full contact with him, Connor recognized the truth.
Her.
Connor stared down into the eyes of the woman he had just attacked, stunned. It wasn’t that women couldn’t be bad guys, but this woman so obviously was not. He cursed under his breath, and her eyes, already wide, widened more.
She seemed to realize she was still pressed, full length, against him, and she pushed herself away.
“Ma sei pazzo!” she said. Her voice was gorgeous, husky and rich, a note of astonishment in it that matched the astonishment in her huge, wide eyes. She definitely had the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen.
Eyes that, at the moment, were wide with shock. Now that she had pushed away from him, her hand went to the sweet swell of her breast, and he could see where her pulse beat wildly in the delicate column of her throat.
Connor, ever the soldier, and still in that place of heightened awareness, took in every exquisite detail of her. She had long, dark hair, luxuriously thick and straight, that was capturing the incredible morning light that poured in through the arched windows of the hallway they were in. Her hair fell in a shimmering waterfall of dark chocolate past slender bare shoulders.
At least a foot shorter than he was, the woman had on a bright, flower-patterned dress. It was sleeveless and accentuated the lovely litheness of her figure. The dress was pinched by a narrow belt at a tiny waist and then the skirt flared out in a way that made him able to picture her dancing, that skirt flying around her. She had sandals on her delicate feet, her toenails painted a soft shade of pink.
Her coloring looked as if it was naturally pale, but golden from the sun. Her skin was flawless. Ma sei pazzo. It occurred to Connor he was not in Iraq. Or Somalia. Not Afghanistan, either.
He cringed inwardly at his mistake. “Jeez,” he said, out loud. “I’m in Italy.”
It all came back to him. He was in a small town in Tuscany on a puffball mission for Itus Security, the company he and his friend Justin had started after Justin’s injury had made them both leave the US Navy SEALs, though for different reasons.
“Sì, Italia.”
Yes, he was in Italy. And it was not a secret. Everyone in his world, including his mother, knew exactly where he was. In fact, his mother had been thrilled for him when he had told her the Tuscan village of Monte Calanetti was on his itinerary.
Italy? she had said breathlessly. She had looked at him with ridiculously hope-filled eyes and said softly, The land of amore.
If anybody had a right to be soured by love, it was his mom, who’d had him when she was barely sixteen and had suffered through all it meant to be a single mother at that age.
In addition, Connor knew exactly what his years of service in the world’s trouble spots and danger zones had made him. He knew only a mother could look at a battle-hardened and emotionally bereft specimen like Connor and hope love was in his future.
“Do you speak English?” he asked the young woman. He kept his voice deliberately quiet, threading it with calm. The woman was still watching him silently, with those doe-like eyes, and just like a doe, was ready to bolt at one more wrong move from him.
She nodded warily.
He deserved her wariness. “Sorry, ma’am,” he muttered. “I seem to have a bit of jet lag. I was disoriented.”
“You came out of that room as if you expected an assassin!” she said accusingly, finding her voice.
No point sharing with her that was exactly what he had been expecting. There was something sweetly angelic in her face that suggested that would be entirely foreign to her world.
Looking at her, it did occur to Connor that if a man was not completely hardened to life, the woman in front of him—beautiful and angelic, yet still sensual in an understated way—might have made his thoughts go to amore.
“I said I was sorry. I hope I didn’t hurt you.” Connor had tempered his strength, but even so, she was right. He had come out of that room expecting trouble of one variety or another, and his force had been substantial.
“No. No, I’m not hurt,” she insisted hastily, but then she folded her hands over her shoulders and rubbed them.
He stepped in close to her again, aware of her scent intensifying. He carefully pried her hands off her shoulders. She stopped breathing, staring up at him, her hands drifting to her sides.
If he was not mistaken, he stopped breathing, too, as he leaned in close and inspected the golden surface of her shoulders for damage. He stepped back and started to breathe again.
“There are no marks on your shoulders,” he said quietly. “You won’t be bruised.”
“I told you I was fine.”
He shrugged, looked away from her, ran a hand through his hair and then looked back. “I just thought I should make sure. What does that mean? What you said to me? Ma sei pazzo?”
“It’s an exclamation of surprise,” she said.
It was her eyes sliding away from him that alerted him to the fact there might be more to it than that, so he lifted an eyebrow at her, waiting.
“Specifically,” she said, looking back at him, “it means are you crazy?” She was unrepentant, tilting her chin at him.
“Ah. Well. I can’t really argue with that, or blame you for thinking it.”
His senses were beginning to stand down, but even so, the woman’s scent tickled his nostrils. Her perfume was very distinctive—it had an exotic, spicy scent that was headier than any perfume he had ever smelled. He looked once more into the liquid pools of green and gold that were her eyes and recognized a weak inclination to fall toward those pools of light and grace, calm and decency.
Instead, he reminded himself who he really was. He let his thoughts travel away from her and down the road to the sense of failure that traveled with him these days, around the globe, like a shadow.
What had just happened was precisely why he’d had to leave the only world he had known for nearly two decades. He’d started making mistakes. It was why he had left the SEALs when Justin had. In his line of work, mistakes demanded a price be paid. Often it was a huge price. Sometimes it was an irrevocable one.
And he knew, from firsthand experience, it was even harder when it was someone other than yourself who paid the price for your mistakes.
“It’s all right,” she stammered, and he realized she had seen something in his face that he would have preferred she hadn’t seen.
And of course it was not all right to be attacking innocent civilians. Now that the initial shock had worn off, Connor could see she was trembling slightly, like a leaf in a breeze, and her eyes were wide on him. Her gaze flitted down the length of him, and then flew back to his face, shocked.
He glanced down at himself.
“Sheesh,” he muttered. “Would that be adding insult to injury?”
“I told you I wasn’t injured,” she stammered. “And I’m not sure what you mean by insulted.”
“It’s an expression,” he clarified, “just like your ma sei pazzo. It means on top of giving you a good scare, I’ve embarrassed you with my state of undress.”
Her eyes flew to his state of undress, again, and then back up to his face. She confirmed that she was indeed embarrassed when her blush deepened to crimson.
He would probably be blushing himself if he had any scrap of modesty remaining in himself, but he did not. He’d lived in the rough company of men his entire adult life and guys had a tendency to be very comfortable in their underwear.
Still, he was very aware that he was standing in this beautiful woman’s presence outfitted only in army-green boxer briefs that covered only the essential parts of himself.
Despite the circumstances he found himself in, he was reluctantly charmed that she was blushing so profusely it looked as if she had been standing with her face too close to a robust fire.
“Sorry, I’m disoriented,” he said again, by way of explanation. “I’ve been on an insane schedule. I was in—” he had to think about it for a second “—Azerbaijan yesterday putting a security team in place for the World Food Conference. And the day before that...ah, never mind.”
She struggled to regain her composure. “You’re Signor Benson, of course.”
“Connor, please.”
“I’m sorry I was not here to greet you last night. Nico told me you would arrive late.” Her English, he noted, was perfect, the accent lilting and lovely in the background of the precisely formed words. Her voice itself was enchanting, husky and unconsciously sensual. Or maybe it was that accent that just made everything she said seem insanely pleasing. Connor was willing to bet she could read a grocery list and sound sexy. He felt, crazily, as if he could listen to her all day.
“I think it was close to three in the morning when I arrived.”
She nodded. “Nico told me your arrival would be very late. That’s why I closed the shutters when I prepared your room. To block out the light so you could sleep in. I was just leaving you something to eat this morning. I have to be at work in a few minutes.”
“Schoolteacher?” he guessed.
She frowned at him. “Nico told you that?”
“No, I guessed.”
“But how?”
“You just have that look about you.”
“Is this a good thing or a bad thing to have this look about me?”
He shrugged, realizing he shouldn’t have said anything. It was part of what he did. He was very, very good at reading people. He could almost always tell, within seconds, what kind of lifestyle someone had, the general direction of their career paths and pursuits, if not the specifics. Sometimes his life and the lives of others depended on that ability to accurately read and sort details. This was something she, living here in her sheltered little village in Italy, did not have to know.
“I still do not understand if it is a good thing or a bad thing to have this schoolteacher look about me,” she pressed.
“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.”
