LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

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