opened a door. It opened a door that was pretty darned difficult to wrestle shut again once it had been opened. It changed everything in subtle ways.
Connor sucked in a deep breath. He said a word under his breath that he would never say in Isabella’s presence. He dived under the surface of the water. His momentum carried him to one end of the pool. Though there was hardly room to get going, he began to do furious laps, butterfly stroke.
But by the time Isabella emerged from the cabana, he was aware that swimming had not defused what he was feeling. Even that most challenging stroke did not begin to burn off the fire that brush of her lips against his had stoked within him.
ISABELLA CONTEMPLATED THE fact that she had kissed Connor Benson. Really, as far as kisses went, it had been nothing. A peck. A thank-you.
But even in Italy, where people were passionate, a thank-you kiss might normally be placed on the cheek, not the lips.
Connor’s lips looked so firm. And yet, giving under the pressure of hers, they had felt soft and pliable. His lips had tasted of something, but she wasn’t sure what. It had been pure, like holding out your tongue to catch raindrops.
Heaven. That’s what they had tasted of. The problem was, after tasting something like that, a person could spend her life in pursuit of it. It had really been a foolish thing to do, reckless, especially with them living under her roof together.
But in that moment, after the lesson, she had just felt so bold, so ready to do just as he suggested, to ride the wave of discovery instead of fighting it. It had been wonderful tackling the water, doing something she had always been afraid of. It had made her feel free in a way she never had before.
From the moment she had chosen that bathing suit over the far more conservative ones available, even with the limited selection in Monte Calanetti at this time of year, Isabella had felt she was saying yes to life.
The swimming lesson itself had made her feel so alive and so bold and as if the world and this day were plump with possibilities instead of just one day following the next, safe and routine.
Isabella came out of the cabana and saw that Connor was swimming like a man possessed. The stroke he was using was amazing, his powerful arms and shoulders lifting his torso and propelling him out of the water as if he had been shot out of a cannon.
He noticed her, she was not sure how, and he stopped and stood up. He folded his arms over the lines of his chest. Her awareness of him rippled through her like a current that could sweep her away.
“I forgot to tell you, I found another place to stay,” he said.
She knew instantly he was lying. He hadn’t found another place to stay. He had tasted the reckless danger, too, as soon as her lips had touched his, and decided to find different accommodations.
He was acknowledging something was going on between them. Something more powerful than he could control. And even though he had told her to ride the wave of discovery, he was not prepared to do that himself.
She held her breath. Was he going to cancel swimming?
“I’ll see you tomorrow. And I’ll pay you for your place for the agreed dates.” he said. He dived back under the water before she could let him know she was not going to help him assuage his guilt by allowing him to pay her for a room he wasn’t going to occupy.
Isabella had never really felt this before: an acute awareness of her feminine power.
She walked home by herself, aware that the buoyancy of the water seemed to have infused her. Even though Connor had said he was moving out, her steps were light, and she felt as if she was walking on air.
She got home to discover a parcel had been delivered. It was one of the bathing suits she had ordered online, from Milan. She was pleased it had been delivered so quickly, that overnight delivery had meant just that.
And she was even more pleased when she opened the parcel and slipped the fabric from the tissue paper. So tiny! How could it possibly have cost so much money? Still, she hugged the scraps of fabric to her and went to try the new suit on. It was no more a swimsuit than the lime-green bikini today had been.
But she had given herself permission, with that first bold choice of a bathing suit, to start exploring a different side of herself. More feminine. More sexy. Deeply alive within her own body. Deeply appreciative of herself as a woman, and of the power that came with acknowledging this new side of herself.
Isabella was choosing the bathing suits of a woman who wanted a man to be very aware she was a woman. Not to just tease him, but to let him know he was not going to be able to shunt her aside so easily, just because he’d switched from a date to swimming lessons.
She thought of the way Connor had been swimming when she left Nico’s garden area—like a man possessed, or at the very least, like a man trying to clear his head—and allowed herself the satisfied chuckle of someone who had succeeded beyond their wildest dreams.
Still, when she heard him come in later, pack his bags and leave, she avoided him. Already her house felt empty without him. If she went and saw him, she was not at all certain she could trust herself not to beg him to stay.
She would not beg him to stay, but she was not above making him sorry he had left.
The next day at the pool, she wore the same oversize caftan out onto the deck. Connor was in the pool tossing a blue flutter board into the air and catching it, pretending he’d barely registered her arrival.
But when she dropped the caftan, he registered her arrival—he missed his catch on the kickboard.
If it was possible, her new bathing suit, black and shiny, was even skimpier than the one she had worn yesterday. She really took her time getting into the water, savoring the scowl on his face.
When she reached the bottom stair, he shoved the kickboard at her and snapped some instructions.
“Aren’t you even going to say hello?” she asked, petulant.
“Hello,” he snapped.
“Your new accommodations must not be very nice.”
“What would make you say that?”
“You seem like you haven’t slept well or something. You have grumpy lines.” She touched the sides of her own mouth to show him where. He stared at her mouth. His grumpy lines deepened.
“We’re going to work on your kick today.” And so they did. There was a lot less touching this second day of instruction. It was shameful how disappointed she was by that. He announced the session was over from the opposite end of the pool. Isabella was fairly certain this was to discourage thank-you kisses.
Though, even without the kiss, his swimming seemed even more furious when she left than it had the day before.
The third day, another bathing suit had arrived. It was not a bikini. It was a leopard-patterned one-piece with a plunging neckline and the legs cut very high. It was so racy—and not the competitive swimming kind of racy—that Isabella actually debated not wearing it at all.
But
