Maddy dutifully puffed out her cheeks, then looked up just in time to catch Zack watching her with a quizzical expression on his face. Her pent-up breath escaped in a rush.
"Okay, I think we're ready for the big time," Zack said as he patiently hauled Jennifer back onto the platform. "That's right-we are going to put our faces in the water! I'm going to say, 'One, two, ready,' and you're going to take a big breath. Then I'm going to say, 'Go,' and I want you to put your face right down in the water. Okay? One… two… ready…"
Please, Lord, Maddy prayed. This is a good time for the Big One… the big California quake…
"Go."
Maddy leaned forward and stared down at the choppy surface of the water. Her neck and jaw muscles turned to concrete. She felt a wave of nausea, and thought desperately, If I get sick now, I'll kill myself.
Something touched her arm. Both arms. Near her ear a low, masculine voice rumbled, for her alone, "I won't force you to put your face down. I won't push you. You have to do it by yourself. Understand?"
She nodded, refusing to look at him.
"You can do it," the voice insisted. "I'm here for moral support, but you can do it."
She nodded again. She knew only one thing for certain. If she didn't do it now, she never would, and all this humiliation would have been for nothing. Taking one more, excruciating breath, she closed her eyes tightly and plunged.
It was like jumping off a building. It seemed forever before she felt the clinging, suffocating wet close over her face, and longer than forever before she was out of it and breathing again, gasping and blowing and frantically brushing water from her face as if it were sticky nightmare cobwebs.
"Good job," Zack said quietly, and only when he released her did she realize he had been holding her all the time, supporting her with strong hands on her waist. She began to shiver.
"Now," Zack said to the rest of the class, "see how Maddy went all the way under the water and got her hair wet? That's what we're going to do next. This time when I say, 'Go,' I want you to bob down and get all your hair wet. Hey, not until I say, 'Go,' Jennifer. No dry hair allowed, got it? Okay…"
Maddy had been hearing Zack's voice through a funny, high-pitched ringing. She must have water in her ears, she thought fuzzily, just before somebody turned all the lights off.
Fortunately, Zack was standing so close to Maddy that he felt her sway and go slack, and was easily able to catch her before she slipped under. Then he was really in a hell of a predicament-arms full of a beautiful, unconscious blond, and five pairs of baby owl eyes focused on him with varying degrees of alarm. Okay, Zachary, he thought. Let's see you get out of this one.
But for the moment, heaven help him, he wasn't even thinking about getting out of it. He was looking down at her still, pale face and seeing it flushed and warm instead, with the curve of her cheek just fitting his palm. Her lips were a deep, dusky rose, and even slack and parted, showing the glistening tips of even white teeth, they looked full, and sweet, and incredibly inviting. It was ironic, really, after all the time he'd spent fine-tuning his protective reflexes and shoring up his barricades, that someone should slip past his guard here, in a babies' swim class, of all places!
But, as he'd learned the hard way, life was full of surprises.
He'd wondered at first if she might be some sort of celebrity chaser, though it had been awhile since he'd had to deal with that sort of nuisance. But that idea hadn't lasted any longer than it had taken him to spot the fear in her eyes. Her eyes… just like that little kid's. He supposed that was why he'd thought they belonged together. They both had that same scared look.
"She gonna be okay?" a woman asked. It was Sherry, one of the on-duty lifeguards, leaning over the edge of the pool to peer with concern and interest at his burden.
Zack nodded. "Yeah. She fainted, but I think it's just a case of nerves." Panic, he thought, would be more like it.
"Swept her right off her feet, huh?" Sherry said, deadpan, then levered herself into the water, planting herself between Zack and the round-eyed children. "Hey, who told you guys you could let go of the wall? Let's see one hand on the wall, now, okay?" In an aside to Zack she muttered, "I'll take over here. Get her outa here before they start getting hysterical."
Zack nodded and turned to wade toward the steps. Thank heavens for Sherry, he thought. The girl was barely nineteen, but had a level head and a way with children.
A voice piped up. "Is she sick?" That would be Jennifer, of course, asking bluntly the question that had been in all of their eyes. Zack turned and opened his mouth to answer, but instead of Jennifer's plump face and bright, interested gaze, he found himself meeting a pair of eyes as round and dark and liquid as two cups of coffee.
"Nah," Sherry said briskly, making a squirt gun with her hands. "Just dizzy. Some people get dizzy when they stare at the water for a long time. It's called vertigo. Any of you guys feel dizzy? No? Great. So what are you doin' with dry faces? Let's all take a big breath and start bobbing!''
Zack grinned, shook his head, and started again for the steps. Damn, Maddy Gordon wasn't exactly a dainty little bundle. She was almost as tall as he was and… He glanced down, swallowed, and stared resolutely straight ahead. Healthy. Very healthy. And all that thin, wet black nylon did was make her look like she'd dipped that spectacular body in ink.
Zachary, you're an idiot, he told himself. This was obviously a woman with problems. And problems, heaven knows, he'd had enough of. With grim determination he divorced his libidinous mind from the warm, voluptuous body in his arms.
It wasn't as difficult as he'd thought it would be. The image that followed him out of the pool and into the office was of another face entirely. A pinched little face with scared brown saucer eyes that tore at his heart. What was her name, anyway? Oh, yeah. Theresa.
Maddy's first thought was: How strange. She was dry.
She opened her eyes and stared through a dark tunnel at a white moonscape, which turned into an acoustical ceiling as her field of vision slowly expanded.
She was lying down; how did she get to be lying down?
She heard the murmur of voices and lifted her head to find out where they were coming from. What she saw was Zack's back. He was standing a few feet away, talking in a low voice to the Oriental lifeguard and unconcernedly dripping pool water onto the floor. From some distance away came the sounds of splashing, and a girl yelling directions and encouragement in a voice like a drill sergeant's.
Maddy lay very still, frowning at that magnificent back as she took a quick mental inventory. She was dry because she'd been wrapped from toes to chin in a scratchy blanket. And she was lying on a canvas folding cot. The acoustical ceiling belonged to the pool office. So far so good. But there could be only one explanation for all of this.
She groaned out loud. "Oh… damn. I bet I passed out, didn't I?"
"Cold," Zack said mildly, turning to look at her. She watched apprehensively as he walked toward her. "Feeling better now?"
She nodded, wondering if he was being sarcastic or was sincerely concerned for her well-being. Now she found herself gazing at his legs instead of his back, following trickles of water as they made their way over hills and hollows of muscle and through sparse forests of hair. He wasn't overly hairy. She liked that. And then, mortified as much by her thoughts as by her circumstances, she closed her eyes and moaned softly. "You didn't call anyone, I hope?" She had horrifying visions of wailing sirens and paramedics.
He shook his head and squatted beside her, balancing on his heels. "You weren't out more than a minute. Only just long enough to scare the daylights out of my class."
"Oh, Lord. Poor little things. I'm sorry. I never thought this would happen." She opened her eyes, and winced when she encountered that dark, smoky look. If only he wouldn't keep frowning at her like that. She'd had all sorts of responses from handsome males, ranging from obnoxious come-ons to acute bashfulness. She'd never had one keep scowling at her as if she were an annoyance
he didn't know what to do with.
"Don't you think you should have told me you had a problem?" he asked.
"Problem?" Maddy shifted her frown to his chest and found that view no more comfortable than the other. "There's nothing wrong with me, except that I can't swim."
"Like hell there isn't. Normal people don't keel over when they put their faces in the water!"
"Normal!" Bristling in automatic defense, Maddy raised herself on her elbows. "I'm not sick! There's nothing physically wrong with me!"
He made a choking noise and stared at the hands that he was clasping between his knees. "I can see that," he said, nodding solemnly.
Maddy looked down at herself and went incandescent with embarrassment. "I didn't mean-" she said, trying to achieve the illusion of shrinking. She glanced up, straight into a pair of eyes that were lighted now with that elusive spark of humor. The spark ignited and became a glow that sent warmth oozing right down through her insides.
And then he grinned.
The soft, oozy feeling inside her congealed, quick-frozen by a cold wave of shock. Because all of a sudden Maddy knew who he was.
Two
The grin had done it. Maddy might not have been a swimmer, but she'd had the same dreams and fantasies as other thirteen-year-olds, and for her entire eighth-grade year that grin, and a slightly slimmer, smoother version of that chest, had decorated the inside wall of the gym locker she'd shared with her best friend, Chris.
But that wasn't the only place she'd seen that grin. For a year or so it had sparkled at her from the cereal box at breakfast, and promoted sugar-free soft drinks on the billboards she rode her bicycle past on the way to school. And along with a glorious slow-motion sequence of his specialty-the butterfly stroke-that was pure poetry set to music, it had helped pitch the healthful properties of milk, on television at night.
"Zack…" she said on a long, drawn-out breath, knowing a kind of fatalistic dread. "You're Zachary London, aren't you?"
The grin faded slowly. Maddy was sorry to see it go. It had been like a brief reunion with a long-lost friend.
Zack nodded, and without taking his gaze from her face said simply, "Yeah."
"Oh, no," Maddy said dismally, and covered her eyes with her arm. "Why me? All I wanted to do was learn to swim. Anybody could teach me to swim. A high school kid. A Boy Scout."
"I doubt that," Zack said dryly.
Anger began to melt the prickly ice of shock. "And who do I get for a teacher? Zachary London. Zack London! Five Olympic gold medals and three world records-or was it the other way around?" It didn't occur to her until later that she was being inexcusably rude. She was frustrated and shaken and definitely not thinking clearly. She sat up suddenly, glaring. "Do you have any idea how humiliating it is to be a grown-up person living in Southern California and not know how to swim? And how long it took me to get up the courage to do something about it?"
"I think I do," he murmured softly, but she ignored him.
"Do you know how embarrassing it is to find out you're in the wrong class? And then-" She threw up her hands dramatically. "Zack London. I can't believe it. I just can't believe it."
Throughout this tirade Zack sat on the floor with his arms draped over his drawn-up knees, watching her quizzically and patiently, waiting for her to run down. When she seemed to have run out of steam he slowly shook his head and muttered sardonically, "Well, I've gotten some pretty interesting reactions from women before, but yours is certainly unique."
"Why?" Maddy asked suddenly, getting her second wind. "Why do you do this, anyway? Teach beginners. In a place like this. It's like… it's like-" She waved her arm angrily. "Like hiring Mickey Mantle to coach T-ball!"
Zack suddenly burst out laughing. When Maddy went on glaring at him he used a hand to remold his features into somber lines and said in a strangled voice, "I'm sorry you're upset. I really am. And I'm not laughing at you. It's just-" He cleared his throat, looked away from her while he appeared to collect himself, then looked back. His face was straight and under control, but the glint of humor remained. "In answer to your question-I don't usually teach the beginners. I'm just standing in for the high-school kids and Boy Scouts until school's out next week."
"Oh," Maddy murmured. Something was happening to her as a result of that prolonged eye contact. She couldn't seem to remember how to breathe.
"I do coach the swim team and teach lifesaving, though. And I have a question for you, Maddy Gordon."
She blinked at him, suddenly apprehensive.
"How did you get to be an adult person in Southern California without learning to swim?"
"Haven't lived in Southern California that long. I'm a transplant from the Midwest- Indiana." She shivered and hunched her shoulders, wishing for a towel or a wrap of some kind.
She'd forgotten about the blanket. Zack leaned forward and drew it up around her shoulders. The movement brought his face close to hers. " Indiana has a terrific public swim program," he said. "You haven't answered my question."
The sensation produced by the warm stirring of his breath on her skin was indescribable. She shivered again, and he tugged the blanket together across her breasts.
"So… how come you never learned to swim?"
"No big deal," she mumbled. "I'm just afraid of water."
"Why?"
She shrugged. "I don't know. I just always have been."
"Baloney. Nobody's born afraid of water. We spend the first nine months of our lives happily immersed in it. What happened to make you afraid?"
She pushed back a strand of wet hair and said lightly, "Who knows? Maybe I had a bad experience when I was little. Maybe I almost drowned or something. I really don't remember." He knew she was lying; she could see it in his eyes. But she returned his disbelieving stare with stubborn defiance, letting him know that she'd gone as far as she was going to go.
"Well," he said, recognizing a brick wall when he saw one, "it would help if you could remember. It does a lot of good just to talk about things like that, you know."
Maddy bit her lower lip, but remained silent. Oh, she knew that-how well she knew that. But she wasn't the sort of person who went around blurting out her deepest feelings to strangers. Especially a stranger who just happened to have been an international celebrity and the object of her adolescent dreams!
Zack took a deep breath and stood up, acknowledging defeat. "Okay," he said briskly. "Let's see if we can find you an adult class. I'm sure you won't have so much trouble if you've got the company of others in the same boat."
He walked to the desk and began shuffling through papers, looking for a schedule. Maddy found that she could breathe again without having to think about it, but now she felt strangely off kilter, as if someone had removed some of the supports that kept her balanced and perpendicular to the ground. She seemed to be leaning in the direction he had gone, as if pulled by an invisible magnetic force.
"That's funny," he was saying, frowning down at the schedule in his hands. "There doesn't seem to be an adult-beginners' class this session. Guess there wasn't enough demand for one. Okay, that takes care of that." He dropped the papers back onto the desk and leaned against it, folding his arms across his chest. The stance made him look even more like a comic-book superhero. "Have you considered private lessons?"
"I hadn't," she said, focusing doggedly on the off-center dimple in his chin. "I wouldn't even know whom to ask. Look-" She stood up abruptly, gathering the blanket around her. "I've taken up enough of your time. You have a class to teach, and I've already upset the children, and anyway, it's not that important. I can learn to swim any time. Maybe next time they decide to offer an adult-beginners' class…"
She was moving past him, making for the women's shower room, trailing the blanket behind her like a queen's robes. Zack planted one foot firmly on the end of the blanket and said, "Whoa."
It was either stop or make her exit in nothing but her bathing suit. Maddy stopped.
"It's important," he s
aid. "It was important enough that you signed up for lessons and showed up for the class. You said that took courage, and I believe you. It was important enough that you stuck it out when you found yourself in a class full of babies, and important enough that you put your face in the water even though you were scared to death to do it. So what's changed? Not a damn thing. You know what I think? I think you need to learn to swim." He tapped his head. "Psychologically. Not just because it might save your own life or somebody else's someday. Right?"
She stared resentfully at him and didn't answer. Who did he think he was, anyway, a psychologist or something? And why was he so determined to make a crusade out of her inability to swim? Why should he care? She would have thought that after the mess she'd made of his swimming class he'd be more than glad to be rid of her. And she couldn't understand the way he was looking at her, with his brows drawn together and his eyes that smoke color she found so unsettling.
"Well, look," he said abruptly, as if he'd just come to the same conclusion she had about wanting her out of his hair. He turned to scribble on a message pad. "Here's a couple of phone numbers. These are lifeguards here at the pool who give private lessons during the summer. Right now they're still in school, but as soon as school's out they'll be available during off hours. Why don't you give one of these guys a call? They'll be glad to take you on, and I think they'd be pretty reasonable, too." He strolled toward her and tucked the paper inside the overlapping edge of the blanket. "And," he added, his voice unexpectedly gentle. "Promise me you'll do it, okay? It really is important." He smiled at her, the same warm, reassuring smile he'd used to break the ice with Theresa.
Theresa, Maddy thought. She'd almost forgotten. There was something she needed to tell him about Theresa.
With a sizable effort she pulled herself together, took a deep breath, and said, "Okay, I'll look into it. I promise. Zack… um…" She cleared her throat and focused on him, steeling herself against the distraction of his charisma. If anything was important, this was. "I think there's something you should be aware of. It's about that little girl-the one you thought-"
Still Waters Page 2