Still Waters

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?'