"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.