the zipper, and closed her eyes. Because she was afraid of the water? Or was she sweetly shy about being seen in her swimming suit?
She bent over to get the zipper undone. Her swim cover was still doing its job. Covering. The zipper stuck partway down, and she tugged and tugged, but nothing happened. Suddenly, in frustration, she gave up on the zipper and pulled the caftan from her shoulders. As she was freed from the bulky covering, it slid down and settled in a lump at her waist.
Connor stared helplessly.
Her eyes locked on his. He looked away, focusing on those little green toenails, not sure he wanted her to see what he was thinking. She pushed the caftan away from her waist and it floated to the ground, at his eye level, creating a puddle that looked like a burlap bag around her little monster-toed feet.
He was left looking at the length of her lovely legs. Then she stepped out of the fabric puddle and kicked the covering aside.
Connor reminded himself he had seen her in a transparent shower curtain. And a red dress that had made his mouth go dry. Whatever this was, it could not be any worse than that. Isabella was a practical schoolteacher. She would know how to pick a good bathing suit.
Having thus reassured himself, Connor cocked his head upward to see more than her feet and her legs. His mouth fell open. He gulped. He snapped his mouth shut so that the practical schoolteacher would not guess how much she was rattling his world.
A swimming lesson? Whose dumb idea had this been?
She was wearing one of the tiniest swimsuits he had ever seen, if you could call that scrap of fabric—three scraps of fabric—a swimsuit. Isabella was wearing a string bikini in an amazing shade of lime green that made her skin look as golden as the sand at a beach in New Zealand, Kaiteriteri, that he had visited once. Her dark hair spilled over that golden expanse of skin, shiny and beautiful.
“Is something wrong?” she asked. Her tone was all innocence, but he wasn’t fooled. No woman put on a bathing suit like that without knowing exactly what she was doing!
Suck it up, he ordered himself. He’d seen her in a shower curtain. Nothing could be worse than that. Except this was worse than that. It was worse, even, than the red dress.
Isabella Rossi, village schoolteacher, nerdy girl, was smoking hot!
“Wrong?” he choked out, not willing to give her the victory. “What could possibly be wrong?”
“I don’t know. You have a look on your face.”
“A look on my face?” he demanded.
“Mmm. Like you’ve been smacked with a frozen fish.”
He wiped whatever look he had on his face off. He felt as though he’d been smacked, all right, and not with a frozen fish. Smacked with awareness of her. He had the ugly feeling she wasn’t as innocent as she appeared. In fact, Connor had the ugly feeling that she might be toying with him.
He forced himself to find his voice. It had to be addressed. “You really should have left your hair up.”
“Oh? Why’s that?”
What was he doing talking about her hair? He needed to tell her the bathing suit wasn’t going to work. At all. “You don’t want to get it in your face.”
“I’m not planning on getting my face wet.”
“You have to get your face wet. To swim.”
She didn’t look the least convinced. She dismissed him with a little wave of her hand. “Oh, well, maybe next time I’ll get my face wet.”
Address it, he ordered himself. “Uh, that bathing suit—”
“Yes?” Her voice was husky.
“—is really nice.”
Now, that he had not meant to say. At all. Isabella was beaming at him.
“—but, it isn’t, er, really made for swimming.”
Unless he was mistaken, and he was pretty sure he was not, the little minx was lapping up his discomfort.
“It’s called a bathing suit,” she said stubbornly.
“Maybe it’s for sunbathing. I mean, if you were to dive in the water with that thing...”
His voice trailed away.
“I’m not planning on diving today, either,” she informed him primly.
Wait a minute. Who was in charge here? He suspected, in that bathing suit, she was. “Well, I wasn’t planning on that, either, but—”
“The bathing suit will have to suffice,” she said. The schoolteacher voice was very at odds with the drop-dead gorgeous woman standing in front of him. “Selection—”
Seduction? No, no, she’d said selection, not seduction.
“—is very limited in Monte Calanetti at this time of year. I ordered some other things on the internet. They should arrive soon.”
How soon was soon, he wanted to demand. Maybe they could postpone.
“I’m sure it will be fine,” Isabella said, “You already said it’s not as if I’m training for the national swim team.”
She had him there. He wanted to teach her enough to hold her own if she fell out of a boat. Or in the river. Or got carried away unexpectedly by a current. He wanted to teach her enough that being around water did not make that pulse go crazy in her throat, like a rabbit being chased by dogs. The way it was now.
Was that because she was about to get wet? Or was it because she was trying out her bold new self on him?
Connor considered, again, postponing. He glanced at her face. A tiny little smile was playing across her lips before she doused it. She was toying with him!
“Get in the water,” he snapped. The sooner she was covered up with anything, including water, the better. If the bathing suit fell off, or melted, they’d deal with that when it happened. Just as they had dealt with the shower catastrophe.
But really, how much could one man take?
Isabella stuck her toe in and yanked it back out. She made a face. She hugged herself, either not as confident in the skimpy suit as she wanted him to believe or suddenly aware that she was tackling something she was afraid of.
“I can’t just jump in,” she decided.
She could sit on the edge of the pool, reach out and put her hands around his neck... Connor gave himself a shake. This was going to be quite hard enough! “There are stairs at that end.”
She looked where he was pointing and saw the stairs entering the pool at the shallow end. She eyed her dropped caftan for a second, as if she was considering putting it back on for the short walk to the stairs. Or putting it back on and fleeing.
Instead, she tilted her chin up and went over there, wiggling her
