green scraps of fabric. It also gave him plenty of opportunity to set his face into a mask of indifference.
At the top of the stairs, she repeated the put-one-toe-in-and-withdraw-it procedure. Still in the water, he slogged his way over to that end of the pool and stood close to the bottom of the stairs.
“At this rate we are still going to be here tomorrow,” he groused out loud, instead of saying what he really wanted, which was get in the water, dammit.
She held up a hand, a very Italian gesture that warned him not to hurry her, and then Isabella proceeded to get into the water with painful slowness.
AS CONNOR WATCHED, Isabella got on the first stair leading into the pool. She was acting as if the world was tilting and her life depended on her hanging on to the handrail.
The world was tilting, and Connor felt as if his life depended on her getting in the water. With the water at her ankles, she paused there, allowing him to wallow in the full impact of that bathing suit. Was that a piercing, right below her belly button? Was his jaw clenched?
“The easiest way is just to jump in,” he told her. Yes, definitely clenched. He deliberately relaxed it.
“Never let it be said I’m easy.”
He contemplated her. Her command of English and all its nuances and slang was not good enough for her to have meant that the way it sounded. Though the beautiful young widow was probably about the furthest thing from easy that he had ever met.
She went down one more step. Now she was up to her knees. She had both hands on the handrail. Her knuckles were white.
“I thought the water would be warmer,” she said.
“It’s perfect.” His jaw was clenching again.
She wrinkled her nose, letting him know their ideas of perfect were different, which would be a very good thing for him to keep in mind, because a bathing suit like that made a man think he could make anything work out, even against impossible odds.
And the odds were impossible. Everything about them was different. He was large, she was tiny. He was powerful, she was fragile. He was cynical, she was innocent. They were culturally a million miles apart. He’s seen colleagues fall for the seemingly exotic girls of foreign lands. It never worked.
He tried to hold those thoughts as, finally, Isabella was at the bottom of the steps, up to her cute little belly button in water. It was a little dark mole under her belly button, not a piercing. He was not sure which was sexier.
Isabella was still holding onto the handrail as if her life depended on it. He tried to remember why he had thought getting her in the water would be easier on him. It was not.
“Let go of the handrail and walk over to me,” he said.
“Not yet.” Her voice had a little quaver to it.
And that changed everything. Because it reminded him this wasn’t about him. It wasn’t about recalculating impossible odds. It was about her, giving her a few tools to deal with the harsh realities of life. And he could not let her scanty little bathing suit distract him from that. That’s one of the things he was trained to do. Sift through information very quickly, ignore the distractions, focus on the mission.
So he crossed the distance that remained between them and pried her hand, ever so gently, off the handrail. He placed himself right in front of her and held out his other hand. She hesitated and then placed her hand in his.
Their hands joined as they faced each other, they were like two dance partners who had never danced together sizing each other up. It occurred to him this was going to be like no swimming lesson he had ever given before.
“Don’t even look at the water,” he said softly. “Just look at me.”
Her eyes fastened on his face as if she was drowning and he was the lifeline. Her gaze was as disconcerting as the bikini. Maybe more so. It made the mission waver a little more.
“See?” he said, forcing himself to speak, keeping his voice soft, and taking a step back, “No danger. No crocodiles. No chance of falling over a ledge. No current to sweep you away.”
No danger. Ha-ha. Her hand, small but strong in his, felt like one of the gravest dangers he had ever encountered. Had he really thought getting her in the water was going to be better than watching her on the deck?
Now, added to his physical awareness of her hands in his, she was so close to him he could smell that spicy perfume that was hers and hers alone. It felt as if he was being swept away by the absolute trust in her eyes fastened on his, the way she was holding his hands. She took her first tiny step through the water toward him.
He backed up. She took one more. He backed up two. And then they were doing a slow waltz through the water. He was careful to stay in the shallows, even though it wasn’t nearly deep enough to help him deal with the worst of the distractions. Was that tiny bathing suit top sliding sideways just a touch?
Connor repeated his command to himself.
Suck it up.
“See?” he said softly. “It’s not so bad, is it? Just stay in the moment. Don’t think one thought about what could happen.”
She actually closed her eyes. A tiny smile touched her lips. He ordered himself not to look at her lips and definitely not to think about what could happen. Connor felt the purity of the moment—water on his skin, her hair shining in the sun, her small hands in his, the rapturous look on her face—seducing him.
Somehow, he’d had this utterly foolish idea that he was going to pretend she was a raw recruit and be able to keep professional distance from her as he taught her the basics of swimming. He was not sure how he had deluded himself. He had never had that much imagination. He’d always prided himself on being such a realist.
“The water does feel amazing on my skin,” she breathed. Her eyes remained closed in wonder.
Connor cleared his throat. “So now you’ve seen the water in this end of the swimming pool holds no danger to you,” he said, trying desperately to stick to the business at hand and not think one single thought about her skin. “So, let’s try the next step.”
Her eyes flew open and that pulse in her throat picked up tempo. “What is the next step?”
“I’d like you to learn the water will support you. Human beings are buoyant. They float.”
She looked doubtful about that—the pulse in her throat went crazy.
“Isabella, you will float.”
“I’m scared.”
“I know.”
His life’s work had presented him with this situation, again and again. He’d had plenty of encounters with people, civilians, who found themselves in difficult situations. Families who, through no fault of their own, found themselves in war zones. Hostages, in the wrong place at the wrong time, who didn’t know the rule book,
