“You’re okay. Loosen your knees. Good. Watch your balance…Don’t look backward.” He laughed when, with a squeak, she whipped her head around to face forward again and nearly tumbled off.

“Steady,” he said. “Relax, keep breathing.”

She nearly told him where he could stuff his “relax,” but he was right. When she controlled her breathing, it was easier. Not so much like a cat trying to figure out how to swim without getting wet.

“Ready to stand up?” he asked.

“No!” She watched him move with such masculine grace and wanted to be able to do that. “Okay, yes.”

“Go down to all fours, with your paddle across the front of the board.”

Once again her mind went straight to the gutter. But she went to all fours, wildly aware that he was right behind her, watching.

“Slowly push to your feet,” he instructed.

Easier said than done. Her sundress was caught between her knees and the board, holding her down. As she struggled to free herself, the board began to wobble and she swore the air blue. “Damn, shit. Fuckers!”

Laughter in his voice, Jacob said, “Don’t overcorrect…” just as she did exactly that and for a moment went on a wild roller-coaster ride without a seat belt, and then…

Fell face-first into the lake.

The cold water closed over her head, and she had just enough time to think, I’m gonna kill him, before she broke the surface, gasping for air.

She grabbed her board and hung on to it, narrowing her eyes at Jacob, who—smart man—wasn’t laughing outright. Nope, it was all in his eyes.

“How’s the water?” he asked.

Dammit, it was deliciously chilly on her heated skin, not that she was about to admit it. She waited for him to say, I told you the dress was a bad idea, or at least smirk at her clumsiness, but he did neither. Instead he crouched low and used his paddle to hold her board steady.

“Stay low as you pull yourself up,” he instructed, sure and calm.

It kept her the same as she managed to get back on. Sitting, her legs hanging off either side of her board into the water, she wrung out her hair. “You’re about to get a good look at why I keep my hair constrained,” she warned.

He took in the long, wavy red strands. “I love it like that.”

Okay, so maybe she wouldn’t kill him after all.

Her dress, which had been light and airy around her legs when dry, now clung to her like a second skin. A sheer second skin, emphasizing her hard nipples.

“I’m feeling a little self-conscious,” she said.

“That’s not what I’m feeling,” Jacob said. “You still going to try to paddle in that dress?”

Dammit. No. She pulled it off and wrung it out, sending Jacob a long look, daring him to say one word about her admittedly itty-bitty bikini.

He just smiled. “Nice. Really nice. You ready?”

“No comments on the level of itty-bittiness?”

“I was trying to be respectful, but you should know I had to roll my tongue back into my mouth to keep from drooling and that I want to worship you with said tongue from top to bottom and back.”

She both laughed and felt sexy, loving that he could make her feel that way. They drifted along on the water for a time. With maybe two hours until sunset, the sunrays slanted over the rugged peaks, making the water seem like a sheet of sheer, endless glass. Far beneath the clear surface, schools of fish swam, an entire world going on parallel to hers. Birds chirped. Insects hummed. Her heartbeat and blood pressure slowly lowered.

It was the most amazing, peaceful thing she’d ever done.

They paddled across the lake to the south side, which was forestland. Here there were no houses, just secret little coves and awe-inspiring scenery. “Wow,” she breathed. “This is incredible by daylight. I tried to stay here a couple of times at night but got spooked. No city lights, no one else around, and then there was the fact that the trees looks like three-hundred-foot-tall ghosts in the dark.”

He didn’t smile at that. Instead he looked distinctly unhappy. “Promise me you won’t do that again.”

“Be spooked by ghosts masquerading as trees?”

“Stay out here alone.”

She looked around. “You don’t think I could have done it?”

“Sophie, I think you can do anything you set your mind to. I just don’t like the idea of you out here alone and so isolated.”

Isolated seemed like a problem right now. In fact, like always in his company, all worries vanished. They slowed in a cove, drifting, resting. Jacob sat with his long legs hanging down over each side of the board. She lay flat on her belly and worked on her tan.