Skintight by Susan Andersen Page A

steady laps.
    Still, it wasn’t until Carly and Mack’s voices had long faded, leaving nothing but the lap of water against her ears and the whisper of wind through the palms that she swam to the ladder and pulled herself up. Pausing on the top rung, she tilted her head to tap water out of her ear.
    â€œAbout damn time you finished.”
    She jerked around so violently she nearly slipped off the ladder. Peering into the shadows beneath the palms, she saw Mack sitting on the same lounge chair where she’d dropped her towel. He scowled at her and raked her from head to foot with his deep brown eyes.
    She wanted desperately to sink back into the water to avoid his insolent inspection, but pride got her moving. Her heart skipped a beat as she hauled herself the rest of the way up and stepped out of the pool onto the apron. Painfully aware of the lost muscle tone of her inner thighs and the slight rounding of her tummy beneath her navy swimsuit, she raised her chin to meet his stare head-on.
    Mack was every bit as old as she was, if not older. How woefully unfair was it then that he looked so much fitter in his neatly pressed khakis and white polo shirt? There was simply no justice in the world.
    She swallowed the bitter fact, however, and managed a courteous nod. “My apologies, Mr. Brody. I didn’t realize I was holding up your work.” Biting back a satisfied smile at the irritation she saw flash across his eyes when she used his last name, she tried to tell herself it was petty to be so pleased at his aggravation. Yet she didn’t plan to deprive herself of the pleasure. “If you’ll just toss me that towel, I’ll get out of your way.”
    He snatched the towel up off the hard plastic seat and rose to his feet. Striding over to her, he thrust it out. “Here.” His dark eyes gave her another quick up-and-down. “Cover up. You’re dripping all over the damn place.”
    She caught his gaze lingering for the briefest second on her small breasts. God. Men. Even when they thought someone was a dried-up old prune, they couldn’t resist ogling the goods.
    Well, let him look. That was one attribute that was still reasonably perky. A primitive urge washed over her with abrupt white-hot intensity. Thinking of all the insulting assumptions he’d made since the day Treena had introduced them, she had a sudden wild urge to demonstrate exactly how misguided he was about the sexuality of librarians in general and her own in particular.
    She did no such thing, of course. Plucking the towel from his outstretched hand, she wrapped it around herwaist, thanked him sedately and, stopping only long enough to collect her key, she headed for her unit with all the dignity befitting an almost-sixty-year-old.
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    S TANDING BACKSTAGE later that evening as they waited to go on, Treena laughed at Carly’s story of Rufus in the pool. The mutt’s antics delighted her, but hearing Ellen and Mack mentioned in the same sentence brought back memories of Mack’s behavior in her apartment. She recalled the thought she’d gotten at the time watching them. “So, what did Mack and Ellen have to say to each other this time?”
    â€œNothing.” Carly looked at her in surprise. “I mean, Ellen just went back to doing the laps Rufus interrupted, and I’m not sure what Mack did after that. I talked to him for another minute or two, then I took Idiot Dog in and changed out of my soggy clothes.”
    â€œHe was still there when you left, though?”
    â€œYeah. I think he sat down to wait for her to finish so he could, I don’t know, clean the pool or something.”
    â€œUh-huh.” Treena’s hunch strengthened, and she shot her friend a wry glance. “Because he does that so often in the middle of hundred-degree afternoons. You wanna know what occurred to me today?”
    Carly raised her brows in assent.
    â€œI think he’s got the hots for