Page 76

“It is not!”

Juliet left her shoes on the bank and stepped in.

It was, as she had known it would be, absolutely freezing. She said nothing, because Eloise was looking at her with the open face of a child who expected agreement, and Juliet had a well-developed capacity for the expedient position.

“Not cold at all,” she said.

They worked through the lesson in stages, Eloise progressing with the cheerful determination of a child who has decided to master a thing and sees no compelling reason it should take long. She kicked. She floated on her back for three seconds and then lifted her chin to check if she was doing it, at which point she sank. She came up sputtering and immediately said she had done it on purpose.

“You tipped your chin,” Adam said. He had waded in to waist depth and crouched to her level, his hand steady beneath her. “Keep your head down.”

“But then I cannot see where I’m going.”

“You are not going anywhere. You’re floating.”

“What if there’s something⁠—”

“There is nothing. Head down.”

Eloise tipped her chin down with the expression of a child making a very significant concession. Adam waited. She kicked. She floated. She did not look up.

“There,” he said. “Yes. Keep the arms long.”

She kept the arms long for approximately four seconds, then turned to look at him. “Am I doing it?”

“You are doing it.”

Her face took on the expression she made when she was trying not to look too pleased with herself: her mouth pressed flat, and her chin came up, and she went back to floating with somewhat exaggerated composure.

Juliet stood in the water and watched Adam hold his daughter level with one hand open under her stomach. The water was up to his ribs now. His shirt had gone translucent at the shoulders. She looked at his hand under Eloise, at the patience in the set of him, and then she looked away at the far bank before he could look up and find her looking.

He looked up anyway.

She fixed her eyes firmly on the oaks beyond the water.

“You’re doing it again,” he said, low enough that Eloise, still working on her floating, did not hear.

“I am watching your daughter swim,” Juliet said. “It is an appropriate use of my attention.”

“Mm.”

The water caught her first across the elbow, then up along her jaw, cold and immediate, and accompanied by a low, satisfied sound from Adam’s direction.

Juliet turned around. He stood in the water with both hands at his sides, entirely composed, like a man who has done nothing at all.

“You—” she started, but he did not give her the chance to accuse him. Water hit her again, harder this time, his cupped palm aimed directly at her shirt.

“Papa,” Eloise said, forgetting to float, “you splashed her!”

“I have no idea what you mean,” Adam said, mischief dancing in the windows of his eyes.

Juliet blinked at him. Oh. He truly was playing with her. She had hoped coming to the water would not be a repeat of what it had been that first time…but this…this was even more than she’d hoped for, truly.

Heart pounding in her chest, Juliet scooped both arms into the water and swung them toward him in a sheet. The wave caught him from his chest to his collar, and he exhaled sharply, eyes closing for one second. When they opened, they were fixed on her with a look that had no business being worn in front of a seven-year-old.

She became aware of the state of her shirt approximately two seconds later.

The linen had gone transparent across the front, plastered to her in a way that the design had never intended and the manufacturer could not have anticipated she would be standing in a Hampshire lake in it.