“Strange that I’ve never seen you here before,” said Crystal. Her gaze took in his arms, chest and shoulders, apparently concluding it wasn’t the first time he’d been swimming.

Okay, his ego could handle that.

“I usually work out in the pool at State,” he said, grateful he hadn’t completely lost the power of speech.

“Your brother said you were a professor?”

Larry nodded. Words, man. Words!

“I teach mathematics.”

“Interesting.”

“That’s not what most people say.” Most people’s eyes glazed over at the mention of his profession.

She grinned, and something about her smile warmed him inside.

“You here to do laps?” he asked.

“Three times a week.”

“You can burn up to eight hundred excess calories doing an hour of freestyle.”

She glanced down at herself.

He cringed. “Not that I’m suggesting…That is, of course, you don’t need to worry about burning excess calories.”

She chuckled at his horrible faux pas. “Trust me. I do it to feel good. I couldn’t care less about the visual pleasure of others.”

She moved to the next lane and sat down, dangling her feet and calves in the water.

Larry noticed that she was providing him with all kinds of visual pleasure at the moment, from the curve of her tanned hip, to her nipped-in waist, to the hint of cleavage. Visual pleasure didn’t get much better than this.

“Guess I’d better get going,” she said, slipping into the water.

“And I’d better get back at it.” He’d never stopped in the middle of a workout before. It simply wasn’t a logical thing to do. He quickly decided he’d better add a few laps to get his pulse rate back to optimal.

“See you later,” she called, pushing off the wall, arms curling, legs scissoring, gorgeous derriere poking out of the water.