Hidden Talents

the porch. “It's cold out here tonight.”
    “It will get a lot colder before long.” Serenity opened the glass slider of the darkened hot tub room and stepped inside the humid atmosphere. She didn't bother to turn on the lights. There was enough of a glow spilling from the cottage windows to enable her to see what she was doing. “Give me a hand with the cover, will you?”
    “All right.” Caleb went to work on the fastenings that secured the cover. It didn't take him long to figure out the hooks.
    Serenity showed him how to roll back the heavy vinyl sheet and stash it on a nearby bench. Then she switched on the mechanism that caused the hot water to churn and pulse gently in the large, deep tub. She opened a cupboard and removed several thick towels. She stacked them beside the tub.
    When everything was ready, she looked at Caleb. She couldn't see his expression clearly in the shadows, but she could tell that he was watching her with the familiar dark intensity that so often characterized him. A new, different chill of tingling sexual awareness shot through her. This time it wasn't just in her imagination; it was coming from him. She felt dangerously energized.
    “It's all yours.” Serenity said. “Help yourself.”
    “Will you join me?”
    Not a good idea, she thought. Definitely not a good idea at all. She opened her mouth to tell him that she had work to do.
    “Why not?” Serenity heard herself say. She could hardly believe her own words. This was stupid, really stupid. “I could use a little relaxation therapy.”
    She peeled off the gauzy green dress that she had worn over her knit jumpsuit and hung it neatly from a brass hook. Her fingers went to the zipper of the jumpsuit. She paused, trying to remember where she had stored her old swimsuit. Normally she never used a swimsuit in the hot tub.
    Doubt and uncertainty were turning her into a nervous wreck, she realized. When she first met Caleb, she had been so sure, so joyously positive that they were meant to have a relationship. She had looked at him and seen the glimmerings of a shared future, hope for a real family. But his reaction when he'd discovered the existence of the photos Ambrose had taken had changed all that. It had plunged her into this morass of confusion. Normally, she was unselfconscious about her nudity. But not with Caleb. Nothing was clear at all tonight except that the air in the glass-walled room seemed electrically charged.
    On the other side of the tub Caleb slowly began to remove his shirt. His strong fingers went methodically from one button to the next. The garment parted down to his waist.
    Serenity stopped cold. She was riveted by the sight of the dark, curling hair just barely visible in the shadowed area revealed by Caleb's unbuttoned shirt. She swallowed heavily.
    “What's wrong?” Caleb asked.
    “I'm…not sure I know where my old swimsuit is. And I don't have a man's suit for you to use.”
    “I didn't think people used suits in hot tubs.”
    “Ah, well, no, they don't usually. Bathing in a hot tub is a lot like bathing in a hot springs pool or a Japanese bath.”
    “Fine. Then we don't need suits.” Caleb unbuckled his belt.
    Serenity quickly turned her back to him. She kicked off her shoes and finished unzipping her jumpsuit. Until tonight she had never thought of hot tubbing as a sensual experience. But then, she had never climbed into a hot tub with a man who made her insides melt.
    Behind her she heard Caleb step into the bubbling tub.
    “This feels very good,” he said softly.
    “It's quite therapeutic. A wonderful form of relaxation.” She winced. Her voice sounded too high, even to her own ears.
    “I can see why you enjoy it.”
    Driven by a deep compulsion that she was afraid to name, Serenity turned around very cautiously. Relief was coupled with a measure of undeniable disappointment when she saw that Caleb was safely immersed to his chest in the churning water.
    But even though she couldn't see his expression in the shadows, and the darkness certainly guaranteed a high degree of modesty for both of them, it was impossible for her to ignore Caleb's brooding masculinity. Either her imagination was running wild or, as Lloyd would say, she just couldn't seem to transcend the man-woman thing tonight. On the contrary, she had never been so acutely aware of it.
    Caleb stretched his arms out along the edge of the tub and relaxed in the churning water. The dim glow from the cottage windows lined