“I understand completely. So will Dad. He’s so gruff, people don’t realize that he’s really very concerned for all his athletes.”

Yeah, and he’s a complete asshole to anybody who isn’t one of “his athletes.” But Danny didn’t say it.

The hand was back, except that because he wasn’t facing her, she was touching his waist right at the top of the zipper, her thumb hooked onto the waistband. It was a surprisingly intimate place to touch him. Maybe if he didn’t wear his jeans so low—but he had always worn hand-me-downs that were a little small on him, or way too big. The former had to ride low so there’d be room in the crotch; the latter rode low because they were on the verge of falling off. Now that was where pants felt comfortable to him. But it also put her hand very low on the front of his body and for a long moment that’s all he could think about.

And in the silence between them, he knew that’s exactly what she intended.

Innocent little Nicki wasn’t all that innocent. Whatever it was that had led her to kiss him that time, it was still there. She hadn’t given up. She was still offering.

Or was she demanding?

This didn’t seem like the same girl he had talked to that day in the Lieders’ kitchen, when he had healed her and changed her life. By not letting it end, of course, but also by restoring her to strength and health, and by talking with her like a normal person instead of an invalid. Apparently he had made much too great an impression on an impressionable girl.

He could just remove the hand, but the lingering presence of her hand so near his groin was obvious enough now that he felt the need to say something aloud. “There’s only one woman who has the right to touch me there,” he said, “and it isn’t you.”

She didn’t remove the hand. What girl wouldn’t remove her hand when the guy said something like that?

Instead she answered, “Who is it, then?”

“My wife,” he said.

“But you’re not married.”

Now, at last, he took her by the wrist. He couldn’t understand why he felt so reluctant to move her hand away. Or why, in the moment that he took her wrist, what he really wanted to do, what he almost did, was move her hand lower, to a place that was already eager to welcome her touch.