“He did a great job building you.” She’d resisted touching him all evening. Now, she reached out and touched his hand. The lightest brush of fingertips, but he turned that big, scarred, sure hand over and took hers, running his thumb over her knuckles like he wanted to memorize them. Like they mattered.
His hands could pluck a spinning missile of a ball out of the air like it was a butterfly. They could shove off a charging defender, and they could tackle, too, when they had to. She’d watched him do it on TV. She’d watched obsessively, in fact. Everything she could find online, in the weeks and months since that last day on the tarmac in Wild Horse, as if she could sense the essence of him from that shadowy form in a helmet and shoulder pads, playing a game she’d never cared about with the kind of skill that made it look easy.
But now, his hands were gentle.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve tried to be excellent in football. Seems to me, now, that I could’ve run away sometimes from being excellent at life.”
“Hey.” Her voice was soft in the gathering dark. “Nobody gets it right all the time. I sure don’t.”
He smiled, and that smile transformed his face like it did every time. Not charming, though, not now. This smile was sweet, and it was all for her. “I don’t know. I’d say you’re pretty excellent.”
“I don’t take chances,” she said. “Since I met you, that’s what I’ve been realizing. Going to North Dakota with you that first time? That was crazy, for me. I’ve never done anything that impulsive before, not since …” She stopped, then went on. “I’ve been sort of … shut down, I realize. Thinking I was safer that way. But how safe is it never to try? How safe is it never to take a risk?” She laughed, trying to lighten the mood. “Never mind. You don’t know the answer. You always try, and you always risk. Three teams. Three towns.”
“Maybe you need balance between those things,” he said. “That’s the other thing I know from football. Wide receiver’s sort of a … star position. You do the spectacular stuff, the flashy stuff. But you know, you’re just one guy out of fifty-three. You’re not the guy who wins the game. Nobody’s the guy who wins the game, not even the quarterback, though don’t tell Blake I said so. All you can do is to prepare as hard as you can every single week, and every offseason, too, and try never to have a bad game. Even if you drop a pass. Which, if you saw my last playoff game …” He saluted her with his glass. “You know I did.”
“Which was overthrown,” she said. “And should’ve had pass interference called, besides.”
“Oh, baby,” he said, “now you’re just being nice.” His eyes were crinkling with his smile, but she could tell that the memory of not catching that ball would have him catching a hundred more in practice. A thousand more.
“You can’t control everything,” she said. “You can only control your preparation. You can’t control what happens once you’re out there.”
“Now, see,” he said, “that’s what we call football wisdom. I’m guessing you’re a little bit like that, too. That you don’t go into anything unprepared.”
“Other than the occasional sexual encounter,” she said, but it didn’t feel angry, even at herself.
His hand tightened on hers. Just a little, but she felt it. “Sometimes, something just hits you. The thunderbolt, Italians call it.”
“Colpo di fulmine.” When he looked surprised, she said, “My dad’s Italian. The thunderbolt? That was my parents. It didn’t stick, but it sure burned hard while it lasted.”
“Ah,” he said. “Another reason you’re cautious.”
“One of them.” She wasn’t going to say this. It was stupid. It was too raw.
Of course, she did say it. “I want to … sink into this,” she told him. “My body wants it so much. The way you touch me. The way you kiss me. The way you look at me. It makes me weak, and I want it. But I need to know if it’s just a thunderbolt, or if it’s …”
“Rain,” he said. “The kind a farmer wants. The kind that soaks the ground and makes things grow. You’re wondering if I can do that. If I even know how.”
“Yes. And maybe if I can, too.”
His smile hurt her heart. “I know you can. Me, though? I don’t know. I know I want you with me. I want to take care of you. I want to see this baby. So I think we should date.”
Whatever she’d expected, it wasn’t this. “Uh … date?”
“Yeah. You know, that thing where you go … I don’t know. To the movies? Bowling?”
“Bowling?” Now, they were both laughing.
“Swimming,” he said. “Out to dinner. Picnics. Help me out here. I’m running out of ideas. Skiing. Whoops. That’s out.”
“Also, it’s spring.”
“Not in the Southern Hemisphere.”
“Uh … OK. Wow. You want to date a pregnant woman, though. And not have sex. Even if you wanted to have sex with a pregnant woman.”
He grinned. “Well, I wouldn’t say I don’t want sex. It’s all about working toward the goal, though. And are you kidding? The pregnant woman works for me. In case you haven’t noticed—you bet she works for me. Partly because that’s my baby growing in there, which gives me all kinds of dangerous feelings, and partly because it’s you, and sorry, but you’re hot as hell.”
“Oh.” She wasn’t sure what to say about that.
“But here’s the deal.” He tightened his hold on her hand again. “I’m kind of an exclusive dater. So if you want to do this, I’m afraid the big, strong new boyfriend is out.”
She did her best to look skeptical, even though her heart was racing. Her heart had never learned to be cynical, it seemed.
“Hey,” he said, “if Owen can do it, I can do it. Even though I know what I’m missing, which makes it harder.”
“So what do we get to do?” she asked. “Besides bowl. Because I notice you’re still holding my hand.”
“I notice you still kissed me back today, too,” he said. “So holding hands and kissing are all good, I guess. And I might not have as much control of my hands as I’ve always thought, so maybe some hands, too, do you think?”
“Oh, do I get a vote here?”
He grinned. “Oh, baby, you know you do. You get the final vote. Every time.” He lifted the hand he held to his mouth and kissed her knuckles, then turned it over and kissed her palm. Which was completely unfair. Which made her just melt.
“So …” She cleared her throat and tried again. “So this exclusivity works both ways.”
“Hey,” he said. “I thought that was the point. That it’s only good if it works both ways. Isn’t that what you told what’s-his-name?”
“You know his name.”
“I don’t want to know his name.”
“And how long are we doing this?” she asked. “This dating thing?”
No laughter now. His eyes, a blue as deep and bright as sapphires, were level when he said, “As long as it takes, that’s how long. Exactly as long as it takes.”