One thumb absently stroked a line upward to the elastic band of my bra, which I couldn’t help but remember was literally just a centimeter from the bottom swell of my breast. “You’ll be fine,” he stated confidently like he had x-ray powers that told him everything was all right.

His hands dropped from my stomach.

I swallowed, trying to get myself together. “My, uh, keys are in the side zipper of my bag. Can you grab them for me or pass me the bag so I can get them?”

He shot me a look, reaching for my bag off the ground before unzipping the pocket and fishing my keys out, holding them clasped in his palm. “I would drive you home but…” His lips curled over his teeth, almost as if he were going to smack them.

But.

“Don’t worry about it.” I didn’t ask him if he couldn’t. He couldn’t. It was that simple. I didn’t know why exactly, but the clues were there.

He didn’t even blink or look mildly uncomfortable, I understood that much. He nodded once, his lips still tight. “I’ll follow you.”

Follow me home? “That’s all right. I promise. I can make it home in one piece.”

“I’ll follow you.”

Dear God. “I’m sure you have better things to do. Trust me, it’s fine.”

“I don’t. I’ll follow you home,” he insisted. I opened my mouth to argue, but he cut me off. “Get in.”

That was exactly how I found myself leading an international soccer icon to my garage apartment.

Chapter Seventeen

It was the knocking.

It was the freaking knocking that finally made me roll out of bed.

I was going to kill whoever was on the other side of the door. Okay, maybe not kill but seriously maim.

The fact that my feet were dragging behind me at ten o’clock in the morning was the first example of how horrible I felt. Though I knew better, I wasn’t actively stretching any of my muscles, which explained why I felt even worse than the day before.

“Coming!” I barked out when the knocking became even more obnoxious.

Murder. Screw it. Maybe I could get away with a crime of passion.

When I looked through the peephole that my dad had installed the minute after he’d finished helping me move in, I thought about slapping myself in the face to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.

“Coach?” I asked as I unlocked the top lock and then the bottom, pulling the door

open just a crack.

His big German face stared at me through the slit. “Rey is fine. Let me in.”

He would like being called Rey—king in Spanish.

I let him in.

Only after I opened the door, did I think about the fact that I’d just rolled out of bed a second earlier. My hair must have resembled something out of John Frieda’s worst nightmare and my face… puffy. It was definitely puffy and drool-stained, definitely. “I just got up,” I explained weakly, watching him lock the door once he was inside.

“I can tell.” Those brown-green eyes gazed at my face for a second, straying a little lower briefly, before finally taking a look around my small living room. “I called you,” he said absently.

“I put my phone on silent after I called Gardner to tell him I wasn’t coming in,” I explained. First, I’d slept like complete crap. A comfortable position to sleep in had eluded me the entire night, I’d been miserable. When my alarm went off at six and I’d rolled over to turn it off, my ribs had told me very calmly that there was no way I was going for a run, much less making it through practice.

Fortunately in the last four seasons I’d been with the team, I’d missed practice on only one occasion that wasn’t injury related. My grandfather had died, and I’d flown to Argentina for the over-the-top funeral thousands had attended. A country in mourning, a telecaster had called it that night when I’d sat in my hotel room watching the news recap the day. Gardner didn’t even hesitate to tell me to feel better and come back once my mysterious ‘virus’ went away.