The touch on my bare shoulder was all fingertips.

But I still didn’t turn around. I gave the pot another forceful shake but his fingers didn’t fall off, they just moved further up my shoulder until he was closer to my neck. “You can take the first batch if you want.”

“Turn around,” he requested.

I tried to shrug off his fingers. “I need to keep an eye on this so it doesn’t burn, Kulti.”

He dropped his hand immediately.

“Turn around, Sal,” he said forcefully.

“Wait a minute, would you?” One more hard shake to the pot and I opened the lid.

The German reached around me and turned off the knob on the stove. “No. Talk to me.”

Carefully, I wrapped my fingers around the long oven handle and took a breath to bottle my frustration up.

“You said a few minutes ago you didn’t have a temper,” he reminded me which only made the moment that much more aggravating.

“I’m not mad,” I snapped back a little too quickly.

“No?”

“No.”

He let out a sound that could have been a scoff if I thought German people were capable of making noises like that. “You called me Kulti.”

My fingers flexed around the oven handle. “That’s your name.”

“Turn around,” he ordered.

I tipped my chin up to face the ceiling and asked for patience. A lot of it. Hell, all of it. Unfortunately, no one seemed to answer my prayer. “I’m not mad at you, all right? I just thought…” I sighed. “Look it doesn’t matter. I swear I’m not mad. You don’t have to tell me anything you don’t want to. I’m sorry I asked.”

No response.

Of-freaking-course not.

Right. Right.

Patience. Patience.

“I took the position because I had to,” that deep voice I’d heard a hundred times on television said. “I didn’t do anything for almost a year except almost ruin my life, and my manager said I needed to come out of retirement. I had to do something, especially something positive after my DUI.” Two warm hands that could only have belonged to him covered my shoulders. “There weren’t many things to choose from—“

“Is that because you didn’t want to be in the spotlight anymore?” I asked, remembering an earlier conversation we’d had.

He made a positive grunt. “Coaching was the only thing we could agree on. Short and temporary, it seemed the best fit.” Kulti paused as the pads of his thumbs brushed over my trapezius muscles. That made me snicker, and it made the German dig his thumbs into my muscles. “A friend of mine suggested women’s soccer. I did some research—“

I had to save that for later. I wasn’t surprised he admitted he had to do research on women’s soccer. Of course he wasn’t familiar with it.

“—and the U.S. women kept coming up as consistently the best,” he finished, but something nagged at me.

Something didn’t add up.

“Why didn’t you just join the national team staff?” I asked even as his thumbs really dug deep into my shoulders and holyfreakingcrap, it felt great. It’d been months since the last time I’d gotten a massage.

The German let out a sigh that reached all the way to my toes. “Is anything ever enough for you?” His voice was resigned.

He knew the answer. “No.” Then I thought about it and his reluctance and I gasped. “They didn’t want you?”

“No, you little idiot.” He called me an idiot even as he gave me a massage that made my knees go weak, so I couldn’t take it to heart. Actually, it was sort of his own affectionate way of talking to me. “Of course they would have wanted me if I had asked.”