Now she came up onto her elbow and brushed her slim fingers around his bruised ribs. “Your injury isn’t that bad, is it?”

He fought with himself for another few moments before he said, “No.” He rolled toward her again. “I don’t have an answer to your question.”

“Why is that a problem? You love football, and to say you’re good at it would be an understatement.” Her brown eyes held puzzlement.

He ran his finger along her arm. “I’m thirty-six.”

He saw understanding dawn on her. “You’re wondering what to do after football.” She paused for a long moment, and he watched something that looked like pity cross her face. That should have bothered him, but instead it made him feel less alone.

“Wouldn’t you like to coach?”

Everyone assumed that was his next step. He pictured himself standing on the sideline, watching the game unfold when he could do nothing about it. “If I can’t be on the field, I don’t want to be anywhere near it.”

“You could start that art collection we talked about at the Morgan Library,” she suggested.

He’d considered that, a lasting legacy of some kind, but—“I’d have to hire experts, take their advice.”

She frowned, coming up against the same wall he kept hitting. “There’s got to be something that interests you other than football.”

He let his fingers drift over the smooth skin of her shoulder again, avoiding eye contact by following their progress. He took the plunge. “Investments. The stock market. Venture capital.”

“I can see you being very good at that. It requires strategy and risk taking.”

She hadn’t laughed or looked shocked, so he confessed some more. “Sometimes I help out my teammates with their investments. I got tired of seeing them get cheated or just fritter away their money.”

“You like to help people as much as I do.”

“I’d have to learn a lot more, take some tests, get licensed.” He smoothed his palm down the curve of her hip.

“And the problem is?”

This was the hardest part. “Studying wasn’t my strong suit in school.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Don’t you memorize all the plays for every game so you don’t have to wear one of those wrist thingies?”

“Not the same. I know football like I know the back of my own hand.”

She snorted, a surprisingly inelegant sound from such a cultured woman. He liked it. “I’ve seen those charts with all the Xs and Os. If you can memorize those, you can handle stocks and bonds.”

“The study guide for the Series 7 test is three inches thick.” He’d taken one look at it and decided he needed to find something else to do for chapter two of his life.

She scanned his face, seeming to peer into the fault lines of his soul with her grave, kind eyes. “If I had a portfolio, I’d hand it over to you without a moment’s hesitation. There’s no one I would trust more than you to take care of my hard-earned money.”

The uncertainty inside him melted away. She’d made it so simple and so clear. He might not be the most sophisticated money manager in the world—yet—but he was 100 percent committed to doing the right thing for anyone who entrusted their money to him.

He wanted to leap out of the bed and do a touchdown dance like DaShawn’s famous Cotton Bowl boogie. Instead, he let a grin spread across his face.

“What?” she asked, her lips curling upward in an echoing smile.

“You are a very smart woman.” He pulled her against him to plant a loud smack of a kiss on her lips. As soon as the season was over, he’d hire a tutor to get started on the Series 7 material.

“Am I?” A shadow dimmed her smile.

He wasn’t having any of her self-doubt, especially not with her soft breasts crushed against his chest. “More than smart. Brilliant. A genius.” He slid his hand under the sheet to take a satisfying handful of rounded behind.

“If that’s where my genius resides, I’m not flattered,” she said, but he heard the tiny gasp in her breath.

All the exhilaration her words had sparked seemed to flow into his cock. He wanted to bury himself inside her and make her feel as good as he did. He slipped his fingers between her legs from behind and made her gasp long and loud.

Miranda lay in the big bed as Luke slept facedown beside her, the muscled weight of his arm heavy over her waist. The steady rise and fall of his back as he breathed was almost hypnotic, while the warmth of his athlete’s body soaked into her bones. She felt as wrung out as he looked, but her brain wouldn’t stop revving. She stared out the window, only half seeing Lady Liberty’s solemn presence as the helicopters and ferries plied their routes back and forth across the variegated dark blues of water and sky.

She knew he’d entrusted her with something private when he’d talked about his parents and then admitted his ambition to be a financial adviser. And his doubts about his ability to handle the examination.

When he’d said he had no answer for his future, she’d felt a wrench of heart-cracking pity. He’d had to cut away everything else in his life to reach this level of success. If he couldn’t play football, what was left? It shocked her to realize how bleak his future must look to him. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him.

He’d confided his past disappointments and shared his future dreams with her. His trust was both potent and treacherous, because she wanted it to mean something.