She’d stopped studying the sink and switched her attention to the fridge shelves, possibly about to suggest places for cans five and six. That was closer to acknowledging he was alive.
Progress.
“How’s Olivia getting on at Bounty Bay High?” he said.
Asking a single mum about her kid was a guaranteed way to get her talking, according to the guys’ rulebook on dating—not that he was trying to date Nat. Only to have a civil exchange.
“She loves it.”
“Good. It’s a good school. With good students, and, ah, good staff, too.”
Someone smack him upside the head with a thesaurus. Isaac loaded the final two cans into the fridge and bumped the door shut with his hip.
“So I’ve heard.”
He caught the corner of her mouth twitching. Was that almost a smile for him? His heart gave a girlish pirouette.
“They’ve got a great summer and winter sports syllabus, and their gymnasium is top notch. I’ll bet PE will turn out to be her favorite subject, like her—” Isaac’s brain finally caught up with his runaway tongue.
Like her dad.
He snapped his mouth shut but it was too late.
The upward mouth twitch vanished and her gaze, which for a moment he could’ve sworn held a glimmer of warmth, hardened to sheet ice.
“Speaking of Olivia,” she said with a tight, tooth-baring smile, “I’d better go and check on her and Morgan.” Then, spine rigid, she stalked from the kitchen.
Isaac didn’t attempt to stall her longer—because what the hell could he say? He just shook his head at his big fat mouth and set about dumping party ice around the remaining beers inside the cooler.
“Yo. Need help?”
Sam strode into the kitchen and walked straight to Owen’s pantry with the familiarity born of years of friendship. Since Owen had spent the latter part of his teenage years living with the Ngata family and helping raid their ma’s stash of Sunday baking, Isaac figured it was fair turnaround. His brother opened the pantry door, snickered, then snatched something off the shelf and stuffed it into his mouth.
“Awesome cupcakes,” he said around vigorous chewing. “Must be Nat’s.”
“Who’ll carve off your nuts if she was saving those for later.”
Isaac cracked open a beer. He damn well deserved one now.
“As if I’m scared of the frizzy little blonde like you are.” Sam licked frosting off his thumb, then stilled, half turning toward the kitchen door. “Was she in here?” he asked in a whisper. “Did you talk to her?”
What were they, bloody twelve? Isaac grimaced and took a swallow of beer. It slipped coolly down his throat but seemed to burn like acid in his gut. “If by talk you mean I asked if there was room in the fridge and she said no.”
“Shit. And then she bailed?”
“Then she bailed.” Isaac took another swallow and screwed up his nose. “Here, you want this?” He offered the can to Sam who shrugged and took it.
“Still can’t?” his brother asked.
Isaac’s gut twisted around the two sips of beer. “No.”
Add “drink alcohol” to the list of things he couldn’t do around Natalie. A list that included “avoid sounding like an asshole” and “act like a normal person.”
“She sees me with a beer and gives me that injured animal caught in a trap but will bite your hand off look. You know the one,” he added.
Sam tipped up the can and drank, then wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Nope,” he said. “Nat likes me. Most of the time anyway. Sorry, bro. That’s a look she must reserve for you.”
Teasing mixed with sympathy filtered through Sam’s tone. But there was nothing either of them could do to change Nat’s icy reaction to Isaac. Nothing he could do—nothing he would do. Avoidance was easier for them both. Better for them both.
A little part of him had hoped today might be different.
“Guess it is.” He picked up the cooler. “I’ll take this onto the back deck.”
“Zac,” Sam said.
Isaac froze on the spot. His brother rarely called him by his childhood nickname, not unless he wanted his ass kicked. Sam stared at him with his own version of injured animal eyes, the world-weary gaze of a man whose reputation had also been blackened because of Isaac’s past yet never once complained about it.
“One day it’ll be okay between you two again,” Sam said. “Somewhere, deep down, she knows it wasn’t your fault.”
“Sure.”
That was the one thing Sam had wrong. It would never be okay between him and Natalie, not after everything that’d happened. It would never be okay, and it would always be his fault.
Chapter 2
Nat could do this. She totally could.
Hands on hips, she stood in front of wall number one—the scraped, stripped, sanded, prepped and primed wall of her house—and continued with her pep talk. If she could survive the most uncomfortable barbecue ever last weekend, she could survive repainting her house. Which—suck it up, buttercup—was a single-story old villa and needing only a small extension ladder for her to reach under the eaves.
House painting. Piece of cake.
Even though her shoulders were stiff from being hunched over a sewing machine all day. Even though there were only two hours of decent light left and she had to figure out dinner at some point. Even though the last thing she wanted was to pry open the can of sagebrush green at her feet and pick up a paintbrush.
But if she didn’t do it, nobody would do it for her. Which meant she and Olivia would spend another winter in a house desperately requiring some TLC. Thank God she and Jackson replaced the leaky roof the year before he died.
Nobody doing it for her wasn’t precisely true. Olivia had helped, enthusiastically at first and then with waning interest. Gracie and Vee came over one afternoon for a ‘prepping party,’ and Gracie had offered to ask Owen’s dad, who was handy where her fiancé wasn’t, to help with the job. But pride kept Nat from accepting. This was her house—her and Jackson’s home. She’d been a widow for five years, and she was used to doing the hard stuff alone.
Footsteps scuffed along the driveway. Nat glanced up to see Olivia walking toward her, hunched under the weight of her schoolbag, a frown that could sour milk on her face. She’d inherited her father’s full lips and a smile that could light up a room. She’d also been blessed with his natural athleticism. Sadly for Olivia, Natalie’s genes had contributed curly hair and hazel-green eyes, and a tendency to be mulishly stubborn.
Raising a teenage girl as a solo mum? Piece of cake. If that cake was rock hard, burned to a crisp, full of weevils, and iced with frosting made of salt instead of sugar.
“Hi,” she called, prizing up the paint lid. “How was your day?”
An unoriginal parenting question, but Nat could try to inject some positivity into her daughter’s mood. Most times Olivia only needed an opening before she’d launch into a detailed dissection of everything her teachers said, everything her friends said, everything her friends said about her other friends, and what friend had turned into the world’s worst drama queen. Another inherited trait from her dad—Olivia was an extrovert with a capital E.
“I hate today.” Olivia’s nose crinkled. “I want today to die a horrible, painful death and then I want to blow it up with dynamite and then stab it until it dies again.”
“Must’ve been a pretty awful day.”
That earned Nat a look that said she was the dumbest of all the dumb people Olivia knew, but that her daughter would humor her since she’d been raised to be kind to all creatures no matter if they only had two brain cells to rub together.
“Yup.”
“Want to tell me about it?” Nat crouched and stirred the paint.
“Meh.” Olivia gave a noncommittal roll of her shoulders and wandered over to sit on the veranda edge, shrugging off her schoolbag and dumping it on the ground.
Uh-oh. Single-word grunts were not a good sign. Expe
rience with Olivia’s adolescent moods had taught Nat silence was often the best way to drag out whatever was bothering her. She poured a measure of paint into the smaller, handy-sized paint tin and got to work. The slap-slap-slap of paint on clapboard was soothing and she’d only covered a small section of wall before Olivia couldn’t hold her tongue any longer.
“Mrs. Crawford said there won’t be a girls’ rugby team this season if she can’t find a new coach to take over for Ms. Pierce.”
Nat’s brushing slowed, then stopped. “Honey, I thought you were planning to play hockey and netball this winter?”
“Netball’s for girlie girls—mean girls like Amanda Trotter who’d scream at getting tackled or muddy. Ms. Pierce says I’d be awesome at rugby because it’s in my genes.”
Nat had met Livvy’s physical education teacher at the parent/teacher interviews. Out of the ten-minute meeting which was supposed to be about the student’s progress in class, Ms. Pierce had spent eight of those minutes rhapsodizing about Jackson’s prowess on the rugby field. Nat physically had to pin her tongue down with her teeth to prevent herself from pointing out that while Olivia was Jackson’s daughter, she wasn’t an All Black and hadn’t shown any signs of wanting to follow in her father’s footsteps.
Up until now.
“Why can’t she continue to coach?”
“She’s preggers.” Livvy pulled a face. “And she’s taking early leave because her doctor said she had to.”
Nat loaded up the paintbrush and attacked the next section of clapboard. “So. Rugby? What changed your mind?”
Livvy drew her knees up on the veranda step and rested her chin on top. “Remember when we’d go down to the school fields with Dad and Isaac sometimes? They taught me how to throw and catch, and Dad would tuck me under one arm and the ball under the other, then Isaac would chase us both all the way down to score a try.”
Nat’s stomach rolled over at Isaac’s name. Though Jackson and Isaac had started out as teenaged rivals, they challenged and drove each other to succeed, and somehow during their early adulthood, Jackson came to consider Isaac family. Nat didn’t have any family, so she’d happily pulled up her shallow roots and moved herself and six-month-old Olivia north to Bounty Bay, where her new husband wanted to settle out of the city rat race.
“That must be a good memory,” she said diplomatically. “You were only three or four then.”
And it’d only happened a few times since Jackson’s grueling training schedule meant he was away from home for weeks at a time.
“Dad said I got too big to carry when I started school.” Olivia’s mouth kicked up in the corner. “But he taught me how to pass and catch a rugby ball. Even though I sucked.” She grinned over at Nat. “Almost as much as you did.”
Nat pointed her brush at Olivia. “Hey. You know I’m allergic to sports.”
“Yet, duh, you fell in love with a future All Black.”
“I didn’t know he was aiming to be an All Black until we’d been on three dates, and by that time it was too late.” She dipped the brush back into the paint, sucked in a deep breath, and tightened her grip on the handle. “Your dad teased me about not recognizing him for years, but I think he secretly liked that I was never one of his groupies.”
“What’s a groupie?”
Nat chuckled. “In this case, women who follow rugby teams around to ogle them and squeal like you do over some greasy-haired boy band.”
“I do not squeal over boy bands,’ Olivia said then added, “and ewww. Did women really ogle my dad? I just threw up in my mouth a little.”
Her daughter wasn’t the only one. The national rugby team was New Zealand’s equivalent to rock stars, and she knew from whispers among other women either married or involved with the squad that a lot more than ogling and squealing could take place at the less formal after-match functions. What goes on tour, stays on tour. Nat had ignored the innuendos because Jackson and Isaac always kept each other in line. Isaac was baffled by the attention, and Jackson found it hilarious.
Nat stroked paint on a fresh section of clapboard. After a moment’s pause, her daughter stood and gave two huffing breaths out of her nose—a sure signal she was about to say something Nat wouldn’t like.
“What about Isaac?” Olivia asked.
The brush stuttered along the board, forcing Nat to smooth over it a second time. She tried to keep her tone light, as if groupies and Isaac’s involvement with one hadn’t cost them everything. “He had his share of groupies back then, too, I’m sure.”
“No, Mum. I meant, what about Isaac being the coach for the girls’ rugby team?”
Nat dropped the paintbrush, rocked back on her heels to avoid paint splatter, and ended up sprawled on her butt.
“Mum! Are you okay?”
“I’m fine.” Nat got to her feet and picked up the paintbrush, now covered in grit and bits of leaf. Dammit. Isaac coach Olivia and the other girls wanting to play? “I don’t think he’d be a good choice for a coach.”
“Isaac’s the perfect choice. He knows everything about the game. Everything.”
“He does. But he also works full-time and helps out his mum and dad on their farm.” At least, that’s what he used to do in his downtime back when they’d been friends. “He’s too busy.”
“We could ask.”
Nat’s stomach curled into a little ball full of prickles. “No, we couldn’t.”
Not in this lifetime or any other would she ask that man for anything. But she couldn’t say that to Olivia. She’d promised Jackson to protect their daughter as best she could, and she’d protected her from as many of the rumors about her dad’s friend as possible.
“Honey…” She gentled her voice. “You’ve seen his limp. Now that you’re older”—she sucked in a steadying breath—“you can understand why he hasn’t set foot on a rugby field since Dad’s accident. Why he seems so angry all the time.”
“Oh. Because he’ll never play professionally again? I didn’t think of that.” Olivia’s brow crumpled. “Though, when I see him I think he looks sad, not angry. I bet he misses Dad, too.”
Nat felt as if her skin had shrunk to two sizes too small. Yeah. She’d go with that reason, then. “I’m sure he does. So let’s not poke the sleeping bear, okay? We’ll figure out someone else who can coach your team.”
Someone who wouldn’t give Nat heart palpitations at the thought of him being anywhere near her or her daughter.
Isaac Ngata woke alone in his bed, as he had every morning since his life had screwed up beyond all reason, and stared at the ceiling.
“I don’t want to adult today,” he told the empty room.
No one answered, not even the annoyingly cheerful birds who usually heralded the new day by trilling outside his window.
Isaac scrubbed a hand down his face, palm prickled by thick stubble that had sprouted on his jaw over the weekend, and swore. Where the hell had his weekend gone and how had it become Monday so damn fast? Oh yeah. He stretched out his legs, wincing as his left knee ached in protest. He sometimes worked six days a week so ‘weekend’ was a misnomer. And Sunday was hardly a day of rest once he’d finished helping out his dad on the farm.
He sat upright and gingerly swung his legs out from under the covers. Bare feet hitting the cold floor, he winced again. He sat for a few more seconds, head in hands, waiting for the last tentacles of the nightmare to release him.
Jackson’s laughter sounding as if it were piped down a long tube. The smell of caramelized sugar and cheap flowery perfume in the night air. Misty rain on Isaac’s face. His heart thudding painfully in his chest, his face growing hotter because he’d never been so fucking pissed at his best mate. The shriek of tyres on wet pavement, a blinding flash of headlights—an instant of pain so beyond anything he’d ever experienced on or off the rugby field—then a hazy, swirling gap in his memory that equaled nothing.
Isaac shoved the rest of the covers aside and lurched to his feet. His knee gave an almighty throbb
ing roar of you fucking idiot and he fell back again onto the mattress. He swore, using every one of the curse words he’d heard in locker rooms over the past twenty-nine years since he’d first pulled on his boots as a five-year-old. He lay still for a moment, waiting out the pain until it dialed back to the old and familiar ache.
“Next time, dickhead,” he told the ceiling, “remember you’re not that guy anymore.”
The guy who could run like the fucking wind, cliché or not. The guy who’d lived and breathed rugby as if it were the love of his life, a woman after whom he’d lusted for years in secret, then courted and wooed and worked his ass off to win—only to have her snatched away from him in an instant.
“Yeah, yeah. Get your pitying ass off the bed and get moving.” Isaac stood again—this time sloooowly. “Gotta stop talking to myself, too. Make a note, Siri. Screw it.”
He huffed a breath out of his nose, the closest he came nowadays to laughter, and glanced at his empty nightstand. He’d forgotten to take his ever-present phone out of his jacket pocket last night. Because there was no one there to witness it, he allowed himself the weakness of hobbling like the gimp he was out into the hallway to the old-fashioned coat stand near the front door. Digging around in the pocket of his leather jacket, he located the cool edge of his phone and dragged it out. No missed calls, no texts, no surprise.
Movement through the door’s frosted glass caught his attention, and he froze as someone stepped onto his porch. Partially hidden by his jacket and an oilskin stockman’s coat he wore in winter when he and his dad rode into the bush to muster cattle, he couldn’t back away without whoever was out there seeing him move.
Apparently whoever was outside hadn’t spotted the ‘No Salesmen’ sign beside the doorbell, because he or she reached out a hand and ding-dong!—there went his morning ritual of coffee, coffee, and more coffee. Now he’d be forced to tear some asshole salesman a new one, thereby delaying his first caffeine hit that would have put him in a mellower mood. Or as mellow as Isaac ever got when dealing with strangers, since people generally sucked.
Mend Your Heart (Bounty Bay Book 4) Page 2
