“Make sure there’s room for the Holy Ghost between the kids when they’re dancing,” one of the teachers had jokingly advised while he’d skulked around the school hall.
His nape pricked, the tingles sweeping down his spine as he remembered how close he’d been to Nat behind the changing rooms. She’d touched him, and the sensation of her fingertips on his skin had sizzled straight to his dick—hey, he was a guy—but the pleasurable sensation had frozen at the realization there was a six-foot, ninety-kilo ghost planted squarely between them. A ghost named Jackson.
A ghost who wouldn’t approve of Isaac pushing the boundaries with his wife. He should get as far away from Natalie as possible, starting with returning to his truck and driving home to his empty house. Beer o’clock, maybe followed by a cold shower.
Instead he strode around the corner of the house into the backyard. Natalie had returned the brush to the tray and was scrubbing a rag along her hip. She looked up with a frown as he gave her a wide berth and stopped in front of the section of wall she’d been working on.
“Wrong time of year for painting your house,” he said.
“Yeah. A really bad time with the crappy weather we’ve been having.”
He didn’t miss the relief coloring her voice at his topic change or another sideways glance as she continued to dab at her jeans. With a crinkle of her paint-speckled nose, she tossed the rag down by the paint tray and half turned toward him, folding her arms tight across her chest.
“I started prep work back in February, but with everything going on…” She shrugged. “It’ll get done when it gets done. The house has lasted seven years without new paint. It can wait a few more months.”
Seven years ago Isaac, Jackson, and Sam got together over a holiday weekend and, with much natural competitiveness spurring on the three of them, had Jackson’s house repainted by Monday lunchtime. Natalie had asked why they didn’t just pay to have the house repainted. As if. No self-respecting Kiwi male would pay someone to do work around his property when he and his mates were capable of doing it themselves.
Apparently, some of that attitude had rubbed off on Natalie. He knew Jackson had provided well for his wife and daughter in his will, though it was common knowledge that Nat had earmarked most of Jackson’s legacy for Olivia and a substantial amount was set up in trusts for rugby scholarships and charities. But the woman was stubbornly self-reliant.
“I’ll come after training tomorrow and give you a hand,” he said. “We’ll get this back wall done and start on the other side.”
“That’s not necessary,” Nat said. “But thank you for the offer.”
Should’ve seen that coming a mile off. He mirrored her body language and gave her his best don’t fuck with me stare.
Which worked with everyone other than Natalie. She’d gotten her mojo back in the past few minutes and stood hipshot, returning her own version of a don’t fuck with me stare.
“It wasn’t an offer. It was a statement of intent. I’ll be here after training to help you. Unless you have a valid reason why a friend shouldn’t help out a friend when they need it?”
“We’re not friends.”
She was right. “No. There’s that whole attraction thing we’re not talking about.”
Yep, he was going there. Again.
Because against all better judgment he wanted her to admit he wasn’t the only one who felt this inexplicable pull from deep in the gut. He wanted to know he wasn’t the only one who was tempted by a taste of forbidden fruit. It was as simple and complex as that.
“Fine. Let’s talk about it, then.”
She closed the short distance between them, and the faded trace of her perfume got stronger. God, but she smelled good. The kind of good that if she’d been any other woman he might’ve hauled her into his arms to discover if she tasted as amazing as she smelled.
“You,” Natalie said, back to the hands-on-hips stance, “are a handsome man—an attractive man. That, I agree with. The same way I agree that the Hemsworth brothers are attractive men. Doesn’t mean that I’m attracted to them, though, and it doesn’t mean that I’m attracted to you.”
“That you chose to include half-naked photos of me on that flyer means something.”
“It means I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to ensure Olivia gets to play rugby this year.” Then her brow crinkled and her gaze shuttered for a moment. “Though the photos, um, may not have been one of my better ideas.”
Wait. He scanned through his memories of the Christmas volleyball game—and Rangi-Marie and some of his other younger relatives taking photos. Huh. Not at all suspicious. Surely a woman who blushed looking at his underwear advert would be unlikely to opt to deal with potential personal questions from the girls’ parents? But a woman who didn’t want to throw the real culprit under the bus—a teenage culprit both he and Nat knew they needed on the team—seemed a more likely scenario.
“Because people might get the wrong idea, thinking I’m just a pretty face with a hot body who’s hoping to tap some of the girls’ mums if they bring their daughters to practice tomorrow?”
Nat rolled her eyes. “Some of those women wouldn’t need a printed invitation to offer to assist you in any way you needed.”
“Really.”
She shrugged and pulled a face. “There are couple of solo mum potentials for you to pick from, but the rest of us married mothers will have to be satisfied just looking at your pretty face and hot body.”
His gut clenched at her emphasis on the word married. “You still consider yourself married?”
Nat’s gaze zipped down to her left hand and Isaac’s gaze followed. Her long, slender fingers were splayed on her hip bone, with only the faintest change of color in her tan on her third, ringless finger. She obviously hadn’t worn her wedding band for a while.
“Some days,” she said quietly, the previous sass vanishing from her tone. “Something will happen in my day and for a split second I catch myself thinking to make a mental note of it to tell Jackson. Then I remember he’s gone and I’m lost somewhere in no-man’s land where I’m not married but not…interested in pursuing a romantic relationship either.”
Her gaze flicked up from her hand and landed square on his mouth, lingering there for a moment before meeting his eyes once more.
“Romance is overrated,” he said.
Overrated, overcomplicated, and full of ways to fuck you over.
“Yeah.” She offered him a small smile. “And it’s not like I have men queuing up at my door. They seem to know they could never compete with my Jackson.”
Isaac took a step back from her, shoving his fists into his jacket pockets. He wasn’t just her Jackson, though. There were parts of her husband that’d never belonged to Nat, never even known by Nat. And Isaac couldn’t—wouldn’t—hurt her more.
“They’re some big boots to fill,” he said.
He needed to leave, needed space to fill his lungs to capacity instead of this struggle to breathe. Needed to continue to hold his tongue under lock and key, and to keep his damn hands to himself.
“I’m going to finish painting your house. It’s the right thing to do.” Isaac took another step backward. “He would’ve wanted me to help you, so please let me.”
“All right, then,” Natalie said.
He dipped his head. “See you tomorrow at practice.”
He spun on his heel and walked back to his truck. He’d lost many things after the accident, but his ability to decipher a woman’s interested signals wasn’t damaged. Nat was attracted to him, but she didn’t want to be. She objected to it and rejected those feelings—that, he understood.
Jackson’s ghost was a possessive bastard that wouldn’t hesitate to use guilt and grief to manipulate both of them.
Chapter 7
Natalie and early Saturday mornings weren’t compatible. Especially as she’d tossed and turned so much during the night that she awoke at four in the morning with the sheets trying to strangle her. Sleep
had been evasive afterward, since every time her eyelids fluttered shut Isaac appeared in Technicolor behind them.
Somehow she’d managed to fall into such a deep state of unconsciousness that she’d slept through her alarm and woke only when Olivia pounded on her bedroom door, saying they had thirty minutes until training started. Nat floundered out of bed and into the shower, where she shampooed and conditioned in record time, hopped out to speed dry, took one look at the stubble on her shins, swore, and jumped back into the shower with her razor. By the time she’d thrown on shorts and a T-shirt, Olivia was back at her bedroom door yelling that she’d get a ride to training with Morgan and Owen, and they’d see her there.
Nat grimaced at her reflection as the front door slammed. Her curls rioted around her face thanks to a frantic encounter with the blow-dryer, and tying them up in a ponytail only made her look like a frizzy blond Medusa. Surely a bad hair day was a plausible excuse for missing practice? Nope. Not when Isaac Ngata was the coach.
Two things got her legs moving into the kitchen where she gulped down a quick breakfast of a banana and yoghurt.
One: She wouldn’t let Olivia and the other girls down.
Two: She wouldn’t let Isaac think she’d taken all that silliness of them being attracted to each other seriously.
Even though, dammit, she was attracted to him. Just a little bit, a fraction attracted. In the way a moth is unable to resist the lure of a bright light and bashes its stupid insectoid head against the window to get to it.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” she chanted under her breath, locking up the house and driving to Bounty Bay High School. Stupid, and you are not a stupid woman.
She pulled into the school’s parking lot. Nat found a spot, grabbed her backpack, and jogged across the asphalt to the edge of the playing fields, checking her watch at the same time. Two minutes past eight so she was only two minutes late and—whoa. She stumbled to a halt, her mind struggling to comprehend what she saw ahead.
Girls.
Lots and lots of girls.
Surrounded by a sizeable crowd of onlookers, which at a quick glance appeared to consist of eighty percent smiling female, nineteen percent irritated male, and a one percent giving nothing away coach who looked annoyingly sexy in a tight black T-shirt that molded his frame to impressive proportions.
Nat hurried across the grass, picking Olivia and Morgan out of the crowd of girls, laughing with their friends. Not far from them stood the taller figure of Rangi-Marie, who gave Nat a raised eyebrow greeting and a grin before turning back to the three other teenage girls in her group. Nat gave the hovering parents a wide berth and circled toward the changing rooms, counting the girls as she walked. Thirty-eight or forty was her best guess since nervous excitement rippled through them and they kept shifting positions.
She set her backpack down on the grass and peeled off her light jacket.
“I don’t know whether to say thanks or tear you a new one for the turnout today.”
Isaac’s deep voice behind her cut through the rest of the chatter on the field and singed her eardrums. Nat carefully folded her jacket and placed it on top of the bag before turning. Her traitorous heart gave another little skip at the sight of him. It was still so new, this Isaac in her world. She was continually off balance near a cliff edge around him.
She moistened her dry lips, wishing she’d stopped to apply even a little lip gloss since the majority of female parents looked as if they were about to head off on a date night. “Neither is necessary. I just let people know; the turnout is all on you.”
She angled her head toward the girls clustered in brightly colored T-shirts and shorts, some jogging on the spot, impatient to start. “They’re keen.”
The corner of his mouth kicked up. “That’s because they haven’t done the work yet. They’re posturing for each other and their audience.”
Nat gave a group of mums closest to them the side-eye. All four women had appreciative gazes trained on Isaac, one of them blatantly eyeballing his butt. Not that she was one to judge when the black track pants he wore were cut in such a way to emphasize it. “I think you’re the biggest drawcard for the audience.”
Isaac’s hint of a smile flatlined.
“Yeah,” he said. “You’re probably right. A rubbernecking, see how far the mighty have fallen kind of show.”
Which wasn’t what she’d meant, though there was truth to his words if the expressions on some of the other adults’ faces were any indication. The thought fired steel bullets into her spine and she straightened, raising her chin in challenge at a couple of nearby dads who were giving Isaac the stinkeye.
“You’re doing a good thing, so who gives a monkey’s ass what anyone standing on the sidelines thinks? Let’s put these girls through their paces.” Without thinking, she lifted a fist for him to bump.
Isaac tapped her fist with his, and the mouth-corner twitch returned and grew into a grin. It only lasted a second before he turned to the field and blew his whistle, but it was enough to start her heart pounding all over again.
Twenty minutes of warm-ups, and three sets of drills later, Isaac had metaphorically sifted the wheat from the chaff. It became glaringly obvious which girls were there because they loved the game, which girls were there because they were interested in participating but needed a skill upgrade, and which girls were there for less altruistic reasons. Amid cries of relief and laughter, Isaac called a break and was immediately surrounded by chattering parents. Two minutes before the break ended, he excused himself and loped over to where Nat was watching from the sidelines.
“Any ideas,” he asked as he drew up alongside, “of how to cut thirty-nine girls down to twenty-two?”
Nat took another sip from her water bottle, then rolled the cool plastic side over her sweaty forehead. “A few won’t show up at practice during the week. The rest?” She scanned the girls, some of them still enthusiastic even covered in grass stains and flecks of mud, others with heads downcast and making grumbling noises. “Think of a way to make them prove their commitment to joining the team.”
After a game of touch rugby—with a couple of the dads and suitably attired mums playing with the girls at Isaac’s insistence—Isaac declared the practice over.
He blew his whistle, planting himself solidly in front of the milling parents and girls. Nat stood by her backpack, watching as all eyes turned toward Isaac’s unsmiling face.
“Before you go,” he said, “I’d like to say thanks to all the girls for showing up here this morning, some of you dragging your parents out of bed to accompany you. Next week is going to be different.”
He folded his arms across his chest. “Parents, if you’re not here to participate with the girls at training, stay home. You’re here, you train. Simple. Your daughters aren’t eight-year-olds who need parental approval from the sidelines. Girls, I need fifteen of you on the field at one time and seven to eight reserves, but I won’t turn away anyone who wants to play badly enough. The takeaway phrase here is wants to play badly enough. When you’re with me, you’re here to give a hundred percent. If you can’t do that, stay home and enjoy your Saturday morning sleep in.”
Grumbles spread through the crowd, and Isaac blew his whistle again.
“I’m not finished.” His dark gaze deadly serious, he looked from one girl to another.
Some shrank under his attention, others seemed to grow taller.
“It’s a no-brainer that in order to play a sport where you’re required to spend eighty minutes running up and down this field, you need to be fit. Many of you aren’t fit enough, so every day this week, I want you here at seven. That’s a.m., not p.m.”
A chorus of groans arose from the girls.
“We’ll work on that fitness level,” Isaac continued, raising his voice to be heard. “Sometimes it’ll be laps of the field, sometimes a run down to the beach and back, sometimes it’ll be more drills. This is how it is. Don’t show for more than two mornings in a row, you’re gone.
Miss Monday or Wednesday after-school practice, you’re gone. Then we’ll see who’s got the rugby-ball-sized lady nuts to make to the team next Saturday.”
Nat bit back a smile as the crowd’s grumbles turned to laughter. The girls collected the cones and rugby balls, and helped return them to the equipment room. Isaac caught up with Nat, Olivia, and Morgan as they collected their gear, ready to leave the field.
“I’m just going to shoot home for a quick shower and then I’ll come to you,” he said.
Worse than the women ogling him this morning, Nat’s imagination supplied a detailed picture of rivulets of soapy water streaming down Isaac’s tanned skin as he beckoned her with a finger to join him—
But her expression must’ve looked blank, as his brow crumpled and he added, “To help you paint, remember? We agreed I’d give you a hand yesterday.”
Oh, right. The help the poor widow because of a warped sense of duty agreement. Now she remembered.
“Isaac’s helping you paint?” said Olivia at her side. “Cool. So can I go to Morgan’s house, then? We’ll run there for extra exercise.”
“Um, I suppose so.” Which in mum-speak translated to oh crap nonononono. Painting with Isaac would be hard enough. Painting without Olivia or anyone else around, impossible. But her mind blanked on any plausible excuse to keep her daughter home.
“Okay, see ya.”
Olivia and Morgan whirled around and raced across the grass. Leaving her alone—and still without a viable excuse to put off a painting session—with Isaac.
“Is thirty minutes long enough for you to set things up?”
Nat jumped. She’d been staring after the girls and hadn’t noticed him moving closer, her backpack in his hands. He offered it to her and she quickly took it, swinging it onto her shoulder.
“I think so, though I might hop in the shower, too.” She ducked her head, nose crinkling as the faint smell of sweat and extra-strength deodorant rose from her T-shirt. “I stink.”
Mend Your Heart (Bounty Bay Book 4) Page 8
