His breath puffed against her neck. “Tahu, what’s going on?”
“Not here,” she whispered. “Let’s go back to the kitchen.”
Isaac released her, but linked their hands together as they padded back into the kitchen. Nat crossed to the counter and her phone, promising Vee she’d call her back later. After she disconnected, she hid her face with her palms and groaned.
“Want to tell me who’s on your front porch?” Isaac moved past her and she heard the coffee bag rustle as he picked it up from the counter.
“Reporters, I think.”
Her voice came out muffled, but he must’ve heard her as he swore and came to stand by her side.
“Nat?”
She dropped her hands and straightened. “Someone took photos of us at the game yesterday. Vee called to let me know it’s on the news websites, and probably all over social media by now.”
Isaac picked up her phone and brought up the news site. He scanned the photo and text, his jaw bunching into carved marble the more his flat gaze studied the screen. A couple of times an eyebrow twitched upward, or lines cut across his forehead. After a minute he huffed disdainfully and set the phone back down.
“Did you read the article that went with the photo?” he asked. “And I use the term article lightly since it appears to be have written by someone who graduated from the Journalism School of Unsubstantiated Conjecture.”
“No.” She grimaced, tugging the edges of her robe tighter around her. “But I imagine it implies you and I are engaged in a sordid affair.”
“There’s nothing fucking sordid about us.” Isaac gripped her waist and boosted her up to sit on the counter, stepping between her thighs in one fluid motion.
She opened her mouth to object, then let it fall shut as he enveloped her in a bear hug, rubbing her back with slow, soothing strokes.
“This isn’t an affair,” she said, sliding her hands up the broad expanse of his back and closing her eyes, allowing herself a few endless seconds to just draw on all the strength she found beneath her fingertips.
Would he correct her bold statement of defining the physical, sensual heat that sparked between them as something more than a transient attraction?
“No. It’s not,” he murmured against the side of her throat.
“But I don’t know what this is.” She pulled back, bracing her palms against his pecs, and putting some distance between her body that wanted to keep dissolving into him and her brain that was all hey, reporters on your doorstep!
“Are we friends with benefits?” she continued.
Isaac gave her a lifted eyebrow, are you shitting me? grimace. “What are we? Horny twenty-year-olds?”
“Fine. So are we going steady, then? Dating?” Heavy on the sarcasm. “We haven’t even been on a date, unless you count the time you took Olivia and me to see a rescreening of the Richie McCaw movie and sprang for popcorn.”
“And KFC afterward,” Isaac said deadpan. “In Bounty Bay, that’s considered a five-star date.”
She snorted. “Yeah, if you’re a horny twenty-year-old.”
His smile warmed her from the inside out, and for a moment she forgot what they’d been bantering about and just soaked it in to charge her batteries for later.
Then the wattage of his smile dialed back into seriousness. “I’m sorry I haven’t taken you on a real date. I didn’t want to rush you into something you weren’t ready for.”
Isaac cupped her jaw, forcing her to meet his gaze.
A woman could drown in those beautiful dark-brown eyes. Death by chocolate, but you’d die happy and sated. Assuming that in one lifetime you could ever get enough of staring into Isaac Ngata’s eyes.
Nat now had her doubts, but she also had something more at stake than girlish daydreams that she should’ve already outgrown. Olivia. Her daughter was only one thing preventing her from rushing into the public arena of dating Isaac. Only one thing, but the most important thing.
“This wasn’t the way I’d planned to broach the subject of you—of an us—with Olivia. I thought I’d have time to feel comfortable with us being something real, that I could introduce her slowly to the idea that maybe you and I could be more than friends, that we could ease her into it.” Her mouth wobbled. “But having that crap written about us all over the ’net, being thrust back into the public eye again—those sharks out there will keep circling until they find blood.”
“Then we don’t give them any.”
Isaac tucked a lock of her hair behind her ear, then gripped her by the waist again and lowered her to her feet. “Go and get dressed while I make coffee and call Owen. It’s early Sunday morning and Olivia and Morgan probably won’t even be conscious yet.”
“True,” she said. But her stomach still flip-flopped at the thought of Olivia seeing something online.
“Trust me.” Isaac stepped aside and snagged the bag of coffee. “You’ll feel better equipped to handle this shit storm with some caffeine in your system.” He turned away for a beat and then back again. “Oh—and pack a couple of bags with enough clothes for you and Olivia for three or four days.”
“What? Where are we going?” She must really need the java juice as she had no idea what he was talking about.
“My family’s farm,” he said, measuring out spoonfuls of ground coffee. “The three of us are going to starve those sharks.”
Chapter 15
At just after 9:00 a.m. Nat received a text from Owen.
The Eagle has landed at The Farm, you’re good to go. BTW, she’s pretty grouchy at being woken up before 10 and having her phone confiscated.
Nat just bet she was. But getting her daughter away from the media circus while they were still unaware of Olivia’s whereabouts meant it couldn’t be helped.
“You ready?” Isaac asked, one of the hastily packed bags for her and Olivia in his hand.
“I look ridiculous.” She pulled up the hood of her jacket over her head and the black scarf wrapped around the lower part of her face, and slid on her sunglasses.
“I’m sorry, who is wearing Olivia’s pink baseball cap, girlie sunglasses and a bed sheet wrapped around him like some weird-ass Jedi?”
“Um, that would be you.” Nat picked up the second bag and couldn’t help but chuckle.
Isaac’s idea of screwing with the reporters outside was for them to be unrecognisable in any photos taken as Natalie Fisher and Isaac Ngata. And as screwed up as this morning had become, and as much as she dreaded the heart-to-heart she needed to have with Olivia very soon, a tiny ball of warmth enclosed her heart. She wasn’t facing the sharks alone this time.
A flash of a grin poked out under the pink bedazzled sunglasses Nat had stashed from a fancy dress party. “Let’s go. Mum’s making us brunch.”
They slipped out the back door and locked it. Rounding the corner into the driveway, shouts rang out as reporters and cameramen spotted them. They tossed the bags into the truck’s back seat and leaped inside. He reversed down the driveway, slow and steady, refusing to engage with the reporters yelling at them and the one or two bolder reporters knocking on the truck’s windows. Nat kept her gaze fixed on her knees until Isaac announced it was safe.
They drove in silence the rest of the way to the Ngata farm. Isaac kept his bed sheet on as he pulled into the farm entrance and got out to unlock the gate that was used to keep any stray cows contained on the property. The truck rumbled over the metal cattle guards and Isaac got out again to lock the gate. By this time the first of the media vans had pulled into the driveway after them, but if the ‘private property’ notices weren’t enough to deter them, the locked gate barring the road would.
Isaac got back into the truck and they drove along the winding gravel road toward the farmhouse, concealed behind a stand of tall poplar trees. No chance a stray cameraman would get a money shot even with a long lens, not unless he was precariously perched in a helicopter.
“This is why I came home after the accident,” he said quietly
as the two-storied, sprawling house came into view. He parked next to Owen’s car and killed the engine. “It’s not Mum and Dad’s first rodeo where the media jackals are involved. We didn’t have a gate until five years ago.”
“The publicity was pretty brutal.”
“Worse for you.” He shrugged off the bed sheet and removed the cap and sunglasses. Then he unclipped his safety belt and leaned over, sliding her hood off her head and tugging down the scarf.
“There you are,” he said. “You’re safe here.”
“We’re an imposition.” She glanced toward the farmhouse. It had been a long, long time since she’d had any interaction with Ariana and Pete Ngata.
“Don’t let my mother hear you say that,” he advised and flung open his door. “Wait there.”
“Why?” she asked, but he’d already raced around to her side of the truck and opened her door.
“Because Ma’s watching from the living room window and if she sees me not acting like a gentleman, she’ll box my ears.”
“I can open my own door.” Nat climbed out and came nose to sexy-smelling collarbone.
“I know. But while you’re with me, you need to cater to my fragile male ego and let me take care of you.”
Before she gave in to the temptation to lick the semicircle of tanned skin exposed by the neckline of his T-shirt, he turned away and opened the truck’s rear door.
“Muuuum!” Her daughter’s voice streaking across the parking area from the Ngata’s front door contained traces of the same helpless fury Olivia had experienced during a terrible-two’s tantrum.
While you’re with me…
Just how long was she planning to be with him—and what would her daughter have to say about it?
Olivia stomped across to meet them, her narrowed gaze switching between Isaac and her mother as if a conspiracy was afoot and Nat was the mastermind behind it.
“What’s going on? Why are we here and why did Owen take my phone away?”
Further questions were written all over her face, but the politeness Nat had instilled in her over the years prevented her from asking them in front of Isaac.
“Nat, why don’t you and Olivia walk around to see the horses, and uh, have a chat?” Isaac suggested. “I’ll go see how brunch is coming along.”
“Good idea.” Nat squeezed Olivia’s arm in what she hoped was a soothing gesture.
“Yeah, whatever,” Olivia said. “Because I’m, like, eight years old and seeing a couple of horses will distract me from the fact that no one will tell me what’s going on.” She shoved her fists into her jacket pockets and stalked ahead of Nat toward the four horses grazing contentedly in a large paddock.
Olivia leaned against the wooden gate that opened into the paddock, her chin jutted out at an angle so much like her dad’s when he’d been in a pissy mood that Nat’s heart rolled over, belly up. She swallowed hard, and came alongside her daughter, just watching the horses munching in silence. One of them, a dark brown with a white stripe down his face boy horse—such was Nat’s limited knowledge of the animals—raised his head, whinnied, and headed toward them at a fast trot.
“I bet he’s expecting a treat,” she said. “We should’ve grabbed a couple of apples from Mrs. Ngata.”
Olivia grunted. “She hugged me and told me to call her Ariana or Auntie, and Isaac’s dad Pete or Uncle, not Mr. and Mrs. Ngata. It feels weird, though. We’re not related.”
Nat kept her mouth stitched shut. Olivia knew from living in Bounty Bay all her life the inclusive culture of Māori whānau. We’re not related was a knee-jerk reaction to what her daughter probably suspected—and it wasn’t a good sign.
The horse slowed to a plodding walk and poked his head over the gate, blowing out his warm breath and flapping his fleshy lips, which gained a flicker of a smile from Olivia.
Her daughter had been smiling the afternoon two police officers had arrived at Natalie’s house with the news of Jackson’s death. Olivia was in her room, playing with those fiddly little doll sets with little pieces that ended up sucked into the vacuum’s maw, happy and innocent and loved by both her parents. Until, in an instant, she was reduced to only one parent who loved her. One parent who then had to try and explain to an eight-year-old how Daddy had been in an accident and hurt so badly that he’d died. That, yes, it was kind of like when Mummy and Olivia had found Skittles the cat on the side of the road after a car must’ve hit him. How Mummy had to dig a hole in the garden because Daddy was away on tour. How they’d both cried as they’d put Skittles in an empty box Olivia had decorated. How they’d always remember how much they loved that tortoiseshell cat, and how much she loved them, even though Olivia wouldn’t be able to snuggle with her under the covers or dress her up in dolls’ clothes anymore.
It had carved a deep and bloody slice out of Nat’s heart that sunny afternoon, and she still remembered in aching detail the moments she’d stood outside Olivia’s bedroom door, knowing that in seconds Nat’s words would change the course of her daughter’s life forever.
Nat sucked in a deep breath of air composed of damp grass and fresh manure. She turned her head toward Olivia, who was crooning an apology to the horse about the lack of apples and stroking his velvety soft nose.
Start with the least inflammatory piece of information. “I had Owen bring you here this morning because our house is surrounded by TV news crews and reporters,” she said.
Olivia’s nose scrunched up. “What? Why?”
Next piece of the unfolding disaster. “There must’ve been a photographer at your game yesterday, and they took a photo of you, me, and Isaac together.” Nat’s fingers tightened on the fence’s rough wooden paling. Knowing her luck, a deep splinter was somewhere in her near future.
“So? He’s my coach and you’ve been helping out the team for ages.” Olivia’s forehead drew together in a V. “Oh. Is it because he hasn’t been involved in rugby since the accident?”
A cowardly part of her wished that if there were any way her daughter wouldn’t catch wind of what the photos and accompanying gossipy speculation were about, Nat’d happily agree and leave it at that. But she’d more chance of winning a spot on the All Blacks’ squad herself than keeping Olivia in the dark with social media the way it was.
“Partly,” Nat said. “But the reporter took another photo at the game, one of me and Isaac smiling at each other. It’s made people speculate about what sort of relationship we have.”
“I don’t get it.” Olivia firmly pushed the horse’s head away from her shoulder and turned to Nat. “Why wouldn’t you be smiling at Isaac—you guys are friends now, right?”
“We are.” Nat’s dry swallow was as loud as distant thunder in her ears. “But we’ve also become a little more than friends since he started coaching.”
“More than friends? Is he, like, your boyfriend now?” Olivia’s voice rose half an octave on the word boyfriend.
Keep it to terms a thirteen-year-old can understand. Even though the average understanding of adult relationships for most teenagers nowadays far exceeded what their parents thought they knew about them.
“Yeah. I guess he is. Are you okay with that?” Nat went to touch Olivia’s shoulder, but the girl took a giant step backward out of her reach.
Olivia’s lower lip trembled as she folded her arms tightly across her chest. “What about Dad?”
Nat’s gut twisted as if it were trying to wring every last drop of blood out of her body. Heat flushed into her face as fight-or-flight hormones rushed through her. Jackson was the one name she’d been hoping to avoid in this conversation.
“Honey, you were the one wanting me to go on a date with your teacher earlier in the year.”
The horse tried to nibble on Olivia’s ponytail and she once again pushed his head away, taking another step away from him. “That’s different,” she said. “Mr. Trotter wouldn’t have reporters outside our house. Nobody would care if he was your boyfriend—Dad wouldn’t care either. He’s just some
guy that Dad didn’t even know.”
“I can’t live the rest of my life worried about whether your dad would approve of what men I date. I have been on dates before,” Nat said.
“But you’ve never had a boyfriend before,” Olivia pointed out. “And Isaac isn’t just some random guy, he’s Dad’s best mate.”
“He was Dad’s best mate,” Nat said gently. “And maybe Dad would approve that someone who cared about him, who cares about you, makes me happy.”
Crazy happy, she suddenly realized. The kind of happy that wakes you up each morning and actually has the power to drag you out of bed into the day because you can’t wait to see that person’s smile, hear their voice, feel their skin under your fingertips.
Her daughter’s eyes narrowed into sullen slits. “It’s creepy. He’s creepy. And now everything is ruined because of you and your stupid boyfriend.”
Olivia’s gaze suddenly zipped past Nat to a spot behind her, the girl’s lips pressing together so tightly they appeared bloodless. Nat whipped around.
Isaac stood a couple of feet away from them with an apple.
“Sorry to interrupt, but Richie won’t leave you alone without this. Here.” His face remained stoic as he made a tossing motion with his hand, and then threw the apple underhand to Nat.
She caught it, her cheeks burning from the inside out as she offered it to the horse. Richie plucked the apple from her palm and crunched noisily, a fine cover for the shattering silence of Isaac’s arrival and his unavoidable eavesdropping.
“I’m going back inside,” Olivia announced, and giving Isaac a huge berth, stalked around him and headed in the direction of the house.
Isaac tracked her across the neatly mown lawns that surrounded his parents’ property before turning back to give her a wry, one-raised-eyebrow wince.
“Guess that puts me squarely on her shit list,” he said. “Which means brunch will be fun.”
For the first time in years, Isaac’s mum canceled Sunday lunch. A news crew had showed up at Kauri Whare trying to get an exclusive interview with Sam, who then locked himself in his workshop and sicced Uncle Manu onto them. Tui was currently sunning herself on a beach somewhere in Rarotonga with her friends, but she’d sent a sympathetic text: Bro—Sam texted me the link. Sorry you’ve been dumped in the, and a poo emoticon.
Mend Your Heart (Bounty Bay Book 4) Page 19