Very few excuses given to Ariana Ngata for missing the Sunday family roast would fly. If you were in another part of the country or overseas, you got a pass. If you were in hospital undergoing surgery with Death observing, scythe in hand, you got a pass. Any other reason—hangover, forgot, other plans, slept in—forget about it.

And not showing up at midday to the farm because you were calling yourself ten kinds of fucking fool and you didn’t want to be roasted alongside the leg of lamb in Ma’s oven would result in a maternal guilt trip that would be worse than just enduring the two-hour meal.

Isaac sat at the family dining table laden with roast lamb, potatoes, pumpkin, kumara, and various salads to make the meal stretch further. He ate with methodical concentration. Head down, food in mouth, only chance of avoiding family drama. His ma and dad were positioned at either end of the large kauri dining table. Across from Isaac sat Tui, doing her sisterly best to get a rise out of him. Bookending her was Uncle Manu and one of his mum’s church singleton older ladies who didn’t have any family remaining in Bounty Bay.

Seated next to Isaac, and eating like he hadn’t been fed in a month, was Sam. And beside him, Tony Johnson, one of the Ngatas’ foster kids who’d spent nearly a year with them when Isaac and Sam were still in primary school. Tony—or TJ as the Ngatas called him—had a fascination with horses as a kid, and Isaac’s dad’s patience teaching the boy to ride had paid off, since Tony was now one of New Zealand’s top jockeys.

God bless TJ, since this flying visit with his ‘ma and dad’ meant Isaac was currently avoiding the interrogation spotlight while the smaller man glowed under it. Until TJ took too long in chewing his last mouthful of lamb, and Isaac’s little sister threw him under the bus.

“How’s the coaching going?”

Anyone who didn’t know Tui would think her sugar wouldn’t melt smile reflected the same sweet and harmless personality beneath it. Spoiler alert: it didn’t. Tui Ngata was fierce and a little wild, too much hurricane bottled inside her for many people to handle. Not her big brothers, though.

“Good.” Isaac set down his fork and took a sip of his wine. “How many tattoos have you got now?”

“Touché, bro.” Tui poked out her tongue and laughed.

It was enough to remind their ma that Isaac hadn’t contributed much to the conversation. Not that he usually did, since Isaac was like his dad, while his siblings took after their ma.

“A one-syllable answer would only be acceptable if you were still a pimply faced teenager,” said his ma. “I hear Jackson’s wife, Natalie, is helping you out for a bit.”

Hearing Jackson, Natalie, and wife in the same sentence caused the lamb he’d just eaten to kick in his stomach as if it were still alive.

Fuck, he’d kissed Jackson’s wife.

He resisted the urge to drain the rest of his wine in one gulp, and instead picked up his fork. “Just until the girls get settled in as a team.”

In any other family he was certain having guests at the dining table would prevent overly personal questions from being asked. Hah, not in his family. He braced himself for the onslaught.

“How do you feel about having her there, son?” Ariana set down her knife and fork. “Is it hard for you?”

Sam stiffened beside Isaac and a side-eye aimed at his father showed the old man observing with quiet interest, but no intention of interfering. While Sam was the only one he’d confided the whole story of the accident to, Isaac knew his father suspected the truth but out of respect for their relationship, chose to remain silent.

“No harder than being back on a rugby field for the first time.” Bait and switch time. “And there’s a lot of possibility in the group of girls I’ve got, especially since Rangi-Marie turned up for practice yesterday. Looks like rugby won over the new deadbeat boyfriend,” he added for good measure.

“Oooh. Sheryl mentioned that boy is still sniffing around. Rangi best hope her dad doesn’t catch him.”

And then his mum was off and running onto the evils of texting and what Rangi-Marie’s dad would do to Jimmy if he ever found out that his youngest girl was doing that sexting thing.

The rest of the meal passed without further drama, aside from a few more probing questions about which girls showed up for practice, and comments about their families and the connections within the Bounty Bay community. After Isaac, Sam, Tui, and TJ had cleared away the lunch dishes—being one of Ariana and Pete’s foster kids meant you were treated until the end of time as one of their own, which meant chores—Pete ambled into the kitchen.

“A couple of the cows have broken the fence line up on Griffin’s ridge. You boys up for a ride to get ’em back through?”

TJ shook his head. “Sorry, Dad. I’ve got to drive to Whangarei this arvo. Next time, though?”

“You betcha.” He turned to Isaac. “You?”

“Yeah.” Isaac tossed his dish towel at Sam’s head.

Sam caught the towel midair and grinned, flicking it at Tui’s butt. She yelped and punched his arm. Their dad didn’t bother extending the invitation to his youngest kids. Tui claimed she was allergic to horses and Sam preferred things with fewer teeth and more horsepower as a mode of travel.

Thirty minutes later, Isaac and his dad went through one final gate at the rear of the Ngata farm which bordered on the hills of native bush rising in a low spine inland toward the bottom curve of Bounty Bay. Isaac rode his mum’s horse, Hōiho, an unoriginally named mud-brown mare since it meant horse in the Māori language. Hōiho had a bit of a crush on his dad’s gelding, Eddie, and showed it by constantly trying to nip his rump if you weren’t watching.

They followed a winding trail up into the hills though groves of totara, mānuka, and small kauri. Sunshine speared through the treetops, birds and insects buzzed and fluttered in their path, and Eddie’s and Hōiho’s hooves and huffing snorts were the only sounds. Years of riding with his dad, from the time Isaac was old enough to sit unassisted on a horse’s back, and their easy relationship meant words were unnecessary noise in the beauty of the hills.

Often they’d spot churned up parts of the steep track from the hooves of his dad’s cows, who were allowed to roam free on his five hundred acres of native bush. The delicacy of Ngata beef was well known in the area and credited to the cattle’s varied diet. Occasionally, though, the animals wandered too far.

Once they found the gap in the fence line that the cows had taken advantage of, it was a matter of tracking them onto Griffin land. Between Isaac, his dad, and his dad’s two cattle dogs, Kurī—which meant dog—and Hari—which meant happy or joy—they mustered the two straying cows back through the fence onto Ngata land. The cows safely trotted off to find greener pastures, and Isaac and his dad dismounted and got to work repairing the fence.

Conversation existed only through instructions like “pass me the wire,” or “tighten that,” or “make sure it’s straight,” and there was plenty of time, under the whispers of the land all around them, to just breathe. To think.

“I screwed up, Dad.” Isaac handed his dad the metal wire strainer.

“Taking on the coaching?” His dad attached it to the strand of wire they were working on. “It’ll be good for you, I reckon.”

Isaac scrubbed a palm over his mouth. He shouldn’t burden his dad with this. He should just shut the hell—

“I kissed Natalie.” He winced as the words made his tongue feel coated with slime. With shame. “Shit. I kissed Jackson’s wife.”

His dad shot him an inscrutable glance from his kneeling position on the churned up ground by the damaged fence. “When?”

Isaac blanked for a moment. “When, what?”

“When did you kiss her?” his dad asked patiently.

“Yesterday. While I was helping paint her house.”

And what a brain-frying kiss it’d been. One he could still feel burning hot in his gut…and other places farther south.

“Not five years ago before London?”

“Hell no. I’d never do that to a mate—or even a man who wasn’t my mate.” Isaac glared at his dad, who gave him a bland stare in return.

“Then you didn’t kiss Jackson’s wife. You kissed an unattached woman you had every right to kiss”—his dad tilted his head to the side, a slow grin appearing on his mouth—“long as the woman in question didn’t mind, of course. Cutters.”

“She didn’t mind,” Isaac muttered, handing over the wire cutters. “Not in the moment. But afterward…”

Afterward she leaped away from him—understandable considering the arrival of Owen and the girls—but then she’d kept a giant bubble of keep-away-from-me distance between them for the rest of the afternoon.

His dad snipped the wire and rocked back on his haunches to admire his work. “You were both whakamā.”

Ashamed, embarrassed. Yeah, that about summed it up.

“It felt wrong.” Isaac took the wire cutters off his dad and returned them to the knapsack his dad carried for fence repairs.

“Friend-zone kiss, then, eh?” his dad asked.

“How do you even know that word?”

His dad shot him a grin. “I’m old school, but not out of touch, boy.”

“Not a friend-zone kiss.” Isaac pinched the bridge of his nose. “And I have no idea why I told you about kissing Natalie.”

“I reckon you do.” His dad stood and gave the now mended fence a rock back and forth to make sure it was sturdy. “Because you want parental permission to do it again.”

Isaac choked out a wheezy laugh. “Since when do I need your permission, old man?”

His dad chuckled, then clapped a hand on Isaac’s shoulder, the laughter lines around his eyes smoothing out to a serious, knowing stare. “You don’t. But Jackson isn’t around to give you permission, and you’ve gone above and beyond the bounds of friendship these past five years. You deserve to chase some happiness, and if that happiness points to Natalie, then bloody well give yourself permission to grab her with both hands.” His eyes twinkled and he gave Isaac’s shoulder a squeeze. “Long as Nat doesn’t mind, of course.”

“Of course.” Isaac picked up the knapsack, and he and his dad returned to the horses.

The problem was, Isaac suspected Nat would mind. That she wasn’t ready to accept their surfacing attraction. That everything in her stubborn nature would fight against it.

* * *

At 6:30 a.m. Isaac stood on Natalie and Olivia’s front porch, pushing the doorbell over and over until it sounded like a swarm of bees had congregated inside the Fisher household.

“Piss off, Isaac,” shouted a woman’s voice from somewhere inside. “We’re up, we’re up.”

He hit the button one more time and grinned at the sound of footsteps thudding down the hallway. The door swung open and Natalie, wearing pajama pants and a tank top—sans bra—launched a nuclear missile gaze at him from her narrowed green eyes. She huffed out an attitude-ridden sigh, fisting a hand on her cocked hip, which only further emphasized her bralessness, and, oh damn, her nipples tightened in the cool morning air.

His grin vanished and his heart forgot to beat for a count of five. “How did you know it was me?”

He blamed the evacuation of blood from his brain as it headed to his groin for the dumbass question.

“Who else would show up at my door at six-freaking-thirty in the morning?”

Nat’s hair was a wild cloud of curls around her face, slightly flattened on the left side. She looked tasty enough to throw over his shoulder, carry her back to her bed, and make her forget about the morning run.

“You were late last practice, so I gathered you weren’t a morning person.” Risking a pajama-covered knee to the groin, Isaac braced a hand on the doorframe and leaned in slightly. He fixed a just trying to help smirk on his mouth. “Consider me your wake-up call.”

Natalie shifted on her bare toes, swaying a little closer to him. For a moment—an insanely blissful moment—he thought Nat planned to kiss him. Then a sharp, poking finger dug into his stomach. Her sexy-beyond-belief morning pout halted too many inches away from his mouth to be of any use.

“I’m considering you my coffee-making bitch, ye of little faith. I’ll take it strong and sweet, but not instant.”

Instant described his dick’s current reaction as his imagination conjured up all the strong and sweet ways he could take her. Before he could exercise his right to stupidity by saying or doing something inappropriate, she strode down the hallway and into her room, leaving him drooling on her doorstep.

Figuring she actually did want a caffeine hit before a run—bad idea, but he wouldn’t judge—Isaac crossed the threshold. He’d gone from the guy offering Nat and Olivia a ride to the school field, to inadvertently becoming part of Nat’s morning routine. If being part of Nat’s routine meant functioning as an on-the-spot barista, nothing more. He rolled his eyes at himself as he headed into the kitchen. Making her a coffee was something he could do right.

Twenty minutes and one perfectly brewed French press coffee later, Olivia jumped into the back seat of his truck while Natalie rode shotgun. In her hands she cradled the remains of her coffee in a travel mug, and she was still squinty-eyed and yawning during the short drive to the high school. Olivia chatted to him nonstop, peppering him with questions about training exercises, what he thought of her long pass, and could they please, please run to the beach today since it was such a nice morning?

“Sure,” Isaac said as they pulled into the school parking lot. “You good with that, Natalie?”

“I’m really not much of a runner.” She kept her gaze lowered to her running shoes. “More of a hot yoga fan.”

“Muuuum. Just suck it up and try. It’s not a race; it doesn’t matter if you’re the last one back.” Olivia hoisted up her sports kit and cracked open the truck door. “But last one back’s a rotten egg, just saying.”

She hopped out of the truck, slammed the door, and loped off across the field to where a group of girls were huddled together.

“Hot yoga, huh?” Isaac fixed his gaze out the windshield and not on the woman beside him. “I can think of better ways to have fun getting sweaty than twisting yourself into a pretzel inside a sauna.”

“So can I. Much more pleasurable than the warrior pose or downward-facing dog.”

The husky, teasing note in her voice had him on a fast track to another hard-on—not the way he wanted to start the morning’s training. But was she actually flirting with him? Picking up the leftover strands of sexual tension from their Saturday afternoon kiss? Or was it just bantering?

He shifted in his seat, stealing a glance. Nat continued to track the girls streaming through the parking lot on the way to the field, but the corner of her mouth ticked up as if she was warring with the urge to smile. He blinked, and the mouth crease disappeared.

Nat set her travel mug in the holder then opened the door. “Quite a crowd of girls out there. Your threat worked.” She didn’t meet his eyes as she slid out of the truck. “And, ah, thanks for the ride. My people skills in the early morning are a little rusty.”

Because for the past five years she’d had no one to bring her coffee in bed each morning? Or had she? His gut twisted viciously at the thought.

“So are mine. And you’re welcome.” He matched her polite tone and unclipped his seat belt. By the time he looked up from his hip, the passenger door had closed and Nat was jogging across the grass.

Bantering. He locked the truck and walked toward the cluster of girls. Definitely bantering.

Thirty-five girls were on the field waiting by the time 7:00 a.m. rolled around. After taking them through a warm-up routine, he instructed the girls on which route to take to the beach. An easy two-mile run with only a slight incline on the returning loop. Ignoring his suggestion to take their time and focus on long-distance stamina not speed, the girls took off at a run, Natalie hot on their heels.

Isaac kept his gait measured, and probably by the girls’ standards, tortoise slow. Fortunately this morning was a good knee morning and he appreciated the fact he wouldn’t look like a jogging Quasimodo.

About a half mile along the route, he rounded a bend in the road and spotted Natalie ahead of him, the cute twitch of her ass not as dramatic now she wasn’t pumping her arms and legs like a sprinter. She’d fallen behind the last group of girls, and with a slight increase in speed, Isaac caught up with her.

Gentlemanly, he pretended not to notice her red cheeks, the stain of which extended down her throat below the V-neckline of her T-shirt. He also pretended not to hear her huffing like a steam engine or see the determined set of her jaw.

“How’s it going? Nearly to the halfway point,” he said. Not huffing.

A point to the tortoise.

She held up a wait-for-it finger. “I can…run or…I can…talk, not…both.”

“Fair enough.”

They loped together in silence for a few minutes.

“How ’bout…you talk…distract…me from…collapsing?” she managed as they crossed over a bridge that spanned the stream meandering its way toward the ocean.

“As kids we used to jump off this bridge every summer,” he said. “It was a rite of passage seeing who was brave enough to do it in winter, too. Right up until we were adults, me and Sam and Tui would meet during winter at midnight and dare each other to make the leap. We’d all end up doing it because we’re all proud, crazy bastards who hate to lose.”

Nat smiled and kept moving. “Who went…first?”

“Me,” Isaac admitted. “But we haven’t done it in a few years.” Since he’d injured his knee and everything that came after it. “Guess we finally grew up.” Or Sam and Tui didn’t want to tempt fate with their big brother getting in another accident.

Running toward them was a group of ten or so girls, Morgan and Olivia among them. The girls waved and called out various heckling nicknames for him and Nat being last, and passed by them on the way back to the school.

“Growing up…overrated,” she said once the girls were gone.

“Yeah, being an adult and making adult decisions that can change the course of your life. Like hanging up my rugby boots.” He sidestepped around an uneven patch of the sidewalk, the sudden movement causing a sharp sliver of pain to arrow up from his bad knee.

He winced, cursing softly beneath his breath, but continued to jog. Beside him, Nat fisted her hands on her hips and slowed to a walk. He stopped, and waited for her to catch up.

“Sorry,” she said. “Stitch. Can we walk?”

Her green eyes were guileless and filled with shuttered concern. He knew why she wanted to slow down, but instead of irritating him—with the old familiar frustrated grief of what he’d lost—her silent solidarity warmed him.

“Sure. We can take five at the beach ramp.”

“Hot yoga obviously isn’t doing much for my fitness levels,” she said after she got her breath back.

“Training runs five mornings a week for the next couple of weeks will.”

Margaret Crawford told him she’d asked Natalie to ‘assist’ him in settling the girls in. For ‘only a short while,’ the principal had assured him. A chill worked its way down his sweat-damp back. Natalie was under no obligation to show up for training and practices for much longer. And if she stopped coming, he wouldn’t have any excuse to see her again.

A short distance away from the boat ramp—basically the end of the residential asphalt road that petered off into sand between two large dunes—were a couple of overturned dinghies. Isaac walked toward them and sat on the blue one. Natalie sank down beside him with a groan.

“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?”

Her gaze abruptly dropped to her running shoes. If she hadn’t already been flushed pink with exertion, Isaac would bet his right testicle she was suddenly aware of how her teasing statement could be misinterpreted. She blew out a long exhale and drooped forward, undoing then retying one of her shoelaces.

“Did you ever talk to anyone about your transition from sportsman to civilian?” she asked, starting on the second shoelace.

“Anyone, like a therapist or counselor?”

Her head dipped down, fingers stilling on the laces. “Yes. It can’t have been easy for you.”

“I had counselors, therapists, the team’s sports psychologist, and some teammates queuing up to be a shoulder to cry on those first few weeks back in Auckland. Not to mention reporters and camera crews begging me for exclusive interviews. I thought none of them seemed to give a shit about how I might never be able to play rugby again, only that I’d be forced to retire from professional sport—from the All Blacks.”

Isaac wasn’t going to dredge up those days and weeks and months after the accident. The blur of hospitals, rehab, and the media witch hunt that had cornered him in Auckland until he’d sunk into the darkest depression he’d ever experienced. He’d gone from golden boy to pariah in a matter of days. Crawling out of that deep black hole to grab his family’s hand and allowing them to shelter him until he healed had been a weight lifted from his shoulders. By the time he’d returned home to Bounty Bay he was on the path to accepting he’d never play professionally again, but the fear of never playing the game he loved at all consumed him until he was a brittle shell of the man he used to be.

“Everybody wanted a piece of you,” she said. “The media probably believed that they were justified in tearing strips off you to feed the public’s insatiable curiosity.” She shuffled closer to him on the dinghy and placed her smaller hand over his.

Her fingers were warm and smooth, and they slid between his and tightened, locking their fingers together.

Nat’s gaze never wavered. “Leaving you with almost nothing to piece yourself together again.”

That Nat understood, that she got it—got him—even if she couldn’t ever forgive him…it meant a lot.

“I had my family to help Humpty Dumpty put his broken pieces back together.”

She nodded, an approving smile curving her lips. “I’m glad.”

But he wasn’t done. The man who’d once jumped off a bridge into unknown icy waters wasn’t done.

“And I had one other reason driving me to become whole again,” he said. “You.”

Nat’s frown slipped as her eyebrows drew together. “Me?”

“Whatever loss I’d suffered was nothing compared to you and Olivia. A little naively I’d hoped to find a way to look out for you both, and I couldn’t do that if I was curled up, rocking in a corner of a padded room.”

Blood thudded against his eardrums, so loudly it merged with the nearby sound of waves tumbling over the sand. “As Jackson’s friend, I needed to step up to be there for his wife and daughter, regardless of whatever shit went down in my own life.”

But they both knew that Natalie had justifiably—in her mind—cut Isaac out of their lives with surgical precision. And after a while he’d accepted her decision, become content to remain out of sight, out of mind, in the background. For her sake.

He raised their linked hands and brushed the softest of kisses across her knuckles. She started, eyes widening, and arched a little away from him—but she didn’t pull her hand from his. Instead, she stood and reversed her grip, tugging on his hand until he stood.

“We’d better go or the girls will send out a search party,” she said.

“Too serious a topic for this early in the morning?” he asked lightly.

She gave a hmm of agreement and brushed chips of blue paint off the seat of her leggings. “Tomorrow we can cover global warming, or the devastation of the rainforests.”

“Deal. Now start running,” he said. “I’ll give you a two-minute head start.”

The smile she gave him was part sass, part something he couldn’t put his finger on—acceptance? One brick of the keep Isaac out wall around her heart crumbling down?

Then she took off, her shoes kicking up little sprays of sand that the wind had blown into the road.

“Last one back is a rotten egg,” she shouted.