For the rest of the week, Nat submitted gracefully—kinda—to her new morning routine. Tuesday, Isaac again showed up at 6:30 a.m., catching her still in bed after she’d hit snooze on her phone one too many times. Then coffee, ride to school, laps around the field, mostly one-sided conversation with Isaac telling her stories to keep her mind off the fact that, OMG, running and mornings should be illegal.

Wednesday, a repeat of Tuesday.

Thursday, she was actually up when Isaac rang the doorbell, but she still imperiously instructed him to be her coffee bitch before repeating Tuesday and Wednesday’s torture sessions.

By Friday, there really wasn’t a need for Isaac to drag her out of bed ready for training, but damn, there was something to be said about the quality of the coffee he made. And the teensy fact that she had started to enjoy spending an hour in his company every day—plus two afternoons a week at after-school training sessions. She was proud to report skill and fitness improvement in the twenty-seven girls who’d made the effort to show up for each of the sessions.

Friday evening Nat received a text from Isaac to say a mate needed a hand on Saturday morning and he’d meet her at practice. Did she need a wake-up text? When the reply, “What about a wake-up sext?” popped into her brain, Nat decided she’d better hit a cold shower and hope it’d shock some sense into her.

She’d replied with “No, I’m good thanks,” and shut her phone in her nightstand drawer and out of temptation.

Saturday morning she made a huge effort to be on time, and at quarter to eight she and Olivia hurried across the school field to the locker rooms. Owen, and Casey’s mum, Justine Tamati, appeared out of the doors with an armful of marker cones, followed by Morgan and a couple of girls carrying more. Olivia ran to help and Nat set down their kit bags. Hah. She’d finally managed to beat Isaac to practice. Chalk one up for time management—

Donna Clarke sashayed out the doors and struck a pose. She was a single mum to Sapphire, one of the borderline mean girls Nat secretly hoped would drop out. Donna wore camel-toe-inducing black-and-gold compression short-shorts and a black boob-hoisting sports bra, which—hello—was not a freaking suitable training top by itself.

“Zac, you’re such a gentleman, but I could’ve helped carry those,” she said. “Good for the core muscles, you know.” She patted her stomach.

Her can you believe I’ve had kids? sculptured stomach.

Natalie refused to glance at her own woman who has a teen and likes cookies stomach, covered by her slim-fitting but not skintight T-shirt, sports leggings, and topped with a pair of running shorts. Instead, she watched as Isaac hauled two bags of rugby balls outside, his biceps bulging into tanned mounds with the effort of manoeuvring the bags through the doors. Not that she was noticing. Donna was, though—if the do-me smile she directed at Isaac was any indication.

“No worries.” Isaac dumped the balls near the sideline, his gaze flickering around the field until it landed on Natalie, crouched by the girls’ kit bags and water bottles.

He didn’t smile, but gave her a head dip of acknowledgement. He might not have smiled, but the heat of his gaze and the little bubble of recognition mixed with chemistry zipped between them. She felt it, but she still wasn’t sure that she wanted to feel it, or if she’d ever truly be comfortable with this attraction she could no longer deny.

So she dipped her head in return, and got to work positioning marker cones with Owen and Justine.

Isaac pushed the girls—and the adults—hard during warm-up and drills. He utilized the five parents who had shown up as mini-team coaches during the drills and exercises, spreading them out over the field in three separate groups. Nat and Owen were put together with ten girls including Rangi-Marie, rotating through the training stations in fifteen-minute intervals. Justine and another dad, Mike Young, took another ten girls and, unsurprisingly, Donna paired herself with Isaac. Considering none of the drills focused on tackling or body contact between players, the woman sure found plenty of opportunities to bump her body parts against him.

As Owen and Nat’s group finished up at one station and crossed the field ready for their final one, Rangi-Marie puffed companionably at her side.

“Man, Isaac and Sapphire’s mum should just get a room already.”

While it was somewhat reassuring Nat hadn’t been imagining things, she had to suck in a deep breath and count to three before she answered. “They’re both single adults, Rangi-Marie.”

“Yeah, but eww.” Rangi-Marie draped an arm over Nat’s shoulders.

Isaac’s little cousin was, dammit, already an inch taller than Nat. And under her initial bluster, Nat had discovered a kindhearted, driven girl this past week. Rangi-Marie had already begun the process of turning this ragtag bunch of girls into a team, her popularity and natural leadership skills meaning there was a lot less goofing off at practices that week than there were previously.

Rangi-Marie waved at the girls in Isaac and Donna’s team as they passed by, then leaned into Nat.

“She reminds me of one of those highly strung little dogs,” she whispered. “You know, the type that’ll hump your leg whenever they can.”

Nat snorted, resisting the urge to turn around and stare after Isaac and Donna, who’d been boob-brushing her coaching partner’s arm all across the field. “That’s one description you shouldn’t share because maybe Isaac likes her.”

And look how low she’d sunk, stooping to glean information from Isaac’s cousin.

Rangi-Marie grinned at her. “Nah. Even though I saw her slip him her business card when she first arrived, I don’t think he’ll call her. She’s not his type.”

A shot glass of lava exploded into Nat’s gut. Donna had given Isaac her number? Had he kept it—and would he call her? “Women who look like that are every guy’s type.”

Nat tried, and possibly failed, to keep her tone lighthearted. As if she didn’t care Donna was gunning for the man who’d kissed Nat last Saturday. Get a grip, she ordered herself. Isaac hadn’t mentioned that kiss, so obviously it was a one-off, embarrassing mistake for both of them. She had no reason for the lava burning in her stomach, no right to be even a little bit possessive over a man who was a single, unattached adult.

Nat cleared her throat as they approached the final grid of marker cones. “She’s very pretty, is what I meant to say.”

Rangi gave her a speculative stare as she dropped her arm from around Nat’s shoulders. “Being pretty isn’t the only thing guys go for.”

The fire in Natalie’s gut tempered down and she squeezed Rangi’s arm. “You’re right. Any man who only sees the superficial and not the strength, intelligence, and heart and soul of a woman isn’t worth your time.”

Rangi-Marie looked at her a moment longer. “I’m real sorry about your husband,” she said softly. “He must’ve seen all those things in you.”

“Thank you,” Nat said.

Rangi-Marie ran forward, scooped up a rugby ball, and tossed it in a basic pass to Nat—who caught it. Yay, her.

The girl gave her another wide and affection-inducing Ngata family grin. “You’re pretty and you can catch a ball. Unlike some.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.” Nat bent to pick up another ball and strode over to the corner of the marked-out area, her heart a relentless kickboxer pummeling her chest.

She’d lost the man who’d seen more than the superficial. Lost her chance to live out her own happily ever after. And to expect a second shot at it was like waiting for unicorn dust to rain from a clear blue sky.

* * *

Call her petty, but when it came to the final thirty-minute game of touch rugby before practice finished, Nat took great satisfaction in Donna’s ball fumbling. And if Nat threw one of those passes to her just a little too hard while they thundered down the field on the way to scoring a try and Donna flubbed it again? It was worth it, especially as Olivia, on the opposing team, swooped in and gained possession of the ball.

Win some, lose some.

And damn, but the little green monster clawing inside her gut was mollified when, core muscles aside, Donna slipped and fell on her ass in the mud. Until Isaac rushed over to help her up. The woman pointed to her left foot and Isaac crouched, gently running his fingers over her ankle to check for tenderness while Donna dug her fingers into the slab of muscle spanning Isaac’s shoulder. Apparently for balance.

Isaac stood, but Donna didn’t unhook her fingers from his shoulder. Nat was close enough to see her puppy-eyed stare up at him and her request for him to ‘help’ her to one of the benches outside the locker room. Then, after an attempt to put weight on her ankle, the smirk on her face as Isaac swept her up in his arms and carried her.

After Donna was settled with a cooler propping up her injured ankle, Isaac gathered the girls in a circle. Fifteen of the girls were named, among them Olivia as halfback, her friend Morgan as a winger, and Rangi-Marie hooker and team captain, which caused whoops and hollering to erupt among the girls.

But focusing on Isaac’s words soon became harder than focusing on the memory of Donna pressed snugly into his chest with his hands cupping her thighs. Hell. She really was jealous. Feral, bona fide wanting-to-kick-ass-and-take-names jealous. It was a flashing neon sign she’d become invested in Isaac. Maybe only a little invested, but enough that her emotions felt like a cluster of fireworks waiting for a lit match.

Justine insisted on driving Donna and Sapphire back to their house after practice, once all the gear was packed away. While Mike and Owen chatted by the goalpost, Nat offered to check on the girls’ progress getting changed. She poked her head around the locker room door, and spotting Livvy in mid conversation with a small group of girls she normally didn’t interact with, Nat decided to let them be for a little longer. She backed out and gently closed the door. The boys’ locker room door opening across the hallway caused her to freeze on the spot.

Isaac stood in the doorway, his hair in towel-dried spikes, wearing faded blue jeans and a white T-shirt that clung to his chest and shoulders and other stupidly sexy muscles whose names she couldn’t remember, because, dammit, the just-out-of-the-shower yummy smell of him reached her nose and she couldn’t think, couldn’t stop herself from—

Nat marched over and gave his chest a two-palmed shove. She had enough momentum to knock him back a step, and too much momentum to dig in her heels when Isaac spanned his big hands either side of her waist and lifted her off her feet and into the locker room.

She gave an undignified squeak and swatted at his hands until he released her. The door swung shut behind him, and he blocked her exit. Not that she planned to leave just yet. She wasn’t a teenage girl mortified to be in the boys’ locker room, and she wasn’t intimidated by the width of his shoulders and how he made the rows of lockers stacked three high either side of the door look leprechaun sized. Not until she’d spoken her mind. Invisible Natalie wasn’t invisible anymore.

“You want to talk?” he asked. “Or is this about to be a physical attack on the coach’s person?”

His mouth twitched on the word physical as if he was about to smile—which, trust her, would’ve been a really bad call. Physical they wouldn’t get, though parts of her perked up at the puzzle of how to erase the smug gleam from Isaac’s dark eyes. Karate chop to the diaphragm? She didn’t know karate and besides, she’d probably only bust up her hand on all those aforementioned muscles. Knee to the nuts? Oh, so tempting. But perhaps a little overkill. Scale him like a tree and kiss him until he begged for mercy? That was a bad direction to let her thoughts roam in. Keeping emotions from showing on her face wasn’t one of her talents, and Isaac was perceptive enough to notice.

She stalked away from him and leaned against the row of lockers, facing forward, feigning great interest in the mirrors above the two hand-washing sinks against the opposite wall. Now she could school her features into righteously annoyed instead of more turned-on than irritated.

“What’s up, Nat?”

He moved, coming to lean against the lockers next to her and also facing forward so their gazes connected in the reflection. The mirror showed Nat’s mouth squeezed into a cat’s bum pucker, trapping inside all the spiteful, juvenile thoughts she’d been thinking.

What was with the Officer and a Gentleman lift? Will you take Donna up on her offer? Do you like her? Did kissing me mean anything or am I reading way too much into it because I’m so out of touch with kissing men?

She’d barged in there like a crazy woman on a mission so she had to say something. Something that wouldn’t expose the green-eyed monster in her brain making her dance like a puppet on a string. Or how she couldn’t stop wondering what it’d feel like if Isaac went all Officer and a Gentleman on her. She had to utter something neutral, noninflammatory and completely away from the topic of—

“Why did you kiss me?” Classic brain-edit-fail and her mouth hadn’t finished yet. “Was it an accident?”

Reflected Isaac’s brow crinkled. “It’s possible to kiss someone by accident?”

Yes. No. Possibly. “If our lips just happened to be in the same place at the same time.”

“That’s one explanation. Another is we wanted to.” Reflected Isaac rolled his shoulder sideways so he faced her. “And we still want to kiss each other. That isn’t accidental.”

The coolness from the metal lockers at her back did nothing to chill the warm little tremble that rippled down her spine. Isaac wanted to kiss her. But…

“Donna Clarke seemed pretty interested in swapping spit with you this morning.”

Oh my freaking God, did I really just say that? She caught a wolfish flash of Isaac’s white teeth before she face-palmed herself, keeping her eyes squeezed shut because she was doing a bang-up job of piling on the humiliation. “Not that I care in the slightest.”

Hello, Ms. Teen-Queen of Dramatic Clichés.

Flexing metal creaked and the fine hairs on her forearms lifted, reaching toward the warmth radiating in front of her. Cracking open an eye, she peeped through her fingers. A wall of white cotton blocked her view of the mirrors. The hard contours beneath that white cotton triggered a need so deep inside her that her hand fluttered down from her face and pressed against the center of it. As if his rapid heartbeat thudding through her palm would quell that need.

“You can kiss who you like,” she added.

Isaac touched a finger to her chin, tipping it up so their gazes met, the hunger in his undeniable.

“Good,” he said.

And man of few words, his mouth descended on hers. No hesitation, and definitely no accident that their lips were in the same breathing space. Isaac’s tongue flickered against hers, his palm moving from her jaw to the back of her head, holding her at the perfect kissable angle. From hot to incendiary she melted into him, a buttery-soft mess caught between metal and hard, unyielding flesh. She twined her fingers around his neck, arching closer, breasts crushed to Isaac’s chest. A delicious shiver rolled down her body from scalp to toes, making a number of erogenous stops on the way, and gathering momentum at the apex of her thighs.

Her hips rocked forward, the shivers transforming to a pleasurable ache at the hard length of him straining behind worn denim. She rose on tiptoes to rub against him, in an unsuccessful attempt to gain relief from that pleasurable ache. Unsuccessful—until, without stopping his brain-addling kisses, Isaac grabbed her butt and lifted her into his arms.

Her legs automatically clamped around his hips, the hardest part of him nestling into the softest part of her. For a moment she squirmed, losing her tenuous grip on control as blood raged in her veins, flowing and throbbing into body parts she’d ignored for far too long. Isaac shifted his weight, pinning her flush against the locker, his arousal exactly where she needed it. An embarrassingly needy moan escaped her as his hand skimmed up her rib cage and settled just under her breast. He pulled back, their lips clinging for another endless moment.

They stared at each other, trapped in a fragile bubble of desire that could so easily shatter with the wrong word. But Isaac remained silent, and Nat couldn’t have utilized her vocal chords if her life depended on it. Then his thumb stroked the underside of her breast, a sweeping back and forth caress that sent an electrifying buzz straight to her womb.

His face dipped to the curve of her throat, the tracing of his lips on her skin as they worked up to her earlobe unbearably sensuous.

“I only want—”

But she never got to hear what he wanted because a door slammed opened and Owen strode into the room. “Isaac, have you seen—”

There was perhaps a one second beat of opportunity when Isaac and Nat could’ve pulled apart, but Owen’s gaze shot unerringly to the mirrors. He gave an almost comical double take. At least, she would’ve found it comical if Isaac’s hands hadn’t been on her butt and breast. Not to mention she was pinned like a bug to the lockers by a large, fully aroused male.

“Nat?” Isaac finished for his mate as casually as if he’d been asked where the rugby balls were stored. “Yeah, I’ve seen her.” He removed his hand from her breast, using it to steady her other hip as he lowered her to the floor and pulled away.

Seen her, tasted her, touched her.

Her lips and nipples still tingling as if a low-voltage charge was running through them, Nat folded her arms and took a giant step sideways away from Isaac. The tingles transformed into a rash of heat that spread from neck to scalp, turning her skin hot enough to fry up a cooked breakfast. What the hell had gotten into her? It could’ve been Olivia who’d stumbled onto them. Unlikely, since most girls wouldn’t venture into a male locker room, but still.

Kinda made a hypocrite out of her, considering the things she’d thought about Donna.

“Um.” Owen’s gaze darted around the room, landing on anything other than the two of them. He swiped the back of his wrist across his mouth, but it didn’t disguise the grin waiting to burst forth. “Gracie just texted with an order to invite you both to lunch today. No excuses, she said. But if you’d both rather, ah”—laugh lines crinkled around his eyes—“get a room, then I’m happy to pass that on.”

Nat did a quick calculation of the odds that Owen finding her and Isaac together wouldn’t reach Gracie’s ears whether or not she attended lunch, and decided that telling her friend in person was better than her friend hearing about it.

“That sounds very nice,” she said. “Olivia and I will head home for a quick shower and we’ll pick something up on the way to your place.” She quickstepped toward the door, avoiding eye contact with Isaac’s face or any other part of his body. “See you at twelve-ish.”

Then like a teenager who’d literally been caught making out with a boy, Nat slunk out of the locker room, praying that the consequences of her actions wouldn’t be worse than a stern telling off and detention.