Nat opened an eye in complete darkness. Even in utter blackness and brain-fogged with sleep, something was different. Everything was different.

A clock ticked somewhere in the room—something that in her own room would’ve driven her insane. The air didn’t smell of the lingering scent of lavender oil that she sometimes sprinkled on her pillowslips to help her relax, and she wasn’t wearing pajamas or a nightshirt. Crisp cotton covered her and stretched beneath her naked body. And the cotton wasn’t chilly—she wasn’t chilly—because something like a flexible radiator heater with slightly hairy skin was spooning her.

Isaac. She was still in Isaac’s bed.

She pulled the snuggly soft comforter away from her and squinted down. Yep, if she couldn’t exactly see the warm, rough palm tucked under her left breast, she sure as hell could feel it. And oops, her nipple was starting to wake up, eager for round three. But since her bladder demanded a quick trip to the bathroom, Nat gently lifted Isaac’s arm off her and slithered out from it to sit on the edge of his bed.

He muttered cryptically in his sleep and rolled over, the mattress jostling beneath her. Her bare skin prickled with the room’s cool air, so as fast as one could in an unfamiliar pitch-black room, she shuffled across the bedroom in the direction of his en suite bathroom. She flicked on the lights, squinting as she went about her business.

Afterward, she paused in the doorway, a shaft of light from the en suite preceding her and falling across the king-sized bed. Isaac was sprawled over his half, the covers bunched up over his left leg.

The last vestiges of sleepiness vanished as her gaze skimmed down Isaac’s thigh to the hard curve of his kneecap, and the swirling black ink of a tribal tattoo that covered the relaxed muscles of his calf. The tattoo hadn’t been there back when she’d last seen him in shorts. She tiptoed closer, her shadow falling like a hunched crone over the white sheets. Blood thudded against her eardrum, louder than the clock ticking in the room or the fading trickle of water from the flushed toilet behind her.

She reached the bed, and for the first time let the cool triangle of light illuminate the ridged scar that twisted down Isaac’s shin. The tattoo artist hadn’t tried to disguise the scar, but almost highlighted it with the thick bands of black and a stylized rendering of a taniwha—a water monster in Māori legend.

The design was both beautiful and heart-wrenching at the same time. Why had he chosen a taniwha? Was that the way Isaac saw himself? As a monster? Surely not.

Nat backed away from the bed, stumbling when she stepped on one of her discarded heels. She bent and picked it up, turning away from the bed as she spotted the second shoe out the corner of her eye.

“Hey,” came a sleep-thick voice from behind her. “Are you leaving?”

Nat straightened and spun around, dropping the shoes in order to cover her breasts—which, yeah, was kind of pointless since Isaac now knew every curve and crevice of her body…intimately. She snatched up a button-down shirt left draped over a chair and slipped it on. Thank God Isaac wasn’t one of those rare neat-freak guys who actually dropped their discarded clothes into a laundry basket.

Isaac had propped himself up on his elbows, watching her with his implacable mask once again firmly in place. She had no idea by his tone whether he wanted her to stay or to leave, and she had no idea what the protocol was in these situations since she’d never done anything like this before.

“I thought I probably should,” she said, pulling the shirt edges closed.

Did she just put on her shoes and hightail it back to the laundry for her underwear? Maybe put on a load for him while she was at it? Sheesh.

“You look cold. Why don’t you come back to bed and let me keep you warm?” He patted the sheet beside him, the mask slipping aside to reveal the warmth in his dark eyes as they skimmed over her. A warmth that could almost be affection…

No-no-no-no-no. Nat’s gaze zipped down to Isaac’s leg, her breath catching again at the sight of his scar, but she forced herself not to stare and returned her gaze to his face. Warmth had evaporated out of his eyes, the angle of his jaw suggesting he’d seen exactly what she’d been looking at.

“Guess this is the first time you’ve seen my leg,” he said quietly.

“Yes.” Nat glued her lips together, but the seal didn’t last when Isaac sighed and scrubbed a palm over his face. “The tattoo’s beautiful, but why a taniwha?”

His fingers scraped along the stubble covering his jaw with a rasp. “Part of my culture. Especially since there’s rumored to be one living in Lake Omapere.”

“And that’s really why you’ve got a permanent monster inked around your scar tissue?”

After a drawn-out moment of their gazes clashing across the room, he eased himself upward and leaned against the headboard. He flipped the sheet over his bare legs and tilted his head.

“Do you really want to go there, Nat?” he asked. “Because I thought you wanted to keep this casual.”

“I do.” At least her head wanted to keep this casual…and fun. Her heart, well. She didn’t trust her heart to make any sort of rational decisions when it came to Isaac. Not while he was all rough and unguarded and sexy as hell in just those white sheets.

He crooked a questioning eyebrow at her. “But?”

“But I don’t know if I can keep being casual with you when there’s this weight, this burden of truth between us.”

He stilled. His body could’ve been carved from the same kauri wood as the huge headboard behind him. The room’s ticking grew louder, as if there were a grandfather clock in the corner instead of a little wall one. Oh crap—she’d all but said tonight wasn’t a onetime thing for her, and Isaac was freaking out. Which led to her freaking the hell out.

She spun on her bare toes and fled into the en suite, slamming the door behind her. Gripping the cold edges of the ceramic basin, she stared at the wild-haired crazy woman staring back at her.

Truth? “You can’t handle the truth,” she said in her best Jack Nicholson impersonation, then turned away and pressed her back to the tiled wall.

She heard Isaac curse and call her name, then the sound of his heavy footsteps moving across the floor on the other side of the closed door. Which wasn’t locked—and even if it were, it wouldn’t have stopped him from getting to her if he’d wanted.

Nat slid down the wall and sat, arms wrapped around her knees, her face resting on her elbows as she tried to steady the rapid gasps of her breathing.

The door gave a soft squeak as it opened then shut again. He moved silently to her side, lowering himself with a grunt to sit next to her. He didn’t touch her, didn’t speak, just gave her the space she needed to collect herself. Because only a crazy woman would run into an en suite to escape. Only a crazy woman who actually wanted to stay and, as much as it would hurt, find out the truth once and for all.

“Five years ago I wasn’t ready to hear what happened that night in your own words.” She kept her face hidden within the shelter of her arms and a lot of wild bed hair. “Now I am. If you’ll tell me.”

“Nat.”

The pain in his voice was undeniable, but sometimes you had to rip that Band-Aid off for the wound to begin to heal. If, of course, Isaac actually wanted the wound between them to heal.

“If we’re only about tonight, then go back to bed and I’ll leave,” she said. “No hard feelings, since that was what I implied this would be.”

“I’m not going anywhere.” He inhaled deeply, then released his pent-up breath in a long sigh. “And we’re not only about tonight.”

“I need to hear. It’s time.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

Nat uncurled and leaned back against the tiles, the coolness transferring through the cotton of Isaac’s shirt and tamping down the heat that had rushed through her. She kept her gaze fixed on the huge corner tub which looked as if it could fit a couple of Isaac clones in it without them bumping knees.

“Jackson and I had broken away from the other guys celebrating after the game,” Isaac said. “London was insane, the streets packed, parties and people drinking everywhere. We wanted to go somewhere a little quieter and ended up at that bar.”

“Were you both drunk?” Nat asked.

“On the way to it.”

From the corner of her eye Nat caught the motion of him stretching out his legs. He’d stopped on the way to the bathroom to pull on a pair of jeans, covering up his scars, covering up his ink, returning to his former guarded state.

“We sat in a corner of the bar and ordered beer.”

“Lucy Gilbert was bartending,” she stated. The New Zealand woman who’d been working her way around Europe in bars and clubs. An All Blacks fan who’d recognized Isaac and Jackson immediately.

“It was good to hear a Kiwi accent again, and Jackson struck up a conversation with her about which beer should be known as New Zealand’s national brand.”

She managed a dry laugh. “Sounds like Jackson. He’d talk to anyone about anything.”

“Well, we continued to talk to Lucy while she worked, more after the pub began to empty out and the manager announced last call. Then I…” Isaac’s breath hissed in between his teeth. He blew it out and continued. “Then I asked if the two of us could go back to her place after she finished her shift.”

Hearing him say the words caused the butterflies swarming in her stomach to leap up into her throat. Media speculation had exploded after the accident, with Lucy being unavailable for comment and then the brief appearance Isaac made in front of the cameras to admit he’d pursued Lucy that night even though she hadn’t been interested.

“So you wanted to sleep with her that night, even though Emily had been your girlfriend for almost a year.”

She didn’t really pose it as a question, since he’d just admitted as much. But that Isaac would’ve cheated on Emily if the accident hadn’t happened made her want to roll onto her knees and hurl her stomach contents into the nearby toilet. Because in all the years she’d known him, she’d trusted in the integrity and inner strength he’d shown in his everyday actions.

A split-second pause, then he said simply, “Yes.”

“Did you know that night that Lucy was engaged?” she asked.

“No. She wasn’t wearing a ring.”

“Would it’ve made any difference if she had been?” Nat wriggled slightly, her bottom numb from the cold seeping through the tails of Isaac’s shirt.

“Maybe. I don’t know what I would’ve done,” he said.

“Because you were drunk?”

“Because I can’t let myself fall down that rabbit hole of ‘if only’ again.” His voice, sharp enough to cause paper cuts, burst out a little too loudly in the bathroom.

Nat’s heart slammed against her ribs, beating its way into her throat. She swallowed hard. “What happened after Lucy finished work?”

“Jackson and I waited outside the pub for her. He was, uh, trying to convince me to take a cab with him back to our hotel and we were still arguing when she came out and started yanking on my arm to pull me away.”

Nat rolled her head toward him, but he continued to stare straight ahead. “Brave girl, trying stop two big drunk guys about to go head to head.”

“Yeah. Well, we never came to blows because this car came out of nowhere.” His forehead arrowed into a ferocious V, and his jaw bunched, as if he were biting down hard on tinfoil. “Jesus Christ. We were so caught up we never heard it come around the corner. It was just suddenly there—lights blinding us, engine revving to shit, a fucking monster bearing down on us. A witness on the other side of the road said Jackson launched himself at me and the girl, knocking her out of the car’s path. The car clipped me as I staggered backward, the guy said.”

Isaac’s Adam’s apple worked up and down, but his gaze never flinched from where it was locked on the bathroom door.

“Jackson must’ve taken the full brunt of the impact. I don’t remember anything after the horrific crunching sound of the car jumping the curb.”

“He was always the fastest on the field. No one could catch him.” She laid a hand on his thigh. “He would’ve been glad to know his reaction saved your life.”

The muscles under her palm tensed into marble slabs. “Yeah, he saved my life and this is how I repay that debt—by wanting his wife so much I gave in to my biggest weakness.”

One hand braced above her head on the basin, and he shoved himself awkwardly to his feet. “We all have our demons, our own personal taniwha to deal with. Mine is just a permanent personal reminder.” He limped to the door and opened it to the yawning darkness beyond. “In light of what I’ve told you, I’ll understand if you want to go home.”

He didn’t meet her gaze as he disappeared through the doorway. Nat remained hunched on the floor while the clock marked seconds and then minutes.

Did Isaac mean that she was his biggest weakness? That maybe, maybe, he’d wanted her longer than she’d realized? Nat stood slowly and splashed cold water on her face. The wee hours of the morning weren’t the best time to make sense of something with such major implications. She walked to the en suite door and looked into Isaac’s bedroom. He was stretched out on his side, facing away from her…but he’d left the corner of the comforter flipped over in case she chose to join him.

She thought about her empty room, her empty bed back home. And she thought about how one little thing—the turned-back comforter—was the only way a proud man could communicate that he hoped they both wouldn’t have to be alone for the rest of the night.

Nat flicked off the light and crawled back into Isaac’s bed, cuddling in close to spoon around his big body, knowing that she was lying by telling herself it was only to keep warm.

* * *

Isaac didn’t remember ever being so nervous about a game since his first test match as an All Black. Even though it wasn’t him playing on the high school field this sunny Saturday morning. Even though Bounty Bay’s girls’ rugby team was playing against the neighboring East Coast High School girls’ team, and it was a casual match. His gut was twisted in strangling knots around a thorny ball of stress and expectation as the ref blew the whistle for halftime.

Kept busy by the buzz of excitement vibrating through the girls since the team arrived on the school fields earlier, Isaac hadn’t had time to do more than smile a greeting at Nat when she and Olivia turned up. And he’d seriously wanted to greet her with something more than a smile. Like a full on, wrap-himself-around-her clinch culminating in a kiss that’d leave them both breathless. But he had a job to do and girls who depended on their coach being focused on the game, not on how much he’d missed Nat since she’d left his bed at dawn this morning.

Halftime over, Isaac walked to the sideline to watch his team and yell encouragement. On the temporary bleachers, students and parents stamped their feet and cheered as both teams ran back onto the field. East Coast High was up by six points, and his girls had forty minutes left to take back the lead and hold it. Tricky, but he had faith in them.

With five minutes to go, he still had faith in them, but they needed a minor miracle—and he got it when Lynda scored her first try ever, and Sapphire converted it with a textbook perfect kick over the goalpost. Heart pumping like a racehorse, he stalked the sideline until the final whistle blew. They’d done it! Bloody brilliant!

The girls whooped and hugged each other, then, in the way he’d instructed, shook hands with the opposing team. Soon surrounded by parents wanting to congratulate him, Isaac lost sight of Nat. Once the initial excitement died down and the girls and parents started making their way home, he spotted her close to the locker rooms talking to Margaret Crawford. He jogged over, trying to ascertain by the expression on Nat’s face what they were talking about. Nat looked up as he approached, her eyes both welcoming and wary at the same time.

Considering how intense their three in the morning conversation had been, he’d woken beside her with a lump in his throat wondering how awkward their interaction would be. He needn’t have worried, because she’d been curled shrimplike on her side, breathing the deep, even breaths of the nearly unconscious. He’d sneaked out of bed and put on the coffee, and had a cup waiting in hand for her when she roused twenty minutes later. Her hair a wild tangle over her shoulders, Nat propped herself up in his bed and sipped with a blissful smile.

“We okay?” he asked after he’d judged she had enough caffeine in her system.

She watched him over the rim of the cup with a serious and thoughtful stare. “Yeah. We’re okay.” She’d left fifteen minutes later, once again dressed in only her coat and heels—an image he’d never forget—with a quick and almost shy kiss on his cheek.

“Did you enjoy the game, Margaret?” he asked, taking a spot at the apex of their triangle position, equal distance between himself and the two women, with enough space that he wouldn’t accidentally give himself away by touching Nat’s arm.

“Very much,” the principal replied. “You’ve come a long way with the girls in a very short time. Congratulations on the win.”

He dipped his head in acknowledgement. “Thanks. It’s really been a team effort from everyone involved, and the girls themselves deserve the most credit.”

“Very true, but the board and myself are most impressed with the dedication you’ve shown, and how graciously you’ve accepted Natalie’s presence at training.” She half turned toward Nat to address her. “The school appreciates how much time you’ve sacrificed over the past month ensuring the team would get off to a good start.”

“Oh.” Nat shot him a veiled glance, before looking back at Margaret. “It’s been my pleasure. They’re a great bunch of girls.”

Margaret gave Nat a narrow-lipped smile. “We wouldn’t want you to feel obligated to continue with such close involvement. I know I kind of pressured you into helping out this month under duress, so you’re off the hook.”

Margaret was giving Nat a way to pull out from weekday training and Saturday morning games? Isaac’s pulse leaped, then sprinted toward the opposite goalpost. If Nat quit, there’d be no more of her enthusiasm and natural competitiveness which inspired the girls around her to try harder and push further each practice. No more of them standing side by side watching the girls run through their drills and tossing back and forth ideas to help improve their ball-handling skills. No more stopping by to pick her and Olivia up for the morning runs, even though they both knew Nat no longer needed a wake-up call.

“Actually,” Nat said, “I plan to continue going to practices and training sessions. As long as Isaac doesn’t have any objections?”

She lifted an eyebrow in his direction and he had to—literally—pin his tongue between his teeth to prevent a “fuck no” from exploding out of his mouth. Superhuman effort was required to keep his face in a neutral but appreciative expression.

“None from me. The girls are more settled when you’re around.” And I’m a helluva lot happier.

He jerked back a little as the thought popped into his brain, because big idiot that he was, he hadn’t realized just how much he’d enjoyed these past weeks. And only a part of it could be attributed to his love of the sport.

“Well, then,” Margaret said. “I’d thought you’d have your work cut out for you with the fund-raising event you’re planning, but if you’re sure it’s not too much to juggle?”

“I’m at my best when I’ve got my hands full.” Nat turned a wide-eyed look of innocence his way. Except it wasn’t really that innocent, because damned if the flicker of her smile didn’t tell him she was thinking of last night and what she had her hands full with.

He cleared his throat. “What fund-raising event are we talking about?”

“A bake sale and auction to raise money for new sports uniforms and expenses for the semifinals,” Nat said. “I’ve already checked with Sam to ask if we could set up the bake sale in the back half of Kauri Whare’s parking lot two Sundays from tomorrow to benefit from foot traffic from the tour buses. He said to ask you, and if it was okay, he’d donate one of his carvings as an auction prize.”

“It’s fine with me,” he said. “I’ll hit up a few businesses in town for vouchers and stuff for the auction.”

“And I’ll work out a roster for the girls and their families to take turns manning the stalls, plus organize a bake-off after practice the Saturday before the sale.” Her brow crinkled. “I’ll need to find a kitchen big enough for all the girls to help.”

“Our marae has a fully equipped commercial-sized kitchen. Would that work?”

“Perfect.”

They smiled at each other.

Margaret clucked her tongue. “You two put the team in teamwork. You’re good together.” She scrunched up her face in Isaac’s direction. “And a good influence on each other, too. I don’t think I’ve seen you smile so much since your younger brother covered Mr. Jamison’s desk and chair with Post-it notes when he was fourteen.”

Nat laughed, slanting him a glance. “You weren’t involved in the Post-it prank?”

Margaret jumped in to answer before he could. “Oh, no. Isaac insisted on taking the blame for Sam, even though I had a pretty good idea who was the real culprit.” She nodded, a small smile forming in the corner of her mouth. “He did his brother’s detention without complaint, and Sam never pranked a teacher again because he felt so guilty for Isaac taking his punishment.”

Isaac smiled at Margaret. “You mean Sam never got caught pranking a teacher again. I didn’t completely redeem him.”

“Ah, well,” said Margaret. “The pranks were never mean-spirited with you Ngata boys, and you both grew into fine men. Your old math teacher is proud of you.”

“You are?” Maybe he sounded a little incredulous, but wasn’t this the woman who insisted on Nat acting as a babysitter in case his unsavory nature badly influenced the girls?

Margaret straightened to her full height and met his gaze square on. “I misjudged you, Isaac, and I’m sorry. The mistakes we make in life aren’t nearly as important as the direction we choose to take afterward. You chose not to engage with the media attention and turned instead to helping your family and your community. In my book, that makes you a man to be proud of.” She huffed out a disdainful snort. “And if our own dirty laundry was publicly aired and our sins judged as harshly as yours, we’d all being living under a rock, trembling with shame.”

His gaze shot to Nat, who looked at him with a furrowed brow and a slight tilt to her head, as if Margaret had said something she’d never considered before. He didn’t quite know what to say—words not being his thing—so he muttered a gruff, “Thanks.”

Margaret patted his arm and excused herself, striding over to speak to another of the remaining parents.

“Uh, I gotta get going,” he said to Nat. “Owen informed me there’s a potluck lunch for the usual gang at my place in an hour. Are you and Olivia coming?” His stomach gave a sudden twist, jumping back to the same visceral sensation he’d had the night before when he’d sat with Nat on the bathroom floor. A bone-deep fear that at any moment she’d pull away from him.

But her gaze softened and her lush mouth curved into a smile. “We’ll be there.”

And when she turned away to walk toward Olivia and Morgan, who were still chattering like magpies to their friends, something small but powerful broke free from inside his heart to follow after her.