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Nate was too close. Kris could smell his coffee-and-leather scent and see the gold flecks in his eyes. She wanted to step back out of the danger zone, but that would be admitting weakness.
Instead, she reached for Teague, her fingers curling around his arm for support.
Nate tracked the movement with the intensity of a predator. Something akin to pain raked across his face before it disappeared as quickly as it came.
“Is everything okay?” Michael came up beside his son and examined Kris with mild surprise. “Hi, Kris.”
“Hello, Mr. Reynolds.”
Awkward silence punctuated the air.
“I’m Teague.” The blond held out his hand; the other remained on Kris’s waist. “Kris’s friend.”
Nate’s eye twitched.
“Right.” Michael grasped Teague’s hand, seeming grateful for a normal interaction. “Nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.”
More awkward silence.
“I’m going to congratulate Sky before we head out.” Kris last saw her mentee in deep conversation with a woman whom, based on the familiarity with which Skylar spoke to her, she assumed was the camp coach. “She did a great job today.”
Michael’s head bobbed up and down. “That she did.”
Nate remained silent. He hadn’t said a word since his dickish proclamation that Kris and Teague were blocking his way.
He did, however, follow Kris, Teague, and Michael as they elbowed their way through the thinning crowd. A majority of players and parents had dispersed, and it didn’t take them long to reach Skylar, who was still talking on the sidelines with her coach. An older man with thinning blond hair and a black tracksuit had joined them.
The coach caught sight of the foursome and said something to the man. She shook his hand, a motion Skylar repeated before the mystery man walked away.
“You came!” Skylar’s face lit up when she saw her father. She tackled him in a huge hug, which he returned with a laugh.
First the MentHer gala, now the big game. Two in one week. Not bad for a man who’d been MIA on the fatherly duties front for half a decade.
Kris caught the grim set of Nate’s mouth out of the corner of her eye, but he appeared less suspicious than when he learned Michael had shown up to the gala.
Skylar hugged Nate next, and the sight of the siblings’ arms wrapped tight around each other, pride shining in Nate’s eyes while his sister burrowed her face in his chest, tugged at Kris’s heartstrings.
I really am going soft.
“Hey, Kris.” Skylar broke away from Nate and approached Kris, stopping a few inches short. “Oops, I’m all sweaty.”
Kris looked at her expensive outfit, then at Skylar’s sweat-dampened jersey, and heaved a huge sigh. She opened her arms.
Skylar grinned, closing the distance between them and hugging her with the same ferocity she had her family. She was the biggest hugger Kris had ever met. “You look hot,” she whispered. “I bet Nate is eating his heart out.”
A smirk tugged at Kris’s lips. She’d taught the girl well.
It was a good thing Skylar was fundamentally sweet, or the male Reynoldses would have major trouble on their hands.
“Thanks for coming. You look different with your shirt on,” Skylar chirped in her greeting to Teague.
Color rose on his cheeks, and Kris’s smirk widened.
Who was she kidding? Skylar was already trouble.
Michael and Nate choked at the same time.
