The Ghost [Marvel | Steve Rogers]

Chapter 9

Upstate New York, USA

Late Fall 2015

Well, that was a peculiar look. And Nadine wasn't entirely sure she wanted to know what it meant. It certainly didn't stop her stomach from flipping nervously.

Nina had obviously been taking lessons from Natasha...

But almost as soon as it had appeared on her daughter's face, it was gone and Nina was looking back to her new textbook; she and Nat had taken a trip to Cambridge the week before and Nina had returned lugging a stack of textbooks for her courses. Her final scores weren't in yet, but Tony had been heavily hinting to Nat that not only had he'd taken a peek but that it looked good so far.

But that look... Nadine eyed her daughter warily as she crossed the sitting area of their suite to deposit her workout gear in her room, not entirely sure what to make of it. For all that Nina's focus was almost wholly on her upcoming semester, she had still been sitting in on the odd bit of training now that her testing was over and done with. Not to mention she had been spending a great deal of quality time with her aunt.

Natasha had definitely taken to being an aunt to a teenage girl like a match to paper. More than once over the last little while, even before Nina had taken her tests, there had been times when Nadine would be looking for one of them and they'd be nowhere to be found. Only to find out later they'd popped off together for coffees or some shopping. "Have to make sure my niece is properly outfitted for school," Nat had explained with a sly look after one such occasion, "after all, what are aunts for except to talk boys, go shopping and swap gossip."

Yes...gossip. Nadine could only imagine what sorts of things her sister had filled her daughter's head with. And vice versa, if she were being honest. Nina was no slouch at noticing things around her that other people often missed; a by-product of the mental and memory 'games' Nadine had raised her with.

For the most part, Nadine really could care less. She was just far too happy that her sister and Nina had bonded the way they had. It was more than she could've ever dreamed, to be honest. Never would she have imagined even a few months before that she would be wondering what sorts of things Natasha and Nina had been talking about. The very idea that they even knew about each other would've seemed ridiculous and unattainable alone, much less that they could develop a relationship; a nice dream, but not something she should let herself hope could one day happen.

Yet now? Here she was, wondering what sort of innocuous gossip her sister and her daughter had been trading.

And what sort of less-than-innocuous gossip, if her daughter's odd look had been any indication.

Nadine had an unsettling feeling like a great deal of Nat and Nina's gossip recently had been centered on Nadine...and a certain Captain she was trying very hard not to think of in decidedly unprofessional ways.

The more time she and Steve were spending together was not making it any easier, that was for sure. To the point where the sparring session she had just wrapped up with him had left her feeling warm in ways that had very little to do with the physical exertions of physical training.

Rather, it had a great deal more to do with the person she was training with, be it the friendly smiles he gave her, the genuine interest he had or the wonderfully solid feel of those arms. More likely, it was a devastating mix of that and more.

After all, not many men she'd ever known would even think to find out her favourite song, much less sneak it into his workout playlist just to make her laugh. Yet, just that had happened barely even an hour before. One minute she was on the verge of slipping behind Steve's guard to take him down—again, she recalled, still pleased about that—and the next she's blinking in bewilderment at the sound of Woody Herman's Woodchopper's Ball. And Steve promptly hooked an ankle around hers and laid her out flat on the floor, looking down at her with a wicked twinkle in his eye.