Know Your Heart: A New Zealand Enemies to Lovers Romance (Far North Series Book 2)

by Tracey Alvarez

  Glen’s gaze smoldered, suggesting that he, for one, was curious about her sex life.

  “You tell ‘em, love.” Robbie chuckled and stabbed a finger at her. “People need to mind their own shit—pardon my French.”

  The kettle began to wail, and Josie rose from her chair. “Amen to that. While we’re waiting for Robbie to boil up that cray, I’d love to hear about L.A, Savannah. I’ve always wanted to go there.”

  ***

  Savannah slotted into easy conversation with Robbie and Josie—a surprise to Glen. Guess his assumptions her interactions with locals would be strained and awkward were grounded in bias toward the woman. After a brief stumble when her ex-husband was mentioned, Savannah had continued to relate to the elderly couple as if they were old, dear friends. Her self-depreciating sense of humor over some of Hollywood’s ridiculousness had him feeling like a jackass.

  Apparently, the public weren’t the only ones who neglected to look beyond the toothpaste-ad smile and dreamy green eyes to the warm, funny, and forthright woman beneath. Had he also misjudged her? Or was this just another character role she’d donned in a scheme to soften him up and convince him to leave?

  They’d left the house to wait for Robbie to gas up the tractor and bring it around. Savannah wanted to help with the clean-up, but Josie wouldn’t have a bar of it, asking only for a photo of her and Robbie with Savannah so she could show her grandchildren. Savannah had obligingly posed then hugged the woman goodbye.

  Now, Glen and Savannah stood on the beach in front of the Aldridge’s little cottage, the tide having retreated to expose the rocky reef needed to return home. Glen pretended to study the distant line of white breakers in the moonlight. Correction. That’s what he was doing—staring at the sea. Because pretense suggested he’d have to admit to his awareness of the faint scent of summer berries rising off Savannah’s skin. Or the way her hair had curled in the humidity. Or the shiver rippling through her when a cooler sea breeze picked up.

  He stripped off the light fleece sweatshirt he’d grabbed out of his car earlier. “Here, put this on.” He offered the garment, expecting her to turn it down with a side order of snark.

  “Thanks.”

  She pulled it on. The sweatshirt hung loosely on her, the sleeves momentarily covering her hands until she pushed them up her arms.

  Glen sucked in a harsh breath, memories of that night ten years ago crowding into his head. He’d given her his sweatshirt that night, too, and she’d looked like a child lost in a shopping mall as he’d driven her home. The next time he’d seen her, at Nate’s flat a few days later, she’d been cuddled up on his couch with Liam’s arm wrapped tightly around her shoulder. A possessive piece of work, even then. Savannah had given Glen a bland smile, her eyes filled with no recognition other than acknowledgment that he was one of her cousin’s many friends. Stupid to have believed his presence would trigger a memory of that night—and she’d probably binned his non-descript navy sweatshirt the next day.

  Forget it. She continued to stare at the horizon’s black line. He’d more things to worry about than an event that had evidently meant so little that Savannah either couldn’t, or chose not to, remember. He needed to remove her distractingly hot bod from his life—using a light touch and hopefully avoiding any dig-in-heels resistance.

  He cleared his throat. “This audition…wouldn’t you be better rehearsing with one of your actor pals?”

  Like the ones who lived in multi-million dollar houses that overlooked Malibu or at the very least, Auckland city.

  Savannah’s glance could’ve stripped paint.

  Ah. Missed the mark of subtle hint, then.

  “Nate’s agreed to read lines with me,” she said.

  “Nate couldn’t act his way out of a paper bag,” he scoffed. “He couldn’t even score the part of a tree in his primary school play.”

  “He’ll be fine.”

  Forget subtly. “You’re miles away from anything up here—supermarkets, beauty salons…a decent fitness center with personal trainers, for example.”

  Okay, laying it on a little thick. But another yoga session outside his window would siphon all his creative juices from brain to another region entirely.

  Her eyebrows drew inward. “Exactly. No temptation to go to the twenty-four-hour supermarket at 2:00 a.m. for Hokey Pokey ice-cream, no friends pouting if I refuse to hit the pub and club circuit with them, no photos of me running with close-up photos of my thighs with red arrows pointing to oh my god, the horror, is that cellulite?”

  Glen faced her, ignoring the ice slick coating the insides of his gut. He couldn’t imagine how humiliating it was to see unauthorized and unflattering photos virally spread across the internet, but the fact remained. He wasn’t going anywhere until he’d finished his book.

  “Is being away from the city worth the inconvenience of living in a trailer and doing your laundry by hand?”

  “If you weren’t so stubborn to accept my offer of a hotel—”

  “Plus a bang up dinner at Kai Moana.”

  Savannah threw up her hands. “How about I pay for a hotel room and dinner every night until your agreement runs out? You can write without disruption.”

  “Hmmm.” He pretended to consider this, just to yank her chain a little bit more. Then he leaned forward, close enough to see a few specks of sand dotted along her cheekbones. “How about you learn to accept no as a non-negotiable answer? I don’t want to stay in a cramped hotel room when I have a beautiful bush retreat to work in.”

  “It’s my house,” she said through gritted teeth.

  “Not until the eighteenth, so you should consider the hotel.”

  “I’m not staying in a hotel, goddamn it.” Savannah placed a hand in the center of his chest and gave him a little shove.

  He rocked back on his heels, heart revving like a stuck motorbike throttle at the imprint of heat her palm left behind. An imprint that shot sparks down to his gut, and lower…

  “I want you to leave.” Another shove.

  Glen allowed her to shift him back another step, curious to see how physical Savannah would get.

  “I want you out of my house.”

  She raised her hand to push him again, but her fingers didn’t make it to his chest. Instead, they hovered, trembling, while her lips parted and a sigh escaped. He zeroed in on her mouth—Savannah’s bewitching, demanding mouth ordering him to leave—but the only phrase he’d focused on in the last few moments was I want you. That, combined with the dull ache behind his breastbone where her hand touched him snapped the last of his resistance.

  Glen gained the ground he’d lost, standing toe to toe with her.

  “I want…” Savannah’s words came out in a strangled rasp, whatever order about to fall from her lips crumbling to dust and blowing away in the sea breeze.

  He removed a strand of hair blown across her face and tucked it behind her ear, his fingers lingering, stroking her jaw. “You want to put your hands on me?”

  “No! I…” She moved to drop the hand she still held between them, but after years of swordplay, his reflexes were fast, and he caught it, placing her palm on his chest.

  “I…” Her breathing hitched, her sudden intake of air audible even with the background hiss of the ocean. “Glen.”

  The way Savannah said his name set his heart hammering against her palm like a man hammering on a door, desperate for shelter while outside a storm raged. And he was desperate—to taste her mouth…to see if honeyed sweetness hid under her sharp words.

  He skimmed a thumb down her bottom lip and her mouth parted, eyes widening at his touch. Emboldened by her lack of resistance, he cupped her nape and drew her closer. Her expression remained unreadable in the semi-darkness, but he gambled the fingers curling into a fist around his tee shirt meant she didn’t intend to knee him in the nuts.

  But if he did this, if he kissed her now…would it be a sign of strength? Or surrender?

  Perfect example of his problem, right there
. He over-analyzed everything to death, instead of just doing, taking the risk, and to hell with the consequences.

  Screw it.

  Glen let go of Savannah long enough to grasp her upper arms and tug her flush against him. He bent his head, hesitating a whisker away to gauge her reaction. Her breath puffed gently on his lips in rapid pants, her green eyes shielded with the sweep of her lashes at half-mast. Guess he must have traces of the young man fascinated with medieval chivalry still inside him. He couldn’t go all caveman on a woman if she didn’t want him.

  Dipping his head, he brushed his top lip against the fullness of her bottom one. She gasped, tilting up her head, so he repeated the action, but this time lingered…aligning their mouths so they clung lightly together. The tip of his tongue traced the seam of her mouth, savoring the fruity zing of the Sauvignon Blanc they’d had with dinner. Savannah made a needy sound in the back of her throat, half sigh, half moan. He stiffened further, resisting the urge to fill his palms with her curvy bottom and snug her lower half even tighter against him. Tentative fingers grazed his chest to clutch at his shoulders, and she pressed closer.

  “Glen.”

  His name on her lips a second time shattered his restraint, and he kissed her the way he’d always dreamed of kissing her—deep, wet, uninhibited. She opened to him, and he took what he wanted, what he hadn’t known he needed. If she’d any further objection to his mouth crushing hers, it melted under the heat of their connection.

  Her tongue slid sensuously against his, boiling the blood in his veins until it arrowed straight to his groin. With a groan wrenched gut deep, he gripped her tighter, positioning himself into the welcoming cradle of her hips.

  An engine grumble and the flash of bright light sliced through a lust-fogged haze. Headlights cut straight paths from the cottage’s side, lighting them up as if they were on a stage. Savannah wrenched her mouth from his with a soft cry—embarrassment or dismay at being interrupted, he couldn’t tell.

  The tractor chugged alongside, brakes creaking as it juddered to a halt. Robbie leaned out of the cab with a grin. “You two need a lift? Or perhaps a dip to cool you off?” He laughed and thumped the huge steering wheel. “Climb on up.”

  A dip in the warm waters of Bounty Bay wouldn’t work since Glen had a hard-on solid enough to jack up his four-wheel drive. Ten minutes under a cold shower would cool him off. Maybe.

  Savannah stalked around him, her legs flexing as she climbed up beside Robbie. Glen loped around to the other side of the cab, shielding his eyes from the headlights. Spots danced in his eyes as he scaled the steps and grabbed the frame to hold on.

  When the spots cleared, Savannah was watching him—her eyes hooded, jaw firm, lips in a neutral line. Ever the actress, she had years to perfect an indifferent expression. She could pretend the kiss didn’t affect her all she liked. While she could hide her emotions, she couldn’t hide the rapid rise and fall of her chest as she tried to catch her breath, or the bee-stung pout of her lips the scruff around his mouth had irritated.

  Yeah, a cold shower? Not gonna help.

  Kissing Savannah was neither a show of strength nor a sign of surrender, but the igniting of a wildfire he had no idea how to control.

  ***

  Well, the tongue tangling experience hadn’t been that awkward at all. Savannah rolled her eyes, pressing her forehead to the passenger window as Glen drove onto the beach ramp. Just call her the queen of understated sarcasm.

  Robbie easily towed the bogged car out of the sand, and with a brisk wave indicated they should drive ahead to make sure they didn’t get stuck again. Glen drove them over the hard-packed sand and exposed reef in strained silence.

  Strained from her end, anyway.

  Looking at the man, his elbow resting on the open window frame as he steered with one hand, breeze molding his tee shirt around some truly impressive chest muscles—and she knew just how impressive as she’d been snugged up against them—anyone would think she hadn’t had her tongue halfway down his throat only minutes ago.

  The SUV juddered onto the gravel road. She kept her gaze fixed on the lower corner of the windshield and breathed shallowly through her mouth so she wouldn’t have to suffer the heady scent of male wafting off the borrowed fleece.

  Tuneful humming, only just audible over the engine’s purr, made her dig fingernails into the door armrest. The instrumental from The Lord of the Rings?

  Seriously?

  The man was thinking about hairy-footed fictional creatures while she was all but squirming, trying not to dwell on The Kiss.

  She fired over another glance, designed to sear off his girlishly long eyelashes. The moonlight on his side of the car highlighted a profile designed by dark angels to tempt even the most resistant woman. Straight nose, defined cheekbones, fine laugh-lines in the corners of his eyes below a crinkled brow—someone who thought as much as he laughed. God knew why that transformed her leg muscles to quivery goop. Scruff covered his jaw and circled the perfection of lips not too full but not meanly narrow, either—scruff that chafed so deliciously against her lips as he’d ravished her mouth.

  Ravished? Did people even still use that word to describe how a man kissed a woman? It was old fashioned, but it fit the emotions and sensations roiling through her moments before the tractor’s headlights caught them. Down to her core, the focused intensity with which Glen kissed her left her feeling ravished. Devoured. Stripped bare. As if over the last couple of days he’d bottled every ounce of frustration, irritation, curiosity, and lust into a beaker, shaken the hell out of it, and let it explode out of him once he’d gotten his hands—and mouth—on her.

  Still. She glanced away from Glen to the trees whizzing past. She couldn’t allow it to happen again. Only an idiot would believe he hadn’t had an ulterior motive with that lip lock.

  Glen pulled to a stop in front of the locked gate that separated the public road from the private road leading to her property, as well as Lauren and Todd Taylor’s. Savannah collected the gate key from the console before Glen could make a move, and hopped out of the vehicle. She swung the metal gate wide open, relocking it once Glen drove through. Twin taillights glowed like demon eyes as she walked toward the car, the disconcerting image intensified when a native owl hooted its eerie and distinctive cry of morepork-morepork from a nearby tree.

  Savannah stiffened her spine then opened the passenger door and climbed inside. In Maori culture the high, piercing call of the little Ruru was a harbinger of bad news. Well, she had some bad news for Glen Cooper if he thought she’d turn into a crumbling, clingy mess who’d roll belly up in submission just because he’d kissed her.

  After she slammed shut the door, she turned in her seat, switching on the full-power Diva Stare. “I still want you out of my house.”

  Glen’s hand stilled on the shifter and then dropped to rest on his thigh. Savannah’s gaze swept along the length of lean muscle barely concealed by the thin fabric of his board shorts. When she raised her gaze, Glen watched her with hooded eyes and a crease of his lips that was definitely a smirk.

  He remained silent. Trying to psych her out with some of that I’m sexy and you know it mojo, no doubt. Wouldn’t work on her. Aw, hell no.

  “And I think you’re being a stubborn ass about it,” she said.

  The smirk remained. “Noted.”

  “So, I hope you can cope with daily 5:00 a.m. wake-up calls and other assorted disturbances to make your stay as uncomfortable as possible.”

  One eyebrow twitched up a fraction, but otherwise his face showed as much interest as a man flicking through a craft catalogue. “I’ll adjust. As will you, when you accept I’m not changing my mind.”

  Said with such calm reasonableness, it defused some of her temper. If they were, as it appeared, at an impasse, she’d like to understand why. “Help me accept it then. Give me one reason why you won’t go back to Auckland, other than you don’t want to. Please.”

  The green glow of the dashboard lights caught
the working of his jaw muscles. Glen rubbed an index finger over his chin, leaning farther back into his seat while the car idled quietly in the dark. “A week before I came up here, my sister-in-law walked out on my brother with their three boys and arrived on my doorstep.”

  Three boys. In what Nate described as a house where he would worry about Drew leaving grubby fingerprints? “They’re staying with you?”

  “Couldn’t leave them out on the street.”

  Three kids, an upset sister-in-law, and Glen crammed into his bachelor pad…okay. That would make writing a novel impossible.

  “She couldn’t stay with family or one of her friends?”

  “Erin’s parents are dead. Her sisters live in Australia. And her friends are mostly Jamie’s friends who’d make it their mission in life to convince her to return home.”

  “Ah.”

  Was it coincidence, or did Glen know what buttons of hers to push to gain her sympathy? She’d been in Erin’s shoes not so long ago. Some of her so-called friends convinced her to give Liam just one more chance when she’d scraped up the courage to admit things hadn’t been healthy in their marriage for a long time.

  “I’m sure your sister-in-law appreciates having a safe place to stay.”

  Glen’s head tilted to the side, and he studied her across the small space, making everything from her neck down coil tight with tension.

  “She is safe with her husband.” His voice softened. “He didn’t hurt her—that’s the first thing I asked once she’d finished sobbing on my shoulder. Jamie is a self-absorbed workaholic who hasn’t paid nearly enough attention to his wife and family, but he wouldn’t hurt a fly, let alone Erin. He does love her, he just hasn’t figured out what’s really important. If he pulls his head out of his ass and focuses on Erin again, I think they’ll be okay.”