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

by Tracey Alvarez

  “You want to cuddle?”

  He sighed. “We just had our tongues in each other’s mouths, and you find the idea of cuddling distasteful?”

  Actually, the idea of spooning with Glen filled her with a pretty even mix of warm glow and fiery heat. Nothing about being up close and personal with the man was in the realms of distasteful.

  “Not distasteful, just unexpected when we’ve, ah, got each other all worked up.”

  “You’re truly ready for us to take the next step?”

  She burned at the thought of that next step. Safer to keep her mouth shut.

  He spoke again. “If I made love to you, right now, while you’re looking for someone to distract you from all the bad shit spinning around in your head, would you still respect me in the morning?”

  She snorted, but his words dug deep. Joking aside, would she still respect herself in the morning? No. And somehow, even though he’d only known her for a short time, he’d figured that while she wanted him, what she needed was his presence, was him.

  “I want us a hundred percent focused on each other and nothing else before we go any farther.”

  A hundred percent of his focus. What would that feel like? She shivered, and without any further complaint, rolled over. Glen moved behind her, sliding his arm under her pillow and draping the other over her waist. He aligned the front of his thighs to the back of hers, his leg hairs giving her another pleasurable shiver, then his hips met her bottom with a light bump—enough so she could feel his arousal, but not in a c’mon, baby, I’ve changed my mind way.

  “We’re just talking about sex, right?” she asked.

  Glen tucked his fingers under her waist, holding her close. His abs clenched then relaxed. “Of course. Two consenting adults who want to make each other feel good.”

  “That’s all it is.”

  She counted to twenty before thunder grumbled in the distance, willing the ache between her legs to subside, the pounding of her heart to slow.

  “Yeah. Only I’d like to know it’s me you see while I make you come,” he added so quietly she thought she’d imagined it.

  The irony that he could even consider that she wouldn’t see him pulsed hotly behind her eyes. She couldn’t see anything but him. Close her eyes—and she did so now to prove a point—and all she saw was his blue eyes, dark with emotion as he’d looked down at her in his arms earlier that night after rescuing her from the caravan.

  Irony, you are a cruel, meddlesome bitch.

  Because as soon as she pondered on his unexpected vulnerability, it raised one of her own. She didn’t want to be with Glen as Savannah Payne, a stroke to his ego. She just wanted to be with him. Not as an actress, not as the teenage girl she suspected he crushed on, just Savannah. Because this wasn’t Notting-bloody-Hill and she wasn’t Julia Roberts.

  Light bloomed against the window drapes as lightning lit up the night sky. Muscles in his arms flexed, tightening around her waist.

  “I could be anyone here with you in the dark,” she said. “Angelina Jolie. Jennifer Lopez. Cameron Diaz. Anyone.”

  “You could, but you’re not. I’d know you anywhere by the way I feel when you’re close by.”

  “Irritated beyond belief? Like when there’s a mosquito dive-bombing you at night.”

  “There is that aspect.” He chuckled. “But it’s different from the way I used to feel around you, back in the bad old days.”

  “How did you feel?” Sav tightened her fingers on the pillow’s corner.

  “Invisible.”

  That one word reached into her chest and clawed her heart to bloody shreds. She knew all about feeling invisible—the scars left behind when the people you loved didn’t notice you. When your best efforts to gain their attention fell short over and over. When you weren’t high in their priorities so you had to make them notice by being the best, by hogging the spotlight. And even then, sometimes the people you loved walked away, or moved to a different country with their new, improved family…

  “You weren’t invisible; there was just a lot of stuff competing for my attention—exams, theatre club, auditions and rehearsals, and the rest of my teenage dramas.”

  “I blended in.” A breath that could’ve been a sigh. “While you stood out in a crowd.”

  “I remember some things.”

  She’d thought and thought about those days since meeting Glen again. And while there were things that still teased her subconscious, what Glen-memories she’d dragged to the surface were sweet ones.

  “You were quiet and kind of serious. I think I remember you watching me a few times. You were frowning, as if I were just a silly girl trying to fit in with my cousin’s older friends.”

  “I was frowning because I didn’t like the way Liam treated you when Nate wasn’t keeping a close eye on him.” He paused. “I never thought you were silly.”

  She said nothing, just settled into his warmth as if it were natural for the two of them to spoon. Yawning, she traced a circle on the back of his hand with a fingertip. “Do I still make you feel like you’re invisible?”

  And if he said yes, she’d win the title of world’s biggest bitch.

  “No.” A drawn out sigh, as if he didn’t want to think about it anymore. “Now you make me feel like I’m a steel rod at the top of a sky scraper, waiting for a strike to come out of a mid-summer storm.”

  So was she the storm or the lightning bolt or the sky scraper? She crinkled her nose, let her eyelids drift shut. “Anyone ever tell you you should be a writer?”

  “Yeah, once upon a time someone did. Now shut up and go to sleep.”

  With a smile on her face, Savannah did.

  Chapter 8

  Glen woke expecting to find a warm, curvy blonde in his arms. Instead he opened his eyes to the steady downpour of rain and cool, empty sheets.

  The old walk of shame in the early morning hours.

  Except they hadn’t done anything to be ashamed of, though he’d let his guard down, saying things he probably shouldn’t have. Glen scrunched up his face and snatched his phone from the nightstand.

  9:03 a.m.

  He slid over Savannah’s fancy sheets until his ass hit the bed edge and then sat up. Hands jammed into his hair, knees on elbows, he blinked at the floorboards. He never slept in this late. And he never slept so deeply with a woman in his space.

  He flopped backward, starfish style. Then rolled his head to the right and inhaled. The faintest trace of perfume curled into his nose. He sniffed again, not too proud to stick his nose on the sheet where she’d been sleeping.

  With a sigh, Glen climbed off the bed and hauled on jeans and a long-sleeved tee shirt. Cracking open the bedroom door, he peered into the hallway. Voices rose and fell from the kitchen. Tom’s—and bloody hell, the boy was talking in actual sentences—and Savannah’s, her laugh as sweet as a chorus of bells.

  Chorus of freakin’ bells? He was losing it.

  Savannah had burrowed under his skin, like one of those little Amazonian fish that’d shoot up your dick given half the chance. He winced and padded down the hall into the bathroom, latching the door behind him. It was an unappealing yet accurate comparison of how Savannah had somehow gotten her hooks in him, he thought, splashing cold water on his face. She’d targeted the part of his body that men were often prone to think with.

  “What’s your band called?” he heard Savannah ask as he walked into the kitchen, following the siren call of brewing coffee.

  He didn’t catch Tom’s response. A few remaining brain cells dribbled out of his ears at the sight of Savannah, perched on a bar stool at the end of the counter, dressed in his baggy clothes still, her long hair in a single braid, and smiling with such guilelessness his heart felt like a bear trap had sprung on it. Even wearing Tom’s fleece, in the ugliest shade of orange known to man, she looked stunning.

  In an instant, Glen flashed back to the first time he’d spoken to her. It’d been in the flat he’d shared with four other students, and the
y and some friends had been in the middle of a twenty-six-hour-and-counting game of D&D, crowded around a coffee table in their tiny, junk-food scattered living room. Yes, he’d been a geek. He’d worn a tie-dyed tee and jeans that should’ve been laundered two days ago. His hair hadn’t been cut for a couple months as a small sign of rebellion against his father, who refused to step one polished loafer inside what the old man referred to as Glen’s “hovel”.

  That Saturday morning, Nate bowled into their flat as he always did, without knocking and with a favor to ask. “Coop, can I borrow your car? I’m almost out of gas, and I need to get Savannah to an audition in the city.”

  Seven sets of eyes, including his, looked up from their character sheets and dice at the mention of a female’s name, and seven young men gawked. That day, Savannah had channeled a 1960s Audrey Hepburn, dressed in skinny black jeans and a tight black shirt, with a pink scarf tied around her slender throat. Her huge green eyes were framed only by naturally long lashes, and a neat braid of hair the color of aged honey trailed down over her shoulder, the end tied with a matching pink ribbon.

  They weren’t that geeky, and Nate’s younger cousin was that beautiful. Maybe he’d been the only one imagining Savannah as a ranger, complete with kick-ass bow and skin-tight leather armor, but he doubted it.

  Glen had cleared his throat and laid down his die. “Sure.” He dug in the pocket of his jeans and pulled out the key to the ten-year-old bomb he’d scrimped and saved to buy with his own money. “Here.”

  He tossed the keychain, but in his sudden nervousness, cocked up his aim. It flew over Nate’s shoulder, and a small fist snatched it out of the air.

  “Thanks,” Savannah said, her gaze summing up the seven of them in the room as quickly as a calculator summed up a simple equation.

  Nate gave them a narrowed stare and then jabbed a thumb behind him. “If you haven’t met her, this is my little cousin, Savannah. She’s in her last year of school, and she’s trying out for the lead in Pygmalion.” Emphasis on the words cousin and school. They all understood the subtext.

  “If I get it,” Savannah said behind him.

  “Course you will.” Nate turned and wrapped a comforting arm around her shoulder. “You’ll get it since you don’t have to sing”—Savannah jabbed him in the ribs for that—“and later on, this bunch of losers can cough up twenty bucks to see you as Eliza Doolittle. Right?” His gaze switched back to the group, as if daring them to contradict him.

  Seven guys nodded at Nate like bobble-heads. Yep, each of them had suddenly become a huge fan of the dramatic arts.

  “We’d better get going.” Nate grabbed the keys from Savannah and nodded to Glen. “Thanks.”

  “Thanks for lending us your car…Coop.”

  For the first time since she’d entered their living room, Savannah smiled.

  A smile that had turned up in his dreams over the years to haunt him.

  Obviously, he hadn’t had the same effect on her. Savannah had followed her cousin out without a backward glance. That had been the first and only time she’d spoken to him directly until the night of her final performance in Pygmalion.

  “Uh, Uncle Glen?” Tom’s curious voice jerked Glen back into the present.

  Savannah fiddled with the tip of her braid, a faint splash of rose developing on her cheekbones. He switched his gaze back to his nephew.

  “Huh? What?”

  Smooth recovery, Coop. He should probably wipe his mouth in case he’d been drooling for the past thirty seconds.

  Glen glanced down at the empty coffee mug in Tom’s hand. “Oh. Coffee. Hell, yeah.” He snatched the mug and filled it from the coffee pot. “And drop the ‘Uncle’, will you? It makes me feel old.” Holding up an index finger at the smirk forming on Tom’s mouth, Glen sipped what was probably the worst brew in the history of crappy brews and added, “Don’t go there.”

  “Is the coffee okay?” Savannah came behind the counter carrying another mug, ending up at the sink beside him. “I don’t drink it, but Tom said you can’t function in the morning without it.”

  Glen leaned against the cabinetry and sucked in another mouthful of lukewarm, dirt-colored liquid. “It’s great.” Caffeine swimming in it somewhere was about the best he could say. But coffee was coffee, and she’d gone to the effort of making it for him. “Thanks.”

  She smiled up at him. With her face devoid of its usual coating of make-up, she was once again pre-Savannah Payne, pre the defensive mask she regularly wore. She brushed past him to load a stack of plates and her mug into the dishwasher. Chills raced up his arm where she’d accidentally, or not-so-accidentally touched him.

  “My dad says he runs on coffee,” said Tom. “Explains why he’s such a Type A—A for asshole,” the boy added in a mutter, his shoulders hunched around his ears as he glared at his orange juice.

  Couldn’t argue with the boy’s assessment. Jamie could be an asshole—but whatever other shortcomings Glen’s brother had, he loved his boys. He just wasn’t great at expressing it.

  Savannah glanced up from her bent position at the dishwasher, her eyes soft, her mouth twisting. Yeah, a pep-talk with a teenage boy was a recipe for eye-rolling, mono-syllabic grunts, and the kid tuning him out after thirty seconds max.

  Glen carried his mug to the counter and sat on the bar stool Savannah had vacated. He decided ignoring the asshole comment would avoid the boy’s premature shut down. “Heard from your dad lately?”

  Tom tore a crust off his toast and nibbled it for a few seconds before dropping it back on the plate. “He sent me an e-mail with a spread sheet attached on Friday. So I could fill out my study hours during the holidays.”

  “Ah.”

  Jamie and his damn spread sheets, schedules, and automated life. It would never have occurred to him to ring his son and have an actual conversation about study plans.

  “I sent him a text with the prize-giving date in November. My band’s performing at half time, so I hinted about a special act and asked if he could finish work early to get a good seat. Guess what he replied with? It’s in my calendar.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  Making excuses for Jamie was pointless. No surprise he’d failed to read between the lines of Tom’s text, or if he had understood Tom’s hint, that Jamie had chosen to ignore it. Glen’s brother was a great believer in ignore the problem and it’ll go away—at least in his personal life. How well is that working out for you now, Jamie, with your wife and kids gone?

  “Yeah, well.” Tom shrugged, the tell-tale sheen in his eyes indicating he was anything but indifferent. “I’ll be crap, anyway. I’ve never played in front of a crowd, and I’ll freeze—I know I’ll freeze in front of everyone and look like a complete dickhead.”

  The dishwasher drawer rattled as Savannah slid it in. She turned and leaned a hip against it, watching them. “I could help with that.”

  Tom’s eyebrows rose with hope then sank into a lined V. “Nah. When Dad finds out I’m playing, he’ll make me quit, so it doesn’t matter anyway.”

  “It matters.” Glen rested his forearms on the counter. “And because it matters, it’s worth fighting for. I’ll speak to your dad before prize-giving; you work on becoming a bad-ass lead guitarist.”

  Tom snorted, but the ropey tension across his narrow shoulders loosened. “So, how can you help me?” he asked Savannah. “Can you play?”

  “Not the guitar.” Savannah walked around the counter and hopped on the stool on Tom’s other side. “I took piano and violin for years when I was a kid.”

  “Do you sing?”

  She laughed, a rolling belly-laugh that stroked across Glen’s skin like feathers.

  “God, no. People would pay me to stop. Not being able to sing is why I never aimed for Broadway, even though I love the theatre most of all.” The laughter in her tone faded. “Anyway. Something I do know about is stage fright.”

  “You got stage fright?” Tom asked.

  “I get stage fright—still,” she
said. “It never goes away completely. I’ve just learned some techniques to control it. Those, I can teach you, if you want me to.”

  “I’m in.” Tom picked up his toast. “When can we start?”

  “I guess we’ve got some time this morning. I’m hoping your uncle won’t kick me out until the rain stops.”

  Funny how his primary goal had been keeping Savannah out of his house, therefore out of his life. Now, he looked for an excuse to ask her to stay without admitting he didn’t want her to leave.

  Tom had just dropped one in his lap.

  “I won’t kick you out since you’re offering to be my nephew’s coach. Hell, I’m such a nice guy, I’ll even go out in the rain and see if I can salvage any of your clothes.”

  “Oh.” Her lips, which had been on the cusp of smiling, sagged. “I’d forgotten about Daisy.”

  Glen sighed. “I’ll grab some breakfast and then check it out while Tom starts his study—”

  “Aw, c’mon.”

  Glen held out a palm. “Study first—your dad’s right about that being your top priority with exams only weeks away.” He turned to Savannah. “Take my phone on the deck, and let Nate know what happened.”

  “Thank you, Glen.”

  He shoved a hand into his jean pocket and stood, uncomfortable at her softening gaze sweeping over him. Had he been so caught up in being right that the smallest show of kindness moved her?

  “No problem.”

  A classic, knee-jerk response. Because going gooey inside at this apparent truce between them was a big red flag. Give the woman an inch and she’d take a mile—give her the thinnest sliver of his heart and it opened up the possibility that she’d steal the rest from right under his nose.

  ***

  Low clouds and drizzle replaced the raging storm by mid-morning. Glen and Nate stood facing Daisy’s crumpled side. They’d tried for the better part of an hour to get inside the caravan, but the heavy trunk of the gum tree had warped the door. Neither man thought Savannah’s wardrobe or purse was worth risking life and limb.

  Nate dragged a coin from the pocket of his long stockman’s coat. “Heads, I take her to town. Tails, you’re up.”