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

by Tracey Alvarez

  He sat next to Nate and slanted him a glance, before turning his gaze inside the barn. The group of ten kids sat in a semi-circle on the floor around Savannah. She stood, a queen resplendent in front of her subjects, her voice spilling rich and pure into the silence. Not one child moved while she spoke, caught up, as he soon was, in the emotion of her words. Most of them were too young to understand Shakespeare’s tale of two star-crossed lovers, but each of them understood Juliet’s grief and yearning.

  She finished her monologue and swept her arms wide in a curtsying bow. Applause exploded from her little audience, as did whoops and whistles.

  Savannah rose from her curtsy and cupped a hand behind her ear. “And how should we finish up?”

  “Dance party!” shouted the kids.

  “And what’s the best way to kick our nerves to the curb?” She cocked her finger at Tom. “Tom’ll answer this one, guys.”

  Tom grimaced like Savannah had jabbed him with a fork, but his eyes shone with the same adoration as the other kids. “Dance party.”

  “Hit it, Sophie.”

  The beaming, dark-eyed Sophie ran to the workbench and cranked up the music. A thumping beat blasted out of the speakers. Glen couldn’t have named the song if his life depended on it, but Savannah captivated him. The kids crowded around her in a mini mosh-pit, jumping, yelling, laughing up at her with pure joy. Even Tom’s normal, teenage self-consciousness at being seriously uncool had disappeared, and he bounced in the thick of it, waving his arms around.

  And Savannah…hair flying, hips shaking, and spinning the shyer kids in a twirl. She lit up the barn like a super-nova.

  Nate nudged Glen’s arm. “She’s good with them, isn’t she?”

  Glen still couldn’t drag his gaze from Savannah, who’d scooped up Drew and pretended to Tango with him across the floor.

  “She is. The kids’ll never forget this.”

  “No.” A thoughtful pause from beside him. “Neither will you, I suspect. Does she know you’re in love with her?” Nate asked in a conversational tone.

  That captured Glen’s attention big time. He turned, ready to deny everything, but Nate studied him with his steady, see-all eyes.

  Glen sighed, scratching a hand down his jaw. He’d forgotten to shave—again. Forgotten a lot of things, apparently, the most important being, don’t fall in love with Savannah. “No. She doesn’t know.”

  The music had changed to an old Journey hit, and now the kids jumped in unison, shouting, “Don’t stop, believing,” loud enough to blast the roof off.

  “You don’t think she feels the same?”

  Glen shot Nate an are you really that thick look. “I haven’t asked her, if that’s what you’re getting at. Seems a little premature, when I’ve only known her for a few weeks.”

  “You’ve known her a lot longer than that.”

  “Yeah, well.” He wouldn’t admit he’d probably been in love with Savannah since the first time he’d seen her all those years ago. “I have no idea what she’s thinking half the time. She’s an actress, and a bloody good one, as we’ve just seen.” Glen waved a hand toward the barn.

  “Then ask yourself if you’ve seen the real Sav behind the actress. I’ve faith that you’re not as stupid as you look. And I’ll tell you one thing”—Nate nailed Glen with a stare—“her feelings for you won’t be an act, so tread carefully.”

  Glen should’ve been pissed that Nate assumed he’d hurt Sav, but instead, his heartbeat quickened. “Think she has feelings for me?”

  Nate pulled a face and bumped Glen’s arm, nearly knocking him off the bench. “What are we? Still in high school? Ask her yourself, man.”

  ***

  Savannah twirled with Drew in her arms, joining in with the boy’s contagious giggles.

  She lowered him to the floor, groaning. “Next time you can pick me up for a dance, okay?”

  “Or Daddy could,” said Drew. “He’s outside with Glen.”

  Savannah’s gaze shot to the open door and the shadows beyond. Sure enough, Nate and Glen sat on the bench, their heads angled together in deep discussion.

  “I think they should join the dance party, don’t you?” She took Drew’s hand. “Let’s go and make your dad and Glen get their groove on.”

  “Yeah!” Drew towed them both across the floor.

  Nate swiveled toward her, moments later followed by Glen. Arrogant to assume they’d been talking about her? One look at Glen’s laser-like focus and the wry twist of his mouth told her she was right.

  Drew let go of her hand and pounced. “Come on, Daddy!” He pounded Nate’s knee with a little fist. “You can dance with me, and Glen can dance with Savannah.”

  Drew shot a glance over his shoulder, and wouldn’t you know it? The little imp had a gleam in his eyes. Huh. Savannah fisted her hands on her hips. Their feelings for each other were that obvious that even a five-year-old had spotted her I’m-crushing-on-Glen vibes?

  And if Drew could spot it… Nate gave her a sleepy-smug smile. Yeah, Big Cousin was no fool, either.

  “How about it, Glen?” She held out a hand. “Gonna show me more of your fancy footwork?”

  He slipped his hand in hers, his big palm almost engulfing her smaller hand, the quick stroke of his finger along her inner wrist shooting sparks through her tinder-dry libido.

  “I’m not much of a dancer,” he said.

  Nate choked out a cough sounding suspiciously like “bollocks”.

  “Don’t believe him,” Nate said. “Mr. Smooth, here, puts the rest of us left-to-right shufflers to shame.”

  Savannah arched a brow at Glen. “Really?”

  He walked with her into the barn. “My mother made Jamie and me take dance lessons for a couple of months before the school ball.” He pulled a face, but his eyes glittered as he bent close to her ear. “She said women love a man leading them on the dance floor. She wasn’t wrong.”

  A shiver worked its way down her spine as his warm breath brushed her throat. “I’ll try to resist sexing you up against the wall while we have an underage audience, then.”

  He pulled back, delivering a wicked grin she felt to the soles of her sneakers, then led her into the barn’s center.

  Someone changed the music from a fast beat to a country one.

  Glen scrunched up his face. “You actually do like to listen to this stuff? You weren’t just messing with my head?”

  She poked his flat stomach. “It’s not that bad.”

  “It really is,” he said but extended his arms to her.

  She stepped into them, and as her palm connected with his, her skin tightened everywhere with delicious tingles. His touch on her waist was light, because he didn’t need brute strength for her to relinquish control. Oh no, Glen didn’t need much at all to melt her into a gooey mass of do-me hormones. His mum had been right about that.

  A wolf whistle cut through the music, then one of the older kids, who sounded a lot like Tom, yelled, “Old school.”

  “Old school, huh?” Glen said. “Watch and learn, kiddies.”

  Blue eyes locked with hers, the hard edge of his grin transforming to silky seduction. “You ready to educate these little barbarians?”

  “In a dance-off?” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he wouldn’t allow it. “I haven’t got moves like yours.”

  “Just follow my lead, angel.”

  His words triggered little land-mines of memories deep in her subconscious. She had a two beat window to gawk at him before he spun her out and back again, somehow managing to keep her from falling on her butt. Somehow managing to make her laugh while she stumbled, trying to keep up with his direction changes. The song ended, and Glen dipped her over his arm in a dramatic flourish, to the whoops of their audience.

  She stared into his face, at the mussed hair tumbling over his forehead and the flush of color in his cheeks from the effort of her uncoordinated dance moves. Her heart thudded painfully fast, sprinting for Olympic gold. Twice she tried to speak and c
ouldn’t. The knowledge rose in her, hot enough to burn her words to ashes.

  “It was you that night.”

  Faint frown lines appeared on his brow. She didn’t need to clarify which night.

  “Yeah.”

  He brought her upright and let go. She desperately wanted to fire a hundred different questions at him, but a small group of chattering kids, led by Sophie, inserted themselves between her and Glen.

  “Later,” he said.

  Glen met her gaze over the crowd, and emotions roiled through her like the approach of another spring storm.

  ***

  After dinner, Savannah asked Glen to accompany her on a run.

  Damp mist closed in on them as they set off down the driveway, their footsteps muffled by the trees on either side.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” she puffed as they turned onto the road. “You had the perfect humiliating evidence to throw in my face.”

  Even now, her flushed cheeks couldn’t solely be attributed to exercise. She’d acted like a brat that night, wild and reckless, hurt and anger feeding the blazing fire inside. The next morning, she’d woken with a big brass band playing their greatest hits inside her head. Beside her bed were piles of cigarette-smoke stinky clothes—tinged with the acidic remains of vomit. She’d staggered to the bathroom and discovered finger-shaped bruises on her wrists and arms. Hadn’t that been a holy-shit-what-happened moment?

  “You didn’t remember me.” Glen’s gaze remained on the road. “The humiliation was all mine.”

  They ran in silence for another few minutes, their ragged breathing settling into a similar rhythm. Passing the lights through the trees belonging to Nate and Lauren’s house, Glen slowed his gait to a brisk walk.

  “What do you remember?” He tugged up the hem of his shirt and wiped his forehead.

  Savannah couldn’t help but sneak an appreciative peek at the play of muscles across his bare stomach. She’d rather ogle Glen than take an unwelcome trip back into her past. But she shook her head and glanced away. If nothing else, Glen deserved an explanation for her behavior that night.

  She sucked in a few deep breaths, hoping to steady her voice.

  “It was my last night performing as Eliza. I remember creeping onto the school auditorium stage and peeking through the curtains to the first row, seat 12A. I’d left the ticket at the front desk, just in case my dad had a change of heart and caught a later flight.”

  “He was going to come?”

  “I made him promise when I stayed with him earlier in the year during a seventeen-year-old’s worst school holidays, ever.”

  “Worse than what I’m subjecting Tom to?” He offered an encouraging smile.

  “Oh, yeah. I thought I was only a built-in baby-sitter for my two half-sisters—Brianna, age three, and Lucy, still a baby. Dad taking me shopping on Oxford Street, or his new wife, Rachel, paying for mani-pedis, barely wiped the scowl off my face.”

  A sigh shuddered out of her. Viewing those two weeks through adult eyes, she could admit her dad had done the best he could under the circumstances. She’d been awkward and stiff, her former position in her father’s affection usurped by his two little girls. His newer model little stars. His new little divas.

  She’d hated them.

  Of course, as she got older, her feelings toward her two half-sisters had changed. Sav made an effort to keep in touch. She spoke more to Brianna and Lucy online and on Birthday-Christmas phone calls than she did her father.

  Guess not everything had changed.

  “I asked him to come to see me in Pygmalion. I didn’t care about him flying over for my final year prize-giving, but I desperately wanted him there for the last show.”

  “He didn’t make it.”

  “No. Lucy came down with bronchiolitis two days before he was due to fly out. He hated to do this to me, he told me over the phone, but he couldn’t leave her. I yelled at him that he’d left me when I had measles, chicken pox, and didn’t even stay for the surgery when I had my appendix out. He promised to come to my prize-giving later in the year.”

  “And you told him not to bother.”

  “Little brat, huh?”

  “You were young, hurt, and bitterly disappointed,” he said. “And after his no-show at the play?”

  She scrunched up her face, poking out her tongue. “Nate was working that night and Mum had gone off with a group of her friends. I got a lift home after the play and drank most of a bottle of wine left in the fridge, then I headed to a club in the next suburb over. I figured nobody would recognize me there.” She slanted a glance at Glen. “I didn’t have enough cash to catch a taxi into the city; otherwise I would’ve been foolish enough to try Queen Street.”

  “Just as well. Who knows how much more trouble you would’ve gotten into there.”

  “I don’t remember much about the club other than it was loud enough to dull the snarky voices in my head, and men kept offering to buy me drinks.” She pressed her lips together to stop a tremble appearing in her next words. “It’s all murky.” Savannah stopped in the middle of the road. “You were there?”

  He stopped next to her, rubbing his fingers along his jaw. “I was grabbing a burger in the MacDonald’s across the street from the club. You wobbled past on the sidewalk outside, dressed up like a”—he made a rumbly, embarrassed noise in his throat—“like a much older girl, and disappeared into the club. I couldn’t let you stay in there alone.” He sighed. “I didn’t think it was my place to go all big-brother on you, so to start with, I kept my distance.”

  “And watched me get tanked.”

  “You were having fun, and no one was bothering you at that point. You had a little crowd of admiring men circling your table like sharks, but you wouldn’t dance with any of them.”

  Savannah groaned, covering her eyes. “I probably couldn’t have stood unassisted, let alone danced.”

  “Yeah…well. When you headed for the bathroom, one of the sharks followed with an expression on his face that gave me a bad feeling. I went after you both and found he’d cornered you in the hallway, pinning you against the wall, so you couldn’t get away. You remember that?”

  Savannah licked dust-dry lips. God, she should’ve brought her little running backpack with her water bottle.

  “He wanted to dance.” She rubbed a hand back and forth around her wrist. “Called me a whore and trapped me when I tried to get past him.” She shook her head. “There was shouting and shoving, and he finally let me go. Someone grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the hallway.”

  “That was me. I got you out of the club before a brawl started.”

  Something tickled at her memory. “But I remember dancing.”

  Heat stole over her, even though the clinging mist had turned into a fine, cool rain. The warmth spread out from her chest, circling lower and lower until it settled deep inside her. A strong arm wrapped around her waist, keeping her upright, the spill of neon lights on wet pavement. Muted music pouring out of the club and drifting into the crisp air.

  “We danced in the parking lot,” she said.

  His gaze softened. “You made it clear that if you didn’t get a dance with me, you’d cause a scene.”

  “See? Brat.” She laughed. “Was there anyone even around to see me cause a scene?”

  “No. Not even a car in the drive-through.”

  “Ohmigod—I made you dance with me in a MacDonald’s parking lot?”

  “If we’re going for accuracy, I’d have to say I was dancing, you were drunkenly lurching.”

  She clamped a palm over her eyes. “Tell me I didn’t puke over you? Because I do remember a lot of puking that night.”

  “You didn’t puke over me. I managed to get you home without you tossing your cookies in my car, too—though it was a close thing.”

  “You drove me home?”

  He gave a self-deprecating shrug. “I couldn’t leave you giggling like a loon in the MacDonald’s parking lot. I put my sweatshirt on you to k
eep you warm, and I took you home. Made sure you were okay.”

  “I don’t remember the ride home,” she said. “Or much of what happened after—except the vomiting marathon.” She shuddered. “That I remember.” She closed her eyes for a moment, struggling against the blurry memories. “You carried me inside.”

  “Yeah.” He fisted a hand through his hair, dipping his chin. “You kept calling me Henry Higgins.”

  Her bottom lip wobbled. “And held my hair back in the bathroom?”

  “You would’ve ended up face-first in the toilet bowl.”

  She held up a hand. “Don’t joke about it, Glen. What you did was the sweetest thing anyone has ever done for me.”

  He studied her intensely and shook his head. “Making sure you didn’t hurt yourself shouldn’t be on your list of sweetest things a man has done for you.”

  “Yet it is.” The warmth in her belly flared upward to her face and squeezed her throat closed until it was almost impossible to swallow. “I don’t remember much about that night, but I remember how I felt with you. Cared for. Safe. And I kept your sweatshirt for years. It was my favorite.”

  Tears prickled the corners of her eyes but she blinked them away. She covered the distance between them and laced her fingers behind his neck. Resting her forehead on his shoulder, she breathed him in—fresh male sweat and whatever addictive pheromones were added to his deodorant.

  His hands smoothed her shirt against her upper back, the touch making her want to purr.

  “You still are safe with me.” He sighed and encircled her in a huge bear hug, resting his chin against her temple. “I thought you were asking for Liam, once the feel-good-euphoria of alcohol wore off.”

  Sav frowned. “You did?”

  Stubble scraped her skin as he nodded. “Yeah. You kept saying, ‘Where is he? Why didn’t he come?’ The last thing you said to me after I poured you into your bed was, ‘I thought he loved me.’”