Nate’s eyes gleamed as he tried not to smile. “You know the type, Todd. Writes about some guy having adventures but doesn’t have the balls to actually have one himself.”
Glen nudged the wetsuit with a toe. “Drowning for your entertainment is having an adventure?”
“Yup,” said Todd. “So man up and get changed before we diss your manhood to Nate’s little cousin.”
The pointed look Nate shot Glen tightened his gut. It was a look saying, I don’t want to know Savannah’s naked in your bed.
“You heard the part about me not being able to surf?”
Todd nodded. “Oh, I heard. You’ll learn. Fast, if you don’t want to end up swallowing a gallon of saltwater.”
Glen snatched up the wetsuit. Well, there were worse ways to die. He’d researched drowning while writing this book, and evidently, it wasn’t so bad. Maybe preferable to Nate and his enormous future brother-in-law gutting him.
Glen stabbed a finger at Nate. “Next time either of you want legal advice, I’m charging double.”
Todd and Nate’s laughter followed him inside.
***
Two hours later, Glen had an epiphany—likely brought on by bone-deep exhaustion and ingesting too much salt water.
He slumped gasping on Bounty Bay’s beach with Nate beside him.
“I really suck,” Glen said.
“Worst I’ve ever seen.” Nate shifted his smug, green-eyed gaze to Glen, then turned to look at the distant shape of Todd, waiting on his board for the next wave set. “Thought with your reflexes and good balance, you might’ve improved. Turns out, no. You still suck.”
Glen coughed, his chest sore from hacking sea water from his lungs. “Better give up my dreams of taking out the New Zealand surf champ’s title. Law is less painful, at least.”
“Is it?” Nate continued to study the horizon. “You’re returning to Darth Vader and his minions?”
“You’re mixing movies.” But point taken. “And I don’t know. Work’s the smallest part of the shit spinning around in my head.”
Glen reclined on the gritty sand and laced his hands behind his neck. The sun had come out during Glen’s grueling hour session and now danced across the slow rise and fall of the waves. It was hypnotic, and if he allowed himself to close his eyes, he knew what dreams would rise to haunt him. Staying here in Bounty Bay with Savannah. Writing books, while she taught local kids to believe in themselves—on stage and off of it. Barbecues and fishing trips and hanging out with Nate and Todd and their families. Reconnecting with Jamie and his nephews during the school holidays…one day, he and Savannah taking their kids to play in the sun, sand, and surf.
“Told Savannah you love her yet?”
Glen’s eyes popped open. “This is the intervention part of the surf intervention?” He angled his head toward Nate.
“Yup.”
“Guys don’t talk about this kind of thing.”
“We do at a surf intervention. Todd started it when he took me out for the first time, asking me what my intentions were with Lauren. You don’t refuse to answer Todd Taylor when he puts you on the spot.”
“Huh.”
“So, unless you want Todd giving you the stink-eye before he rips your arm off— because he’s adopted Savannah as another little sister—we’ll ignore the guy rule of not talking about feelings, and you’ll tell me what the hell is going on with you and Sav.”
“You could ask her that, then help a guy out so I have a clue.”
Glen sat up, draping his arms over his knees, a bitter taste forming in his mouth. A taste he identified as bone-shattering fear. While falling off a surfboard and being thrust under huge volumes of saltwater potentially hiding creatures that could eat you was scary, facing rejection from Savannah filled him with terror.
“My aunt once asked me what happened the night after Sav’s performance—she wanted to know who the Good Samaritan had been. I told her I didn’t have a clue.”
Nate paused as a teenager on a four-wheel bike blasted past them on the hard-packed sand.
“But I always wondered if it was you,” he continued after the bike’s exhaust faded. “And I saw what she meant to you the day I told you she’d been accepted into the New Zealand School of Drama. That Liam was moving with her to Wellington.”
“Ancient history,” Glen said.
“Yep. But I’m assuming you’ve grown a bigger pair than you had at twenty, and you won’t let her walk away this time before you tell her how you feel.”
“Like you told Lauren before you bolted like someone applied a horsewhip to your ass?”
A sand-ball splattered against the back of Glen’s borrowed wetsuit. “Heard about that, did you?”
“Kathy got a kick out of telling me the story.”
Nate grunted. “I was an idiot. I couldn’t admit that I was in love with Lauren, and it nearly cost me everything.” More sand hit Glen’s back. “So don’t be an idiot. Spill your guts. Who knows? Maybe Sav loves you in return.”
Todd sloshed through the shallows toward them, his surfboard tucked under his arm.
“Maybe,” Glen said.
Maybe he’d find the courage to do now what he hadn’t had the courage to do a decade ago.
***
Savannah stretched, luxuriating in the feel of cotton sheets against bare skin. Warm, sated, and still amused at Glen’s frustration at being conned into a surfing session. Before he left, he’d kissed her until she nearly dragged him back into bed.
She sighed into the pillow, inhaling the delicious scent of Eau-de-Glen, which still permeated the pillowcase. It set off a little ache low in her belly that spread upwards to dig claws into her heart. Sav shuffled to the edge of the bed and sat up.
Why was it suddenly so damn hard to breathe? She rubbed the aching spot in her chest and stood. Could she have possibly fallen in love with him?
Once, filming a particularly emotional scene in a movie that never broke any box office records, the director said to her, “This is the man you’re madly, passionately, and uncontrollably in love with. He’s being tender and sweet to you, so look at him the way you look at your husband!”
Simple, right?
Only Sav had no idea how she looked at her husband. She didn’t feel the way a woman madly, passionately, uncontrollably in love should feel. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever known that feeling. So, she’d dredged up a murky memory of a young man who’d been tender and sweet to her. She couldn’t remember his face or his name, but while those details were frustratingly absent, the emotional imprint left by that memory hadn’t been. Harnessing those emotions, that feeling, she’d aced the scene in one take.
Savannah positioned herself in front of the full-length mirror. She smoothed her hands over her hips—which had definitely lost some padding, yay vegetables—and cupped her breasts, the nipples still tender and flushed pink from this morning’s early encounter with Glen’s jaw. She raised her chin, mussed hair spilling over her shoulder, and pictured Glen’s face after he’d kissed her goodbye.
Oh, crap.
The mirror doppelgänger’s mouth curved into a dreamy smile, her eyes gone glassy and soft. Either Sav was drugged by the green tea Glen made her before taking off with the guys, or…
Or she was a woman in love.
The dreamy smile faded to a knife-thin grimace. No. She couldn’t be. Not when there was so much at stake in L.A.
Unless… Savannah turned on the shower, barely waiting for the water to heat before stepping under the spray. She needed to think logically. Give up L.A.? She shampooed her hair. Only a few weeks ago, the idea of blowing this audition would’ve made her break out in hives. Now? Well, she still had High Rollers. While it may not have millions behind it like a new sitcom, she enjoyed working with her co-stars, and it meant living in Auckland.
With Glen.
Excitement bubbled through her as she rinsed and dried off. Another six months to a year with High Rollers and her agent could knock on her do
or with a better opportunity. Plenty of time for her and Glen to see if their feelings were real and to work out an agreeable compromise.
Sav slipped back into the master bedroom. She stole one of Glen’s freshly laundered tee shirts and slipped it on, loving the little shiver that rippled through her at the thought of him peeling it off with a teasing laugh once he got home. First, though, a phone call to her agent from the deck.
***
Savannah stared at the phone in her hand as if it had turned into a tarantula. She shoved it onto the small patio table and strode to the edge of the deck. In the distance was the long, blue curve of Bounty Bay’s beach, where Glen, Nate, and Todd were male-bonding over the surf. Sav closed her eyes, straining to hear the distant sigh of the sea. Instead, the only thing she heard was the echo of her agent’s voice telling her she’d been trying to get in touch with Sav for the last two days.
“There won’t be a second season of High Rollers, sorry,” the woman had said in her perfectly cultured but not apologetic So-Cal accent. The New Zealand production company had serious concerns about the ratings and blah-blah-blah. Sav tuned the agent out, barely listening to her litany of how High Rollers didn’t matter because once more, Hollywood stardom was within reach.
Sav’s throat squeezed shut, as though a small swarm of bees had stung her repeatedly, causing an allergic reaction. Breathe, she reminded her lungs. Keep the oxygenated blood circulating through her stone-cold heart.
An engine rumbled as it shifted gears along the driveway.
Oh, God, the guys are back. Perfect-freaking-timing.
She’d been fooling herself ever since Tom and Jamie left. She had to let Glen go. But she’d shoved everything aside and reveled in a few more days alone with him. Now that High Rollers was a bust, what choice did she have? It was kinder to make a clean break.
A door slammed, and then the truck drove back down the driveway. Deck planks vibrated as Glen walked toward the back of the house. Sav smoothed a hand over her hair and checked the width of her smile in the sliding door’s reflection, making sure her expression didn’t scream, woman drowning here!
Glen appeared, the wetsuit body peeled down and arms knotted around his lean hips, exposing an indecent amount of tanned skin. And his face, when he spotted her—blue eyes sparkling with warmth and a smile, as if she, in his shirt and hastily dragged on leggings, was the best thing he’d seen all day. As if she, instead of being a woman about to metaphorically kick him in the balls, was a gigantic chocolate-fudge-smothered sundae.
She couldn’t be his chocolate sundae…not any longer.
Sav took a deep breath that burned every inch of her windpipe. “Glen—”
He scooped her against his hard body, the neoprene of his wetsuit still a little damp. Salt and the faint hint of beer tickled her nose as Glen buried his face in her hair and growled in appreciation.
“Mmm, you smell amazing.” Hot kisses trailed up her throat and along her jaw, and he flicked the tip of his tongue against her earlobe.
Her nipples stiffened, becoming painfully hard as Glen deftly changed direction and teased her mouth with soft, fast kisses. She couldn’t get the word “no” out—and she had to stop him because one touch from this man sent her flailing down the slippery slope into “yes, please, don’t stop”.
Glen cupped her face in his hands, bending in to press the tip of his nose to hers. “Hey. I need to tell you something.”
Savannah could only give a tiny nod while her inner voice said, tell him to stop! Don’t let him keep talking.
But keep talking, he did. His thumbs brushed a slow sweep over her cheeks, and his gaze, so forthright and trusting, made her soul shrivel.
“After I had a near-death experience at the hands of your cousin,” he said, “I had a reality check. Ten years ago, I let you walk away from me without telling you how I felt. I won’t make that mistake again.”
He chuckled, a sound that normally sent pleasurable shivers down her spine but now filled her with dread.
“Because I don’t intend letting you walk away. Sav—”
Glen, no, please don’t, her inner voice wailed.
“I love you,” he said.
The words fell like boulders between them, crushing, smashing, obliterating any hope she had of letting him down gently.
His brow creased, the first spark of apprehension darkening his gaze. “Sav?”
“Glen, you can’t.” Savannah’s voice cracked like cheap porcelain, her throat raw with unshed tears. “You don’t. We haven’t known each other more than a few weeks.”
“Oh, but I do.” His eyes crinkled.
Oh, God. He thought she was only denying his feelings in a knee-jerk reaction.
“Love doesn’t give a damn about time.”
Savannah was thrown back to her teenage years. Two years had passed since the divorce, leaving her mother an empty shell…until she figured out she was still attractive to the opposite sex and dived back into the dating pool. A string of giddy, “Oh, Savvy, I’m in love—for real this time! I know he’s the one,” came thick and fast.
But none of The Ones had lasted more than a couple of months.
And now, this gorgeous, wonderful man was laying it all on the line. Telling her he loved her. But how could she believe it—how could she possibly have thought she loved him, too? Jamie had been right. Maybe they were both in love with the idea of being in love. So why did it cut her heart to ribbons as she prepared to break his?
But break it she would. Telling him High Rollers was history and that she had no choice—other than career suicide—but to go to L.A., wouldn’t be enough to save Glen from himself. If she gave him any hope, he’d follow her. Because inside the tough, logical, lawyer shell beat the heart of a knight who would sacrifice all for love.
Not real love, she reminded herself. He didn’t know her well enough to truly love her. But for the romantic images he carried in his head, he’d give up everything for a woman too selfish to do the same.
Like hell would she let him.
***
The walls slammed down in Savannah’s eyes and Glen’s burst of joy at seeing her, barefoot and beautiful, wearing his shirt with sunshine streaming through the loose strands of her hair, bled away.
She watched him the same way a fencer watched their opponent, waiting for a tell, a sign of weakness where he or she could attack. And he’d just exposed a massive weakness. Maybe she’d nearly won a Golden Globe, but she wasn’t that good an actress.
She didn’t love him. He’d once again made a colossal ass of himself over this woman.
“I’m sorry, Glen.” Her eyelashes swept down as she stared at a spot on his collarbone. “I didn’t realize you were getting so serious…so attached. I thought we were enjoying each other, burning off some sexual tension.”
She slipped away from him, tucking a strand of hair behind her ears as she shot him a glance filled with embarrassment and regret…and a hint of pity.
He folded his arms, a gesture designed not only for distancing himself but to prevent him from reaching for her.
“Burning off sexual tension? All those times we made love, it was just part of your exercise program?”
It couldn’t be. The hours spent talking, laughing, losing themselves in the pleasure of each other’s bodies. The connection, the chemistry, the sheer magic between them…
“The sex was fun…”
He didn’t miss her emphasis on the word sex.
—“and I’m not denying it was amazing, but it was only sex, Glen, not love.” Her voice had gentled, as if she restrained herself from being even blunter. “I like you a lot, but the fun ends once you leave for Auckland. I’m sorry, we don’t seem to be on the same page.”
Evidently, they weren’t even reading the same book. He’d told himself he wouldn’t let her walk away a second time…guess his giant ego blocked the possibility that Savannah wouldn’t share his feelings. Magic, his butt. She didn’t love him; he’d imagined th
e whole thing. She didn’t want longer than today, tomorrow, the day after… Each beat of his heart was a horse kicking his ribs with nail-spiked shoes.
Her eye tooth nipped at the soft skin of her bottom lip, and she shivered. Huh? Was she scared of how he’d react? Did she think he’d make a grab for her? He was an idiot, but he wasn’t a stalker or a doormat. He wouldn’t try to change her mind or beg for her affections. Not while he still had some pride. But a few more days in her presence and she’d bring him to his knees.
“Thank you for clearing up my misunderstanding. I think under the awkward circumstances, I’ll concede defeat to the better player. I’ll leave you to your victory in peace.” His ears burned with the sound of his voice.
Pompous asshole, much? But better a pompous asshole than a heart-broken loser.
Her eyes widened a fraction. “You’re leaving? But what about your book?”
Shrugging would’ve used muscles that still ached from the beating of the waves, so he merely stared, part of him irritated by his brain’s insistence he memorize the last glimpse of her face.
“I finished the book three days ago, so there’s nothing keeping me in Bounty Bay. Consider the last four days of my tenancy a thank you gift for the amazing sex.” He strolled to the corner of the house.
A sharp inhale behind him made him glance over his shoulder.
“You’re right, I forgot.” Another smile, so broad his jaw ached. “Good luck with the audition, Sav. You won’t need it though. You’re a hell of an actress.”
This time, he would be the one doing the walking.
Chapter 15
“Heard anything yet?”
Glen looked over at Jamie, red faced and sweating, sitting next to him on a bench overlooking the Waitemata Harbor after their five kilometer run. Glen could’ve easily gone for another five, but since his brother was building up from years of physical neglect, he didn’t want to push him too hard.
Tipping up his water bottle, Glen drank deep, stalling. The question could be answered in a number of ways, depending on what Jamie was really getting at. He tackled the easiest first.
Know Your Heart: A New Zealand Enemies to Lovers Romance (Far North Series Book 2) Page 22