Know Your Heart: A New Zealand Enemies to Lovers Romance (Far North Series Book 2) (5 page)

“I knew perfecting the fencer’s lunge would come in handy one day.” This close heat pumped off him, waves of testosterone-infused radiation that could burn a woman from the inside out. “You okay?”

When she nodded, he released her and stepped back.

“I’m fine.”

But just for a second there she hadn’t been fine. Sav resisted the urge to rub her arms where his fingers had grabbed her. Five spots on either arm tingled from the memory of his touch. A good kind of tingle, not the ache of fingers dug into resisting flesh. Fingers that left bruises like petals from some hideous purple flower.

“I never quite grew out of my uncoordinated stage,” she muttered and dropped her gaze, which unfortunately landed on his chest. Again.
Dammit
.

And now she’d officially worn out her welcome.

“Thanks again for the milk. I’ll let you get back to your work.” She aimed herself toward the open door.

“Savannah?”

She turned, careful to make slow, steady movements because she really didn’t want to fall on her butt in front of him.

“My book’s high fantasy.
The Lord of the Rings
-ish if I was arrogant enough to make a comparison.”

Fantasy. Somehow it fit. A blink in time, a memory of a group of guys crammed in a living room with paper and dice and weird terminology she hadn’t been the slightest bit interested in deciphering… She strained, trying to pick out individual people, but the recollection was too vague, her ability to remember faces too sucky.

“I never read fiction.” Sav brushed the frustrating wisps of memory away and concentrated on stepping onto the deck without slipping. “There’s too much make-believe in my life already.”

“Fair enough.” Glen’s mouth curved, but his eyes were chips of polar ice. “Goodnight.”

And just like that, her enthusiasm for
Operation Know Thy Enemy
vanished, because she suspected Glen had learned just as much about her in their short exchange as she had about him.

Chapter 3

It felt as if rusty nails dipped in sulphuric acid jabbed into his head.

Glen lurched upright, his feet tangling with the bed sheet twisted around his ankles. Music blasted through his bedroom walls as if they were paper thin.

Really awful music.

Music that seemed to involve a hellish combination of violins, guitars and what sounded like an honest-to-God banjo. He cracked open an eye and snatched up his smartphone from the nightstand.

Six-o-bloody-clock?

He scrubbed a hand over his face, then glared at the blind-covered window. A guy was singing—a guy with a nasal twang that made his scalp crawl. He flopped back down, snatching the spare pillow from the other side of the queen-size bed and jamming it on his head. Every note of the banjo solo assaulted his eardrums. He clamped each end of the pillow over his face.

It didn’t help.

With a snarl, Glen rolled out of bed and grabbed yesterday’s jeans off the rocking chair in the corner.

“Would serve her right if I decided to show up bare assed at her door.” His voice sounded as rough as a pack-a-day smoker.

Serve her right, except glancing down at his bare-assed self, he’d be the one embarrassed. Bad enough he’d been awake for hours the night before thinking about how she smelled like juicy summer berries—the kind you couldn’t wait to sink your teeth into. Or the rounded curve of her bottom with no panty-line in sight as she’d bent over the caravan jacks the day before. Or the briefest spark of fear in her eyes as he’d grabbed her arm to prevent her falling on her butt.

That last thought effectively killed his ardor. Not that his morning wood was from dreaming about Savannah Payne…except it totally was, and he wasn’t happy about it.

He yanked on his jeans in record time, didn’t bother with the button, and shrugged on a long-sleeved flannel shirt. 

Icy stars twinkled above as he threw open the back door and strode onto the deck. The first haze of dawn had lightened the horizon, and the abundance of native birds in the area chattered and called through the trees. He assumed the poor buggers were also pissed about the racket blasting out of Savannah’s caravan. Lights blazed rectangles on the chewed-up patch of lawn in front of the caravan, and Glen kept his eye on her windows as he shoved his bare feet into his gumboots. He marched across the grass. The caravan’s front door was pinned open—all the better to conduct the music out at ear-wincing volume.

“Savannah?”

No answer, but considering his voice battled against a cacophony of musical instruments, it was little surprise. He banged a fist on the orange-painted side of the caravan. “Goddammit, Savannah!”

“Good morning.” Her voice tinkled in a cheerful sing-song as she appeared in his line of vision, smooth, bare legs flashing under an eye-wateringly yellow dress.

He couldn't help peering inside her caravan. Floral curtains hung over the small windows, and red-checked lino and matching painted cabinets lined the space between ceiling and walls. Opposite the door entrance was a small fridge and next to it a dinette with white-and-red striped cushions. Classic kitschy 1950s decor. And Savannah—in her yellow dress, hair tied in a simple tail and bright-red lipstick on her pouty mouth—looked the part of a domestic goddess.

“Are you kidding me with this crap? It's six in the morning.” He had to shout to make himself heard over the twanging guitars.

Savannah ran a tap at the sink, sliding a stove-top kettle under the stream. She twisted the volume dial on her sound system and the music volume dropped to only ear needling rather than ear splitting.

“Early bird catches the worm.” She finished filling the kettle and placed it on the tiny range-top. “Today, I overslept. Normally I'm up at five, and if I'm working on a set, sometimes I’m even up at three.”

Glen shut his eyes against the lights and the blinding colors of the décor and gripped the door’s edge. Counted to five slowly. He had a sister—so he knew Savannah was baiting him. But he couldn’t help himself. Something about her pushed his buttons. Always had, always would.

“Cup of tea?”

Her voice purred and his eyes popped open.

She smiled, all glossy-red lips that promised sinful sweetness. The woman had a killer smile; he'd give her that. A smile as sweet and sincere as a cat who purred against you one moment and left your arm in bloody shreds the next.

“I don’t drink tea.”

“Coffee?”

“I’m not drinking anything with you at this time of day.”

“Not a morning person then?” She opened a cabinet above the sink, stretching up on tip-toes, the hem of her dress rising to give him a glimpse of silky thighs.

He dropped his gaze, wincing as another song started. This one featuring a harmonica, God help him. He scrubbed at the stubble on his jaw and debated jamming his fingers into his ears. Nope, wasn’t going to give her the satisfaction. “No. How about you turn that music down? It’s noise pollution.”

She set the cup she’d reached for onto the counter and swirled over to stand in front of the door, fists on hips. “Hey, it’s classic country. You being a lawyer, I thought you’d have more appreciation for human misery and the whole ‘I lost my job then my wife left me and now my dog died’ genre.”

“I work in corporate law; there’s enough human misery there.”

Savannah stood a step above him, and because of it, his nose was now level with her breasts. Her two very perky, very lush breasts which were swaying gently as her rib cage rose and fell in exasperation. He tried hard to remain irritated and indignant, but her body was a major distraction when his brain clearly hadn’t woken up yet.

He needed caffeine, stat. But not hers—she’d probably poison it.

“Corporate law?” She rolled her eyes. “You really are a suit, aren’t you?”

“Are you going to keep calling me a suit?”

The tag rankled because he had never, ever wanted to be one. No, he’d dreamed of changing the world in a different way. By writing the great New Zealand fantasy novel. Then life and his father interfered. Law became his world, not warlocks, and swords, and heroism. As an idealistic nineteen-year-old he’d switched to a more conservative dream of preserving New Zealand’s clean-green image with environmental law or helping lower income families. But even that dream had fizzled. He’d ended up at his father’s corporate law firm, burning out with twelve hour days reading and writing briefs…and the last thing he felt like doing during what little downtime he had was working on his novel.

“Are you going to keep calling me a diva?” She tossed her ponytail over her shoulder.

Ah, so it did piss her off—he’d suspected as much. “If the shoe fits…”

Long, dark lashes narrowed, and he couldn’t help but wonder what time the woman had crawled out of bed in order to look so damn perfect at six in the morning. He also couldn’t help but wonder what Savannah wore to bed—flannel pajamas? Silky lingerie? Or like him, nothing at all?

If she wasn’t watching him so intently, he’d thunk his head into the caravan’s metal shell. Then do it again, for good measure. He had no business and no excuse, caffeine deprived or otherwise, to be thinking about Savannah’s sleepwear. He couldn’t even blame it on the embarrassingly long time it’d been since he’d last had female company sharing his bed.

Because it all boiled down to Savannah. Like it or not, she’d clawed into the part of his brain reserved for
sexual-fantasies-that’ll-never-happen
ten years ago, and he’d never been able to get her out.

“You really are cranky in the morning. You should go back to bed.”

Then with a swirl of her yellow skirt, she turned her back on him to crank up the volume again. Without gracing him with another glance, Savannah sauntered into what he surmised was the tiny bathroom, and shut the door behind her.

“You’ll drain the caravan battery dry. Remember that when you’re sitting in the dark later.”

Reduced to yelling at her like a teenage boy—and back when he’d been a teenage boy, she hadn’t paid any attention to him then, either. Glen clenched his teeth together hard enough to practically snap his jawbone in half and stalked back to the house.

***

Glen sat on his deck with a beer-stein-size mug of coffee and brooded. Normally, he wasn’t a brooder. That was his brother’s way of dealing with stuff. Glen, like his dad, went and got things done. Fixed whatever bugged him.

But he couldn’t fix the annoyance of Savannah, who for the last two mornings blasted out at dawn the top one hundred hits of the world’s worst country music. So he’d been reduced to fuming and brooding about it while the sun peeped over the hill, sending shafts of rosy gold through the
punga
fronds and cabbage tree leaves, sparkling off the dew collecting on the deck’s railing. It was shaping up to be a blue-sky stunner of a spring day. A perfect day for getting another ten or more pages written.

Thankfully, his unwelcome neighbor turned her damn music off half an hour ago. He took another sip of coffee and rolled his tense shoulders forward. He’d suck it up and lose himself in the Forest of Knawth where his warlock was being tracked by blood thirsty demons. His fingers hovered over the keyboard, jiggling lightly as he tried to ignore the cheeky fantail darting down to snatch toast crumbs near his bare feet.

Right. Let the words flow forth…

His phone vibrated on the table, the first notes of some cheesy boy band hit bursting out of the tiny speakers—the song his sister-in-law had chosen as a joke. Jamie’s assigned ringtone was the creepy cello solo from Jaws, and Glen had picked Darth Vader’s heavy breathing for his father, James Senior. Those, he let go to voicemail. Erin’s calls he’d take.

“Erin, how’re you doing?”

“Not so good.”

Glancing at his watch, he scrunched up his nose. Calling just after eight when she should’ve been getting his three nephews to school meant no, things couldn’t be going well.

From the background came the sounds of grizzling. The youngest, four-year-old Mikey, was probably the culprit.

“Ah. Trouble with the boys?”

“They’re fine, well—”

He heard her intake of breath, suspiciously wet sounding as if she’d been crying. Hell.

“As fine as can be expected when their father has only been around twice to see them since we left. He’s been texting Tom and Reece—texting them, Glen!”

“Erin, I’m sorry.” Glen closed his eyes.

Jackass. His brother was a complete jackass.

“Bad enough he forgot I existed, but his boys?” A loud sniff down the line.

“I’m sure he hasn’t forgotten them, he’s just—”

“Working? Yeah, I know. James is always working. Sometimes I wonder if he’s actually noticed we’ve moved out. It’s been nearly two weeks and he hasn’t rung me, hasn’t even sent me a goddamned e-mail since I sticky-taped the “honey, I’m leaving you” note to his home computer. Does he not care?”

“I don’t think it’s that at all, Erin. He’s got his priorities screwed up.” Like Glen himself for the last ten years. Until he woke up on the morning after his thirtieth birthday with a woman whose name he couldn’t remember and who’d greeted him by asking, “So, you’re a lawyer? What kind of car do you drive?”

A soft thud, the rattle of crockery. His sister-in-law, ever efficient, talking and making breakfast at the same time.

“Has he called you?” she asked.

Glen stared out over the miles of green, the tops of trees straining ever upward to reach the sun. In the distance, the faint, grey ribbon of road carved through the land, and a tiny, matchbox-sized car sped along it toward Bounty Bay.

“He’s left a couple of messages on my phone,” he said finally.

A soft sigh then a pause. “Let me guess. The messages were about work and what a loser you are for chasing a pie-in-the-sky dream.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t apologize, Glen. At least you have a dream.”

His brother had a dream once too—marry the gorgeous Erin, whom he’d pursued unrelentingly until he’d won her heart, then settle down and have the perfect family. And Jamie had done it. He’d gotten the girl, the career, the flashy house and the healthy, happy kids—he’d held the dream in both hands and then let it slip between his fingers.

Glen rose and paced to the deck’s edge, glancing over at Savannah’s caravan. She was outside on the grass, battling to raise the orange-striped awning. He turned his back and stared out at the view again. “I’ll talk to him.”

He could almost hear Erin shaking her head.

“No. No don’t you dare. If he wants me, he can come find me. He knows where we are.” There was the softest of sniffs.

Glen’s fingers clamped around the phone. God, he hated it when women cried because he always ended up doing something stupid. “What can I do to help?”

There must be something he could do to make up for being genetically related to his jackass of a big brother.

She sucked in a shuddery breath. “You’ve already given us somewhere to stay. I can’t thank you enough for taking us in.”

“We’re family.” And as family, he was sorely tempted to drive back to Auckland and roast Jamie’s ass. “You and the boys can stay as long as you need. Are they behaving for you?”