Know Your Heart: A New Zealand Enemies to Lovers Romance (Far North Series Book 2) (11 page)

“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.”

Silence throbbed between them, painful as a toothache. “I’m sorry, Savannah,” he added.

Glen didn’t have to spell out what he was sorry for; the pity was written in his softening gaze. She swallowed hard, stomach dipping in the elevator-plunging sensation she got every time she thought about her ex.

“You know about Liam?” Her voice sounded flat in her ears, as if every nuance of emotion had been sucked out. “Did Nate tell you afterwards how Liam…?” She couldn’t finish the rest of the sentence.

Glen gave the barest shake of his head. “I drew my own conclusions from what I know of your cousin, not from what crap the media hurled about—”

“Parasites.”

This earned her a fleeting smile. “Yeah.” His lips thinned again. “Nate was protecting you from your ex. Liam hurt you.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes. That time he left bruises. The other times didn’t show on my skin.” She tapped her forehead. “They were all up here”—and then her chest—“And in here.”

Savannah’s gaze slipped from the jerky shifting of his Adam’s apple to his long fingers, now clenched in a fist. A strand of silence twisted between them, harsh and cutting.

She moistened dry lips. “Nate didn’t tell you more when he came to see you that first day?”

“No. He only said you were a little vulnerable at the moment, asked me to, ah…” He scratched the back of his neck.

Oh, she got it. Nate had asked Glen to be gentle with his poor, spineless-as-a-jellyfish cousin. “He asked you to be nice to me?”

A
shit, I’ve said too much
noise rumbled deep in Glen’s throat.

“You know, I liked you a hell of a lot more twenty minutes ago than I do now.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.” She met his gaze. “Because then you weren’t treating me like a porcelain doll who might shatter if you looked at it the wrong way. You’ve gone head-to-head with me, assuming I’m tough enough to take anything you dish out. So go back to the guy who kissed me without worrying I’d flinch or run away.”

Something flared hot and hungry in his gaze. “You like that guy, huh?”

“A little. But don’t get smug about it. You’re insufferable enough as it is.”

He released the parking brake and smoothly accelerated up the slight rise after the gate.  “Can’t argue with that.”

“Insufferable, but kind of sweet to allow your sister-in-law to kick you out of your own home.”

Glen grimaced. “I’m not sweet. If I were sweet, I’d have stayed down there to help with the kids during the school holidays next week instead of just offering to take Erin’s teenager off her hands.”

Wait—what? He was planning to have a teenage houseguest?

“Your nephew’s coming here?”

“Yeah—Tom. He’s fifteen and a good kid, but he’s not coping well with his parents’ dramas. I told Erin he could stay with me. That way he’ll at least have a quiet place to study for his exams next term without his younger brothers bugging him.”

Well, hell. Wouldn’t that make her look like the Wicked Witch of the West if she continued to object to Glen being in her house? The deviousness of inviting his nephew to stay so she’d feel guilty was pure genius. Because how could she continue a campaign of terror when an innocent boy was involved?

But Glen had underestimated how distracting a fifteen-year-old roomie would be. The teenager might just do what she couldn’t.

Savannah bit off a smile and said sweetly, “Having three kids living with you must cramp your style when you have company over.”

Even in the dim dashboard light, the humor in his gaze was evident as it skimmed over her. “If you’re interested, you only have to ask if I’m single.”

The thing about being an actress is that her snappy comeback lines were scripted. Not so much in real life. Not when the man next to her made her feel hot-squishy-bellied one moment and biting on tin-foil the next. A rush of blood fired into her cheeks, and she angled her chin toward the passenger window.

“I am single, by the way,” he said in a
just-so-you-know
tone as they continued to drive. “I wouldn’t have kissed you otherwise.”

“You shouldn’t have kissed me,” she muttered. “You messed up everything.”

“Sometimes, messing things up is fun.” He turned onto the long driveway that led to her property.