Know Your Heart: A New Zealand Enemies to Lovers Romance (Far North Series Book 2) (4 page)

Twenty minutes later, Sav had Daisy parked in position with all her jacks down, uncoupled from the car, and had manhandled her luggage inside. She glanced surreptitiously toward the deck where Glen had been watching her, but he was no longer there. Pity, she would’ve enjoyed shutting the door in his face. She stepped out of her mud-encrusted gumboots and into her new home.

Glen was right about one thing, though.

She wouldn’t last three weeks without all her little luxuries—because he’d be gone long before then. Day one of her campaign to get the man out of her house had begun.

***

After fighting with Daisy’s frustratingly tiny shower, Sav changed into jeans and a snuggly sweater and curled up on her bed with a copy of THE SCRIPT. The script was thought of in capital letters because it was just, that, important.

Words blurred as a hot wash seared her cheeks. Being called into Julius Santiago’s trailer two weeks into filming certainly made the top three on her mental list of
Savannah’s Most Humiliating Moments
. Her eyes stung. She shook her head. No. She hadn’t cried then, and she wasn’t crying now. She had a job to do—two jobs. One. Remove Glen from her house so she could focus a hundred percent on job two. Job two required losing twenty pounds by the time she returned to Hollywood and then nailing the audition for the role of twenty-one-year-old Charlotte Malone.

Focus.

Savannah hunched over the script and lost herself in Charlotte’s syrupy-sweet life filled with little oopsies touchingly shared with her two younger siblings.

Three hours later, her stomach rumbled like distant thunder and she put the pages aside. The afternoon light spilling inside the small windows had dulled now the sun had slipped behind the hills, but wary of draining the caravan’s battery, Sav opted for a break.

She peeked through the red and white floral curtains hanging in Daisy’s kitchen-dining area. Lights blazed in her house, whitewashing bright patches on the deck outside.

Time to implement her first covert operation.
Operation Know Thy Enemy.

To figure out the best way to drive Glen away, she must discover the right kind of ammunition. Unfortunately this meant engaging with the enemy—since Nate had refused to dish on his old buddy, declaring himself “Switzerland.”

Switzerland, my butt.

Savannah opened Daisy’s door and donned her gumboots. Tomorrow she’d figure out how to get the caravan’s awning up and find something to spread over the grass so she’d have somewhere to store her muddy boots. She clomped across the lawn and onto the deck, wrinkling her nose at the muddy footprints she’d created on the newly stained wood. She slipped off the boots and left them neatly to one side.

So what did she know about her obnoxious tenant? One, he was a lawyer. Two, he was writing a book of some kind. Three, he had the audacity to call
her
stubborn. And four—Sav walked around the house corner to a shirtless Glen tapping away on his laptop at the outdoor table—he looked really,
really
good without a shirt.

Her legs wobbled and stopped working. Just stopped, like a giant hand had burrowed inside her body and yanked out all her bones. How the heck did a lawyer get a body like that?

Glen’s long fingers continued to dance over the keyboard, causing little quakes of movement along his corded forearm. He didn’t have the beefy build of a gym rat and many of the actors she’d worked with who worshiped at the Throne of the Leg Press.

But, oh-my-goodness…still.

He had well-defined pecs and abs beneath tanned skin with some kind of black sword tattooed over his ribcage, the point of the weapon disappearing beneath the waistband of his shorts. The suit had a tattoo? Now that was something to add to her growing list of observations.

She cleared her throat and he jumped. Actually jumped a good half inch off the chair. The startled “O” of his mouth closed after a split second, replaced with a grim, flat line when his gaze landed on her.

“Sorry,” she said. “Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“Were you aiming to give me a heart attack?” He pushed out of his chair and stood, rewarding her with the full, undiluted impact of shirt-free hotness.

Sav pointed at her feet, covered in fluffy pink socks. “I took my boots off before I tracked mud all over the new decking.”

“Thoughtful, but you should wear a bell.” He waved a dismissing hand. “I probably wouldn’t have heard you anyway, I was working.”

“Again, sorry.”

She gave him a wide berth and walked to the edge of the deck. In the distance, the last light glistened on the Tasman Sea and the crescent curve of beach. From this height and distance away from the coast, Bounty Bay’s houses were small dots, some with drifts of smoke spiraling up from their chimneys.

When she turned back, his gaze probed her, the question of
what the hell do you want?
written in every tense line of his big body.

“Aren’t you cold?” she asked.

He looked down, and she tracked the movement to his chest. “Nope. Temperature’s pretty mild out.”

Must, stop, looking, at, the, hotness. Her gaze jumped around until it landed on his open laptop.

“So…you’re writing.”

Oh, great start.
The scene she’d run through her head before coming over wasn’t going to plan. In her version, she’d say something charming and a little quirky to catch him off guard. Then he’d laugh, and chill out enough to have a grown up conversation. Which would in turn reveal some information she could use as leverage.

Except quite a few brain cells seemed to have popped like soap bubbles when she’d turned the corner.

“Yep.” His weight shifted as he folded his arms across his chest.

Sav’s eyes, completely ignoring the must-stop-looking instruction, flicked from the laptop to the raised ridge of hip muscles above his shorts. Muscles that made smart girls stupid, they said. Whoever “they” were, she had to concede they were correct.

“Writing a book.”

“Uh huh.” Said with a pointed glance back at his laptop.

“What kind of book? Law for Dummies?”

That earned a mouth twitch, a.k.a. a quarter smile. “A novel.”

“Crime, thriller, murder mystery?”

“How stereotyped your mind is. What makes you think I don’t write romance?”

A laugh exploded out of her before she could snatch it back. “Really?”

An epic eye roll behind his tortoiseshell frames. He unfolded his arms and for a moment the silence, broken only by the rustle of the wind sighing through the trees, stirred, flared, became electrified. Then the electrified silence collapsed into just plain old awkward silence as Glen exhaled in a frustrated rush.

“Other than because I specifically asked you to stay away from the house,” he said. “Why, exactly, are you here?”

More than monosyllables out of him—progress. She pasted on a sheepish smile. “I forgot to get milk.”

Both eyebrows rose. “And?”

“And I wondered if I could borrow some of yours.”

“Let me get this straight. Instead of driving to your cousin’s place, you sneak over here, proceed to nearly give me a heart attack and wreck my train of thought…all to ask for some milk?”

“If you wouldn’t mind, that’d be great.”

He threw up his hands. “Go bug Nate.”

“Are you really so petty as to not give me some milk when I asked politely for it?”

Blue eyes sparked fire in response.

Sav smiled. A syrupy smile—it was good practise. Charlotte Malone used her sickly sweet smile
a lot
.

“I’ll get you some milk.” He turned and strode into the family room.

She crossed the deck to stand by the open glass slider door but made no move to step inside. Pushing him too far wasn’t part of her plan—this time, anyway. Her heart did give a little flip-flop at being so close to all the pretty things she’d picked out for her house. And she had to admit the state of the family room was impressive—unlike Liam, her ex-husband, Glen hadn’t left piles of newspapers cluttering the coffee table. No dirty mugs on the counter or gym gear dumped wherever it landed. Her only complaint was something in her gleaming white and chrome kitchen smelled a-mazing.

“There’s a little milk jug in the top cabinet,” she called out helpfully.

Glen yanked open the fridge door. “I’m not
petty
enough to only give you a jug.”

He pulled out a small, unopened carton of full-cream milk and nudged the fridge door shut with his hip.

“Oh—” Her hand jerked up to snag his attention. “You don’t have any no-fat or skim, do you?”

“Do I look like the kind of guy to have no-fat in his fridge?”

“Well, you look good—” A beat while her tongue curled into a mortified ball and heat mushroomed over her cheekbones. “I mean you’re obviously health conscious, you probably eat nutritiously and work out regularly.”
Shut up, Sav. Shut, up, now.
She bet if she pressed her face to the door, her cheeks would melt the glass.

Glen’s frown flipped into a white-toothed, wolfish grin. “Uh huh.” His glasses slipped down his nose as he studied her over the frame. “I work out at the local a couple of times a week, but mostly I run. And I fence.”

“Fence? Like on a farm?” A mind picture popped into her head of Glen strolling around a paddock with a coil of number eight wire over one bare shoulder. Cue for her saliva glands to work overtime…of course, the delicious smell wafting out of her oven must be the cause.

He strolled back around the island counter, his grin expanding. “Wrong kind of fencing.” He bumped the carton on the left side of his stomach, against the hard planes of his abs. “The kind like my tattoo—with a sabre, foil or épée.”

She stepped over the threshold into the house as he set the milk on the counter nearest the door.

“I was in the fencing club in high school, then at university,” he said.

“What? No rugby or cricket or soccer?”

“My brother, James, was the rugby star at Kelston Boys’. I was a beanpole back then—one tackle from a fullback and I would’ve ended up in traction.”

“Ouch.”

“I figured doing this”—Glen angled his body to the side, his knees bent and his left arm raised shoulder height behind him. Muscles rippled across his torso and down the length of his extended and slightly bent front arm—“reduced the likelihood of getting the shit kicked out of me and it took advantage of being fast on my feet.”

He shuffled forward a few steps and did some fancy twisting thing with his wrist. If he’d had a sword in his hand she would’ve been disemboweled.

A little flame kindled low in her belly. “Oh.”

“I’ve always been fascinated with knights and swordplay.” He straightened, pulled in his outstretched hand and ran it through his hair, offering her a smile. This time a full three-quarters smile. “Kind of geeky, I know.”

“No.” He’d reduced her vocabulary to one syllable words with the hint of vulnerability in his tone. She scrubbed a fist over her thudding heart. “I used to love reading about heroic knights who went on quests to win a lady’s favor.”

“The whole knight in shining armor complex?”

“No complex, just a naive ten-year-old who still believed in that sort of thing. I grew out of it by the time I hit my teens.”

Their gazes met, locked, then shattered when his icy blue eyes blinked, and he turned back to the counter. “Do you want the full cream or not?”

And…that concluded their little moment. Obviously, it had been an imaginary moment.

“Yes, please. I’ll replace it next time I go to town.”

He shrugged and picked up the carton. As he turned to pass it over, her stomach let out a loud, complaining rumble.

“Hungry, diva?”

Back to the diva thing. Steamrolling over what could’ve been a civil conversation.

She raised her chin. “Not really. I ate before I came over.”

If you counted a raw carrot as eating, which she totally didn’t. Not when the spicy scents of tomato and basil and garlic came steaming out of the oven—
her oven
. Again her stomach rudely demanded a share of whatever was cooking. She snatched the carton out of his hand. “It does smell delicious though.”

See? She could play nicely with others.

“Thanks. It’s basil and tomato pasta. Kind of my specialty.”

While she had a low salt, low taste can of vegetable soup waiting. Plus a boring green salad with diet French dressing and bottled water since beer had over a hundred calories. Hugging the carton tight to her belly to try to freeze the rumbling, she stepped backward—and her fluffy socks slipped on the wood-paneled floor.

She uttered a startled squeak. Glen sprang forward, grabbing both her arms and pulling her upright. Even though a layer of Merino wool separated her skin from his, the warmth and strength of his touch tingled right down to the soles of her feet. Her breathing hitched and behind the lenses of his glasses, his gaze narrowed.