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