way to remove an unwanted tenant from your property. Your tofu sausages could’ve burned Daisy to ashes.”
She gave a dismissive snort, but her hunched shoulders and down-turned lips told a different story. The bold Savannah Payne was trembling in her high-heeled sandals.
Tension crawled across his shoulder blades and spread, banding around his chest. He shook off the first deadly symptoms of sympathy and folded his arms. “Guess my dead cow and pig are looking kinda good right now?”
Her gaze dropped and veered left. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“Riiiight. So that’s why you were sniffing the air like a starved bloodhound when I tossed those steaks on.”
“I’ve been a vegetarian since I was a teenager.”
“You weren’t at Nate’s twenty-first birthday. You probably ate your weight in barbecued meat.” Shit. He hadn’t meant to say that out loud.
Her eyes widened. “You were there?”
Way to go, sounding like a crazy stalker guy. Glen shifted and remained silent. Seemed the safest course, preferable to taking one size-ten foot out of his mouth and jamming in the other.
Savannah scrunched up her nose and studied him down its length. “There were a lot of people at that party. I don’t remember you.”
The punch line of his pathetic crush on Savannah Davis, his mate’s beautiful and unobtainable cousin. In a nutshell.
“No reason why you would.” His lips curved up in what he hoped appeared on his mouth as a casual smile. “I was just one of many guys there for a free feed and a keg of beer.”
She cocked her head, tucking the pot mitt under one arm. “But you noticed me?”
That night, ten years ago when he’d first seen her, he’d been one of a large crowd drifting around Nate’s party, balancing a beer on the edge of his disposable plate loaded up with potato salad and cheap cuts of barbecued meat. Nate had introduced Savannah to him and a group of other students gathered around the grill. With a shy smile she’d said “hello”, but her gaze had skimmed his face and immediately moved on to the guy next to him. While Glen…he’d stood there with blood pounding in his ears, sucker-punched and breathless.
“Everyone notices you, Savannah. Haven’t you built your career around that?”
“Yes.” Her voice a terse squeak, she cleared her throat before continuing. “I have.”
A mini battle took place inside him—gallant knight against pragmatic cynic. As usual, the knight won. “I have some fish in the fridge I could throw on the barbecue if you want.”
She stood blinking at him, her lush mouth slightly parted, soft and inviting. Then, like storm clouds passing over the sun, her actress mask slipped into place freezing the soft and inviting into cool rejection. “I still have my salad. But thanks.”
He straightened his shoulders—conversation over. She’d made her feelings about sharing a meal with him perfectly clear.
“Bon appétit, then.” He gave her and her blackened frying pan a wide berth, heading back to his deck before his dinner charred to a crisp.
Chapter 4
Sun, shake, and shade. What more could a girl want?
Perhaps a dial-a-handy-hunk who’d show up in his tool belt and not much else—since the caravan awning remained lop-sided even after another thirty-minute attempt to fix it after lunch. But at least the striped canvas provided some shade as Sav relaxed in her lounge chair with her meal-replacing-meant-to-taste-like-chocolate-but-didn’t protein shake in one hand and The Script in the other.
She wriggled her bare toes, admiring her buttercup-yellow polish. She hadn’t seen Glen since last night’s sacrificial burning of her tofu sausages, and this morning, the man had wised up, keeping the blinds to the office tightly closed. Point to her.
Sav sighed, glancing down at the printed pages. She assumed she’d won another round at 5:30 a.m. with a ‘70s country music medley, yet somehow, she was the one distracted. She was the one waiting to catch a glimpse of him instead of memorizing her damn lines.
An approaching engine jerked her gaze to the black hood of Nate’s Range Rover coming up the driveway. Sav swung her legs off the lounge chair and leaped up, smoothing down her shorts and silky top. Through the windshield, Nate raised a hand and Lauren, beside him, waved.
Lauren jumped out of the car, her face creased in a huge grin. “Oh my goodness, Sav—I love it!” She jogged across the grass and hugged Sav, quick and fierce.
“Aunty Sav!”
Nate opened the rear door and unhooked Drew from his booster seat. The boy rocketed from the Range Rover like a miniature cannonball and wrapped his arms