Know Your Heart: A New Zealand - Tracey Alvarez Page 0,73

was light, because he didn’t need brute strength for her to relinquish control. Oh no, Glen didn’t need much at all to melt her into a gooey mass of do-me hormones. His mum had been right about that.

A wolf whistle cut through the music, then one of the older kids, who sounded a lot like Tom, yelled, “Old school.”

“Old school, huh?” Glen said. “Watch and learn, kiddies.”

Blue eyes locked with hers, the hard edge of his grin transforming to silky seduction. “You ready to educate these little barbarians?”

“In a dance-off?” She tried to pull her hand from his, but he wouldn’t allow it. “I haven’t got moves like yours.”

“Just follow my lead, angel.”

His words triggered little land-mines of memories deep in her subconscious. She had a two beat window to gawk at him before he spun her out and back again, somehow managing to keep her from falling on her butt. Somehow managing to make her laugh while she stumbled, trying to keep up with his direction changes. The song ended, and Glen dipped her over his arm in a dramatic flourish, to the whoops of their audience.

She stared into his face, at the mussed hair tumbling over his forehead and the flush of color in his cheeks from the effort of her uncoordinated dance moves. Her heart thudded painfully fast, sprinting for Olympic gold. Twice she tried to speak and couldn’t. The knowledge rose in her, hot enough to burn her words to ashes.

“It was you that night.”

Faint frown lines appeared on his brow. She didn’t need to clarify which night.

“Yeah.”

He brought her upright and let go. She desperately wanted to fire a hundred different questions at him, but a small group of chattering kids, led by Sophie, inserted themselves between her and Glen.

“Later,” he said.

Glen met her gaze over the crowd, and emotions roiled through her like the approach of another spring storm.

***

After dinner, Savannah asked Glen to accompany her on a run.

Damp mist closed in on them as they set off down the driveway, their footsteps muffled by the trees on either side.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she puffed as they turned onto the road. “You had the perfect humiliating evidence to throw in my face.”

Even now, her flushed cheeks couldn’t solely be attributed to exercise. She’d acted like a brat that night, wild and reckless, hurt and anger feeding the blazing fire inside. The next morning, she’d woken with a big brass band playing their greatest hits inside her head. Beside her bed were piles of cigarette-smoke stinky clothes—tinged with the acidic remains of vomit. She’d staggered to the bathroom and discovered finger-shaped bruises on her wrists and arms. Hadn’t that been a holy-shit-what-happened moment?

“You didn’t remember me.” Glen’s gaze remained on the road. “The humiliation was all mine.”

They ran in silence for another few minutes, their ragged breathing settling into a similar rhythm. Passing the lights through the trees belonging to Nate and Lauren’s house, Glen slowed his gait to a brisk walk.

“What do you remember?” He tugged up the hem of his shirt and wiped his forehead.

Savannah couldn’t help but sneak an appreciative peek at the play of muscles across his bare stomach. She’d rather ogle Glen than take an unwelcome trip back into her past. But she shook her head and glanced away. If nothing else, Glen deserved an explanation for her behavior that night.

She sucked in a few deep breaths, hoping to steady her voice.

“It was my last night performing as Eliza. I remember creeping onto the school auditorium stage and peeking through the curtains to the first row, seat 12A. I’d left the ticket at the front desk, just in case my dad had a change of heart and caught a later flight.”

“He was going to come?”

“I made him promise when I stayed with him earlier in the year during a seventeen-year-old’s worst school holidays, ever.”

“Worse than what I’m subjecting Tom to?” He offered an encouraging smile.

“Oh, yeah. I thought I was only a built-in baby-sitter for my two half-sisters—Brianna, age three, and Lucy, still a baby. Dad taking me shopping on Oxford Street, or his new wife, Rachel, paying for mani-pedis, barely wiped the scowl off my face.”

A sigh shuddered out of her. Viewing those two weeks through adult eyes, she could admit her dad had done the best he could under the circumstances. She’d been awkward and stiff, her former position in her father’s affection usurped by his two little girls. His newer model little stars. His new little