face and mock glared. “I’ve been awake since five when you woke me with your…”
Glen’s smile grew wider, and she made the most adorable huffing sound then hurled a pillow across the room. Glen dodged it with a laugh.
“Go see what he wants, and hurry up; or I may just fall asleep again.” She flopped back on the bed.
Glen strode down the hallway. A car door slammed, followed seconds later by another. Freaking great. One car door could’ve meant Todd wanted to borrow some of the tools Nate left in Savannah’s tiny garden shed, or maybe a spare carton of milk.
Two car door slams meant visitors.
And with only days remaining before he was due back in Auckland, he didn’t want to shoot the shit with Todd and Kathy—nice people though they were—when he could be discovering new ways to make Savannah scream his name.
He yanked open the front door and stepped into the misty-morning air. The sun strained to break through the cloud cover, lending the light a spooky, otherworldly quality. Which he would’ve enjoyed painting word pictures about if it hadn’t been for Todd and Nate, dressed in black wetsuits, strolling toward him. And on the back of Todd’s ute?
Three surf boards.
Nate’s face split into an evil smile. “Morning, sunshine. Welcome to your first surf intervention.”
Glen curled his toes onto the damp wooden deck, as if that’d prevent Nate and Todd from dragging him away. “You both know I can’t surf, and I don’t need any kind of intervention.”
“Yeah, ya do.” Todd scratched his shaggy blonde hair then rested his hand on the wetsuit draped over his shoulder. “It’s tradition.”
“A drowning the new guy tradition?”
Todd and Nate shot each other an amused glance. Nate whipped the wetsuit off Todd’s shoulder and tossed it at Glen.
Glen allowed it to flop at his feet. “Hell, no.”
“Couple of hours of sun, sand, and surf will do you a world of good,” said Nate. “It’ll clarify some of that shit spinning around in your head. Worked for me, eh, Todd?”
“Like a charm.”
“I’ve no shit to clarify,” Glen said, but he felt himself wavering.
Savannah mentioned she wanted to work on her script this morning, plus make a phone call to her agent.
Todd pulled a fake sad face and sighed, slapping Nate’s shoulder. “Sorry bro, hate to break it to you—but your mate’s a wuss.”
Nate’s eyes gleamed as he tried not to smile. “You know the type, Todd. Writes about some guy having adventures but doesn’t have the balls to actually have one himself.”
Glen nudged the wetsuit with a toe. “Drowning for your entertainment is having an adventure?”
“Yup,” said Todd. “So man up and get changed before we diss your manhood to Nate’s little cousin.”
The pointed look Nate shot Glen tightened his gut. It was a look saying, I don’t want to know Savannah’s naked in your bed.
“You heard the part about me not being able to surf?”
Todd nodded. “Oh, I heard. You’ll learn. Fast, if you don’t want to end up swallowing a gallon of saltwater.”
Glen snatched up the wetsuit. Well, there were worse ways to die. He’d researched drowning while writing this book, and evidently, it wasn’t so bad. Maybe preferable to Nate and his enormous future brother-in-law gutting him.
Glen stabbed a finger at Nate. “Next time either of you want legal advice, I’m charging double.”
Todd and Nate’s laughter followed him inside.
***
Two hours later, Glen had an epiphany—likely brought on by bone-deep exhaustion and ingesting too much salt water.
He slumped gasping on Bounty Bay’s beach with Nate beside him.
“I really suck,” Glen said.
“Worst I’ve ever seen.” Nate shifted his smug, green-eyed gaze to Glen, then turned to look at the distant shape of Todd, waiting on his board for the next wave set. “Thought with your reflexes and good balance, you might’ve improved. Turns out, no. You still suck.”
Glen coughed, his chest sore from hacking sea water from his lungs. “Better give up my dreams of taking out the New Zealand surf champ’s title. Law is less painful, at least.”
“Is it?” Nate continued to study the horizon. “You’re returning to Darth Vader and his minions?”
“You’re mixing movies.” But point taken. “And I don’t know. Work’s the smallest part of the shit spinning around in my head.”
Glen reclined on the gritty sand and laced his hands behind his neck. The sun had come out during Glen’s grueling hour session and now danced across the slow rise and fall of the waves. It was hypnotic, and if he allowed himself to close his eyes, he