knew what dreams would rise to haunt him. Staying here in Bounty Bay with Savannah. Writing books, while she taught local kids to believe in themselves—on stage and off of it. Barbecues and fishing trips and hanging out with Nate and Todd and their families. Reconnecting with Jamie and his nephews during the school holidays…one day, he and Savannah taking their kids to play in the sun, sand, and surf.
“Told Savannah you love her yet?”
Glen’s eyes popped open. “This is the intervention part of the surf intervention?” He angled his head toward Nate.
“Yup.”
“Guys don’t talk about this kind of thing.”
“We do at a surf intervention. Todd started it when he took me out for the first time, asking me what my intentions were with Lauren. You don’t refuse to answer Todd Taylor when he puts you on the spot.”
“Huh.”
“So, unless you want Todd giving you the stink-eye before he rips your arm off— because he’s adopted Savannah as another little sister—we’ll ignore the guy rule of not talking about feelings, and you’ll tell me what the hell is going on with you and Sav.”
“You could ask her that, then help a guy out so I have a clue.”
Glen sat up, draping his arms over his knees, a bitter taste forming in his mouth. A taste he identified as bone-shattering fear. While falling off a surfboard and being thrust under huge volumes of saltwater potentially hiding creatures that could eat you was scary, facing rejection from Savannah filled him with terror.
“My aunt once asked me what happened the night after Sav’s performance—she wanted to know who the Good Samaritan had been. I told her I didn’t have a clue.”
Nate paused as a teenager on a four-wheel bike blasted past them on the hard-packed sand.
“But I always wondered if it was you,” he continued after the bike’s exhaust faded. “And I saw what she meant to you the day I told you she’d been accepted into the New Zealand School of Drama. That Liam was moving with her to Wellington.”
“Ancient history,” Glen said.
“Yep. But I’m assuming you’ve grown a bigger pair than you had at twenty, and you won’t let her walk away this time before you tell her how you feel.”
“Like you told Lauren before you bolted like someone applied a horsewhip to your ass?”
A sand-ball splattered against the back of Glen’s borrowed wetsuit. “Heard about that, did you?”
“Kathy got a kick out of telling me the story.”
Nate grunted. “I was an idiot. I couldn’t admit that I was in love with Lauren, and it nearly cost me everything.” More sand hit Glen’s back. “So don’t be an idiot. Spill your guts. Who knows? Maybe Sav loves you in return.”
Todd sloshed through the shallows toward them, his surfboard tucked under his arm.
“Maybe,” Glen said.
Maybe he’d find the courage to do now what he hadn’t had the courage to do a decade ago.
***
Savannah stretched, luxuriating in the feel of cotton sheets against bare skin. Warm, sated, and still amused at Glen’s frustration at being conned into a surfing session. Before he left, he’d kissed her until she nearly dragged him back into bed.
She sighed into the pillow, inhaling the delicious scent of Eau-de-Glen, which still permeated the pillowcase. It set off a little ache low in her belly that spread upwards to dig claws into her heart. Sav shuffled to the edge of the bed and sat up.
Why was it suddenly so damn hard to breathe? She rubbed the aching spot in her chest and stood. Could she have possibly fallen in love with him?
Once, filming a particularly emotional scene in a movie that never broke any box office records, the director said to her, “This is the man you’re madly, passionately, and uncontrollably in love with. He’s being tender and sweet to you, so look at him the way you look at your husband!”
Simple, right?
Only Sav had no idea how she looked at her husband. She didn’t feel the way a woman madly, passionately, uncontrollably in love should feel. She wasn’t sure if she’d ever known that feeling. So, she’d dredged up a murky memory of a young man who’d been tender and sweet to her. She couldn’t remember his face or his name, but while those details were frustratingly absent, the emotional imprint left by that memory hadn’t been. Harnessing those emotions, that feeling, she’d aced the scene in one take.
Savannah positioned herself in front of the full-length mirror. She smoothed her hands over her hips—which had definitely lost some