Chapter 1
There was a special place in hell reserved for the people who designed the lighting in airplane bathrooms, Carly thought, glaring at her reflection in the tiny, grubby mirror. She’d already spotted three new gray hairs since she started brushing her teeth. After a full day in transit, she felt exhausted. And thanks to this mirror and the ghastly overhead lighting, she looked it. Her freckled cheeks were pale, her skin dry and pinched. Two purple-gray smudges under her eyes made them look swollen and sunken, and gave her whole face a vaguely undead vibe. Despite her lip balm’s best efforts, it was no match for twenty-plus hours in a plane, and now her lips were chapped and flaking. And,shit, make that four new gray hairs.
Carly spat into the teeny sink and rinsed her mouth, scowling into the mirror while she swirled the water around her gums.This is true friendship, she thought, packing her toothbrush and toothpaste back into her travel toiletries case,spending a whole day sitting upright in a series of tin cans full of recycled air so I can stand up with Heather at her wedding. She was basically a lock for sainthood, she reasoned, as she opened the door carefully and slipped back out into the coach section, offering a quick, apologetic smile to the impatient-looking middle-aged man who had been seated across the aisle from her snoring loudly for the last twelve hours but was now waiting outside the door. He slipped past her, unsmiling, into the bathroom.
Of course, Carly conceded once she was settled back in her lumpy aisle seat, Heather would do the same for her—if Carly ever got married, which seemed unlikely. Heather had a habit of always showing up when Carly needed her, though. Like two years ago, when Heather’s ex had gotten Carly fired and Heather had leapt into action to get Carly’s job back. And it wasn’t like Carly was sorry to be missing three weeks of a particularly slushy February in New York to drink champagne and go to the beach and hang out with her best friend.So, maybe not sainthood, she thought, swiping through the action movies on offer and wondering if she could squeeze in one more before the plane landed.But maybe some kind of friendship medal. A plaque, at the very least.Carly must have dozed off during the opening credits, because she jolted awake when the plane touched down. The hundred people around her seemed to heave a collective sigh of relief.
As soon as the plane came to a stop, the man across the aisle from her stood up and reached for the overhead bin. Carly rolled her eyes. Why did people do that? Did they not understand how lines worked? Did they think the first person to leap out of their seat back in row 56 would somehow be allowed to leave the plane before everyone else?
Trying to ignore the fact that his khaki-clad ass was now perilously close to her face, Carly pulled her phone from her backpack and turned it on. There were two texts waiting for her:
AusTel, 6:57AM: Welcome to Sydney. You are roaming on Australia’s largest network. Enjoy your Aussie adventure!
Heather, 6:57AM: WELCOME TO SYDNEY! Marcus and I will be waiting for you at arrivals and we’ll have coffee. Can’t wait to see you
Carly let out a little groan of longing. Coffee sounded so good right now. So did a shower, a nap, and any meal that hadn’t been reheated into oblivion and served to her on a plastic tray. And a hug from her best friend.
She opened her emails, scrolling through twenty-two hours’ worth of messages. There were a few ads about flash sales from her favorite brands—the Capezio leotard she loved was 25 percent off this week—and stopped suddenly when she saw one from Catherine Lancaster. Subject line:Changes to New York Ballet promotion schedule.
Carly’s stomach lurched. Since Catherine had retired from her perch as a longtime principal dancer and taken the reins of the company from the recently dethroned Martin Koenig—that asshole—she’d changed very little at the company. Mr. K had retired abruptly after a long and authoritarian rule, and for the last year Catherine had been running things much as he had, albeit without Mr. K’s cold disdain or hot temper. Carly had sometimes wondered if Catherine’s recent experience as a dancer imbued her with a little more sympathy for the dozens of dancers now under her purview. Now, though, it seemed the Lancaster era was beginning in earnest. Carly’s breath was a little short as she jabbed hastily on the message.
Dear company members,
As you know, New York Ballet traditionally promotes dancers at the end of the spring season in June. However, in order to give promoted dancers more time to prepare for their new positions, this year promotions will be announced when we begin rehearsals for the spring season in March. My hope is that—
Carly didn’t read the rest of the email. She slumped back in her seat and let her phone fall into her lap, trying not to panic. Shit. Shit, shit,shit. She’d thought she had more time. Heather had scheduled her wedding so her maid of honor would be home in time to start rehearsals, and Carly had figured that when the trip was over, she’d be able to go home to New York and have a whole season to impress Catherine. But now she’d have … a week, if that? Her chances of proving to her new boss that she deserved to be promoted to soloist had just been slashed, and there was nothing she could do about it. She couldn’t very well turn around and go back to New York. She wouldn’t even consider missing Heather’s big day, not after everything she and Heather had been through together. She screwed up her face and tried to take a deep, calming breath. It didn’t work.
“Shit!” she hissed.
From the aisle, someone cleared their throat pointedly. Carly opened one eye and looked up to find the impatient man in khakis staring at her, looking affronted. Carly closed the other eye and went back to cursing internally.
She needed this promotion. She’d spent all thirteen of her years at NYB in the corps, and if being unceremoniously fired by Mr. K had taught her anything, it was that being one woman in a fifty-person corps made her disposable. She hated how that felt. As a soloist, she’d have a little more stability—to say nothing of the opportunities to teach, coach, or maybe even run a small company when her body gave out and she retired. But she was thirty-one, and there wasn’t much time left.
She managed not to curse out loud again, and when it was finally time to deplane, she pulled her bag up off the floor and rose to her feet. Both her knees cracked loudly as she stood, and Impatient Khaki Pants glared at her, now truly appalled. She gave him a bright, plastic smile and shrugged.That’s what twenty-five years of ballet sounds like,buddy,she thought.We might look like fluttering fairies on stage, but in real life our joints are wrecked, our muscles are spasming, and our toenails are peeling off. And we really like to curse.
Oh, and our careers are fucking falling apart.
Once she made it past the front of the immigration line—where the agent did a double take when he saw “ballerina” listed as her employment and looked her up and down with obvious curiosity—she found a loose luggage cart and pointed it toward the only moving carousel in the large, brightly lit arrivals hall. Hopefully, her bag would come out quickly and she could get out of here and go find Heather. And Marcus, and that promised coffee, but mostly Heather. It had been almost a year since she’d last seen her best friend, when the happy couple had come to New York for Heather’s short guest run with her former company, but it felt like a decade to Carly. They’d gone from being roommates who took class together almost every day to living on opposite sides of the globe. While Carly was happy that Heather had found a company and a man that she loved down here, being apart all the time absolutely sucked. Which she planned to tell Heather as soon as she’d given her a hug that lasted between ten and fifteen minutes.
It was only after she’d thrown most of her body weight behind the stray luggage cart that she realized it was missing one wheel. It swerved wildly, jerking hard to the right, and then the plastic bar slipped out of her grasping fingers and the cart went reeling away from her, wobbling and rattling toward—
“Look out!” Carly shrieked. Khaki Pants whipped around and threw himself out of the way just in time, but it was too late for the person behind him. The cart careened into the back of their legs and sent them sprawling onto their stomach on the smooth, shining floor of the arrivals hall, bag and papers flying.
“Shit!” Carly breathed, shrugging her backpack off her shoulders and running toward the stirring body on the ground. The cart rolled away and into a pair of trash cans bearing a list of foods travelers were forbidden to bring into Australia.
“Oh God, I’m so sorry, are you all right?” she asked, on her hands and knees next to the body, praying she hadn’t just caused an international incident. God, she’d been in this country less than half an hour and already screwed up in spectacular fashion. Classic Carly.
The body rolled over, and Carly registered for the first time that it belonged to a man. She looked into his face and felt her mouth go dry. Thick, wavy dark brown hair. Sharp, sculpted cheekbones above a long, straight nose. And deep blue eyes surrounded by the kind of full, dark eyelashes that would make Maybelline executives weep. He looked like he’d be a head taller than her when standing, and his merino wool hoodie clung to a pair of lean, muscled shoulders. Even in her state of distracted distress, she could see that he was extremely good looking.
He was also extremely angry looking. His cheeks were flushed pink with rage, and his mouth was twisted into a shocked grimace.
“Putain de—what the hell is wrong with you!” he snarled up at her. Carly flinched and straightened up to sit on her knees. “You nearly killed me!”
Carly looked him up and down, taking in the muscular thighs visible beneath his tapered black sweatpants. She couldn’t see any blood. All of his joints seemed to be bending in the right directions.Nearly killedseemed like an overstatement. Still, he did look pretty shaken up.
“I’m sorry,” she said again, “I lost control of the cart. Are you hurt?”
“No, but that’s hardly the point,” he snapped. “Be more careful next time, would you?” The pink blotches in his face were blooming red as he looked up at her disdainfully. Carly glanced around and saw that a handful of people were watching them from beside the carousel. Khaki Pants picked up his carry-on bag, which had toppled over in the chaos, and approached them. Before he could offer his help—or, more likely, his own reprimand—she waved him off.
