“I haven’t decided,” Nick lied again. “Things ended so badly last time, and they were already pretty messy. They’re just never going to forgive me for the way I left.” His parents had never gotten over him going behind their backs to audition for Münchner Staatsballett. And after the fight they’d had when he’d last come home to visit—yet another row about him moving home—he didn’t want to go out to Springwood to see them.
“What about Nina?”
Nick nodded. “Yeah, Neens and I are fine. Now that she’s grown we’ve kind of got our own thing, separate from them.” His sister had been so young when he’d left for Europe, and her parents had hidden a lot of their anger from her. But she was smart; she’d figured out that something wasn’t right between them, and she’d spent years trying to bridge that gap, always reminding him whenever she called him that theyallmissed him, that he was welcome at home. But Nick didn’t want to go home to Springwood, and he definitely didn’t want to face his parents now.
He had been so cocky about his future back then, so sure he was going to go overseas and make a whole glamorous new life for himself, so sure that he was going to get away and stay away from Sydney, and even further away from his little hometown. He was so sure back then. So very, very sure.
He drained the last of his coffee and fiddled for a moment with the empty cup.
“Is, euh, is Carly bringing a plus-one?” he asked Marcus. He didn’t know why he’d asked. He didn’t care. It didn’t matter.
“Nope, she’s flying solo as well,” Marcus said, and Nick ignored the prick of satisfaction that usually came from hearing the answer he’d been hoping for. “It’s a good thing, actually, that you’re both on your own. Makes the seating chart a little simpler.”
“Do I want to know what that spreadsheet looks like?” Nick asked.
“No, but I see it in my dreams. And nightmares,” Marcus chuckled. “I’m telling you, wedding planning is intense. I think Delphine might be on to something.”
Nick forced himself to smile as he stood and tossed his coffee cup in the bin.
“Should we go get your mum’s car?”
“Yeah,” Marcus said, standing and yawning widely. “Let’s get showered and then we’ll go pick it up, okay?”
“Okay,” Nick agreed. He didn’t have to worry about Delphine today. He didn’t have time to worry about her, actually. Today he had to remember how to drive on the left-hand side of the road. And he had to figure out how to spend the day with Carly Montgomery without one or both of them ending up dead.
Chapter 5
“We’ve circled this block three times already,” Carly growled murderously, keeping her eyes straight ahead. “Do you even know where we’re going?”
She gripped the seat and stared at the back of the car in front of them, determined not to let her gaze stray toward the driver’s seat. It was bad enough that she was stuck spending her long-awaited vacation with Nick Jacobs, an insufferable snob who knew her biggest and most mortifying secrets. But this morning had made them enemies for life. First, she’d accidentally spent a good five minutes cataloging every mouthwatering detail of his mostly naked body, andhe’d caught her doing it. And then, while she’d been waiting for the barista at the surf club café to make her coffee, she’d overheard him talking to Marcus.
I’ve met some ballet brats, but she’s on another level.
Carly hated thatb-word even more than she hated the otherb-word. She’d spent the last decade of her life saving and budgeting and having the same argument with her parents every six months, all so she wouldn’t be what Nick had called her. A ballet brat. An entitled princess who didn’t live in the real world, who always relied on Edward and Marlene to buy her way into anything—or out of anything. Okay, so she sometimes lost her temper. But she was working on that, too. She was trying to be better. But of course Nick had seen none of that. All he’d seen was abrat.
“I know where we’re going,” Nick said through gritted teeth, accidentally turning on the windshield wipers instead of the blinker. He sighed with frustration. “We’re going to the printer.”
“I meant do you know where the printeris,” Carly replied, although she already knew the answer.
“I know what you meant,” he said, “and yes, I know where the printer is. It’s on King Street, near the train station. That’s what Marcus said.”
“Do you want me to pull up a map? Google can solve this problem for us, you know.”
“I don’t need a map, I just need to find this place,” he snapped, turning the windshield wipers on again.
Carly rolled her eyes. She’d always thought the whole men-don’task-for-directions thing was an old-fashioned cliché. Or was she simply abratfor not wanting to spend her day circling the same block?
“If only there were some kind of visual aid that could help you do that, perhaps guided by some kind of global positioning system?”
“Putain de merde, je vais la tuer,” he muttered.
“I wouldn’t if I were you. I’m pretty sure Australia frowns on murder.” There was a long silence as Nick stared out at the traffic, his jaw clenched. She watched him in satisfaction as realization dawned on him. “Faut faire attention, Nick, on ne sait jamais qui parle français.” There was another tense silence. Maybe she shouldn’t have rubbed it in, but it was just so satisfying to watch the muscle in his jaw tick like that.
They inched forward through the traffic, through the same traffic lights she was quite sure they’d already waited at several times. “Since when do you speak French?” he finally gritted out.
“Since my least favorite nanny was Belgian. I learned it just to spite her. She used to mutter about killing me, too.”
“Can’t say I blame her,” he shot back.
