“We’re going to make you an even bigger photography star, and we’re going to get me promoted. When can we start?” It had been a while since he’d made that expression appear on a woman’s face.
“Um, we can probably start tomorrow,” he ventured. “Tomorrow afternoon.” Maybe by then she would have figured out some other plan and convinced some other sucker to go along with it.
She raised her eyebrows at him, looked out the window. “It’s not even 7AM. Why waste two whole days?”
For God’s sake, this woman was relentless. “Because I might have things to do?” he said, rising from the bed and throwing his empty cup into the bin. “I might already have plans for how I’m going to spend this whole day.”
She frowned at him, skeptical. “And do you?”
He paused. “No,” he admitted under his breath.
She grinned again, triumphant, and there was that throb in his chest again.
“Then we start today. Let’s shake on it.” She thrust her hand out, and he took it without thinking, wrapping his fingers around her palm and feeling it clammy with sweat.
She gave his hand one enthusiastic downward tug. He returned it, a little more gently, and she gave a strange, relieved little giggle. He looked down into her delighted face and couldn’t keep himself from smiling. Maybe this wouldn’t be a total disaster.
Chapter 9
“Well, this is a total disaster,” Carly muttered, brushing her hair away from her mouth, only to have it blown right back into her face for the hundredth time. A few strands stuck stubbornly to her lip gloss as the wind whipped around her.
Their first attempt at a photo shoot wasn’t going well at all. The location Nick had chosen was a rocky cliffside in a national park near Manly, with sweeping views of the harbor hundreds of feet below. It was beautiful and forbidding, with clumps of gray-green scrub that looked like the only plant life that could survive up here. It was also extremely windy. Why had Nick decided that it was a good idea to hike to the edge of a cliff on a windy day and ask her to do an arabesque on a craggy rock? Carly had no idea.
“Make it an attitude. And can you cheat it a bit to the left?” he called from ten feet away. Carly obliged, bending her free leg and pulling her hip back so that her foot rose a little higher into the air and less of her torso was facing the camera.
“Myleft,” he called, sounding annoyed. She rolled her eyes as she made the adjustment. “It’s a pretty good lens, so I saw that.”
She rolled her eyes even bigger this time, to make sure he really got the shot. He pulled the camera down, then squinted at the screen. “Nice, really nice,” he yelled sarcastically. “You look like you’re about to faint.”
Or get thrown into the ocean by the next strong gust.Maybe, Carly thought,that was his plan.It would look like an accident if she toppled into Sydney Harbor in the middle of an arabesque. She brought her foot down and crossed her arms over her chest.
“What step is that?” Nick called.
“Pas de douche,” Carly muttered as the wind plastered several of her curls to her cheek again. She pulled them out of her face and glared over at him.
“Can you give me a Giselle penché? The big one, from the second act?”
He must be out of his mind. If she stood out here on one leg, with her free foot pointing at the sky and her body lowered almost to the ground, she was going to be swept off the side of the cliff for sure.
“I’ve never danced Giselle,” she yelled back. One of twenty-four identical wilis? She’d danced that role plenty of times, standing stock-still in a line along the side of the stage while Heather or one of the other principals danced in the middle of it.
It was Nick’s turn to roll his eyes. “You still know how to do a penché, though. Or is it just not very good?”
Carly scowled. Nick didn’t know what he was talking about. She had an excellent penché, thank you very much. She took a step forward, making sure there weren’t any loose rocks under her supporting foot before lifting her other foot behind her, raising it as high as she could before she needed to lower her body to accommodate the movement. When her leg wouldn’t go any further, she stopped, and for good measure she clasped her hands in front of her chest, just as she’d seen Heather and all the other Giselles do in the second act pas de deux.
“See, was that so hard? You’ve got a very nice penché,” Nick called, sounding smug.
I know I do, she wanted to yell at him, but she’d lose her balance if she turned her head. The sneaky bastard had goaded her into doing exactly what he wanted, and he knew it.
After a moment, her lower back began to ache with the effort of holding the position, and she brought her leg down slowly.
“Okay, try the Odette thing, with the wings,” he called, putting one foot behind him and raising one hand to the sky, resting his head against his bicep.
“Also never danced Odette.” A nameless swan? Many times. But before he could goad her into doing it, she did her best impression of the famous swan pose, with her front leg in a deep bend and her other leg extended long behind her. She raised one arm like Nick had, placing the other hand in front of her body, hovering over the place where a white tutu skirt would have been had she been in costume. “How’s that?” she asked, as though Nick’s opinion mattered. There was a long silence as he scrutinized her.
“Tilt your chin up,” he called eventually, and she ignored the absence of praise and lifted her head slightly.
“Up and to the right,” he corrected, and she tried. “No,” he called, and Carly closed her eyes to keep from rolling them. Presumably, being a stickler for detail was an asset in a photographer, but surely it wouldn’t be good for him if his model got blown off a cliff while he fussed about the precise angle of her chin.
