“It’s nothing,” she shrugged, raising the camera again, but he stepped towards her, unwilling to touch the camera but trying to get her to stop so he could do this properly.
“It’s not nothing. It’d be ruined if you hadn’t done that,” he gestured down at the camera, which she was still clutching tightly, her fingertips white around it, “and I’d be in big trouble.”
Carly swallowed hard, then looked him up and down. “I don’t know, you look like you’re in pretty big trouble now.”
He looked down at himself again, then held his hands up in surrender. He really did look like a drowned rat. “Fine. Don’t let me stop you from capturing this glorious moment.”
She flashed him a quick grin as she raised the camera, and his stomach gave a strange jolt. Leftover adrenaline from the near-miss, he told himself, as she started snapping again.
Chapter 11
By the time Carly presented herself at Heather’s place that evening, she had posted two more of Nick’s photos and added almost a thousand new followers. It wasn’t a lot compared to some dancers she knew—there was one principal in her company with 250,000 followers—but it was a damn good start.
She checked her account one last time before she rang the doorbell, because she needed to know the current number. She wasn’t stalling. She certainly wasn’t dragging out the minutes until she had to be in Nick’s company again, just like she definitely hadn’t spent the day dragging her mind away from the memory of the way Nick had looked as he’d clambered out of the pool this morning. She’d spent the entire day regretting her decision to save the camera. She should have kept Nick on dry land and let his Nikon fly into the pool. Sure, it would have destroyed an expensive piece of equipment and broken Nick’s heart, and sure, it would have set their little project back. That would have been regrettable, obviously. But at least she wouldn’t be walking around Sydney with the mental image of a sopping wet Nick, his shirt clinging to his broad muscular chest, looking down at her like she’d saved his life rather than his camera. Looking at her as though, for the first time since they’d met, he actually wanted to look at her.
She was distracted by the memory of it all day. She barely managed to hold up her end of the conversation as Heather drove them to ANB ballet studios, and she screwed up the frappé combination on both legs because she hadn’t paid attention when the ballet mistress was setting the exercise. As she and Heather walked the aisles of the supermarket, collecting ingredients for a family dinner, she couldn’t stop seeing it: Nick, sunlit and soaked, gazing at her with unmasked gratitude.
She hoped some of those photos had turned out well, because otherwise all she’d have to show for this morning was a very unwelcome memory of Nick with his shirt plastered to his shoulders and droplets sparkling on his eyelashes.Yum, Heather had said the other day, but that didn’t even begin to describe the roaring hunger Carly felt when that image popped into her mind for the four hundredth time that day. Or the unsettling stab of concern she’d felt when she’d seen him about to topple into the water and had to decide, in a fraction of a second, what to do. It had been an easy decision.
He’d been so panicked as he’d scrambled around the pool searching for the camera, and in that moment she’d had a sudden and unwelcome flash of realization, which was that for all his pedantry and pretention, Nick Jacobs wasn’t a monster. He’d looked like a kid in that moment. A scared kid terrified that he’d messed everything up, and Carly had felt a strange, aching sense of recognition as she’d watched him splash and struggle. She knew that feeling, the way dread and self-recrimination slammed you in the chest when you discovered you’d screwed up yet again.
It would be easier if he were a monster, a fuckboy. Monsters and fuckboys she could handle. If he were a fuckboy, she would have let his camera sink to the bottom of the pool without a second thought. But he wasn’t. He was just a person—a person who was helping her, even though he could barely stand her. A person who had thanked her earnestly and hadn’t noticed that she’d played his thanks off with a laugh, then brought the camera up to her face so he wouldn’t see how her cheeks were burning at the unbearable combination of a soaking wet man and a sincere apology.
She pressed the doorbell and the door opened almost immediately to reveal a curvy white woman with tight brown curls and flawless makeup above her flowing hot pink caftan.
“Hiya!” she chirped. “You must be Carly. I’m Izzy. Come on in!”
Carly returned her smile and stepped over the threshold to follow her down the hallway into the little kitchen, which was crowded with people. To her relief, none of them was Nick.
“It’s Carly!” Izzy called into the room, spreading her arms wide and bellowing the words like Oprah announcing her next guest.
“Oh my God, finally,” someone said, and Carly wondered for a moment if she’d arrived late. But then the speaker, a petite Asian woman, definitely a dancer, stepped away from the kitchen counter and smiled at her.
“I’m Alice,” she said, grinning as she wiped her hands on her shorts. “So excited to meet the famous Carly. Heather was actually counting the days until you got here.” She held out her hand and Carly shook it, returning Alice’s smile. Alice had been Marcus’s best friend in the company, and Carly knew she and Heather had become good friends since Heather had joined ANB.
“I’m excited to meet the famous Alice,” Carly said. “Aren’t you the one who told Heather to get her ass back to Sydney to make things right with Marcus?”
“The very same,” Alice said proudly. “And I was right, wasn’t I? God, I love being right. I was just about to pour Iz a drink. Do you want a drink? You look like you could use a drink.”
“Once again, you are right,” Carly smiled, and Alice let out an honest-to-God cackle. Carly liked her already. “Heather said you’re injured. What happened?”
“Standard dancer’s fracture,” Alice shrugged, lifting her right foot a few inches off the floor. “I’ve been putting in my hours in physio, but I’m going to miss the season. So I could use a drink, too.”
While Alice was pulling wine out of the fridge, Carly placed her bag on the couch, then returned to the kitchen, where Heather was standing at the counter next to a woman Carly suspected was Marcus’s mother.
“Anything I can help with?” Carly asked.
“No thanks, dear, we’ve got it under control,” the older woman said, and she turned around to face Carly.
“This is Marcus’s mom, Leanne,” Heather said over her shoulder as she chopped up a cucumber and tossed the pieces into a large bowl where they joined the greens they’d bought earlier.
“The maid of honor!” Leanne smiled, the tanned skin around her green eyes wrinkling deeply as she smiled warmly at Carly. Marcus had the same eyes, and the beginnings of the same wrinkles. Leanne wiped her hands on her apron and extended a hand, which Carly shook carefully; she knew that Leanne had moved out of this house when her worsening osteoarthritis made the stairs too much of a challenge.
“Nice to meet you, Mrs. Campbell,” Carly said politely, accepting a tumbler of white wine from Alice. As she turned to thank Alice, she let her eyes dart around the kitchen and living room. No sign of Nick. Where the hell was he? Maybe she’d get lucky and he wouldn’t show up at all.
“Oh, please,” Leanne chuckled, waving a dismissive hand. “Mrs. Campbell is my dad. Call me Leanne.”
“Okay, Leanne,” Carly laughed. When she joked, Leanne’s eyes took on the same wry twinkle that Marcus’s did. A kind and funny husband, a house on the beach, a principal dancer job,anda cool mother-in-law? Heather really had won the lottery.
