“Whatever,” Nick Jacobs muttered, and she rolled her eyes again. She reached out to grab the handle of her bag, but at the very same moment, he reached over to grab his own. In an instant, the space between their bodies had all but closed and her face almost pressed against his shoulder. The air was suddenly full of his cologne, something citrusy and spicy that made her stomach flip over.
She looked up in surprise and saw him looking down at her. No, looking downonher, his stormy eyes narrowed with dislike and his forehead creased with a frown. She pursed her lips, and watched as his gaze flicked down to her mouth, then back up to her eyes. Hot irritation clawed at the back of her neck as she glared, unblinking, into his face, unwilling to signal weakness by stepping back first. His frown deepened, his face clouding with what looked like confusion as he kept his eyes locked on her. The heat of their bodies and the scent of his cologne formed a small angry bubble around them in the middle of the cool hotel lobby. He held her gaze, still. So he was stubborn. But she was stubborn-er.Not a word, but I don’t care, she thought, lifting her chin and cocking one eyebrow.
His eyes widened, and he gave in, straightening up and stepping back. Carly allowed herself a triumphant smile as cool air rushed in and his scent was snatched away—but as she watched him pull the suitcase toward him and she caught a glimpse of his toned forearms, her stomach gave another irritating flip.
Hewouldlook good in that suit, she thought bitterly, as she pulled her own suitcase toward her, but he looked damn good in the plain white T-shirt and navy blue shorts, too. Clearly Nick Jacobs was the kind of person who always remembered to pack a change of clothes in his carry-on.
Not bothering to thank her or say goodbye, he took a step away from her, then stopped and looked down at his suitcase. “Is everything still in here?” he frowned.
Carly stared at him in disbelief. “You’re asking if I actually stole from you? My God, what is your problem?”Fuck this fucking guy!“No, I didn’t steal from you. I’m not athief.”
He had the decency to look chastened, and she watched his cheeks turn pink again, this time from something other than anger at her. He ducked his head and placed a possessive hand on the side of the suitcase.
“I’m sorry,” he muttered, “there’s just some pretty expensive equipment in here and I was worried I wouldn’t get it back.”
Carly shook her head impatiently. He could keep his half-assed apology. “Are we done here? Or do you want to file a police report? Maybe call Interpol while you’re at it? I heard MI6 has some time on its hands lately.”
“We’re done,” he said shortly. And then, because apparently he couldn’t resist condescending to her one more time, he added, “Next time you should put a tag on your suitcase. So this doesn’t happen to anyone else.”
“Next time you should put all your fancy little cameras in your carry-on,” Carly retorted. “So you don’t have to worry about thieves.”
“Yeah, well, maybe next time I’ll just fill my bag with dildos, how about that?”
Carly’s jaw dropped, and her skin went cold. She stared at him open mouthed, rendered speechless for the second time today. He ran his hand over his head, seemingly uncomfortable under her furious gaze.Good, she thought. You should be uncomfortable, you smug piece of—
“You went through my bag?” It came out like a hiss, and he looked around them, presumably to make sure no one had overheard.
“Just enough to see that it wasn’t mine,” he said stiffly.
“And just enough to find my … very personal belongings? Are you kidding me right now?” Carly’s heart was pounding and indignation pushed her voice an octave higher.
He ducked his head again, wincing slightly and shrugging his broad shoulders as she glared at him. Guilt nipped at her neck. Distantly, she told herself to calm down, that she was letting her temper get the better of her yet again, but she was too tired, too embarrassed, and too furious to heed any of it. She was meant to be relaxing, goddammit. She was meant to be on a beach with her best friend, or racking her brains trying to figure out how to escape the corps. And instead she was here with Nick Bag Tag Jacobs, who had managed to ruin 100 percent of her vacation so far. Who was standing here all hot and put together and mocking the most intimate contents of her luggage. Of herlife.
She gripped the handle of her suitcase and glared at him. She knew she should stop and take a few deep breaths and count to ten, like her meditation app had told her to do. She should visualize a train slowing down instead of reeling out of control and off the tracks. But she couldn’t make her brain do it. Her limbs were heavy with exhaustion, and her cheeks were burning with rage and humiliation, and right now Nick Jacobs’s face looked like an amalgam of every hot, nice-smelling jerk who’d screwed her over in the last few years.
“I didn’t go through it all,” Nick Jacobs said, his voice low and urgent, as if it was important to him that she understood, “I just needed something to identify it for the airline, and since there was no tag—” he said, but she interrupted him. The train had come off the tracks and was plowing through buildings, causing millions in property damage—and she couldn’t seem to stop it.
“Next time,” she growled, “I hope someone does take your fancy little cameras, okay? You deserve it. And they’re not dildos, you pompous perve, they’re dilators.” She grabbed her suitcase handle again, never once breaking eye contact. “Medical, therapeutic devices for people like me, with useless, broken vaginas. Hilarious joke, right? A real thigh-slapper. Have a nice life, asshole.”
Humiliation burned her cheeks, and a new instinct took over. Carly turned and stalked across the lobby, yanked open the door without waiting for it to open automatically, and was gone.
What. The hell. Just happened?
Nick stood planted to the lobby floor, shellshocked, for the second time that day, by the human hurricane that was … whoever that woman was. He didn’t know her name, not that he’d ever need to. She’d stormed away from him after accusing him of rifling through her stuff and denouncing him as an asshole. Again.
The hand wrapped tightly around the handle of his suitcase was slippery with sweat, and his heart was racing. It had started thumping unusually hard when he watched her rise from her seat and had only sped up as he’d taken her in. Despite his bruised knees and dented pride—both her fault, by the way—he couldn’t help but notice the length of her neck and her thick, expressive eyebrows. Watching her from across the room, he felt like he could read everything she was feeling on her striking face. Even when what she was feeling was exasperation, disgust, disbelief, and loathing. Towards him.
He’d known even as the words were coming out of his mouth that he shouldn’t mention the sex toys. But her jab about his cameras had gotten him right in the gut. Those fancy little cameras had cost him so much. His whole government-supported retirement fund wiped out in just a few foolish, hopeful clicks of a mouse. And what good had it done? He wasn’t a photographer, was he? He was just a retired dancer with a failed second career and no retirement savings. He’d been so panicked when he thought those cameras were lost, and now that he had them back, they only seemed to mock him. He didn’t need a beautiful woman mocking him, too, especially not a beautiful woman who had already upended his morning so completely.
And it absolutely would have been an asshole move to go through her personal belongings, which was why he hadn’t done it. He’d put the bag of—what had she called them, dilators?—back as soon as he’d realized he was looking at something very intimate. She was the one who’d rammed him with a trolley, taken his bag, and then rejected his very sensible suggestion of buying a fucking luggage tag. She was the one who’d shouted at him in public on two separate occasions this morning. So who was the asshole here, really?
He huffed out a sigh and loosened his grip slightly on the suitcase, his muscles and joints suddenly feeling every minute of the twenty-one-hour trip from Paris, and his trip onto the floor of the arrivals hall. His first thought as he’d gone sprawling onto his stomach had beenI can’t break anything, I have to be able to dance. A split second after he’d hit the floor, he’d realized that no, actually, he didn’t have to be able to dance. It didn’t matter if he shattered his kneecap or tore his Achilles or threw his hands out in front of him and broke both his wrists. He wasn’t a dancer any more, and he no longer had any reason to be cautious with his body. No one would miss him if he wasn’t in class or on stage; no one would reprimand him for being careless and missing a performance season. He would just be a regular man with a regular broken wrist.
He sighed again, more resigned this time, and pulled his suitcase across the lobby towards the hotel restaurant. It was hard to imagine a less auspicious arrival home than the one he’d had today. But he was home.
Well, kind of, he thought, settling himself at a small table and looking out the window at the road down to the beach. Sydney was where he’d spent his teen years, but it had been ages since he’d lived here. In fact, he’d been gone almost half his life; he’d left as soon as he’d graduated from the School of Australian Ballet at seventeen. Only a few boys in his class had been offered places at the Australian National Ballet, and the rest of them, Nick included, had to audition for jobs at other companies. Seeing as there weren’t that many full-time ballet companies in Australia, that usually meant going to Europe—Eastern, Western, wherever they’d give you a job. His parents hadn’t wanted him to go overseas, and he was daunted by the prospect, too. But what choice did he have? He had to go where the jobs were. They’d been furious when he told them he’d accepted a contract at the Munich State Ballet, and they’d been pushing him to move home ever since.
Those first few years away had been an exhausting blur of figuring out how to be an adult with a real job, on top of learning German and memorizing dozens of ballets’ worth of choreography. But after a few years, he’d been promoted out of the corps de ballet, then made the jump to the Paris Opera Ballet, where he’d had the absurd luck to spend over a decade dancing as a premier danseur at one of the oldest and most prestigious ballet companies in the world. If Sydney was where he’d spent much of his childhood, Paris was where he had truly grown up. In Paris, he’d finally begun to feel like he knew how to be a working artist. Like he knew who he was.
