Chapter 18
Thirty minutes later, they found themselves at the front door of a tiny sandstone cottage surrounded by a rambling garden full of wattle bushes and stone statues of horses. Leura House was a charming-looking BB, and even if it hadn’t been, it was the only place on the mountain that had a room available at short notice. The affable middle-aged man who checked them in was all too happy to provide them with toothbrushes and a few other essential toiletries and only looked slightly curious when Nick hauled three plastic bags full of clinking liquor bottles into the lobby.
The horse theme continued as they walked up a creaky stairway. On the wallpaper, stallions raced, and a series of watercolor ponies kept them company as they climbed. Once they turned the key and let themselves into the last bedroom in town, Carly was entirely unsurprised to find several horse figurines over the fireplace.
“The Australian tourism industry sure loves a theme,” she muttered, taking in the small rearing horses on either end of the mantle piece.
“I think they’re trying to encourage horsing around,” Nick deadpanned, and behind his back, Carly rolled her eyes. They’d both calmed down a little on the drive back up to Leura, though she could feel the aftermath of the adrenaline that had shot through her body as they’d left his parents’ house, like a lingering exhaustion in her muscles.
“Whereas my place in Freshwater doesn’t care what you do, as long as you shell out some money?” she replied, sitting down on the bed with a grateful sigh. She kicked off her shoes with a groan.
Nick snorted as he joined her on the bed, and she laid back until her head landed on a lumpy throw pillow. She reached behind him and pulled it out to find it was shaped like a horse’s head.
“This is disturbing. Haven’t these people ever seen The Godfather?” She frowned at the pillow and tossed it on the floor, then laid back on the firm mattress. Next to her, Nick had lain down and closed his eyes with a deep, heavy sigh. She looked over at him, tracing the sharp lines of his face and studying the dark creep of his five o’clock shadow. She kept waiting for the usual self-recriminations that followed an outburst like the one she’d just had, but they hadn’t arrived. Nick’s parents, and especially his dad, had had it coming, the way they’d talked about Nick. That pointed question his dad had asked about her parents had rankled her, but she knew it wasn’t really about her—it was about his son, and the irritating but unavoidable truth, which was that Nick Jacobs was remarkable.
“I’m sorry I lost it back there,” she said quietly, even though she wasn’t, really.
Nick opened his eyes and looked at her for a long moment, his face unreadable. “It’s okay,” he said finally, even though it didn’t sound like it was, really.
“Wanna get drunk?”
“I really, really do. Let’s get drunk in the name of science and wedding planning.” He climbed off the bed, reached for the bags of liquor, and began lining the bottles up on the antique wooden desk by the window.
“But we don’t have our spreadsheet!”
“We’ll make do. We can take notes on quantities and stuff, and Heather can enter all the data into her system when we get back.”
“Sounds very scientific,” Carly nodded, getting off the bed to join him. Together, they surveyed the bottles. Nick had gone a little nuts in the liquor store, and they had an entire bar cart to work with. Gin, vodka, tequila, and bourbon. Tonic water, a half bottle of prosecco, bitters, and small bottles of sweet and dry vermouth. Carly had had fun in the flavored liqueur section and had cajoled Nick into buying a few little fruity flavors in brightly colored bottles.
Nick stepped into the bathroom and returned with two glass tumblers. “What’s your poison?”
“I like whiskey,” Carly offered. “It’s what I drink after a really bad day. And champagne after a really good one.”
“Well, today was a really bad day,” Nick said, reaching for the bourbon.
Carly watched as he unscrewed the cap and deposited a heavy pour in each glass. “I don’t agree with that. It was a really bad night. But before that, it was a really good day.”
Nick paused, then picked up the tumblers and handed her one. He looked exhausted, but he managed a small smile. “That was pedantic.”
“Says the pedant. And besides, I’m right. We had a good day, right? We got some great shots; we both picked up a bunch of new followers.”
Nick’s smile widened, and Carly was relieved—and, okay, a little aroused—to see a mischievous spark in his eyes. “We did have a good day.”
She took a sip of bourbon and stepped closer to him, near enough to brush a light kiss along the side of his neck. He groaned quietly and tipped his head, giving her more of the stubbly skin and the taut muscle beneath it. She kissed it again, her mouth open this time, and the sweat-salt taste of him mingled deliciously with the sweet bourbon.
“And the night’s not over, Nick,” she murmured against his skin. “We can turn it around.”
In response, he wrapped one arm around her waist and pulled her tight against him, making her breath catch in her throat. She nipped at the place she’d been kissing, and he groaned again, louder and darker, and the sound made her nipples tighten and ache.
“We’ve got work to do,” he said with a sigh.
“We can work later.” Carly ran her free hand up the back of his neck and slid her fingers into his hair, pulling his face down to hers.
“And piss Heather off? No, thank you,” he retorted, and she whimpered in frustration. She pulled away from him and looked at the bottles on the desk.
“For Heather,” she said, echoing his concession from earlier in the evening.
“For Heather. Let’s get to work.”
“Fine, fine.” Carly stepped backward, putting a few feet between them, and picked up a pen and notepad from the desk. The BB’s stationery had a chubby little pony on it, naturally. “The wedding theme is kind of a mash-up of New York City and the beach. You saw the table signs. So, it’s kind of a cliché, but a Manhattan?”
“Two parts rye, one part vermouth, dash of bitters,” Nick nodded.
“How did you know that?” Carly liked a good cocktail every now and then, but she didn’t have their ingredients memorized.
“I know things,” Nick said after a pause. “But we don’t have rye.”
“I think if you’d bought one more kind of grain alcohol the guy behind the counter would have called for a welfare check.”
“Please, this is Australia. He would have reminded me to grab some rum.”
Carly laughed and took another step backward. They had work to do. The faster they got it done, the faster she could get back to exploring Nick’s neck with her mouth.
“Can we make a Manhattan with bourbon?”
“I don’t see why not. It would be sweeter, but maybe if we go easy on the vermouth?”
“Let’s try it. Bourbon is kind of southern, and Australia is the south. The deep, deep south. Like, get to Louisiana and keep going.”
Nick looked skeptical at her reasoning, but he reached for the vermouth and the bitters and eyeballed the measurements. She watched him carefully, taking in the movements of his fingers, the flexing muscles of his forearms and wrists. For scientific reasons, obviously. So they could recreate the recipe later.
“We’re supposed to add a cherry, so imagine there’s a cherry in here,” he said a moment later, handing her the tumbler full of rich red-brown liquid. “And it should be cold.”
“Got it,” Carly said, jotting down notes on the pad. 2 Bourbon, 3/4 vermouth, dash bitters, cherry, cold. She took a sip and widened her eyes. “Holy crap, that’s good.”
As she watched, Nick took a slow sip of his creation, nodding thoughtfully as he savored the taste. She watched his mouth, biting her lip as he ran his tongue over his bottom lip. He watched her watching him, then repeated the movement with his tongue, and there went her nipples again. God, this man was a tease. How had she ever thought him uptight? He was playing with her. And he was winning.
“How does it taste?” she asked, her voice huskier than she intended.
“Perfect,” he replied, downing the rest of the drink in two quick swallows. “You want more?”
Fuck yes, she did.
Nearly an hour later, they’d perfected the Deep South Manhattan—less vermouth and more bitters, to counteract the bourbon—and Carly’s handwriting had deteriorated significantly. She hoped she’d be able to read it in the morning.
“’Kay, ’kay, we got it, on to the next one,” she giggled. They were out of vermouth, anyway.
Nick was sprawled in the desk chair, swinging it back and forth gently. He wasn’t quite as tipsy as she was, but he looked relaxed for the first time since they’d run into Nina that afternoon. He surveyed the remaining alcohol.
“What’s Heather’s favorite drink?”
Carly thought for a moment. “White wine. And light beer. She’s not a cocktail person, and we’re not serving white wine spritzers. I’d lose my maid of honor card for that.”
Nick chuckled, then picked up the prosecco, which was sitting in a puddle of condensation. “We could do a twist on a French 75. That’s sparkling, gin, lemon juice.”
“A Freshwater 75,” Carly said triumphantly.
“Yeah, I like that,” Nick grinned up at her, and her pulse picked up at the sight. They needed to get this second drink done before she’d drunk too much to do all the things she wanted to do to him tonight. She turned her attention to the little bottles of liqueur. There was nothing lemon flavored, but she had bought some strawberry liqueur, which seemed promising.
Nick rinsed his tumbler in the bathroom sink, then opened the gin and popped the bottle of prosecco.
“Three parts sparkling, one part gin,” he said under his breath, and once again she was impressed, if a little perplexed, by his knowledge of cocktails. She was about to ask about it when he handed her the bottle of strawberry liqueur. “Why don’t you pour until the color looks right?”
She poured until the drink was a dark pink, and then they repeated the experiment in her glass, but with less liqueur.
“To a good day,” she offered, holding one glass up in a toast. He looked at her for a long moment, his eyes a deep, unreadable blue.
“To a good day, and a bad night that got better. Thanks to you,” he said, clinking their glasses gently, and desire tugged in her chest.
They sampled the paler drink, then the darker one.
“Oof, too much,” Nick said, screwing his face up and setting the drink down.
If I had a nickel, Carly thought tipsily, scribbling the proportions of the paler version on her notepad.
“I think we’re done here. I’ll text Heather so she can cross this task off her master list.” Nick nodded, looking satisfied, and started packing away the undrunk liquor. Carly padded toward the bed, drink in hand, hoping she looked sexy but feeling more sleepy than seductive. The hours in the sun had taken it out of her.
She settled herself against the pillows and sipped at the cocktail, watching him tidy up, then drained her drink.
“Nick. Let’s have a really good night.”
He looked up from the desk and let his eyes rake slowly down her body, lingering on her thighs and hips. Then he looked down at his own body and ran a hand through his hair.
“Stay right there. I’m going to take a shower, and then we’ll have a really good night.”
She pouted, and then remembered everything they’d done today.
They both probably needed a shower.
“Fine, fine,” she conceded.
“Unless you want to join me in the shower?” he raised one eyebrow, and the effect was unforgivably sexy.
Carly yawned widely despite herself. “Get the water warm, I’ll join you in a second.”
She adjusted a pillow beneath her and slipped her socks off, letting her tired feet sink into the perfectly firm mattress. Just a few minutes, and then she’d go into the bathroom and help Nick get clean, so they could both get very, very dirty. She was going, in just a second. Just … one more second …
Carly never joined Nick in the shower. He waited, letting the warm water beat some softness into his tense shoulders, enjoying the thick and luxurious lather of the BB’s shampoo, and gently palming his cock, hungrily anticipating Carly’s hands and fingers and mouth taking over. But she never arrived. After a few more minutes of waiting, Nick realized he was wasting water and got out of the shower with a twinge of disappointment in his gut.
“Changed your mi—” he started to ask, stepping out into the bedroom wrapped in a fluffy white robe. The question died in his mouth as he took in Carly, who was curled up on one side of the bed fast asleep. She was barefoot, and as he moved closer he saw that the top button of her shorts was undone. But she was out.
As quietly as he could, he switched on the bedside lamp on the empty side of the bed, then crept across the room to turn off the overhead light. The moon and the streetlights now shone through the lace curtain, which was fluttering slightly at the open window.
Nick tiptoed to the window and carefully pulled the lace aside. The air outside was cool at last, and the lightest of breezes made the leaves in the gum trees rustle and sway on the other side of the street. The night up here belonged to the bush, to the croaking of frogs and the eerie, mournful cries of curlews. To the high-pitched chatter of ringtail possums and, somewhere not too far away, a barking that could have been a dog or an owl.
He stood there and inhaled deep breaths of eucalyptus and blooming night jasmine. It smelled like his youth, like life before his life really began.
Carly didn’t stir as he lowered himself gently onto the bed, and for a moment he watched her, her chest rising and falling steadily, like calm water after a storm. The stillness after the hurricane. He slipped under the covers, still watching her. Her full lips were pursed and pouty against the pillow as though she was arguing with someone in her dreams. Which, he reminded himself, was definitely something she would do.
What a beautiful, infuriating, surprising woman. Not a brat but a force, an uncompromising warrior for the people who earned her trust. He thought about the way she’d defended him in front of his parents tonight. It had felt just as he’d imagined it would: like standing inside a hot, high ring of fire that burned between you and all the things that frightened you. His stomach clenched with guilt at the realization that he’d somehow fallen into the circle of people she trusted, despite having no business being there. She still didn’t know the truth about his photography career; none of them did. And none of them would be as furious as she would be when she found out.
Nick sighed heavily, and she stirred, pulling herself into a tighter ball. “Mmphmmmph,” she muttered into the pillow, and he smiled in the semidarkness. It sounded like she was winning this round.
He pushed the guilt away. He would tell her. He would. Just not tonight. Tonight they’d sleep in this strange bed in a horse-themed BB in his favourite mountain town, in this country that was and wasn’t his home. And tomorrow he’d wake up and make a plan to tell her the truth without losing her trust.
“You should get under the covers,” he whispered.
“Mmmphmmph.”
“I know, I know,” he agreed. “But the nights get chilly up here, even in summer.” He pulled the comforter out from under her limp body as gently as he could, but she simply cinched herself into a tighter ball. He kept tugging, determined to get her under the covers. With one last firm pull, he managed to get them out from under her, and he pulled them over her body.
“Niiiiick,” she whined, in a tone some people might have called bratty, “’m tryna sleep.”
“I know, ma puce.” He froze at the sound of the endearment, which had fallen out of his mouth before he could stop it. For a second he watched her closely, waiting to see if she’d registered what he’d said, but she was too wrapped in sleep to do anything but nuzzle the pillow and pull the covers up around her shoulder.
Force of habit, he told himself, as he settled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. But then, he’d never called Delphine that, had he?
“Nick?” Carly said, her voice muffled by the pillow.
“Yeah?”
“You should tell him the truth.”
Nick’s eyes widened in the dark, and he looked over at her. Her eyes were barely open, and her hair was a rumpled mess around her face.
“Tell who what?” he asked, tentatively.
“Marcus. Tell him about your ex. He’s not going to judge you.”
Nick let out a quiet sigh of relief. “Maybe not.”
“He’s your best friend. Just wants to be there for you, like you are for her,” Carly said.
“Him,” Nick corrected.
“Mmhmm, that’s what I said. And you have a whole new life, too,” she went on. The note of grudging admiration in her sleepy voice made something sharp and wonderful twist in his chest. “You’re a big shot pain in the ass photographer now.”
He chuckled, then swallowed hard when he realized what she’d said. He thought about how enraged she’d been when she found out about Delphine, the look of disgust on her beautiful face. Disgust at him, but at herself, too. What would she say if she found out that he really had lied to her? That he wasn’t a big shot at all?
Determined not to think about that any more tonight, he reached out to pull her body closer to his. She grumbled quietly, but as soon as her head was on his chest, she nuzzled into it like she’d done to the pillow.
“Heather’s your best friend. Isn’t there anything you don’t tell her?”
Carly was silent for a moment, and her eyes drifted closed. For a long moment, he heard nothing but deep breaths and birdsong.
“Yeah, there are things I don’t tell her,” she said, so quietly that she could have been talking to herself. “But I told you.”
He put a hand into her hair and held her until her breathing evened out, her inhales cool on his skin and her exhales warm and damp, soothing the aches he’d grown accustomed to living with. Tired as he was, essential as he knew sleep to be, he tried to stay awake to feel her breath on him.
Carly woke to the sound of twittering, cooing birds outside the window. For a moment, she lay still and listened, trying to pick out the differences between mountain birdsong and beach birdsong. Then she stretched under the covers, feeling all of the previous day in her muscles. The drive, the photo shoot, the sun. The cocktails. She had a vague memory of intending to have sex last night, but then … nothing. In the middle of the night, she’d woken for a few minutes and found herself curled into a snug ball with Nick’s large, solid body wrapped around her, his arm slung over her shoulder. It had felt alien and intimate, and she’d shifted slightly, putting a few inches of warm air between them. But a moment later, his arm had tightened, and he’d pulled her toward him, closing the distance and pressing his chest against her back. Deep in the haze of half-sleep, she’d been too tired to pretend she didn’t like it.
She smiled to herself and turned to see if Nick was awake yet. But his side of the bed was empty.
Carly frowned, remembering the time she’d dated a guy for three months, only to wake up in his bed one morning and find him gone. When she’d wandered out of his bedroom, she’d found his roommate, perched on the kitchen counter in his boxers, eating mac and cheese out of a crusty-looking pot. When she’d inquired about the man she’d been seeing, the roommate said he’d left town on a two-week business trip that he’d never once mentioned to Carly. It wasn’t her worst experience of the New York dating scene, but it was up there. Still, she was fairly certain Nick hadn’t simply abandoned her in this BB that not even the most dedicated horse girl could have dreamed up.
And to her relief, she was right. On his pillow was a note written on hotel notepaper. Gone for coffee, back ASAP, he’d written. His handwriting was neat and upright, just like him.
She stretched again and thought about the next two weeks. They needed to take more photos and keep up the momentum on their joint project. She’d need to go to company class every day. They had more wedding prep on their respective lists. And in their spare time, they could do … whatever it was they were doing. Whatever it was Nick had done the other day to make her quads and adductors ache so pleasantly this morning. Her muscles warmed and pulsed at the thought.
She heard footsteps outside the door, and a second later the door swung open and Nick backed into the room with a coffee cup in each hand and a piece of pale blue fabric slung over his shoulder.
“Good morning,” she yawned as he handed her the larger of the two cups. Iced coffee with plenty of milk. He smiled at her, looking surprisingly well rested for someone who’d conducted an extensive semiscientific cocktail study the previous night.
“Good morning. The car’s gassed up. The coffee is strong. And,” he pulled the piece of fabric off his shoulder, “I even found you a spare shirt, in case you really want a change of clothes.”
She smiled back, then took a grateful sip of the coffee. So he hadn’t vanished on a surprise business trip. Quite the opposite, in fact.
“Thank you,” she said, reaching up and pulling the shirt off his shoulder. She unfolded it, then guffawed. LEURA HOUSE, EST. 1907, it said, in flowing teal screen-printed letters, which were surrounded by photographs of half a dozen rearing and racing horses. It was the most impressively ugly thing she’d ever seen.
“Wow.” She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Like I said, it’s in case you really want a change of clothes.” He grinned. “The front desk guy sent it up for free, because he noticed we came in without any luggage.”
Carly stared at the shirt. “You sure it’s not because he ordered five hundred of these things, and still has four hundred and ninety-nine left?”
“I am not,” Nick replied, and she shook her head, then looked up at him, unable to keep a grin off her face.
“I love it,” she declared. “I’m going to wear it to the wedding. I’m going to wear it on stage. I’m going to wear it in my new head shots when Catherine promotes me.”
“As long as you don’t wear it in any of my photos, that’s fine,” he chuckled, as she threw off the cover and pulled the shirt over her head. “By the way, lots of new followers this morning. And we haven’t even posted yesterday’s shots yet.”
“Nice!” Her phone had died overnight, and suddenly she was in a hurry to get back to Freshwater so she could charge it and see how much progress they’d made. She climbed out of bed and struck a pose in her underwear and T-shirt. “What do you think?”
Nick let his eyes trail over her bare legs and her jutted hip, and then her T-shirt-covered shoulders. He took a slow, thoughtful sip of coffee, a small frown creasing his forehead.
“Well, as Miss Rosemary used to say about some of our costumes, you are a beautiful girl with a beautiful body. And that shirt is doing everything in its power to make it appear otherwise.”
“Rude!” she gasped in mock outrage, flicking the horse head throw pillow at him.
“True!” he gasped back, catching it and pulling hard, reeling her toward him. And then she was pressed against him, up on her tiptoes, hip to hip and nose to nose. She kissed him, tasting coffee and milk, and his tongue met hers gently, carefully, as though they’d woken up and found each other in the sleepy dark. She moaned quietly and tightened her grip on her coffee, but before she could deepen the kiss, he pulled away.
“This place has a pretty early checkout time,” he said, pressing a kiss against her hairline. “And we need to get back.”
“Fine,” she sighed. “But I’m not taking this shirt off.”
Downstairs, the man at the front desk took one look at Carly and his round face split with a wide, delighted grin.
“I told you she’d love it,” he said to Nick, approvingly. Nick smiled back and nodded, seemingly unable to come up with a polite response.
“I do love it,” Carly enthused. “Thank you for sending it up. I can’t wait to wear it in New York City.”
He looked even more pleased at that. “The room is $282 for the night, and that includes taxes,” he said, and Carly swallowed. That hadn’t been in her budget.
“Exchange rate,” Nick murmured from just behind her. “It’s not as bad as it sounds. And we’re splitting it. Fend for ourselves, right?” He pulled his wallet out of his pocket and put his card down on the glossy wooden desk.
“Right,” she squared her shoulders and reached into her bag to get her own wallet. “Fend for ourselves.”