‘Bit close,’ Nella said, sticking her head out the window to look at the white line.
Impossible. Jett always parked dead centre; he’d got it down to a science. But she was right. He swore and lurched them back out.
BEEP!
A white Range Rover swerved to stop him crashing into it. Heat scorched up his neck.
Nella said nothing. Her mind was clearly elsewhere, clearly not where his was.
You are seeing someone. She’s your boss.
If she knew what you were thinking ... If Giovanni knew ...
But Giovanni was dead. The warning he’d given Jett when he’d first started, when he’d caught Jett laughing at something Nella said, was still fresh.
Girls like my daughter deserve better than boys like you.
He’d been right, but his warning had been redundant. Jett had almost choked on the piece of toast he’d been eating. Never would he have even entertained the thought of him with the daughter of the country’s most famous wine maker. But Giovanni’s words had acted as an extra buffer for Jett’s already inbuilt caution around Nella. He never touched her, if he could avoid it. And that’s why, when she’d rested against him last night, and then this morning in the garage, he wasn’t used to it. It was like when you dove into the ocean on the first day of summer after a cold spring, your body in shock; can’t breathe, frozen.
That’s all this was.
But he wasn’t used to the feel of her, the warmth of her. And definitely not near that part of him. Not even in his dreams, except for that one time – the time that meant he had to leave. This was all wrong.
He needed to put it in the attic. He was seeing a woman he’d met at the gym, notseriously,but they’d been out a few times. He liked her enough. He needed to think of her.
He let the car idle while he gathered his thoughts, bound them tightly and lobbed them up into that space in his head he never opened the door to. Then he turned to his boss and said, as neutrally as possible, ‘I’ll get the ticket.’
When he returned, Nella was leaning against Irene’s bonnet, her arms crossed, heart-shaped sunglasses with glitter frames covering her eyes.
‘If the aim of the shades is to disguise yourself, it’s not working.’ He shoved the parking ticket onto the dashboard and shut the door again, squinting at the angry glare of the denim blue ocean. Sunscreen, salt and percolating coffee from the pink van filled his nose enough for him to ignore the undertones of vanilla and white musk beside him. She hadn’t changed her perfume since she was nineteen, despite all the free samples she was constantly being sent to review.
‘They make my nose look smaller,’ she said.
‘Nice try.’ He mimicked her stance, but over the other headlight. A safe distance away. ‘Self-deprecationisa mortal trait, but you’re still failing to camouflage completely.’
‘We paid for parking, didn’t we? If anything screamsI don’t belong to the aristocracy,it’s that.’
‘Who are you meeting anyway?’
‘A lawyer.’
‘Uni friend?’
‘He was Clarkson’s roommate.’ Her tone suggested there was more to it – and he should be picking up on it. ‘From when he rented in Subiaco. You picked me up from there once.’
‘Oh.’ Didn’t exactly narrow it down. He’d picked Nella up from a number of university share houses, in various degrees of intoxication.
‘They’re business partners now.Were.’
‘Okay.’ Nella seemed to be wanting him to take some sort of hint. ‘And where is he?’
‘There.’ She nodded at the pink coffee van.
‘That screaming kid or the old woman with the cane?’
‘The pretentious blond prick in the suit.’
‘You’rein a suit. AndAntonella Barbaraniis the first word in the thesaurus next topretentious.’
