Page 21 of Last Breath (Blood Wine Dynasty #2)

Jett

How had that ...

He’d never ...

Did he really just ...

He hadn’t missed a gear since he’d first learnt to drive.

Well, learnt was a strong word. Jett had always felt like cars were just an extension of him; they were his first gateway drug.

He hated the phrase ‘adrenaline junkie’, but even he had enough self-awareness to know that’s what he was.

If it went fast, was high or had a waiver the thickness of his forearm, he was in.

Jett drove fast, but he drove well. So this was ...

It happened at the lights before the turn-off to Ocean Boulevard. He would never be able to drive through that intersection again without remembering.

He didn’t make driving mistakes like that.

He was still reliving the trauma as they pulled up to the bubble-gum-pink coffee van. Had Nella noticed? How could she not? The whole car had whined and lurched in that split second when he went to third instead of fifth like a sixteen-year-old on his L-plates.

Maybe it was because his brain was currently wired like a sixteen-year-old’s after the garage. No, he was tired. That’s why he’d missed the gear. It wasn’t because of the garage. That small, insignificant moment that his school-boy brain was playing over and over.

Nella’s breath on his collarbone. Her hand brushing against him. It wasn’t even a second. What the fuck was wrong with him? Against the car, her curves, her softness, her edges, fit into him like they were both shattered pieces of the same statue.

He breathed out slowly as he swung the car into one of the last bays left in the sandy, beach-side car park.

‘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, not seriously, 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-deprecation is a mortal trait, but you’re still failing to camouflage completely.’

‘We paid for parking, didn’t we? If anything screams I 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’re in a suit. And Antonella Barbarani is the first word in the thesaurus next to pretentious .’

‘Not blonde though.’ She bit her cheek.

‘You tried once.’

‘I pulled it off.’

She had. It hadn’t stopped him teasing her endlessly about it. A little boy tugging at pigtails.

‘Off you go.’ He tipped his head back, determined to get as much Bindi Bindi sun as he could before he started his new job in the workshop. ‘I’ll get my tan on, as the kids say.’

She didn’t move. Her cheek chewing migrated to her lip.

‘Nella?’

‘You need to come with me.’ She pushed off the car.

‘Very funny. This is just some lawyer you know, right? Tom hasn’t got me wired. I’ll watch from here, make sure no one poisons your coffee. Don’t have to worry about me interfering.’

‘Jett.’ She lifted her ridiculous sunglasses to the top of her head.

He turned half to her, as casually as he could, as though too much movement would dislodge what he’d just tossed up into his attic for her to see.

Her dark eyes were lined in fine-liner or eyeliner or whatever that black stuff was that made her eyes massive.

But none of it could disguise that look she was giving him now.

Nella Barbarani never let her guard down, so Jett knew, in those moments when it fell on its own, she wasn’t messing with him. She needed him for some reason.

‘Lead the way, signorina.’ He drew himself up to his full height as her lip relaxed and she stalked across the red cycle path in front of a family of bike riders who swerved angrily. Jett waved an apologetic hand and jogged after her.

This was a first, especially given Nella had almost started World War Three over Vittoria’s insistence he stay by her side.

It didn’t make sense. He readied himself for some sort of punishment for A, not telling her about leaving, B, not waking her to come with him and Max to church and C, not telling her about his love-life – a sin, apparently.

As they approached the coffee van, Clarkson’s partner regarded them with a broad smile and opened his arms for Nella.

Jett didn’t miss the way she hesitated before accepting his embrace the way someone might extend their arm for a blood test.

So clearly not a friendship that had lasted, then.

The guy was on the short side of medium height with bleached white eyebrows and unruly sand-coloured hair that was more suited to an errant teenager who cut down your hosepipe every week, thinking you wouldn’t notice, than the named partner of a law firm.

His nose was slightly crooked, like he’d been in one too many bar fights or, judging from his thick forearms and wide back, too many rugby scrums. ‘Long time, Nellie-Bellie. You still drink your coffee death-style?’

She didn’t smile. ‘I’m all right for now.’

‘Oh, go on, it’s on me.’ His rugby arm was up on the van window, the barista looking expectantly at Nella.

For some reason Jett had the strongest urge to pull her away and say, ‘She said she doesn’t want one.’ But he was quite attached to his balls – although maybe not as much after that moment in the garage. He doubted they’d ever be the fucking same again.

Shut up. Attic.

Nella grudgingly ordered a long black and Clarkson’s partner raised an eyebrow at Jett, who held up a hand. The partner didn’t push him.

When she and the partner had their coffees, they started to walk down the sandy path lined with blue-green and brown grassy shrubs. ‘This is Jett,’ Nella eventually said, kicking off her heels as Jett shook the guy’s hand.

‘Oliver Lockridge,’ he said as he crushed Jett’s fingers.

Jett waited for the obligatory pause as he properly took in Jett’s face, but Oliver either spent his days looking at things much more shocking (unlikely, as a civil lawyer) or had perfected the art of an emotion mask (far more likely, as a civil lawyer).

‘I’m the chauffeur,’ Jett said to fill the silence that followed. Oliver gave a nod that said Can’t see a car. Which was fair.

Jett kept his distance, waiting for Nella to let him know what exactly his role here was.

To Oliver’s credit, he certainly looked like a man who’d just lost his business partner and university friend.

His striped grey shirt was rumpled, his navy tie askew and loosened around his unshaven neck.

When the sand turned cool and damp, Nella bent to roll up her pants and something deep inside Jett ground like a missed gear as he saw Oliver’s gaze tip down, following her movement.