Praise for
Ally Blake:

‘Ally Blake’s FALLING FOR THE REBEL HEIR is a sweet, often funny story, with a wonderfully written pair of lovers and a believably developed relationship.’

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Ally Blake also writes for Modern Heat™

‘Ally Blake’s THE MAGNATE’S INDECENT PROPOSAL starts with an amusing premise and quickly moves into an entertaining love-at-first-sight tale. It’s full of humour, witty dialogue, a hero to die for and a heroine who’s his match in every way.’

—Romantic Times BOOKreviews

‘I’d really like to see you again,’ Cameron said.

Snap! Rosie’s eyes flew north till they met his. Deep, blue, heaven…‘Seriously?’

He laughed. She bit her lip.

Just because he’d used her full name in such a deferential way, and just because more than once she’d caught him looking at her as if she was the most fascinating creature on the planet, it didn’t mean she should go forgetting herself.

He said, ‘Do you want a list of reasons why? Or would you prefer them in the form of a poem?’

Rosie’s heart danced. She knew that taking guidance from one’s heart was as sensible as using one’s liver for financial planning advice, having witnessed firsthand what listening to the dancing of your heart could do to a woman. If she needed any further reason to call it a day…

And then Cameron had to go and say, ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’

Mills & Boon® Romance brings you a fresh new story from Australian author

Ally Blake

Indulge yourself with this vibrant,

witty and fabulously flirtatious novel!

Having once been a professional cheerleader, ALLY BLAKE has a motto: ‘Smile and the world smiles with you.’ One way to make Ally smile is by sending her on holidays—especially to locations which inspire her writing. New York and Italy are by far her favourite destinations. Other things that make her smile are the gracious city of Melbourne, the gritty Collingwood football team, and her gorgeous husband Mark.

Reading romance novels was a smile-worthy pursuit from long back, so with such valuable preparation already behind her she wrote and sold her first book. Her career as a writer also gives her a perfectly reasonable excuse to indulge in her stationery addiction. That alone is enough to keep her grinning every day!

Ally would love you to visit her at her website: www.allyblake.com

Ally also writes for Mills & Boon® Modern Heat™!

DATING THE REBEL TYCOON
BY
ALLY BLAKE

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To my baby Boo.

You own my heart, you crack me up,

you dazzle me daily,

and it is my absolute privilege

watching you become you.

Love Mum xxx

CHAPTER ONE

CAMERON KELLY opened the heavy side-door of the random building, shut it smartly behind him and became enveloped in darkness. The kind of inky darkness that would make even the bravest boy imagine monsters under the bed.

It was some years since Cameron had been a boy, longer still since he’d realised people didn’t always tell the truth. When he’d found out his two older brothers had made the monsters up.

The small window between himself and the Brisbane winter sunshine outside revealed the coast was clear, and he let his forehead rest on the cold glass with a sheepish thunk.

Of all the people he could have seen—many miles from where a man such as he ought to have been while commerce and industry raged on in the city beyond—it had to have been his younger sister Meg, downing take-away coffee and gabbing with her girlfriends.

If Meg had seen him wandering the suburban Botanical Gardens, pondering lily pads and cacti rather than neck-deep in blueprints and permits and funding for multi-million-dollar skyscrapers, she would not have let him be until he’d told her why.

So he, a grown man—a man of means, and most of the time sense—was hiding. Because the truth would only hurt her. And, even though he’d long since been cast as the black sheep of the Kelly clan, hurting those he cared about was the last thing he would ever intentionally do.

He held his watch up to the parcel of light, saw it was nearly nine and grimaced.

Hamish and Bruce, respectively his architect and his project manager, would have been at the CK Square site for more than an hour waiting for him to approve the final plans for the fifty-fourth floor. This close to the end of a very long job, if they hadn’t throttled one another by now then he would be very lucky.

He made to open the door to leave, remembered Meg—the one person whose leg he’d never been able to pull, even with two adept older brothers to show him how—and was overtaken by a stronger compulsion than the desire to play intermediary between two grown men. His hand dropped.

Let the boys think he was making a grand entrance when he finally got there. It’d give them something to agree upon for once. He could live with people thinking he had an ego the size of Queensland. He was a Kelly, after all; impressions of grandeur came with the name.

‘We’re closed,’ a voice echoed somewhere behind him.

He spun on his heel, hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Though he hadn’t boxed since his last year at St Grellans, in a flash his fists were raised, his fingers wrapped so tight around his thumbs they creaked. Lactic acid burned in his arms. It seemed fresh air, sunshine and tiptoeing through the tulips weren’t the catharsis for an uneasy mind that they were cracked up to be.

He peered around the huge empty space and couldn’t see a thing past the end of his nose, bar a square of pink burned into his retina from the bright light of the window.

‘I’m desperately sorry,’ the voice said. ‘I seem to have given you a little fright.’

Unquestionably female, it was, husky, sweet, mellow tones drifting to him through the darkness with a surprisingly vivid dash of sarcasm, considering she had no idea who she was dealing with.

‘You didn’t frighten me,’ he insisted.

‘Then how about you put down your dukes before you knock yourself out?’

Cameron, surprised to find his fists were still raised, unclenched all over, letting his hands fall to his sides before shucking his blazer back onto his shoulders.

‘Now, I love an eager patron as much as the next gal,’ the mocking voice said. ‘But the show doesn’t start for another half-hour. Best you wait outside.’

The show? Cameron’s eyes had become more used to the light, or lack thereof. He could make out a bumpy outline on the horizon, rows of seats decked out auditorium-style. They tipped backwards slightly so that an audience could look upwards without getting neck strain, as the show that went on in this place didn’t happen on stage but in the massive domed sky above.

He’d stumbled into the planetarium.

Wow. He hadn’t been in the place since he was a kid. It seemed the plastic bucket seats and industrial carpet scraping beneath his shoes hadn’t changed.

He craned his neck back as far as it would go, trying to make out the shape and form of the roof. The structural engineer in him wondered about the support mechanisms for the high ceiling, while the vestiges of the young boy who’d once upon a time believed in monsters under the bed simply marvelled at the deep, dark, infinite black.

Finally, thankfully, one thing or another managed to shake loose a measure of the foreboding that ruminating over rhododendrons had not.

He kept looking up as he said, ‘I’ll wait, if it’s alright by you.’

‘Actually, it’s not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Rules. Regulations. Occupational health and safety. Fire hazards. Today’s Tuesday. You’re wearing the wrong shoes. Take your pick.’

He slowly lowered his head, glancing down at his perfectly fine shoes, which he could barely see, and he was a heck of a lot closer to them than she was.

He peered back out into the nothingness, but still he couldn’t make her out—whoever she was.

Was she security, ready to throw him out on his ear? A fellow interloper protecting her find? A delusion, born out of an acute desire to change the subject that had shanghaied his thoughts since he’d caught the financial news on TV that morning?

‘Go now, and I can reserve you a seat,’ the honeyed tones suggested.

Management, then. And strangely anticlimactic.

‘I’ll even personally find you a nice, comfy seat,’ she continued. ‘Smack bang in the centre, with no wobbles or lumps, that doesn’t squeak every time you ooh or aah at the show. What do you say?’

He didn’t say anything. He could tell she’d moved closer by a slight shifting of the air to his left, the sound of cloth whispering against skin, and the sudden sweet scent of vanilla making his stomach clench with hunger.

Had he forgotten to eat breakfast? Yes, he had. He swore softly as he remembered why.

The appearance on the financial report on the TV news by the very man who had made him a family outcast many years before had not been a bolt from the blue. Quinn Kelly, his father, was a shameless self-promoter of the family business: the Kelly Investment Group, or ‘KInG’ as it was irresistibly dubbed in the press.

His father was the epitome of the Australian dream. An immigrant who had come to the country as a boy with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back, he had built himself the kind of large, rambunctious, photogenic family the press prized, and a financial empire men envied. Tall, handsome, charming, straight-talking, the man acted as though he would live for ever, and the world believed him—needed to believe him—because he had his fingers in so many financial pies.

Cameron hadn’t realised he’d believed the man to be immortal too until he’d noticed the pallor make-up couldn’t hide, the weight lost from his cheeks, the dullness in his usually sharp eyes that would only have been noticed by someone who went out of his way not to catch a glimpse of the man every day.

For that reason it was highly possible that not even the family knew something was very wrong with Quinn Kelly. The rest of the clan was so deeply a part of one another’s lives he could only imagine they had not noticed the infinitesimal changes.

He’d lost hours trying to convince himself it wasn’t true. And not for the kinds of reasons that made him a good son, but because he’d felt the sharp awakening of care for a man not worth caring about. Why should he care for a man who’d so blithely severed him from his family to save his own hide, and that was after laying waste to any naivety Cameron might have yet possessed about loyalty and fidelity? And at an age when he’d not even had a chance to make those decisions himself.

It wasn’t even nine in the morning and already Cameron wished this day was well and truly over.

‘The door is right behind you,’ the only highlight in his day so far said.

Cameron pulled himself up to his full height in the hope the unwanted concerns might run off his back. ‘While I’m enjoying the thought of you testing each and every seat for me, I’m not here to see the show.’

‘You don’t have to act coy with me,’ she said, her teasing voice lifting him until he felt himself rocking forward on his toes. ‘Even big boys like you have been known to find comfort in the idea that there might be something bigger and grander than you are, out there in the cosmos, that will burn bright long after you are a two-line obituary in your local paper.’

Surprising himself, he laughed out loud, something he had not expected to do today. It wasn’t often people dared to tease him. He was too successful, his reputation too implacable, his surname too synonymous with winning at all costs. Perhaps that was why he liked it.

‘Your expertise on the ways of big boys aside,’ he said, ‘I saw the show years ago in middle school.’

‘Years ago?’ the husky voice lobbed back. ‘Lucky for you, astronomers hit a point at exactly that point in time when they said, “Well, that’ll do us. We’ve found enough stars out there for a hundred generations of couples to name after one another for Valentine’s Day. Why bother studying the eternal mystery of the universe any more?’”

He laughed again. And for the first time in hours he felt like he could turn his neck without fear of pulling a muscle. He had not a clue if the woman was eighteen or eighty, if she was married or single, or even from this planet, but he was enjoying himself too much to care.

He took a step away from the door. He couldn’t see the floor beneath his feet. It felt liberating, like he was stepping out into an abyss.

Until he stubbed his toe, and then it felt like he was walking around in a strange building in the dark.

Something moved. Cameron turned his head a fraction to the left, and finally he saw her: a dark blob melting into the shadows. If she was standing on the same level as him, she was tall. There was a distinct possibility of long, wavy hair, and lean curves poured into a floaty calf-length dress. When he imagined seriously chunky boots, he realised he didn’t have any kind of perspective to trust his eyes.

But he’d always trusted his gut. And, while he’d come to the gardens searching for the means to navigate his way around a difficult truth, the only real truth he had so far found was the voice tugging him further into the blackness.

‘How about you turn on a light?’ he said. ‘Then we can come to an arrangement that suits us both.’

‘Would you believe I’m conserving power?’

There wasn’t a single thing about the tone of her voice that made him even half believe her. His smile became a grin, and the tightness in his shoulders just melted away.

He took another step.

‘Not for even half a second,’ he said, his voice dropping several notes, giving as good as he got to that voice—that husky, feminine voice. Mocking him. Taking him down a peg or two. Or three, if he was at all honest.

He—a Kelly and all.

Rosie kept her distance.

Not because the intruder seemed all that dangerous; she knew the nooks and crannies of this place like the back of her hand, and after stargazing half her life she could see in the dark as well as a cat. And from the lazy way he’d held his fists earlier, like he’d instinctively known nobody would dare take a swipe, she’d surely have been able to get in a jab or two.

She kept her distance because she knew exactly who he was.

The man in the dark jeans, pinstriped blazer, glossy tie and crisp chambray shirt poking out at the bottom of the kind of knit V-necked vest only the most super-swanky guy could get away with was Cameron Kelly.

Too-beautiful-for-words Cameron Kelly. Smart, serious, eyes-as-deep-as-the-ocean Cameron Kelly. Of the Ascot Kellys. The huge family, investment-banking dynasty, lived their lives in the social pages, absolutely blessed in every possible way Kellys.

She would have recognised that untameable cowlick, those invulnerable shoulders, and the yummy creases lining the back of that neck anywhere. God only knew how many hours she’d spent in the St Grellans school chapel staring at them.

Not that getting up close and personal or turning on the light would have rendered her familiar. She’d been the scholarship kid who’d taken two buses and a train to get to school from the indifferent council flat she’d shared with her single mum. He had attended St Grellans by birthright.

Post-school they’d run in very different circles, but the Kellys had never been far from the periphery of her life. The glossy mags had told her that dashing patriarch Quinn Kelly was seen buying this priceless objet d’art or selling that racehorse, while his wife Mary was putting on sumptuous banquets for one or another head of state. Brendan, the eldest, and his father’s right-hand man, had married, had two beautiful daughters, then become tragically widowed, adding to the family folklore. Dylan, the next in line, was the charmer, his wide, white smile inviting every magazine reader to dare join the bevy of beauties no longer on his speed dial. Meg, the youngest, was branded bored and beautiful enough to rival any Hollywood starlet.

Yet the one Rosie had always had a soft spot for remained mostly absent from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. He’d played into the Kelly legend just enough by sporting fresh new consorts every other week: a fabulous blonde senator on his arm at some party here, a leggy blonde dancer tucked in behind him at a benefit there.

Yet the minute he’d appeared without a blonde in sight, her soft spot had begun to pulse.

‘Rightio,’ she said, curling away to her left, away from Cameron and towards the bank of stairs leading to the front of the auditorium. ‘What are you doing here if not to once and for all find out who truly did hang the moon and the stars?’

‘Central heating,’ he said without missing a beat. ‘It’s freezing out there.’

She grinned, all too readily charmed considering the guy still seemed to have blinkers when it came to skinny, smart girls with indefinite hair-colour and no cleavage to speak of.

And now she was close enough to make out the subtle, chequered pattern of his vest, the fine platinum thread through the knot of his tie, and the furrowing of his brow as his eyes almost found hers.

She took two definite steps back. ‘The café just up the hill has those cool outdoor furnace-heaters—big, shiny brass ones that have to be seen to be believed. And I hear they also serve coffee, which is a bonus.’

After much longer than was at all polite, his voice drifted to her on a rumble. ‘The allure of coffee aside, the warmth in here is more appealing.’

Her knees wobbled. She held out both arms to steady herself. Seriously, how could the guy still manage to incapacitate her knees without trying to, without meaning to? Without even knowing her name.

She wrapped her russet beaded-cardigan tighter around herself, squeezing away the return of an old familiar ache that she thought she’d long since cast off: the sting of growing up invisible.

Growing up with a dad who’d left before she was born, and a mum who’d never got over him, being inconspicuous had come with the territory. Being a shy unfortunate in a school saturated with the progeny of politicians, moguls and even royalty hadn’t helped the matter.

But since then she’d achieved a master’s degree in astrophysics, run with the bulls, stood at the foot of the sphinx, spent a month on grappa and fresh air on a boat off Venice and surveyed the stars from every corner of the globe. She’d come to terms with where she’d come from. And now hers was a life lived large and not for anyone else to define.

Cameron took another step forward, and she flinched, then indulged in a good eye-roll. An eyelash caught in her contact lens, which was about all she deserved.

As she carefully pulled it free she told herself that, just as she’d evolved, this guy wasn’t that Cameron Kelly any more—the Cameron Kelly who’d seemed the kind of guy who’d smile back if she’d ever found the pluck to smile first. Maybe he never even had been.

Right now he was the guy wasting the last precious minutes she had with the observatory telescope, before Venus, her bread and butter, disappeared from view.

‘Okay, tell it to me straight. What do I have to say or do to get you to vamoose?’ She paused to shuffle her contact lens back into place. ‘I know Italian, Spanish, a little Chinese. Any chance “off you pop” in any of those languages will make a dent?’

‘What if I leave and not another soul turns up?’

Rosie threw her arms out sideways. ‘I’ll…grab a seat, put my feet up on the chair in front and throw popcorn at the ceiling, while saying all the lines along with the narrator. It wouldn’t be the first time.’

That got her another laugh, a deep, dry, rumbling, masculine sort of laugh. Her knees felt it first, then the rest of her joined in, finishing off with her toes curling pleasurably into her socks.

She remembered exactly what the smile that went along with the laugh looked like. Deep brackets around his mouth. Appealing crinkles fanning out from a pair of cornflower-blue eyes. And there was even a dimple thrown in for good measure.

Yikes, she hadn’t waded quite so deep into the miasma of her past in a long time. It was time she moved the guy on before he had her remembering former lives.

Knowing he’d follow, she circled him to the left and herded him towards the exit. ‘I thought you weren’t interested in the show?’

‘You should never have told me about the popcorn.’

He edged closer, and she could tell by the slightest amount of diffused light from the window in the door behind her adding colour to his clothes that she couldn’t back away much further.

She glanced at the glowing clock on the wall by the ticket office. Venus would only be visible another fifteen minutes at most. If she wanted to finish the day’s assessment, she’d have to get cracking. ‘So, try a movie. Far more action.’

‘More action than supernovas, red dwarfs and meteor showers?’

‘You boys and your love of all exploding, fiery things,’ she said. ‘Thank goodness there are women in the world to appreciate the finer details of the universe. You should sit still and just stare at the moon once in a while. You’d be amazed at the neural pathways a little down-time can open up.’

‘Maybe I will.’ This time the lift of one blazer-covered shoulder was obvious in the hazy sunlight. ‘I was holding out on you before. I have my own telescope.’

Damn it! There weren’t many things he could have said to have distracted her, but even a passing interest in the one great overriding passion in her life was a pull she couldn’t resist.

‘What type?’ she asked.

‘It’s silver. Not solid silver. Maybe not even silver. Silver looking.’

‘The silver-look ones are the best. It comes down to the light refracting off all that extra shininess.’

His half-second pause as he decided whether or not she was taking the mickey out of him was a pleasure. So much of a pleasure it made her soft spot for him stretch and purr.

‘To tell you the truth,’ he said, ‘All I remember from way back when is the bit about the wormholes. And I’m man enough to admit I lost a couple of nights’ sleep over them.’

His voice was low. Rough. Suggestive. Her bad, bad lungs contracted until the air inside her felt like it had nowhere else to go but out in a great, big fat sigh.

She played with a turquoise bead on her cardigan. It had been sewn by the hand of a woman she’d found on the way to Rosarito, Mexico. She’d lived alone in a shack made of things she’d found on the edge of the most beautiful beach in the entire world. It reminded Rosie that she’d been places, seen amazing things, and was not easily impressed.

Waxing lyrical in the dark with Cameron Kelly ought not to feel so much like a highlight.

She straightened up. ‘Fine. Since you’re not staying for the show, I’ll let you in on the big climax. Pluto isn’t a planet any more.’

‘It’s not?’ he asked, genuinely shocked. ‘Poor Pluto.’

This time she was the one to laugh. Loose, low and most enjoyable.

And then she realised, all too late, that Cameron was close enough now that she could see the sunlight brush over evenly tanned skin, a straight nose, a smooth jaw and deep-set eyes. Eyes that had become so used to the light that they’d finally found hers.

He wasn’t likely to be able to see much more than their shape, and perhaps the curve where ambiguous grey met the dark edges of her pupils, which were no doubt dilated from the lack of light. But he certainly seemed keen to try.

When his eyes left hers, she breathed again. Unfortunately she was not to be let off so lightly.

His glance took in her hair, which was likely a mess, since she’d had it up, down, twisted in a knot and in plaits since she’d arrived a little before sunrise. Then there was her long, floral dress she’d thrown on that morning because it had been atop the clean-clothes basket, the cardigan she’d found in the back of her car, and the comfortable boots that had taken her all over the world and brought her home again in one piece—but did little in terms of being fashionable or flattering.

It was the briefest of perusals. Really no more than a flick of his gaze. But that didn’t stop her from wanting to fix her hair, hitch her bra, and wipe fingers beneath her eyes to remove any traces of smudged mascara that several hours of awake-time would have left behind.

Thankfully his gaze cut back to her eyes.

All traces of thankfulness dried up smartly when those famously blue eyes remained fixed on hers. Her throat grew dry. She tried to swallow, only to find she couldn’t quite remember how.

She had the distinct feeling time was running out on something she was meant to be doing, but she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it was. She wished ultra-hard for a light-bulb moment.

And got one.

Fluorescent bulbs by the dozen flickered in the walls around them, strobing on and off like disco lights.

In between dark patches, Cameron’s eyes locked with hers, deep, dark, determined. She wondered for a moment how she’d ever thought she knew him…

And then he smiled. Cheek brackets. Eye crinkles. Dimple. And she felt like she was fourteen years old, complete with glasses, funny clothes and a crush.

Her glasses had been exchanged for contacts, and her now mostly pre-loved wardrobe was probably still a little funny. But at least the moony kid she’d once been was no more.

With every flash of intense white light, Rosie made sure her feet were well and truly on the ground.

CHAPTER TWO

ADELE, Rosie thought, giving the word in her head all the oomph of a curse.

It had to be Adele who’d turned on the lights. She was Rosie’s best friend, the astronomer in residence at the planetarium, the one who let her use the observatory whenever she pleased, and the woman she most wished to tie up and gag most of the time—now being one of those times.

‘That puts a whole new spin on “let there be light”,’ Cameron said, looking around before his gaze landed back on hers.

Even her amazing night-sight wasn’t enough to ready her for the true wallop those of eyes: bluer than blue; the bluest blue. Bordered by thick chestnut lashes the same colour as his perfectly scruffy hair.

As for the rest of him…

As tended to be the way of the gods, they had decided that the boy who’d once had it all would turn out even better for the ageing. The years had sharpened the smooth edges, filled out the willing frame and tempered the blazing confidence of youth so that intense self-assurance now wrapped tight around him like a second skin.

Which congruently, in all her loose-haired, comfy-shoed, laid-back glory, made her feel like something the cat had dragged in. She fought the need to rewrap her cardigan tighter again.

‘Jeez, hon, you sure you’re not becoming a vampire?’ Adele called as she clumped up the stairs. ‘All that night-time activity finally getting to you? Oh, sorry. I didn’t know you had company.’

Rosie’s eyes swept to her friend, who was grinning and raising her eyebrows manically and pointing a thumb at Cameron’s back.

Rosie quieted her friend with a withering look as she explained, ‘I was just failing miserably at trying to convince this gentleman that we were not yet open and that he ought to come back another time.’

‘Cameron,’ he said, stepping closer. ‘The gentleman’s name is Cameron.’

Rosie blinked into his eyes.

It took a second or two before she realised he had stretched out a hand for shaking. She placed her hand in his. Warmth met cool. Soft skin met skin weathered by manual labour.

Her eyes flickered back to his. Manual labour? She searched his eyes for something to answer the unspoken question, but no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t see even a millimetre beneath the blue. Because he didn’t want her to, or because he didn’t want anyone to?

Cameron Kelly, clean-cut and preppy, had been yummy. Cameron Kelly with hidden qualities was a force to be reckoned with.

‘Rosalind,’ Adele called out, leaning her backside against a chair before noisily biting down on an apple. ‘The lady’s name is Rosalind. Like the eighth moon of Uranus.’

‘Like the character from As You Like It,’ Rosie corrected. ‘The eighth moon of Uranus wasn’t discovered until 1986.’

‘Either way, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Rosalind,’ Cameron said, somehow making the antiquated name she’d only ever thought of as just another hurdle sound almost wistful, pretty, romantic. She found herself correcting her posture to match.

Then she realised that, even with her name attached, there was still not a glimmer of recognition in the cool depths of his gaze.

She quickly deflated back into her normal, regular, perfectly content self. She did not need any man to notice her in order to feel interesting—and she couldn’t believe she was really having to remind herself of that.

Then Cameron said, ‘I realise this sounds incredibly corny, but have we met?’

‘Smooth,’ Adele muttered from the sidelines.

Rosie shot her so-called friend a frosty glare, but Adele only pointed at her watch, meaning they were about to open to the public.

Knowing that to pretend she had no idea what he was on about would only make her feel even more foolish, Rosie said, ‘We have. I’m Rosie Harper. I was below you at St Grellans. I took advanced maths with Dr Blackman the same time as you.’

The fact that she’d spent more time imagining what it might be like to kiss him than taking actual notes had led to a B-that had threatened her full academic scholarship.

It had been a watershed moment; proving she’d inherited her mother’s propensity to fall hard, and indiscriminately, and with no thought of self-protection.

She now protected herself so vigorously, even the common cold had a hard time getting near.

‘Small world,’ Cameron finally said, almost hiding the fact that he still couldn’t place her behind the charming, crinkle-eyed, dimpled smile that had likely got him out of trouble his whole life.

His hand moulded ever so slightly more snugly around hers. She’d forgotten they were still holding hands, while he held on with a purpose she was only now just beginning to fathom.

His smile warmed, deepened, drew her in, as he said, ‘In the interests of remaining corny, what do you say we—?’

The door behind him slammed open before he got out another word, and a harried-looking woman burst inside.

Rosie sprang away from Cameron as though they’d been two teenagers caught in flagrante. She ran the hand he’d been holding across the back of her hot neck, only to find the hand was hotter still.

The anxious woman said, ‘Sorry to intrude. I’m Miss Granger, Kenmore South grade-four class teacher. Please tell me I can send the kids in? Another minute in the open and they’ll be beyond my control.’

The teacher somehow managed to smile through her stress. Probably because she directed her comments entirely towards Cameron, who did look more in charge in his blazer and tie than Rosie did in her vintage get-up—and that was putting a nice spin on it.

Or maybe it was that indefinable X-factor that meant every woman he ever encountered ended up inexorably spinning in his orbit. Rosie, it seemed, was destined to be within perilously close proximity to this particular heavenly body once every fifteen or so years.

Fifteen years earlier he’d been a beautiful boy who’d brushed shoulders with her once or twice in a crowd. This time round he was a fully grown man who saw something in her that made him rethink moving on just yet. She’d hate to think what another fifteen years might do to the man’s potency. Or aim.

She glanced up after a good few seconds staring at his shoulders to find him watching her. Unblinking. Radiating authority and curiosity.

Break eye contact, her inner voice said; back away, roll into the foetal position, whatever it takes to make him head back to his side of the street leaving you to yours.

‘Pretty please?’ the teacher asked Cameron.

Rosie had a feeling the woman was asking a completely different question from her first.

Before Rosie had the chance to tell Miss Granger she was barking up the wrong man, Adele called out, ‘Send ’em on in, hon! Who are we to turn away those ready and raring to learn about the mysteries of the universe?’

‘Who indeed?’ Cameron asked.

Rosie steadfastly ignored him and his rumbling voice as Miss Granger heaved the heavy side-door open again, letting in wisps of cool late-winter air and a throng of kids in green tartan school uniforms, half-mast beige socks and floppy wide-brimmed hats.

They slid into the arena like water spurting through a bottle neck. But at the first sign of a break Cameron slipped through until he stood beside Rosie, well and truly within her personal space.

She kept her eyes dead ahead, but couldn’t ignore the tug of his gravitational pull, the scent of new cotton, winter, and clean male skin. She breathed in deep through her nose, then pinched the soft part of her hand between her thumb and her index finger in punishment.

‘Any feet seen touching any chairs will be forcibly removed!’ Adele said as she was carried away with the noisy crowd.

And all too soon it was just the two of them again. Alone, in the unforgiving fluorescent light that couldn’t seem to find one bad angle on him.

‘It seems you really do have to get to work,’ Cameron said, a hint of something that sounded a heck of a lot like the dashing of hope tinging his words.

Rosie’s heart twitched, and kept on twitching. She coughed hard, and it found its regular steady pattern once more.

‘No rest for the wicked,’ she said, turning to him, thus allowing herself one last look before she brought this strange encounter to a halt.

Looking was allowed. Looking at pretty, bright, hot things was her job. And as it was much safer doing so from a great distance she began backing away, thus setting in motion the next fifteen years until they crossed paths again.

‘It was great seeing you again, Rosalind.’ A glint lit eyes that she was entirely sure had been that exact cornflower-blue from the moment he’d been born.

A jaunty salute and she was gone, hitting the top step at a jog and not stopping until she reached the control room at the bottom, as from there she couldn’t tell if he had turned and left or if he’d watched her walk away.

The outer door shut behind Cameron with a clang, sending him out into the cold over-bright morning.

He stood on one spot for a good thirty seconds, letting the winter sun beat down upon his face, savouring the pleasant, hazy blur that an encounter with an intriguing woman could induce.

Rosalind Harper. St Grellans alumnus. How had he managed to go through the same school without once noticing that soft, pale skin, those temptingly upturned lips that just begged to be teased into a smile and the kind of mussed, burnished waves that made a man just want to reach out and touch?

He took a deep breath through his nose and glanced at his watch. What he saw there brought him back down to earth. And lower still.

Into his father’s world.

Quinn Kelly was a shameless, selfish shark who a long time ago had convinced Cameron to keep a terrible secret to keep his family from being torn apart.

He’d done so the only way he’d known how, cutting himself off from the family business. As he saw it, if the man was as unscrupulous in his business dealings as he was in his personal life, God help the stock holders. Quinn on the other hand had seen it as a greater betrayal, and had cut him off completely, which in the end made for a nice cover as to why the two of them couldn’t be in the same room together.

It hadn’t for a minute been easy, looking his mother, brothers and sister in the eye while knowing what they did not. In the end he’d worked day and night to establish his own career, his own identity, his own manic pace with nonexistent down-time in which to miss those things he no longer had, or yearn for things he’d learnt the hard way didn’t really exist, or scratch himself, giving himself a reasonable excuse to decline attendance at enough family gatherings that it was now simply assumed he would not come.

There was the rub. There was no subtle way to sound the others out. The only way to know for sure was to ask the man himself.

The opportunity was there, winking at him like a great cosmic joke. His father’s seventieth birthday was less than a week away, and that was one invitation he had not managed to avoid. Every member of his family had called to remind him, all bar the big man himself.

There was no way he’d attend. For if it gave that man even an inkling that deep down he still gave a damn…

The echo of a bombastic musical-score sprang up inside the domed building behind him, more than matching the clashing inside his head. The star show had begun.

Cameron looked to his watch again. It didn’t give him any better news. He shoved his hands deep into his trouser pockets, turned up the collar of his jacket against the cold and jogged towards the car park, the diminishing crunch of pine leaves beneath his feet taking him further and further from the gardens.

He turned to watch the great white dome of the planetarium peek through the canopy of gum trees. Quite the handy distraction he’d found himself back there. With her sharp tongue and raw, unassuming sex-appeal, Rosalind Harper had made him forget both work and family for as long a while as he could remember doing in one hit in quite some time.

He hit the car park, picked out his MG, vaulted into the driver’s seat, revved the engine and took off through the mostly empty car park, following the scents of smog, car exhaust, money and progress as he headed towards the central business district of the river city.

And the further away he got from all that fresh air and clear open sky—and from Rosalind Harper, her bedroom hair and straightforward playfulness—the heavier he felt the weight bear down upon his shoulders once again.

The fact that she was still at the forefront of his mind five sets of traffic lights later didn’t mean he’d gone soft. It simply wasn’t in his make-up to do so.

His parents had been married nearly fifty years. They were touted throughout the land as one of the great enduring romances of the modern age. Such tales had filled newspaper and magazine columns, and at one time they’d even had a tele-movie made about them.

But, if the specifics of their marriage was as good as it could get, he wasn’t buying. Even a relationship that to the world looked to be secure, long-lasting, deeply committed could be a sham. What was the point?

The short-term company of an easygoing, uncomplicated woman, on the other hand, could work wonders. A dalliance with the promise of no promises. Having the end plan on the table before the project began sat very comfortably with the engineer in him.

Rosalind Harper had been an excellent distraction, and he knew enough to know that behind the impudent exterior she hadn’t been completely immune to him. The spark had sparked both ways.

He saw a gap in the traffic, changed down a gear and roared into the spot.

His stomach lifted and fell with the hills of Milton Road, and he realised if he was going to endure the next week with any semblance of ease a distraction was exactly what he needed.

That afternoon, after taking a nap to make up for her usual pre-dawn start to the day, Rosie sat on the corrugated metal step of her digs: a one-bed, one-bath, second-hand caravan.

As she sipped a cooling cup of coffee, she stared unseeingly at the glorious hectare of Australian soil she owned overlooking the Samford Valley, a neat twenty-five-minute drive from the city.

For a girl who’d been happy to travel for many a year, the second she’d seen the spot she’d fallen for it. The gently undulating parcel of land had remained verdant through the drought by way of a fat, rocky stream slicing through a gully at the rear. High grass covered the rest of the allotment, the kind you could lie down in and never be found. A forest of achromatic ghost-gums gave her privacy from the top road, lush, subtropical rainforests dappled the hills below and in the far distance beyond lay the blue haze of Moreton Bay.

But it was the view when she tilted her head up that had grabbed her and not let go.

The sky here was like no other sky in the world. Not sky diffused with the glare of city lights, distorted with refraction from tall buildings or blurred by smog. But sky. Great, wide, unfathomable sky. By day endless blue, swamped by puffy white clouds, and on the clearest of winter nights the Milky Way had been known to cast a shadow across her yard.

She wrapped her arms about her denim-clad knees, quietly enjoying the soothing coo of butcher birds heralding the setting of the sun.

A mere week earlier her work day would have been kicking off as Venus began her promenade across the dusk sky, masquerading as the evening star. Now that Venus had begun her half-yearly stint as the morning star, Rosie was still getting used to the crazy early starts to the day, and finding it tricky to know what to do with her evenings.

This evening she had no such trouble, filling it ably by reliving her curious encounter with Cameron Kelly. The way one side of his blazer collar had been sticking up as though he’d left the house in a hurry. The way he still hadn’t worked out how to stop his fringe from spiking out in all different directions. The way she’d felt his smiles even when he’d been little more than a Cameron-shaped outline. The way her skin had continued to hum long after she’d last heard his deep voice.

She sighed deep and hard, and figured she’d at least get some pleasant dreams out of it!

All of a sudden her bottom vibrated madly. When she realised it was the wretched mobile-phone Adele had made her buy when she’d moved back to Brisbane—lest they live within the same city but never see one another—she picked it up, stared at the shiny screen, and jabbed at half a dozen tiny buttons until it stopped making that infernal ‘bzz bzz’ noise that made her teeth hurt.

‘Rosie Harper,’ she sing-songed as she answered.

‘Hey, kiddo.’ It was Adele. Big surprise.

‘Hey, chickadee,’ she returned.

‘I have someone on the other line who wants to talk to you, so don’t go anywhere.’

‘Adele,’ Rosie said with a frown, before she realised by the muzak assaulting her ear that she was already on hold. ‘Girl, I’m gonna throw this damn thing in the creek if you’re not—’

‘Rosalind,’ a deep, male voice said.

Rosie sat up straight. ‘Cameron?’

She slapped herself across the forehead as she realised she’d given herself away. If she hadn’t been thinking of him in that moment it wouldn’t have made a difference. Deep, smooth, rumbling voices like that only came around once in a lifetime.

‘Wow, I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Did your stars tell you I was going to call?’

‘You’re thinking of astrology, not astronomy.’

‘There’s a difference?’ he asked.

Her skin did that humming thing which told her that wherever he was he was definitely kidding, definitely smiling.

‘So you are an astronomer, then?’ he asked.

‘That’s what my degree says.’

‘Hmm. I did consider you might be a ticket-seller, but then when I thought back on how hard you were working to not let me buy a ticket I had to go with my third choice of occupation.’

‘What was the second?’

After a pause he said, ‘Well, it wasn’t a choice so much as a pipe-dream. And I’m not sure we know one another well enough for me to give any more away than that.’

The humming of her skin went into overdrive, a kind of fierce, undisciplined overdrive that she wasn’t entirely sure how to rein in. She went with a thigh pinch, which worked well enough.

‘What’s up, Cameron?’

‘I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed my morning.’

She turned side-on so that her back could slump against the doorframe, and lifted her boot-clad feet to the step. ‘So, you did stay for the show. Good for you.’

‘Ah, no. I did not.’

Her brow furrowed. Then it dawned: he was calling to say he’d enjoyed the part of the morning he’d spent with her. Okay. So this was unanticipated.

When she said nothing, Cameron added, ‘I couldn’t do it. The wormholes, remember?’

She laughed, loosening her grip on her phone a little. ‘Right. I’d forgotten about the wormholes.’

‘I, obviously, have not.’

‘If one was smart, one might have thought this morning might have been a prime opportunity to overcome such a fear, since you were already there and all.’

‘One might. But I’ve not often been all that good at doing what I ought to do.’

First calloused hands, now rebellion. Where was the nice, well-liked Cameron Kelly she’d known, and what had this guy done with him?

‘You were in Meg’s year at St Grellans,’ Cameron said. Meaning he’d been asking around about her.

Rosie unpeeled her fingers from the step and lifted them to cradle the phone closer to her ear. ‘That I was.’

‘And since then?’

‘Uni. Backpacking. Mortgage. Too much TV.’ After a pause her curiosity got the better of her. ‘You?’

‘Much the same.’

‘Ha!’ she barked before she could hold it back. She could hardly picture Cameron Kelly splayed out on a second-hand double bed watching Gilligan’s Island reruns on a twelve-inch TV at two in the afternoon.

‘No kids?’ he added. ‘No man friend to give you foot rubs at the end of a long day telling fortunes?’

Rosie didn’t even consider scoffing at his jibe. She was too busy trying to ignore the image of him splayed across her bed.

‘No kids. No man. Worse, no foot rubs,’ she said.

‘I find that hard to believe.’

‘Try harder.’

He laughed. Her cheek twitched into a smile. She slid lower on the step, and told herself she couldn’t get closer to being physically grounded unless she lay on the dirt.

‘You’re in a profession which must be teeming with men. How is it you haven’t succumbed to sweet nothings whispered in the dark by some guy with a clipboard and a brain the size of the Outback?’

‘I’m not that attracted to clipboards,’ she admitted.

‘Mmm. It can’t help that your colleagues all have Star Trek emblems secreted about their persons.’

‘Oh, ho! Hang on a second. I might be allowed to diss my fellow physicists, but that doesn’t mean you can.’

‘Is that what I just did?’

‘Yes! You just intimated all astronomers are geeks.’

‘Aren’t they?’ he said without even a pause.

She sat up straight and held a hand to her heart to find it beating harder than normal, harder than it had even when she’d been a green teenager. It had more than a little to do with the unflinching, alpha-male thing he’d found within himself in the intervening years. It spoke straight to the stubborn independence she’d unearthed inside herself.

‘You realise you are also insinuating that I am a geek?’ she said.

This time there was a pause. But then he came back with, ‘Yes. You are a geek.’

Her mouth dropped open then slammed back shut. Mostly because the tone of his voice suggested it didn’t seem to be the slightest problem for him that she might be a geek.

‘Rosalind,’ he said, in a way that made her want to flip her hair, lick her lips and breathe out hard.

‘Yes?’ she sighed before she could stop herself.

His next pause felt weightier. She cursed herself beneath her breath and gripped the teeny-tiny phone so tight her knuckles hurt.

‘I realise it’s last minute, but I was wondering if you had plans for dinner.’

Um, yeah, she thought; cheese on toast.

He continued, ‘Because I haven’t eaten, and if you haven’t eaten I thought it an entirely sensible idea that we make plans to eat together.’

Oh? Oh! Had Cameron Kelly just asked her out?

CHAPTER THREE

ROSIE looked up at the sky, expecting to see a pink elephant flying past, but all she saw were clouds streaked shades of brilliant orange by the dying sunlight.

To get the blood flowing back to all the places it needed to flow, not just the unhelpful areas where it had suddenly pooled, Rosie dragged herself off the step and walked out into the yard, running a hand along the fluffy tops of the hip-high grass stalks.

Dinner with Cameron Kelly. For most girls the answer would be a no brainer. The guy was gorgeous. She couldn’t deny she was still attracted to him. And there was the fantasy element of hooking up with her high school crush. One of the invisibles connecting with one of the impossibles.

But Rosie wasn’t most girls. She usually dated uncomplicated, footloose, impermanent guys, not men who made it hard for her to think straight. She liked thinking straight.

The only time she’d ever broken that rule was with a cardboard cut-out of a gorgeous A-list movie star Adele had nicked from outside a video store for her seventeenth birthday. He was breathtaking, he never talked back. Never stole the remote. Never left the toilet seat up. Never filled any larger part of her life than she let him. Never left…

She wrapped her hand round a feathery tuft of grass and a million tiny spores flew out of her palm and into the air, floating like fireflies in dusk’s golden light.

Her mother had been the very definition of other girls. She’d fallen for the wrong man, the man she’d thought would love her for ever, and it had left her with a permanently startled expression, as though her world was one great shock she’d never got over.

After years of thought, study and discovery, a light-bulb moment had shown Rosie that, contrarily, the way to make sure that never happened to her was to only date the wrong men—those who for one reason or another had no chance of making a commitment. She could then enjoy the dating part dead-safe in the knowledge that the association would end. And when it did she wouldn’t be crushed.

So, back to Cameron Kelly. He was gorgeous. He was charming. But most importantly beneath the surface there was a darkness about him. A hard, fast, cool character that he was adept at keeping all to himself. He was fascinating, but there was no mistaking him for some sweet guy looking for love.

And, of all the men who’d asked her out, she knew exactly what she was up against. Cameron Kelly was the least likely man in the world Rosie would again make the mistake of falling for, making him the ideal man for her, for now.

‘I haven’t lost you, have I?’ he asked.

You can’t lose what you never had, she thought, but said, ‘I’m still deciding if I’m hungry enough for dinner.’

‘It’s a meal, on a plate. I was thinking perhaps even cutlery may be involved.’ His voice resonated down the phone, until cheese and toast was the last things on her mind. ‘We can reminisce about average cafeteria food, bad haircuts and worse teachers.’

‘When did you ever have a bad haircut?’

‘Who said I was talking about me?’

‘Ha! You know what? I don’t remember you being this ruthless at school.’

‘Have dinner with me and I’ll do my very best to remind you just how bad I can be.’

Suddenly her hands began to shake. She wiped them down her jeans, dusting off the tiny fragments of plant residue. Then said, ‘Where would we go?’

‘Wherever. Fried chicken, a chocolate fountain, steamed mung-beans; whatever you want, it’s yours.’

‘Steamed mung beans?’

She felt him smile, and even without the visual accompaniment it made her stomach tighten. But now that she’d reconciled herself to her attraction to him she let herself enjoy it. It felt…wonderful. A little wild, but she had a handle on it. This was going to be fine.

‘I didn’t want to be all he-man and impose my carnivorous tastes upon you,’ he said. ‘For all I know you might well be a vegan, anti-dairy carb hater.’

‘So happy to know I give off such a flattering vibe.’

‘Your vibe is just fine,’ he said, his voice steady and low and, oh, so tempting.

She stopped brushing at her jeans and hooked her thumb tight into the edge of her pocket. ‘Imagine me as the least fussy woman you’ve ever taken to dinner.’

‘Then I know the place. It’s so informal, it’s practically a dive. They make the best quesadillas you’ll ever have.’

‘Mexican for grilled cheese, right?’ How ironic.

It was his turn to pause. ‘It seems I have failed in my attempt to impress you with my extensive knowledge of international cuisine. Mmm. I’ll have to up my game.’

Rosie took a moment to let that one sink in. It left a really nice, warm glow where it landed; her hand clutched the fabric of her old black T-shirt against the spot. ‘And I guess dinner would be one way of making up for the astrology jibe.’

‘I admit, it was hardly gracious.’

‘It was hardly original, either.’

He laughed again, the sound sliding through the phone and down her back like warm honey.

The distant tones of a warning bell rang in the back of her mind, but she was confident enough of him and of herself to say, ‘So, yes. To dinner. Sounds fun.’

He gave her the time, and address of the place that made the exotic grilled-cheese, and they said their goodbyes.

When Rosie hung up the phone she realised her knees were wobbling like mad. She slumped down upon the metal step, hugged her arms around herself and looked up.

The clouds had moved on, the colour of the sky had deepened, and several stars had shown themselves. When she hadn’t been paying attention, the world beneath her feet had turned.

The world turned some more until night had well and truly fallen upon Brisbane. The bark and bite of peak-hour traffic had subsided to a low growl, and Rosie pulled her caramel velvet jacket tighter around herself to fend off the night chill as she walked briskly down the city footpath. Late for her date.

A minute later the maitre d’ at the Red Fox bar and grill pointed the way through the bustling bar crowd towards a table along the far wall.

A dive, Cameron had promised. The place was anything but. It was bright, shiny, cool, filled with men with more product in their hair than she had in her bathroom, and women wearing so much bling around their necks she wasn’t sure how they kept upright. While she’d been in so many seedy places in her time she could practically write a guide, Cameron it seemed was still very much a Kelly.

She ruffled her hair, wished she’d washed it or put it up, or had a haircut in the past six months, and excused herself as she nudged a group of hot young things out of her way.

Her hand was still delved deep into her hair when she saw him sitting at the head of a loud, rowdy table peopled by ex St Grellans students.

Kids who’d been given sportscars for their sixteenth birthday while she’d taken on an after school job cleaning dishes at a diner. Kids who’d skipped class to shop but had still magically got into universities she’d worked her butt off to attend. Kids who hadn’t given her the time of day when, having been accepted to St Grellans, she’d so hoped she’d finally found a place where she might shine.

Suddenly she couldn’t for the life of her remember what it had been about Cameron Kelly that had made her convince herself dinner was a good idea. To put on lip gloss. To walk through a cloud of perfume. To wear her nice underwear.

She took a step backwards and landed upon soft flesh. A woman squealed. She turned to apologise, then glanced back at the table where several pairs of eyes were zeroed in on her chest. She wasn’t sure if they were collectively less impressed by her lack of top heaviness or the rainbow-coloured peace symbol splashed across her black T-shirt.

But it wasn’t so much their eyes she was concerned about as Cameron’s. And she remembered why she’d said yes. He was standing, his eyes locked onto hers with a kind of unambiguous focus that was almost enough to send her hurtling towards him like an object falling from the sky.

But not quite.

He was beautiful. He was irreverent. He made her knees wobble in an entirely pleasant way. But she had no intention of going to a place where she had to perform cartwheels to feel remarkable. No man on the planet was worth that.

She offered him a shrug by way of apology then backed into the crowd.

Cameron’s backside hovered several inches off his chair as he watched Rosalind disappear into the crowd.

His chair rocked, screeched, and he had to reach out to catch it lest it crash to the ground. His old schoolmate in the chair next to him raised an eyebrow in question.

Cameron shook his head as he brought the chair back upright, and then made a beeline for the front door.

He hit the pavement, looked right then left, and then saw her. In amongst the night owls in their barely-there attire, she stood out like a rare bird, striding down the city street in skinny jeans, flat shoes, a soft jacket nipped at her waist, a multi-coloured scarf dangling to her knees, her long, wavy hair swinging halfway down her back, everything about her loose and carefree. Unpretentious.

And, just as before, having her within reach he felt as though for now the weight of the world could be someone else’s problem.

He took off after her at a jog. ‘Rosalind!’

When she didn’t turn, he grabbed her elbow.

She stopped. Turned. A stubborn gleam lit her eyes before she glanced pointedly at where he still held her arm. But if he was the kind of guy who got scared off by a little defiance he wouldn’t be where he was today.

‘What’s with the hasty exit?’

Her chin tilted skyward. ‘Would you believe, I suddenly realised I wasn’t hungry after all?’

‘Not even if you donged me on the head and hypnotised me before saying so.’

She kept backing away. He kept following, the sounds of the bar fading behind him.

It occurred to him that he didn’t usually have to work this hard to get a woman to eat with him. In fact, he’d never had to work all that hard to get a woman to do anything with him. For a simple distraction, Rosalind was fast proving to be more difficult than he’d anticipated.

But he was born of stubborn Irish stock; he couldn’t leave well enough alone. The effort of the chase only made her vanilla scent seem that much more intoxicating, her soft skin that much more tempting, the need to have her with him tonight that much more critical.

‘Rosalind,’ he warned.

‘Can’t a girl change her mind?’ she asked.

‘Not without an explanation, she can’t.’

The stubborn gleam faltered. She glanced down the block at the façade of the bar and bit her bottom lip.

When her teeth slipped away he found himself staring at the moistened spot, transfixed. And imagined pulling her into his arms and leaning her up against the building wall, and kissing her until the dark clouds hovering on the edge of his mind vanished.

He dragged his gaze to her eyes to discover she was still watching the bar, which was probably a good thing, considering his pupils were likely the size of saucers.

As casually as possible, he let her arm go and took a step back. ‘So what gives?’

Her chest rose and fell. ‘When you invited me to dinner, I thought you meant just the two of us. If I’d known it was to be a class reunion I might have pretended to be washing my hair.’

He followed her line of sight to find one of the guys chatting to a girl lined up outside the bar, but he knew the cheeky bugger was there to give word back to the group. His world was excessively intimate. Everybody assumed a right to know everybody else’s business.

Which is why this girl, this outsider, with her refreshing candour and her easygoing, cool spirit was just what he needed.

When he turned back, Rosalind’s arms were crossed across her chest and her hip was cocked. Her patience was running thin.

He reached out and cradled her upper arms; the velvet was freezing cold. On impulse he ran his hands down her arms to warm her up.

And at his touch her eyes finally skittered from the bar and back to him. Mercurial grey. Luminous in the lamplight. And completely unguarded. He saw her restlessness, her disharmony, and the fact that she was searching for an excuse to be with him rather than the other way round.

Arrested, he moved close enough to follow every glint of every thought dancing behind those amazing eyes, yet not so close he found himself caught up in the scent of her until he couldn’t think straight. And he did his best to be as forthright in return.

‘Rosalind, I invited you to dinner because I knew I’d enjoy a night out with you. I chose this place as it makes the best Mexican on the eastern seaboard. As to that lot in there, I had no idea they’d be here; I haven’t seen most of them in years. It would have been far more sensible of me to have avoided them once I realised Meg’s best mate Tabitha was there, as she can talk the hind leg off a horse, but another fellow is a union lawyer and, workaholic that I am, I saw my chance to talk business and took it. Scout’s honour.’

Her eyes narrowed as she asked, ‘When were you ever a scout?’

His laughter came from nowhere, shooting adrenalin through his body, putting every muscle on high alert. No longer much caring about keeping himself at a sensible distance from her pervasive scent, he moved in tight and said, ‘It’s on my to-do list.’

She watched him a few long, agonising seconds before she gave a little shrug beneath his touch. ‘Okay, then.’

Okay, then. He took a few more moments to enjoy her sweet scent, her gentle curves leaning into him, and thought about suggesting they skip dinner after all.

He let out a long, slow breath and disentangled himself from Rosalind Harper’s corrupting wares. Self-restraint was an asset. It separated men from monkeys, and Cameron from being anything like his father. He needed to get some food into him and soon.

He slid around beside her, placed a hand in the small of her back and did his best to pay attention to his two feet as much as he was paying attention to the swing of her hips beneath his thumb as he herded her towards the Red Fox’s red doors.

‘It’s cold out,’ he said. ‘Come wait in the entrance while I get my jacket. Then we’ll find somewhere else to eat.’

‘After all the time you spent convincing me how great the quesadillas are? Not on your life.’

Well, he’d shot himself in the foot there. All he wanted was her. Alone. Distracting him senseless. Now he was going to be stuck in a place peopled by Dylan and Meg’s mates, who knew enough about him to want to catch up, and not enough to know which subjects to avoid. ‘There’s a joint down the road where you can choose your own lobster before they boil it.’

She shook her head, no.

‘You sure?’

Her mouth titled into a sexy half-smile as she said, ‘Can’t a girl change her mind?’

Somehow Cameron found the words, ‘Right. Then we’ll head inside, and say polite hellos on the way past as we find a table of our own as far away as it can possibly be. Sound good?’

‘Sounds perfect.’

‘Though, I must warn you, I fully expect them to throw potato wedges at us. If we’re lucky they won’t have dipped them in guacamole first.’

She snuck a quick look sideways. ‘I like guacamole.’

He liked her perfume. He liked her lips. He liked the feel of her beneath his hand. And most significantly he liked the fact that when he was with her his mind couldn’t for the life of it wander.

For that alone he promised her, ‘Then guacamole you shall have.’

They reached the front of the queue and the bouncer looked up, saw Cameron then opened the velvet rope without hesitation.

Cameron nudged Rosalind with his shoulder and she skipped ahead of him, glancing back with a half smile.

The bar crowd closed in around them. She ran a quick hand through her hair, fluffing it up, and straightened her shoulders like she was preparing to enter a prize fight.

Before he let himself think better of it he took her hand, and as though it was exactly what she’d been waiting for her fingers wrapped tight around his. It brought her back to his side, where her warm body fit in against him.

Images of lips and backs against walls and hot hands rushed in on him so fast one would think he’d been a monk these last thirty-two years.

‘Relax,’ Cameron said, so close to Rosie’s ear her lobe got goose bumps. ‘They won’t bite. Though, just in case, I hope you’ve had your shots.’

She tried to put some air between them, but the crowd kept jostling her back to his side. ‘I don’t know if you’re trying to be funny, as I don’t know any of them. I barely even know you.’

Her arm dragged behind her as he came to a halt. She let go of his hand and turned to see why.

He was rooted to the spot among the surging crowd, a half-head taller than everyone else, broader of shoulder, and more likely to make a woman tremble with one look than anyone else she’d ever met.

Talk about being remarkable without any effort whatsoever. Maybe once this unnerving-yet-irresistible night was finally over she would have learnt a thing or two about genuine cool.

He slid his hands into his trouser pockets and asked, ‘What would you like to know?’

‘The highlights so far will do fine.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘The name’s Cameron Quinn Kelly. Star sign, Aries. Six-feet-two inches tall, weight unknown. I like test cricket more than many consider natural, and can spend hours in hardware superstores without spending a cent and never consider it time wasted. I buy far too many useless things on eBay, because once I’m committed to an auction I can’t stand to lose. I’m slightly reluctant to admit my favourite holiday destination is Las Vegas, and I have no shame in saying I have cried during Dead Poets Society.’

Rosie took a deep breath. Was it really possible to like a guy that much more after such a simple snapshot? ‘You forgot your favourite colour.’

‘Blue.’

She didn’t doubt it. At some stage that day he’d lost the vest and tie, and the blue shirt hugging his chest was a perfect match for his eyes. It looked so good on him she was finding it hard to remember what else he’d said.

‘Enough?’ he asked.

She swallowed hard, then quipped, ‘That was more than I know about my mailman, and I give him beer at Christmas.’

He bowed ever so slightly. ‘Now, before I let you loose upon my friends, maybe I should know more about you too.’

Fighting the urge to cross her arms, she grabbed hold of both lengths of her long scarf as she said, ‘Rosalind Merryweather Harper. Star sign, Taurus. I’m about five-eight. Weight, none of your business.’

His eyes dropped, lightly touching her breasts, her hips and her calves, before sliding neatly back to her eyes. Her pause was noted, and his cheek curved into the kind of smile that made a girl think of fresh sheets, low lighting and coffee in the morning.

Unnerving yet irresistible. Yep, that summed him up perfectly.

‘Merryweather?’ he asked.

She grinned. ‘It’s rude to interrupt. Now, where was I? I’ve been to Nevada twice, yet never seen Vegas. With all those lights it has to be one of the more difficult places on earth to see stars. My guilty pleasure is Elvis Presley movies, and I was born with seven toes on each foot.’

Cameron’s smile wavered. Twitched. Stumbled. His eyes slid to her shoes.

Until she said, ‘Gotcha.’

His eyes took their time meandering up her body before they returned to hers.

‘Satisfied?’ he asked, his voice deeper than the bass notes thumping through the bar.

‘Getting there,’ she breathed.

The shift of the crowd threw them together. The slide of his cotton shirt against her velvet jacket acted like a flint shooting sparks between them.

She pressed both hands against his chest. ‘I’m almost certain somebody promised me dinner.’

He smiled. ‘I’m almost certain you’re right.’

Then for a moment, the briefest snap in time, she thought she caught a glimpse of the man behind the dark-blue fortress, and saw strengths, knowledge, experience, and hunger far deeper than she’d even imagined. Her fingers curled into his shirt as once again she felt like she was in some kind of free fall.

She didn’t like the feeling one little bit.

She slapped him hard on the chest, twice, then with a thin-lipped smile turned away and slid through the crowd.

And then the St Grellans table loomed before her. She recognised a couple of faces—a school captain, a drama queen, the daughter of an ex–Prime Minister. Bless their hearts.

Rosie felt Cameron slide in behind her. ‘Do you think for some of them school really was the time of their lives?’

‘Was it the time of yours?’

Rosie scoffed so loudly she practically snorted. ‘You reeeally don’t remember me from back then, do you?’

His silence was enough of an answer. Then he had to go and ask, ‘Do you remember me?’

She thought it best to let her own silence speak for itself on that one.

CHAPTER FOUR

AN HOUR and a half later, with the remains of a shared plate of nachos dripping in sour cream taking the edge off her flashback-phobia, Rosie felt surprisingly serene.

Cameron was a great date—talkative, funny, attentive. And he didn’t flinch when she ordered seconds of the quesadillas. That was during the sporadic moments in which they’d been left alone.

A round of drinks had appeared every half hour on the dot, followed by a rowdy toast from the other side of the restaurant. Just about everyone had come over to pay their respects as though Cameron was some kind of Mafia don. And Tabitha stopped by for a chat every time she went to powder her nose. During those moments Cameron held his beer glass so hard his fingertips were the colour of bruises.

Then, when she had him to herself again, he was a different man. The darkness abated, the clouds cleared and he was entirely present. That was the reason she’d sucked up her pride and entered the dragons’ den.

In the end she was so glad she had. If nothing else came of the night, slaying some dragons of her youth had been a major plus. Even so, she half-wished they had gone somewhere else after all so that she could have had a little more time with that Cameron Kelly.

‘Glad we stayed?’ he asked.

A fast song came on and Rosie had to lean in to hear him properly. Cameron took her cue and leaned in himself. He was close enough that she could see the ridges in his teeth, a small scar on the bridge of his nose and a slight shadow of stubble at his throat. Tiny imperfections that should have made him less attractive only made him more so.

She smiled. ‘You were right about the quesadillas. If they plonked another plate in front of me there is no way I could send them back.’

‘Good. Now, for the real reason I invited you to dinner. When do I get my free horoscope?’

She laughed, and flicked the back of his hand so hard he flinched. With reflexes like a cat, he grabbed her offending hand and held it, ostensibly to keep himself from harm, but when his thumbs began running up and down her palm she wasn’t so sure.

She manoeuvred her hand away, then sat back and crossed her arms, crossed her legs and remonstrated with herself to keep her feet firmly on the ground where they belonged.

‘Pay attention,’ she said. ‘Because I’m not going to tell you this again. I am a scientist, not a fortune teller. I study the luminosity, density, temperature and chemical composition of celestial objects. My speciality is Venus, the one planet you can still see in the sky after sunrise, about a hand span at arm’s length above the western horizon. I am an authority in the field, and if you’re not careful one of these times I might turn miss-ish and decide to get offended.’

Cameron looked deep into her eyes, seemingly deadly serious. ‘So, tell me, are we alone in the universe?’