by Ally Blake
‘Four-point-three trillion kilometres.’
His laughter lifted her as it echoed through his ribs.
Rosie buried her blushing cheeks in a mound of sleeping bag. ‘I’m sorry. I just compared you with spheres of hot gases. And after all the nice things you just did for me. And to me. It seems to have opened neural pathways better left closed.’
‘I only have myself to blame.’
She lifted her head and rubbed a knuckle across the end of her cold nose. He lifted his head to kiss the spot.
This was bliss. This made it all worth it. Surely…
She looked directly into his disarming eyes as she said, ‘All that Alpha Centauri stuff—I just meant that you’ve turned out to be not quite who I expected you’d be.’
‘A man ought to do his best to exceed expectations wherever possible.’
‘Maybe a man ought to, though in my experience not all that many bother to try.’
‘Your experience?’ he rumbled. ‘Now, there’s a subject I could warm to.’
He waggled his eyebrows, and Rosie felt like she’d blushed enough for one day. Any more and her cheeks might stay that way.
‘This is not the time for that conversation.’ She dragged herself into a sitting position. She slipped her flannelette pyjama-top on, and quickly added the beanie and scarf, suddenly cold now that she was no longer wrapped in Cameron.
His fingers slunk beneath her top and trailed down her back, creating a slip and shift of heat that made her want to give in and stay, talk, confess, believe…
But, like Alpha Centauri, the four-point-three trillion ways he made her feel safe and secure and precious were illusions all. At the end of the day, she was all she had. And that was fine. She could enjoy him in the in-between times. And that would be enough. If she told herself enough times she might even start to believe it.
‘Then how about we put it right up front during a Saturday night drink before my dad’s birthday party?’ he said.
‘Before your who and what?’ she asked. Her head whipped round to stare at him, to find him leaning on one arm, bare chest rippling with manly gorgeousness that made her sure the canoe, bike and jet ski in his garage weren’t the dust collectors his telescope was.
Her mouth watered. She dragged her eyes back to his—like that had ever made anything any easier!
‘My father’s seventieth,’ he said. ‘Something you said has been percolating for a while now. And last night, as I cleaned the floors of my house with my hours of pacing, I made up my mind. I’m going.’
‘What did I say?’
‘That you spent too long wishing you’d had the chance to know your father, no matter what kind of man he might have been. I need to face the man, to ease my mind. And, since you’re the one who convinced me as much, I thought you might like to tag along.’
Rosie breathed in and out. In and out. Not eight hours earlier he’d wanted to cool things down. Now he was making plans whereby she would meet his parents. His whole family. She tried to figure out what he was playing at, but all that beautiful, warm skin was making it hard for her to see the bigger picture.
‘Saturday? I can’t,’ she said, searching the end of the sleeping bag with her feet for her jeans and sighing with relief when her toes hit denim.
‘It’ll be one hell of a party.’
‘I’m sure it will.’
The sleeping bag around her bare thighs slid away as Cameron sat up, and it pooled low around his hips. Staring at the bland wall of the tent, she whipped on her cardigan and did the bow up tight.
He leaned in and pushed her hair aside, laying a small, soft kiss on her neck.
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the warmth washing across her skin, the grip of his gravitational pull tugging her into oblivion. But it felt too good. He felt so good. So difficult, so dangerous, but so very good.
‘Cameron…’
‘The truth is, I need you there.’
She squeezed her forehead tight, trying to push away how wonderful those three words—I need you—felt.
Once upon a time all she’d wanted was to feel needed, wanted, loved. She’d been a good kid, she’d studied hard, and she’d silently hugged her mum whenever she’d found her crying, even when deep down she’d known it would never be enough.
Since she’d been on her own in the big, wide world all she’d needed was fresh air, food, water and basic shelter. She’d never once felt that need to be needed by anybody else.
Yet now those three little words danced behind her eyes, waving streamers and skipping through fertile fields, singing at the top of their lungs. It had been so long since she’d shoved the wish down so deep inside that the moment it came to the surface it was intoxicating.
‘I’ll think about it.’
‘Don’t think, just come,’ he murmured against her shoulder.
She extricated herself from his wandering hands and slipped out of the tent, happier to be half-naked beneath the open sky than to see how much more he could get her to promise him from just a simple touch.
‘So, I’ll pick you up at your place around eight,’ he called out.
She found her functional white, cotton briefs hanging provocatively over her tripod, and shoved them into a pocket of her telescope bag. ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake, fine! I’ll go. Are you happy now?’
‘Now I am happy.’
All her fidgeting stopped. He might have been playing like he was flirting, but the thread of truth lacing its way beneath his words got to her like nothing else.
She glanced back into the tent to find Cameron was lying back with his arms over his head, his biceps cradling his head, watching her.
‘It’s black tie,’ he said with a grin.
Her eyebrows lifted so fast she almost pulled something. ‘Are you intimating that might be a reason for me to back out?’
His gaze meandered down her crazy get-up. ‘Not at all. So far you haven’t found it at all difficult to just say no to me when you really wanted to say no.’
‘You have no idea,’ she muttered.
‘What was that?’
She wrapped the tie of her fluffy cardigan ever tighter. ‘Cameron, I’ll go with you to your father’s party because I’m madly proud of you for listening to my words of wisdom. No hidden agenda. Nothing more. As agreed last night.’
He stared at her for a few moments, then nodded. She was mighty glad he believed her, as she wasn’t even close to sure that she believed herself.
She shielded her eyes and looked to the sun, which had risen, making it some time after seven in the morning. The faint crescent of Venus had been hovering above the horizon for some time without even getting a look in.
She said, ‘Shouldn’t you get going? Don’t you have minions to boss around at the worksite? Won’t Bruce be lost without you?’
‘I’m not so worried about Bruce right this second. How about you?’
‘Bruce isn’t high on my list of priorities either.’
He smiled. A smile so stunningly sexy that Rosie’s knees forgot how to work.
‘I meant, do you have anywhere else to be,’ he said.
She blinked down at him, arms crossed. ‘Um, no. I don’t. Because this is my place of work.’
Cameron didn’t move a muscle. He simply lay naked in her tent, while she realised that from the minute he’d walked into her glade—all gorgeous and conciliatory, talking of how he couldn’t keep his hands off her—she hadn’t given her work, her time, her warm bed, her breakfast, or anything else usually so important to her, a single thought.
Warning bells began to chime inside her head, telling her to finish getting dressed. To get moving. To just let him keep the damn tent.
‘Then what are you doing out there in the cold when it’s still so warm in here?’ he asked, flapping open the sleeping bag, leaving room for her.
That was all she’d done for him too—left room. And if that meant having a little less room for herself then maybe that was the price a girl had to pay for ge
tting a man who came back for her.
Rosie bit her lip, weighed her options, became trapped in his eyes, then said, ‘Oh, what the hell,’ as she tore off her beanie and threw it over her shoulder before she dove back into the tent.
‘Now, tell me more about this crush you had on me in high school,’ he muttered as he stripped her down.
‘I think it was you I had the crush on. You were the captain of the footy team, right?’
‘No, I was not. Now, stop sassing me and tell me about the moment you first laid eyes on me and your teenaged heart went pitter-pat.’
‘Cameron Kelly,’ she said on a sigh as he went to work, ‘You’ll have to do much better than that if you think I’m ever going to spill a single detail.’
He did better. Like a lightweight, she spilled.
And, just as she’d hoped, the warning bells were soon drowned out by the symphony of sensations only this man could make her feel.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
MOST of that next day and night Rosie slept like a log. Saturday morning she woke late, crinkled, ruffled, and blissfully replenished in every which way.
It was after lunch by the time she stood staring unseeingly at the window of the designer boutique on the top floor of Queens Plaza.
Adele was puffing when she arrived at her side. ‘Sorry, sorry. Lipstick disaster. Don’t ask.’ Puff, puff, puff. ‘What’s the big emergency?’
‘I have to buy a new dress to wear tonight.’
‘I know a dress from a pair of trousers, so I’m your girl. Do you have any maybes as yet?’
‘Not exactly. I have yet to venture inside.’
Adele turned to stare into the window at the shimmery, wispy, frothy frocks hanging off obscenely thin mannequins. ‘Any reason you’re looking in this particular window?’
‘It’s for Cameron’s father’s birthday.’
In the reflection Adele’s eyes shimmied down a mannequin whose dress was low cut in places, high cut in others and barely worth putting on, it covered so little flesh. ‘Happy birthday, Quinn.’
Rosie slapped her on the arm without even turning her head.
‘Ow. So I take it you and the great and wondrous Camster are still on?’
‘We’re not on,’ Rosie said, running her thumb hard down the middle of her palm to stop the tingle that had spread up her fingers at the memory of his hands touching her cheek, getting lost in her hair, stroking her naked back. ‘We agreed that our relationship only extends so far as dining together on occasion, and now we are attending an event in tandem.’
Adele’s eyes left the dresses to turn slowly her way. Her voice was impassive as she said, ‘Heck, Rosie, I’ve never seen you so very giddy.’
Rosie squinted. ‘I don’t do giddy, and you know it. It’s just new. He’s different. And…Oh, shut up.’
Adele grinned. ‘Mmm. Now he’s invited you to his father’s biggest-bash-Brisbane-has-ever-seen birthday party, where you will meet his whole family including his parents. Sounds ultra low key to me.’
Rosie scowled. ‘Just help me find a dress.’
Adele’s mouth quirked as she looked back at the window. ‘Have you seen the price tags hanging off those there garments?’
Rosie shrugged. ‘I can afford it.’
‘That one costs as much as a small car.’
‘There are side benefits to living in a caravan.’
‘So it would seem.’
Rosie stared at a more demure black, shimmery sheath. It was beautiful. It was what someone who Cameron Kelly took to a party would be expected to wear.
She hadn’t been kidding when she’d told Cameron how proud she was that he was going to face his dad. And she knew how hard it would be. She wanted to be there for him. And if she was truly honest the more she thought about it the more she wanted to be there, like she could somehow vicariously live through his experience now that it was too late for her to do the same with her own father.
And if that meant straightening her hair and pumping up her assets with chicken fillets, and stuffing herself into some dress that she’d never in a million years have picked out if she’d had the choice, could she do it? Should she do it? Was every new decision going to mean making room for him? Was it either do that or lose him?
‘So, are we going in?’ Adele asked. ‘I’m fairly sure the sales assistant won’t bring them out here unless you flash a platinum Amex.’
‘Give me a minute,’ Rosie said.
Adele rubbed a hand down her arm. ‘Kiddo, you’re starting to look a little flushed. Are you feeling quite yourself?’
And then it hit her.
She was as different as a person could be from the kind of date Cameron Kelly usually had on his arm at parties—She, in her unapologetic hand-me-down glory, with her au naturel hair desperately in need of a cut, and the big trap she couldn’t keep shut. And he knew that.
Yet of all the women who would have jumped at the chance to be on his arm dressed in designer clothing, he’d asked her.
Rosie grabbed Adele’s hand, tucked it into the crook of her arm and tugged her away from the shop window. ‘I’m done here. We’re going to the Valley.’
Adele tugged against her hand. ‘No, Rosie! I’m not going to let you find some sad old second-hand prom dress to wear to Quinn Kelly’s birthday bash. Please, for me, for the sake of the future princes of Brisbane you may one day be able to introduce me to, no!’
Cameron drove up Samford Road, one hand loosely working the steering wheel, the other running back and forth across his top lip.
Within hours he’d be face to face with his father for the first time since he was a teenager.
He could have given his mother a believable excuse. None of the family would have been surprised. But now that he’d committed he was not backing out.
A familiar National Park sign had him turning left towards Rosalind’s. He breathed deep and pressed the accelerator to the floor. Even the whisper of her name helped relieve the pressure building inside his head.
Their night together had been beyond anything he could have expected. It was the most intense, affecting and wicked night of love-making of his young life. And right then he couldn’t have been more impressed with himself for having had the mettle to go after her.
As he drove up her dirt driveway he was forced to slow, to shift his mind to focus on the matters at hand so that the low-hanging trees didn’t scratch his car, and so he didn’t land in the same great hole in the ungraded path in which he’d almost lost himself when he’d dropped her home the morning before.
That made it almost thirty-six hours since he’d last laid eyes on her, since he’d left her at the door of her crazy caravan, with its hills, sun and flowers painted all over the sides like some leftover relic of the seventies. Since he’d touched her hair, and held her tight, and kissed that spot on her lower back that made her writhe.
The tyres jerked against the wheel, and he concentrated fully on finding a path that led him to her door relatively unscathed.
The ground was dry, so his dress shoes didn’t collect any mud as he picked his way up the path made only by her daily footsteps rather than by any kind of design.
He looked for a bell, but found nothing of the sort. At a loss for a moment, he lifted his hand to knock thrice on the corrugated door.
Shuffling was followed by a bump, then a muffled oath. Then, when she didn’t appear in an instant, he tugged at his tie and hitched his belt so that it was perfectly set just below his navel. He straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat. He had no reason to be nervous. So why did he feel like he was seventeen again, and picking his date up for the senior dance?
The door whipped open, and that was where all fidgeting stopped.
Backlit by the warm, golden light of a small desk-lamp, and helped along by the thin moonlight falling softly through the clouds above, Rosalind stood in the doorway looking like she’d stepped out of a 1930’s Hollywood movie-set.
Her shoulders were bar
e, bar a thin silver strap angling across one shoulder. Lilac chiffon fell from an oversized rosette at her chest and swirled about her long, lean form like she had been sewn into it. Several fine silver bangles shimmered on her wrist. And her hair was pinned at the nape, with soft tendrils loose and curling about her cheeks.
He’d never once in his entire life been rendered speechless—not when one of his mates had streaked during the debate-team final. Not when he’d made a three-hundred percent profit on the sale of his first property. Not even when his father’s only response to his declaration that he could never work for a man with so little backbone had been that, as long as he didn’t work for the Kelly family, he was not welcome in the Kelly family home.
But Rosalind Harper, in all her rare, noble, charming loveliness, had him at a complete loss for words.
‘Hi,’ she said, her voice breathy, and he knew it had nothing to do with her rushing about before she opened the door.
She looked at him like she’d be happy to keep looking at him for as long as she possibly could. Like he was all she’d ever wanted, and all she would ever want.
His heart raced like a jackhammer. He felt the boundaries he’d set being smashed left, right and centre and he had no idea what to say, or do or think.
But then she let out a long, descending whistle and flapped her hand across her cheeks, and her eyes ran coquettishly down his dinner suit. His skin tightened every place her gaze touched, and his heart eased.
He snuck a hand to her waist, the fabric sliding against his palm until he connected with the curve of her hip. It took all of his self-control not to throw her over his shoulder, take her back inside her crazy home, close the door behind them and forget about the rest of the world.
Instead he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, letting her sweet vanilla scent wash over him like a cure-all.
‘You,’ he said, his voice gruff, ‘look like a dream. And that dress; there are quite simply no words.’
The smile he wrought lit her from the inside out. ‘What,’ she said, swinging from side to side, ‘this old thing?’
Her tone was wry, but he knew she half-meant it. For nothing that romantic could ever have come from today.