Dating the Rebel Tycoon

‘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.