by Ally Blake
By the time he joined Hamish in the lift, he was clearheaded and ready to act like the head of a multi-million-dollar business.
When after several seconds the lift had yet to move, he realised he’d forgotten to press the button. He reached out and jabbed it so hard his finger hurt.
As the lift doors closed, Hamish said, ‘If you’re this scrambled, I’m thinking redhead.’
Rosalind’s face swam before Cameron’s eyes—her wide eyes unguarded, her smile heartfelt, her kiss like heaven on earth.
‘Hair like caramel,’ he said. ‘Skin like cream, legs that go on for ever.’
Hamish swore softly and Cameron grinned.
On the other side of the city, Rosie peeled her eye away from the planetarium’s telescope then stared unseeingly at her open laptop.
The cursor blinked hopefully on a blank screen. Her daily notes about Venus’s position, colour, opacity, flares, shadows, and any other nuances her dedicated study was meant to bring forth, were lost within the muddy mire of her mind.
She glanced through the gap in the domed ceiling and stared at the distant patch of sky where Venus’s crescent had been before streaks of cloud slid across the view. Though, truth be told, she wasn’t entirely sure how long she’d been staring at cloud rather then planet.
She leant her hand on the telescope, leant her chin on her hand and stared at a blank spot mid-air about an inch from her nose. Her mind wandered happily back to the top floor of CK Square. Was Cameron there now? What was he doing? Who was he with? What was he wearing? Was he thinking about her at all?
‘Mornin’ kiddo!’
At Adele’s voice, Rosie jumped so high she landed awkwardly and clunked herself on the chin. She rubbed the spot with one palm and asked, ‘What time is it?’
Adele perched on the corner of a desk and shrugged. ‘Seven-ish.’
Rosie groaned and let her face land against her forearm, where she got a mouthful of red-and-grey-striped wool poncho. She waved a hand in the direction of her laptop and her voice was muffled as she said, ‘I’ve been here since five-ish and have literally achieved nothing.’
A crunching sound brought her head up to find Adele eating a packet of corn chips. Rosie clicked hungry fingers at her friend.
Adele stood. ‘Uh-uh. Not while you’re within breathing distance of my telescope. I’ve already had to explain to the board why we needed to have the mirrors cleaned twice last month. A third time and they’ll start looking closer.’
Rosie packed up her gear and dragged herself after her friend into the nearby office, where she slumped into an old vinyl chair. She grabbed a handful of chips then hooked her boots over the edge of the chair.
‘So,’ Adele said, swinging back and forth on her office chair, eyes narrowed. ‘How is it that you, Rosalind “stars in her eyes” Harper spent two hours sitting at that thing without making a single note?’
Rosie licked cheese-flavoured salt off her fingers and stared at her friend wondering what, if anything, she should say. Could say. In the end she went with, ‘My mind was otherwise occupied.’
It took less than half a second for Adele to join the dots. ‘Who’s the poor sod?’
She baulked. It wasn’t as though she’d kept her dates from her best friend because they felt too precious; she just hadn’t found the time. So if that was true why was she hesitating now? She closed her eyes tight and blurted, ‘Cameron Kelly.’
When Adele didn’t shoot her down with a snappy comeback, Rosie opened one eye.
‘Cameron Kelly,’ Adele said. ‘The Cameron Kelly who was here the other morning?’
Rosie nodded.
‘Well, fair enough too,’ Adele said. ‘Those thighs, that voice, those eyes; I’ve been having some nice dreams ever since myself.’
Rosie nibbled at her lower lip and let her legs slide back to the floor. ‘The thing is it’s kind of gone beyond nice dreams. We’ve been out the past two nights. And he’s picking me up here to take me to dinner again tonight.’
‘So why don’t you sound as over the moon about that fact as I feel you should?’
‘He’s just not the kind of guy I usually go for.’
‘Um, he’s gorgeous and sexy. And you usually go for gorgeous and sexy. Think about the blond who hung around here every morning last summer, making the place smell like sunscreen.’
‘Jay was following the waves down the east coast. His job was over at nine in the morning.’
‘Right, well, he was gorgeous and sexy. And last winter…?’
Rosie thought back. ‘Marcus.’
‘Right! The American professor playing job-swap for three months. Super-duper cute in a leather elbow-patch, reading-Emily-Dickinson-to-you-in-bed kind of way. So what makes this one so different?’
Rosie shrugged.
‘Is there something wrong with the guy you’re not telling me? Some physical flaw hidden beneath the designer duds? Some personality deviation one would never expect? It’s okay; I can take it. I have fantasy guys in reserve.’
‘Well…no. Okay, it’s like this—he has that inviolable, lone-wolf aura that makes some men always get chosen captain of every team they join, which I really like. He’s resilient, self-reliant, and far too focussed on the intricacies of his own life to even think about searching for the girl of his dreams.’
‘He sounds just like you.’ Adele nodded along. ‘Except the liking girls part.’
‘In that respect, I guess, yeah. But then in the spirit of full disclosure he’s shared with me intimate details of his private life. And he’s the kind of man who opens your car door without being asked. I didn’t know they even existed any more. Is a nice streak a personality flaw? No, I’m clutching at straws there. Because the way he kisses…’
Rosalind’s voice petered away as she became lost in memories of his sultry, liquefying, unnerving, transporting kiss. There had not been one moment of that kiss that could be blandly described as ‘nice’.
‘Hey!’ Adele called out. ‘You seem to have drifted off there at the best part.’
‘Use your imagination,’ Rosie said.
‘Oh, I shall.’
Rosie hunched inside her poncho and wondered about Cameron’s best parts. Somehow she knew she hadn’t even scratched the surface. And that was fine; he could hardly help it if he was naturally fascinating. It was the ferocity with which she found herself longing to know those parts, and to let him get a glimpse of hers, that had her in a twist.
She began nervously flicking at a crack in the end of one short fingernail. ‘So, do I see him tonight or quit while I’m ahead?’
‘I’m sorry, was Miss Independent looking for my humble opinion?’
Rosie glanced up. ‘I ask your opinion all the time.’
‘Sure you do, when you want to know which science journals might suit whatever new paper you’ve whipped up.’
‘I’m not that bad.’
‘Ah, yeah, y’are. Hon, you’re a rock.’
Rosie stared at her friend, who stared right back. She bit the inside of her lip as she said, ‘Yeah. I am. I’m just used to looking out for myself, is all.’
Adele reached out with her foot and gave her a nudge on the leg. ‘I know, hon. It’s cool. Now, do you really want my opinion?’
‘I really do.’
‘You said this was your third date?’
Rosie nodded.
‘Well, then, yeah you’re seeing him tonight!’
The friction between Rosie’s jiggling knees suddenly had nothing on the warmth invading her cheeks and her palms, and the searing coil deep and low in her belly.
‘Adele, the third-date rule is rubbish. Nothing ever happens in life that you don’t allow to happen.’
‘So you don’t want to sleep with him?’
‘I didn’t say that, I—’
‘Then let it happen, for Pete’s sake! Jeez. To think if only I’d been at work ten minutes earlier that day it might have been me having this conversation. Actually, no; it wo
uldn’t. I don’t believe in the third-date rule either. The second date is fine with me.’
‘Adele!’
Adele held up a hand. ‘Can I just say one last thing before I zip my lips for good on the matter?’
‘Please,’ Rosie said.
Adele bit her lip for a moment, just a moment, but just long enough so that Rosie knew she wasn’t going to like what she had to say.
‘You like the guy, right?’
Rosie nodded, and Adele patted her on the hand.
‘Then consider this,’ Adele said. ‘He may be an island, but his family is an institution in this town. Unlike your professor or your surf pro, who both came with convenient expiry-dates built in, Cameron Kelly isn’t going anywhere.’
Rosie waited for the heat in her belly to cool to room temperature. But for some unknown reason the idea of Cameron being around a while longer than her normal guys didn’t scare her silly.
Which of course only scared her out of her mind.
That evening, as they snaked up the steep cliff-face of exclusive, riverside Hamilton in Cameron’s MG, Rosie kept doggedly to her side of the car, arms crossed beneath her poncho, knees pointed towards the outer window, feet bouncing against the low-slung floor.
She’d been pacing outside the front door of the planetarium when he’d appeared through the trees, gorgeous in dark low-slung jeans, a black T-shirt under a designer track-top, sleeves pushed up to his elbows, revealing his strong, sculpted forearms that she found so irresistible. His hair was ruffled, his cheeks slightly flushed from the cold. His heavenly blue eyes had been on her. Focussed. Unwavering.
He’d kept an arm about her waist as he’d guided her to his car, then had hastened to put the soft-top up, reminding her how spontaneously nice he was. Then, just before she’d hopped in the car, he’d pulled her close to kiss her hot, hard and adamantly, and she’d remembered how beautifully not nice he could be.
Yet all she could think the entire time was that he was gorgeous. It was their third date. And he wasn’t going anywhere.
They turned down a street where mature palm trees lined the perfectly manicured footpath and all the houses were hidden behind high fences and brush-box hedges. The MG slowed to a purr as Cameron pulled up in front of a cream rendered-brick wall. A double garage door whirred open and they slunk inside.
Golden sensor-lights flickered on at their arrival, revealing a simple room with polished-wood floors and just enough room for two cars. Or in Cameron’s case a car, a mountain bike, a jet ski and three canoes suspended from the far wall.
He took her hand and helped her out of the car.
When he let go she snuck her hand back beneath her poncho and eased round him to give herself space to breathe.
Cameron twirled his keys on the end of a finger as he opened the unassuming doorway to the left and waved her through. ‘Welcome to my humble abode.’
On the other side of the door, at the bottom of a tall, curved floating staircase, lay an open-plan room with shiny blonde-wood floors, a far wall made up of floor-to-ceiling windows and a dramatic two-storey canted ceiling. On the right, a raised granite-and-oak kitchen with a six-seater island bench rested beneath a charming skylight the size of a small car. In a living area on the left was a soft, cream leather lounge-suite that would easily seat ten, and a flat-screen TV that must have been six-feet wide. The fireplace in the corner was filled with half-burnt logs and fresh ash. Outside the windows she could see a large, dark-blue, kidney-shaped pool.
Rosie stopped cataloguing and swallowed. ‘You built this?’
‘It gave me blisters, took a toenail and dislocated a shoulder, so I wouldn’t forget. It was the best education for a guy who would one day have labourers in his employ. My empathy when they whinge is genuine, as is my insistence that if I could do it so can they. Come in,’ he said as he placed a hand in the middle of her back and encouraged her to get further than one step down.
Her feet moved down the stairs, past the lounge and to the windows as she stared at the view. Beyond the smattering of orange-tiled rooves meandering down the cliff-face below, established greenery bordered the Hamilton curve of the Brisbane River. Half-baked shells of what would one day become multi-million-dollar yachts rode the water surface. In the distance the Storey Bridge spanned the gleaming waterway, and the city glowed in the last breath of dying sunlight while the moon rose like a silver dollar between the towers.
This place was more than just a building; the personality, the warmth, the lovely, lush detail made it more than a house. It felt like a home.
For a girl who took enormous gratification in the fact that the place in which she slept was just that—a place to sleep, with no history, or memory, or attachment, nothing she would fear losing. It was an extraordinary feeling.
Extraordinary and emphatic. Adele was dead right: Cameron Kelly may appear a lone wolf, but he was a man with roots as deep as his city was tall.
‘Rosalind?’
‘Do you sleep on the couch?’ she said overly loudly, to cut him off.
‘My bedroom and the study are in the level above. More bedrooms, wet bar; games room below.’
She nodded. ‘Your home is really beautiful.’
‘Thanks.’ His voice rumbled through the wide, open room, but he might as well have whispered them into her ear, the way it affected her.
He was different from the guys she usually dated in more ways than she’d let on to Adele. No surfer’s body or professor’s poetry had ever brought her to this state of permanent anticipation and awareness of every detail around her, every tactile sensation, every natural beauty. And worse, neither had the dedicated life she’d led alone.
She gave herself a little shake and decided a change of subject was what was needed if she had any chance of finding her feet again.
She turned with a plastered-on smile. ‘So where’s this telescope you claim to have—still in its box? A figment of your imagination? A falsehood with which to impress the science girl?’
‘It’s…unpacked. Though honestly it’s always been more decorative than functional.’
She stuck a hand on her hip. ‘So it’s an expensive dust-collector?’
He winced. ‘The night I moved in, I looked through the thing. The trees were upside down. I gave up and watched the cricket match instead.’
‘Ever heard of an instruction manual?’
He stared back at her. She let her gaze rove over the glassware in his clear kitchen-cabinets, anywhere but at those hot, blue eyes.
‘Some refractors work that way. You just have to remember that in space nothing’s upside down or the right way up. Only your thinking makes it so.’ She glanced back at him as she said, ‘Your problem is the “centre of the universe” thing you have going on.’
‘I have the feeling if I keep you around long enough you’ll eventually knock that out of me.’
The very idea created a knot deep in her belly. How long was long enough? How long was a piece of string? How long until she relaxed, for Pete’s sake?
She tugged on the fingers of one hand until a couple of knuckles gave helpful cracks. ‘So where is it? I can give you a quick lesson.’
‘It’s in my bedroom.’
‘Of course it is. Is there any better place from which to spy on your neighbour’s trees?’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’
She tugged her fingers so hard something popped that she wasn’t sure ought to have popped. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
She stretched out her tense hands, and again didn’t quite know where to look—while he stood at the bottom of the stairs clean-shaven, handsome as they came, oozing cool, calm and collectedness. Pure and unadulterated Kelly.
And in that moment Rosie knew she’d been kidding herself; she’d bitten off far more than she could chew.
Cameron was secure in the lifestyle he’d been born to, while it had taken her half a lifetime and a lot of fight to become half as comfortable in her own skin
, and she was still very much a work in progress.
If the two of them came together in the kind of collision she felt was on the horizon, he’d not show a dint, while if genetics counted for anything she could well be damaged beyond repair.
When he threw his keys into a misshapen wooden bowl on a chunky hall-table at the bottom of the stairs, the sound made her jump.
She blew out a stream of air, her eyes scooting over the table to find that it was covered in clutter—a baseball cap, a couple of loose computer back-up-stick thingies on brightly coloured lanyards, a camera bag tipped over and empty, a coffee cup with remnants on the rim and a messy pile of opened envelopes in need of throwing out.
The flotsam and jetsam of a real life. And a reminder that Cameron wasn’t just a name, or a bank balance, or an alma mater, or an archetype she could shove into some pigeon hole that suited her.
Above all else he was a man. A real man. Possibly the first authentic man she’d ever known.
Warmth curled throughout her insides, loosening all the immobilised places inside her. The feelings that tumbled in its wake came too thick and fast for her to even hope to herd them somewhere safe. She just dug her toes into her shoes and waited for the waves to stop.
Thankfully Cameron was in the kitchen by that stage, with his back to her and his head deep in the fridge, one hand wrapped about the edge of the door, the other wavering near the top shelf, letting out the cold air and not giving a hoot.
‘I had a crazy day today,’ his muffled voice said. ‘One level of chaos after another, starting with some attitude from your friend Bruce. It’s made me so hungry I’d eat the fridge if I had a knife sharp enough.’
Rosie was so addled; if he came out of there with a lasagne he’d cooked for her himself, she thought she might just faint.
He ducked his head round the door and his cornflower-blue gaze caught hers. She blinked and stared right back.
He was gorgeous. And this was the all-important third date. But was she willing to yield to everything that concept entailed, even knowing that afterwards he wouldn’t be going anywhere?
As though he knew the exact nature of her thoughts, the corners of his mouth lifted lazily, creating the sexiest creases in his cheeks, adorable crinkles around his eyes and such a provocative gleam in those eyes it was as good as an invitation.
