by Ally Blake
‘Are you ready?’ he asked.
She held up two fingers. ‘Two seconds. I’m still missing an earring. You’d think in a place this small that wouldn’t be a concern, right?’
She turned and raced inside. He followed, intrigued at just how much Rosalind’s home might reveal about the woman whose layers seemed to go on and on.
At one end an ajar door revealed the corner of a double bed which all but filled the space. It was covered in a soft, worn, pastel comforter. It was unmade. One pillow lay in the centre of the bed, dented where her head had lain. She was used to sleeping there alone. So far, the insights were entirely positive.
In the middle where he stood was the kitchen. He looked for photos of family or friends, but there were none on show. No knickknacks had pride of place on the pleasantly scuffed bench. It was almost as though she was on holidays rather than living in the place. He wasn’t sure what to make of that.
He glanced up. In lieu of a chandelier was a home-made mobile of the solar system made from bent wire-hangers and string, planets made from chocolate wrappings, balls of rubber bands, and an old squash-ball pitted with teeth marks. He’d asked for insight and he’d been given a fanciful, inventive, dynamic mind. No surprise there.
He counted. No Pluto. Poor Pluto. He was in, then suddenly one day he was out. Cameron felt an affinity with the little guy. He only hoped Pluto was out there in the universe, kicking butt and taking names.
‘Found it!’ Rosalind called out from deep in the other end of the caravan.
In the bathroom, perhaps? He took a step in that direction, and out of the shadows a face peered back at him. Against one wall rested a life-size cardboard cut-out of a musclebound actor in a wetsuit. And just like that all the good the single pillow on her bed had done to his ego was wiped out. By a piece of cardboard.
He stepped back into the relative safety of the more conservatively decorated kitchen. His head brushed against something. He turned and came face to face with a line of string, over which had been hung a collection of skimpy lace underwear, quite different from the androgynous knickers she’d had on under her layers upon layers of clothing the other night.
He swallowed hard, wondering just what she might or might not be wearing under her diaphanous dress. The answer would be his for the taking if he wanted it, of that he was sure. And try as he might he couldn’t imagine a situation in which he would not.
Before he had the chance to interpret the thought, Rosie appeared from the other end of the van, pinning the back on a dangly earring at her left lobe, saw where he was standing and came to a screeching halt. And blushed.
It wasn’t even the loveliness of the blush that got him deep in his gut. It was the fact that, even after he’d already seen every inch of her beneath the underwear, she still managed to blush at all.
Their eyes caught. And locked. Her sparkling grey depths were warm, questioning, unguarded as always. But this time he felt like he was teetering on the edge of a most important discovery, when she closed her eyes and spun away, and it was gone.
‘It’s getting late,’ she said, grabbing a clutch purse and a fake-fur wrap the same colour as her hair. ‘Your family will be expecting you. How good does that feel?’
He let her lead the way, and paused when she simply shut the door and kept on walking.
‘You’re not locking up?’ he asked.
She shot him a quick smile as she backed towards his car. ‘No need. You met my faithful protector, didn’t you? Serious eyes, big muscles, made of cardboard. He keeps me safe from harm.’
His eyes narrowed and he stalked to catch up. Not able to go even ten seconds without touching her, he slid an arm around her waist.
‘Seriously,’ she said, leaning away from him as though he was holding her as some form of punishment rather than for his own satisfaction. ‘If anyone is brave enough to head into my woods at this time of night, they’re welcome to whatever they find.’
When they reached the car he spun her to face him, holding her by the hips, his nostrils flaring as her sweet scent caught on the wind. ‘Promise me when you come home tonight you’ll lock that door behind you.’
Her eyes smiled. ‘It’s an old van. You can’t open that front door unless you know exactly how to jiggle it. Nobody’s getting in there, bar me or anyone I choose to let in.’
She kissed him on the lips, softly, lingeringly, with a promise he couldn’t quite discern, then she slid into his car.
It took a moment for Cameron to collect himself before he rounded the back of the car, slid into the driver’s seat and curled his way down her drive.
He kept half his focus on the road, half on preparing himself for the momentous evening ahead. Yet, even with all that to contend with, somehow he was never quite able to take his mind off the woman at his side.
By the time the front gates of the Kellys’ family home loomed, Rosie was so nervous she could barely feel her toes.
Meeting the infamous Kellys was only half the problem. She was here for Cameron, and so long as she was herself and did her all to support him in his quest then she couldn’t go wrong. But from the second he’d shown up at her door looking so suave, so sexy, so dark and delicious in his black tie, she had found it hard to remember how it was that she had promised him that she would be just fine when one day it all came to an end.
Cameron pulled up to the front gates, which opened in time for him to slide the car through. The charcoal-coloured driveway, embedded in a swirling pattern of white quartz, curled around a pristine green mound sprinkled with neat rows of white and orange roses.
Rosie pushed herself an inch off the seat. ‘You have to be kidding me. Is that an Irish flag?’
Cameron didn’t even need to glance at the garden to know what she was talking about. His mouth quirked into a smile. ‘Welcome to Kelly Manor, where nothing is done by halves if it can be done twice as big.’
They drove on down the long, straight drive through an archway of oak trees which opened out to reveal a three-storey, dark brick, and cream trim, Edwardian-style home that looked like something out of an English period film.
Cameron pulled his car to a stop at the top of the circular drive. A liveried servant held the door open for Rosie, then took Cameron’s keys in order to park the car goodness knew where, as the whole front drive was clear.
‘Is this an intimate gathering?’ she asked.
‘Of course. Only a few hundred of my father’s best friends.’ There was no mistaking the tinge of bitterness in his voice.
She snuck her hand into the crook of his arm. ‘You are doing the right thing. I meant it when I said if I had the chance to sit down and talk to my dad, to get things off my chest and let him explain himself in his own words, I’d take it.’
‘You are a magnanimous woman, Rosalind Harper.’
‘Well you, Cameron Kelly, are an amazing man. With a family who obviously want you to be a part of their lives. Don’t blow it or I might never forgive you.’
‘We can’t have that, can we?’ He tucked her hand close, and she could feel him drawing from her strength. It was a heady feeling indeed. One she found she liked very very much.
Fearing he might see in her eyes how much this was all affecting her, how much he was affecting her, she looked over her shoulder to find a Bentley cruising up the drive. ‘This place is where the Thunderbirds got all their ideas, right?’
His laughter rumbled through her. ‘Now what on earth are you talking about?’
‘The cars. Where do they all go? I mean, the whole house opens up and there’s an underground car-park beneath it all, right?’
Cameron unhooked her hand from his arm and snaked his arm around her hip as he guided her up the front steps. The move was possessive and sensual, sending her nerves spiralling up into the sky.
‘You watch too much television,’ he murmured against her ear, a wisp of hair tickling her cheek.
She leaned back into him. ‘I work odd hours. I have an excus
e.’
Cameron pressed the doorbell, and Rosie turned away to fix her hair, lick her top teeth in case of lipstick smudges and generally take in as much oxygen as she could before she entered the kind of rarefied air she had not had to endure since St Grellans.
‘Everything okay?’ Cameron asked, his hand touching her elbow in reassurance.
Over the top of the box hedges, Brisbane twinkled in the distance. ‘Everything’s fine. And for the record the view from your place is way better than this.’
Cameron grinned as the twelve-foot front door swung open, and he guided her inside. ‘I knew I brought you for a reason.’
If the Kelly family had intended the front of their home to be imposing, it had nothing on the ballroom in which the party was being held.
Rosie’s cold hands gripped the edge of a curling wrought-iron railing as she looked down from the gallery into the main room below.
Over two hundred people in evening dress milled about the massive rectangular space. A gleaming parquet floor shone in the light of six crystal chandeliers hanging from the multi-vaulted ceiling; a string quartet played in one corner of the room, a jazz band was setting up in the other, and white roses tumbled from every surface available.
She felt a sudden need to hitch up her dress.
‘Come on,’ Cameron said.
He took her hand and practically dragged her down the staircase and through the crowd so fast that he didn’t have to stop and talk to anyone, and onto the dance floor, where several couples were swaying to the beautiful music.
He took her in his arms, pulled her close and together they danced.
With a blinding flash that had her losing her footing for a second, Rosie found herself deep in the middle of a memory she’d long since forgotten.
She was at the only school dance she’d ever attended. She’d been invited by a boy in her science class—Jeremy somebody. He’d been two inches shorter than her, and had always worn his trousers too tight, but in those days even to be asked…
Halfway through the night, dancing alone within the pulsating crowd, she’d turned to find herself looking into a pair of stunning blue eyes brimming with effortless self-belief. Cameron Kelly. A senior. She’d looked and she’d ached, if not to be with him then to be like him—content, fortunate, valued. He hadn’t looked away.
And like that they’d danced with one another for no more than a quarter of a song before one of his friends had dragged him away for photos with the gang.
Cameron pulled her closer and drew her back to the present, just in time to hear him say, ‘If only you’d let me dance with you this close all those years ago then who knows what might have happened?’
Rosie snapped her head back so fast she heard her neck crack. ‘Excuse me?’
He pulled her back into his arms and wrapped her tighter until her cheek was back against his chest, and she could feel the steady beat of his heart as he twirled her around the floor.
‘My senior-year dance,’ he said, the sound rumbling through her. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’
She closed her eyes lest he realise what she could no longer deny—that she was still very much the young girl with the naïve, wide-open heart that had seen something exceptional in him all those years ago.
‘You remember,’ she whispered.
‘Mmm. I remembered a couple of days back, actually. I forgot to mention it til now.’
Her knees wobbled in recognition of the smile in his voice. Her poor, struggling heart wobbled right along with them.
‘Skinny black jeans,’ he continued. ‘Hot-pink tank top, enough eyeliner to drown a ship. And I might be getting this part wrong, but did you have your hair in two long plaits?’
Rosie’s hand lifted off his shoulder to slap across her eyes. ‘Oh no, I’d forgotten that part. That was my “separate myself from the preppy, pastel suburban princesses before they separate themselves from me” phase. You know what? I’m not sure I ever grew out of that.’
Cameron slipped a finger beneath her chin and didn’t slide it away until she was looking into his eyes. Those beautiful, corn-flower, soulful, sexy, smiling eyes. ‘I’m glad. And for the record you looked adorable. And scary as hell.’
She blinked up at him, her brow furrowing. ‘Scary?’
‘God, yeah. I was mucking about, pretending to dance with my mates, and when I turned there was this stunning creature right under my eyes, chin up, eyes fierce, daring the world to even try telling her off for simply being herself. I was fairly sure that girl must have thought me ridiculous.’
‘Ridiculous?’ she repeated, beginning to feel like a parrot, but it was either that or say something she’d never be able to take back. That, in that moment, she’d been fairly sure she was looking at the most beautiful boy in the whole world.
She gripped his shoulder a tad too tightly, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just looked deep into her eyes with that barely there smile lingering upon his mouth.
‘It didn’t take any kind of genius on my part to know you were far too cool for the likes of me.’ He reached out and slid a finger under her fringe, pushing it off her face until he cupped her cheek. ‘You know what? Nothing you’ve said or done this week has made me think any differently. Only now I’m old enough not to give a damn.’
And then he kissed her, so softly, so gently, her heart turned inside out.
‘Well, if it isn’t little Cam Kelly. I’m not sure I believe my own eyes,’ a deep male voice drawled.
Rosie dragged herself out of the bottom of a beautiful dream and blinked into the warm light to find they’d stopped dancing.
And Cameron was no longer all hers.
His shoulders were stiff, his back straight, his neck tense as he stared at a taller man with slick hair and cold eyes.
‘Brendan, this is my friend, Rosalind Harper,’ Cameron said, his voice so cool if felt like the exhilarating warmth that had enveloped them both only moments earlier had all been in her imagination. ‘Rosalind, this is my brother, Brendan. He is the heir apparent to my father’s empire.’
Brendan gave her a short nod with a smile that didn’t light his eyes. She smiled back and offered a tiny curtsy. His eyes narrowed, but his smile broadened, and Rosie caught a glimpse of Cameron’s charisma therein.
‘Which by the old joke makes our Dylan the spare,’ Brendan said. ‘And what does that make you, brother?’
‘Delighted to be my own man.’
Feeling like she was in the middle of two lions circling one another, hoping to bite the other’s head off, Rosie disentangled herself from Cameron’s hold and waggled his little finger. ‘I think I’ll take a look around, see what there is to eat. Give you boys the chance to do what you need to do.’
‘I’ll come back for you soon,’ Cameron said.
Rosie smiled, but a shiver ran down her back as she thought it would be asking too much to have the same good luck twice. ‘Nice to meet you, Brendan.’
‘Likewise,’ he said, and this time she believed him.
As she walked away through a crowd of people she’d never met, and didn’t particularly want to, she glanced back to find Cameron and his brother already deep in heated conversation.
She’d brought him here, she’d made his first step bearable. Was that as far as she was needed? She kept walking straight ahead and ignored the sadness that had once again begun to settle in her chest.
It was all she’d ever known how to do.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TEN minutes later Rosie leant against a marble column in the corner of the room, a champagne glass in one hand, a couple of hors d’oeuvres secreted within a linen napkin in the other. The food hadn’t done much to ease the tightness in her chest; the champagne, on the other hand, had.
She watched Cameron and Brendan holding court with two politicians, a tennis pro and a guy with so many shiny medals on his chest she figured he was an army general.
For a guy who’d supposedly turned his back on all this guff, C
ameron was in his element—while she was hiding lest she was forced to have another conversation about yachting, or golf, or the medical benefits of rhinoplasty.
‘Rosalind Harper, right?’
Rosie blinked and spun to find Meg Kelly at her shoulder, her chocolate-brown curls bouncing about her perfect pink cheeks, and her petite figure poured into a glittery copper number that could not possibly have been worn as well by another living soul.
‘Hey, Meg.’ Rosie clamped her fingers around her glass to stop herself from checking her hair, from tugging at her dress, from feeling awkward and gangly and everything Meg Kelly was not.
‘Having fun?’ Meg asked.
‘The mostest fun,’ Rosie said. ‘You?’
Meg’s face twisted in the way that only someone who somehow knew she would never wrinkle could twist her face. ‘I hate these things. So many ancient VIPs trying to kiss Dad’s butt. I mean, if they had vodka cruisers rather than this dry, old champagne then maybe, just maybe, these nights might not make me feel so much like my youth is just slipping away. You know what I mean?’
Rosie sipped her champagne and smiled with her eyes.
‘So how do your people celebrate birthdays?’ Meg asked.
Rosie spluttered on her drink. ‘My people?’
‘Your friends and family.’
Rosie mentally kicked herself. Cameron was from good people. His friends were at heart good people. It stood to reason Meg would be good person too. Just because this night had wrenched up some latent feelings of inferiority and doubt, that wasn’t her fault.
‘Pizza,’ Rosie said. ‘Beer. Ten-pin bowling. Birthday cake with used candles. Pressies under thirty bucks a pop.’
‘So, no ice-sculptures then?’ Meg asked.
They both turned to look at the six-foot-tall melting bust of Quinn Kelly’s head in the centre of the twenty-foot long head table.
‘Ah, no,’ Rosie said. ‘Not that I can remember.’
‘And don’t you now think those parties were the poorer for it?’ Meg’s voice was deadpan, but her eyes were sparkling.
