Snap! Rosie's eyes flew north til they met his. Deep, blue heaven … 'Seriously?'
He laughed. She bit her lip.
Just because he used her full name in such a deferential way, and how more than once she'd caught him looking at her like she was the most fascinating creature on the planet, didn't mean she should go forgetting herself. On the contrary, she never intended on being just who she seemed in someone else's eyes.
He said, 'Do you want a list of reasons why, or would you prefer them in the form of a poem?'
She shook her hair off her face and looked him dead in the eye, tough, cool, impassive. 'Is that the best you can offer? No wonder you had a blank night in your calendar.'
'Who says it was blank?' he rumbled.
Rosie's heart danced. She blamed exhaustion. She knew that taking guidance from one's heart was as sensible as using one's liver for financial-planning advice, having witnessed first-hand 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 he had to go and say, 'What are you doing tomorrow?'
Her heart did the shuffle. She tried to concentrate on her liver instead. But it seemed every organ was on Cameron-alert.
'Tomorrow?' she said. 'I'll be sleeping. Eating. Watching telly. Looking up. The usual. You?'
'Working. Working. And working some more. Though I too will need to fit some eating in at some stage.'
'What a coincidence.'
'Dinner, then?' he insisted. 'This time just the two of us.'
The two of them. Didn't that sound nice? She looked skyward, but couldn't for the life of her see a star above the canopy of cloud and bright city-lights with which to anchor herself.
She took care to get her next words just right. 'How about you check you diary, and down the track, if you have a window, call the planetarium and they'll get a message to me, and I'll get back to you if my window matches up, and we'll see how we go?'
He let her wrist go which gave her a moment of reprieve before he brushed a lock of hair from her cheek, his fingers leaving trails as light as a breeze across her skin.
'I need a diary,' he said, 'Like you need a watch. And it would make things simpler if you'd just give me your home number.'
He brushed a lock from the other cheek, leaving his hands resting on either side of her neck, leaving her feeling extremely exposed. She'd had to work so hard in her youth to be seen, she'd never had the need to develop a poker face. But she needed it now. All she could do was look at the top of his shirt, where a triangle of tanned skin peeked out from the expanse of blue.
'Can't do that,' she said.
'Why not?'
'Don't have one.'
'You don't have a home phone number?'
'Too difficult, considering … '
'Considering?'
She paused then, wondering quite how to put it in such a way that a man who'd likely never felt a need to deny himself pleasure for the sake of reason would understand. In the end she really saw no choice but to say, 'I live in a caravan.'
Instead of flinching at the very thought-oh, it had happened to her before!-Cameron laughed. Uproariously. As though she'd turned into all the comedians in the world combined.
Her eyes flew up to clash with his. 'What's so funny about living in a caravan?'
'Nothing at all,' he said, his voice still rippling with amusement. 'I think if you owned some suburban Queenslander or lived in a flash city-apartment I'd have been disappointed.'
He'd moved closer, his face now lit by the reflections in a shop window behind her. 'So, tomorrow night. Dinner. Just the two of us. I'll call the planetarium with a location.'
'You could do that.' She bit the inside of her lip only to find that, now he was within the required proximity, it was practically swollen with the desire to lock with his. 'Though I do have a mobile phone.'
His voice was low and dry as he said, 'Do you, now?'
'I never remember to take it with me,' she justified. 'And it's so ridiculously small that I lose it four days out of seven, so I rarely bother giving the number out. But it's there. If you'd like it.'
'That'll do just fine.'
She bent into the car and fumbled through her bag for her phone, and the slip of paper on which her number was written, as she didn't for the life of her know what it was. Then realised she was giving him a fine view of her tush, and stood up so straight she hit her head on the doorframe.
Pretending she hadn't, she jauntily threw him her phone. He punched her number into his, and when she looked at him blankly he did the same for hers. It made her feel like she was nineteen again, in a nightclub, half-hoping the cute guy would call, half-hoping he'd leave her be.
She shoved her phone back into her bag so roughly her knuckles scraped on an inner zip. She then looked up and directly into his eyes from barely a foot away. Those relentless blue eyes …
Kiss me, she yearned inside her head.
No, don't kiss me. Yearning led to pining, which led to languishing. And that was not for her.
He leaned in.
God, yes, please kiss me!
His warm breath slid past her ear as he pressed firm lips against her cheek. With an undisciplined sigh her eyelids fluttered shut, and she let herself open up just a little, just enough so that she could truly feel the moment. His touch, his scent, his strength. The way he made her feel feminine and desirable just as she was.
When he pulled away, her whole body swayed with him. Her eyelids darted open to find his eyes focussed on her lips with such intensity it took her breath away.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and his eyes clouded over, so dark, so hot. She had two choices: throw herself at him, or remove herself from a situation which suddenly felt like it was getting out of her control.
She slid deeper inside the cover of the car and swung the door between them.
Coming to as if from a trance, Cameron growled, 'I'll talk to you tomorrow.'
'It is tomorrow.'
The darkness brightened but the heat remained as his eyes shot to hers. 'So it is.'
'And time I got home to my nice warm bed.'
His accompanying smile was so broad she had the perfect view of a pair of sharp incisors.
'And you to yours,' she added.
This time his growl came without words.
She took that as the opportune moment to give a noncommittal wave before diving into the car and buckling up while he closed the door for her. The fact that she remembered which pedal was the accelerator amazed her as she drove into the night.
Her head throbbed, her knuckles stung, and the voice in the back of her head pointed out she'd lived in one spot for a while now, and Peru was nice this time of year …
An hour later, after Rosie had realised she was too wired to get any sleep, she took a shower and got changed from her pyjamas back into jeans, a warm jumper, and her mangy brown boots in preparation for heading out to the edge of the thicket in which she often spent her early mornings with a tent, a sleeping bag and her favourite old telescope.
She put the TV on while she made herself some jam on toast, not sure how she hadn't keeled over from a sugar rush from the amount she'd already eaten the night before.
The name Quinn Kelly barked from her TV, and she spun and leaned her backside against her tiny kitchen bench.
She didn't know the man, but he was about the most famous personality in town. A charismatic man, with a deep Australian drawl overlaid with enough Irish lilt for it to be unforgettable. He was outrageously good-looking even with his seventieth birthday just around the corner. She recognised him the moment he came on screen in what must have been a repeat of that morning's financial-news report.
She looked through the crooked smile and stunning blue eyes for a sign that all was not well. Or, more truthfully, for signs that Cameron had been wrong and his father was fine. But, as though Cameron was sitting beside her pointing out the subtle nuances of pain etched across his father's face buried deep beneath the infamous smile, she knew something wasn't right.
She'd lived through the sudden loss of one parent and the permanent loss of another, and she wouldn't wish either situation on anyone. Especially not on the man who'd asked the barista at the casino to put extra marshmallows in her hot chocolate just because he thought she might like it.
She picked up the remote and jabbed at the off switch. The small screen went black. 'They were marshmallows,' she blurted at her reflection in the small, black screen. 'Get a grip.'