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 wouldn'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.'