Reading Online Novel

Dating the Rebel Tycoon(27)



Yet of all the women who would have jumped at the chance to be on his arm dressed in designer clothing, he'd asked her.

Rosie grabbed Adele's hand, tucked it into the crook of her arm and   tugged her away from the shop window. 'I'm done here. We're going to the   Valley.'

Adele tugged against her hand. 'No, Rosie! I'm not going to let you find   some sad old second-hand prom dress to wear to Quinn Kelly's birthday   bash. Please, for me, for the sake of the future princes of Brisbane  you  may one day be able to introduce me to, no!'



Cameron drove up Samford Road, one hand loosely working the steering wheel, the other running back and forth across his top lip.

Within hours he'd be face to face with his father for the first time since he was a teenager.

He could have given his mother a believable excuse. None of the family   would have been surprised. But now that he'd committed he was not   backing out.

A familiar National Park sign had him turning left towards Rosalind's.   He breathed deep and pressed the accelerator to the floor. Even the   whisper of her name helped relieve the pressure building inside his   head.

Their night together had been beyond anything he could have expected. It   was the most intense, affecting and wicked night of love-making of his   young life. And right then he couldn't have been more impressed with   himself for having had the mettle to go after her.

As he drove up her dirt driveway he was forced to slow, to shift his   mind to focus on the matters at hand so that the low-hanging trees   didn't scratch his car, and so he didn't land in the same great hole in   the ungraded path in which he'd almost lost himself when he'd dropped   her home the morning before.

That made it almost thirty-six hours since he'd last laid eyes on her,   since he'd left her at the door of her crazy caravan, with its hills,   sun and flowers painted all over the sides like some leftover relic of   the seventies. Since he'd touched her hair, and held her tight, and   kissed that spot on her lower back that made her writhe.                       
       
           



       

The tyres jerked against the wheel, and he concentrated fully on finding a path that led him to her door relatively unscathed.

The ground was dry, so his dress shoes didn't collect any mud as he   picked his way up the path made only by her daily footsteps rather than   by any kind of design.

He looked for a bell, but found nothing of the sort. At a loss for a   moment, he lifted his hand to knock thrice on the corrugated door.

Shuffling was followed by a bump, then a muffled oath. Then, when she   didn't appear in an instant, he tugged at his tie and hitched his belt   so that it was perfectly set just below his navel. He straightened his   shoulders and cleared his throat. He had no reason to be nervous. So why   did he feel like he was seventeen again, and picking his date up for   the senior dance?

The door whipped open, and that was where all fidgeting stopped.

Backlit by the warm, golden light of a small desk-lamp, and helped along   by the thin moonlight falling softly through the clouds above,  Rosalind  stood in the doorway looking like she'd stepped out of a  1930's  Hollywood movie-set.

Her shoulders were bare, bar a thin silver strap angling across one   shoulder. Lilac chiffon fell from an oversized rosette at her chest and   swirled about her long, lean form like she had been sewn into it.   Several fine silver bangles shimmered on her wrist. And her hair was   pinned at the nape, with soft tendrils loose and curling about her   cheeks.

He'd never once in his entire life been rendered speechless-not when one   of his mates had streaked during the debate-team final. Not when he'd   made a three-hundred percent profit on the sale of his first property.   Not even when his father's only response to his declaration that he   could never work for a man with so little backbone had been that, as   long as he didn't work for the Kelly family, he was not welcome in the   Kelly family home.

But Rosalind Harper, in all her rare, noble, charming loveliness, had him at a complete loss for words.

'Hi,' she said, her voice breathy, and he knew it had nothing to do with her rushing about before she opened the door.

She looked at him like she'd be happy to keep looking at him for as long   as she possibly could. Like he was all she'd ever wanted, and all she   would ever want.

His heart raced like a jackhammer. He felt the boundaries he'd set being   smashed left, right and centre and he had no idea what to say, or do  or  think.

But then she let out a long, descending whistle and flapped her hand   across her cheeks, and her eyes ran coquettishly down his dinner suit.   His skin tightened every place her gaze touched, and his heart eased.

He snuck a hand to her waist, the fabric sliding against his palm until   he connected with the curve of her hip. It took all of his self-control   not to throw her over his shoulder, take her back inside her crazy  home,  close the door behind them and forget about the rest of the  world.

Instead he leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, letting her sweet vanilla scent wash over him like a cure-all.

'You,' he said, his voice gruff, 'look like a dream. And that dress; there are quite simply no words.'

The smile he wrought lit her from the inside out. 'What,' she said, swinging from side to side, 'this old thing?'

Her tone was wry, but he knew she half-meant it. For nothing that romantic could ever have come from today.

'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.