She threw out her arms and laughed until every part of her felt loose. 'Are you kidding me?'
'I'm interested in your expert opinion.'
'Here it is. In all my years searching the stars, I've never knowingly seen anything which I couldn't explain. But I'd feel way sillier ruling out the idea than flat-out believing we're alone. The universe is a great, strange and mysterious place.'
He smacked a fist on the table. 'I knew those UFO stories couldn't all be fakes.'
She picked up her napkin and threw it at him. He caught it before it landed in his food. And they sat there smiling at one another like a pair of goons.
An hour later Tabitha was back, perched on the corner of the table, prattling on and on about Dylan's high-school pranks, and Meg's spate of hopeless boyfriends; Cameron had had enough.
The fabulous distraction that was Rosalind Harper only worked when the life he was trying to forget wasn't being shoved down his throat quite so regularly. More to the point, he'd spent enough time with a table between them and an audience watching over them. He wanted to get her alone.
As though she'd sensed him watching her, Rosalind glanced at him over her left shoulder, frowned, then licked a stray drop of salsa sauce from the edge of her lip.
He tilted his head towards the front door. Her eyes brightened, she nodded, and he wished he'd done so a hell of a lot sooner.
He clapped his hands loud enough to cut through Tabitha's verbosity. 'Tabitha, the lovely Rosalind and I are away.'
Tabitha stood up. 'Oh, right. You sure? I just never get to see you any more. Meg says it's because you're always so busy with work, but-'
'Yep,' he said. 'Quite sure. Our after-dinner plans are set in stone. We have to leave immediately.'
Rosalind, trouper that she was, grinned and nodded through his fibs.
Tabitha backed up with a wave. 'Okay, then. Cam, maybe I'll see you at your dad's party on the weekend if you can drag yourself away from work. Rosalind, it was a pleasure. I'll say hi to Meg for you. Both of you.'
Rosalind gave her a wave back, then when she was gone slumped her forehead to the table, arms dangling over the edge from the elbows down. Cameron laughed as he caught the attention of a passing waitress and mimed the need for the bill.
'And why didn't we go somewhere else to eat?' she asked from her face-down position.
'The quesadillas.'
She clicked her fingers and lifted her head. 'Right. And you have to admit there was nary a projectile potato-wedge in sight.'
'The place should advertise as much.'
She grinned, her eyes sparkling, that wide, sensual mouth drawing his eyes like a lighthouse on a stormy night. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell her as much when the bill arrived.
Saved by the waiter, Cameron took out his wallet, which was closely followed by Rosalind's. He stilled her hand with his. 'Put that away.'
She slid her hand free and hastened to flick through compartments, searching for cash. 'I've got it covered.'
'Rosalind, stop fidgeting and look at me.'
She did as she was told, but it was obvious she was not at all happy about it. And again he got a glimpse of how stubborn she could be.
'I invited you out tonight, so it's my treat. Let me play the gentleman,' he insisted. 'It's not all that often I get the chance. Please.'
It was the 'please' that got to her. Her flinty-grey eyes turned to soft molten-silver and finally she let go of the death grip on her wallet. 'Fine; that would be lovely. Thanks.'
He threw cash on the table. As she eyed the pile, she brightened. 'But you have to let me look after the tip.'
'Too late; I've already added fifteen percent.'
'Why not twenty?'
'Fifteen's customary.'
'Tips shouldn't be just customary. They can make the difference between the underpaid kitchen staff, out there right now washing our dirty dishes, paying rent this week or not.'
Cameron blinked. Forthright, stubborn, and opinionated. He tried to reconcile that with the playful, uninhibited girl he'd thought he'd picked up at the planetarium, and found he could not.
What did it matter? Whatever she was, it was working for him.
He said, 'So the tip comes to … ?'
'Fourteen-ninety,' Rosalind said a split second before he did. She threw another twenty dollars on the table before he had the chance to try, and glanced at him with a half smile. 'Beat ya.'
'Geek,' he said, low enough only she could hear.
As she put her wallet away she grinned, then leaned in towards him. 'Let's blow this joint before Tabitha comes back.'
'Excellent plan.'
Cameron stuck close as he herded Rosalind back through the crowd, partly to protect her from the flailing arms of dancers and chatters alike, but mostly because being close to her felt so damn good.
'So, what now?' she asked.
He moved closer until he was deep inside her personal space. 'Lady's choice.'
She licked her bottom lip, the move so subtle he almost missed it. 'Okay. But dessert is most definitely on me.'
She turned and practically bounced ahead of him.
The image of her wearing nothing but strategically placed curls of chocolate was distracting in a way he might never get over.
Cameron waved a hand towards a large, red plastic toadstool in the universal courtyard outside the Bacio Bacio gelataria on South Bank.
Rosalind sat upon it, knees pressed together, ankles shoulder-width apart, sucking cinnamon-and-hazelnut flavoured gelato off her upside-down spoon.
He had straight vanilla. He'd been craving it all day.
As the rich taste melted on his tongue, he let out a deep breath through his nose and stared across the river at his city. His eyes roved over the three skyscrapers he'd built, the two others he now owned, and through the gaps which would soon be filled with more incomparable monoliths he had in the planning.
'Some view, don't you think?' he said, his voice rough with pride.
Rosalind squinted up at the sky and frowned.
Cameron said, 'Try ninety-degrees down.'
'Oh.' Her chin tilted and her nose screwed up as she watched the red and white lights of a hundred cars ease quietly across the Riverside Expressway. 'What am I missing?'
He held a hand towards the shimmer of a trillion glass panels covering the irregular array of buildings. 'Only the most stunning view in existence.'
She stared at it a few moments longer as she nonchalantly tapped her spoon against her mouth. 'I see little boxes inside big boxes. No air. No light. No charm.'
Cameron shifted on his spot on the toadstool. 'I am in the business of building the big boxes. Skyscrapers are my game.'
She turned to look at him, resting her chin on her shoulder, a lock of her long, wavy hair swinging gently down her cheek. 'Sorry.'
'Apology accepted.'
'Though … '
'Yes?'
'A city is a finite thing. Some day, in the not too distant future, someone like you will come along and tear down your building to make a bigger one. Doesn't that feel like wasted effort?'
He laughed, right from his gut and out into the soft, dark silence. 'You sure don't pull your punches, do you?'
Her cheek lifted into a smile-a smile that made him want to reach out and entwine his fingers in her kinky tresses.
Before he had the chance, she shook her hair back and looked out at the city. 'Growing up, my only chance at being heard was by having something remarkable to say.'
'I hear that. Big family?'
'Like yours, you mean? Ah, no. My mother and I did not ski together, or turn on the City Hall Christmas-tree lights together. My mum cleaned houses and waited tables and took in ironing, and I can't remember five times we ate dinner together. Much of the time she had other things on her mind.'
She glanced back at him, the reflection of the river creating silver waves in her eyes. And she smiled. No self-pity; no asking for compassion. Only Rosalind Harper just as she was, wide open.
While he sat there, the most mistrustful man on the planet. The secrets he'd kept had led him to play his cards close to his chest his whole life. Hell, he had three accountants so that no one man knew where he kept all his money.
She hid nothing. Not her thoughts, her past, her flaws, her quirks. He wondered what it might feel like to be that transparent. To leave it up to others to take you or leave you.
Oh, he wanted to take her. Badly. But though a level of shared confidence came with them having gone to the same school, and though he was attracted to her to the point of distraction, and though she made him laugh more than any woman he'd ever met, there was nothing he wanted bad enough to make him quit his discretion.