Dating the Rebel Tycoon

He kept looking up as he said, ‘I’ll wait, if it’s alright by you.’

‘Actually, it’s not.’

‘Why not?’

‘Rules. Regulations. Occupational health and safety. Fire hazards. Today’s Tuesday. You’re wearing the wrong shoes. Take your pick.’

He slowly lowered his head, glancing down at his perfectly fine shoes, which he could barely see, and he was a heck of a lot closer to them than she was.

He peered back out into the nothingness, but still he couldn’t make her out—whoever she was.

Was she security, ready to throw him out on his ear? A fellow interloper protecting her find? A delusion, born out of an acute desire to change the subject that had shanghaied his thoughts since he’d caught the financial news on TV that morning?

‘Go now, and I can reserve you a seat,’ the honeyed tones suggested.

Management, then. And strangely anticlimactic.

‘I’ll even personally find you a nice, comfy seat,’ she continued. ‘Smack bang in the centre, with no wobbles or lumps, that doesn’t squeak every time you ooh or aah at the show. What do you say?’

He didn’t say anything. He could tell she’d moved closer by a slight shifting of the air to his left, the sound of cloth whispering against skin, and the sudden sweet scent of vanilla making his stomach clench with hunger.

Had he forgotten to eat breakfast? Yes, he had. He swore softly as he remembered why.

The appearance on the financial report on the TV news by the very man who had made him a family outcast many years before had not been a bolt from the blue. Quinn Kelly, his father, was a shameless self-promoter of the family business: the Kelly Investment Group, or ‘KInG’ as it was irresistibly dubbed in the press.

His father was the epitome of the Australian dream. An immigrant who had come to the country as a boy with nothing to his name but the clothes on his back, he had built himself the kind of large, rambunctious, photogenic family the press prized, and a financial empire men envied. Tall, handsome, charming, straight-talking, the man acted as though he would live for ever, and the world believed him—needed to believe him—because he had his fingers in so many financial pies.

Cameron hadn’t realised he’d believed the man to be immortal too until he’d noticed the pallor make-up couldn’t hide, the weight lost from his cheeks, the dullness in his usually sharp eyes that would only have been noticed by someone who went out of his way not to catch a glimpse of the man every day.

For that reason it was highly possible that not even the family knew something was very wrong with Quinn Kelly. The rest of the clan was so deeply a part of one another’s lives he could only imagine they had not noticed the infinitesimal changes.

He’d lost hours trying to convince himself it wasn’t true. And not for the kinds of reasons that made him a good son, but because he’d felt the sharp awakening of care for a man not worth caring about. Why should he care for a man who’d so blithely severed him from his family to save his own hide, and that was after laying waste to any naivety Cameron might have yet possessed about loyalty and fidelity? And at an age when he’d not even had a chance to make those decisions himself.

It wasn’t even nine in the morning and already Cameron wished this day was well and truly over.

‘The door is right behind you,’ the only highlight in his day so far said.

Cameron pulled himself up to his full height in the hope the unwanted concerns might run off his back. ‘While I’m enjoying the thought of you testing each and every seat for me, I’m not here to see the show.’

‘You don’t have to act coy with me,’ she said, her teasing voice lifting him until he felt himself rocking forward on his toes. ‘Even big boys like you have been known to find comfort in the idea that there might be something bigger and grander than you are, out there in the cosmos, that will burn bright long after you are a two-line obituary in your local paper.’

Surprising himself, he laughed out loud, something he had not expected to do today. It wasn’t often people dared to tease him. He was too successful, his reputation too implacable, his surname too synonymous with winning at all costs. Perhaps that was why he liked it.

‘Your expertise on the ways of big boys aside,’ he said, ‘I saw the show years ago in middle school.’

‘Years ago?’ the husky voice lobbed back. ‘Lucky for you, astronomers hit a point at exactly that point in time when they said, “Well, that’ll do us. We’ve found enough stars out there for a hundred generations of couples to name after one another for Valentine’s Day. Why bother studying the eternal mystery of the universe any more?”’