Dating the Rebel Tycoon

She wrapped her arms about her denim-clad knees, quietly enjoying the soothing coo of butcher birds heralding the setting of the sun.

A mere week earlier her work day would have been kicking off as Venus began her promenade across the dusk sky, masquerading as the evening star. Now that Venus had begun her half-yearly stint as the morning star, Rosie was still getting used to the crazy early starts to the day, and finding it tricky to know what to do with her evenings.

This evening she had no such trouble, filling it ably by reliving her curious encounter with Cameron Kelly. The way one side of his blazer collar had been sticking up as though he’d left the house in a hurry. The way he still hadn’t worked out how to stop his fringe from spiking out in all different directions. The way she’d felt his smiles even when he’d been little more than a Cameron-shaped outline. The way her skin had continued to hum long after she’d last heard his deep voice.

She sighed deep and hard, and figured she’d at least get some pleasant dreams out of it!

All of a sudden her bottom vibrated madly. When she realised it was the wretched mobile-phone Adele had made her buy when she’d moved back to Brisbane—lest they live within the same city but never see one another—she picked it up, stared at the shiny screen, and jabbed at half a dozen tiny buttons until it stopped making that infernal ‘bzz bzz’ noise that made her teeth hurt.

‘Rosie Harper,’ she sing-songed as she answered.

‘Hey, kiddo.’ It was Adele. Big surprise.

‘Hey, chickadee,’ she returned.

‘I have someone on the other line who wants to talk to you, so don’t go anywhere.’

‘Adele,’ Rosie said with a frown, before she realised by the muzak assaulting her ear that she was already on hold. ‘Girl, I’m gonna throw this damn thing in the creek if you’re not—’

‘Rosalind,’ a deep, male voice said.

Rosie sat up straight. ‘Cameron?’

She slapped herself across the forehead as she realised she’d given herself away. If she hadn’t been thinking of him in that moment it wouldn’t have made a difference. Deep, smooth, rumbling voices like that only came around once in a lifetime.

‘Wow, I’m impressed,’ he said. ‘Did your stars tell you I was going to call?’

‘You’re thinking of astrology, not astronomy.’

‘There’s a difference?’ he asked.

Her skin did that humming thing which told her that wherever he was he was definitely kidding, definitely smiling.

‘So you are an astronomer, then?’ he asked.

‘That’s what my degree says.’

‘Hmm. I did consider you might be a ticket-seller, but then when I thought back on how hard you were working to not let me buy a ticket I had to go with my third choice of occupation.’

‘What was the second?’

After a pause he said, ‘Well, it wasn’t a choice so much as a pipe-dream. And I’m not sure we know one another well enough for me to give any more away than that.’

The humming of her skin went into overdrive, a kind of fierce, undisciplined overdrive that she wasn’t entirely sure how to rein in. She went with a thigh pinch, which worked well enough.

‘What’s up, Cameron?’

‘I just wanted to let you know how much I enjoyed my morning.’

She turned side-on so that her back could slump against the doorframe, and lifted her boot-clad feet to the step. ‘So, you did stay for the show. Good for you.’

‘Ah, no. I did not.’

Her brow furrowed. Then it dawned: he was calling to say he’d enjoyed the part of the morning he’d spent with her. Okay. So this was unanticipated.

When she said nothing, Cameron added, ‘I couldn’t do it. The wormholes, remember?’

She laughed, loosening her grip on her phone a little. ‘Right. I’d forgotten about the wormholes.’

‘I, obviously, have not.’

‘If one was smart, one might have thought this morning might have been a prime opportunity to overcome such a fear, since you were already there and all.’

‘One might. But I’ve not often been all that good at doing what I ought to do.’

First calloused hands, now rebellion. Where was the nice, well-liked Cameron Kelly she’d known, and what had this guy done with him?

‘You were in Meg’s year at St Grellans,’ Cameron said. Meaning he’d been asking around about her.

Rosie unpeeled her fingers from the step and lifted them to cradle the phone closer to her ear. ‘That I was.’

‘And since then?’

‘Uni. Backpacking. Mortgage. Too much TV.’ After a pause her curiosity got the better of her. ‘You?’