Dating the Rebel Tycoon

Cameron took a swipe of icing. ‘I have high hopes.’

Dylan paused. Then said, ‘How high, exactly?’

‘Ridiculously, I’m afraid.’

‘Do tell.’

‘She accused me lately of having no staying power, and I am of a mind to prove her wrong.’

‘Wow. Don’t tell me you’re in need of the little blue pills yet? You’re younger than me.’

Cameron elbowed his brother neatly in the solar plexus and was rewarded with a satisfying, ‘Oomph!’

He slipped the icing into his mouth, and the sweetness exploded on his tongue. Then he said, ‘Rosalind knew I was making excuses. What I didn’t realise was that with her I didn’t need to.’

‘She’s figured you out, then?’

Cameron breathed in deep through his nose. Then he pushed away from the island to head to the door leading outside, to his car, to her. ‘That she has.’

‘Excellent,’ Dylan said with a chummy grin. ‘It seems I may have a bombshell to drop over breakfast after all.’

Rosie sat on Adele’s couch, staring unseeingly at the shifting yellow stripes on the wall left by the early-morning sun spilling through the wooden blinds behind her. Her feet were tucked beneath her, her legs covered in the blanket beneath which she’d slept—kind of. A bit. Not really.

In fact she’d been awake pretty much all night having deep and meaningful conversations with herself across a range of matters that had all led back to the one crucial fact: that she had gone and done the most stupid thing she could ever do and fallen for Cameron Kelly.

About three minutes after the cab had pulled out of the Kelly Manor driveway, the words, ‘Turn this cab around right now!’ had crowded her throat. Shouldn’t she at least have allowed herself the chance to be loved back?

A deep breath, a sharp tug of the hair at the back of her neck and an extra five kilometres distance, and she’d been certain that she’d been on the verge of unashamedly setting herself up for heartache again, and again, and again…

Repeat one-hundred times, and that had been her night.

Adele came into the lounge with a tray of coffee, cake, chocolate, salt-and-vinegar chips, and lollies in the shape of milk bottles.

‘How you doing, snook?’ Adele asked, pouring her a strong cup of coffee.

‘Better.’ She uncurled her legs before they got stuck that way, and let her toes scrunch into the coarse, woven rug at her feet.

Adele’s eyebrows rose. ‘All better?’

Actually she felt like a walking bruise. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug and glanced at Adele over the top. ‘Thanks for letting me stay.’

Adele blinked down at her several times before saying, ‘Thank me later.’

Then the doorbell rang.

Adele jumped. She glanced at the door, back at Rosie, then back at the door. She said, ‘I think I left the iron on. Can you get that?’ And then shot from the room.

The doorbell rang again.

Rosie dragged herself from the couch, ran fingers through her thicket of hair, rubbed her hands hard over her face to make sure all the bits were where they were meant to be and trudged to the door in her borrowed pyjama bottoms, T-shirt and bare feet. The delivery guy would just have to suck it up and pretend she didn’t look like a one-woman freak show.

She hauled open the door and found herself face to face with a crumpled khaki shirt with rolled up sleeves, revealing the greatest pair of forearms God had ever created. And on the end of them…

‘Cameron!’

‘Hi,’ he said.

She swallowed. It seemed his name was the most she could hope to say.

His hand reached up to cup the doorframe, as though she might be about to slam the door in his face—like he couldn’t see that her irrational heart was trying its best to leap from her chest and into his beautiful arms.

‘Can I…?’ He cleared his throat. ‘Rosie, can I come in?’

Rosie… Had he just called her Rosie?

She curled her toes into the hard wood and, no matter how hard she tried to resist, all the stagnant, decided places inside her began to flutter back to life. Which was ridiculous. He was likely there because she’d left something behind, and he was so damned civilised he was returning it by hand.

Needing an anchor, someone on her side, she glanced over her shoulder but there was no sign of Adele.

Then he said, ‘I tried calling you last night. Many, many times.’

She closed her eyes, swallowed hard then looked back to him. His hair was mussed. His jeans unironed. Stubble shadowed his jaw. She’d never seen him so sexily rumpled.

She licked her dry lips and tugged at her T-shirt, and amidst the fidgeting it occurred to her that beneath the sex-god rumples he also looked tired, grey around the eyes, like he hadn’t had much in the way of sleep either.