Dating the Rebel Tycoon - By Ally Blake Page 0,10

that what I just did?’

‘Yes! You just intimated all astronomers are geeks.’

‘Aren’t they?’ he said without even a pause.

She sat up straight and held a hand to her heart to find it beating harder than normal, harder than it had even when she’d been a green teenager. It had more than a little to do with the unflinching, alpha-male thing he’d found within himself in the intervening years. It spoke straight to the stubborn independence she’d unearthed inside herself.

‘You realise you are also insinuating that I am a geek?’ she said.

This time there was a pause. But then he came back with, ‘Yes. You are a geek.’

Her mouth dropped open then slammed back shut. Mostly because the tone of his voice suggested it didn’t seem to be the slightest problem for him that she might be a geek.

‘Rosalind,’ he said, in a way that made her want to flip her hair, lick her lips and breathe out hard.

‘Yes?’ she sighed before she could stop herself.

His next pause felt weightier. She cursed herself beneath her breath and gripped the teeny-tiny phone so tight her knuckles hurt.

‘I realise it’s last minute, but I was wondering if you had plans for dinner.’

Um, yeah, she thought; cheese on toast.

He continued, ‘Because I haven’t eaten, and if you haven’t eaten I thought it an entirely sensible idea that we make plans to eat together.’

Oh? Oh! Had Cameron Kelly just asked her out?

CHAPTER THREE

ROSIE looked up at the sky, expecting to see a pink elephant flying past, but all she saw were clouds streaked shades of brilliant orange by the dying sunlight.

To get the blood flowing back to all the places it needed to flow, not just the unhelpful areas where it had suddenly pooled, Rosie dragged herself off the step and walked out into the yard, running a hand along the fluffy tops of the hip-high grass stalks.

Dinner with Cameron Kelly. For most girls the answer would be a no brainer. The guy was gorgeous. She couldn’t deny she was still attracted to him. And there was the fantasy element of hooking up with her high school crush. One of the invisibles connecting with one of the impossibles.

But Rosie wasn’t most girls. She usually dated uncomplicated, footloose, impermanent guys, not men who made it hard for her to think straight. She liked thinking straight.

The only time she’d ever broken that rule was with a cardboard cut-out of a gorgeous A-list movie star Adele had nicked from outside a video store for her seventeenth birthday. He was breathtaking, he never talked back. Never stole the remote. Never left the toilet seat up. Never filled any larger part of her life than she let him. Never left…

She wrapped her hand round a feathery tuft of grass and a million tiny spores flew out of her palm and into the air, floating like fireflies in dusk’s golden light.

Her mother had been the very definition of other girls. She’d fallen for the wrong man, the man she’d thought would love her for ever, and it had left her with a permanently startled expression, as though her world was one great shock she’d never got over.

After years of thought, study and discovery, a light-bulb moment had shown Rosie that, contrarily, the way to make sure that never happened to her was to only date the wrong men—those who for one reason or another had no chance of making a commitment. She could then enjoy the dating part dead-safe in the knowledge that the association would end. And when it did she wouldn’t be crushed.

So, back to Cameron Kelly. He was gorgeous. He was charming. But most importantly beneath the surface there was a darkness about him. A hard, fast, cool character that he was adept at keeping all to himself. He was fascinating, but there was no mistaking him for some sweet guy looking for love.

And, of all the men who’d asked her out, she knew exactly what she was up against. Cameron Kelly was the least likely man in the world Rosie would again make the mistake of falling for, making him the ideal man for her, for now.

‘I haven’t lost you, have I?’ he asked.

You can’t lose what you never had, she thought, but said, ‘I’m still deciding if I’m hungry enough for dinner.’

‘It’s a meal, on a plate. I was thinking perhaps even cutlery may be involved.’ His voice resonated down the phone, until cheese and toast was the last things on her mind. ‘We can reminisce