Dating the Rebel Tycoon - By Ally Blake Page 0,23

her arm out of Cameron’s grasp, feigned having to unhook the back of her shoe from her heel, then walked on with a good foot’s distance between them.

They hit the end of a row of cafés at the southern end of South Bank, then veered around in a one-eighty-degree arc and headed back towards the Victoria Street Bridge. Towards their cars.

Towards the end of the night.

And Rosie’s relief and disappointment at the thought of their date coming to an end ran pretty much neck and neck.

On the other hand, Cameron was feeling strangely content. He would have expected by now to be over the elation that came with revelation, and to have moved on to disappointment with himself for giving into a moment’s weakness.

But instead his mind was completely filled with the fact that he was out on a stunning winter’s night with a beautiful woman. And, having given up so much of himself, he found himself wanting more from her. To restore the balance? That was the reason he was most comfortable admitting to.

He said, ‘What’s your relationship with your father like?’

She tilted her face towards him; her hair shifted against his shoulder, long, soft, kinky, fabulous. He breathed in deep to stop himself from ravaging her then and there. She really tried his self-control, this one.

‘You ask that question like it should have an easy answer.’

‘Complicated man?’

She shrugged beneath his arm. ‘I wouldn’t know. He and my mum met, married, he left, then she had me.’

Cameron’s neck tensed. Not in surprise, but in disillusion at the levels to which some men would sink in the grips of their own self-interest. ‘That can’t have been easy on your mum.’

‘Not for the whole time I knew her. They knew one another less than a year, but she dropped out of uni when she met him and never went back. It was as though she always thought one day he’d come back, and she wanted everything to be the same as when he left.’

‘So where did a grown-up daughter fit into that?’

Her smile was as rich as always. Could nothing floor her? ‘With difficulty, and tantrums and killer grades. Whatever it took to break through the fog. Mum passed away a few years ago when I was overseas. I wish she was still around so that she could see that I’ve landed on my own two feet. Him too, actually—which is the nuttiest thing of all.’

Her voice was strong, as though she was telling a story she’d told a thousand times. But Cameron was close enough to feel the tremble beneath the gusto.

‘Cousins? Grandparents?’

She shook her head. No blood ties. No fallback. No choice about whether or not to turn her back on the man who’d hurt her…

‘But I’ve known Adele since I was seventeen. She’s as bossy as a sister, as cuddly as a grandparent, as protective as a dad ought to be. So as far as family goes, I’m more than covered.’

He held out an arm, an offer, and she sank into him. It took a whole other kind of strength not to lean against her, not to kiss the top of her head.

‘Argh!’ she said, curling away all too soon. ‘The last thing I meant to do was get slushy. You just happened to hit a soft spot.’

She slid round in front of him, out of his embrace, though her hand stayed resting on his arm as though she couldn’t break all contact. ‘Can I poke at one of yours?’

Okay, so she was touching him because she knew he might try to get away. ‘You’re asking this time?’

She tilted her head, not to be brushed off. ‘You have the kind of family some of us only dream of.’

‘You know those suburban news reports when a neighbour says “they always seemed like such a nice family”?’

‘I never assumed they were nice. They might all be stark raving mad for all I know. Nice seems such a bland word to describe…’ She waved a hand at him, her eyes touching on his shoulders, his chest. She blinked quickly as they scooted past the zipper of his jeans.

‘Nevertheless there are many members of your family. Talk to them about your dad. Talk to your dad. And soon.’

He jawed clenched so hard his back teeth hurt. ‘I have my reasons not to.’

‘Which are?’

‘Impeccable.’

She stared him down, wanting more, but there was no more he would give.

When on that dark day many years before he’d discovered his father had been cheating on his