widowed, adding to the family folklore. Dylan, the next in line, was the charmer, his wide, white smile inviting every magazine reader to dare join the bevy of beauties no longer on his speed dial. Meg, the youngest, was branded bored and beautiful enough to rival any Hollywood starlet.
Yet the one Rosie had always had a soft spot for remained mostly absent from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. He’d played into the Kelly legend just enough by sporting fresh new consorts every other week: a fabulous blonde senator on his arm at some party here, a leggy blonde dancer tucked in behind him at a benefit there.
Yet the minute he’d appeared without a blonde in sight, her soft spot had begun to pulse.
‘Rightio,’ she said, curling away to her left, away from Cameron and towards the bank of stairs leading to the front of the auditorium. ‘What are you doing here if not to once and for all find out who truly did hang the moon and the stars?’
‘Central heating,’ he said without missing a beat. ‘It’s freezing out there.’
She grinned, all too readily charmed considering the guy still seemed to have blinkers when it came to skinny, smart girls with indefinite hair-colour and no cleavage to speak of.
And now she was close enough to make out the subtle, chequered pattern of his vest, the fine platinum thread through the knot of his tie, and the furrowing of his brow as his eyes almost found hers.
She took two definite steps back. ‘The café just up the hill has those cool outdoor furnace-heaters—big, shiny brass ones that have to be seen to be believed. And I hear they also serve coffee, which is a bonus.’
After much longer than was at all polite, his voice drifted to her on a rumble. ‘The allure of coffee aside, the warmth in here is more appealing.’
Her knees wobbled. She held out both arms to steady herself. Seriously, how could the guy still manage to incapacitate her knees without trying to, without meaning to? Without even knowing her name.
She wrapped her russet beaded-cardigan tighter around herself, squeezing away the return of an old familiar ache that she thought she’d long since cast off: the sting of growing up invisible.
Growing up with a dad who’d left before she was born, and a mum who’d never got over him, being inconspicuous had come with the territory. Being a shy unfortunate in a school saturated with the progeny of politicians, moguls and even royalty hadn’t helped the matter.
But since then she’d achieved a master’s degree in astrophysics, run with the bulls, stood at the foot of the sphinx, spent a month on grappa and fresh air on a boat off Venice and surveyed the stars from every corner of the globe. She’d come to terms with where she’d come from. And now hers was a life lived large and not for anyone else to define.
Cameron took another step forward, and she flinched, then indulged in a good eye-roll. An eyelash caught in her contact lens, which was about all she deserved.
As she carefully pulled it free she told herself that, just as she’d evolved, this guy wasn’t that Cameron Kelly any more—the Cameron Kelly who’d seemed the kind of guy who’d smile back if she’d ever found the pluck to smile first. Maybe he never even had been.
Right now he was the guy wasting the last precious minutes she had with the observatory telescope, before Venus, her bread and butter, disappeared from view.
‘Okay, tell it to me straight. What do I have to say or do to get you to vamoose?’ She paused to shuffle her contact lens back into place. ‘I know Italian, Spanish, a little Chinese. Any chance “off you pop” in any of those languages will make a dent?’
‘What if I leave and not another soul turns up?’
Rosie threw her arms out sideways. ‘I’ll…grab a seat, put my feet up on the chair in front and throw popcorn at the ceiling, while saying all the lines along with the narrator. It wouldn’t be the first time.’
That got her another laugh, a deep, dry, rumbling, masculine sort of laugh. Her knees felt it first, then the rest of her joined in, finishing off with her toes curling pleasurably into her socks.
She remembered exactly what the smile that went along with the laugh looked like. Deep brackets around his mouth. Appealing crinkles fanning out from a pair of cornflower-blue eyes. And there was even a dimple thrown