Dating the Rebel Tycoon - By Ally Blake Page 0,39
was a man with roots as deep as his city was tall.
‘Rosalind?’
‘Do you sleep on the couch?’ she said overly loudly, to cut him off.
‘My bedroom and the study are in the level above. More bedrooms, wet bar; games room below.’
She nodded. ‘Your home is really beautiful.’
‘Thanks.’ His voice rumbled through the wide, open room, but he might as well have whispered them into her ear, the way it affected her.
He was different from the guys she usually dated in more ways than she’d let on to Adele. No surfer’s body or professor’s poetry had ever brought her to this state of permanent anticipation and awareness of every detail around her, every tactile sensation, every natural beauty. And worse, neither had the dedicated life she’d led alone.
She gave herself a little shake and decided a change of subject was what was needed if she had any chance of finding her feet again.
She turned with a plastered-on smile. ‘So where’s this telescope you claim to have—still in its box? A figment of your imagination? A falsehood with which to impress the science girl?’
‘It’s…unpacked. Though honestly it’s always been more decorative than functional.’
She stuck a hand on her hip. ‘So it’s an expensive dust-collector?’
He winced. ‘The night I moved in, I looked through the thing. The trees were upside down. I gave up and watched the cricket match instead.’
‘Ever heard of an instruction manual?’
He stared back at her. She let her gaze rove over the glassware in his clear kitchen-cabinets, anywhere but at those hot, blue eyes.
‘Some refractors work that way. You just have to remember that in space nothing’s upside down or the right way up. Only your thinking makes it so.’ She glanced back at him as she said, ‘Your problem is the “centre of the universe” thing you have going on.’
‘I have the feeling if I keep you around long enough you’ll eventually knock that out of me.’
The very idea created a knot deep in her belly. How long was long enough? How long was a piece of string? How long until she relaxed, for Pete’s sake?
She tugged on the fingers of one hand until a couple of knuckles gave helpful cracks. ‘So where is it? I can give you a quick lesson.’
‘It’s in my bedroom.’
‘Of course it is. Is there any better place from which to spy on your neighbour’s trees?’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’
She tugged her fingers so hard something popped that she wasn’t sure ought to have popped. ‘I’ll take your word for it.’
She stretched out her tense hands, and again didn’t quite know where to look—while he stood at the bottom of the stairs clean-shaven, handsome as they came, oozing cool, calm and collectedness. Pure and unadulterated Kelly.
And in that moment Rosie knew she’d been kidding herself; she’d bitten off far more than she could chew.
Cameron was secure in the lifestyle he’d been born to, while it had taken her half a lifetime and a lot of fight to become half as comfortable in her own skin, and she was still very much a work in progress.
If the two of them came together in the kind of collision she felt was on the horizon, he’d not show a dint, while if genetics counted for anything she could well be damaged beyond repair.
When he threw his keys into a misshapen wooden bowl on a chunky hall-table at the bottom of the stairs, the sound made her jump.
She blew out a stream of air, her eyes scooting over the table to find that it was covered in clutter—a baseball cap, a couple of loose computer back-up-stick thingies on brightly coloured lanyards, a camera bag tipped over and empty, a coffee cup with remnants on the rim and a messy pile of opened envelopes in need of throwing out.
The flotsam and jetsam of a real life. And a reminder that Cameron wasn’t just a name, or a bank balance, or an alma mater, or an archetype she could shove into some pigeon hole that suited her.
Above all else he was a man. A real man. Possibly the first authentic man she’d ever known.
Warmth curled throughout her insides, loosening all the immobilised places inside her. The feelings that tumbled in its wake came too thick and fast for her to even hope to herd them somewhere safe. She just dug her toes into her shoes and waited for the waves to stop.
Thankfully Cameron was in the kitchen by that stage, with his back to her and his