to a job that isn’t freelance. Not to a home that you can’t up and move with an hour’s notice. Not even to your own name.’
The heat in her eyes made his lungs burn as he breathed deep to keep from saying any more; his skin felt a hundred degrees. And he’d never been so turned on in his whole life. Not by success, or power, or by being the one man in town gutsy enough to build the tallest, greatest, most spectacular buildings his city had ever seen.
‘Fine,’ she shot back. ‘If I’m the world’s greatest hypocrite, then you are the most wilfully pig-headed man in the universe. Do you have any kind of clue what you have? You are surrounded by people who love you so much.’ Her eyes flickered from his for a moment before slamming into him again. ‘Family who need you, who want you in their lives no matter what. You have roots in this place a mile deep, and you’ve done everything in your power to chop them off. One of these days they might not grow back, then you’ll have the faintest clue what it truly feels like to be alone in the universe.’
Two fat tears slid from her eyes and peeled pathetically down her cheeks. The ache it created inside him knocked him sideways. He wished he knew how to tell her. He wished she would let him hold her, kiss her, show her, so that he didn’t have to find the words—as he wasn’t even sure he knew what the words should be. But she let him off the hook by staring hard at her shoes.
‘Can you please thank you mother for a lovely party? Give my regards to the rest.’
She looked up and captured his eyes with hers. He felt like his whole life had led him to this one minute in time. The defining minute of his life. Was he really a good man after all? Would a good man get on his knees and tell her how he felt, or would a good man realise he’d hurt the woman enough and let her go?
All of a sudden an explosion of sounds startled them both rigid. A half-second later fireworks burst and sparkled in the sky over the river.
The balcony quickly became crowded with guests, oohing and ahhing, and Cameron felt Rosalind being tugged from him. It wasn’t until he lost her within the sea of faces that he realised she’d been the one doing all the tugging.
Suddenly she was gone.
And, though he was surrounded by people, including the family he’d taken back into his life this night, he already felt more alone than he’d even known it was possible to feel.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CAMERON had ditched his jacket and tie, his sleeves were rolled up past his elbows, his forearms leant against the cold stone of the ballroom balcony and he watched blue turn to pink as morning came round.
Venus was already up, steadfast in the sky. Unlike the other heavenly bodies that had set with the moon, there was no unsteady flickering, no distracting twinkling. She was constant, unwavering, enchanting and all alone.
Something hard and heavy thumped behind his ribs, and not for the first time in the past twelve hours. In fact, the thumping and heaviness had come over him the moment Rosalind had left him standing in this exact place.
The hours had passed. He and his family had retired to the library once all the guests had gone, and he had told them all about Quinn’s heart attacks and stubborn refusal to seek treatment, and together they had fought, reconciled, laughed and cried—and he’d come to realise that he’d never in his life been really alone.
But Rosalind had—solitary in her work, isolated in her home, alone even in her family. And it didn’t matter any more that she might have done everything in her power to keep at arm’s length those things that could provide her the same easy comfort he’d enjoyed; he finally understood the reason.
Loving something, then losing it, hurt like hell.
Was she out there hurting right now? Hurting and alone, because of him? Because he’d been too stubborn, too scrupulous, too disenchanted to take on the mess that came with the good in any real relationship?
A good man would suck up his pride, put himself in the unpleasant position at being rejected twice in twenty-four hours and do what he had to do to to make sure the person he cared about knew she