He pulled away, blinked up at the white crescent high in the sky and said, "I also came here because I don"t like leaving a conversation unfinished."
He felt Rosalind cross her arms beside him. "Oh, I think we both had ample opportunity to say what we wanted to say."
"Can I ask...if I hadn"t kissed you...?"
She shivered, and this time he knew it wasn"t the cold. He wanted to wrap her up in his jacket, but he knew she wasn"t near ready for that. Not yet.
"What do you want from me, Cameron?"
"Truth?"
"Always."
"I didn"t like watching you walk away tonight."
She said nothing. The conversation it seemed would be all up to him.
"I"ve been having a great time being with you. I get a kick out of your frankness. You must have noticed that I have huge trouble keeping my hands off you. And none of that has changed. All I"ve ever hoped is that we might continue to enjoy one another"s company for as long as it"s enjoyable. And not a minute longer."
He felt her breathe in. Breathe out. "And who gets to decide when that minute"s up?"
"You can, if it needs to be that way."
"And if I think that minute has already pa.s.sed?"
"Do you?"
He looked down to find she was no longer staring at the moon; she was watching him, her eyes wary, calculating, her mind changing back and forth with every pa.s.sing second.
"I don"t want to hurt you," he said.
Her chin lifted. "I don"t plan on getting hurt."
She was talking in the present tense. And, though she wasn"t smiling at him, neither was she scowling. He"d done enough. Relief poured through him, its intensity rather more than he would have expected.
"Aren"t you cold?" she asked.
And he realised he was shivering. She might have been rugged up like she was about to spend a week on Everest but he was still in his jeans, T-shirt and track top.
"I"m absolutely freezing," he said. Now he"d noticed it, he really noticed it. He rubbed his hands down his arms and stamped his sneaker-clad feet before they turned to ice.
"You have to make the most of your body heat."
He stopped jumping about like a frog and asked, "My body heat?" body heat?"
"One"s body heat," she reworded. body heat," she reworded.
"I was going to say, that was a line I hadn"t heard before."
"Hey, buddy, I have no agenda here. I was out here minding my own business. You came looking for me."
Still no smile, but the bite was back. Attraction poured through him like it had been simply waiting to split the dam behind which he"d held it in check.
"I did, didn"t I?"
She stared at him, the wheels behind her eyes whirring madly. Finally she demanded, "Get inside the tent, unzip the sleeping bag, and wrap it around you. It"s thermal. You"ll be toasty in a matter of minutes."
"Who knew you had such a Florence Nightingale side to you?"
"You"re too heavy for me to carry you back to your car if you freeze to death," she muttered, then gave him a little shove.
From outside the tent Rosie watched as Cameron"s head hit the roof as he snuck inside.
He"d come looking for her. In the middle of the night, along unmarked roads and through wet, th.o.r.n.y bushland, he"d come. That was an entirely new experience. Men had left before but none had ever come back. Not one.
She hadn"t had any past experiences from which to extrapolate the right course to take. All she"d been able to do was follow her instincts. They"d gently urged her to let him back in. To understand that his dad"s betrayal ran deep and that had caused his panic. And that, now that the boat had righted itself, things would be as they were.
She didn"t have time to decide if she"d been cool and sophisticated or simply stupid, as right then his elbow slid along the right wall of the tent, making an unhappy squeaking sound against the synthetic fabric. The next loud "Oomph," meant she had to go in after him in case he managed to break any equipment worth as much as her caravan.
He turned and saw her there.
Moonlight glowed through the tight mesh, creating glints in his eyes. Though she soon realised the glints would have been there even if they"d been in pitch blackness.
The pom-poms on top of her beanie brushed the ceiling, while he had to bend so as not to stick his head through the top. She glanced up, saw his hair catching and creating static, went to tell him so, but he reached out to her, grabbed a hunk of her cardigan and pulled her to him. Her breath shot from her lungs in a sharp whoosh as her chest thumped against his.
She desperately clambered for her instincts, hoping they might come to her rescue again, but they were as immobilised as she was.
He dropped to his knees and she came with him. They were nose to nose, the intermingling of warm breath making her cheeks hot. Her heart thundered in her ears. She felt lightheaded. Little tornados curled about her insides.
And she knew, as well as she knew her own name, that she"d done the right thing. Their minute wasn"t up.
He snuck a hand along her neck, his thumb stroking the soft spot just behind her ear. Her whole body responded, opening to him like a flower to the sun. She immediately contracted in fear at exposure of how much she wanted this. Wanted him. Was willing to tell herself whatever she needed to hear to have him.
But then he leaned in and kissed her. Gently. Slowly. And all the last bits of her that hadn"t melted finally did so. She sank into him and kissed him back.
Sensation so astronomical overwhelmed her until she could only pick out pieces to focus upon lest she drown in the delectable whole.
The subtle strength of his hand cupped the back of her head. His breath tickled the column of her neck before he rained kisses over every inch of her throat. Her cardigan tie slithered across her back as he undid it.
She came to from far, far away when suddenly it all came to a cruel halt.
She opened her eyes to find him staring at her chest. Her chest wasn"t all that impressive without a lot of help.
"What on earth are you wearing?" he asked.
She looked down to find his fingers enclosed over a fat, furry, pig-shaped b.u.t.ton on her pink flannelette pyjama-top.
She slapped a hand across her eyes. "My pyjamas. Oh G.o.d, I was cold, I was lazy. I was feeling sorry for myself."
"Rosalind." The way he said her name... The way he said her name...
She let her hand slip away and looked up into his eyes. His deep, dark, bottomless, persuasive blue eyes.
He slipped the first b.u.t.ton from its hole, and her breath caught.
And when he kissed her again she felt so frail she believed she might just shatter into a thousand pieces before the night was through.
Hours later, Rosie stroked slow fingers over Cameron"s naked chest while his fingers played gently with her hair.
The rising sun washed beams of gold through the opening of the tent, leaving his beautiful profile in sharp relief, while she was shielded from the beams" touch by his large form.
So it had to be. No matter how much they each struggled against their true natures, he would always be a child of the light, she of the dark.
Perhaps the only moments they could simply still be together were the in-between moments, right at dawn or dusk, when everything seemed softer, gentler, quieter. When nothing, past or future, mattered more than the moment itself.
A great sadness overwhelmed her. Why, she didn"t know. After the night she"d had, she should be feeling anything but sad.
She rested her chin on the back of her hands and in the rosy half-light her thoughts spilled unchecked from her lips. "I"ve come to the brilliant conclusion that you"re the human equivalent of Alpha Centauri."
He opened his eyes and her sadness slipped away. He turned his head to watch her, a quizzical smile only adding more character to his beautiful face. "Would it be in my best interests to ask why?"
She grinned from the top of her mussed hair to the tips of her bare toes. "I"m gonna tell you anyway. Alpha Centauri appears as a single point of light to the naked eye, but is actually a system of three stars."
"You think I have a split personality?"
She held up a stilling finger. "I think there"s more to you than the face you show the world. You"re also bright, eye-catching and seem much closer than you really are."
"Eye-catching, eh?" He closed one eye. "And how long were you lying there coming up with all that?"
She shrugged, her upper body sliding deliciously against his. "Not long."
"Mmm." He lifted a heavy hand and trailed it down her naked back, sending goose b.u.mps popping up all over her skin. "So how far away is my heavenly twin right now?"
"Four-point-three trillion kilometres."
His laughter lifted her as it echoed through his ribs.
Rosie buried her blushing cheeks in a mound of sleeping bag. "I"m sorry. I just compared you with spheres of hot gases. And after all the nice things you just did for me. And to to me. It seems to have opened neural pathways better left closed." me. It seems to have opened neural pathways better left closed."
"I only have myself to blame."
She lifted her head and rubbed a knuckle across the end of her cold nose. He lifted his head to kiss the spot.
This was bliss. This made it all worth it. Surely...
She looked directly into his disarming eyes as she said, "All that Alpha Centauri stuff-I just meant that you"ve turned out to be not quite who I expected you"d be."
"A man ought to do his best to exceed expectations wherever possible."
"Maybe a man ought to, though in my experience not all that many bother to try."
"Your experience?" he rumbled. "Now, there"s a subject I could warm to."
He waggled his eyebrows, and Rosie felt like she"d blushed enough for one day. Any more and her cheeks might stay that way.
"This is not not the time for that conversation." She dragged herself into a sitting position. She slipped her flannelette pyjama-top on, and quickly added the beanie and scarf, suddenly cold now that she was no longer wrapped in Cameron. the time for that conversation." She dragged herself into a sitting position. She slipped her flannelette pyjama-top on, and quickly added the beanie and scarf, suddenly cold now that she was no longer wrapped in Cameron.
His fingers slunk beneath her top and trailed down her back, creating a slip and shift of heat that made her want to give in and stay, talk, confess, believe...
But, like Alpha Centauri, the four-point-three trillion ways he made her feel safe and secure and precious were illusions all. At the end of the day, she was all she had. And that was fine. She could enjoy him in the in-between times. And that would be enough. If she told herself enough times she might even start to believe it.
"Then how about we put it right up front during a Sat.u.r.day night drink before my dad"s birthday party?" he said.
"Before your who and what?" she asked. Her head whipped round to stare at him, to find him leaning on one arm, bare chest rippling with manly gorgeousness that made her sure the canoe, bike and jet ski in his garage weren"t the dust collectors his telescope was.
Her mouth watered. She dragged her eyes back to his-like that had ever made anything any easier!
"My father"s seventieth," he said. "Something you said has been percolating for a while now. And last night, as I cleaned the floors of my house with my hours of pacing, I made up my mind. I"m going."
"What did I say?"
"That you spent too long wishing you"d had the chance to know your father, no matter what kind of man he might have been. I need to face the man, to ease my mind. And, since you"re the one who convinced me as much, I thought you might like to tag along."
Rosie breathed in and out. In and out. Not eight hours earlier he"d wanted to cool things down. Now he was making plans whereby she would meet his parents. His whole family. She tried to figure out what he was playing at, but all that beautiful, warm skin was making it hard for her to see the bigger picture.
"Sat.u.r.day? I can"t," she said, searching the end of the sleeping bag with her feet for her jeans and sighing with relief when her toes. .h.i.t denim.
"It"ll be one h.e.l.l of a party."
"I"m sure it will."
The sleeping bag around her bare thighs slid away as Cameron sat up, and it pooled low around his hips. Staring at the bland wall of the tent, she whipped on her cardigan and did the bow up tight.
He leaned in and pushed her hair aside, laying a small, soft kiss on her neck.
She closed her eyes and tried to ignore the warmth washing across her skin, the grip of his gravitational pull tugging her into oblivion. But it felt too good. He felt so good. So difficult, so dangerous, but so very good.
"Cameron..."
"The truth is, I need you there."
She squeezed her forehead tight, trying to push away how wonderful those three words-I need you-felt.
Once upon a time all she"d wanted was to feel needed, wanted, loved. She"d been a good kid, she"d studied hard, and she"d silently hugged her mum whenever she"d found her crying, even when deep down she"d known it would never be enough.