"You don"t have a home phone number?"
"Too difficult, considering..."
"Considering?"
She paused then, wondering quite how to put it in such a way that a man who"d likely never felt a need to deny himself pleasure for the sake of reason would understand. In the end she really saw no choice but to say, "I live in a caravan."
Instead of flinching at the very thought-oh, it had happened to her before!-Cameron laughed. Uproariously. As though she"d turned into all the comedians in the world combined.
Her eyes flew up to clash with his. "What"s so funny about living in a caravan?"
"Nothing at all," he said, his voice still rippling with amus.e.m.e.nt. "I think if you owned some suburban Queenslander or lived in a flash city-apartment I"d have been disappointed."
He"d moved closer, his face now lit by the reflections in a shop window behind her. "So, tomorrow night. Dinner. Just the two of us. I"ll call the planetarium with a location."
"You could do that." She bit the inside of her lip only to find that, now he was within the required proximity, it was practically swollen with the desire to lock with his. "Though I do have a mobile phone."
His voice was low and dry as he said, "Do you, now?"
"I never remember to take it with me," she justified. "And it"s so ridiculously small that I lose it four days out of seven, so I rarely bother giving the number out. But it"s there. If you"d like it."
"That"ll do just fine."
She bent into the car and fumbled through her bag for her phone, and the slip of paper on which her number was written, as she didn"t for the life of her know what it was. Then realised she was giving him a fine view of her tush, and stood up so straight she hit her head on the doorframe.
Pretending she hadn"t, she jauntily threw him her phone. He punched her number into his, and when she looked at him blankly he did the same for hers. It made her feel like she was nineteen again, in a nightclub, half-hoping the cute guy would call, half-hoping he"d leave her be.
She shoved her phone back into her bag so roughly her knuckles sc.r.a.ped on an inner zip. She then looked up and directly into his eyes from barely a foot away. Those relentless blue eyes...
Kiss me, she yearned inside her head.
No, don"t kiss me. Yearning led to pining, which led to languishing. And that was not for her. Yearning led to pining, which led to languishing. And that was not for her.
He leaned in.
G.o.d, yes, please kiss me!
His warm breath slid past her ear as he pressed firm lips against her cheek. With an undisciplined sigh her eyelids fluttered shut, and she let herself open up just a little, just enough so that she could truly feel the moment. His touch, his scent, his strength. The way he made her feel feminine and desirable just as she was.
When he pulled away, her whole body swayed with him. Her eyelids darted open to find his eyes focussed on her lips with such intensity it took her breath away.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips, and his eyes clouded over, so dark, so hot. She had two choices: throw herself at him, or remove herself from a situation which suddenly felt like it was getting out of her control.
She slid deeper inside the cover of the car and swung the door between them.
Coming to as if from a trance, Cameron growled, "I"ll talk to you tomorrow."
"It is tomorrow."
The darkness brightened but the heat remained as his eyes shot to hers. "So it is."
"And time I got home to my nice warm bed."
His accompanying smile was so broad she had the perfect view of a pair of sharp incisors.
"And you to yours," she added.
This time his growl came without words.
She took that as the opportune moment to give a noncommittal wave before diving into the car and buckling up while he closed the door for her. The fact that she remembered which pedal was the accelerator amazed her as she drove into the night.
Her head throbbed, her knuckles stung, and the voice in the back of her head pointed out she"d lived in one spot for a while now, and Peru was nice this time of year...
An hour later, after Rosie had realised she was too wired to get any sleep, she took a shower and got changed from her pyjamas back into jeans, a warm jumper, and her mangy brown boots in preparation for heading out to the edge of the thicket in which she often spent her early mornings with a tent, a sleeping bag and her favourite old telescope.
She put the TV on while she made herself some jam on toast, not sure how she hadn"t keeled over from a sugar rush from the amount she"d already eaten the night before.
The name Quinn Kelly barked from her TV, and she spun and leaned her backside against her tiny kitchen bench.
She didn"t know the man, but he was about the most famous personality in town. A charismatic man, with a deep Australian drawl overlaid with enough Irish lilt for it to be unforgettable. He was outrageously good-looking even with his seventieth birthday just around the corner. She recognised him the moment he came on screen in what must have been a repeat of that morning"s financial-news report.
She looked through the crooked smile and stunning blue eyes for a sign that all was not well. Or, more truthfully, for signs that Cameron had been wrong and his father was fine. But, as though Cameron was sitting beside her pointing out the subtle nuances of pain etched across his father"s face buried deep beneath the infamous smile, she knew something wasn"t right.
She"d lived through the sudden loss of one parent and the permanent loss of another, and she wouldn"t wish either situation on anyone. Especially not on the man who"d asked the barista at the casino to put extra marshmallows in her hot chocolate just because he thought she might like it.
She picked up the remote and jabbed at the off switch. The small screen went black. "They were marshmallows," she blurted at her reflection in the small, black screen. "Get a grip."
She grabbed her backpack and headed out into the frosty darkness.
That next evening Rosie arrived at the mid-city address Cameron had invited her to, only to find there was nothing there. Just a cold sidewalk with a handful of newly planted trees looking drab and leafless in the winter darkness, and grey plasterboard two storeys high lining the entire block.
She banged the soles of her knee-high boots on the ground to warm them, and wished she"d brought a cardigan to wear over her floaty paisley-purple dress. But obviously she"d lost her mind the second she"d agreed to come.
She looked up and down the block. A group of bright young things in even less clothing than she wore skipped merrily across the road, arms intertwined. Their voices faded, then it was just her once more.
Her and her chatty subconscious.
What if he was stuck at work? What if he was alone somewhere, trapped under something heavy? Or, better yet, what if he was about to prove how beautifully unavailable he was, how ideal a choice for a first date, by standing her up on the second?
Just as she was about to give herself a pat on the back for being immensely gifted at picking the right wrong men after all, a concealed doorway opened up within the wall of grey, revealing a figure silhouetted within the gap. A figure with s.e.xily ruffled hair, broad shoulders and shirt sleeves rolled up over the kind of sculpted forearms that made her think this was a guy who knew how to fix a leaky tap.
Cameron. Even cloaked in darkness there was no doubting it was him.
"I"m late. Again," she said, her voice gravelly.
He pushed the hole in the wall open wider. "You"re right on time."
She shook her head and hastened across the path. When she was close enough to see his eyes so blue, like the wild forget-me-nots scattered throughout her wayward back yard, he said, "You look beautiful."
"So do you," she admitted before she even thought to censor herself.
"Why, thank you."
She tucked her hair behind her ear and looked anywhere but at him. "Where are we?"
"We"re not there yet."
Cameron shut the hole in the wall and locked it with a huge padlock, then pa.s.sed her a great, hulking, orange workman"s helmet.
"You have to be kidding," she said.
"Put it on or we go no further."
"I"ll get hat hair."
He glanced briefly at the waves that for once had been good to her and curled in all the right directions. "While inside these walls, you"re not taking the thing off."
"Jeez, you"re demanding. You could try a little charm."
"Fine," he said, putting his own helmet on and only ending up looking s.e.xier still in a strong, manly, muscly, blue-collar kind of way. "Please, Rosalind, wear the helmet lest something drop on your head and kill you and I have no choice but to hide your body."
She grimaced out a smile. But all she said as she lugged the thing atop her head and strapped herself in was, "You"re lucky orange is my colour."
He stepped in and reached up to twist it into a more comfortable position, then looked back into her eyes. He said, "That I am."
He smiled down at her. She felt herself smiling back, hoping to seem the kind of woman who could get those smiles on demand. It seemed eighteen hours away from him hadn"t made her any more mindful. She wondered if it was too late to feign strep-throat or the plague.
She hoisted her handbag higher on her shoulder and gripped tight on the strap. "Is this going to be some kind of extreme-sport type of dinner? Should I have brought knee pads and insurance?"
"Stick close to me and you"ll be fine."
Said the scorpion to the turtle.
He tucked her hand into his elbow so that their hips knocked and their thighs brushed, and Rosie felt nothing as straightforward as fine as they tramped over tarpaulins, beneath scaffolding and past piles of bricks and steel girders, until they reached a lift concealed behind heavy, silver plastic sheeting.
Rosie said, "I feel like a heroine in a bad movie with people in the audience yelling "don"t go in there!""
He waved her forward. "Go in there. Trust me."
She glanced at him, at the come-hither smile, the dark-blue eyes, the tempting everything-else. Trust him? Right now she was having a hard time trusting herself.
She hopped in the lift, and for the next one and a half minutes did her best not to breathe too deeply the delicious scent of another freshly laundered shirt. Or maybe it was just him. Just clean, yummy Cameron.
She hoped this date would go quickly. Then at least she could say she"d given it a good old try. And know she could still rely completely on her judgement.
As the lift binged, Rosie flinched so hard she pulled a muscle in her side. Cameron moved to her, resting a hand against her back, and she flinched again. Then closed her eyes in the hope he hadn"t noticed.
She felt the whisper of his breath against her neck a moment before he murmured by her ear. "Now we"re here." we"re here."
"Where, exactly?"
"CK Square."
The lift doors swished open, and what she saw had her feet glued to the lift floor. "Holy majoly," Rosie breathed out.
They had reached the top floor of the building, or what would would be the top floor. The structure was in place, but apart from steel beams crisscrossing the air like a gigantic spider-web there was nothing between them and the heavens but velvet-black sky. be the top floor. The structure was in place, but apart from steel beams crisscrossing the air like a gigantic spider-web there was nothing between them and the heavens but velvet-black sky.
Cameron gave her a small shove to the left, and that was when she saw the charming wrought-iron table set for two around which candles burned on every given surface, their flames protected by shimmering gla.s.s jars. A cart held a number of plates covered in silver domes, and a bottle of wine chilled in an ice bucket to one side.
It was all so unexpected she felt as though the lift floor had dropped out from under her.
"Cameron," she said, her voice puny. "What have you gone and done?"
"I needed to make up for the farce at the Red Fox."
And, it seemed, for every mediocre date she"d ever endured in her lifelong pursuit of cardboard-cutout companions.
Cameron guided her round neat piles of plasterboard and buckets of paint to the table. Only when his hand slid from her back to pull out her chair did she realise how chilly it was.
She let her handbag slump to the floor and sat, knees glued together, heels madly tapping the concrete floor.
The second he"d finished pouring her a gla.s.s of wine, she grabbed it and took a swig. For warmth. He caught her eye and smiled. She downed the rest of the gla.s.s.
"So, how was your day?" he asked, and she laughed so suddenly her hand flew to her mouth lest she spit wine all over the beautiful table. "Did I say something funny?"
She put down the gla.s.s, and with her finger pushed it well out of reach. "Well, yeah. We"re currently sitting atop the world, surrounded by what looks to be every candle in Brisbane. And you"re actually expecting me to remember how my day was?"
She looked down, picked up a silver spoon and polished it with her thumb. "Of course, you"ve probably had dinner here a hundred times, so none of this is in the slightest bit unusual for you."
She put down the spoon and sat on her hands. He poured himself a gla.s.s of wine slowly, then refilled hers just as slowly. Maybe he didn"t feel the tension building in the cold air. Maybe she was the only one second guessing why they were here.
As he pushed her gla.s.s back towards her, he said, "I have eaten Chinese takeaway atop a nearly finished building many, many times when the deadline came down to the wire and every second of construction counted. But my only company has been men in work boots. I"m not sure candles would have been appropriate."
She slid her eyebrows north in her best impression of nonchalance. "Did you just compare me with sweaty men? I may just swoon."
Cameron"s eyes narrowed, but she caught a glimpse of neat white teeth as a smile slipped through. "Eat first, then swoon. I"m afraid this will be a shorter meal than last night. The fact we are here at all at this time of night without supervision means that we are breaking enough laws and union rules to get me shut me down."
Rosie tried to do a happy dance at the "shorter meal" remark, but alas she found mischief even s.e.xier than smooth talk. She clasped her hands together, leaned forward and whispered, "Seriously?"
He put the bottle down and leaned close enough that she could see candlelight dancing in his eyes. "Bruce, my project manager, just about quit when I told him what I had in mind."
"Just about?"
The eyecrinkles deepened and all breath seeped quietly from her lungs.