Adele rubbed a hand down her arm. ‘Kiddo, you’re starting to look a little flushed. Are you feeling quite yourself?’
And then it hit her.
She was as different as a person could be from the kind of date Cameron Kelly usually had on his arm at parties—She, in her unapologetic hand-me-down glory, with her au naturel hair desperately in need of a cut, and the big trap she couldn’t keep shut. And he knew that.
Yet of all the women who would have jumped at the chance to be on his arm dressed in designer clothing, he’d asked her.
Rosie grabbed Adele’s hand, tucked it into the crook of her arm and tugged her away from the shop window. ‘I’m done here. We’re going to the Valley.’
Adele tugged against her hand. ‘No, Rosie! I’m not going to let you find some sad old second-hand prom dress to wear to Quinn Kelly’s birthday bash. Please, for me, for the sake of the future princes of Brisbane you may one day be able to introduce me to, no!’
Cameron drove up Samford Road, one hand loosely working the steering wheel, the other running back and forth across his top lip.
Within hours he’d be face to face with his father for the first time since he was a teenager.
He could have given his mother a believable excuse. None of the family would have been surprised. But now that he’d committed he was not backing out.
A familiar National Park sign had him turning left towards Rosalind’s. He breathed deep and pressed the accelerator to the floor. Even the whisper of her name helped relieve the pressure building inside his head.
Their night together had been beyond anything he could have expected. It was the most intense, affecting and wicked night of love-making of his young life. And right then he couldn’t have been more impressed with himself for having had the mettle to go after her.
As he drove up her dirt driveway he was forced to slow, to shift his mind to focus on the matters at hand so that the low-hanging trees didn’t scratch his car, and so he didn’t land in the same great hole in the ungraded path in which he’d almost lost himself when he’d dropped her home the morning before.
That made it almost thirty-six hours since he’d last laid eyes on her, since he’d left her at the door of her crazy caravan, with its hills, sun and flowers painted all over the sides like some leftover relic of the seventies. Since he’d touched her hair, and held her tight, and kissed that spot on her lower back that made her writhe.
The tyres jerked against the wheel, and he concentrated fully on finding a path that led him to her door relatively unscathed.
The ground was dry, so his dress shoes didn’t collect any mud as he picked his way up the path made only by her daily footsteps rather than by any kind of design.
He looked for a bell, but found nothing of the sort. At a loss for a moment, he lifted his hand to knock thrice on the corrugated door.
Shuffling was followed by a bump, then a muffled oath. Then, when she didn’t appear in an instant, he tugged at his tie and hitched his belt so that it was perfectly set just below his navel. He straightened his shoulders and cleared his throat. He had no reason to be nervous. So why did he feel like he was seventeen again, and picking his date up for the senior dance?
The door whipped open, and that was where all fidgeting stopped.
Backlit by the warm, golden light of a small desk-lamp, and helped along by the thin moonlight falling softly through the clouds above, Rosalind stood in the doorway looking like she’d stepped out of a 1930’s Hollywood movie-set.
Her shoulders were bare, bar a thin silver strap angling across one shoulder. Lilac chiffon fell from an oversized rosette at her chest and swirled about her long, lean form like she had been sewn into it. Several fine silver bangles shimmered on her wrist. And her hair was pinned at the nape, with soft tendrils loose and curling about her cheeks.
He’d never once in his entire life been rendered speechless—not when one of his mates had streaked during the debate-team final. Not when he’d made a three-hundred percent profit on the sale of his first property. Not even when his father’s only response to his declaration that he could never work for a man with so little backbone had been that, as long as he didn’t work for the Kelly family, he was not welcome in the Kelly family home.
But Rosalind Harper, in all her rare, noble, charming loveliness, had him at a complete loss for words.
‘Hi,’ she said, her voice breathy, and he knew it had nothing to do with her rushing about before she opened the door.
She looked at him like she’d be happy to keep looking at him for as long as she possibly could. Like he was all she’d ever wanted, and all she would ever want.