Dating the Rebel Tycoon (12 page)

By the time the front gates of the Kellys’ family home loomed, Rosie was so nervous she could barely feel her toes.

Meeting the infamous Kellys was only half the problem. She was here for Cameron, and so long as she was herself and did her all to support him in his quest then she couldn’t go wrong. But from the second he’d shown up at her door looking so suave, so sexy, so dark and delicious in his black tie, she had
found it hard to remember how it was that she had promised him that she would be just fine when one day it all came to an end.

Cameron pulled up to the front gates, which opened in time for him to slide the car through. The charcoal-coloured driveway, embedded in a swirling pattern of white quartz, curled around a pristine green mound sprinkled with neat rows of white and orange roses.

Rosie pushed herself an inch off the seat. ‘You have to be kidding me. Is that an Irish flag?’

Cameron didn’t even need to glance at the garden to know what she was talking about. His mouth quirked into a smile. ‘Welcome to Kelly Manor, where nothing is done by halves if it can be done twice as big.’

They drove on down the long, straight drive through an archway of oak trees which opened out to reveal a three-storey, dark brick, and cream trim, Edwardian-style home that looked like something out of an English period film.

Cameron pulled his car to a stop at the top of the circular drive. A liveried servant held the door open for Rosie, then took Cameron’s keys in order to park the car goodness knew where, as the whole front drive was clear.

‘Is this an intimate gathering?’ she asked.

‘Of course. Only a few hundred of my father’s best friends.’ There was no mistaking the tinge of bitterness in his voice.

She snuck her hand into the crook of his arm. ‘You are doing the right thing. I meant it when I said if I had the chance to sit down and talk to my dad, to get things off my chest and let him explain himself in his own words, I’d take it.’

‘You are a magnanimous woman, Rosalind Harper.’

‘Well you, Cameron Kelly, are an amazing man. With a family who obviously want you to be a part of their lives. Don’t blow it or I might never forgive you.’

‘We can’t have that, can we?’ He tucked her hand close, and she could feel him drawing from her strength. It was a heady feeling indeed. One she found she liked very very much.

Fearing he might see in her eyes how much this was all affecting her, how much he was affecting her, she looked over her shoulder to find a Bentley cruising up the drive. ‘This place is where the Thunderbirds got all their ideas, right?’

His laughter rumbled through her. ‘Now what on earth are you talking about?’

‘The cars. Where do they all go? I mean, the whole house opens up and there’s an underground car-park beneath it all, right?’

Cameron unhooked her hand from his arm and snaked his arm around her hip as he guided her up the front steps. The move was possessive and sensual, sending her nerves spiralling up into the sky.

‘You watch too much television,’ he murmured against her ear, a wisp of hair tickling her cheek.

She leaned back into him. ‘I work odd hours. I have an excuse.’

Cameron pressed the doorbell, and Rosie turned away to fix her hair, lick her top teeth in case of lipstick smudges and generally take in as much oxygen as she could before she entered the kind of rarefied air she had not had to endure since St Grellans.

‘Everything okay?’ Cameron asked, his hand touching her elbow in reassurance.

Over the top of the box hedges, Brisbane twinkled in the distance. ‘Everything’s fine. And for the record the view from your place is
way
better than this.’

Cameron grinned as the twelve-foot front door swung open, and he guided her inside. ‘I knew I brought you for a reason.’

If the Kelly family had intended the front of their home to be imposing, it had nothing on the ballroom in which the party was being held.

Rosie’s cold hands gripped the edge of a curling wrought-iron railing as she looked down from the gallery into the main room below.

Over two hundred people in evening dress milled about the massive rectangular space. A gleaming parquet floor shone in
the light of six crystal chandeliers hanging from the multi-vaulted ceiling; a string quartet played in one corner of the room, a jazz band was setting up in the other, and white roses tumbled from every surface available.

She felt a sudden need to hitch up her dress.

‘Come on,’ Cameron said.

He took her hand and practically dragged her down the staircase and through the crowd so fast that he didn’t have to stop and talk to anyone, and onto the dance floor, where several couples were swaying to the beautiful music.

He took her in his arms, pulled her close and together they danced.

With a blinding flash that had her losing her footing for a second, Rosie found herself deep in the middle of a memory she’d long since forgotten.

She was at the only school dance she’d ever attended. She’d been invited by a boy in her science class—Jeremy somebody. He’d been two inches shorter than her, and had always worn his trousers too tight, but in those days even to be asked…

Halfway through the night, dancing alone within the pulsating crowd, she’d turned to find herself looking into a pair of stunning blue eyes brimming with effortless self-belief. Cameron Kelly. A senior. She’d looked and she’d ached, if not to be with him then to be like him—content, fortunate, valued. He hadn’t looked away.

And like that they’d danced with one another for no more than a quarter of a song before one of his friends had dragged him away for photos with the gang.

Cameron pulled her closer and drew her back to the present, just in time to hear him say, ‘If only you’d let me dance with you this close all those years ago then who knows what might have happened?’

Rosie snapped her head back so fast she heard her neck crack. ‘Excuse me?’

He pulled her back into his arms and wrapped her tighter
until her cheek was back against his chest, and she could feel the steady beat of his heart as he twirled her around the floor.

‘My senior-year dance,’ he said, the sound rumbling through her. ‘You were there, weren’t you?’

She closed her eyes lest he realise what she could no longer deny—that she was still very much the young girl with the naïve, wide-open heart that had seen something exceptional in him all those years ago.

‘You remember,’ she whispered.

‘Mmm. I remembered a couple of days back, actually. I forgot to mention it til now.’

Her knees wobbled in recognition of the smile in his voice. Her poor, struggling heart wobbled right along with them.

‘Skinny black jeans,’ he continued. ‘Hot-pink tank top, enough eyeliner to drown a ship. And I might be getting this part wrong, but did you have your hair in two long plaits?’

Rosie’s hand lifted off his shoulder to slap across her eyes. ‘Oh no, I’d forgotten that part. That was my “separate myself from the preppy, pastel suburban princesses before they separate themselves from me” phase. You know what? I’m not sure I ever grew out of that.’

Cameron slipped a finger beneath her chin and didn’t slide it away until she was looking into his eyes. Those beautiful, corn-flower, soulful, sexy, smiling eyes. ‘I’m glad. And for the record you looked adorable. And scary as hell.’

She blinked up at him, her brow furrowing. ‘Scary?’

‘God, yeah. I was mucking about, pretending to dance with my mates, and when I turned there was this stunning creature right under my eyes, chin up, eyes fierce, daring the world to even try telling her off for simply being herself. I was fairly sure that girl must have thought me ridiculous.’

‘Ridiculous?’ she repeated, beginning to feel like a parrot, but it was either that or say something she’d never be able to take back. That, in that moment, she’d been fairly sure she was looking at the most beautiful boy in the whole world.

She gripped his shoulder a tad too tightly, but he didn’t seem to notice. He just looked deep into her eyes with that barely there smile lingering upon his mouth.

‘It didn’t take any kind of genius on my part to know you were far too cool for the likes of me.’ He reached out and slid a finger under her fringe, pushing it off her face until he cupped her cheek. ‘You know what? Nothing you’ve said or done this week has made me think any differently. Only now I’m old enough not to give a damn.’

And then he kissed her, so softly, so gently, her heart turned inside out.

‘Well, if it isn’t little Cam Kelly. I’m not sure I believe my own eyes,’ a deep male voice drawled.

Rosie dragged herself out of the bottom of a beautiful dream and blinked into the warm light to find they’d stopped dancing.

And Cameron was no longer all hers.

His shoulders were stiff, his back straight, his neck tense as he stared at a taller man with slick hair and cold eyes.

‘Brendan, this is my friend, Rosalind Harper,’ Cameron said, his voice so cool if felt like the exhilarating warmth that had enveloped them both only moments earlier had all been in her imagination. ‘Rosalind, this is my brother, Brendan. He is the heir apparent to my father’s empire.’

Brendan gave her a short nod with a smile that didn’t light his eyes. She smiled back and offered a tiny curtsy. His eyes narrowed, but his smile broadened, and Rosie caught a glimpse of Cameron’s charisma therein.

‘Which by the old joke makes our Dylan the spare,’ Brendan said. ‘And what does that make you, brother?’

‘Delighted to be my own man.’

Feeling like she was in the middle of two lions circling one another, hoping to bite the other’s head off, Rosie disentangled herself from Cameron’s hold and waggled his little finger. ‘I think I’ll take a look around, see what there is to eat. Give you boys the chance to do what you need to do.’

‘I’ll come back for you soon,’ Cameron said.

Rosie smiled, but a shiver ran down her back as she thought it would be asking too much to have the same good luck twice. ‘Nice to meet you, Brendan.’

‘Likewise,’ he said, and this time she believed him.

As she walked away through a crowd of people she’d never met, and didn’t particularly want to, she glanced back to find Cameron and his brother already deep in heated conversation.

She’d brought him here, she’d made his first step bearable. Was that as far as she was needed? She kept walking straight ahead and ignored the sadness that had once again begun to settle in her chest.

It was all she’d ever known how to do.

T
EN
minutes later Rosie leant against a marble column in the corner of the room, a champagne glass in one hand, a couple of
hors d’oeuvres
secreted within a linen napkin in the other. The food hadn’t done much to ease the tightness in her chest; the champagne, on the other hand, had.

She watched Cameron and Brendan holding court with two politicians, a tennis pro and a guy with so many shiny medals on his chest she figured he was an army general.

For a guy who’d supposedly turned his back on all this guff, Cameron was in his element—while she was hiding lest she was forced to have another conversation about yachting, or golf, or the medical benefits of rhinoplasty.

‘Rosalind Harper, right?’

Rosie blinked and spun to find Meg Kelly at her shoulder, her chocolate-brown curls bouncing about her perfect pink cheeks, and her petite figure poured into a glittery copper number that could not possibly have been worn as well by another living soul.

‘Hey, Meg.’ Rosie clamped her fingers around her glass to stop herself from checking her hair, from tugging at her dress, from feeling awkward and gangly and everything Meg Kelly was not.

‘Having fun?’ Meg asked.

‘The mostest fun,’ Rosie said. ‘You?’

Meg’s face twisted in the way that only someone who somehow knew she would never wrinkle could twist her face.
‘I hate these things. So many ancient VIPs trying to kiss Dad’s butt. I mean, if they had vodka cruisers rather than this dry, old champagne then maybe, just maybe, these nights might not make me feel so much like my youth is just slipping away. You know what I mean?’

Rosie sipped her champagne and smiled with her eyes.

‘So how do your people celebrate birthdays?’ Meg asked.

Rosie spluttered on her drink. ‘My people?’

‘Your friends and family.’

Rosie mentally kicked herself. Cameron was from
good
people. His friends were at heart good people. It stood to reason Meg would be good person too. Just because this night had wrenched up some latent feelings of inferiority and doubt, that wasn’t her fault.

‘Pizza,’ Rosie said. ‘Beer. Ten-pin bowling. Birthday cake with used candles. Pressies under thirty bucks a pop.’

‘So, no ice-sculptures then?’ Meg asked.

They both turned to look at the six-foot-tall melting bust of Quinn Kelly’s head in the centre of the twenty-foot long head table.

‘Ah, no,’ Rosie said. ‘Not that I can remember.’

‘And don’t you now think those parties were the poorer for it?’ Meg’s voice was deadpan, but her eyes were sparkling.

Yep
, she thought,
Meg Kelly is one of the good ones
. She could barely imagine how hilarious she and Adele would be together.

‘So,’ Meg said, just as Rosie started to relax, ‘You and my brother are together.’

‘I think you’ll find your brother is over there,’ Rosie said carefully, ‘While I’m over here.’

Meg tapped the side of her nose. ‘I’m with you. Don’t want to jinx things.’

Rosie made to correct Meg, but then realised she had no way of defining what they were that would make sense to anyone outside the two of them. Actually, the longer she spent alone, she was finding it hard to make sense of it herself.

Suddenly Meg stood straight as a die. ‘Will you lookie there?’

Rosie’s gaze shifted back to Cameron, to find that his father had joined the group, and her relationship with Cameron once again moved to the back of the line.

Her eyes darted between the two men. They seemed civil, at least from a distance. Profile on, they looked so similar—both tall, both straight-backed, both broad and ridiculously good-looking. Princes among men.

Only she knew Quinn Kelly was a man who liked to keep secrets. Secrets that could destroy those who loved him and needed him most. Secrets that had already destroyed that part of Cameron that was open to trust.

She had to loosen her grip on her champagne glass for fear it might smash in her hand.

All she could do was stand on the sidelines and wait. Wait for him to sort himself out. Wait for him to come back to her. The irony of her situation in comparison with her mother’s wasn’t lost on her. And the rest of her champagne was downed in three seconds flat.

‘I truly never thought I’d see the day those two would manage to be in the same room together without shooting laser beams at one another with their eyes. Ever since Cam told dad he wasn’t going to work for KInG, it’s been the battlefield of Brisbane. What did you say to get him here?’ Meg asked.

‘Me?’ Rosie said, lifting her napkin to the rosette on her chest.

‘Yeah, you,’ Meg said with a smile. ‘It’s only since you came on the scene that he’s gone all soft and gooey around the edges. He called me twice this week. I don’t remember a time he called me that often in a month!’

Rosie’s stomach turned soft and gooey in half a second flat. But then she remembered that Cameron had not shared his fears about his father’s health with Meg. It was more likely he’d been fishing and the timing had been coincidental.

Then again, maybe not. Maybe the timing was every
thing. She stared into her champagne. Maybe everything in his life was backwards this week because of the situation with his dad.

An older couple who smelled of talcum powder and diamonds came wafting past, and Meg said just the right things to have them smiling and on their way.

‘You make it look so easy—the schmoozing,’ Rosie commented, her voice a tad breathless.

Meg sighed. ‘I sing rock songs in my head, imagine them all wearing suspenders and fish nets and carry a flask wherever I go.’

She tapped her bag, which clunked with a metallic sound, patted Rosie on the arm, winked and boogied back into the crowd, air-kissing along the way until she found Tabitha, and then together they danced like they were at a rave.

But Rosie had the distinct feeling that Meg Kelly was no more the ditzy socialite she appeared to be than Cameron Kelly had been the carefree, lackadaisical golden boy she’d once thought he was. Or the dark, hard character she’d thought he’d turned into.

‘What the hell is wrong with my brother, leaving you all alone in this crowd of vultures?’

Rosie turned to find Dylan Kelly leaning over her shoulder. She would have recognised him anywhere; he graced the social pages more than the rest of them combined. Fair, dashing, roguish, he grabbed her last
hors d’oeuvre
and popped it in his mouth.

‘There is nothing wrong with your brother,’ she said, snatching her near-empty champagne away lest he went for that too.

He grinned at her with his mouth full. ‘Meg was right—soft and gooey. The both of you.’

‘Sorry to disappoint,’ she said. ‘I don’t have a gooey bone in my body.’

He leant against the side of the column, close enough for her to smell his aftershave. It was nice, but it was not Cameron. Just the thought of Cameron’s clean, linen scent made her gooey, gooey, gooey.

‘And what do you know of my brother’s body?’ Dylan asked.

‘Are you absolutely certain the two of you are related?’ she asked. ‘Because I just can’t see it.’

Dylan’s laughter rang in her ears, and she wondered how Adele, Meg
and
Dylan would be in a room together. Add Tabitha, and it would be such a riot she’d be able to charge admission.

Her chest expanded expectantly at the thought that, if things continued to go well, her friendship circle could triple overnight. And all because Cameron had chosen to include her.

The second she had the chance, Rosie sought him out. To her eyes he stood out like a lantern on a foggy night. His dinner jacket was open, his left hand in his trouser pocket, his right hand lifting and falling as he told a story which held the group enthralled. Though his eyes never once touched on his father, who stood quietly to the side focussed completely on his youngest son, she knew Cameron knew he was there.

Dylan was mistaken; Cameron hadn’t left her alone. She hadn’t been rendered invisible once her work was done. She’d kept herself away, giving him the space she knew he needed.

Right?

Cameron’s mind wandered, and not for the first time. Only once his gaze found Rosalind, and he knew she was being entertained—that she was smiling, happy and in safe hands—could he begin to relax.

Right now she was being entertained by Dylan, a guy he’d never been stupid enough to leave alone with a date even without the added benefit of trust issues. But seeing his brother with Rosalind…

Nothing.

It wasn’t ambivalence he was feeling. Quite the opposite. He
knew
Rosalind was with him even when she wasn’t with him. His trust in her was absolute. And, in a night filled with extraordinary moments, that was one of the more unexpected.

Dylan leant in close to her to point out something on the
ceiling. The guy took the opportunity to place a hand on her waist, feigning a need for balance.

And in the blink of an eye Rosalind had hold of the offending hand, bending his fingers back ninety degrees, and his brother was begging for mercy.

Cameron’s first thought was,
that’s my girl
.

That was the moment he felt his father slide in beside him.

‘Nice girl,’ Quinn said—the first words that had been spoken directly to him by the man in years. He couldn’t have been less surprised.

‘Nice doesn’t even begin to cover it,’ Cameron said, turning to look his father in the eye.

He looked older. Thinner. In person there was the same air of gravitas and power about him that there had always been. But he couldn’t deny he’d seen what he’d seen, felt what he’d felt. There was no point in putting it off any longer.

‘You’re sick, aren’t you, Dad?’ His voice was dry. Emotionless. He had no idea how, as the words burned the inside of his throat as he said them.

‘Wherever did you get that idea?’ Quinn asked, smiling for his audience of hundreds.

‘Dad,’ Cameron pressed. ‘Come on. This is me you’re talking to—the one person on the planet who knows better than to fall for your line of bull. So tell me what’s wrong?’

Quinn blinked at him as though not only seeing him for the first time in a decade and a half, but really
seeing
him for the first time.

‘Nothing major. Just a couple of minor heart-attacks.’

Knowing had been one thing, having that thing confirmed was a whole other level of hell. Somehow he managed to keep his cool. ‘How minor?’

‘Minor enough I was able to call for Dr Carmichael myself when I felt them coming on. He brought me round both times without the need for anything so gauche as an ambulance. Just as well; those drivers would have sold some trumped up version of events to some shoddy paper within the hour.’

‘So you’ve had no treatment apart from Dr Carmichael?’

‘Not necessary.’

Cameron took a breath. ‘Dr Carmichael is ten years older than you, and barely strong enough to hold a syringe, much less resuscitate a man your size.’

‘Proving I was fine.’

‘He has no other job but keeping you well. The guy wouldn’t tell you it was serious for fear you’d fire him!’

‘Which I damn well would. The man has no idea what a health scare would do to KInG. You, on the other hand, are smart enough to figure it out. So I trust you’ll keep your concerns to yourself.’

Cameron scoffed. ‘I’ve heard those words before.’

His father’s face turned red, the kind of red that went with high blood pressure and too many whiskeys over too many years. Cameron’s fingers stretched out to touch his arm, to stay him, to make sure he was okay—but Quinn jerked away as though one show of vulnerability would be enough to let the crowd in on the truth.

‘Son,’ he barked, ‘It’s not your secret to tell.’

‘Well, then, that’s a pity, because I’ve recently discovered the healing quality of letting secrets go.’

‘Think of your mother,’ Quinn warned.

Cameron got so close to his father he could count the red lines in the man’s eyes. For that reason alone he kept his voice as calm as he could as he said, ‘You’re the one who needs to think of my mother a hell of a lot more than you ever do. I don’t give a flying fig about the business, or the press, but I do care about the family. They may think you’re a god, but I know that you are just a man. And I’m not keeping this secret—not from them—because if something happened to you and they didn’t see it coming they’d never forgive you. So I’m back. Today’s a new day for the Kelly clan.’

‘Cameron?’

Rosalind’s soft voice was enough to bring him off his high horse and back down to earth.

‘Cameron?’ she said again. ‘I’m so sorry to interrupt, but Meg was looking for you. She needs you for a reason I can’t mention in front of the birthday boy.’

Her hand clamped down on his forearm, gently but insistently. His vision cleared enough to tell him they had an audience. She’d just saved him from telling everyone in the room what even the family did not yet know.

Her other hand slid around his back, sliding along the beltline of his trousers, slow, warm, supportive. Vanilla essence, purely feminine warmth. Rosalind.

‘Quinn,’ she said, ‘Happy birthday. And can I steal him away?’

His father nodded, then looked back to him, the slightest flicker of sadness damping his sharp, blue eyes before it disappeared behind the usual wall of invulnerability. But it was something. It was regret. It was a beginning.

‘Happy birthday, Dad,’ he said, leaning in to give his father a quick kiss on the cheek before turning and walking away.

‘Oh God!’ Rosalind whispered. ‘I so apologise if that was the exact wrong moment, but you looked like you were about to bop him one. I thought you might need a distraction.’

The woman was a mind reader. He took a deep breath, wrapped his arm about her waist, leaned over and kissed the top of her head. ‘Thank you.’

‘For what?’

For what? For far too many things for him to extrapolate right now.