Dating the Rebel Tycoon. Ally Blake

she barked before she could hold it back. She could hardly picture Cameron Kelly splayed out on a second-hand double bed watching Gilligan’s Island reruns on a twelve-inch TV at two in the afternoon.

      ‘No kids?’ he added. ‘No man friend to give you foot rubs at the end of a long day telling fortunes?’

      Rosie didn’t even consider scoffing at his jibe. She was too busy trying to ignore the image of him splayed across her bed.

      ‘No kids. No man. Worse, no foot rubs,’ she said.

      ‘I find that hard to believe.’

      ‘Try harder.’

      He laughed. Her cheek twitched into a smile. She slid lower on the step, and told herself she couldn’t get closer to being physically grounded unless she lay on the dirt.

      ‘You’re in a profession which must be teeming with men. How is it you haven’t succumbed to sweet nothings whispered in the dark by some guy with a clipboard and a brain the size of the Outback?’

      ‘I’m not that attracted to clipboards,’ she admitted.

      ‘Mmm. It can’t help that your colleagues all have Star Trek emblems secreted about their persons.’

      ‘Oh, ho! Hang on a second. I might be allowed to diss my fellow physicists, but that doesn’t mean you can.’

      ‘Is that what I just did?’

      ‘Yes! You just intimated all astronomers are geeks.’

      ‘Aren’t they?’ he said without even a pause.

      She sat up straight and held a hand to her heart to find it beating harder than normal, harder than it had even when she’d been a green teenager. It had more than a little to do with the unflinching, alpha-male thing he’d found within himself in the intervening years. It spoke straight to the stubborn independence she’d unearthed inside herself.

      ‘You realise you are also insinuating that I am a geek?’ she said.

      This time there was a pause. But then he came back with, ‘Yes. You are a geek.’

      Her mouth dropped open then slammed back shut. Mostly because the tone of his voice suggested it didn’t seem to be the slightest problem for him that she might be a geek.

      ‘Rosalind,’ he said, in a way that made her want to flip her hair, lick her lips and breathe out hard.

      ‘Yes?’ she sighed before she could stop herself.

      His next pause felt weightier. She cursed herself beneath her breath and gripped the teeny-tiny phone so tight her knuckles hurt.

      ‘I realise it’s last minute, but I was wondering if you had plans for dinner.’

      Um, yeah, she thought; cheese on toast.

      He continued, ‘Because I haven’t eaten, and if you haven’t eaten I thought it an entirely sensible idea that we make plans to eat together.’

      Oh? Oh! Had Cameron Kelly just asked her out?

      CHAPTER THREE

      ROSIE looked up at the sky, expecting to see a pink elephant flying past, but all she saw were clouds streaked shades of brilliant orange by the dying sunlight.

      To get the blood flowing back to all the places it needed to flow, not just the unhelpful areas where it had suddenly pooled, Rosie dragged herself off the step and walked out into the yard, running a hand along the fluffy tops of the hip-high grass stalks.

      Dinner with Cameron Kelly. For most girls the answer would be a no brainer. The guy was gorgeous. She couldn’t deny she was still attracted to him. And there was the fantasy element of hooking up with her high school crush. One of the invisibles connecting with one of the impossibles.

      But Rosie wasn’t most girls. She usually dated uncomplicated, footloose, impermanent guys, not men who made it hard for her to think straight. She liked thinking straight.

      The only time she’d ever broken that rule was with a cardboard cut-out of a gorgeous A-list movie star Adele had nicked from outside a video store for her seventeenth birthday. He was breathtaking, he never talked back. Never stole the remote. Never left the toilet seat up. Never filled any larger part of her life than she let him. Never left…

      She wrapped her hand round a feathery tuft of grass and a million tiny spores flew out of her palm and into the air, floating like fireflies in dusk’s golden light.

      Her mother had been the very definition of other girls. She’d fallen for the wrong man, the man she’d thought would love her for ever, and it had left her with a permanently startled expression, as though her world was one great shock she’d never got over.

      After years of thought, study and discovery, a light-bulb moment had shown Rosie that, contrarily, the way to make sure that never happened to her was to only date the wrong men—those who for one reason or another had no chance of making a commitment. She could then enjoy the dating part dead-safe in the knowledge that the association would end. And when it did she wouldn’t be crushed.

      So, back to Cameron Kelly. He was gorgeous. He was charming. But most importantly beneath the surface there was a darkness about him. A hard, fast, cool character that he was adept at keeping all to himself. He was fascinating, but there was no mistaking him for some sweet guy looking for love.

      And, of all the men who’d asked her out, she knew exactly what she was up against. Cameron Kelly was the least likely man in the world Rosie would again make the mistake of falling for, making him the ideal man for her, for now.

      ‘I haven’t lost you, have I?’ he asked.

      You can’t lose what you never had, she thought, but said, ‘I’m still deciding if I’m hungry enough for dinner.’

      ‘It’s a meal, on a plate. I was thinking perhaps even cutlery may be involved.’ His voice resonated down the phone, until cheese and toast was the last things on her mind. ‘We can reminisce about average cafeteria food, bad haircuts and worse teachers.’

      ‘When did you ever have a bad haircut?’

      ‘Who said I was talking about me?’

      ‘Ha! You know what? I don’t remember you being this ruthless at school.’

      ‘Have dinner with me and I’ll do my very best to remind you just how bad I can be.’

      Suddenly her hands began to shake. She wiped them down her jeans, dusting off the tiny fragments of plant residue. Then said, ‘Where would we go?’

      ‘Wherever. Fried chicken, a chocolate fountain, steamed mung-beans; whatever you want, it’s yours.’

      ‘Steamed mung beans?’

      She felt him smile, and even without the visual accompaniment it made her stomach tighten. But now that she’d reconciled herself to her attraction to him she let herself enjoy it. It felt…wonderful. A little wild, but she had a handle on it. This was going to be fine.

      ‘I didn’t want to be all he-man and impose my carnivorous tastes upon you,’ he said. ‘For all I know you might well be a vegan, anti-dairy carb hater.’

      ‘So happy to know I give off such a flattering vibe.’

      ‘Your vibe is just fine,’ he said, his voice steady and low and, oh, so tempting.

      She stopped brushing at her jeans and hooked her thumb tight into the edge of her pocket. ‘Imagine me as the least fussy woman you’ve ever taken to dinner.’

      ‘Then I know the place. It’s so informal, it’s practically a dive. They make the best quesadillas you’ll ever have.’

      ‘Mexican for grilled cheese, right?’ How ironic.

      It was his turn to pause. ‘It seems I have failed in my attempt to impress you