He took a step away from the door. He couldn’t see the floor beneath his feet. It felt liberating, like he was stepping out into an abyss.
Until he stubbed his toe, and then it felt like he was walking around in a strange building in the dark.
Something moved. Cameron turned his head a fraction to the left, and finally he saw her: a dark blob melting into the shadows. If she was standing on the same level as him, she was tall. There was a distinct possibility of long, wavy hair, and lean curves poured into a floaty calf-length dress. When he imagined seriously chunky boots, he realised he didn’t have any kind of perspective to trust his eyes.
But he’d always trusted his gut. And, while he’d come to the gardens searching for the means to navigate his way around a difficult truth, the only real truth he had so far found was the voice tugging him further into the blackness.
‘How about you turn on a light?’ he said. ‘Then we can come to an arrangement that suits us both.’
‘Would you believe I’m conserving power?’
There wasn’t a single thing about the tone of her voice that made him even half believe her. His smile became a grin, and the tightness in his shoulders just melted away.
He took another step.
‘Not for even half a second,’ he said, his voice dropping several notes, giving as good as he got to that voice—that husky, feminine voice. Mocking him. Taking him down a peg or two. Or three, if he was at all honest.
He—a Kelly and all.
Rosie kept her distance.
Not because the intruder seemed all that dangerous; she knew the nooks and crannies of this place like the back of her hand, and after stargazing half her life she could see in the dark as well as a cat. And from the lazy way he’d held his fists earlier, like he’d instinctively known nobody would dare take a swipe, she’d surely have been able to get in a jab or two.
She kept her distance because she knew exactly who he was.
The man in the dark jeans, pinstriped blazer, glossy tie and crisp chambray shirt poking out at the bottom of the kind of knit V-necked vest only the most super-swanky guy could get away with was Cameron Kelly.
Too-beautiful-for-words Cameron Kelly. Smart, serious, eyes-as-deep-as-the-ocean Cameron Kelly. Of the Ascot Kellys. The huge family, investment-banking dynasty, lived their lives in the social pages, absolutely blessed in every possible way Kellys.
She would have recognised that untameable cowlick, those invulnerable shoulders, and the yummy creases lining the back of that neck anywhere. God only knew how many hours she’d spent in the St Grellans school chapel staring at them.
Not that getting up close and personal or turning on the light would have rendered her familiar. She’d been the scholarship kid who’d taken two buses and a train to get to school from the indifferent council flat she’d shared with her single mum. He had attended St Grellans by birthright.
Post-school they’d run in very different circles, but the Kellys had never been far from the periphery of her life. The glossy mags had told her that dashing patriarch Quinn Kelly was seen buying this priceless objet d’art or selling that racehorse, while his wife Mary was putting on sumptuous banquets for one or another head of state. Brendan, the eldest, and his father’s right-hand man, had married, had two beautiful daughters, then become tragically widowed, adding to the family folklore. Dylan, the next in line, was the charmer, his wide, white smile inviting every magazine reader to dare join the bevy of beauties no longer on his speed dial. Meg, the youngest, was branded bored and beautiful enough to rival any Hollywood starlet.
Yet the one Rosie had always had a soft spot for remained mostly absent from the prying eyes of the paparazzi. He’d played into the Kelly legend just enough by sporting fresh new consorts every other week: a fabulous blonde senator on his arm at some party here, a leggy blonde dancer tucked in behind him at a benefit there.
Yet the minute he’d appeared without a blonde in sight, her soft spot had begun to pulse.
‘Rightio,’ she said, curling away to her left, away from Cameron and towards the bank of stairs leading to the front of the auditorium. ‘What are you doing here if not to once and for all find out who truly did hang the moon and the stars?’
‘Central heating,’ he said without missing a beat. ‘It’s freezing out there.’
She grinned, all too readily charmed considering the guy still seemed to have blinkers when it came to skinny, smart girls with indefinite hair-colour and no cleavage to speak of.
And now she was close enough to make out the subtle, chequered pattern of his vest, the fine platinum thread through the knot of his tie, and the furrowing of his brow as his eyes almost found hers.
She took two definite steps back. ‘The café just up the hill has those cool outdoor furnace-heaters—big, shiny brass ones that have to be seen to be believed. And I hear they also serve coffee, which is a bonus.’
After much longer than was at all polite, his voice drifted to her on a rumble. ‘The allure of coffee aside, the warmth in here is more appealing.’
Her knees wobbled. She held out both arms to steady herself. Seriously, how could the guy still manage to incapacitate her knees without trying to, without meaning to? Without even knowing her name.
She wrapped her russet beaded-cardigan tighter around herself, squeezing away the return of an old familiar ache that she thought she’d long since cast off: the sting of growing up invisible.
Growing up with a dad who’d left before she was born, and a mum who’d never got over him, being inconspicuous had come with the territory. Being a shy unfortunate in a school saturated with the progeny of politicians, moguls and even royalty hadn’t helped the matter.
But since then she’d achieved a master’s degree in astrophysics, run with the bulls, stood at the foot of the sphinx, spent a month on grappa and fresh air on a boat off Venice and surveyed the stars from every corner of the globe. She’d come to terms with where she’d come from. And now hers was a life lived large and not for anyone else to define.
Cameron took another step forward, and she flinched, then indulged in a good eye-roll. An eyelash caught in her contact lens, which was about all she deserved.
As she carefully pulled it free she told herself that, just as she’d evolved, this guy wasn’t that Cameron Kelly any more—the Cameron Kelly who’d seemed the kind of guy who’d smile back if she’d ever found the pluck to smile first. Maybe he never even had been.
Right now he was the guy wasting the last precious minutes she had with the observatory telescope, before Venus, her bread and butter, disappeared from view.
‘Okay, tell it to me straight. What do I have to say or do to get you to vamoose?’ She paused to shuffle her contact lens back into place. ‘I know Italian, Spanish, a little Chinese. Any chance “off you pop” in any of those languages will make a dent?’
‘What if I leave and not another soul turns up?’
Rosie threw her arms out sideways. ‘I’ll…grab a seat, put my feet up on the chair in front and throw popcorn at the ceiling, while saying all the lines along
