Praise for
Ally Blake:
‘Ally Blake’s FALLING FOR THE REBEL HEIR is a sweet, often funny story, with a wonderfully written pair of lovers and a believably developed relationship.’
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
Ally Blake also writes for Modern Heat™
‘Ally Blake’s THE MAGNATE’S INDECENT PROPOSAL starts with an amusing premise and quickly moves into an entertaining love-at-first-sight tale. It’s full of humour, witty dialogue, a hero to die for and a heroine who’s his match in every way.’
—Romantic Times BOOKreviews
‘I’d really like to see you again,’ Cameron said.
Snap! Rosie’s eyes flew north till they met his. Deep, blue, heaven…‘Seriously?’
He laughed. She bit her lip.
Just because he’d used her full name in such a deferential way, and just because more than once she’d caught him looking at her as if she was the most fascinating creature on the planet, it didn’t mean she should go forgetting herself.
He said, ‘Do you want a list of reasons why? Or would you prefer them in the form of a poem?’
Rosie’s heart danced. She knew that taking guidance from one’s heart was as sensible as using one’s liver for financial planning advice, having witnessed firsthand what listening to the dancing of your heart could do to a woman. If she needed any further reason to call it a day…
And then Cameron had to go and say, ‘What are you doing tomorrow?’
Mills & Boon® Romance brings you a fresh new story from Australian author
Ally Blake
Indulge yourself with this vibrant,
witty and fabulously flirtatious novel!
Having once been a professional cheerleader, ALLY BLAKE has a motto: ‘Smile and the world smiles with you.’ One way to make Ally smile is by sending her on holidays—especially to locations which inspire her writing. New York and Italy are by far her favourite destinations. Other things that make her smile are the gracious city of Melbourne, the gritty Collingwood football team, and her gorgeous husband Mark.
Reading romance novels was a smile-worthy pursuit from long back, so with such valuable preparation already behind her she wrote and sold her first book. Her career as a writer also gives her a perfectly reasonable excuse to indulge in her stationery addiction. That alone is enough to keep her grinning every day!
Ally would love you to visit her at her website: www.allyblake.com
Ally also writes for Mills & Boon® Modern Heat™!
DATING THE REBEL TYCOON
BY
ALLY BLAKE
To my baby Boo.
You own my heart, you crack me up,
you dazzle me daily,
and it is my absolute privilege
watching you become you.
Love Mum xxx
CHAPTER ONE
CAMERON KELLY opened the heavy side-door of the random building, shut it smartly behind him and became enveloped in darkness. The kind of inky darkness that would make even the bravest boy imagine monsters under the bed.
It was some years since Cameron had been a boy, longer still since he’d realised people didn’t always tell the truth. When he’d found out his two older brothers had made the monsters up.
The small window between himself and the Brisbane winter sunshine outside revealed the coast was clear, and he let his forehead rest on the cold glass with a sheepish thunk.
Of all the people he could have seen—many miles from where a man such as he ought to have been while commerce and industry raged on in the city beyond—it had to have been his younger sister Meg, downing take-away coffee and gabbing with her girlfriends.
If Meg had seen him wandering the suburban Botanical Gardens, pondering lily pads and cacti rather than neck-deep in blueprints and permits and funding for multi-million-dollar skyscrapers, she would not have let him be until he’d told her why.
So he, a grown man—a man of means, and most of the time sense—was hiding. Because the truth would only hurt her. And, even though he’d long since been cast as the black sheep of the Kelly clan, hurting those he cared about was the last thing he would ever intentionally do.
He held his watch up to the parcel of light, saw it was nearly nine and grimaced.
Hamish and Bruce, respectively his architect and his project manager, would have been at the CK Square site for more than an hour waiting for him to approve the final plans for the fifty-fourth floor. This close to the end of a very long job, if they hadn’t throttled one another by now then he would be very lucky.
He made to open the door to leave, remembered Meg—the one person whose leg he’d never been able to pull, even with two adept older brothers to show him how—and was overtaken by a stronger compulsion than the desire to play intermediary between two grown men. His hand dropped.
Let the boys think he was making a grand entrance when he finally got there. It’d give them something to agree upon for once. He could live with people thinking he had an ego the size of Queensland. He was a Kelly, after all; impressions of grandeur came with the name.
‘We’re closed,’ a voice echoed somewhere behind him.
He spun on his heel, hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. Though he hadn’t boxed since his last year at St Grellans, in a flash his fists were raised, his fingers wrapped so tight around his thumbs they creaked. Lactic acid burned in his arms. It seemed fresh air, sunshine and tiptoeing through the tulips weren’t the catharsis for an uneasy mind that they were cracked up to be.
He peered around the huge empty space and couldn’t see a thing past the end of his nose, bar a square of pink burned into his retina from the bright light of the window.
‘I’m desperately sorry,’ the voice said. ‘I seem to have given you a little fright.’
Unquestionably female, it was, husky, sweet, mellow tones drifting to him through the darkness with a surprisingly vivid dash of sarcasm, considering she had no idea who she was dealing with.
‘You
