simple snapshot? ‘You forgot your favourite colour.’
‘Blue.’
She didn’t doubt it. At some stage that day he’d lost the vest and tie, and the blue shirt hugging his chest was a perfect match for his eyes. It looked so good on him she was finding it hard to remember what else he’d said.
‘Enough?’ he asked.
She swallowed hard, then quipped, ‘That was more than I know about my mailman, and I give him beer at Christmas.’
He bowed ever so slightly. ‘Now, before I let you loose upon my friends, maybe I should know more about you too.’
Fighting the urge to cross her arms, she grabbed hold of both lengths of her long scarf as she said, ‘Rosalind Merryweather Harper. Star sign, Taurus. I’m about five-eight. Weight, none of your business.’
His eyes dropped, lightly touching her breasts, her hips and her calves, before sliding neatly back to her eyes. Her pause was noted, and his cheek curved into the kind of smile that made a girl think of fresh sheets, low lighting and coffee in the morning.
Unnerving yet irresistible. Yep, that summed him up perfectly.
‘Merryweather?’ he asked.
She grinned. ‘It’s rude to interrupt. Now, where was I? I’ve been to Nevada twice, yet never seen Vegas. With all those lights it has to be one of the more difficult places on earth to see stars. My guilty pleasure is Elvis Presley movies, and I was born with seven toes on each foot.’
Cameron’s smile wavered. Twitched. Stumbled. His eyes slid to her shoes.
Until she said, ‘Gotcha.’
His eyes took their time meandering up her body before they returned to hers.
‘Satisfied?’ he asked, his voice deeper than the bass notes thumping through the bar.
‘Getting there,’ she breathed.
The shift of the crowd threw them together. The slide of his cotton shirt against her velvet jacket acted like a flint shooting sparks between them.
She pressed both hands against his chest. ‘I’m almost certain somebody promised me dinner.’
He smiled. ‘I’m almost certain you’re right.’
Then for a moment, the briefest snap in time, she thought she caught a glimpse of the man behind the dark-blue fortress, andsaw strengths, knowledge, experience, and hunger far deeper than she’d even imagined. Her fingers curled into his shirt as once again she felt like she was in some kind of free fall.
She didn’t like the feeling one little bit.
She slapped him hard on the chest, twice, then with a thin-lipped smile turned away and slid through the crowd.
And then the St Grellans table loomed before her. She recognised a couple of faces—a school captain, a drama queen, the daughter of an ex–Prime Minister. Bless their hearts.
Rosie felt Cameron slide in behind her. ‘Do you think for some of them school really was the time of their lives?’
‘Was it the time of yours?’
Rosie scoffed so loudly she practically snorted. ‘You reeeally don’t remember me from back then, do you?’
His silence was enough of an answer. Then he had to go and ask, ‘Do you remember me?’
She thought it best to let her own silence speak for itself on that one.
CHAPTER FOUR
A N HOUR and a half later, with the remains of a shared plate of nachos dripping in sour cream taking the edge off her flashback-phobia, Rosie felt surprisingly serene.
Cameron was a great date—talkative, funny, attentive. And he didn’t flinch when she ordered seconds of the quesadillas. That was during the sporadic moments in which they’d been left alone.
A round of drinks had appeared every half hour on the dot, followed by a rowdy toast from the other side of the restaurant. Just about everyone had come over to pay their respects as though Cameron was some kind of Mafia don. And Tabitha stopped by for a chat every time she went to powder her nose. During those moments Cameron held his beer glass so hard his fingertips were the colour of bruises.
Then, when she had him to herself again, he was a different man. The darkness abated, the
Jonathan Strahan [Editor]