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‘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.
‘Just thank you.’
‘My pleasure. And your dad?’
He held her tighter and set his gaze straight ahead. ‘I was right. Heart problems. Certainly worse than he is making out. The man simply won’t admit weakness no matter what it costs.’
‘And your family?’
‘Know nothing. But not for long. I’ll let them have tonight, but tomorrow I’ll be back to tell them all. Give them the chance to make their peace.’
‘Good man.’
Rosalind looked up into his eyes. She’d meant it when she called him a good man. And with it he felt the last of the places inside him that had been hard, fast and immovable for so very long melt away.
‘Now Meg really does need you,’ she said. ‘Are you up for it? Whatever it is?’
‘You bet.’
And as they joined his brothers and sister in an ante room he couldn’t keep his eyes off Rosalind standing quietly in the doorway, watching the interplay between the four musketeers with a wistful smile on her face.
Tonight, rather than her distracting him from his family’s dramas, his family’s dramas had been distracting him from her. Being with her was where he constantly wanted to be. The words gathered in his throat, but not in any order he recognized, so he swallowed them back down.
‘Cam!’ Meg called out, clicking fingers in front of his eyes. ‘Pay attention, Bucko, or I’ll make you jump out of the cake instead of me!’
He blinked, then stared at his sister. ‘You are not jumping—?’
‘No.’ She grinned. ‘I’m not. But pay attention so we can get this done, and then, my little friend, the rest of the night is yours to do with as you please.’
He couldn’t help himself. He looked to the doorway, only to find Rosalind had gone.
Happy Birthday had been sung by the world-famous St Grellans Chorale. A cake the size of a piano had been wheeled out by Quinn’s four children, and a line of people had snaked around the room as everyone awaited their chance to get a piece of cake and slap some Kelly flesh.
Rosie stayed in the gallery, leaning on the railing and watching the proceedings from a more comfortable distance.
‘You must be Rosalind.’
Rosie spun from the rail to find herself face to face with Mary Kelly, the matriarch of the Kelly clan, as petite as Meg, but overwhelming all the same—resplendent in a royal-blue gown, her ice-blonde hair swaying in a sleek bob. She was so elegant Rosie had to swallow down a raging case of stage fright.
