Tycoon's One-Night Revenge (3 page)

Of course she’d forced herself to keep those eyes stoically trained on his face, and the tricky nuances of their dialogue had managed to push everything—including his lack of clothes—to the fringes of her mind.

Until now.

As he moved closer, the edges of her vision and the core of her senses swam with the knowledge of how little he wore and how exposed she felt. Her heartbeat thickened and bumped painfully hard against her ribs. She didn’t know what he wanted, why he’d suddenly shoved to his feet, why that narrowed gaze had suddenly focussed so intently on her—

“Why aren’t you wearing a ring?”

Susannah stared back at him. She opened her mouth, found no answer and shut it again. In that beat of time, he picked up her left hand.

“Isn’t that the usual procedure when you’re engaged to be married? A diamond ring on this finger?”

He illustrated by grazing her ring finger with the pad of his thumb. It was a simple touch, but he stood close enough that she breathed the male heat of his skin, and her body acknowledged a myriad of other touches that were not so innocent. Warmth suffused her skin and pooled low in her belly but she fought it gamely. “I don’t have an engagement ring.”

“Carlisle didn’t buy you a diamond? What did he give you then? A share package? Expansion capital? An exclusive agreement to use your service in the Carlisle hotel chain?”

His voice was soft and mocking, but his watchful eyes never left hers. Wasn’t this why she’d hiked up here—to dispel the misconceptions and tell him the truth? To explain why the demand he’d made of her was impossible to deliver? Her stomach churned with trepidation, but she had to try.

“He offered a rescue package for my business.”

“You’re in financial trouble?”

Susannah tugged her hand free, but the warmth of that contact still tingled through her skin along with the shame of admitting her sorry business plight. Both flustered her; she could feel the heat in her face and couldn’t stop it leaking into her voice. “I expanded too fast, my ideas were too grand and I wanted to prove I was capable of succeeding on my own. I made a poor borrowing choice and, yes, I’ve struggled with the debt.”

“I’m finding that hard to fathom. You’re a Horton. Your parents—”

“I didn’t want their help,” she cut in. “I didn’t want to use my father’s money. That was the point. You know why.” She’d told him about her father’s secret life and why she’d left the family company to start her own business, but there was something in his expression that suggested she should add this to the list of things he’d forgotten from their weekend.

“Accepting your parents’ help is different to accepting help from your husband-to-be?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said fiercely, “it absolutely is. This is not a one-sided situation.”

“What
does
Carlisle get in return for his investment?”

“He gets me.”

Their gazes clashed for a long, heated moment. Something flickered in Donovan’s eyes, a hint of anger or denial that was quickly doused. He drew back and studied her with undisguised disapproval. “So, he’s buying himself a wife. A blue-blooded Horton with all the right credentials and a resort on the side.”

That mocking arrow found its target but Susannah didn’t flinch. She held no illusions about the marriage contract she’d entered into. She understood the terms; she’d spent a full week dissecting them before reaching her decision. Lifting her chin, she met her adversary’s disparaging gaze. “Alex believes he’s getting a bargain.”

“But then he doesn’t know everything about you, does he?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You do,” he countered, his voice a silky contrast to the steel of his gaze. “What does your Alex think about his wife sleeping with clients?”

“His
wife
may have made some poor choices in the past, but that was before she made any vows of fidelity. Once she committed to one man, she would never cheat. She knows the hurt that can inflict on everyone involved.”

“Have you made many of these poor choices?”

“Just one comes to mind.”

“It can’t have been all bad,” he said, and their gazes tangled for an unnervingly quiet second. She couldn’t lie, she couldn’t construct a smart retort. She doubted she could even hide the truth that ached in her chest from showing in her eyes.

Memories,
she told herself.
It is nothing but false memories.

“No,” she managed finally. “Not all bad. I learned a valuable lesson about making rash choices, about staying true to my naturally cautious nature. About thinking my actions through to the consequences. I learned to ask, why does this man want me? And to be honest with the answers.”

Heat flared in his quicksilver eyes. “You don’t believe I could have just wanted you?”

“You wanted me,” she replied, “and you made sure you got me. You just didn’t disclose your reasons until after you’d had me.”

A muscle ticked in his cheek and his mouth tightened in an uncompromising line, but for a fraction of a second, she imagined a softened note of regret in his eyes. Then he turned and started toward the kitchen. He’d only taken a half-dozen strides—she’d barely had time to suck in a deep breath to ease the pounding in her chest—when he swung back around to face her.

Oh, yes, she’d definitely imagined the softening. Now his expression was inscrutable, but the sharp lines of his cheekbones and the straight set of his mouth lent him a hard, dangerous aura. Her instincts shivered back to high alert.

“You didn’t mention this place.” He indicated his surroundings with a sweep of his hand. “Where does it fit into the Carlisle-Horton merger?”

“It didn’t initially, not until after Alex proposed.”

“Which was when?”

Susannah pressed her lips together and withheld her none-of-your-business response. He wanted the facts; she would give him the facts. Then, perhaps, he might see the impossibility of his quest. “In late July, just after our weekend. I was feeling a little…burned by that experience.”

“And so you were receptive to a cold, business-contract proposal?”

“I was receptive to his honesty,” she replied, and was rewarded by the glint of irritation in his eyes. Good. He’d delivered enough backhanded blows, he deserved to take one back. “I weighed up the pros and cons. I talked it over with my mother, and in the process, she found out what had happened between us. To say she wasn’t happy would be an understatement.”

“Your mother requires approval of your lovers?”

“She wasn’t happy that you’d used me to influence your bid. She withdrew her approval.”

The spark of irritation she’d lit in his eyes turned cold and hard. “She occupies one seat in that boardroom. Are you saying the rest of the board agreed?”

“Not immediately but as Edward Horton’s widow her opinion holds some sway. She argued against your business scruples and they listened but they also had your bid on the table. So my mother asked for a week to come up with an alternate buyer.”

“So she found Carlisle and added a clause to the marriage contract. ‘You can have my daughter, but only if you better the bid we have for The Palisades.’” He made a short, rough sound, the perfect punctuation for the scathing tone of his delivery. “And that’s where you came in, with your intimate knowledge of my bid.”

“No,” Susannah objected vehemently. “I had no part in that.”

“Are you saying this was all concocted between your mother and Carlisle? Without your knowledge?”

“I agreed to the marriage contract. I agreed to all the terms, including The Palisades. I didn’t want you to get this place. I didn’t want to ever see you again.” An objection lit his eyes and she hurried on, not wanting to argue that point. “But I did not divulge anything about your bid. How could I have known what to divulge, for heaven’s sake? Do you think I read your mind or that you murmured sweet multimillion-dollar figures in your sleep or that I sneaked a look at your files?”

Susannah stopped, her eyes widening at the stillness in his face. He
did
think that. She shook her head slowly and coughed out a disbelieving laugh.

“How, exactly, do you think I might have managed that? We spent all our time here—” she waved her arm, indicating the rooms around them, but her tone was as cool and disparaging as the subject demanded “—in the villa I had booked. Do you think that after wearing you out in the bedroom, I picked your room key from your pocket and clambered down the cliffside in the dead of night to peek at your laptop?”

Consternation tightened the line of his brows, but Susannah was beyond dissecting what he was thinking or feeling or pretending not to feel. Always she had taken pride in her ability to contain her emotions, to present her side of an argument with logic and clarity. Yet now the bubble of anger tightened her chest and disillusionment burned the back of her throat.

Earlier, he’d claimed that it hadn’t been all bad, and she’d allowed herself a fleeting memory of the good. The stimulation she’d felt from conversations that ranged from wicked banter to sharp debate. The simple pleasure of walking beside him, the strength of his hand around hers, smiling when their strides fell into a matching rhythm. The more complex pleasure of his body joined with hers, delivering her to places unknown, to emotions unfelt.

She’d thought the aftermath, the consequences, his failure to respond to her phone calls, had destroyed all the good memories, but she’d been wrong. Some had lingered, enough for him to trample with today’s insulting allegations. Enough that she now felt angry and bitter and profoundly disappointed in him and her own judgment.

Drawing a strengthening breath, she forced herself to face him one last time and to say what still needed to be said.

“I was about to tell you why I agreed when Mother suggested adding The Palisades to the marriage contract, but I will save my breath. It’s obvious you don’t remember anything about my character or my background or what we shared that weekend. I’m beginning to wonder if you remember me at all.”

Suddenly she felt cold and drained and tired. She wanted home and the security of the choices she’d made, nice and orderly and safe. With strides that gathered strength and pace as she went, she circled the dining table and headed for the door.

He called her name, but she kept right on moving. When she heard the heavy pad of his footfalls against the timber floor, she moved even faster. Clumsy fingers struggled with the lock before, finally, she yanked the door open. But a large hand flattened against the timber beside her head and pushed it shut.

For a long second, she stared at the broad curve of his thumb, while her heart raced and her body registered the familiar heat and weight of his body at her back. Far too close, all too familiar. Anger welled up inside her, and this time, she welcomed its rescuing strength.

“Let me go,” she said through gritted teeth.

“Not yet.” His voice was low and conciliatory, his breath warm against the side of her face.

The traitorous response that prickled through Susannah’s skin only made her madder. She refused to be taken in by false apologies or belated attempts at placation. She ungritted her teeth, but only so she could speak. “You have three seconds,” she said tightly, “before I scream blue murder. If you remember nothing else, then you should remember how far my voice carries across this headland.”

Closing her eyes, she started the count but only made it through one before the warmth of his breath distracted her. At two he started to speak; at three his words took hold.

“I don’t remember, Susannah. You, your scream, anything.”

She sucked in an audible breath and without conscious thought, reached up to push the towelling aside. To reveal scar tissue that hadn’t existed ten weeks ago. “My God, Donovan. What happened?”

When he didn’t answer, she raised her stunned gaze and found his attention fixed on where her hand clutched the edge of his robe, the backs of her fingers resting flush against the heat of his skin. She released her grip, reclaimed her hand, and slowly his gaze shifted to her face, silvery eyes narrowed and aware. It was a look she recognised but didn’t want to remember.

Without answering her question, he pushed away from the door and strolled back to the table where he’d abandoned the bottle of red wine earlier.

When he held up the bottle and raised an eyebrow in question, she nodded, and the familiarity of that silent exchange brought a confused frown to her face as she watched him pour two glasses.

I don’t remember. You, your scream, anything.

“You don’t remember…Is that because of what happened to cause the scar?” Her mind churned over his revelation and the possibilities. “Were you in an accident?”

“An accident, no. I was mugged.” He gave a shrug, as if it were nothing. Or something he preferred others to see as nothing. “Woke up with a memory block.”

Her gaze dropped to his chest, to the now-concealed scar. She had to moisten her dry mouth before she could speak. “And that?”

“One of their weapons, apparently, was a broken bottle.”

With every appearance of complacency, he held out the glass of wine he’d poured for her. Leaving the sanctuary of the door, Susannah managed to walk the dozen or so steps to take the proffered glass, despite the unsteadiness in her legs. Amazingly her voice sounded calm when she asked, “Where did this happen?”

“On my way home.”

“You told me you don’t have a home.”

Surprise stilled the glass he’d been raising to his lips. It echoed briefly in his eyes before he answered. “I have a temporary home in San Francisco.”

“When?”

Their eyes met over the rim of his glass and Susannah’s racing heart skipped a beat, waiting, anticipating the answer. “In July. The day I returned from here.”

“You were in hospital? Is that why—” She had to stop, to shake her head and clear the image of him broken and beaten from her mind’s eye. “You didn’t return my phone calls.”

“Not until I returned to the office.”

“How long was that?” she asked, her voice no longer even or steady.

“Two months, all up.”

That’s why he’d been constantly “unavailable” or “out of the office” over the weeks she’d tried to contact him. She’d assumed his assistant was screening his calls, that he’d chosen to ignore the messages, and she’d given up trying to get through.

Two months to recover from his injuries. My God.

Unable to master the trembling in her hand or legs, she put down the untouched drink and when Donovan pulled a chair from the table, she murmured her thanks and sank to its solid support. “That is a long time to be laid up.”

“Tell me about it.” He punctuated the wry response with the same hitch of his shoulder as before, a fake casualness that masked the tension etched in his face. For the first time since she’d watched him unobserved from the foyer of the gym, Susannah allowed herself to study him fully from head to foot. He looked so straight, so strong, so healthy. She didn’t want to imagine the scale of injuries that would have kept him hospitalised for such an extended time.

“You look fit now,” she said, when he caught her thorough inspection. She didn’t need details of those injuries, she told herself. She didn’t need to ask why his assistant had been so obstructively short with information. It was impossible to change what had happened and too late for regret. She needed to lighten the mood, to lift the crushing weight that had descended on her chest. “The punching bag I found you working over this morning—did that have the face of one of your attackers painted on it?”

A hint of amusement touched his lips as he took the chair next to hers. “Something along those lines.”

“Did it help?”

“Not as much as hitting the real guy.”

“You went down fighting?” Eyebrows arched in faux surprise, Susannah asked the question even though she knew the answer.

The day in July when he’d walked into her office unannounced, when she’d told him she wasn’t available to take him to Stranger’s Bay, warned her that he never gave up on anything without a fight. Then he’d set to work negotiating a price she couldn’t turn down, talking her into dinner, seducing her with disarmingly direct words and the silvery smile of his eyes. She’d been charmed to the mat before the bell ended round one.

And now he’d returned to pursue the same fight, and a fight meant winners and losers. That foresight settled deep in her bones and when she lifted her gaze to Donovan’s, all sign of amusement was gone.

“So I’m told,” he said in response to her question about going down fighting. “I don’t remember, but apparently I put one of them in hospital with me.”

Although she strived, Susannah failed to keep the edge of dismay from her face. It didn’t help that the chilling action played through her mind like a scene from a movie. Her gaze drifted up, to the shorter hair. Funny how that little detail hadn’t really registered until now. “You were hit over the head?”

“And rendered unconscious,” he confirmed, “thus ending the fight.”

She nodded, swallowed. Her restless eyes shifted over him, searching out what else she may have missed, before returning to his eyes. “Do you remember
anything
from before the accident?”

“Everything, up until I left America. I remember bits and pieces of the days I spent in Melbourne. Meeting with the CEO at Horton Holdings. The hotel where I stayed. It was the Carlisle Grande,” Van said with an unamused smile. Selected before he knew anything about Alex Carlisle and his family-owned group of hotels, other than he liked the beds and the service was impeccable.

“You don’t remember coming here to Stranger’s Bay that weekend?”

“No.”

She shook her head and puffed out a short note of scepticism. “I thought amnesia only happened in books and movies.”

Van’s eyes narrowed on hers. “You think I’m making this up?”

In the pause, in the hint of a shrug, Van read her doubt. He jackknifed to his feet and stalked away a few paces.

“I believe you, I just find it so difficult to imagine not remembering anything.”

That quietly spoken comment turned him back around. She sat straight and tall in the stiff-backed chair, her ivory coat still buttoned to the base of her throat. Against the rain-lashed windows, her hair was a bright splash of colour. Her eyes remained unsettled with a mixture of compassion and doubt.

It struck him like a blast of that rain-fuelled wind that he’d spent a whole weekend with her, here in these rooms. That coat he may well have unbuttoned and tossed aside. He might have stripped those boots from her legs. Kissed her in all the places that had drummed through his mind in those seconds he’d held her pinned against the door.

“I look at you sitting there,” he said, his voice low and laced with the frustration of not knowing, “and I find it hard to believe that I don’t remember you.”

She blinked. A slow-motion movement of dark lashes against pale cheeks. “That must be a little…odd.”

Van gave a hollow laugh. “There’s one description.”

“How have you dealt with it?”

He swirled the wine in his glass, wondering whether to answer. How much to share. But then he recalled the compassion in her eyes and, what the hell, he’d likely shared a whole lot more than this with Susannah Horton. “I talked to the people I was dealing with that week. I retraced my footsteps. I reconstructed. I cursed a lot.”

“Cursing sometimes helps.”

Van studied her sitting there all prim and proper in her buttoned-up coat, and he thought about her cursing in that crisp private-school voice. The image was intriguing.
She
was intriguing. “I have a business backer, a mentor, who believes curses are the spice of our bland language.”

“Mac,” she said softly.

Van’s hand stilled and tightened around the stem of his wineglass. “I told you about her?”

“Yes, although there’s no need to look so worried. You didn’t let any family skeletons out of the closet, nor did I sneakily access the information from your possessions.”

Although her words were flippant, there was a bite to her tone. He deserved it, and she deserved an apology. “I’m sorry that I insulted you with that insinuation. That wasn’t my intention.”

“Really? What was your intention?”

“To find out what had happened with the acquisition deal. When I left Melbourne, I had a deal on the table. When I woke up a week later, it was gone.”

He saw a flicker of guilt and what could have been regret cross her face. If possible she blanched even more. “Telling me about your amnesia from the start would have made that conversation go a lot more smoothly.”

“For you, yes.”

“And you?”

Van met her eyes with unflinching directness. “I came here knowing
these
things about you, Susannah. You’re Miriam Horton’s daughter. I employed you to show me Stranger’s Bay. You were engaged to Alex Carlisle.”

“I wasn’t en—”

“This is what I knew from your mother, and everyone I asked vouched for her integrity. But my point is,” he stressed when she looked like interrupting, “I came here thinking the worst of you. If you’d known I remembered nothing, how could I have trusted anything you told me?”

“And now, do you believe anything I told you?”

“Yes.”

Surprise widened her eyes and some colour returned to her face. She looked almost pleased, and Van felt a kick of satisfaction low in his gut, the kind that came from a surprise win on the markets or an unexpected victory at the negotiating table.

“Why?” she asked.

“Who could make up a story like that?”

Their eyes met and shared the dry humour of that answer in a rare moment of connection. Then wariness returned to chase away the smile. She stood suddenly, a quick, jerky movement at odds with her normal grace, and in the awkwardness he caught a distracting glimpse of knee, thigh, skirt. It was nothing overt, nothing sexual, but the sight threw him right off balance.

He’d seen that exact shift of motion before. It moved in and out of focus in the darkness that used to house his memory of that weekend.

“It doesn’t make any difference, does it?”

Van looked up, the sensation gone in a blink, leaving him unsure if he’d remembered or only imagined remembering. “What doesn’t?” he asked, frowning.

She lifted her hands and let them drop in a gesture of defeat. “Your amnesia—me now knowing about your accident—it changes nothing.”

“Not even your perception of why I lost this acquisition?”

Her eyes clouded with an emotion Van hated. Pity. Sympathy. Compassion. Whatever label it wore, he’d seen enough these past ten weeks to last ten lifetimes. “I understand why you feel robbed and I’m very sorry, but that doesn’t change what has happened since.”

“One thing hasn’t changed. I still want The Palisades. And after hearing why I lost out, I want it even more.”

“I’m sorry,” she said again, her voice rasping on the infernal word. “But it is too late. Can’t you see that? The agreement has been made with Alex, the contract is drawn.”

“But won’t be signed until you marry Carlisle.” He paused, swirling the last inch of red wine and allowing the idea that circled his brain to take root. “What happens to The Palisades sale if the marriage doesn’t go ahead?”

“That is not going to happen,” she said resolutely. “Alex is a man of this word. He will not pull out of this deal, no matter what you say or do. The threat you made about exposing our affair won’t change his mind.”

“And yet you came down here, presumably to stop me doing that.”

“I came to find out what was going on, and why you were back. Alex knows we weren’t engaged that weekend, he knows I didn’t cheat or lie to him, so he won’t change his mind about marrying me.”

“And what if
you
change your mind?”

“You’re suggesting that
I
break my engagement?”

“We’re not talking about a love match, Susannah. This is a business contract. You’ve been bartered like a high-price commodity.”

A shadow crossed her face, but a spark of vehemence lit her eyes and lifted her chin. “Perhaps I wasn’t clear earlier, but you’re reading this wrong. Yes, this is an unusual alliance and it is bound and tied up like a business deal, but there was no coercion involved. I want to marry Alex. From this union I am getting everything I want. A husband I respect and admire, children, an extended family, as well as all the advantages being a Carlisle will bring to my business.