Tycoon's One-Night Revenge (9 page)

Her hands, lifted initially to push him away, clutched in his shirtfront and the sound against his lips was a throaty mix of satisfaction and surrender. That evocative sound and the first stroke of her tongue against his fired something in Van’s synapses. A burst of vivid memory of her giving mouth under his, his hands twined in her hair as he rolled her beneath him, the sun streaming through glass to set fire to her red-gold hair and to the passion drumming through his blood. And the echo of his voice deep in his mind.

Now I have you right where I want you.

“What’s going on?” she asked slowly. “What just happened there?”

“I thought I—” He broke off, raked a hand through his hair, let go his breath in a sharp exhalation. And when he started to turn away, Susannah grabbed at his sleeve and forced his attention back to her. “For a moment—not even a second—I had this…flash.”

“You remembered?”

“I don’t know. I don’t even know that it was an accurate memory or a…” He lifted a shoulder and let it drop, but the enormity of his frustration resonated in the deepened rasp of his voice. “I don’t know what I recognised. It was just an impression of you and a line of dialogue.”

“I didn’t say anything. I couldn’t.” Apart from the fact of her tongue being elseways occupied, the overwhelming impact of his kiss had stolen her ability to think in whole words. “Was it something you remembered me saying?”

“No, not you,
me.
And I don’t know if it’s something I said to you. It was there in my mind, as clear as if a light had switched on, and then gone—” he clicked thumb against finger “—like that. I’m left with one pinpoint of illumination in a big, dark void and I don’t know if it’s a memory or a figment of fantasy.”

A reflection of that fantasy flared in his eyes for a moment, alerting Susannah to its erotic nature. She relinquished her grip on his sleeve. She didn’t want to pursue this. She wanted to spring to her feet and run, hard and fast, from everything this man aroused in her—the physical, the emotional, the then and the now.

The knowledge that she could never have him; that she could never tell him what they had shared for such a fleetingly fragile piece of time.

But the storm of frustration raging in his eyes—not sexual frustration, but the exasperation of not remembering—plumbed the depths of her heart. How could she turn her back? How could she not try to help?

“It may well have been a memory,” she commenced cautiously. Nervous fingers, the same ones that had gripped his shirt and held his mouth hard against hers, curled into the cushion beneath her backside. She tightened her thighs, tucking her knees closer beneath her in a vain attempt to quash the heat he’d ignited in her body. “Do you want to tell me about that line of dialogue?”

He stared back at her for a long second, the frustration honed to razor’s-edge sharpness. “Just tell me one thing. Did I make any promises to you?”

Susannah’s heart thumped heavily against her ribs. She couldn’t tell him. Opening up that wound in her heart would serve no purpose.

Mustering every ounce of bravado, she met his eyes and for the first time in her life, she straight-out lied to him. “There were no promises, Donovan. None whatsoever.”

Putting a stop to her marriage, he realised, had become more than a means to securing a deal. Through dinner he watched her eat, drink, talk, and all he could think about was that mouth beneath his. Not as a conduit to the past, but because he wanted. For him, for now.

The craving coiled more tightly with each passing minute, every awkward pause, each time her gaze slipped away from his. And with each passing minute the certainty grew that she, too, was steeped in the same sweet agony of wanting. It was in the heightened colour that traced her cheekbones, the unsettled play of her fingers against glass and tableware, the falsely cheerful bursts of small talk that grew less frequent and more desultory as the meal stretched on.

Van could have picked up the conversational reins, but some perverse part of him enjoyed the crackle of tension in the lengthening silences. He let it play out as long as he could, until she set down her napkin and started packing up the plates. “Leave them,” he said. And when she looked like protesting, “The dishes aren’t going anywhere and neither are we. They’ll still be there in the morning.”

“And so will we,” she said, and the spark in her voice was reflected in her eyes as they met his. This time they didn’t drift away. “For how many more mornings?”

“Why don’t we take this conversation to the fireside,” Van suggested smoothly. “I’ll make coffee.”

“No, thank you.”

“Okay, so no coffee.”

“And no fireside conversation,” she added. “Please, Donovan, just answer my question. When is Gilly returning to pick us up?”

“When our business here is finished.”

“Our business?” She leaned forward in her chair, her fingers tight on the plates she’d yet to relinquish. “How can we even start to sort out this mess when we’re stuck here?”

“That’s not the only business.
We
have unfinished business.”

For a moment his words hung between them, and Van felt a kick of anticipation when their meaning registered in her expressive eyes. They darkened to a turbulent sea-green as she shook her head.

“You’re denying there’s something between us? After that kiss?” Van’s voice deepened with the memory, with the impact, with the certainty that he would have that mouth under his again. “I can still feel it, Susannah. I can still taste you in my blood.”

“That doesn’t change anything.”

“Doesn’t it? What if I hadn’t stopped? What if that kiss had continued the way it started? What if you’d ended up naked with me inside you?”

“Then I would know that you’d succeeded,” she replied. “You brought me here for one reason. You want to end my marriage plans—what better way than by seducing me?”

“It’s not only about the deal, Susannah. You’re discounting this burn between us.”

“I’m not discounting it. How can I?” she asked simply, but the heat of passion was in her eyes, in her cheeks, in the throaty ache of her voice. “But as much as I want you, Donovan Keane, there is one thing I’m determined not to do. My father cheated, with Zara’s mother and Lord knows how many other women, and he hurt a lot of people in the process.

“I would never do that to Alex,” she continued in the same softly impassioned tone. “I would never do that to anyone I respected, and I don’t believe you would want me to. Not even to win this deal for Mac.”

Neither did the storm clouds darkening the southern sky.

They’d come up quickly in the late morning, as if summoned by his own turbulent mood. He’d tried to run that from his blood in a controlled set of sprints up and down the sandy curve of beach. It had worked for the time he’d taken climbing the steep incline back to the house.

Lost in contemplation of the lunch he aimed to prepare after a long, relaxing shower, he started shucking his sweat-dampened shirt as he came in the door. Susannah sat curled up on a sofa. A book lay open on her lap but her gaze was fixed on those billowing clouds until his arrival startled it back toward the door.

Then she focussed on his bare chest and Van’s post-exercise relaxation evaporated under her silent scrutiny.

When her sea-green concern shifted to his face, she must have read the warning signs in his hardened expression. Smart woman; she didn’t say a word about the scars, but as he crossed to his bedroom he felt the incendiary touch of those eyes track his every step.

“Is Gilly coming today?” she asked.

“No.” And he felt mean and moody enough to pause with his hand on the door to add, “If you’re concerned about this weather coming in, there’s a small runabout in the boatshed. We can leave now.”

“How small?”

He turned back. Her fingers had quite a grip on the book; but she still held her chin high and proud. Despite her fear, she was actually considering this option, and while he showered, he recalled a snatch of conversation from the previous evening. When she’d told him about her grandfather who’d gone out fishing and never come back.

Two hours later, she still hadn’t returned. The concern gnawing away inside took a stronger bite. Surely she wouldn’t do something so stupid. She didn’t only dislike boats, they straight-out petrified her.

Then he saw movement on the track just above the pier. The white of his shirt—this morning he’d left it and a pair of his trackpants outside her door—as she loped into view. Not dawdling, but not exactly making haste.

His chest tightened with a contradictory mix of intense relief and annoyance.

If she didn’t get a wriggle on, she’d be caught out in the storm. Right on cue, the clouds growled ominously and the first fat drops fell from the darkening sky. Van hit the steps at a run.

He found her a couple of minutes down the track, just as the heavens opened. By the time they made it back to the house they were both drenched and Van itched for a confrontation. The island’s terrain was barely friendly at the best of times. In the rain she could have lost her way, slipped, fell.

Beneath the shelter of the porch, he rounded on her. “Have you no sense of self-preservation?”

Gathering her wet hair in hand, she paused. Her eyes met his and held. “I thought I did. I didn’t take the boat.”

Hell. She had considered it.

Fear, cold and fierce, held him in its talons for several rough heartbeats. And when he caught up with her at the door he saw that she wasn’t only wet, she was shivering cold. He pushed the door open and, when she didn’t move, urged her forward with a firm hand at her back.

“You’re freezing.” Shouldering the door shut behind her, he indicated the unused bedroom with a curt nod. “That shower’s closest. Go warm yourself under it. I’ll get you dry clothes.”

“I’ll use—”

“Don’t argue, or I’ll pick you up and carry you in there myself.”

When her mouth tightened mulishly, Van took an advancing step. She took several backward, her hands held up in a stay-right-there gesture. They were trembling with cold.

“I’m going. I can manage.”

Van wasn’t so sure. Eyes narrowed, he watched her retreat. Despite the trembling hands she started to unbutton the shirt as she walked. “Are you able to manage the buttons?”

In the doorway she half turned, and he noticed what he’d been too fractious to notice before. The rain had soaked right through, and the shirt clung to her skin revealing the lines of her lacy bra and the lush shape of her breasts. His thighs tightened with a jolt of desire so strong it riveted him to the spot.

An image flashed through his brain and his blood, his hands unthreading buttons, the shadow of aureole through sheer lace, the kiss of her silken skin beneath his tongue.

Slowly, finally, he lifted his gaze. Their eyes clashed with heated knowledge but she didn’t bolt or berate him. She faced him with pride and poise and answered the question he’d long since forgotten asking. “I can manage.”

No. She would not think about Donovan Keane undressing. She. Would. Not.

She wrenched the shower controls off but the muted sound of running water continued, filling her senses with a crystal clear image of tall, dark and naked. Right next door. The knowledge that he was warming his chilled body the other side of this thin wall stripped her of all discipline for several steamy seconds.

Then she grabbed a towel, intent on racing upstairs and locking her unruly self away until the storm had passed—or at least the tumult in her body—but in the bedroom she pulled up short. Laid out on the bed was another set of clean clothes, chosen by him, for her use. There was no other explanation for their presence in this unused room.

Quickly she gathered them up and with an ear to the next room—shower still running, time to make good her escape—she made a dash for the stairs and didn’t stop until she was leaning her back against the closed and secured door. Her breath was coming hard, and not only from the mad sprint. The soft cotton fabric of the under-shirt and snug white boxers clutched to her breast seemed incredibly intimate.

Yes, they were clean but he’d worn them at some point. Against his bare skin. If she had any sense of self-preservation, she would discard them in favour of her own underwear, washed and drying over the towel rail in her bathroom.

If she had any sense of self-preservation, she would drop all the damn clothes and kick them to kingdom come. She would remind herself how he’d trapped her here against her will, a virtual prisoner, and that he had no right to redress her for being caught out in the rain. She should be a dozen kinds of riled with him, but how could she when she understood his motivation?

Is there a person in your life you would do anything for?

Last night he’d vacillated over her appeal for respect, but in the end, he’d let her go.

Today he’d come out in the rain looking for her, making sure she made it back to the house safely.

Then he left the clothes.

Every one of those factors, she realised with a gloomy sense of fatalism, spelled more danger to her self-resolve than a hundred imaginings of wet, well-toned muscles.

A renewed squall of rain-heavy wind blasted her windows and shuddered through the house, a timely reminder of the storm’s growing ferocity. She pushed off the door and dressed quickly. In her own clothes. And despite her earlier vows to seclude herself up here, she knew the howling insistence of that wind would drive her down to the security and the warmth of the lower level.

Why delay the inevitable?

Downstairs she could find something to occupy her mind…or at least redirect her thoughts. Although the resort promoted a get-away-from-the-modern-world ethos, they supplied indoor entertainment in the form of an extensive library of books and music and old-fashioned board games.

Who are you kidding? Downstairs there is Donovan, the only entertainment needed to fully occupy your mind.

Her stomach tightened with nervous apprehension as she descended the stairs. She hadn’t wasted a lot of time dressing; she’d given up on pretending to tame her hair days ago, securing it in a loose braid. And, okay, she still had enough vanity remaining to apply tinted moisturiser but that was it.

Yet, he’d beaten her to the living room. Squatting down at the fireplace, he applied match to kindling and the fire caught in a crackle and hiss of sparks. The same sensation roared through Susannah’s senses when the flames limned his profile in golden light.

What was it about this man, his particular masculine beauty? Why him, why this connection, this depth of knowing and wanting?

Then he turned, saw her and unwound his sinuously muscled frame to its full six and a bit feet of familiar impact. Outside the storm howled a warning to bunker down, take cover, stay safe; inside her mind a voice cried the same warning. It went unheeded, drubbed out by the thundering of her heart.

“You’re back to your own clothes,” he said, taking in her skirt and sweater. Stockings. Boots. “I hope you’re comfortable.”

“Not really,” she admitted. After last night, that kiss, her response, there seemed little point in denying what simmered between them. “But your things—thank you, again. If this keeps up, I may need them tomorrow.”

Reflexively, she lifted her hands to hug her upper arms.

Donovan’s expression narrowed. “Are you cold? Come and sit by the—”

“No, not cold,” she reassured him quickly. “It’s the storm. The wind. I’m not a big fan of the rattling of glass.”

“Bad experience?”

She nodded. “One of those trips to my grandfather’s mountain cabin. And it is only a cabin, one room and outside bathroom. A real rustic retreat with no mod cons. It was Pappy’s way of staying attuned to his roots.”

“A self-made man?”

“Yes.” Abandoning her sanctuary at the foot of the stairs, she came farther into the room. “Property, development, investments. Anyway, we were at the cabin one weekend and a storm came up and the whole place groaned and shook and this great big mountain gum came crashing down right at the edge of the porch. I didn’t think I would live to see my ninth birthday.”

“That would have been a pity,” he said gravely. “I imagine birthdays in the Horton household would have been quite something.”

“Oh, yes. Big showy somethings.” She’d aimed for blithe, but somehow it came out sounding too cynical. Too revealing, under his silent regard. She expelled a deprecating laugh. “As you can see, I survived unscathed. I suspect the storm wasn’t as bad in reality as in my imagination. Probably a tepid sea breeze compared to this. Upstairs, with the wall of windows—I thought half the island might end up in my room.”

As if to illustrate her point, the wind and rain buffeted the eastern wall in a muscle-flexing show of strength.
I am nature, hear me roar.
Susannah flinched, but Donovan stood tall and unmoved. “This not-so-rustic retreat has been built to withstand worse than this, Susannah.”

“If you say so.”

“I know so. I might not remember coming here, but I had all the reports and appraisals. I knew exactly what I was buying.” His gaze, steady, strong, reassuring, locked on hers. “You’re safe here.”

“Am I?”

There was a beat of pause, while the barely audible syllables hummed between them. Last night, she’d asked the question, he’d responded by walking away. Tonight, before she settled, before she trusted, she needed his word. “I brought you here, Susannah. I will keep you safe.”