The cool note in his voice stilled the play of Susannah’s fingers on her wineglass and steadied her gaze on his. She lifted her chin a fraction. “Only when it best serves a client’s needs.”
“The Carlisle hotels have their own concierges.”
“Yes, but my service is at another level. Sometimes they bring me in to help at a hotel level or they recommend a client contact me directly for a specific or unusual request.”
His eyes thinned with an expression she recognised, and she braced herself for another of those disparaging remarks. Possibly about Alex’s specific request for a wife. But whatever he’d been thinking, remained unsaid. He took another drink from his wine.
“Why personal concierging?” he asked.
“It plays to my strengths.”
“Which are?”
“A known name, a lifetime’s knowledge of the lux market and a BlackBerry filled with excellent contacts.”
“That would be the flip answer, but you’re serious about your business. Otherwise you wouldn’t be working so hard to save it.”
Although he lazed back in his chair, his tone as casual as his posture, Susannah sensed real interest. In her, the woman, not the conduit to his own ambition.
Careful, she warned herself as her body warmed to that interest. Don’t be fooled by those silver eyes and tongue.
“It’s important because it’s mine,” she said simply, although the truth behind that answer was not so simple. “I conceived it, I chased capital to start it, its success or failure is all down to me.”
“You believe you can succeed in such a specialist field with a limited pond of possible clients?”
“That’s my point of difference,” she said, leaning forward as she latched on to her favourite topic. “My target clientele isn’t limited to the billionaire market. At Your Service is available to anyone, for any service, not only the big-dollar extravagances that anyone can buy with the right-sized cheque.”
“The everyman concierge service?”
He sounded dubious and Susannah smiled as she conceded his point. “Okay, so not quite ‘every’ man. Most of my clients are either professionals with stacked schedules or visiting executives with the same time challenge. My job isn’t only providing specific requests but also accessing what the client really wants…even when he or she doesn’t know exactly what that might be.”
“For example?”
“A place like Stranger’s Bay. The experience is the isolation and the wild beauty, it’s the escape from civilisation without feeling uncivilised. Every whim is catered but not in an obvious fashion. The staff, the service, everything is first-rate and discreet. That appeals to one client, while another wants staff on tap and constant pampering. My strength is in knowing which experience matches each client.”
“Your strength is in looking after other people’s needs,” he suggested.
She smiled right back at him and said, “Yes. I guess it is.”
There was an honesty in that moment, a connection that lasted a long moment before she remembered that this is what she’d warned herself about earlier. Not once, but twice. Yet again she’d stumbled into the dangerous trap of sharing too much, feeling too much and responding too easily to the wrong man.
Dinner was over. It was time to return to the real world.
Under the guise of clearing the table, she started to stand, but he stilled her with a hand on her arm. “Leave it. Stay and talk.”
“I can’t.”
Her words were barely audible above the pounding of her heart. He rose to his feet and using that hot encircling grip on her wrist, he drew her around the table. “You can,” he said. “You said you would tell me the important things.”
“I said I would try,” Susannah corrected, as inch by inch, he urged her nearer. With nothing to anchor her, she couldn’t resist, could do nothing but hold herself tall and stiff as the steely heat of his hand permeated her skin and raced through her blood.
She came to a halt toe to toe with his black leather loafers. In bare feet, she barely reached his chin and that put her eyes on a level with the open neck of his shirt. She felt ridiculously weak, even before he slackened his hold and let his palm slide up to her elbow and back to take her hand in his.
“Is this the part you thought you’d have trouble remembering accurately?” His words sloughed against her temple; their meaning swirled with liquid desire low in her belly. “Because when I get this close to you, I can’t believe that anything we did together would be forgettable.”
Susannah hadn’t forgotten. Anything. Including the reason she shouldn’t be standing here thinking about touching him. Thinking about kissing him.
Lifting her free hand to his chest, she pushed until he had to let her go. “This is the part I won’t let myself remember,” she said. “Now, I think you should go.”
“You have phone calls to make.”
Susannah nodded. “I do. If I’m going to be away more than overnight, there are people I need to let know.”
“Family?”
“My sister. Half sister,” she corrected herself. “And my neighbour. She worries.” She folded her fingers into her palm, trapping his heat there. It was a small thing to keep of him, but all she would allow. “Good night, Donovan.”
He surprised her by turning to go, then he stopped and turned back. “If you’re thinking of calling Gabrielle, she’s off duty tonight. She said you’re welcome to call anytime, regardless. Front office has the number.”
“Thank you, but I won’t bother her at home. I know she will call if there are any further developments.”
“You don’t want to verify my story?”
“I believe you. Who could make up a story like that?”
It was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek, a reference to his comment about believing her convoluted explanation of how the deal on The Palisades had become tied up in her marriage contract. But after the door closed behind him, after she’d packed away the remains of their dinner and tried calling Alex, Zara, Alex’s brother Rafe, then the suite at the Melbourne Carlisle Grande where she and Alex should have been staying tonight—the only person who picked up was her mother, and at least she promised to call Alex—she had nothing left to do but think.
And her thoughts were all an eddying whirl of Donovan Keane.
Did she trust him? On the transportation issue, yes. It was a story she could easily check with the resort staff or the company which ran the helicopter shuttle.
Did she trust him in a wider sense? No. Although she had to give him props for not taking advantage of the moment when he’d pulled her close. He could have kissed her. He could have insisted on staying, he could have pushed her for intimate details of their weekend activities. But he’d left almost too easily and without any goodbye, which made her more suspicious and more intrigued.
Was that his intention?
Standing at the scenic window looking out into the night, the dark shiver deep in Susannah’s flesh was part chill, part apprehension. She couldn’t stop her mind turning over the possibilities of why he’d accepted the end to the evening with such uncharacteristic compliance. Their dinner couldn’t have helped his memory a great deal. It couldn’t have furthered his need to reconstruct the lost weekend.
Yes, they’d covered some of the same conversational ground as last time but he hadn’t pushed for specific details or asked the did-we-do-this, did-we-eat-that questions she’d anticipated. She understood his need to know, and she understood the kind of man he was—the kind who needed all the facts, the kind who controlled his own life, the kind who didn’t give up.
Those missing days had to be like a burr digging into his psyche. She’d feared he would be unrelenting; that when he’d taken her hand and pulled her close to the tempting heat of his body, he would keep on in a relentless quest for details of how the seduction went down. So to speak.
Intimate memories whispered through her skin and she leaned closer to the window and pressed her ove
rheated cheek against the cool glass. Why hadn’t he pressed for more? Why had he let her go without taking advantage?
Perhaps tonight had been only the start. Perhaps she would wake tomorrow to find him on her doorstep again, this time with breakfast. Perhaps he would use their isolation and her growing restlessness and the compassion she felt for his situation to chip away at her resolve until he’d exposed every secreted emotion from its hiding place.
Looking out into the pitch-black night, she realised that the rain had stopped and the resulting quiet felt almost eerie in its intensity. The aloneness, the isolation, crept out of that quiet like Donovan’s thieves, catching her unawares. If he’d arrived at her door right then, he would have found her exposed and vulnerable to anything that eased the choking grip of loneliness.
Dangerous thoughts.
Susannah pushed away from the window to prowl the confines of her villa. She was honest enough to recognise that danger, in herself and in her responses to Donovan. He had a way of making her feel a curious combination of strength and weakness, of safety and insecurity, of knowing what she wanted yet fearing everything that exposed.
She had to get away. She had to get back to Alex and the sanctuary of a future that answered all her needs. Tomorrow if—please, God!—the rain had really stopped.
Do you want to escape badly enough to get on the boat Gabrielle offered?
She paused by the window and thought about all she’d risked by coming here today. She’d let down Alex, her mother, everything that mattered.
Yes, she would brave the boat trip. Heck, if somebody strapped her into a canoe and handed her the oar, she would paddle like a crazy woman all the way home.
It’s only a boat, she told herself. Just a short trip across the bay. How bad could that be?
“I’ve never known a punctual woman who was worth knowing, so I’m willing to wait another five minutes.”
“This one’s worth knowing,” Van assured the owner of the charter boat, who’d introduced himself as Gilly. “My guess—if she’s not here by eleven, then she’s not coming.”
“Your call,” Gilly said affably. “Just holler when you’re ready to cast off.”
He jumped back on board—nimbly for a man the size of a linebacker—and disappeared inside. The luxury motor cruiser was more boat than Van had expected but Gilly explained that his business was geared more toward fishing and pleasure charters than today’s impromptu ferry trip to the nearest town across the bay.
Van assumed Susannah would have a car arranged and waiting to take her to the airport and her flight home to Melbourne.
Arms folded across his chest, he scanned the hillside that rose steeply toward the resort. She’d told the desk staff she would make her own way down to the jetty, but now he wondered if she’d chickened out. The tone of last night’s exchange about seasickness might have been teasing, but he sensed she’d not been kidding about her aversion to boats.
But if she wanted to leave here badly enough…
A now-familiar flash of colour bobbing in and out of sight on the hillside path brought his musing up short. Not the bright yellow umbrella but the sheen of red-gold hair. Behind him Van heard the thump of Gilly’s feet as he landed on the timber pier. He hmphed in satisfaction. “That looks like our other passenger now.”
Van didn’t answer. His attention remained fixed on Susannah, his heartbeat thickening as he anticipated the moment when she caught sight of him. He’d imagined his presence would be a surprise, and he wasn’t wrong.
Her stride faltered infinitesimally. Her head came up. Her fingers tightened on the tote bag slung over her shoulder.
Then Gilly called out a greeting and she straightened her shoulders and stepped onto the timber planks of the jetty. She wore the same coat as yesterday, the same boots, but there was something different about her, Van mused, studying her approach with narrowed interest. When a sudden snap of breeze grabbed at her hair, she lifted a hand to push it back into order and he was struck by another minibolt of déjà vu.
It was the wind in her hair. Or the sun lighting it in a dozen shades of gold. Or the way she caught the bright mass all together and held it at the side of her throat, bunched in one hand.
Whatever it was, he’d seen it before. The first instances he’d discounted as insignificant, but not anymore. Just being around her tapped into that deep well of forgotten moments, and that made another good case for keeping her close.
Straightening from the mooring he’d been leaning against, he greeted her with a lazy smile. “Good morning, Susannah. Enjoying the sunshine?”
Designer sunglasses obscured half her face but they didn’t disguise the pique in her voice. “What are you doing here?”
“Same as you, I expect.”
“You’re leaving today?”
“Can’t see much point in staying,” he said, “once you’ve gone.”
Gilly cleared his throat, a reminder of his presence and a reminder that they needed to get going. “Morning, Miss Horton. If you’re ready, I’ll help you aboard. Is that all your luggage?”
“Yes. I—”
“I’ll help Susannah,” Van said smoothly. Then to Gilly, “You have to admire a woman who travels this light.”
Her lips tightened ominously but when she didn’t fire back the expected salvo, Van took a closer look and realised that she wasn’t only surprised at finding him here or angry that he’d hijacked her attempt to escape him. Against the dark frames of her glasses and under the clear September sky, her skin looked even paler than yesterday, that gold-dust sprinkling of freckles more pronounced. And the fingers gripping the leather straps of her bag reflected the same tension he saw in the tight set of her lips.
His smile faded. “You really do have a thing about boats, don’t you?”
“Only about getting on them,” she muttered. Then her shoulders went back and her nostrils flared as if she’d drawn a swift breath. Deftly, she stepped around him and allowed Gilly to hand her on board.
Van intercepted before she reached the cabin, and steered her toward the flydeck. At the base of the steps she dug in her heels. “I would prefer to sit inside.”
“Your stomach won’t thank you,” he said mildly.
“I’ve taken something for that.”
“You got the Dramamine then?”
“How did you know…?” Beneath his hand, he felt her stiffen. She drew an audible breath. “You sent that?”
Van shrugged. “It helps. So does being on deck, in the fresh air. You can fix your gaze on a set point—”
“Like all that water?”
Suppressing a smile, he widened his hand against her lower back. “Trust me on this. You’ll feel much better up on top.”
Trust him? After he’d pulled this surprise, I’m coming with you stunt? After he’d dropped that sly suggestion about her feeling better on top.
Okay, Susannah conceded, perhaps she’d only imagined that double meaning. When she met his eyes, she read nothing beyond mild impatience when he asked, “Upstairs or down?”
Either way she had his company. Downstairs, alone. Upstairs, with the laconic-looking captain, as well. “Up,” she decided. If she was going to humiliate herself by upending her breakfast, it might as well be with a full audience.
Five minutes later, she was happy with her decision. Whether it was the medication, the open air in her face or her preoccupation with Donovan close at her side didn’t matter. She tipped her head back and the speed of their progress across the water whipped her hair into a dozen wild streamers and lashed colour into her face. If she just concentrated on that swift progress instead of each wave-to-wave bump she might live through this.
“Enjoying yourself?”
“‘Enjoy’ might be pushing it,” she admitted with a rueful grimace. Until her feet were back on solid ground, that was as near to a smile as she could manage.
“Come on. We’ve got the sun on our skin for the first time in days. Poseidon’s blessed us with
calm water and a hot yacht and nothing for miles and miles but open water. Look at this place. How could you not get a kick out of this?”
Susannah’s hands tightened their grip on the railing. Eyes fixed dead ahead on the distant chunk of land she’d chosen as her point of reference, she refused to surrender to temptation. She would not sneak a sideways look to see if his face reflected the appealing mix of reverence and quiet pleasure that coloured his voice. It was enough that it curled through her, blurring the edges of her senses and melting the grip of her fear another degree.
“I’m going to sit down,” she decided.
“Stay.” His hand closed over hers on the rail, warm and solid and grounding. “We’re almost there.”
Sure, they’d been speeding across the bay at a great rate of knots but they couldn’t be even a quarter of the way to Appleton. Then, as if to make a liar of her judgment, the cruiser’s speed slackened and she realised that she’d lost focus on the anchoring chunk of land.
It rose from the water before them, the white posts of the jetty a stark contrast to the thick green scrub.
Charlotte Island. A beat of alarm pulsed through her as she slowly turned to meet Donovan’s cleverly guarded eyes. “Why are we stopping here? What is this about?”
Six
W hat is this about?
“This,” Van said in response to her question. He turned to face the tiny pocket of land sitting in the middle of Stranger’s Bay.
Until now, he’d kept his focus on Susannah—no hardship there—but now his narrowed gaze shifted over the island and his chest tightened with a familiar frustration. Despite its significance, despite his previous visit, there was nothing familiar in the rocky shoreline or the gentle lap of waves against a bite of sand or the sharp roofline he could see peering out above the trees.
This time, he didn’t even attempt to shuck the vise-like grip of emotion. He let it take hold, let it mould his mood as the yacht cruised in to the pier. A lone figure waited there, hand raised in greeting.
“The caretaker,” Van said, turning back to Susannah. “Gilly’s giving him a lift into town.”
Tycoon's One-Night Revenge Page 6