Tycoon's One-Night Revenge

by Bronwyn Jameson

  Yet everything inside him rebelled against standing aside. For close to two months he’d been forced to do nothing. Impatience, impotence, thwarted desire—hell, there must have been a dozen other equally abhorrent ingredients curdling in his gut. A long night where his insomnia kicked in—and where he’d heard Susannah moving restlessly upstairs into the early hours—had done nothing to improve his outlook.

  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.

  He came out of his room fifteen minutes later with an apology ready, but she was gone. From the veranda he caught sight of her down by the boathouse—checking the size of the runabout?—and he cursed himself for mentioning it.

  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.”

  Susannah spent only enough time in the shower to warm herself through. She couldn’t afford to loiter, to allow her mind to linger over the way he’d looked at her and the way she’d looked back. She wouldn’t think about him soaked to the skin, the fine white fabric plastered against hard muscles…or peeled off.

  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.”

  Susannah trusted him. The notion, surprising, pleasing, terrifying, shifted the mood between them as the afternoon wore on. She refused to sit idly by the fire and be waited on; he was no good at sitting and passing the time.

  He hadn’t needed to tell her that; it was part of his will-do nature and part of the restless spirit that kept him moving and seeking new challenges in business. Another reason why he had no need of a home.

  She slotted another piece into the jigsaw puzzle she’d been working on for the past half hour, before turning to track his progress into the kitchen. “Nuhuh,” she said with mild rebuke. “My turn to make dinner tonight.”

  “You cook?”

  “Quite well, as it happens.”

  He leaned his hips against the island counter, folded his arms across his chest and a small grin tilted his mouth. “You don’t say.”

  “What is the smile for?” she asked, suspicious.

  “You.”

  Their eyes met in the wake of that simple response, but there was nothing simple about it. Asking for more was pure masochism but she couldn’t stop herself. “Me…in what way?”

  “You’re a constant surprise. When I first saw you—even before I saw you—I pegged you as a princess.”

  “In wading boots and a tiara?”

  The smile widened on his lips; deepened in her heart. “Now, there’s a picture.”

  “I’ve always been more comfortable in the wading boots,” she admitted, exaggerating a tony accent. “The tiara tends to get tangled in the hair.”

  “There is a lot to tangle in.” His gaze tracked the braid and its many escaped strands, before returning to her face. “Is the colour natural?”

  He’d asked that before. Their first night. Before he’d chosen to discover the truth in his own will-do fashion.

  Her skin prickled with remembered heat, with the sensation of his fingers sliding beneath her skirt and stroking her inner thigh. And, damn her redhead’s complexion, that memory suffused her skin with warmth and she swore he saw right through her discomfort to the very, very bad images playing in her mind.

  “Yes,” she said in a husky breath. “All natural.”

  The focus of his heavy-lidded eyes grew hazy as he considered her comment. “And the curls?”

  “What you see is all me.”

  “Unaided and unabetted,” he murmured, and the appreciation in his silky, low voice and the hooded heat of his gaze turned every nerve alive in Susannah’s body. “Very unprincessy.”

  “That isn’t entirely by choice. This—” she flipped the plait back over her shoulder “—would normally be blow-dried and straightened. There would be makeup. Zara maintains that I could groom and primp for Australia.”

  “You don’t need to.”

  “Oh, yes. A princess who grows up with frizzy red hair and gangly legs and freckles, learns how to primp!”

  He chuckled, a low, smoky sound that hummed through her heightened senses. It struck her that for all the time she’d spent with him that previous weekend and in the past few days, this was the first time she’d heard that devilish laugh. She’d barely had time to savour the new knowledge, to stow it away with all the other memories, before he said, “You grew up just fine, Princess.”

  They ended up preparing dinner together, a long and leisurely process drawn out by the mood of teasing truce they’d established. She told him she preferred Princess to Goldilocks. He chipped a place even deeper in her heart by asking what her Pappy had called her.

  “Princess,” she admitted. Then, to ease the sudden choking tension, she added with faux gravity, “Or by my full title, Princess Susannah of Horton Ponds.”

  “That works with the wading boots and fishing pole image.”

  “Exactly.”

  They returned to the business of dinner, working alongside each other in a delicious combination of accord and teasing dispute. They debated the optimum combination of herbs for the oven-baked schnapper, swapped tastes of fresh salad ingredients as they chopped and sliced, fought for control of the garlic press but not for the job of dicing onions.


  But beneath the surface lurked the sleeping beast of their attraction, just waiting for the chance to pull them under.

  Like when Susannah refused his offer of wine—“After last night…no, I’ll refrain.” And the memory of their kiss burned bright in his eyes.

  Or when her hair came free of the braid while she was whisking the makings of a crème brûlée, and he stepped in and said, “Let me fix it for you.” His voice, low and gruff, stroked her like roughened velvet and then his hands were in her hair rethreading the sections and filling her with a yearning for more. Then he stopped and she looked up and caught the flare of his nostrils and felt the glancing touch of his gaze on her erect nipples.

  She could feel her body listing toward him, the pull so intense, so necessary, that she couldn’t right herself.

  Until a piercing crack of breaking timber shattered the moment. Susannah yelped. The bowl clattered to the countertop. And Donovan was already halfway to the door, gone a second later.

  A branch had come down on the front path. No damage to the house and a saving grace as far as Van was concerned. If Susannah had continued to look at him in that touch-me, take-me way, if she’d put that outstretched hand on him—anywhere—he would not have been accountable for his actions. It had taken a good ten minutes pacing around in the sleety wind to cool his body’s raging need before he could trust himself to return indoors.

  Two hours later, they had eaten, the storm had abated, but not before a second severed branch crashed noisily against the side of the house.

  “I see what you meant by the scream,” Van said, recalling the night at The Palisades when she’d threatened to scream the place down. Not a smart move, remembering, because with that recollection came the scent of her skin in his nostrils, the heat of her temper bubbling so close to the surface, the rising urge to get that close again.

  “That wasn’t a scream,” she said now. “It was more of a…loud gasp.”

  Van leaned back in his chair and regarded her with a simmering mix of amusement and desire. Princess Susannah really was something. With every hour in her company there was something else. “Out of curiosity—what led to your hair-raising scream that other weekend?”