Tycoon's One-Night Revenge (6 page)

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 overheated 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?

“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.”

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?”

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.”

“We’re just stopping to pick up another passenger?”

“And to let one off. I’m stopping here,” he said. “For a couple of nights.”

He watched her take that in, saw the slight easing of tension around her mouth. The infinitesimal slump of her shoulders. But when she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, the gaze she turned on his was clouded with confusion. “What did you mean by
this?
” she asked.

“This is why I want The Palisades. This is why that substitute property you offered to find for me was irrelevant.”

“You want this island, not the resort?”

Lifting a hand from the rail, she grabbed her hair into that makeshift ponytail just as the yacht came to a rocky halt. She lost her balance for an instant, until Van steadied her with a hand at her elbow. She regained her foothold quickly, but he didn’t let her go. “I take it you didn’t come out here with me last time?”

“No.”

“Because of your aversion to boats?”

“You didn’t come by boat last time. You had the helicopter drop you off. And you didn’t invite me,” she added with a tight shrug that missed casual by at least a nautical mile. “I rather gathered that you wanted a break.”

“From you? I rather doubt that.”

Their gazes met and the inference of Van’s rejoinder hummed between them. Wary heat flared in her eyes and low in Van’s belly. He lifted a hand and threaded a loose strand of windswept hair behind her ear, and she shook her head slightly as if to refocus. “Why is the island so important?” she asked.

Van let his hand slide from her elbow to her hand. “Come and steady your legs on solid ground,” he said, “and I’ll tell you.”