Tycoon's One-Night Revenge (8 page)

Not filling his memory with details of Susannah Horton, not wiping disenchantment or tears from her eyes, not protecting his male pride from further bruising.

If Susannah joined him for dinner, he would use whatever compassion he’d stirred up with today’s revelations to pursue his goal. If she didn’t come downstairs, then there was always the option of delivering room service. This time he’d be better prepared. He wouldn’t let the sight of her naked vulnerability put him on the back foot; he would use it to his own advantage.

As much as he enjoyed the notion of feeding her by the fireside, the image of her stretched out on that bed, dressed in the clothes he’d left…
his
clothes, against
her
skin…lit a different kind of fire. When he caught the first shadow of movement on the stairs, he suffered a minor jab of letdown. The bedroom alternative had been looking so very attractive.

He closed the pantry door, the linguine he’d been searching out in hand, and the sight of her coming down the stairs incinerated the disappointment and redefined his definition of attractive.

He’d wondered how she would take to the intimacy of wearing his clothes…especially the boxer shorts. But, no. There they were, peeping out from beneath the hem of his 49ers sweatshirt. It hung halfway to her knees but still exposed enough of her long, slender legs to turn his mouth dry.

Two stairs from the bottom, she caught him eyeing those legs and stopped dead in her tracks. Palpable tension crackled in the air between them until Van forced his gaze away. If this was going to work—if he was going to build her sympathy into seduction—then he needed to make her comfortable. Keeping his eyes above her collarbone would be a good start.

Depositing the forgotten pasta on the countertop, he nodded at the outfit. “Nice look.”

Still looking wary, she descended the last couple of stairs. “I appreciated having something clean to put on. Thank you.”

“I have my moments.”

“This was a good one,” she conceded. Across the width of the living room their eyes met and held, the caution in hers edged with her gratitude. A promising start, Van decided. But then she straightened her shoulders and started toward the kitchen like a woman on a mission. “I’m just going to grab something to eat in my room.”

“No need to do that. Dinner’s coming along. Why don’t you sit by the fire? There’s antipasto to tide you over. Wine, beer, soda—take your pick.”

She hesitated, her nostrils flaring slightly as if taking in the flavoursome aromas wafting from the kitchen.

“Linguine Marinara. My signature dish.”

“You cooked?” she asked on a note of surprise. “From scratch?”

“No need to sound so stupefied.”

“In July, you told me you travelled too much to bother keeping a home. You ate out. You ordered in. So, yes, I am surprised that your culinary skills have progressed from microwave reheating to claiming a signature dish.”

“There has to be an upside to being off work for weeks on end.”

Her wary gaze turned serious as she met his eyes. “It’s nice that you could take a positive from that experience.”

“Learning my way around the kitchen was one,” he supplied with a half-shrug. “Why don’t you take a seat? Your waiter will be along shortly.”

She hesitated, but only briefly, before crossing to the fireside. In that moment’s pause, Van saw the questions in her eyes, and while he watched her sit on a cushion beside the hearth, he staunched his instinctive resistance.

He’d snared her curiosity. She would stay. They would talk. He would soothe the remaining apprehension from her eyes, the same as he’d done last night.

Except this time, he wasn’t leaving.

“Wine?”

“Thank you, yes.” Twisting at the waist, she looked back at him over her shoulder. The curiosity he’d detected earlier came alive in her face as she watched him pour and then transfer the appetisers to a serving plate. “Is waiting tables another skill you picked up while you were in stasis…or would that have been superfluous?”

“I live alone, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“I thought, given your circumstances…”

“That I might have needed live-in assistance?”

She shuffled her position on the cushion, presumably so she wouldn’t crick her waist or neck looking back at him. The new position afforded him an excellent view of her killer legs, but that was a momentary distraction. Her next comment brought all his attention winging back to her face. “Actually, I wondered if you may have moved in with Mac. She is your only family, right?”

Ever since she’d asked the question upstairs, he’d known she would return to his relationship with Mac. He hadn’t expected the edge to her tone, however. Hands planted on the bench, he held her chary gaze. “Why do I sense that you won’t believe my answer?”

“In July you said you had no family. I believed that.”

“In July I had no family.”

“And now you suddenly do?”

“Another of those upsides I mentioned.”

She shook her head slowly, her expression a mix of confusion and exasperation. “You acquired a grandmother?”

That pretty much summed it up. And if he concentrated on the upside instead of the hot cauldron of regret and frustration that seethed inside him then he could impart the bare facts. “Mac had an unplanned pregnancy when she was a teenager, a daughter she gave up for adoption. She didn’t track her down until ten years ago. By then my mother was long dead.”

“But she found you?”

“She sought me out, became my client. She never intended to tell me about our relationship.”

“Whyever not?” A wealth of emotion swirled in her eyes as she looked up at him; the kind he’d sworn to avoid. The kind that stirred the hot ache in his gut. “Why did she bother finding you if she didn’t want to claim you as her family?”

“She wanted to know me, to help me, but she could see I was doing fine without family.”

“Then why tell you now?” she persisted. Half a second later, she made a rough sound of discovery and distress. “I answered that earlier, upstairs, didn’t I?”

“Yes, she’s dying.” He shrugged, a tight gesture that did nothing to ease the tension in his muscles. “But that wasn’t the only motivation. When I woke up in hospital with this amnesia, she talked to help me work out what I remembered and what I didn’t. Then when I was recovering, we just talked, a lot. Not only about business or politics or the state of the economy. She told me about her past. Her regrets. When she started talking about my mother, the rest came out.”

“That must have been quite a shock.”

He brought her glass of wine and hunkered down to put it in her hand. Then he took his own seat on the floor, close enough that their knees brushed with a frisson of heat. It was a response he welcomed, the physical that he understood and could deal with, that didn’t burn like twisted metal in his gut. “Don’t feel sorry for me, Susannah. As you so accurately put it, I acquired myself a grandmother.”

“A grandmother you’re going to lose,” she said, and the emotion in her eyes—and his body’s response—blew away the remnant heat of the physical contact. When he would have pulled away from that confronting emotion, she leaned forward and captured him with the quiet intensity of her gaze. “I know you said I couldn’t understand what you’ve been through but some of this I do know.”

“Your grandfather?”

She nodded. “He loved to fish. That was his escape from the pressure of corporate life and the pretensions of society. He hated the functions he was forced to attend…he despised small talk. One weekend he went out chasing the big fish and he didn’t come home.”

“Hence your aversion to boats?” he guessed.

“No, that’s all about the seasickness. Although I suspect psychologists would have a field day with the connection.” A whisper of a smile touched her lips. “Pappy Horton was…he was so much more than the tycoon robber-baron the media depicted.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So was I. He left me his cabin in the high country where we stayed when he took me trout fishing.”

Her wistful expression stirred an unfamiliar emotion in Van’s gut. Part was the dull ache of empathy, part the sharper need to stop her hurt, to turn the storm clouds gathering in her eyes to smiles. “You fish? If you think I’ll buy that—” he shook his head, exaggerating his surprise “—how big was the one that got away?”

“My grandfather taught me how to fly cast when I was knee-high to a grasshopper.”

Eyebrows raised, Van studied her in this new light. Even dressed as she was in his oversize clothes, Susannah exuded class and city style. He couldn’t for the life of him picture her in the guise of fisherwoman. “I am impressed.”

“Not half as much as when I caught the first bream from the rocks!”

A reference to their last weekend—to a happening Van didn’t remember. He could have pursued that angle; he could have sought more detail; he could have teased her about the relative merits of their catches.

But as he watched the play of firelight in her hair and the play of shadows in her eyes, the past held no interest. He wanted to know her, not to engage his memory, not to kill the sale contract on The Palisades, but for himself, for this moment of time.

“This cabin,” he began. “Do you go there often?”

“I always seem to be too busy.” She shook her head and made a rueful sound. “And that’s no excuse. I did take Zara once. I taught her the grand tradition of the Pappy Horton fly cast. She was a natural.”

“Your grandfather didn’t teach her?”

“He never met Zara. She’s my half sister, you see.” The smile brimming in her eyes clouded with regret. “We only found out about each other a few years back when she came searching for her father.”

“And she found you?”

“Fortunately, yes.”

Her gaze fell away, lost in silent introspection of her untouched wine. Forgotten along with the plate of appetisers. Van wanted to continue feeding a different appetite, reconstructing his image of the woman inside the polished facade. The woman who looked more comfortable in a sweatshirt and bare feet than in a buttoned-up designer coat.

“Is your sister like you?” he asked.

She took a slow sip from her wine, her eyes meeting his over the rim of her glass before she lowered it. Something had shifted in the mood, he realised, in the last minute or two. The earlier conflict and mistrust soothed by a new understanding and empathy. “You asked that same question the first time I told you about my family.”

“And how did you answer?”

“I said, not at all. Zara is a knockout. Tall, blond, beautiful. She’s studying medicine, so she’s super smart and dedicated to a future in medical research. And as if that’s not enough, she’s also athletic and works part-time as a personal trainer. If I didn’t love her, I might possibly hate her for all that amazingness!”

Van smiled at her deprecating tone. “I imagine you’re more alike than you credit.”

“And
that’s
also the same response as last time.”

“Are you suggesting I’m predictable? Unoriginal? Boring?”

She laughed, a soft, husky chuckle that drew his gaze back to her lips. To the pinkened sheen left by the wine. To the satisfaction of knowing that the vibe arcing between them was here and now and only about them. “Oh, no,” she said softly. “You are many things and not one of them boring.”

In the aftermath of that admission their gazes tangled in a ripple of sensual energy, as delicate and multifaceted and intoxicating as the pinot noir she lifted to her lips. He could have asked about those many nonboring things, but only one held his focus.

“Was it like this before?” He gestured between them, illustrating the subtle tension that he couldn’t label with words.

“Yes. Always.”

The honesty in her answer was real. No question, no hesitation, no artifice. And whether she realised that she’d been too candid or whether she saw the intent in his eyes—whatever the reason, her expression grew cautious as Van removed the glass from her hand and, eyes locked on hers, set it down on the hearth tiles.

The wary widening of her eyes sparked a surge of satisfaction deep in his chest. The heat of contact as he rested his hand on her knee sparked something more primitive lower in his body.

He leaned closer and she drew a swift breath. “No. Don’t.”

But that was all the objection he allowed her. He didn’t want the spectre of her arranged marriage hovering between them, didn’t want the name of her sainted fiancé on her tongue.

He took her chin in his hand and silenced any complaint with his lips on hers. Beneath his touch she stiffened in surprise or in denial, and his objective instantly changed shape. No longer intent on simply tasting, he wanted her response, her acceptance, her participation.

Her kiss.

Cradling her face between his hands, he gentled the initial pressure of his mouth on hers. He traced the shape of her lips, kissed the corners and the dip in her chin, held her captive in the snare of his gaze before he reclaimed her mouth in a long, slow seduction. For a while he lost himself and the passage of time as he learned her taste and the silky texture of her skin beneath his hands.