“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.”
Feet fixed firmly on something that didn’t rock and roll and an answer to the puzzle of why he wouldn’t let The Palisades go. How could Susannah resist a double-edged invitation like that?
Once on firm land, she realised just how shaky her sea legs were, so when Donovan suggested they stroll down to the beach, she had no objection. After a short distance her legs started to feel more normal and so did her head. “This is why you came back,” she mused.
She felt his glance on her face. “Here?”
“To Stranger’s Bay. If you’d only wanted to apply pressure about the deal, you could have landed on my doorstep in Melbourne or gone straight to Alex.”
“I needed to come back here. To see if I remembered.”
Retracing his footsteps, recreating the past weekend. Last night’s anxiety over that endeavour resurfaced in a slither of unease that travelled the length of Susannah’s spine and tingled in the palm of her hand. Where he’d held it, she realised, last night and again leaving the boat just now.
It should have seemed small, insignificant, compared to all the intimacies they’d shared already. But it didn’t. Perhaps because they’d skipped the preliminaries and landed straight in bed the first night, perhaps because he’d returned as a virtual stranger with no memory of those intimacies, perhaps because beyond the innocent touch she felt every memory in vivid, visceral detail.
She pushed both hands deep into the pockets of her trench coat and forced her focus back to his words. “You needed to come out here, to Charlotte Island, to see if you remembered that first visit?”
He didn’t respond immediately, pausing instead to help her down a rocky section of path. They’d come quite a distance from the boat—far enough for her peace of mind. She glanced back to where it sat, rocking peacefully to sleep in the deep-blue water.
“You said I mentioned Mac.”
Susannah’s attention shifted back to his face, the boat instantly forgotten. “Only in passing, when I asked who the MacCreadie was in the Keane MacCreadie business name.”
“Elaine MacCreadie,” he supplied now. He started to move as he talked, and she kept pace beside him, her eyes trained on his face. “She was a client when I worked on Wall Street, a businesswoman with a boatload of investments and a steel-trap brain. She said she appreciated my low BS quotient, and when I was shafted by one of the big bosses, she encouraged me to go it alone. She provided the start-up capital and the smart advice. I provided the man hours.” He cut her a look. “Did I tell you she’s an Aussie?”
“No, you didn’t.”
“From here,” he said, indicating right here with a sweep on his hand. “Born and raised on Charlotte Island.”
Susannah stopped dead in her tracks. “You’re buying the place on her behalf.”
“I’m buying it for her,” he said, making the distinction with subtle emphasis as his eyes locked on hers. “Is there anyone in your life you would do anything for?”
“There was,” she replied without hesitation. “My grandfather. Pappy Horton.”
“Then you understand.”
“I’m not sure that I do,” she said slowly. “There is a wealth of difference between doing something and buying something.”
“You think that’s what I’m doing? Making an expensive gesture?” He expelled a rough breath and turned to stare fixedly out to sea for a long moment. And when he continued, there was a raw note to his voice she’d never heard before. A note that ripped straight to her heart. “Mac’s not well. Hasn’t been for a while now. This is probably my last chance to do something for her, and the one thing that would have any damn meaning would be seeing this place back in MacCreadie ownership.”
“Does she have family?”
“A grandson.”
And this would be her legacy to him, a link to his heritage in Australia.
“So, you understand why I won’t give this up without a fight?” he asked.
“Mostly,” Susannah said huskily, forcing the words past the thick ache at the back of her throat. “Although I don’t understand why you didn’t tell me about Mac before.”
“It’s not something I talk about,” he said, and the shutters had come down on his eyes, just as they had done in the past when she’d asked anything too personal.
“Then why now?” she persisted, wanting to batter down the barriers. Wanting, God help her, a piece of the man inside.
“I had to do something. You were leaving.”
She was achingly aware of his meaning. She was leaving, she was marrying another man, he would lose this last tenuous toehold on his quest to repay Mac. But her heart imagined another meaning in his words, in the quicksilver flame of his eyes.
“It will make no difference,” she said. “I can’t change what’s been set in motion.”
“You can. If you don’t marry Carlisle.” His gaze dropped to her lips. “Stay, Susannah. Convince me that this marriage is what you really want.”
This is what she’d expected last night and she’d armed herself against the assault. Now he’d caught her unprepared. She needed to breathe, to ease the swell of emotion in her chest, to think. “I can’t stay, Donovan. I can’t.”
“I’m afraid you have no choice.”
“I don’t know…” Her voice and her thoughts trailed off as she detected a new determination in his expression. She turned quickly, eyes drawn to the empty jetty and then to the gleam of white speeding away from the island.
“You brought me here, you talked me into leaving the boat and you’d already arranged for Gilly to leave without me?”
Van knew she wouldn’t be happy. He was ready to face the heat of her anger, to answer all accusations, but the disenchantment burning at the back of her eyes caught him low and hard.
“Hey,” he said softly. “I had reasons.”
Giving in to the temptation to touch her, to soothe her, to hold her, he started forward, but she backed away as far as the water’s edge, both hands raised with the same warning that flashed in her eyes.
“Last night I spent half the night worrying over why you’d left so easily. That was so out of character for a man who always pursues what he wants without compromise. Now I see. You were already planning this. You teased me about restraint and force and abduction—”
“
Hang on just a second,” he cut in.
But she wasn’t hanging on for even half that time. She continued down that same path, her eyes growing more disillusioned with each word. “But you didn’t have to resort to force, did you? Not when you could manipulate my emotions so easily. Sending me the seasick medication, your solicitous attention on the boat and then you crown it all with Mac. You know what? I would have preferred if you had brought me here by force. At least that would have been honest.”
“You think I lied to you?”
“I think you manipulated me.”
Van’s eyes narrowed at that accusation. At the implication that he’d bent the truth, that he’d used Mac’s illness in an underhanded way. “After the way you and your mother manipulated Carlisle on this deal, I’d be careful which stones you sling from that glass house, Susannah.”
For a beat of time, that softly spoken counterstroke hung between them. Then she lifted her chin and he noted that the earlier swirl of disappointment had turned to cool disdain. “How long are you holding me hostage?” she asked.
“As long as it takes.”
“To?”
“Stop you marrying Alex Carlisle.”
Van’s luggage, her one bag and the fresh food supplies sent over for their stay had all been delivered to the house perched high on the island’s highest ridge. The original weatherboard cottage where Mac had spent her childhood was now the caretaker’s residence. In recent years, the resort had added the luxurious timber lodge to its private island; the ultimate get-away-from-civilisation retreat with no phones, no television, no Internet.
“Ever been out here before?” Van asked, joining Susannah on the long veranda. The sweeping vista of water added to the sense of sitting in majestic isolation, alone in the middle of the wild and rugged southern ocean.
When she didn’t answer his question, he let it slide. He figured she would get over her huff soon enough—possibly when he divulged why he’d sought her out. “I have a small favour to ask.”
Her fingers curled around the railing, as if to consolidate her grip. “A favour?” She might as well have said, “A slimy toad?” She employed the same level of distaste.
“I’m heading out to take some photos,” he told her.
“Have fun.”
At least she was talking, Van decided. He much preferred these snooty comebacks to the frosty silence of their walk up from the beach. “It’s not a sightseeing stroll. I want photos for Mac.”
“You didn’t think of that last time?” She favoured him with an incredulous look. “You had a camera with you the morning you came out here.”
“Yeah, I had a camera. I had photos. Past tense.”
Realisation flitted across her expression and her gaze snapped to his. “They stole your camera?”
He didn’t answer. He just held her gaze a moment longer before asking again, “Will you help me out with the pictures?”
“Why do you need my help?”
“Mac wants a shot of me, at the cottage.”
“I’ll help,” she said. “But just so you know, I’m doing it for Mac, not as a favour to you.”
Van stretched the afternoon excursion for photos as far as he could, until the impatience simmering beneath her ice-cool facade snapped. He’d been helping her down a steep path at the time, his destination a stretch of virgin sand he’d glimpsed from the elevated veranda. But instead of giving him her hand, she slapped the digital camera into his outstretched palm.
“I think you have more than enough pictures of yourself,” she said. “I’m not a mountain goat. I’m not dressed for hiking. I’m going back to take a shower.”
Two hours later, Van knocked on the door of her bedroom—on arrival, he’d offered her the upstairs master, and after a suspicious moment’s deliberation, she’d accepted. Now he gave her ample time to make herself decent or to tell him to go to hell, but beyond the door he heard nothing.
With her fear of boats, surely she wouldn’t attempt to escape. Still, a tinge of worry clawed at his gut. He’d brought her here and he would keep her safe.
He knocked again, and when she didn’t answer this time, he opened the door. Perhaps she was out on the balcony, out of earshot…
She wasn’t.
Wrapped in a bath towel, she sat in the middle of the king-size bed, legs long and bare, hair a wet tangle of curls, her face turned toward the stunning view of treetops and ocean beyond the wall of louvred windows. Van paid scant attention to the backdrop. There was something in the picture she painted—not her unenhanced beauty, nor the knowledge of all that skin warm and scented from her shower, but the fragility of her expression—that stirred a world of yearning inside Van.
It echoed the moment down at the beach when she’d looked at him with naked disappointment; when he’d reached for her and she’d slapped him down. This time he forced himself not to reach. He sucked up that desire and waited a patient count of five for her to acknowledge his presence.
When she didn’t, irritation ate away at his patience. “Still sulking?”
“Thinking, actually.”
“About?”
“Our conversation down at the beach.” She turned her head a fraction, enough that the angled rays of the sun caught her hair with fire. His breath caught with the same hot burn when he saw the hint of moisture on her lashes, the uneven redness in her cheeks.
She’d been crying.
“When you asked me if there was one person I would do anything for, I answered reflexively. There are others I’d also walk on hot coals for. Zara says I need to cultivate a little healthy selfishness. She thinks I’m a sap.”
“Zara is your sister?” he guessed.
She nodded in silent assent. “She is also on my list of people I would do anything for, but Pappy came to mind instantly even though he’s been gone ten years. Probably because I didn’t have a chance to do any last things for him. He was gone too quickly.” Her gaze lifted and locked on his. “She’s dying, isn’t she?”
The frankness of her question knocked the remaining air from Van’s lungs. He couldn’t answer. Ultimately he didn’t have to because the sudden sheen of understanding in her eyes reflected his answer.
“That’s what I thought.” Lips pressed hard together, she turned away. “Did you only come up here to enquire about my sulking, or was there something else?”
“I brought you some clothes. I thought you might appreciate something clean to change into for dinner.”
He put them down on the dresser beside the door, and prepared to leave before he said any more. Before he revealed the tenuous thread of emotion unravelling inside. He was halfway out the door when she spoke again.
“Mac’s your grandmother, isn’t she? You’re the grandson.”
Sucker punched by her perceptiveness, Van didn’t answer. He didn’t turn around. He kept on walking.
Seven
W hen the shadows of dusk fell over the house, Van started a fire in the huge open fireplace that dominated the living room. Susannah hadn’t made an appearance—he didn’t know if she would—and for a while after he’d come downstairs, he’d been glad. He’d needed time and solitude to soothe the raw emotion prodded to life by her perceptive questions.
That was done now, courtesy of the Vivaldi he’d set on rotation and the therapeutic benefit of applying a large knife to raw foodstuffs. The sauce for a simple pasta marinara now simmered on the stovetop. A bottle of light red breathed on the countertop. And he’d reminded himself of what mattered.
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.
Tycoon's One-Night Revenge Page 7
