Tycoon's One-Night Revenge (10 page)

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.”

“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.

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?”

She, God help him, finished licking the caramelised sugar from her dessert spoon before answering. “A frog.”

“Like Kermit?”

“An ugly frog. It may have been a toad,” she added defensively. “We were in the hot tub and I turned to get something and it was sitting on the edge of the tub. Right. There.”

“Don’t princesses kiss frogs?”

“Princesses kiss princes.”

He should have laughed. Or continued teasing her about the frog/toad. But somewhere in the midst of that exchange he got lost in the remembered taste of her kiss and the frustration he’d kept at bay bubbled to the surface. “Like Carlisle?” he asked.

The spoon went still in her fingers for a beat before she answered. “I’ve never kissed Alex.”

Van’s heartbeat seemed to slow and deepen with the magnitude of that admission. She’d never slept with Carlisle.

“Are you still going to marry him?”

“I don’t know,” she said. “I may have no alternative.”

His eyes narrowed to silver-sharp slits. “Is that what you’re looking for, Susannah. An alternative? In what form—another proposal?”

“No!” Chin up, she stared him down with what looked like genuine outrage. “I know that you don’t want marriage. That you value your independence too much to be looking for permanent ties.”

“Then what do you want? Would you like me to take the choice out of your hands? To get out of my chair and come around the table, pick you up and carry you into my bed and do—”

“No!”

“No, you don’t want me?” His voice dropped, low and rough as his mood. “Liar.”

“You know I want you,” she fired back, an agony of that wanting in the vibrato edge to her voice. “And you know why I won’t let myself have you.”

“Your father, the cheat?”

“Yes. My father, the cheating bastard. I won’t be him. And I won’t go back on my word to Alex.”

Heart in mouth, Susannah watched him rise to his feet. Would he come around the table? Would he force this issue, now, after ceding to her appeal last night? But all he said was, “I’m going to check if there’s any damage outside.”

“Can I help?”

Something like grim amusement ghosted over his face. “You can help by taking yourself to bed. Use the spare bedroom downstairs, if that makes you feel safer.”

Her gaze flickered from the spare room to his, next door.

“Yeah.” There was a wealth of meaning in that soft sound and the speculation that flared in his eyes caused her nipples to tighten into hard buds. “You might consider locking the door.”

After he was gone she did consider the downstairs room, but then she recalled the adjoining showers and how vulnerable—and how tempted—she’d felt with only that one thin wall between them. All night, too near, too dangerous.

She could sleep upstairs. It was only wind. Yesterday she’d conquered a boat ride without humiliation. If she embraced this tumultuous night, who knew, tomorrow she might face down a frog.

She attacked the stairs and started undressing as soon as she closed the door. If she kept moving, without thinking, she could dive under the covers and stay there covered and secure. In the privacy of the bathroom she stripped out of her underwear and pulled on her makeshift nightdress.

Donovan’s shirt.

The fabric shimmered against her oversensitised skin, as fine and cool as silk. Fitting for Princess Susannah. A small smile teased her lips as she folded back the cuffs and started buttoning.

Two buttons down a huge wrenching crash of wood against glass halted her fingers, and in the space of a heartbeat her smile turned to a scream.

He paused beneath the window of the spare bedroom, dark, silent. Perhaps she had stayed up. His heartbeat quickened as he moved on, his steps surer and growing with purpose.

From the east side of the house he heard the wrenching crack of a limb breaking from a tree. The shuddering impact as it struck. But it was her scream, loud enough to split the night and his inflamed body asunder, that sent him careening into the house…only to find the spare bedroom empty. All of downstairs rooms were empty.

Wild with dread, he tackled the stairs three at a time, the pull of fear more powerful than the pull of pain in his tight hamstrings. He tore the door open and came to a brickwall halt when he saw the branch protruding through the shattered wall of windows. Sharp-ended timber and glass fragments littered the floor and bed, which was blessedly empty.

“Susannah!”

Her name rasped raw in his throat. Maybe he’d missed her downstairs. Maybe she’d been in his room, in his—

The bathroom door opened, the light illuminating the scene of destruction. Van heard her gasp, saw the shock on her blanched face as he barked an order to, “Stay put. Don’t move.”

She was in the bathroom, out of harm’s way.

Van’s brain deciphered the information but the fierce tension in his gut did not relent. The brittle crunch of glass beneath his feet twisted it tighter still as he crossed the room.

Without hesitation, he slid one arm under her thighs and the other around her back and picked her up. Her shocked exhalation blew warm against his cheek, but he didn’t hang around enjoying the sensation. He strode back the way he’d come, and the arms wrapped around his neck tightened their purchase.

It was enough, that one gesture of trust, to ease the chokehold of fear. Enough that he could notice how she wore his shirt and snug white boxers. Enough to register the tickle of a stray curl against his throat, the silken texture of her bare legs against his arm, the soft press of her breasts against his chest.

“I can walk,” she said huskily, when he reached the bottom of the stairs. “You don’t have to carry me.”

“There was glass everywhere.”

“Not down here,” she pointed out, but her voice shook enough that he held her more tightly to his chest as he made a beeline for his bedroom.

“I’m all right,” she said with more force. Then she sucked in a breath. “Where are you taking me?”

About to shoulder open the door to his bathroom, he paused and looked down into her face. “I need to make sure you’re all right.”

“I am. Really.” Except her face was still too pale, her eyes pools of darkness, her voice tremulous. And a deep shudder rolled through her body when she added, “It’s just the shock of…of seeing my bed. And all that glass.”

Cursing silently, he carried her through the doorway and slid her onto the marble-topped vanity that spanned the width of the room. Briefly he caught his reflection in the mirror at her back. His face looked gaunt, tight, fearsome in its intensity.

Little wonder she’d wanted to be put down. Or that her pulse beat wildly in that vulnerable spot at the base of her throat. In addition to the shock of the branch falling on the bed she’d been about to get into, he’d managed to scare her half to death with his reaction.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured gruffly. “Just let me check your feet for splinters—”

“I was in the bathroom. The whole time.”

“Show me,” he rasped, unwilling and unable to take her word.

He didn’t wait for her permission. Setting her hand on his shoulder for balance, he swivelled her on her backside until her legs and bare feet were illuminated by the bright downlights. He heard the shuddery little breath she drew when he took her foot in his hands. Felt the reflexive clutch of her fingers on his shoulder.

And when he looked down at the slender arch of her foot, the delicate bones of her ankle, the pearly colour painted on her nails, he felt a surge of possessiveness so strong it threatened to bring him to his knees. It was partly aftershock of his fear and the panicked rush upstairs, partly the adrenaline surge of acknowledging that she was unharmed. But the other part was raw, primitive desire.

Finally she was here, her skin silky smooth beneath his hands, her legs bare and warm all the way up to
his
boxers.

Bare and warm and shivering, he realised belatedly, and when he put her foot down and swung her back around, he realised that she wore nothing beneath his shirt. Largely unbuttoned, the garment had rucked up and twisted to reveal the rose pink tip of her breast.

She was either very, very cold or very, very turned on.

Van was struck by a wave of yearning. To rip his shirt from her body, to take that breast into his mouth, to feast eyes and mouth and hands on the body he’d once known and could not remember. He forced his hands to pull the shirt back together and set it right, but beneath his fingers the sweet warmth of her body beckoned. He trembled, she trembled—through the roaring in his blood he could not tell which, and when he drew a breath to centre himself, he looked up and caught her eyes on him, intent, unguarded and lambent with the same desire that swamped his senses.

She
was trembling. He could feel the delicate tremor in the fingertips still resting on his shoulder. Shock, he told himself.

He picked her up and carried her through to his bed.

He could hold her, just hold and warm and soothe her until she felt safe again. He figured that wouldn’t take long. She would realise that this was his bed, his arms around her, that she was burrowing close against him, her nose pressed into the hollow of his throat, his face buried in the fragrant spread of her hair.

She would soon realise that the tight heat of his body was not all about comfort, that he rode a delicate line between restraint and desire.

Then she would know she wasn’t safe at all.

But for now…

He lifted a hand and combed the tangle of hair back from her face and she sighed, a soft relenting sound that soothed the jagged edges of his arousal. He pressed his lips to the crown of her head and stroked her back and crooned the words that she needed to hear and the message that he needed to remember.

“It’s okay, Susannah. You’re safe now. Go to sleep.”