Tycoon's One-Night Revenge (5 page)

Or perhaps not.

She allowed her memory to slide briefly to that weekend, to recall an exchange where she’d described him as a can-do man. With an amused grin he’d shaken his head and said, “No. I’m more
will-do.
”

She didn’t allow herself to dwell on the memory of how he’d demonstrated that
will-do
quality. Instead she used the knowledge to bolster her defences. She had agreed to help him out because she did sympathise over his lost memory and the circumstances that had led him to lose the deal.

But it was only a deal. He would get over that loss and move on to another deal, another property, another asset. Alex did not have the luxury of that time. He needed a wife now, and The Palisades was part of that marriage contract.

Tonight’s dinner was only about helping Donovan fill in some blanks in his memory. She could do that. And she could do it while remaining cool and calm and not letting him get to her with his incendiary taunts.

She was not going to let him forget that she was another man’s bride.

Leaning back from the mirror she studied herself in the unforgiving light and crinkled her nose. Not exactly the picture of cool, calm and collected that she was aiming for. Despite her best efforts, her hair had taken on a life of its own. A pulse beat noticeably at the base of her throat. Her skin remained rosy-pink from the blow-drying.

Well, at least the colour matched her skirt.

With a last wry grimace at her reflection, she padded through to the bedroom. Wet boots or bare feet? Stitched-up composure or comfort? Dithering over that choice she heard the low rumble of his voice from beyond her closed door.

Perhaps the storm was easing. Perhaps salvation had arrived.

Discarding the boots, she hurried back to the living area only to find Donovan as alone as she’d left him. The microwave whirred busily at his back. The table was set. He looked up from slicing what looked and smelled like a homemade sourdough loaf. “Hungry?”

Susannah ignored her stomach’s growling response and the unsettling notion of how comfortable he looked in her kitchen. “Did I hear you speaking to someone just then?”

“Phone.” He pointed out the instrument across the living room with the wickedly serrated knife. “It was Gabrielle. A courtesy call to check the food had arrived and that everything was to your satisfaction.”

She glanced at the dishes he’d set out on the table, and nodded. Of course the food would be better than satisfactory—it was one of The Palisades’ premium selling points. “Did she mention the transport situation?”

“Yes, but the news is not what you wanted to hear. The helicopter won’t be back until Monday at the earliest.”

A sick feeling of dread tightened Susannah’s throat. “The weather forecast is that dire?”

“The forecast isn’t bad, but the rain was even heavier and more prolonged farther south. There’s flooding over a widespread area and the chopper used for this service has been seconded for rescue operations.” He looked up from his bread cutting and met her eyes. “Since we’re safe and dry here, I suggested that we could wait until after the emergencies.”

“Do you mean we’re stuck here indefinitely?”

“Gabrielle mentioned a charter service they use for day trips. If the sea settles, it can ferry us across the bay,” he said with irritating calm. While he spoke, he carried the bread and whatever he’d nuked in the microwave to the table, depositing both alongside a bowl of salad. He held out a chair, inviting her to sit. “You might as well make yourself comfortable.”

Stiff-backed and a long way from comfortable, Susannah slid into the chair. She took extra care to avoid contact with the hands resting casually against its back. “For how long?” she asked, her voice husky with nerves.

“A day or two, at most.” He took his place across the table, the glint in his eyes as silvery sharp as the knife he’d wielded before. A shiver tracked her spine like the trickle of raindrops on glass as he slowly smiled. “But who knows? It’s in the hands of the Gods. Why don’t you relax and enjoy?”

As long as they couldn’t leave, no one could arrive. And the only thing worse than being trapped here alone with Donovan Keane, was being
discovered
trapped here alone with Donovan Keane by, for example, Alex. He hadn’t called and her mother hadn’t called back, either. She’d expected to hear from someone…unless the phones were out.

“Did Gabrielle mention the phone lines being down?”

He looked up from buttering a slice of bread. “No. Why do you ask?”

“I just wondered, with all the rain, and mine has been so silent.” She cast a glance in that direction, then sat up straight as it struck her that—“I didn’t hear it ring earlier.”

“Above that wailing hair dryer?”

Point taken, but still…“It’s strange that Gabrielle didn’t mention the flooding when I spoke to her. She seemed quite optimistic about tomorrow.”

“Are you suggesting I fabricated her phone call?” he asked after a long beat of consideration. He set down his knife and leaned back in his chair, his hooded gaze inscrutable. “To what end?”

“To keep me here,” Susannah replied, mimicking his deliberate intonation.

“Kidnapping? Isn’t that a little extreme?”

Despite the lazy amusement in his voice, the weight of his steady gaze made her heart beat a little faster, a little harder. And her earlier words resonated in the thickening silence between them.

You would do whatever it takes to get your hands on the contract to The Palisades.

“What lengths do you think I would go to,” he said conversationally, “to keep you here? Would I use restraint, for example?”

“Hypothetically speaking, I would pick blackmail or some other form of verbal coercion as more your speed. You’re far too clever with your tongue to need to use physical force or restraint.”

For a long moment he studied her in silence, and the warmth of a flush rose unbidden in her face. And she silently berated herself for allowing him to lead her down this path. It was too suggestive, too sensually alluring.

“Now you’ve gone and aroused my curiosity.” Leaning forward, he captured her gaze and held it in place with the silky restraint of his tone. “We never got kinky then? I didn’t have to tie you up to have my wicked way with you?”

“I was willing.”

“Past tense.”

“Absolutely.”

His lips tilted at one corner in the sexy half smile that had rendered her willing on so many occasions. He picked up his wine and there was the hint of a salute in the gesture, as if he appreciated her candid responses. But there was a different appreciation in his eyes, one she should not be enjoying, but it was also a challenge from which she couldn’t back down.

“Now—present tense—if I wanted to keep you here I might need to tie you up. Toss you on that boat Gabrielle mentioned. Take you out to the island.”

Susannah pretended to give that some thought. “How proficient are you with a captive who’s prone to brutal seasickness?”

One eyebrow quirked. “I take it that’s not a hypothetical?”

“Unfortunately, no.”

“Then I’ll take that into account, should I ever wish to abduct you.”

“I’d appreciate that.” With a serene smile, she tilted her face toward his plate. “Are you finished with your first course?”

She removed their plates, and on her way to the kitchen, she could feel him tracking her every step of the way. Her heart continued to beat too fast and the tight heat in her skin was
so
not good, but she liked the intensity of sensation. She’d forgotten how much she liked the word play, the eye play, the play of his smile. She’d forgotten how one simple exchange with this man could turn her self-perception from cool, cautious and composed to smart, sharp and sexy.

And it was wrong. Already she had indulged herself far more than she had any right to.

She shut the dishwasher on their first-course plates with an audible snap and returned to the table, to the safe and sensible second-course salad.

“I’m intrigued by the boat thing,” he said.

Susannah’s stomach dipped as if she’d stepped from land onto a moving deck, but she didn’t look up from her plate. “Why is that?”

“With your job in the travel industry, I thought you’d be an expert on all means of transportation.”

“I book them,” she told him. “I don’t have to do them. Besides, travel is only one part of At Your Service.”

“The other parts being?”

“Whatever a client wants, we’ll find it. Travel, transport, accommodation, entertainment, shopping, staff.”

“Is that how you met Carlisle?” he asked. “Through your business?”

Susannah so did not want to go there, but what could she do? Return to banter about abduction and bondage? She’d promised conversation and it stood to reason that the conversation would circle on back to the common conflict. Alex Carlisle, her marriage contract, his business contract.

She took a sip of her wine and placed the glass carefully on the table. “Yes and no. We’d crossed paths many times at business and social events over the years, and when I started my own business, those connections were vital. My early growth was all word-of-mouth and making myself known to the people who could provide the level of service my clients require. Last year, I entered into an alliance with Carlisle Hotels.”

“They scratch your back, you scratch theirs?”

The cool note in his voice stilled the play of Susannah’s fingers on her wineglass and steadied her gaze on his. She lifted her chin a fraction. “Only when it best serves a client’s needs.”

“The Carlisle hotels have their own concierges.”

“Yes, but my service is at another level. Sometimes they bring me in to help at a hotel level or they recommend a client contact me directly for a specific or unusual request.”

His eyes thinned with an expression she recognised, and she braced herself for another of those disparaging remarks. Possibly about Alex’s specific request for a wife. But whatever he’d been thinking, remained unsaid. He took another drink from his wine.

“Why personal concierging?” he asked.

“It plays to my strengths.”

“Which are?”

“A known name, a lifetime’s knowledge of the lux market and a BlackBerry filled with excellent contacts.”

“That would be the flip answer, but you’re serious about your business. Otherwise you wouldn’t be working so hard to save it.”

Although he lazed back in his chair, his tone as casual as his posture, Susannah sensed real interest. In her, the woman, not the conduit to his own ambition.

Careful,
she warned herself as her body warmed to that interest.
Don’t be fooled by those silver eyes and tongue.

“It’s important because it’s mine,” she said simply, although the truth behind that answer was not so simple. “I conceived it, I chased capital to start it, its success or failure is all down to me.”

“You believe you can succeed in such a specialist field with a limited pond of possible clients?”

“That’s my point of difference,” she said, leaning forward as she latched on to her favourite topic. “My target clientele isn’t limited to the billionaire market. At Your Service is available to anyone, for any service, not only the big-dollar extravagances that anyone can buy with the right-sized cheque.”

“The everyman concierge service?”

He sounded dubious and Susannah smiled as she conceded his point. “Okay, so not quite ‘every’ man. Most of my clients are either professionals with stacked schedules or visiting executives with the same time challenge. My job isn’t only providing specific requests but also accessing what the client
really
wants…even when he or she doesn’t know exactly what that might be.”

“For example?”

“A place like Stranger’s Bay. The experience is the isolation and the wild beauty, it’s the escape from civilisation without feeling uncivilised. Every whim is catered but not in an obvious fashion. The staff, the service, everything is first-rate and discreet. That appeals to one client, while another wants staff on tap and constant pampering. My strength is in knowing which experience matches each client.”

“Your strength is in looking after other people’s needs,” he suggested.

She smiled right back at him and said, “Yes. I guess it is.”

There was an honesty in that moment, a connection that lasted a long moment before she remembered that this is what she’d warned herself about earlier. Not once,
but twice.
Yet again she’d stumbled into the dangerous trap of sharing too much, feeling too much and responding too easily to the wrong man.

Dinner was over. It was time to return to the real world.

Under the guise of clearing the table, she started to stand, but he stilled her with a hand on her arm. “Leave it. Stay and talk.”

“I can’t.”

Her words were barely audible above the pounding of her heart. He rose to his feet and using that hot encircling grip on her wrist, he drew her around the table. “You can,” he said. “You said you would tell me the important things.”

“I said I would try,” Susannah corrected, as inch by inch, he urged her nearer. With nothing to anchor her, she couldn’t resist, could do nothing but hold herself tall and stiff as the steely heat of his hand permeated her skin and raced through her blood.

She came to a halt toe to toe with his black leather loafers. In bare feet, she barely reached his chin and that put her eyes on a level with the open neck of his shirt. She felt ridiculously weak, even before he slackened his hold and let his palm slide up to her elbow and back to take her hand in his.

“Is this the part you thought you’d have trouble remembering accurately?” His words sloughed against her temple; their meaning swirled with liquid desire low in her belly. “Because when I get this close to you, I can’t believe that anything we did together would be forgettable.”

Susannah hadn’t forgotten.
Anything.
Including the reason she shouldn’t be standing here thinking about touching him. Thinking about kissing him.

Lifting her free hand to his chest, she pushed until he had to let her go. “This is the part I won’t let myself remember,” she said. “Now, I think you should go.”

“You have phone calls to make.”

Susannah nodded. “I do. If I’m going to be away more than overnight, there are people I need to let know.”

“Family?”

“My sister. Half sister,” she corrected herself. “And my neighbour. She worries.” She folded her fingers into her palm, trapping his heat there. It was a small thing to keep of him, but all she would allow. “Good night, Donovan.”

He surprised her by turning to go, then he stopped and turned back. “If you’re thinking of calling Gabrielle, she’s off duty tonight. She said you’re welcome to call anytime, regardless. Front office has the number.”

“Thank you, but I won’t bother her at home. I know she will call if there are any further developments.”

“You don’t want to verify my story?”

“I believe you. Who could make up a story like that?”