Read Online Tycoon's One-Night Revenge by Bronwyn Jameson - Free Book Online

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,”