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

give up.
    Those missing days had to be like a burr digging into his psyche. She’d feared he would be unrelenting; that when he’d taken her hand and pulled her close to the tempting heat of his body, he would keep on in a relentless quest for details of how the seduction went down. So to speak.
    Intimate memories whispered through her skin and she leaned closer to the window and pressed her overheated cheek against the cool glass. Why hadn’t he pressed for more? Why had he let her go without taking advantage?
    Perhaps tonight had been only the start. Perhaps she would wake tomorrow to find him on her doorstep again, this time with breakfast. Perhaps he would use their isolation and her growing restlessness and the compassion she felt for his situation to chip away at her resolve until he’d exposed every secreted emotion from its hiding place.
    Looking out into the pitch-black night, she realised that the rain had stopped and the resulting quiet felt almost eerie in its intensity. The aloneness, the isolation, crept out of that quiet like Donovan’s thieves, catching her unawares. If he’d arrived at her door right then, he would have found her exposed and vulnerable to anything that eased the choking grip of loneliness.
    Dangerous thoughts.
    Susannah pushed away from the window to prowl the confines of her villa. She was honest enough to recognise that danger, in herself and in her responses to Donovan. He had a way of making her feel a curious combination of strength and weakness, of safety and insecurity, of knowing what she wanted yet fearing everything that exposed.
    She had to get away. She had to get back to Alex and the sanctuary of a future that answered all her needs. Tomorrow if—please, God!—the rain had really stopped.
    Do you want to escape badly enough to get on the boat Gabrielle offered?
    She paused by the window and thought about all she’d risked by coming here today. She’d let down Alex, her mother, everything that mattered.
    Yes, she would brave the boat trip. Heck, if somebody strapped her into a canoe and handed her the oar, she would paddle like a crazy woman all the way home.
    It’s only a boat, she told herself. Just a short trip across the bay. How bad could that be?

    “I’ve never known a punctual woman who was worth knowing, so I’m willing to wait another five minutes.”
    “This one’s worth knowing,” Van assured the owner of the charter boat, who’d introduced himself as Gilly. “My guess—if she’s not here by eleven, then she’s not coming.”
    “Your call,” Gilly said affably. “Just holler when you’re ready to cast off.”
    He jumped back on board—nimbly for a man the size of a linebacker—and disappeared inside. The luxury motor cruiser was more boat than Van had expected but Gilly explained that his business was geared more toward fishing and pleasure charters than today’s impromptu ferry trip to the nearest town across the bay.
    Van assumed Susannah would have a car arranged and waiting to take her to the airport and her flight home to Melbourne.
    Arms folded across his chest, he scanned the hillside that rose steeply toward the resort. She’d told the desk staff she would make her own way down to the jetty, but now he wondered if she’d chickened out. The tone of last night’s exchange about seasickness might have been teasing, but he sensed she’d not been kidding about her aversion to boats.
    But if she wanted to leave here badly enough…
    A now-familiar flash of colour bobbing in and out of sight on the hillside path brought his musing up short. Not the bright yellow umbrella but the sheen of red-gold hair. Behind him Van heard the thump of Gilly’s feet as he landed on the timber pier. He hmphed in satisfaction. “That looks like our other passenger now.”
    Van didn’t answer. His attention remained fixed on Susannah, his heartbeat thickening as he anticipated the moment when she caught sight of him. He’d imagined his presence would