Tycoon's One-Night Revenge by Bronwyn Jameson Page A

dinner he watched her eat, drink, talk, and all he could think about was that mouth beneath his. Not as a conduit to the past, but because he wanted. For him, for now.
    The craving coiled more tightly with each passing minute, every awkward pause, each time her gaze slipped away from his. And with each passing minute the certainty grew that she, too, was steeped in the same sweet agony of wanting. It was in the heightened colour that traced her cheekbones, the unsettled play of her fingers against glass and tableware, the falsely cheerful bursts of small talk that grew less frequent and more desultory as the meal stretched on.
    Van could have picked up the conversational reins, but some perverse part of him enjoyed the crackle of tension in the lengthening silences. He let it play out as long as he could, until she set down her napkin and started packing up the plates. “Leave them,” he said. And when she looked like protesting, “The dishes aren’t going anywhere and neither are we. They’ll still be there in the morning.”
    “And so will we,” she said, and the spark in her voice was reflected in her eyes as they met his. This time they didn’t drift away. “For how many more mornings?”
    “Why don’t we take this conversation to the fireside,” Van suggested smoothly. “I’ll make coffee.”
    “No, thank you.”
    “Okay, so no coffee.”
    “And no fireside conversation,” she added. “Please, Donovan, just answer my question. When is Gilly returning to pick us up?”
    “When our business here is finished.”
    “Our business?” She leaned forward in her chair, her fingers tight on the plates she’d yet to relinquish. “How can we even start to sort out this mess when we’re stuck here?”
    “That’s not the only business. We have unfinished business.”
    For a moment his words hung between them, and Van felt a kick of anticipation when their meaning registered in her expressive eyes. They darkened to a turbulent sea-green as she shook her head.
    “You’re denying there’s something between us? After that kiss?” Van’s voice deepened with the memory, with the impact, with the certainty that he would have that mouth under his again. “I can still feel it, Susannah. I can still taste you in my blood.”
    “That doesn’t change anything.”
    “Doesn’t it? What if I hadn’t stopped? What if that kiss had continued the way it started? What if you’d ended up naked with me inside you?”
    “Then I would know that you’d succeeded,” she replied. “You brought me here for one reason. You want to end my marriage plans—what better way than by seducing me?”
    “It’s not only about the deal, Susannah. You’re discounting this burn between us.”
    “I’m not discounting it. How can I?” she asked simply, but the heat of passion was in her eyes, in her cheeks, in the throaty ache of her voice. “But as much as I want you, Donovan Keane, there is one thing I’m determined not to do. My father cheated, with Zara’s mother and Lord knows how many other women, and he hurt a lot of people in the process.
    “I would never do that to Alex,” she continued in the same softly impassioned tone. “I would never do that to anyone I respected, and I don’t believe you would want me to. Not even to win this deal for Mac.”

Eight
    V an had no argument and no countermeasure. If he forced the issue, he would lose her respect and sometime during the past twenty-four hours that had assumed a vital importance.
    Yet everything inside him rebelled against standing aside. For close to two months he’d been forced to do nothing. Impatience, impotence, thwarted desire—hell, there must have been a dozen other equally abhorrent ingredients curdling in his gut. A long night where his insomnia kicked in—and where he’d heard Susannah moving restlessly upstairs into the early hours—had done nothing to improve his outlook.
    Neither did the storm clouds darkening the southern sky.
    They’d come