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

head back and the speed of their progress across the water whipped her hair into a dozen wild streamers and lashed colour into her face. If she just concentrated on that swift progress instead of each wave-to-wave bump she might live through this.
    “Enjoying yourself?”
    “‘Enjoy’ might be pushing it,” she admitted with a rueful grimace. Until her feet were back on solid ground, that was as near to a smile as she could manage.
    “Come on. We’ve got the sun on our skin for the first time in days. Poseidon’s blessed us with calm water and a hot yacht and nothing for miles and miles but open water. Look at this place. How could you not get a kick out of this?”
    Susannah’s hands tightened their grip on the railing. Eyes fixed dead ahead on the distant chunk of land she’d chosen as her point of reference, she refused to surrender to temptation. She would not sneak a sideways look to see if his face reflected the appealing mix of reverence and quiet pleasure that coloured his voice. It was enough that it curled through her, blurring the edges of her senses and melting the grip of her fear another degree.
    “I’m going to sit down,” she decided.
    “Stay.” His hand closed over hers on the rail, warm and solid and grounding. “We’re almost there.”
    Sure, they’d been speeding across the bay at a great rate of knots but they couldn’t be even a quarter of the way to Appleton. Then, as if to make a liar of her judgment, the cruiser’s speed slackened and she realised that she’d lost focus on the anchoring chunk of land.
    It rose from the water before them, the white posts of the jetty a stark contrast to the thick green scrub.
    Charlotte Island. A beat of alarm pulsed through her as she slowly turned to meet Donovan’s cleverly guarded eyes. “Why are we stopping here? What is this about?”

Six
    W hat is this about?
    “This,” Van said in response to her question. He turned to face the tiny pocket of land sitting in the middle of Stranger’s Bay.
    Until now, he’d kept his focus on Susannah—no hardship there—but now his narrowed gaze shifted over the island and his chest tightened with a familiar frustration. Despite its significance, despite his previous visit, there was nothing familiar in the rocky shoreline or the gentle lap of waves against a bite of sand or the sharp roofline he could see peering out above the trees.
    This time, he didn’t even attempt to shuck the vise-like grip of emotion. He let it take hold, let it mould his mood as the yacht cruised in to the pier. A lone figure waited there, hand raised in greeting.
    “The caretaker,” Van said, turning back to Susannah. “Gilly’s giving him a lift into town.”
    “We’re just stopping to pick up another passenger?”
    “And to let one off. I’m stopping here,” he said. “For a couple of nights.”
    He watched her take that in, saw the slight easing of tension around her mouth. The infinitesimal slump of her shoulders. But when she pushed her sunglasses to the top of her head, the gaze she turned on his was clouded with confusion. “What did you mean by this? ” she asked.
    “This is why I want The Palisades. This is why that substitute property you offered to find for me was irrelevant.”
    “You want this island, not the resort?”
    Lifting a hand from the rail, she grabbed her hair into that makeshift ponytail just as the yacht came to a rocky halt. She lost her balance for an instant, until Van steadied her with a hand at her elbow. She regained her foothold quickly, but he didn’t let her go. “I take it you didn’t come out here with me last time?”
    “No.”
    “Because of your aversion to boats?”
    “You didn’t come by boat last time. You had the helicopter drop you off. And you didn’t invite me,” she added with a tight shrug that missed casual by at least a nautical mile. “I rather gathered that you wanted a break.”
    “From you? I rather doubt that.”
    Their gazes met and the