Sunday, January 20, 2008
Tycoon's One-Night Revenge, the opening scene
So, she'd come. Sooner than Donovan Keane had anticipated, given the weather and the travel necessary to reach the resort's remote location. And, Van noted with satisfaction, she'd come alone.
Good.
A grim half-smile tugged at the corners of his mouth as he watched her dismiss the bellhop's umbrella and jog up the steps toward reception. Under the shelter of the portico she paused to acknowledge the doorman, and something in the swing of her red-gold hair and the lift of her hand triggered a weird flash of deja vu.
For a fraction of a second time vacillated from present to past, between dream and reality. Then she disappeared inside the building, gone in a flurry of long legs and designer raincoat, leaving Van alone and stripped of his satisfied smile.
Punching fist against palm, he searched his memory but came up blank. "Big surprise," he told a captive audience of weight stations and treadmills. He'd identified Susannah Horton the second he caught sight of her arrival through the rain-streaked window. But that recognition was due to the number of photos he'd viewed during the past weeks of intensive research--Australian society cameras loved the local hotel heiress--and not from the weekend she'd spent in his company.
Shoving away from the window, Van shook the tight grip of frustration from his muscles and circled the punching bag he'd deserted minutes earlier. He'd flown in from San Francisco the previous morning, but twenty-four hours at The Palisades at Stranger's Bay, the Tasmanian resort where they'd supposedly spent that weekend, had done nothing to fill the dark hole in his memory.
Hell, he'd come within a whisker of buying the place, yet nothing rang any bells. Not his flight into Australia's island state, not the helicopter transfer to the isolated retreat. Not even his first stunning view of the scattered villas perched high on a rocky promontory overlooking the southern ocean.
Nothing. Thud. Nada. Thud. Zilch. Thud.
Van hit the punching bag with a lethal barrage of punches that did little to soothe his frustration. The insistent internal burn came from more than the forgotten weekend, more than losing the prime property to an Australian hotel group. It stemmed from how he'd lost out.
The below-the-belt punch had been thrown while he lay unconscious in an ICU, incapable of defending himself let alone fighting back. Thud. A knockout counterbid, perfectly timed and perfectly presented. Thud. And all due to a treacherous redhead named Susannah Horton.
Thudthudthud.
Despite the veiled threat in the voicemail he'd left last night, he hadn't expected her to turn up so promptly. At best, he'd expected a return call. At worst, another don't-you-dare-call-again reply from her mother. The fact that Susannah had scurried down here without any advance warning or any entourage in tow, suggested he hadn't misread the signs.
She'd come because he'd hit a vein, and she hadn't wasted a minute seeking him out here in the resort's state-of-the-art fitness centre.
He hadn't heard her entrance, but he caught a glimpse of reflected movement in the expansive window. And a jolt of awareness travelled the length of his spine, strong enough that his next punch miscued and slid off the side of the bag. Recovering, he delivered a final combination of punches, sharp, swift, relentless, until his breath rasped in his lungs and his inner physical therapist barked, enough!
Then he dispensed with the boxing gloves and pulled on a T-shirt. Snagging his towel and water bottle he turned, and, dodging the arc of the still swinging bag, started toward the plush reception area. As he walked, he drank from his bottle and he drank in the woman.
Up close Susannah Horton packed even more punch than that first glimpse through glass and rain. She wasn't a bombshell; her beauty was more about class than flash.
Tall, willowy, feminine. Generous lips balanced by a long, straight nose. Red-gold hair and the kind of redhead's complexion that would burn in the sun. Green eyes that tilted upward and smoked with wariness.
Until that second he'd harboured a lingering doubt over how they'd spent their days, and nights, that July weekend. He couldn't recall one damn detail. All he had to go on was Miriam Horton's word--and hadn't that been one helluva phone conversation!--and his own instincts. Those he trusted. And when his eyes locked on hers, when he detected the suppressed heat in their sea-green depths, his body responded with a powerful jolt of elemental recognition. As he came to a halt in front of her, his instincts hummed like a mesotron.
Oh, yeah, she'd slept with him all right.
And then she'd really screwed him over.From the book TYCOON'S ONE-NIGHT REVENGE by Bronwyn Jameson, Silhouette Desire 04/08, ISBN 0373768656 , published by arrangement with Harlequin Books SA.Labels: excerpt, Tycoon's One-Night Revenge
posted by Bronwyn Jameson @ 6:54 PM  
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