by Daphne Clair
His eyes ominously glinting, Jase said flatly, “Not funny.”
“It wasn’t really meant to be. And what else isn’t funny is the way you’ve been stalking me all day.”
“Stalking?”
“Yes. Give it a rest, will you? It’s beginning to get on my nerves.”
“I didn’t think you’d be so easily rattled, ice lady.” His eyes had turned speculative, curious. “What are you hiding beneath that touch-me-not cool of yours?”
Her heart gave a heavy thud as though she’d just been confronted by a physical threat. “I’m not sure what you mean,” she said coolly. “What do you hide behind that fuzz on your face?”
He laughed. “Laziness, I guess. Can’t be bothered shaving every day. You don’t like it?”
“It’s nothing to do with me,” she told him. Any more than her friendship with Bryn was anything to do with Jase.
She ought to lay his suspicions to rest instead of goading him. But by making excuses she’d be tacitly admitting she was in the wrong. Besides, there was a certain pleasure in unsettling Jase Moore, a secret revenge for his low opinion of her.
He’d been right when he said the ice was only skin deep. Again today he’d made her angry—and frightened. She didn’t want him—anyone—to know how thin and fragile her protective coating was. That underneath the composed and confident business leader with a reputation as a gutsy and unflinching negotiator was a flesh-and-blood woman who hurt like anyone else.
But who didn’t dare show it. Jase Moore was one of the very few people who had seen through the brittle surface she presented to the world, and the only one who had done so without her permitting it.
That was why he made her so nervous.
Jase drove through the night to his home, an hour or so away near the provincial city of Hamilton, his mind annoyingly fixed on Samantha Magnussen. No woman had got under his skin the way she did.
Kissing her after the wedding had been a mistake. Irritated by the distant contempt with which she’d met his warning, he’d wanted to shake her chilly control. And figured that was a surefire way to do it.
Or so he’d tried to explain it to himself. After the fact.
At the time he’d simply done what seemed a damn good idea—for five seconds. And then justified it with that implausible comment about not tasting alcohol.
What he’d tasted had been unexpectedly warm, soft lips, feminine and sweet, that left him wanting more. The memory was still amazingly vivid.
Seeing her today, he’d wanted to do it again. At the same time, when she looked at Bryn and spoke of him with a note of affection in that sexy voice of hers, he’d wanted to shake her.
The small, mysterious smile on her lips when she’d turned away from the other man on his wedding day had set off warning bells in Jase’s head, and then she’d looked straight into his eyes, her poised, cool beauty concealing hidden fires. That kind of understated allure could drive any man wild.
It hadn’t escaped him that despite his warnings she’d made no promises not to try seducing Bryn, made no assurance that she had given up hope.
An old school friend of Samantha’s had organised a fundraiser for the Red Cross. “A kind of upmarket market,” she’d told Samantha enthusiastically. “A fun night for bargain hunters, with live music and a bar—to get the punters in the mood for spending,” she added, with a shrewd grin.
The big room was filled with Auckland’s art lovers, tycoons and socialites sipping champagne, peering at the donated goods and simply chatting—or in many cases networking.
Samantha had donated one of her father’s investment paintings to the cause, and dressed for the occasion in a plain black sheath with subtle silver threads in the weave. A fine silver chain around her neck held a single black pearl.
She saw Bryn, his wife by his side, an arm about her waist while they talked with another couple. Rachel wore an amber satin dress, and her thick dark curls were swathed atop her head in a way that Samantha’s pale, straight hair would never achieve.
Of course it was inevitable that someday—or night—she and Rachel would be in the same place at the same time. The only real surprise was that it hadn’t happened sooner.
While she hesitated about approaching the couple, Jase appeared from behind them, holding between his hands three wineglasses, two of which he adroitly passed to his sister and her husband.
Then, as if he’d felt Samantha’s gaze, he shifted his stance and his eyes found her despite the crush of people between them.
Someone touched her arm, and she turned gratefully to greet an older couple she’d known since childhood. They’d been among the first to arrive offering sympathy and help after her mother’s death, and had made an effort to console the bewildered and stricken thirteen-year-old. Although hardly able to respond to their kindness at the time, she’d kept in touch with them ever since.
They drifted off after obtaining a promise from her to visit in the near future, and she found Jase at her elbow. Although many of the men were in black ties, he was tieless, a crisp white shirt open at the neck under an out-of-fashion unbuttoned waistcoat.
He still favoured the unshaven look, but the dark shadow on his chin had never been allowed to develop into a full beard. She suspected his style, if it could be called that, owed more to an uncaring attitude than deliberation, yet his dressed-down appearance amounted to a sort of dishevelled chic that few men could have carried off.
His eyes held hers with the intensity of a high-end laser. “Samantha.” His gaze dropped over her low-cut, clinging black dress before his eyes returned to her face. The glitter that had appeared in the darkened depths evoked contradictory emotions in her—wariness mixed with disconcerting pleasure because he couldn’t hide the fact that, unwillingly or not, he found her attractive.
He said, “You look…very glamorous.”
“Thank you.” She realised she was holding her glass in a death grip, and loosened it, giving him her accomplished social smile. “What are you doing here?”
“Supporting a good cause. Like you, I guess. Bryn’s here too with Rachel.”
He was watching her closely—she supposed looking for a reaction. Keeping her expression serene, her voice neutral, she said, “Yes, I saw them.”
It wasn’t the first time since she’d stopped avoiding him that she had run into Bryn. They went on as if nothing had changed. She even listened with only a small hitch in her heartbeat when he mentioned Rachel, although the note in his voice might have made a lesser woman weep with envy.
Jase still held her eyes, and to her surprise quiet laughter escaped from his throat. “You’re something else, ice lady.” There was a note almost of unwilling respect in the enigmatic remark.
Samantha was on the brink of a retort when the subject of their discussion entered her field of vision behind Jase, and she hastily closed her mouth.
Then Bryn was there, his lips brushing her cheek as he greeted her, and Rachel said, “Nice to see you again, Samantha.”
They exchanged chitchat, and then moved as a group to compare opinions on the wares being offered. Rachel looked beautiful but was there a tiny shadow in her brown eyes, and behind the wide smile? An expert in putting on a good face herself, Samantha recognised one when she saw it.
Jostled by punters eager to inspect the goods, somehow Samantha and Jase got separated from the other two, and she found herself standing next to him while he examined a carved jade abacus with a hefty price tag.
“That’s beautiful,” she said involuntarily, admiring the intricate patterns on the beads. “I suppose it’s worth the asking price.” Which was rather steep.
“It is to me,” he answered, then put down the abacus and pulled out a credit card to hand to the person behind the table.
For someone in the forefront of an almost unimaginable technological future, it seemed an odd choice. Curiosity getting the better of her, she said, “What will you do with it?” She didn’t suppose he was going to use it for
his calculations, when he had his pick of state-of-the-art computers.
“Enjoy it,” he said. “And admire it, as a fine example of early computing.”
“Oh? I never thought of an abacus as a primitive computer.” And she hadn’t thought of him as a sentimental collector.
“Not so primitive. An example of true genius. Whoever invented the abacus way back sometime BC, when he first spun his beads in a row he was setting us on the road to the computerised society.”
“Or she,” Samantha suggested.
He inclined his head. “Or she,” he agreed, picking up his purchase and nodding thanks to the cashier. “Are you an ardent feminist?”
“I suppose. Ardent may be pushing it a bit.”
“I guess,” he murmured, even as she continued, “I’m no banner-waving activist.”
He said, “No, you just get on with doing it rather than shouting about it, don’t you?”
“I’m not knocking those who do the shouting,” she told him. “We need them—people passionate enough to fight and suffer for what they believe in.” She picked up a silver Georgian coffeepot, smoothed a hand over its elegant shape and put it down again.
“What are you passionate about, ice lady?” Jase asked. He sounded genuinely curious, and a voice inside her whispered caution.
She shrugged. “My company, my father’s legacy.”
Making to move on again, she found him blocking her with the immovability of a stone statue. “That’s all?” he queried.
“Isn’t it enough?”
“You had your own business in Australia, didn’t you?”
“A small one.” She wondered where he got his information, although it was no secret. “We specialised in renovations, with an emphasis on sustainability and energy saving.” Things her father had dismissed as “airy-fairy greenie-babble.”
“And you left it to come back and run your father’s company.” He sounded almost disapproving.
“Of course,” she said, oddly angry. “I always knew it would be mine one day. My inheritance.”
He looked as though he wanted to say more, but then he nodded, and shifted so she could step by him.
Jase let her move away, but his eyes followed her for minutes afterwards. He knew she was aware of his concentrated gaze. It was in the set of her head, the tension in her bare, smooth shoulders. Not looking back, she took cursory interest in several things before leaving the tables without buying any of them.
She’d greeted Bryn tonight showing none of the unguarded emotion Jase had seen the first time he’d laid eyes on her. But he hadn’t missed the uncharacteristic warmth of her smile, nor the searching look she directed at Rachel, fleetingly revealing something strangely like sympathy.
That thought brought his brows together and his mouth into an obdurate line as he watched Samantha greet someone else with what he’d come to think of as her company face—the serene, synthetic smile, not reaching the topaz-blue eyes with their enigmatic gaze.
What was going on behind that beautiful, frustratingly emotionless facade? Why would she be sorry for Rachel? Surely that spelled trouble.
His sister might seem to be a mature, successful woman—hell, she was. But there was a touching innocence about her all the same. He suspected she’d been so busy with her studies and career for the past ten years that she’d let personal relationships—male/female relationships anyway—pass her by. And she’d had a crush on Bryn Donovan since she was barely fifteen, something her whole family knew but had never mentioned to her.
Jase was pretty sure that when the family moved away from Rivermeadows after Rachel’s last year at high school, his mother had been relieved. Not that she wouldn’t have trusted Bryn, but a pretty girl with her heart in her adoring big brown eyes must be a temptation to any red-blooded young man. Jase and his brother had found it rather hilarious that Bryn seemed to be the only one at Rivermeadows who hadn’t noticed how she felt about him.
So when she’d come back into his life, it was nice that Bryn had fallen for her too. Or—uneasily Jase considered the possibility—maybe had been flattered into marrying her, because Rachel had never been that good at hiding her emotions.
Not like Samantha.
During Bryn’s first Magnussen’s board meeting Samantha gave a summary of the seminar they’d attended, skipping over Jase’s contribution as lightly as possible.
But when she’d finished, Bryn strongly suggested that Magnussen’s could benefit from Jase’s expertise. It wasn’t, she thought ruefully, what she’d been looking for when inviting him to join the board. After he’d finished singing Jase’s praises, he said, “I should tell you that Jase Moore is my brother-in-law, but I know from experience that he’s very good at what he does. I’d like to move that Magnussen’s ask him to do a preliminary survey of its systems company-wide.”
The murmurs of interest left Samantha no choice but to put the idea to the vote, with a foregone conclusion.
This was business and—following in her father’s giant footsteps—she’d always put business first. Although she kept her hands firmly on the reins, unlike him she gave respectful weight to other opinions before making decisions. If she vetoed the idea the board members would wonder why.
When she phoned, after she’d given him a brief outline of her reason for calling, Jase said, “I gather Bryn’s been talking me up to you.” His voice was level, and perhaps she was imagining the hint of censure in it.
“As a member of my board. They want you to have look at our systems.”
The silence that followed had an edge to it. She wondered if he was going to turn her down. Finally he broke the pause. “How long has he been on your board?”
Her breath hitched. So Jase hadn’t known that. “Not long. Are you interested?” she demanded. “In doing business with Magnussen’s?”
He was going to turn her down, she was sure. But after another sharp pause he said shortly, “Next week I have some time. You can show me round and I’ll do an assessment.”
CHAPTER FOUR
SAMANTHA asked her IT manager to take Jase around the office building and discuss its computer systems, but when it came to the construction side she usually took site visitors around herself—clients, investors, inspectors. An excuse to get down to where the heart of the company really was.
Site bosses were often less than keen to have outsiders blundering about a half-finished building, asking questions and getting in the way. Her presence smoothed their path. There were safety concerns too and hers was the ultimate responsibility for anyone on site as well as her own workers.
Wearing overalls, earmuffs and hard hats, she and Jase followed the site manager over uneven ground, wet and slippery with recent rain, scattered with odd bits of timber and metal and piles of other materials. The day was cool with a biting wind, grey clouds above the city threatening rain. A torn piece of paper scooted across the ground, lifting and falling.
The sounds of hammering were drowned by the roar of machinery and the steady thud of a pile driver. The building was to be the Auckland headquarters of an international insurance company, its foundations driven deep into the earth.
Samantha inhaled the smell of new wood, which always made her tingle with pleasure. She saw Jase glance at her and give a small, slightly surprised smile.
Yes, she wanted to tell him, this is what I’m passionate about. She just didn’t get down often enough to where the actual work took place.
Wasn’t he passionate about his work? He had surely made his millions doing something he obviously loved. So where did he get off criticising her dedication to her company?
And it was safer to be angry at his arrogance in presuming to know so much about her, than to admit the pull of his arresting good looks and raw male appeal.
Overhead a crane swung a solid iron reinforcing bar through the air, and lowered it delicately to where yellow-helmeted men stood waiting to fit it into place.
Jase shouted questions to the site manager, mak
ing occasional notes in a handheld computer device and sometimes taking photos with it. He went round the entire site and asked more questions of some of the workmen, and occasionally of Samantha herself.
When they returned to the site office Samantha removed her earmuffs and hard hat and shook out her hair. After shedding her boots and overalls, she took a comb from her bag and quickly used it.
Jase watched her with interest. Her lipstick had faded, the cold wind had brought colour into her cheeks, and the tip of her nose was pink. Her feet were bare—she hadn’t yet put on her shoes—and he had a fleeting vision of what she might have been like as a child. “Was your childhood happy?” he asked her, suddenly wanting to know.
“What?” The comb in her raised hand, she paused to stare at him. The pose reminded him of a Greek statue. A thin sweater showed the outline of her breasts, and close-fitting jeans hugged her hips and legs. “My childhood?” she queried, dropping her hand.
“You did have one, didn’t you?”
She gave him a withering look. “Why do you want to know?”
Good question. And one he wasn’t prepared to answer. “Bryn said your mother died when you were young.”
For a moment Samantha felt betrayed. But it was common knowledge. The fact had even been included in a magazine article about her a year after she took over the company. “I was thirteen,” she said.
“It must have been tough.”
Her mother, though considerably younger than her father, had been killed by a brain aneurism, without warning. A shock for everyone. Samantha picked up her bag. “I’ve had a long time to get over it.” But in fact she hadn’t, had simply learned to live with the painful hole left in her life.
“Your father never married again?” She was on her way to the door, but he beat her to it, opening it for her and following her outside.
“No,” she said as they walked to her car. “I’ll give him that.”
“What do you mean by that?” he asked.