by Daphne Clair
“She never argued,” Samantha said simply. “Not that I remember. I suppose that’s why they seemed to have a happy marriage.”
All the same, Ginette Magnussen had not been without her own ways of softening her husband on occasion, using her femininity to advantage when nothing else worked. Something that came less naturally to Samantha. Aloud she said, “I guess I have too much of my father in me.”
“You clashed?” Jase asked.
“More so after I left university and tried working for him.
A mistake on both our parts.”
“So starting your own business was a way to assert your independence and show him what you could do.”
That perilously accurate insight startled her. “It’s part of Magnussen’s now,” she said, “but operating independently. I try to implement some of its principles here, but the old guard are a bit suspicious of anything new.”
“I’ve noticed,” he murmured.
She sighed. “And I can’t sack people who worked for my father for thirty years.”
Jase flicked her a brief but intent glance, perhaps surprised, then his gaze shifted to the window. The temperature in the building wasn’t uncomfortable, but outside high humidity mixing with heat made for a warm, muggy afternoon. A few wispy clouds hung motionless in the slivers of blue sky visible between the city buildings.
He said, “I could do with a cold beer and a long walk on the sand, with a cool breeze coming off the sea.”
The image reminded Samantha she hadn’t spent time at the beach for…so long she couldn’t remember when she’d last felt sand between her toes.
He turned to her and must have seen something in her face. His strongly marked brows lifted. “You too?”
She gave a little shrug. “It’s a nice thought.” Her tone implying, but of course you’re not serious.
“Why not?” he said as if making up his mind. “Are you ready?”
“Ready?” she returned blankly. “I didn’t think you meant it.”
“You said it was a nice idea,” he reminded her.
“I can’t afford to take off on a whim. Anyway, I need to work.”
“Why? It’s almost five o’clock.” It was actually not yet four-thirty. “Will the business collapse without you in the next half-hour?”
She didn’t bother to answer that, nor tell him she seldom left the office at five. “I just thought you’d want to be alone. Or at least, not with me.”
His eyes gleamed derisively. “You need to do something about that inferiority complex of yours.”
“What?” Samantha took a sharp inward breath. Then she saw the curve of his mouth and realised the remark had been gently sarcastic.
“You’ve got a mobile phone,” he said. “If anything happens you’ll get told.”
A wayward urge to surrender to temptation struggled through her sense of responsibility. She tried to suppress it, but temptation won. So what if Jase had a knack of ruffling her feathers, if he didn’t quite trust her? He was offering a stolen hour or so of peace and pleasure. It wouldn’t hurt the business.
“If you mean it…” She still hesitated.
“I don’t usually say things I don’t mean.” Something crossed his face. She wondered if he’d taken himself as well as her by surprise with the invitation. The gleam in his eyes intensified into something that aroused in her a treacherous awareness of his formidable masculine aura, fatally tempting. Softly, seductively, he said, “You know you want to do it, ice lady.”
CHAPTER FIVE
HIS smile—wicked and knowing and dangerous—dared her.
Samantha imagined him with a cutlass in his hand and a bandanna tied about that unruly hair. Jase didn’t look in the least like her mental picture of a man who sat before a computer all day. Perhaps he had a secret yen to command a pirate ship, and had let his fantasies run amok in the games he’d created.
“All right,” she heard herself say, feeling as though she was agreeing to some risky voyage of discovery rather than a simple trip to the seaside. “I’ll have to change.”
She gathered the jeans and flat-heeled shoes that she kept in a small closet behind the door and excused herself before disappearing into her private bathroom.
In less than two minutes she emerged, collected her bag from the lower drawer in her desk, flicked her jacket off the hook behind the door and turned to him.
Her secretary looked up as they left. “I won’t be in again today,” Samantha said, ignoring Judy’s astonishment. “You go home and I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“I’ll drive,” Jase said as they left the building, and he ushered her to a four-wheel-drive vehicle parked in the visitor’s bay.
After leaving the car park he made a right turn, taking them away from the central business district and onto a motorway.
Samantha realised he wasn’t heading for any of the popular inner harbour beaches within minutes of the city, nor across the Harbour Bridge to the North Shore. Instead they were travelling in the opposite direction. “Where are we going?” she demanded.
“To a beach,” he said imperturbably.
She took her cell phone from her bag but as her finger hovered over the “on” button she found the idea of no one knowing where she was strangely liberating.
She lifted her finger and dropped the phone back in her bag again. “Where?” she asked again.
“The west coast,” he said. “Not some tame, crowded strip of trucked-in sand.”
The west-coast beaches—Piha, Muriwai, and their less-well-known neighbours—were wide and wild, a paradise for surfers but often dangerous. Lifeguard patrols routinely rescued swimmers swept out to sea by rips, board-riders who had overestimated their skills, and fishers washed from the rocks by rogue waves. Of course he’d prefer one of those beaches.
Jase expertly negotiated a change of lane, swinging into a space between a bus and a red Volkswagen Golf, and later he took an exit off the motorway, stopping outside a tavern with a bistro and bottle store. “What do you fancy to drink on the beach? I could buy a bottle of wine. And some glasses.”
It sounded too intimate, sitting on the beach drinking wine with Jase Moore. She wondered what she was doing here, why she’d rashly decided to join his spur-of-the-moment expedition. “I thought you wanted a beer.”
“Do you drink it?” His surprise almost led her to lie and say yes. “Cider,” she said, “would be nice. A small bottle, thanks.”
“Wait here.”
He came back minutes later with a six-pack of beer, her cider and a bag of potato wedges with sweet chilli sauce and sour cream. “Shouldn’t drink on an empty stomach. Have some.”
The sight and smell of the spiced wedges was too much to resist, and she reached for one, then another and another.
Rush hour traffic was heavy as they left the city but eventually the 4WD turned onto a winding road that showed glimpses of blue ocean between stands of white-feathered toe-toe, tough tiny-leaved manuka shrubs and tall, thick clumps of flax.
A few vehicles were parked on the gravel area at the end of the road, but the dun-coloured stretch of beach, streaked with broad bands of black iron-sand, looked deserted except for a lone surfer and a couple of distant figures with fishing rods on the flat-topped rocks at one end.
Jase parked beside a battered Holden station wagon with a roof-rack holding a surfboard. Samantha jumped to the ground and strolled to the sand. Jase took a rug from the back of his vehicle and joined her, and for a minute they stood inhaling the salty air and watching the breakers roll in, the blue-green water foaming on the crests and giving off a faint mist as they curled over and hurtled to the dark, glistening shore, a flattened, green-and-white mass of moving patterns leaving a long, slick tongue edged with creamy bubbles until the next wave came in.
“Tide’s coming in, by the look of it,” Jase said.
Samantha removed her shoes and they tramped over the dry, hillocky sand to a small hollow where he spread the rug and they sat down to s
ip at their cool drinks. They talked only desultorily, and Samantha began to feel pleasantly lazy and rather like a truant.
Jase crushed the empty single can he’d taken from the six-pack, and when she finished her cider he collected up the containers. Samantha shook out the rug and he stowed everything in their vehicle then said, “Let’s walk.”
They crossed the soft, still-hot sand to the smoother, harder part of the broad beach, where their feet made only shallow prints. Jase had discarded his shoes and rolled up his jeans, and Samantha swung her shoes in one hand. Just out of reach of the waves, they walked in silence for a while, enjoying the sea-scented wind that made Jase swipe hair from his eyes and teased Samantha’s sleek style into unruly strands blowing every which way. The persistent roar and thump and hiss of the waves, and the shrill calls of gulls circling and swooping overhead made conversation unnecessary. The wind on Samantha’s face felt like a blessing, and the damp sand soothed her feet.
She fell into a dreamlike state of uncomplicated bliss. There was nothing quite like a long, lonely shore for clearing the mind and replenishing the spirit.
Jase picked up a gnarled piece of driftwood and took a few steps towards the water, hurled the stick into a retreating wave laced with foamy white, then returned to Samantha’s side.
The wind gusted briefly, raising gooseflesh on her arms so that she shivered and crossed them, rubbing the skin.
“Cold?” Jase said. “We can go back.”
“Not really,” she said. The gust had passed. “Let’s go on to the end.”
“Suits me.”
There were masses of tiny black mussels clinging to the rocks, and she put on her shoes as Jase found a foothold and climbed, then turned and offered her his hand as she followed. She hesitated before letting him pull her the rest of the way. His hand was strong and warm, and she stifled a rush of purely female appreciation at the ease with which he brought her up to his side.
They stood on a rock outcrop, where the waves beat against the far end, sending spray high in the air to splash down on the edge. Behind them loomed a rugged cliff edged with tenacious plants hanging over its lip, and at its foot a shallow cave held the blackened remains of a fire. Someone had barbecued their catch here perhaps, fresh from the sea.
Samantha picked her way over uneven rocks to a deep pool where small silver fish darted away from her shadow to disappear among seaweed and anemones, and crabs disguised in borrowed shells crawled across its sandy floor.
A bright blue starfish clung to the rock, and she squatted to inspect it. Then she spotted another, half hidden by gently waving seaweed.
Jase went on one knee beside her. “What are you looking at?”
She pointed, and he said, “Uh-huh. Pretty.”
“When I was eight…”
She stopped there and Jase turned from admiring the starfish to look at her. “What?”
“Nothing. Just a memory from way back.”
“Tell me,” he said. It was almost a command, so compelling she very nearly capitulated. But caution prevailed.
She gave a light laugh and stood up, the backs of her knees stiff from crouching, and faced him again as he too rose. “You didn’t bring me out here to bore you with stories of my childhood holidays.” She’d had a sudden vivid memory of staying over part of the Christmas holidays with a school friend’s family.
Her friend’s parents had thought nothing of the children spending all day in their swimming togs, playing on the shore, scrambling over rocks, tumbling down dunes and getting covered in gritty sand that had to be shaken out of all her clothes and shoes when she got home. Her mother had despaired at the effect of sun and sand and salt water on her fine, flyaway hair, and had been dismayed at the spattering of freckles that despite sunscreen had speckled her nose.
But that holiday had been one of the happiest times of her life. She hadn’t thought about it in years, and now the memory brought an odd mixture of remembered happiness and a poignant sense of something lost. Childhood, she supposed.
A breaker thudded against the rock, and tiny salt droplets flung into the air spattered wide and far and dusted her cheeks. She wiped them with a hand and said, “Shouldn’t we get back?”
“Are you in a hurry?” Jase asked.
“You said the tide’s coming in.”
“It won’t be cutting us off yet, but if you’re nervous…” He shrugged and began walking back across the rock, turning his head to check on her as she followed.
Reaching the edge where he’d helped her to climb up, she saw it was too far down to jump, and searched for an easier way. Jase went first, then looked up at her as she peered at the rock face for places to put her feet.
She made her decision and turned, feeling with her foot for a depression not far from the top. Then another. On the third one she slipped, lost her handhold and almost fell, then felt Jase’s strong arms about her waist.
For an instant her back was pressed against his warm, hard chest, his lower body cradling hers, before her feet touched the sand and he loosened his hold. “Okay?”
“Yes. Thanks.” She moved away quickly, and bent to remove her shoes again. For a moment she had wanted to stay in the circle of his arms, lean back against him and…wait for whatever might come next.
She hadn’t been held close by a man for a very long time. Maybe it was a primordial reaction, female hormones responding to a male embrace, even an accidental one that had no sexual intention.
Straightening, she sneaked a look at Jase. He was staring at the sea, thumbs thrust into the waistband of his jeans. His gaze swivelled to her and his eyes met hers with a dark, implicit question in them. Shaken, she realised she hadn’t been the only one affected. Donning a carefully blank expression, she turned away from him and began to walk back the way they’d come.
Blind, instinctive attraction was no basis for an intimate relationship. The primitive sexual undertow below the surface was something neither of them really wanted. It was the unacknowledged source of the edginess that marked their every interaction, even when they stuck strictly to business. But whatever capricious mating instinct was produced between two people and their individual hormones, on every other level the unpredictable, abrasive, discomforting Jase Moore was simply not her type. Nor she his.
She veered close to an incoming wave, letting it gush over her feet as she pulled up the legs of her jeans to wade in the cold, shallow water. Jase picked up another piece of driftwood and hurled it over the crest of the next wave, then sent a small piece of rock after it.
The rock sank instantly, but the driftwood floated seaward until it was swallowed in a breaker, only to reappear farther out.
The rock would remain hidden under the sea, eventually buried in sand, while the deceptively insubstantial driftwood might journey on the waves for years before reaching a foreign shore. Samantha was absently watching where it had disappeared when a rogue wave rushed across the receding ripples and caught her, soaking her jeans almost to her knees as, too late, she tried to escape, emitting a half-laughing squeal.
Jase was laughing too and she ruefully hurried away from the waterline, tossed her shoes aside and began trying to wring out the sodden denim.
He said, still smiling, “How about we find somewhere we can get a good meal?”
Samantha gave up on getting rid of the water, and cast him a disgusted look. “I’m not going anywhere looking like this!” She picked up her shoes and tried to maintain her dignity while struggling across the sand.
Her hair was tangled, her feet crusted with sand, and the legs of her jeans were rapidly acquiring more. Above the high tide mark she sank to the ankles on the dry, warm hillocks. The salty wind and spray had probably ruined her makeup too. She gave him a withering stare, and he laughed again. She wished he wouldn’t—it made her want to forget all the reasons she hadn’t given in to that silent invitation in his eyes at the rocks, hadn’t stepped back into his arms and let natural instinct fly free of its cage.
/> When they reached his vehicle, Jase rummaged in the back for a towel. Samantha didn’t ask its provenance, but although ragged at the edges and so faded its original colours were indecipherable, it looked reasonably clean. She rubbed sand from her feet as best she could, and brushed rather futilely at her jeans. Then she combed her hair and turned her back to do a rapid, inadequate repair job on her makeup.
When she settled herself into the passenger seat again he gave her a critical all-over glance and said, with a glimmer of laughter still in his eyes, “Feel better?”
“A bit. Considering I still must look like something the tide washed in.”
Startling her, he put a hand under her chin and turned her face to his. The laughter faded. Almost roughly, he said, “You looked real—and alive—back there. Nothing wrong with that.”
Before she could move, he lowered his head and kissed her, his lips firm, lingering only briefly on hers, slightly parted, subtly increasing the pressure on her mouth as if testing for her reaction.
She lifted her hand and pushed his light hold away, what he’d said still in her mind. As though he had the right to judge her, decide she was somehow less than fully human.
The seeming experimental nature of the kiss, and the way his too-penetrating gaze was obviously gauging her response now, added to her chagrin.
Did she normally look unreal?
Sometimes she felt that way, as though she was playing a part, that the real Samantha Magnussen was hidden away from the world. Like the crabs in the rock pool, she had borrowed a hard shell that wasn’t really hers so she could protect herself. Underneath was a soft, vulnerable being, hiding from attack, from exposure, pretending to be something it was not. If anyone penetrated her disguise she would die inside.
“I’m a woman,” she said defensively, “in a man’s world. It’s all very well for you to go round looking like…the way you do.”