by Daphne Clair
As Samantha stepped out of the car she could see on a nearby ridge a classic, white painted weatherboard house, a wide veranda hung with wisteria spanning the front. The window frames, front door and corrugated-iron roof were marigold-yellow. It must be the original homestead.
Beside and slightly behind it stood a large outbuilding, also white and yellow, the triangle under its pitched roof filled with glass that glinted in the sun, part of a satellite dish peeking above the roof towards the back.
The door of the newer house in front of her opened and a tall, heavily built man with greying dark hair came out to greet them.
Mr Moore shrewdly assessed her with eyes very like his sons’, took her proffered hand in a powerful, calloused grip and ushered her inside to meet his wife, who had short-cropped greying black hair, smooth light tan skin and Rachel’s brown eyes. She smiled warmly at Samantha, saying, “I remember seeing you at Rachel’s wedding.” She kissed Jase and, refusing help in the kitchen, sent them off to the big, comfortable sitting room to have a drink before lunch.
Minutes after they had settled in the spacious, comfortable front room there was a bang on the outer door, and moments later Ben and his wife entered. “Gidday!” He beamed at Samantha, and his wife, now pregnant and glowing with it, greeted her with a soft smile.
The energy in the room seemed to increase with their advent. Ben joshed his brother, and Jase returned the teasing. Their mother, who had joined them, sighed and shook her head, but with a smile on her lips. She was obviously fond of April too, the quiet young Filipina who carried her first grandchild.
They accepted Samantha into their midst, including her in the conversation, showing genuine interest in her answers to their questions about her job, her family, and expressing shock and sorrow that she had no one left.
“That must be hard for you,” Mrs Moore said. “All alone with so much responsibility.” Turning to Jase, she said, “You’d better take good care of this girl, Joseph.”
Joseph? Samantha almost choked on the remains of her wine. She’d assumed Jase was short for Jason.
“I don’t need taking care of,” she said, not looking at him. “And we’re just business…associates. Jase brought me down here to see his office, that’s all. It’s kind of you to give me lunch.”
Everyone else in the room looked at Jase. Samantha could feel his eyes on her but kept her own gaze on the glass in her hand.
Mrs Moore broke the silence. “It’s a pleasure,” she said, getting up from her chair. “And lunch is ready.”
After a meal of hearty quiche accompanied by a salad made with vegetables fresh from the garden outside, and followed by still-warm scones and home-made jam, no one seemed in a hurry to leave the large pinewood table.
Second cups of coffee were poured, and drunk over chat and laughter, until Ben said he had work to do, and reluctantly pushed back his chair. Everyone helped to put away food and take the dishes to the dishwasher, then Ben and April left to walk up the rise to the old homestead, where they lived.
Jase thanked his mother, gave her a kiss and said, “I’m taking Samantha to see my office.”
They left by the back door and as they followed the dirt and shingle driveway to the barnlike building Samantha had noted earlier, she said, “How does Joseph become Jase?”
“I never liked Joseph much, or Joe.”
No, she couldn’t see him as Joe.
“When I was about twelve,” he said, “I decided using my initials was cool, and it sort of morphed from that.”
They arrived at the big building and he placed his thumb on a tiny square beside the yellow doors, which silently swung open.
Jase ushered her in ahead of him, and she stepped into what she supposed was a high-tech heaven, and within seconds the doors had just as silently closed behind them.
“This is it,” he said. “Where my development team works.”
High strip windows lit a large space filled with electronic paraphernalia and computer screens of all sizes. Cables snaked along the walls, above wide benches on which sat an array of keyboards and computer mice and personal printers. A couple of free-standing desks also held computers and various folders, there was a huge printer and copier in one corner, and drafting tables occupied most of the remaining space, leaving a broad passageway down the middle of the carpeted floor.
At the other end of the big room Jase opened a door into a passageway leading to toilet facilities and a kitchen, staff-room and a meeting room with big windows showing a paved area outside shaded by trees. Several outdoor tables and chairs occupied the courtyard.
As they turned back to the main space Samantha said acerbically, “Your parents’ garage?”
“I had it converted, extended and built a second floor. But it’s where I started, and the rent helped my mother get the house of her dreams. Farmers tend to plough their profits back into the land, and my father kept putting off building the new home he’d promised her when they bought this place. Now he’s semi-retired, Ben and April are share-milking and eventually they’ll take over the farm.”
“You’re a very close-knit family.” She’d felt cocooned in their collective warmth ever since stepping into his parents’ home.
“We get on,” he said. “We all have our own lives, but even when Rachel was away overseas, she phoned home every week and sent e-mails to keep in touch.”
He indicated a stairwell between the staff quarters and a wall. “And this is where I live. I have a place in Auckland too but here is what I think of as home.”
Upstairs, after opening another door with his thumbprint on the little electronic pad, he showed her a kitchen, practical with stainless steel and hardwearing surfaces, a small table and two chairs tucked into a window corner.
An alcove in a short, wide passageway held a digital washing machine and dryer with a stainless steel washtub. A large tiled bathroom was dominated by a huge tub and a separate shower that boasted plenty of elbow room—enough for two, Samantha privately surmised, or even more. For a second she wondered if he ever used it with company—female company. What would it be like to stand under a shower like that with Jase?
Quickly she buried the wayward thought and instead studied the long marble counter and wide inbuilt washbasin.
Everything was unfussy, but obviously the best materials and craftsmanship had contributed to the deceptively simple luxury. She could have costed it to within a few hundred dollars. This radical makeover of an old though solid building hadn’t come cheap. Jase knew where to spend his money wisely, on people who knew their job and took pride in their work.
“I’m impressed,” she said. “Who was the architect?”
He laughed. “Part of what I do for other people is draw up floor plans. This one’s pretty basic. I did some of the carpentry too.”
The room next door seemed dim and shadowy until Jase pressed a button by the door and a blind attached to the ceiling opened, revealing a large skylight that flooded the space with sunshine.
A Pacific Island cotton print covered a king-size bed, swirling black patterns over a red-brown background. A luxurious black-leather sofa occupied a corner, and solid wood panels, one with a full-length mirror inset, hid what she presumed was a built-in wardrobe. A long counter with drawers underneath served as a dressing table, with a mirrored wall behind it, but at the other end of the counter near a window sat a computer, a typing chair pushed into a knee space below. Even in his bedroom, apparently, Jase had to have a computer handy.
As if he read the thought, he said, “Sometimes an idea or a solution to a problem comes to me in the middle of the night.”
She noticed the jade abacus she remembered him buying had also found a place near the computer.
Despite being spacious, there was an air of intimacy in the room. She could imagine Jase relaxing here, sprawled on the expansive bed with a book—or a lover.
That didn’t bear thinking of. She stepped over to the abacus and touched one of the carved beads wi
th a finger, willing her mind away from carnal speculations as Jase walked to the bed and touched a button on a pad over the plain wooden headboard.
With a faint whirr the skylight opened, sending fresh, warm air into the room. “I like to lie here looking at the sky on a starry night,” he said. “You don’t see that in the city. Sometimes I leave it open when I go to sleep.”
Samantha pushed aside the picture of Jase lying on the bed, maybe naked or nearly so. “And if it rains?”
He laughed. “The first sign of moisture, it closes automatically.”
There were lights of course, and music that wafted from some unseen source. He touched another control and the blind overhead began to unroll before he stopped it again. Another, and the head of the bed gently rose. “For reading. Or watching TV.”
A square of wall opposite the bed lifted out of the way to display a TV screen set into the cavity. “A Japanese guy has developed a wallpaper that doubles as a screen,” Jase said. “Not in time for me to use it here, and anyway mostly I have better things to do in bed than watch TV.”
Samantha’s eyes flickered away from the gleam in his, and he laughed softly. “Sleeping,” he said. “Reading, using my laptop. Not what you’re thinking, Samantha.”
“I wasn’t thinking anything,” she informed him, looking him in the eye, daring him to contradict her.
“Of course not,” he said, so soothingly she wanted to shake him. The gleam in his eyes intensified, and her body tautened as he approached her, but with his hand at her waist he walked her out of the bedroom and along the passageway towards the front of the building.
As if by some unseen hand, double doors ahead of them whispered open. Even as she passed through she had an impression of light and space, of entering into a non-earthly dimension.
A vista of green and blue, earth and sky drew her forward across a thick moss-coloured carpet to the huge triangle wall of glass that reached to the floor.
The road was hidden behind a screen of trees, and the countryside stretched for miles. Lush grass and dark, thick native trees were interspersed with splashes of colour in a few farm gardens—pink and purple, gold and red—all under the wide canopy of almost cloudless blue sky.
She caught a glimpse of water glittering in sunlight not too far away, and followed a line of trees that opened here and there to allow more tantalising peeks at a lazy, winding stream.
“Like it?” Jase asked at her side.
“How could your parents bear to leave it?”
“Gets windy up here,” he said. “And they didn’t want a two-storey house for their retirement years. It’s only up this high that the view is worth it.” He looked up, surveying the few ragged clouds scudding upward from the horizon. “If you stay until sunset, it could be a good one. Sometimes they’re pretty spectacular.”
“Sunset’s a long way off.” She looked at her watch, finding it already later than she’d thought. “What would we do in the meantime?”
Jase said, “I could think of a couple of things I’d like to do with you.”
Her eyes flew to his face. Despite the lightness in his voice he wasn’t smiling. And at the heat in his eyes her heart stuttered and her breath paused.
Involuntarily she took a step back—while she still could. Because every nerve she possessed was screaming at her to go forward into his arms, and fear of losing herself there kept her sane and cautious.
The air seemed full of electricity, crackling with it. She was conscious of the sunlight warming her face through the shimmering glass of the windows, the blinding blue of the sky outside, the softness of the carpet under her feet. In her mind, as if she were an onlooker, she could see herself and Jase facing each other, an arm’s length apart, see the rise and fall of his chest under his shirt, hear the sound of his breathing.
She could have reached out and touched him. Wanted to.
Instead she turned to examine the room, taking in details she had only peripherally noticed.
Large and squishy navy-leather sofas formed a U-shape before that expansive view, bookshelves lined one wall, and on another was a long Maori taiaha—sharply pointed at one end, tasselled at the other, intricately carved along the shaft. Below it hung a large framed map, obviously old—or pretending to be. She moved closer, away from Jase and temptation, and saw the map represented an island, with curlicued legends all around and sailing ships anchored in the harbours.
“New Providence,” Jase said. When she looked around he was standing where she’d left him, hands jammed in his pockets, his expression stone-carved but his eyes watchful. “The island was a hangout for pirates in the seventeenth century. Part of my first commercially successfully game is based on the place.”
“It’s genuine?” She peered at the date on one corner. “Sixteen ninety-nine?”
“According to the expert I got to check it. Might even have come off a real pirate ship.”
“Why did you choose to write pirate games?” she asked, turning back to him.
“Robert Louis Stevenson,” he answered. “Treasure Island. After we read the book Ben and Rachel and I played pirate games around the farm—not this one…my father was managing the Donovans’ estate farm then—and in the Donovans’ garden. It was a great place for kids.”
“Rachel? Playing pirates?”
“The most bloodthirsty of the lot.” His stance became a little less rigid, a faint smile playing around his mouth. “And adventurous—the kid didn’t know the meaning of fear. Anything Ben and I did, she wanted to do too. We had to watch out for her all the time, and she still collected a fair number of cuts and scrapes and bruises.”
“Really?” Rachel as a tomboy?
“Scared the wits out of us a couple of times.” Jase’s smile turned ruefully reminiscent. “There are things our parents to this day don’t know. Apart from the fact we were actually quite fond of the little brat, Dad would have skinned us alive if we’d let anything serious happen to her.”
Something twisted painfully inside her. Bizarrely, without right or reason, she was jealous of his sister. He’d obviously never grown out of the imperative to protect her. And “fond” was a deliberate understatement. He would willingly die for her if necessary. Without a doubt. She was family, and that was all Jase needed to give his unstinting loyalty and love.
He said, “It was Rachel who started getting library books about real pirates. That’s what sparked her interest in history. And mine, although I didn’t make a career of it.”
“That’s how you came to invent pirate games?” she said.
“What else was I going to do with all that information once I got hooked on computers? Interestingly, piracy in the so-called Golden Age was really all about economics and trade wars, supply and demand. You might appreciate that. I made the games as authentic as possible. Most of the characters and events in them are real.”
“Educational games?”
“Primarily they’re for fun.” He shrugged. “If people learn from them, it’s a side effect.”
“I’ve never seen your games,” she confessed. “I only use computers for work.”
He shook his head as though she were some kind of freakish, previously unknown specimen. “Sit down over there.”
He picked up what looked like a TV remote, and one of the sofas in the U swung aside and lined itself up against another, leaving a clear space between a solid, square coffee table and a large screen in the wall like the one in his bedroom. He used the same gadget to light up the screen.
For the next hour and a half she became a Spanish sea captain trying to get a cargo of gold and gems from the Atlantic coast of America to the mother country, while warding off a horde of swashbuckling, rip-roaring pirates.
At first Jase helped her, patiently explaining what to do. She found it easy enough to follow his instructions and soon got the idea. She knew he was holding off at first, letting her get the hang of the game, but once she managed to disable the pirate ship with a direct hit from her can
nons, her competitive streak took over and she leaned forward in her seat, intent on using everything Jase had taught her in a determined effort to destroy the enemy.
Of course Jase won, but she had bloodied him and killed half his crew.
“Not bad for a beginner,” he said as he leaned back after capturing the Spanish ship and surrounding her “avatar,” alias the Spanish captain, with a bunch of fierce and victorious pirates. “I’m afraid your only choice now is surrender.”
“Not on your life.”
“It’s your life that’s at stake,” he said.
“I won’t give in. I’m sure the captain would accept death rather than give up his ship.”
“He’s already lost that,” Jase pointed out.
“But not his self-respect. Go on. Do your worst.”
Jase lounged in a corner of the sofa, his eyes alert and watchful beneath half-closed lids. He said softly, “I don’t want to put a sword through your heart, Samantha.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
HIS lopsided grin was teasing, but effortlessly sexy, and his tone had changed. Samantha met his eyes, saw unmistakable desire in them and her heart took a startled leap into her throat.
She swallowed, then said huskily, “Aren’t you supposed to give me a chance? Set me adrift in a ship’s boat or something?”
He laughed, a little ruefully, and the heat left his eyes. “Pirates were a pretty ruthless lot. Is a slow death by starvation and thirst better than a quick one by the sword?” He pressed a switch and the screen went blank. He said, “It’s a nice day outside. We could take a walk across the farm. There’s a bit of bush, with a waterfall and a deep pool. We could even swim if you like.”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’d be quite safe, I promise.”
Safe? Nothing about being with Jase Moore felt safe. “Thanks, but no thanks.”
“Afraid of getting out of your depth?” His eyes challenged her.
“I didn’t think you were serious—about swimming.”
He laughed again at her evasion. “A walk then,” he said. “Are you up for that?”