by Daphne Clair
“If they do, get your IT guy to give me a call.”
“Thank you, I’ll do that.”
There was a hiatus, and she clutched the phone, reluctant to put it down.
Then he said, “Fine. See you.”
She heard the click of the receiver, and knew that despite the last statement he didn’t intend to see her at all. He often ended calls with that casual, meaningless goodbye. Even shop assistants she’d never seen before and probably never would again sometimes used it instead of the equally hollow, “Have a good day.”
She replaced the receiver, her throat tight and aching, her eyes stinging, and in her mind repeated a mantra, I never cry, I am not crying, I will not cry, I never…
She pulled opened her drawer to haul a tissue out of its box, intending to wipe her hands, but it brought a wad of others with it. Stuffing them back in, she swore softly but vigorously, then scrubbed at her damp palms and swiped away a single escaping tear, sniffed, and wiped her nose too before throwing the tissue into the bin.
At least swearing was better than weeping. It had worked for her father, hadn’t it? Although he had made clear his disapproval of his daughter doing the same.
Her mother had used tears as a tool to get what she wanted. Something Samantha had made up her mind not to do. She’d accept a kiss on the cheek instead of a handshake from a male colleague, give a congratulatory touch instead of a backslap, deliver a pat or briefly stroke his arm for commiseration—even hug him if she knew him well.
And she wasn’t above using her eyes, her smile, to win a man over to her viewpoint if it was important enough. Particularly if he was the patronising type who responded better to feminine charm than to simple, obvious evidence that she could do her job as well as any man.
In a business where sexism was still subtly and sometimes glaringly present, she’d use any weapon she could call to hand. Except the ultimate female one.
For the rest of the day she worked as usual, but without being able to shake the sound of Jase’s voice from some secret inner ear. As they had for days, the same questions came back to haunt her.
Halfway through the afternoon she made a phone call to Bryn, on the excuse of asking him if Donovan’s had suffered any damage from the storm.
“Very little,” he replied. “Jase sent someone in to check our systems, and found a few minor problems.”
“Did he phone you to check later?”
“Yes. He runs a good service. Are you okay over there?”
“Fine.” So Jase’s claim to be checking on his clients was true. He wasn’t driven by some need to speak to her.
She hesitated then. If she were a smoker, she thought irrelevantly, a cigarette might have made this easier—a long, slow hit of nicotine. But she’d always been chary of addictions—of anything with the potential to take over her body or her mind.
And what good had that done her once Jase Moore sailed into her life? She couldn’t even get through the day without him affecting both.
Bryn said, “Is there something you want, Samantha?”
She breathed in and out. “You know there are rumours going round—about you and me?”
After a second he said, “My policy has always been to ignore cheap gossip. I hope it isn’t going to affect our friendship.”
“No! It’s just that…Jase thinks there’s something in it.” Her voice had sunk to almost a whisper.
“Jase?” And then he said slowly, “So that’s what it was about!”
The confrontation when Bryn had punched Jase, presumably. “Rachel told him she saw us,” Samantha explained. “You and me…t-together.”
“So what? We’ve often been toge—” He broke off. She heard him draw a breath. “She can’t have told him that. Her leaving had nothing to do with you. I’ll straighten Jase out if you like.” His voice suddenly sharp and curious, he asked, “Is it important to you?”
“No,” she said quickly. “Don’t do that.” Leaving the ambiguity in the air. Having Bryn fight her battles wasn’t an option. “He told me at the Donovan’s ball that you hit him.”
Bryn sounded rueful. “I guess because of course I couldn’t hit Rachel. I was feeling pretty raw and angry. I’m damned sure she didn’t ask him to interfere.”
“You didn’t tell him…”
“No. If she hadn’t told him that she’d found someone else, it wasn’t up to me. You and my mother are the only ones who know. And I did apologise for the punch.”
And she supposed, manlike, they rubbed along together now. For women, conflict was less simply resolved with an outburst of physical aggression.
He said, “Jase has always been close to Rachel. When they were kids he even had a go at Ben if he teased her. He’s a good guy, Sam, if a bit overprotective.”
He was tiptoeing round the subject of her relationship with Jase.
She might have told him there wasn’t one, that even if there had been a slight possibility it had withered on the vine, succumbing to the worm of distrust and the blight of disbelief.
That evening after the storm had passed, leaving only occasional drizzle behind, she was watching a film on TV, trying to blank her mind to all else, and had just pressed the remote at the third lot of ads when her doorbell pealed.
Assuming it was one of the neighbours, perhaps the retired accountant next door who was a keen fisherman and sometimes dropped off a fresh kahawai or snapper for her, she unlocked the door and opened it, stepping back quickly as Jase pushed it wider and strode into the small entryway. His hair was more unruly than usual, and she had trouble reading his expression. Fed up? Angry? Obstinate?
He said, “Don’t tell me to go away. Where can we talk?” He saw the open doorway to the lounge, where the TV and one of the sofas was visible, clasped her arm and drew her into the room.
“Why are you here?” she asked, trying to smother a glimmer of hope fighting through the resentment that had closed about her heart.
He searched her eyes with a gimletlike gaze, then made an impatient sound. “Are you going to ask me to sit down? Do you want to finish watching your programme?”
“No,” she said. “I mean, sit down if you like.” She walked over to switch off the set.
When she turned he was ensconcing himself in a chair. He wore jeans and a black crew-neck shirt and smelled of rain. The shirt was darkened on the shoulders and there were tiny droplets in his hair. The storm had blown southward but the wind had gusted all day, with intermittent misty showers. She wondered how long he’d been out in the rain.
She said, “Can I get you a drink? Or coffee?” She could do with a strong one herself, but it probably would be a mistake.
Jase shook his head. “I just had coffee. Lots of it.”
She sat opposite him, upright and with her hands folded in her lap, as she’d been taught as a little girl to sit when there were visitors. “What can I do for you?” she asked.
His lips twitched and he drawled, “Now there’s an interesting question.”
“If you’ve come here to make suggestive adolescent remarks—” Her temper was slipping a little, and she made an effort to keep it leashed.
“No,” he said, holding up a hand then lowering it. He looked at her intently, as if trying to fathom her thoughts. “I came to—” he ran a hand over his hair, which did almost nothing to smooth it “—have a go at sorting things out.”
Hope flared again, and she quickly doused it. He might not mean what she thought. “Things?” she said cautiously. “Like what?”
His mouth thinned impatiently for a moment. “I keep telling myself it’s no use, but I can’t get you out of my system. I still want you, Samantha, always have. And I can’t shake this crazy, irrational feeling I always will. Everything else is irrelevant. Is it the same for you?”
Samantha was speechless. Trust him to go directly to the point of his visit, dispense with any sort of finesse. One part of her was responding with a soft, sweet yearning, disarmed by his frankness. That was the
emotional part. All the female areas of her body were quiveringly alert with a totally physical answer to the sexual demand in his eyes that was even more explicit than his words. And yet her mind was screaming warnings.
She had never wanted a man so much in her life. And it scared her witless.
“Well?” Jase stood up so quickly she flinched.
“I…” She paused to catch her breath, stop herself saying something inane like, Mr Moore, this is such a surprise!
“I’m not going to attack you!” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Were you really as cool as a bloody iceberg when I phoned today? Or were your palms sweating?”
He noticed her almost imperceptible start, and his eyes narrowed, glittering. His voice lowered. “Did you remember that kiss at my window? At that moment you were mine if only I’d been short enough of common decency to take advantage of it. You have no idea how often I lie awake wishing I had fewer principles,” he told her with grim irony.
So did she, but she wasn’t going to confess to that.
He said, his expression turning brooding, “When you heard my voice today, did you wish you’d come to my bed and we’d made love, with the stars overhead and the night breeze to cool the heat we shared? The heat we’d create when we touched each other, kissed each other, found out what it was like to be together, to have me inside you?”
Samantha couldn’t stop the flush rising in her cheeks, spreading throughout her entire body. “No,” she said. She knew he was telling her his own fantasy, and the erotic picture he drew made her pulse throb, her breasts tingle and peak.
“Samantha.” He took a step and leaned over her, one hand on the arm of the sofa, the other lifting her chin so that she had to either look into his mesmerising, deep-sea eyes or close her own—which would invite…
He said very softly, “Don’t lie to me. I might be wrong about a lot of things, but not about this. Nothing else matters. Whatever Rachel saw, I don’t give a damn. Whoever else you’ve slept with in the past, you want me now. It’s in your eyes. And—” his hand swept down the curve of her throat, over her breast, his own eyes blazing with dangerous fire “—this doesn’t lie.”
He didn’t love her and he hadn’t said anything about believing in her, only that he wanted to have sex with her—even if he did call it making love. He wasn’t even pretending he had more in mind than one night. She should be grateful for his honesty.
While her body was screaming at her to take what he offered while she had the chance, the tiny rational part of her mind that was left whispered, Save yourself.
With a valiant effort, she said, “We can’t…I won’t go to bed with you because of an inconvenient biological reaction.”
For a moment he didn’t move at all, just stared into her defiant eyes while a couple of lines gradually appeared between his.
Then to her chagrined amazement his mouth widened into an unholy grin, and he began to laugh.
Samantha stood up uncertainly, seething. She said, “I’m glad I amuse you so much.”
He sobered. “I’m not laughing at you, Samantha. Well, I suppose I am. It’s just that ‘an inconvenient biological reaction’ is ludicrously inadequate for the way I feel about you.”
He was trying to look sorry, although laughter still lurked in his eyes. Not derisive or cynical laughter. But inclusive, almost affectionate—inviting her to see the funny side too.
She felt her own lips reluctantly curve in response. “I suppose,” she said, “it sounded rather pompous.”
“It sounded like you,” he said. He cocked his head to one side, examining her as if she were one of his computer problems that needed solving. “Pulling up the drawbridge and retreating to the castle keep, locking yourself away from the enemy at the gate.”
She felt the tug of his attraction as though it were a physical thing, drawing her to him. “Are you my enemy?” she half-whispered, acutely aware they were standing within touching distance, that one step would bring them together. One irrevocable step.
And aware too of the danger he represented. To her integrity, her self-control, her tightly guarded heart.
But already he’d breached the walls, sent her defences tumbling—captured that heart, which she’d tried so hard to keep inviolable. It was his to treasure or trample.
“I won’t hurt you,” he said.
An easy promise to make. Maybe he even believed it—believed she could give her body without engaging her emotions. If he still thought she was an ice princess it was her own fault—she’d tried her best to hide her inner self from him.
She said, “You don’t trust me.”
“Do you trust me?”
She’d wondered if he had some Machiavellian plan to make her want him in order to save his sister’s marriage. Yet everything she knew of him said he wasn’t capable of duplicity. His methods were direct, his style a full-scale charge with a battering ram rather than a secretive tunnelling under the castle wall.
True to form, he hadn’t tried to deceive her, had not denied that he still mistrusted her. That hurt like a poisoned dart. The initial sting, she knew, would be followed by a slowly spreading pain. But right now all other feeling was drowned out by the insistent clamour of the aching need that consumed her. If she trusted him with her body, would he come to trust her integrity in return?
Impatient with her hesitation, Jase said, “What does it matter? I don’t give a damn any more about Bryn and Rachel and what she might have seen or not, the whole damned mess. Right now all that matters is this.”
He reached out and took her hand, drawing her towards him, and she didn’t resist. His arms went around her and her body said, Yes! Just this once she would allow instinct to take over, regardless of the consequences.
She saw the flare of triumph in his eyes, saw his beautiful male mouth lift at the corners before it parted to crush down on hers, just before she closed her eyes, and the doubts and fears and warning signals retreated to some distant corner of her mind and huddled there, ignored.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
SAMANTHA had never been kissed quite like this before, with passion and persuasion and frank enjoyment, yet with a faint edge of something approaching anger. And she had never kissed as she did now, eager and open and revelling in the taste of Jase, the texture of his lips, the brush of his unshaven cheek against her skin.
She thrust her fingers into his hair, loving the silky thickness of it, and when he touched her breast again she arched her back, asking for more even as his mouth opened hers wider, his tongue a welcome invasion. She felt him fumble with the small buttons on her prim cotton blouse, then give up and rip it apart, and his hand was on her bare flesh, shoving aside the lacy edge of her bra to caress and tease.
She moved her own hands across his shoulders, down his chest, and then under his shirt, sliding them over the skin of his back, feeling the firm muscle and bone beneath. Her fingers danced up the groove of his spine, and their kisses became deeper and wilder, until she thought she knew every millimetre of his mouth, and he of hers.
She felt him surge against her groin, and his hands pressed her to him, then he wrenched his mouth from hers, kissed her cheek, her jawbone, her throat, and muttered, “We need to find a bed.”
Desperately, her mind agreed. “I know where there is one,” she told him, her voice low and throaty.
He grinned, a flash of teeth reminding her she’d once thought he looked like a pirate. His eyes were brilliant with desire, and she knew hers were glazed with it too. “Show me,” he said in a guttural growl. But as if he couldn’t resist her mouth he kissed her again, accompanied by a slow movement of his pelvis that made her gasp into his mouth.
She pulled away from the kiss. “This way. Don’t let me go.”
He moved so he was behind her, his arms about her, both hands on her breasts, his mouth dropping kisses on her neck, and they inched towards the bedroom, stopping for more kisses.
On the way she lost her blouse, an
d once she turned in his arms to shove up his shirt, pulling it off when he raised his arms for her, then he wound them tightly about her and bent her backward to nuzzle at her breasts, the stubble on his cheeks and chin adding an erotic edge she’d never experienced before.
They finally reached her bedroom. As she bent to fold back the cream satin cover he undid the clasp of her bra and the flimsy garment slithered away down her arms.
Still holding her with one arm, he hauled back the bedclothes with the other and they fell onto the sheet, limbs entwined, mouths and hands searching for each other, shedding their remaining clothing, kissing, touching, exploring. Jase grabbed a packet from his denims and ripped it open, came back to her and looked into her eyes, his own feverish.
“Yes,” she said, her body already writhing in anticipation. “Jase…”
He gave her his piratical, feral smile, and poised himself over her, then plunged deeply, and she opened her mouth in a silent cry of abandon, wound her arms about him, clung, moved beneath him, felt him move in answer, his breath on her cheek, one hand cupped about her breast, his body hers.
He rolled over, bringing her on top of him, sending her into ecstasy such as she’d never known was possible—out of her mind, out of her body, flying weightless into some other cataclysmic dimension.
He bucked beneath her, giving a hoarse cry of satisfaction, and she felt her own pleasure build again and explode dazzlingly, before fading into aftershocks until they both lay still and quiet.
Jase roused himself first, turned over and withdrew, before returning to her and kissing her on the lips, then on her breasts, each one in turn, her belly-button, her thighs.
His hand stroked from her thigh over her hip, rested on her breast, and he kissed her again—softly, sweetly. He retrieved the sheet and settled beside her, his body warm and strong against her. She turned her head to look at him. The room was dim, only a glow from the lamp in the living room allowing them to see each other.
She thought her heart was going to burst right out of her chest, she loved him so much. For the first time in her life she had held nothing back, given him every part of her to do with as he willed. Let her emotions lead her mind.