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His eyes narrowed for an instant, becoming even greener, then he said evenly, “Happy. And I mean her to stay that way.”
“Surely that’s up to Bryn?” Samantha’s eyes went to his brother-in-law, still in conversation with the other businessman. “And Rachel. Who’s a grown woman,” she reminded him. From her own brief encounter with Rachel, the woman was no wilting flower. She’d seemed entirely capable of protecting her own marriage.
“She’s still my sister,” Jase said. “Getting married doesn’t change that. And I warn you, if necessary I’ll play dirty.”
She cast him a glance that would have refrozen the melting icecaps of the Antarctic, hiding a shocking flash of temper that made her palm itch to slap his head from his shoulders.
She wasn’t answerable to him for her feelings, or his misconceptions. “You’re the only one playing games,” she said. “They don’t interest me.”
Bryn turned to confirm something with Jase, and as the conversation continued between the three men she thought of slipping away, but hesitated, not wanting to appear to be running from Jase.
Then the other man reclaimed Bryn’s attention, and it was too late. Following on from their discussion, she asked dryly, “How much driving did you do before you were allowed to play with Donovan’s computers?”
For a moment he looked blank, before apparently recalling the conversation with his brother at the wedding reception. Then he laughed. “Quite a bit—travelling round the country to all the branches so I’d know how they operated and what was needed. Bryn wanted me to start with his sawmills, designing systems to increase safety.”
“That sounds like him,” she said, recalling Bryn’s almost haggard face after a near-fatal accident in one of Donovan’s mills when a worker in a careless moment forgot to observe its stringent safety rules. Her gaze strayed to him, still listening patiently to the man in the brown suit.
Jase’s brows drew together. Before he could say any more the crowd about them parted and someone touched Jase’s arm. A pretty brunette with bright lipstick on her mouth, she wore a black suit over a white blouse.
“Mr Moore,” she gushed, “that was a wonderful presentation. I’d love to have you come and talk to my executive staff.”
Samantha edged aside, and the man who had been monopolising Bryn turned his attention to the newcomer.
Bryn smiled at Samantha and said, “How about we get out of this scrum and find a place where we can catch up while we finish our coffee?”
Still riled at Jase, she let Bryn lead her to an empty lounge bar where the counter was closed. He sat at a small table across from her, and relaxed into the tub chair.
He was one of the few people with whom she felt safe lowering her guard. Taking over Magnussen’s after her father’s death hadn’t been easy. Bryn too had become head of a family business on his father’s death, and their similar experiences had given them a unique bond. Unlike her, he had spent years within the family firm before it became his, yet instead of taking advantage of her lack of experience, as some shrewd operators had, he’d offered advice and support.
And she wouldn’t kowtow to his brother-in-law’s erroneous view of her, give up a friendship she valued, simply because Jase Moore didn’t believe she could control her feelings.
Ironic, considering she’d spent a lifetime learning to do just that.
Twenty minutes went by quickly, and she slipped into the familiar territory of stress-free friendship, with only a slight lingering discontent that she’d missed her chance of something deeper.
At her last board meeting one of the members had resigned due to illness. Not so long ago Bryn would have been at the top of her shortlist for a suggested replacement, but she’d not put his name forward, afraid her feelings for him would be reactivated. Now she made a decision and put the invitation to him, firmly dismissing a twinge of trepidation. If Jase found out…
When they returned, the area outside the hall was nearly deserted, a few people hastily finishing their coffee or tea, and Jase lingered near the double door, one half already closed. Samantha saw the sharp look he directed at her and his brother-in-law, and instinct made her move closer to Bryn, her shoulder brushing his arm.
Jase’s eyes narrowed dangerously as Bryn put a light hand on Samantha’s waist to usher her into the big room before him.
They slipped into seats at the rear, Jase next to Bryn at the end of the row. As Samantha put her bag out of the way under her seat and straightened up she saw him fold his arms and stretch out his long legs.
For the rest of the seminar he was never far away each time she looked around her. She avoided him at lunch by sitting with a couple of other women, swapping war stories about sexism in business, but later, as she seated herself at the closing dinner, Jase slid into the chair beside her.
Apart from a cool nod of greeting she tried to ignore him, concentrating on the food and the other diners around the table. But she was conscious of his hands picking up his knife and fork, his voice when he spoke to others at the table, his laugh when someone cracked a joke, his leg brushing against hers as he reached for one of the bottles of wine on the table.
“Samantha?” He poised the bottle over her glass.
“Thank you.” She nodded without looking at him, and watched as with a steady hand he poured ruby-red wine into her glass before refilling his own.
He replaced the bottle and said in a low voice, “Where did you and Bryn get to during the tea break this morning?”
Her stomach clenched, remembering the look he’d directed at her on their return. He didn’t have the right to interrogate her, and she wasn’t going to be intimidated. “Somewhere private and quiet,” she said, driven by an obscure urge to needle him, because he certainly had no compunction about provoking her.
“Why?” Jase’s hand curled around the stem of his glass but he didn’t lift it.
“To talk,” she said. “Privately and quietly.” She turned to stare into his eyes, daring him to inquire further.
She might have known it would have no effect. He said, “What about?”
A knot of resentment had lodged in her chest. “If you really need to know,” she drawled, keeping her own voice down, “we made plans to run away together and set up house somewhere and have wild, uninhibited sex for days on end.”
The flash of shock and anger in Jase’s eyes, the sharp breath he drew gave her a moment of fierce satisfaction. Then she recalled his renewed warning earlier—If necessary I’ll play dirty—and a shiver slithered down her spine.
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.
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