Taken by the Pirate Tycoon

He’d discarded the jacket and tie altogether now. In white shirt and grey trousers he looked relaxed, his movements assured and imbued with masculine grace.

“And,” he was saying, a glint of humour—mixed with something else—in the eyes again meeting hers, “it was a pretty neat way to get a girl into my arms.”

It was the something else—the suppressed but unmistakable spark of masculine awareness that made her realise she wasn’t the only one finding their forced proximity unsettling.

Rachel and Bryn danced by them. Rachel was smiling up at her new husband, and he bent to fleetingly kiss her lips, then said something to her as he drew back.

Rachel laughed, shaking her head.

And Jase’s hand hardened on Samantha’s waist, bringing her closer as he said in her ear, “Don’t even think about it. About him.”

Her head snapped backward and she glared into the hard olive-green gaze, no trace left of humour. “I wasn’t thinking about anything, except how soon I can decently get away.”

“From me?”

“That too,” she said frostily, an annoying heat in her cheeks as it occurred to her that if she said any more he’d assume she wanted to leave so she could nurse her supposedly broken heart.

Which, she assured herself, wasn’t broken or even chipped. Maybe a tiny bit cracked, but that would heal. She said, “I’m not fond of crowds.”

One dark brow twitched upward, and something new came into his eyes. Something she hoped wasn’t pity. Quickly she added, “It’s hot in here.” An excuse for the guilty, girlish flush.

Jase nodded curtly, and before she could guess his intention he’d steered her through open French doors, propelling her to the back terrace.

A group of smokers indulging their habit were the only people there. At an unoccupied table for two Jase pulled out a chair and said to Samantha, “Sit. I’ll get you a cold drink. What do you want?”

“I don’t need a drink.” Then it occurred to her that the offer was an excuse. He could leave and not come back. A way out for them both from their hostess’s misguided pairing. “I’ll be fine, if you—” leave me here was on the tip of her tongue, but unexpectedly he shrugged and dropped into the chair opposite hers.

“Okay,” he said. “Probably a wise decision.”

“I’m in no danger of getting drunk,” she said, more sharply than she’d intended.

“You’ve had at least four glasses of wine, and haven’t eaten much. Is that how you keep that figure?” He ran a quick, critical glance over her, the expression in his eyes veiled when they returned to hers. “Dieting doesn’t do you any good, you know.”

He’d been watching her? “I don’t diet,” she snapped, then deliberately moderated her voice. “And four glasses in four hours won’t take me over the limit.” Her last two drinks had been apple juice. She never overindulged in alcohol, but had learned to hold her own with business contacts who did, often making one glass last while they downed several.

“You’re driving?” Jase frowned.

“We’re a long way from the city,” she pointed out. Central Auckland was a good hour away from the rural community of Donovan’s Falls.

“You can afford to hire a driver, surely?”

Samantha wondered if he’d been asking questions about her, of the Donovans or their guests. Or had simply recognised her name. “I prefer to drive myself,” she said shortly. “Do you work in construction?” Surely she wasn’t so well-known that many people outside the field would have connected her with the firm that still bore her father’s name, and the wealth he’d accumulated.

“Nope. Well, you could say that now, I guess. Bryn just hired me. Is a timber merchant in the construction business?”

Had he been unemployed? “They can’t do without each other,” she said. “That was good of Bryn.” Presumably he’d offered the job for Rachel’s sake.

Something flickered across Jase’s face and was gone. Then he said, “He’s going to be quite a useful brother-in-law.”

Behind the careless tone she detected a hint of something suspiciously like mockery, reflected in his darkened eyes by the soft light from carriage lamps affixed to the wall of the house.

Even if he didn’t share his sister’s brains or ambition, maybe he’d had some kind of job, and Bryn had offered a better one. In any case, unemployment was no disgrace, though many people were embarrassed to admit to it.

She doubted this man shared that emotion. He was blunt to a fault himself. “What did you do before?” she asked.

He grinned as though for some reason the question amused him. “Mainly messed about with computers in my parents’ garage.”

A geek? That might account for his lack of social niceties.

“And helped out on their farm now and then,” he added.

A man and woman emerged from the house holding glasses of wine. Seeing Jase, they changed direction and walked towards the table. “Hey there!” The man grinned down at them. “Are we interrupting something?”

“No,” Samantha said before Jase could answer. “Actually I was just about to leave.” She made to get up but the man looked dismayed and laid a large, work-roughened hand on her shoulder to stay her. “Don’t move for us,” he urged. “If it’s a private conversation—”

Jase said, “If it was, you’d have just shoved your big manure-covered gumboot so far into it there’d be no hope of continuing anyway. Samantha Magnussen, this is my brother, Ben. And April, who for some unknown reason actually married this big dumb lug.”

Ben aimed a swipe in the general direction of his brother’s ear, expertly dodged by Jase, and then hooked a couple of chairs from an empty table for himself and his wife. After seeing April seated he said, “Nice to meet you, Sam,” and settled his sizeable frame into the other chair.

His grin was engaging, his gaze curious but friendly. Samantha didn’t even mind him shortening her name at first acquaintance. Despite his close-shaven cheeks and short-back-and-sides and the tie he still wore, he reminded her of a big, harmless Labrador. There was some family resemblance to Jase in his eyes and hair colouring, but there it ended.

His wife was dainty and shy and in the conversation that followed Samantha learned that April was from the Philippines, and they had met when Ben holidayed there a year or so earlier. Anyone could see they adored each other.

She felt a stab of envy. It seemed to be her day for it.

Because this was a wedding celebration? Perhaps it had something to do with her thirtieth birthday looming. But many of her contemporaries hadn’t married until well into their thirties, or weren’t going to bother at all, even if they had a partner. It was nothing to be concerned about.

In fact she’d never seriously thought about marriage, even when she’d begun thinking about Bryn in…that way. It had been just something that might happen at some vague future time.

When a pause came in the conversation April turned to Samantha. “A nice wedding,” she said in her prettily accented voice. “Rachel looks very beautiful.”

“Yes, she does.” Samantha tried to inject enthusiasm into the conventional agreement, avoiding Jase’s eyes.

“She’s a lovely girl,” April added. “Very nice.”

Samantha prepared herself to listen to a litany of Rachel’s virtues, but the other woman merely said, “I’m sure Bryn will be a wonderful husband.”

I’m sure too. Samantha didn’t say it aloud.

Ben said to his brother, “I hear you’re going to work for our new in-law. Bit of a change from your flippin’ games, staring at a ruddy screen all day. Ruin your eyes,” he warned.

“Beats staring at the back end of cow and getting covered in sh—ah—dung.”

“Huh!” Ben grunted. “About time you got yourself a proper job, you effing layabout.” He glanced at April as though she might object to the euphemism, but she merely shook her head reprovingly, trying to hide a smile.

“Okay, so I’m not a horny-handed farmer like you,” Jase said, and gave his brother a mock salute. “Backbone of the country and all that.”

“Gonna drive a truck for Bryn?” Ben inquired, grinning. “Stack timber? Do some real work for a change?”

Samantha couldn’t read the glance Jase threw her before answering. “Probably a bit of driving, for a start.”

As the brotherly banter continued, April turned to Samantha. “Take no notice of them. They’re always like this. Just because Jase didn’t want to be a farmer, and Ben can’t imagine doing anything else. But they’re very fond of each other really.”

Jase was lazily grinning at his brother’s teasing, a grin quite different from the guarded teeth-flashes he’d directed at her.

Samantha forced a smile. An only child herself, when young she had watched the sometimes rough-and-tumble interaction of her friends and their siblings with wistful envy. And here she was again, the outsider, the one who didn’t belong.

Attacked by a wave of melancholy, she stirred and stood up. “I really have to go,” she said, directing her social smile at Ben and April. “It was nice meeting you.”

To her surprise Jase rose too. Coming to her side, he touched her arm, saying, “You’re sure you’re okay to drive? I can take you home.”

They were entering the house and she said, astonished, “Why would you do that? Anyway, you must have been drinking too.”

“One glass of bubbly to toast the happy couple,” he replied. “Pearl asked for volunteers to stay cold sober and see that everyone got home safely.”

A consummate hostess, Pearl Donovan had thought of everything.

“I’m fine,” Samantha assured him. When they reached the wide, empty hallway she walked in a rigidly straight line down the centre of the carpet runner to the long hall table and retrieved her things. Stiltedly she said, “Thanks for the offer.”

The solid front door was closed. Jase went forward and laid his hand on the brass handle but didn’t open it immediately, instead surveying her with an assessing gaze.

Samantha took a determined step towards the door. He’d have to open it or move out of the way.

Instead he lifted his other hand and closed it about the nape of her neck, pulling her to him. Then as her mouth parted in startled protest he leaned towards her and she felt his warm lips on hers, a slight pressure parting them further.

Before she had even gathered her wits enough to push him away he released her.

Outrage at his daring to kiss her, and shock at the unexpected, contradictory sensations he’d aroused held her speechless. Her instinct was to slap his face, but with her hat in one hand and her bag in the other that wasn’t a real option. “What the hell—” she started to say, and stopped as she heard her voice shake.

“You don’t taste of alcohol,” Jase Moore told her calmly. He opened the door and stood waiting for her to pass through. “I guess you’ll be all right.”

Not trusting her voice, she lifted her head and gave him a stare that would have frozen the fires of hell, then swept by him without a word.

Ignorant, sexist opportunist! The man should be dressed in a bearskin and dragging a wooden club.

She negotiated the steps and followed the lights along the driveway to the temporary parking area in a close-shorn paddock. A security guard at the gate nodded to her and added the powerful beam of his torch to the lights set around the perimeter, until she located her car.

The guard waved to her and she drove slowly out of the gateway and accelerated along the road, tempted to put her foot down and express her anger by recklessly breaking the speed limit. She settled instead for calling Jase Moore every insulting name in her vocabulary, under her breath.

Thank heaven, she told herself when she finally ran out of epithets, with luck she’d never see the man again. If he was working as a truck driver for Donovans she’d hardly be likely to run into him at their city premises, even though her firm did a great deal of business with Bryn’s.

Why the hell—she asked herself the question she’d been unable to finish asking in the Donovans’ hallway—why had he kissed her? He certainly didn’t like her.

Had he meant to humiliate, show her she was vulnerable to male physical power? That he had the upper hand and she’d better heed his earlier warning?

And as for that You don’t taste of alcohol, as though he were some kind of human breathalyser…

Automatically dimming the headlights as another car crested a rise and sped towards her, she gave a tiny, scornful laugh.

She remembered the feel of his mouth on hers, the tang of pine and another unnameable, somehow seductive scent in her nostrils. The strength of his fingers curling about her nape.

And she remembered too, that when he drew back and released her, within the curve of the light beard his cheeks had showed a subtle colour along the bones.

Something stirred inside her. A peculiar mixture of fierce satisfaction and an unwanted but not unpleasant thrill replacing mortified fury.

He’d kissed her because he’d wanted to. Because he couldn’t help himself. And then he’d had to excuse it somehow. Because…

Samantha bit her lip. No use denying, ignoring it. Because despite his suspicion, his antagonism, and her own justifiably furious reaction, despite the hostility that arced between them like an alternating electrical current, something else sizzled under the surface. Something primordial, elemental.

Something sexual.

When Jase rejoined his brother and sister-in-law, holding a glass of amber liquid, Ben gave him a quizzical look. “Moving in high-flown circles now, eh, mate? She doesn’t seem your type.” “She isn’t,” Jase answered shortly. “Bryn’s mother set us up.”

April asked, “Is that why she was uncomfortable?”

Jase looked at her in surprise. “I suppose.” He hadn’t thought anyone else would have noticed. He and Samantha had been unwillingly thrown together but good manners prevailed.

He’d expected Samantha would dance like a mannequin from a store window, looking great but stiff and haughty. Instead she’d been fluid and warm, supple and sinuous, easily following the slightest pressure of his hand, her steps matching, even anticipating his every movement.

For a moment or two he’d found himself wondering if she’d respond like that in bed, what it would be like to make love to her.

Not that he was likely to ever find out. Nor really want to, he assured himself.

Ben said, “She’s a looker.” Then grinned. “Too classy for the likes of you.”

“Uh-huh,” Jase grunted and picked up his glass to drink. The taste didn’t erase the memory of Samantha Magnussen’s soft lips, the warmth and sweetness of her mouth—so at odds with her aloof manner. Even the kiss—an impulse he should never have given in to—had only had the effect of making her amazing, almost translucent blue eyes turn glacial.

“Hey, that went down fast.” His brother broke in on Jase’s thoughts. Ben’s brows curved upward. He’d gathered his own and his wife’s empty glasses and pushed back his chair. “I thought you weren’t drinking.”

“Ginger ale,” Jase replied, and declined Ben’s offer to get him another.

“Do you like her?” April inquired quietly as her husband disappeared inside the house.

“Hardly know her,” Jase said. “We had one dance, she was feeling hot so I brought her out here.”

She certainly doesn’t like me.

Hardly surprising. She’d wanted to hit him after he’d kissed her. He had seen the reflexive movement of her arm before she dropped the hand holding that absurd hat to her side. He’d almost hoped she would, that at last she’d show some loss of her unwavering control.

Like what he had glimpsed when she greeted Bryn, a moment of real human emotion behind the lightly spoken words with their ambiguous undercurrent. But there was nothing ambiguous about the brief but telling betrayal of her feelings. She hadn’t been a happy guest at the wedding.

After the confrontation in the summerhouse he’d watched her from a distance, seen her greet several people, exchanging hugs with some of the women, one of whom did so with a piercing, “Samantha, darling! I haven’t seen you in an age!” From some of the men she’d accepted a kiss on the cheek, but never offered her lips. Once she laid a hand on a man’s arm for a second or two, making some laughing remark. The man—sixty-ish, grey-haired but still good-looking—smiled at her with unconcealed admiration and said something in return at which she laughed again.

The ice princess could turn on the charm when she wanted to. But when the man leaned closer she moved almost imperceptibly back, though keeping her smile intact. Not the way it had been with Bryn, as if she couldn’t stop herself touching him.

Showing a capacity for pain and passion under the Nordic cool. The woman was a walking contradiction.

Should he care? His only concern was for his sister. He wouldn’t allow anyone to hurt Rachel.

Chapter Three

SAMANTHA was unable to put the disturbing, infuriating Jase Moore out of her mind. For weeks, then months, she’d scarcely seen Bryn. She let her managers deal with him when business made contact necessary, and kept away from gatherings he might be expected to attend—with his wife at his side. Her social life was reduced to close friends and inescapable obligations, giving herself time to get over the surprisingly deep hurt of losing a man she’d had no claim on in the first place.

It couldn’t be that hard to return to viewing him as a friend and business colleague whose company she enjoyed. And her circumspection had nothing to do with Jase Moore and his misguided attempt to frighten her off.

It wasn’t as if Bryn had ever appeared to notice her perhaps too-tentative attempts to signal her growing interest—the lingering handshakes, the sincerity and warmth of her smile, the occasional fleeting touch. Now she wondered, if a perfect stranger could pick it up at first glance, had Bryn known all along? Known and not given her any encouragement because he simply didn’t find her sexually attractive? The thought made her inwardly squirm. Another reason to avoid him for a time.

She immersed herself in carrying on her father’s business, his life’s work. A brilliant builder, he had employed the very best workers, even poaching them without conscience from other firms, but had remained staunchly attached to traditional practices. He had never learned to use a computer himself, although conceding the need for them and paying his Information Technology Manager a handsome salary.

Samantha felt it was important to keep up-to-date if her firm was to maintain its premier position in a crowded industry. She booked for a one-day seminar on Future-Proofing Your Business, the star attraction being an American speaker whose books about the changing face of management she’d admired.

After seeing his name she hadn’t bothered to read the rest of the programme, sure the steep fee would be worth it just to hear him.

His keynote speech, first on the programme, convinced her she’d been right, but she was puzzled when before the next session she saw none other than Jase Moore carry a laptop computer onto the stage.

Her first thought was, It can’t be. Her second that he was there as a technician. Maybe he’d left Donovan’s already or been shifted from the transport department to one more to his liking.

He placed the computer on a table beside the microphone and lifted the lid. His white shirt, worn with dark trousers, was open at the collar, the sleeves rolled to the elbow. Obama casual, and it suited him.

Then the chairwoman stepped forward and began to introduce him. Samantha looked down at the programme in her hand, passing over a glowing CV of the guest speaker to the next page. Among a list of names and subjects, she saw “The Future of the Interfaced Workplace.” Speaker: J.S. Moore.

“Mr Moore,” the chairwoman was saying, “began his career in computer games, hitting the jackpot before he was out of his teens with his popular pirate series, ‘Pinnaces, Pillage and Plunder,’ and ‘Hunters of the High Seas.’”

Samantha’s mouth fell open and she quickly shut it again. She’d never played computer games, nor even looked at those included with her office programme, but she had seen TV ads touting the virtual environment games, and no one could miss the ubiquitous posters, T-shirts and novelty items emblazoned with the titles and characters.

“At the same time,” the chairwoman continued, “he was experimenting on his father’s farm, marrying farm machinery and electronics, leading to designing revolutionary systems for the agricultural sector, which are now used worldwide.”

The woman glanced at the notes in her hand. “Recently he’s been developing systems and machinery for industrial use, with a particular interest in safety and the use of virtual reality simulations for training, and the integration of office and workface into a seamless digital environment.”

Jase’s deep, confident voice woke Samantha from a whirling daze. She dimly recalled glancing through a couple of news articles mentioning the ubiquitous pirate games and their spin-off merchandise, and being somewhat surprised that their creator was apparently a multi-millionaire, fast catching up to the top ten richest people in the country.

His name hadn’t stuck. And she had no interest in agricultural machinery, so that too had passed her by.

Helped by computer-generated images on a large screen behind him, Jase clearly and fluently described a future of machinery and even surgical instruments controlled by operators simply thinking their commands to specialty computers.

Already Samantha used computer programmes to show clients three-dimensional “plans” for buildings, but he promised “a real-time physical walk-through of virtual buildings,” then went on to describe more ground-breaking work in fields that once were the domain of science-fiction.

When he was done, in answer to a query he quoted statistics about production losses due to industrial accidents, and called on Bryn, whom Samantha hadn’t seen seated in the front row, to come to the microphone and describe how Jase had improved production and safety at Donovan’s Timber.

At morning tea, among the throng around the tables bearing scones and muffins to go with their tea and coffee, Bryn caught her eye and made his way to her with Jase in tow.

Bryn kissed her cheek and said, “Haven’t seen you for a long while. What did you think of my brother-in-law?” He put a hand on the other man’s shoulder. “You met Jase at my wedding, didn’t you?”

Samantha gave Jase a nod of recognition. “Your presentation was very interesting.” She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of expressing surprise that he was not the idle loser he’d allowed her to imagine.

His “Thanks” was preceded by a faint twist at the corner of his mouth, as though he knew she found the compliment difficult, and that amused him.

Bryn said, “Some of the systems he put in place for us would probably work for you. In fact if we used the same programmes it could cut time and effort—even expense—for both our companies.”

Samantha just stopped herself from physically recoiling. Jase must have noticed. The curl at the corner of his mouth grew, and the hint of a dimple creased his cheek. She said, “I’ll think about it.”

A tubby man in a brown suit joined them, loudly quizzing Bryn about his experience with Jase’s services.

Jase moved closer to Samantha’s side and said sotto voce, under the chatter all around them, “Glad you took my advice.”

Something prickled along her spine. “I don’t remember you giving me advice.”

“Bryn hasn’t seen you for a while?” He nodded as if in approval, making her hackles rise further.

She clipped out, “We’re both busy people.”

Casting her a penetrating glance, he said, “How are you doing?”

Tempted to retort, What do you care? or preferably, Get lost! Samantha said shortly, “Fine, thank you. And Rachel?” she inquired pleasantly, trying to be civil as well as deflect the conversation from herself.