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