Taken by the Pirate Tycoon by Daphne Clair Page B

feared, though she was always conscious of tension between them, the undercurrent of sexuality that was never totally absent. Determinedly businesslike, she was pleasant but impersonal, and he seemed willing to go along with that, though occasionally she caught a slightly acerbic gleam in his eye, an unsettling curl to his mouth when he looked at her, his eyes resting on her for a fraction longer than necessary.
    They visited another Magnussen’s site, a private home for a wealthy Chinese family who had particular requests for curves and pillars that signified good fortune. Samantha actually had a secret preference for building homes where people would live, families grow up, though she wouldn’t admit to Jase that she didn’t always love the concrete-steel-and-glass structures that formed a large part of her firm’s business.
    Eventually she gave him a name tag and carte blanche tovisit any of the company’s operations after clearing it with the site managers. When he’d collected the information he wanted, he didn’t contact her until he had finished a preliminary report.
    Together they pored over diagrams, pricings and plans spread over drafting tables in her office. He’d e-mailed them to her computer, but this way she found it easier to comprehend them. Rigidly she suppressed her inevitable interior response to his smile, the accidental brush of her arm against his sleeve, the brief waft of his personal scent when he reached across to point something out to her.
    At times a comment of his or a question of hers led them into other areas than the immediate task at hand.
    She made a passing remark one day about wishing they could go back in time and visit famous buildings that had succumbed to disaster or decay over the centuries. And Jase said quite casually, “Mmm-hmm. Some of the world’s best physicists believe that time travel will be achieved some time in the present century.”
    “Seriously?” Samantha queried. She straightened from the chart in front of them to stare at him.
    “Seriously,” he confirmed. “It seems that scientifically it’s not impossible.”
    It had to do with black holes in space and other concepts she’d never really understood, but the way Jase explained the basics led her to exclaim, “You should have been a teacher.”
    “You think? My teachers would turn in those early graves they claimed I was driving them to.”
    “But you must have been bright!”
    “If I was, it didn’t show. I think I spent more time in detention than in class.”
    She regarded him thoughtfully. “I suppose you were a rebel.”
    Shrugging, he said, “A pain in the posterior. Barely scraped through my final exams. My parents despaired.” Momentarily he looked regretful. “I try to make it up to them. Eventually I got a degree in computer science and physics.”
    “Didn’t anybody recognise your potential?”
    “A late bloomer,” he said, then admitted, “I did get pretty good marks in maths at school. And science was okay, but I was banned from the lab after…well, a couple of unilateral experiments that were…um, less than successful.”
    Samantha tried to look disapproving, but couldn’t help a laugh escaping.
    His eyes lit with curiosity, he said, “I’ve never seen you do that before.”
    “Do what?” She stepped back from him, automatically checking for some gesture she’d made.
    “Laugh so naturally. And don’t do that !” he added, scowling.
    She blinked. “Don’t laugh?”
    “No.” He looked exasperated. “Don’t close up every time I say something halfway personal.”
    Samantha stiffened. Then realised it was exactly what she’d done. Her face felt much as it did when her beautician applied a herbal mask that hardened over her entire face and would crack if she changed her expression.
    Jase said, “You should laugh that way more often. It makes you look human.”
    Somehow that wounded her. “I am human!”
    “Yeah,” he said with a kind of scathing weariness.