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.
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