Taken by the Pirate Tycoon by Daphne Clair Read Free Book Online Page A

going to turn her down. Finally he broke the pause. “How long has he been on your board?”
    Her breath hitched. So Jase hadn’t known that. “Not long. Are you interested?” she demanded. “In doing business with Magnussen’s?”
    He was going to turn her down, she was sure. But after another sharp pause he said shortly, “Next week I have some time. You can show me round and I’ll do an assessment.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    S AMANTHA asked her IT manager to take Jase around the office building and discuss its computer systems, but when it came to the construction side she usually took site visitors around herself—clients, investors, inspectors. An excuse to get down to where the heart of the company really was.
    Site bosses were often less than keen to have outsiders blundering about a half-finished building, asking questions and getting in the way. Her presence smoothed their path. There were safety concerns too and hers was the ultimate responsibility for anyone on site as well as her own workers.
     
    Wearing overalls, earmuffs and hard hats, she and Jase followed the site manager over uneven ground, wet and slippery with recent rain, scattered with odd bits of timber and metal and piles of other materials. The day was cool with a biting wind, grey clouds above the city threatening rain. A torn piece of paper scooted across the ground, lifting and falling.
    The sounds of hammering were drowned by the roar of machinery and the steady thud of a pile driver. The building was to be the Auckland headquarters of an international insurance company, its foundations driven deep into the earth.
    Samantha inhaled the smell of new wood, which always made her tingle with pleasure. She saw Jase glance at her and give a small, slightly surprised smile.
    Yes , she wanted to tell him, this is what I’m passionate about. She just didn’t get down often enough to where the actual work took place.
    Wasn’t he passionate about his work? He had surely made his millions doing something he obviously loved. So where did he get off criticising her dedication to her company?
    And it was safer to be angry at his arrogance in presuming to know so much about her, than to admit the pull of his arresting good looks and raw male appeal.
    Overhead a crane swung a solid iron reinforcing bar through the air, and lowered it delicately to where yellow-helmeted men stood waiting to fit it into place.
    Jase shouted questions to the site manager, making occasional notes in a handheld computer device and sometimes taking photos with it. He went round the entire site and asked more questions of some of the workmen, and occasionally of Samantha herself.
    When they returned to the site office Samantha removed her earmuffs and hard hat and shook out her hair. After shedding her boots and overalls, she took a comb from her bag and quickly used it.
    Jase watched her with interest. Her lipstick had faded, the cold wind had brought colour into her cheeks, and the tip of her nose was pink. Her feet were bare—she hadn’t yet put on her shoes—and he had a fleeting vision of what she might have been like as a child. “Was your childhood happy?” he asked her, suddenly wanting to know.
    “What?” The comb in her raised hand, she paused to stareat him. The pose reminded him of a Greek statue. A thin sweater showed the outline of her breasts, and close-fitting jeans hugged her hips and legs. “My childhood ?” she queried, dropping her hand.
    “You did have one, didn’t you?”
    She gave him a withering look. “Why do you want to know?”
    Good question. And one he wasn’t prepared to answer. “Bryn said your mother died when you were young.”
    For a moment Samantha felt betrayed. But it was common knowledge. The fact had even been included in a magazine article about her a year after she took over the company. “I was thirteen,” she said.
    “It must have been tough.”
    Her mother, though considerably younger than her father, had been killed by a