Escapade

He flung open a file folder and buried his thoughts in business.

CHAPTER THREE

THE OCEAN OFF Opal Cay was every shade of mingled green and blue in the color spectrum. Like the rest of the Bahama Islands chain, the water was crystalline, unpolluted. Virginal.

Amanda smiled at the unspoiled beauty and hoped that this exquisite sugar-white beach would never go the way of so many other beautiful coves that now boasted casino and hotel complexes.

She pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her short white robe. She’d just been swimming, and her slender body was still wet, like her long black hair. She lifted it to the ever-present breeze, feeling the hot, wet wind pull at it, drying it. Under the robe was a yellow bikini with red stripes, the first unconventional statement she’d made since her father’s death.

She knew she should have felt something. Sadness. Grief. Loss. Emptiness. There was only relief. What a eulogy for Harrison Sanford Todd.

“I must be heartless,” she said aloud.

“Why?” came a deep, cynically amused reply from over her shoulder.

She turned, her pale green eyes wide. They softened helplessly at the masculine perfection of the man who approached her. She pushed back her long, windblown hair to keep it out of her mouth in the crisp breeze. “I thought you were going to Nassau.”

“Not until eleven-thirty. It’s barely seven. Why are you out so early?”

“I dreamed about Dad,” she said. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was close enough. She rammed her hands deep into her pockets. “I wish I could miss him.”

“He wasn’t exactly a family man, Amanda. Don’t waste time on unnecessary guilt. He gave what he could, and so did you. Let that be enough,” Josh said in his soft, deep Texas accent. His dark eyes flashed like the reflection of the ocean in sunlight as he looked down at her from his imposing height. “Didn’t I mention the undertow and the danger of swimming alone?”

“You probably did,” she agreed with a grin. “And I probably didn’t listen. But I only went out a little way. I’m not terribly adventurous. Yet,” she added.

He smiled. “You’ll get around to it. It’s a big world.”

“And full of sharks,” she mused.

His eyes narrowed as he glanced seaward. A smoking cigar dangled from one lean, darkly tanned hand, its only adornment a thin gold watch buried in the thick hair of his strong wrist. He was wearing white slacks with a sedate gray T-shirt, tediously conventional. It was like flying a false flag, because there was nothing, absolutely nothing, conventional about Joshua Cabe Lawson, as his business adversaries had learned to their cost.

He towered over her, despite the fact that she was tall and slender. His blond good looks and superb physical presence drew women like a magnet. His scandalous reputation had dimmed only briefly during the time he was seeing Terri. Although Josh had genuinely loved the woman, she’d left him because he didn’t want to get married. He was incapable of commitment except when it came to business matters. Then he was as dedicated as any workaholic.

Amanda, fresh out of college and brimming with ideas, had some small understanding of the aphrodisiac that a career could provide. She wanted desperately to have a chance to make the Todd Gazette’s small job press grow to its full potential. The present manager, Ward Johnson, had been in his job so long that he just slogged along from day to day in the same old rut, never bothering to change anything at all. His first love was the weekly newspaper. The job press was only a worrying sideline to him, and like Josh, he wanted to close it down or sell off the equipment. Amanda didn’t. She knew it could pay for itself. If only it were run right!

Amanda loved working at the paper. Although she didn’t have a journalism degree, she did have one in business, and she had some innovative ideas about how to upgrade the antiquated equipment, reorganize the print shop, and structure the job descriptions of the staff who overlapped both businesses. But repressed from childhood by her overbearing, domineering father, she hadn’t yet learned how to be aggressive without being offensive, and when she made gentle suggestions, no one would listen to her. Least of all the man at her side.

She looked up at him and wondered idly why he never made her feel smothered even when he did exercise his protective instincts. For a year after she’d come home from a finishing school in Switzerland, he’d hounded her until she’d entered a local San Antonio college, late, at the age of nineteen.

Joshua had steered her toward college when her father hadn’t even noticed her lack of occupation. Women needed to train in a profession, Josh had insisted, and not be dependent on anyone else for a living—even a husband, if she ever married. She’d taken that one piece of advice and gone on to major in business and minor in marketing. She’d graduated summa cum laude while Josh watched her accept her diploma. Her father had been closing a deal in London.

Josh had gone into business with her father eight years before, and despite the fact that he seemed to hate almost everyone he associated with, he’d been kind to Amanda since the first time he’d seen her.

She remembered that meeting with amused delight. Tough Joshua Lawson had fallen into a prickly pear cactus because of her cat, Butch—a fourteen-pound monster of a cat with the disposition of a rattler. Amanda had been horrified that her pet was going to be strangled, but her compassion for Joshua had been even stronger than her fear for Butch. She’d rushed to get a pair of tweezers, and it had taken her twenty long minutes to pull out every cactus hair. She’d done it painstakingly, while a surprised and then amused Joshua sat docilely and allowed a personal invasion that he would have tolerated from no one else. Amanda hadn’t known that until years later, when he’d confessed it with rueful amusement.

“What are you smiling about?” he murmured.

“The prickly pear cactus,” she said immediately.

He chuckled. “Yes. The prickly pear. What ever became of that blue-eyed cat?”

“He died, remember? While he was staying with Mirri last year,” she replied, a little sad.

“Tiger Lily,” he muttered.

His reference to Mirri made her smile. “Her temper is no worse than yours,” she pointed out. “And she’s the best friend I’ve got.”

“She’s a lot like you,” he said disgustedly. “Incredibly repressed and hopelessly locked into a self-destructive pattern of solitary living.”

“Well, thank you for that professional analysis,” she said sarcastically. “And you aren’t supposed to notice that Mirri’s repressed,” she reminded him gently. “She certainly doesn’t give that impression to strangers.”

“I know,” he replied. “She puts on a good act when she’s dressing like a third-rate prostitute, piling on makeup, flirting outrageously, and publicly announcing that she wants to have some man’s children.” He chuckled. “And how they run! But one day she’s going to find someone who’ll mistake that image for the real woman. And I’ll feel sorry for her when she does.”

“I hope it never happens,” Amanda remarked.

“So do I. Her scars are deep enough. Like yours.” His eyes narrowed on her face. “Someone should have taken a horsewhip to Harrison years ago. I considered it a time or two, on your behalf. What he did to you was criminal. I could never make him see it.”

She was surprised and touched that he’d cared enough to try. “He could be cruel,” she agreed. “But he wasn’t all bad. He did find good people to take care of me, and I always had everything I wanted.”

“Everything except love,” he agreed. He touched her chin, and his fingers felt hard and cool against her face as he lifted it. “Some lucky man is going to enjoy you one day, Amanda, with all that love and need welled up in you, just waiting to pour out.”

She smiled at him, ignoring the sweet explosions that were going off all over her body. “Just as long as he can cook and use a vacuum cleaner,” she teased.

He laughed, not offended at all. His eyes went back to the horizon. “At least you won’t be hiding out anymore.”

“No, I won’t,” she replied, realizing this was the perfect opportunity to assert herself further. “Joshua, what about the job press? Are you really going to side with Ward Johnson and close it down?”

“Here it comes,” he grumbled, glaring at her. “Can’t we get away from that damned job press? What do you know about running a job press, anyway?”

It was impossible to wring a decision out of him. She’d long since learned that he was a past master of the Socratic method—answering questions with questions.

“I know more about it than Ward Johnson seems to. He’s running the operation into the ground. Josh, I’d like to take over management of the newspaper and job press in San Antonio,” she blurted out.

“We had this conversation before Harrison died. The answer is still the same. No,” he said.

“You might hear me out before you make any snap decisions. I’ve thought about it a lot. I have a degree in business administration. I know how to manage a business.”

“You have the education, yes.” He turned to her, his face hard and unyielding. “You don’t have the experience, the ruthlessness, to handle people.”

Management doesn’t always require ruthlessness. “I’ve been working at the paper for two months. I’ve managed everything recently, and I’ve noticed a lot of flaws...”

“You’ve been substituting for Ward Johnson when he was out of the office,” he returned. “That’s a far cry from managing on a day-to-day basis. And what do you want me to do with Ward, fire him after fifteen years of loyal service just so you can play Madam Executive?”

She flushed with temper, her green eyes darkening, her face flushing. “You’re forgetting that I own forty-nine percent of the paper,” she said through clenched teeth. “And that it’s been in my mother’s family for almost a hundred years!”

“You’ll get control of that forty-nine percent only when you comply with the terms of the will,” he said with a cold smile.

“I’ll contest it!” she raged.

“Your father’s mind was as sound as mine. You haven’t got a legal leg to stand on.”

She felt as if her face had gone purple. Rage sparkled in her pale green eyes, making them as glassy as ice.

“Until you reach twenty-five, or marry,” he reminded her bluntly, “I suggest you follow Ward Johnson’s lead. Then we’ll talk.”

“Ward Johnson can go to hell,” she said icily. “And you can keep him company, Joshua!”

His wide, masculine mouth curled up at the corners in amusement. “When you were about seventeen, you had all the spunk of a two-hour-old bunny rabbit,” he remarked. “That was when I started to needle you. Remember?”

“Made me furious,” she corrected, almost choking on the flash of temper. She took deep breaths to regain control. “Made me mad enough to throw things.”

He nodded. “It was what you needed. Harrison had made a puppet out of you,” he added, his face hard. “A damned little doll whose strings he pulled. I taught you to fight for your survival.”

Slowly the rage left her. Yes. He had done that for her. And once she’d started to challenge her father, her life had changed. She, who had never raised a hand in class in school, who had never spoken back to an adversary, was suddenly able to stand up to anyone.

“It seems I learned well,” she said after a minute. She glanced up at him with a rueful smile. “But it’s uncomfortable to fight, just the same.”

“Or lose. But both experiences teach valuable lessons,” he returned. His eyes were almost transparent for a few seconds. He could have told her that he knew as much as she did about being overwhelmed and dominated. His childhood had been no joy ride. But that was something he never discussed. Not even with Brad.

He stepped away, taking a long draw from the cigar. “Disgusting habit,” he muttered. He pulled a tiny tape recorder from his pocket and depressed the record button. “Dina, remind me about that no smoking seminar at the Sheraton next week. I’ve got a board meeting that morning, so I’ll forget otherwise.”

Amanda smiled secretly, amused at his gesture. Dina had been his secretary since his father’s untimely death from a heart attack ten years ago. She knew where all the bodies were buried, and she was efficient in a frightening way. Amanda had once wondered, quite seriously, if Dina was psychic, because she seemed able to anticipate every move Josh made. Even now she probably had an alarm programmed into her computer to remind him of that seminar he’d just remembered.

“Why are you grinning like the Cheshire cat?” he asked curtly. “Another dangling thought?”

The smile vanished. Her hands clenched in her pockets as she prepared for yet another fruitless argument. “About the job press...”

“No,” he repeated with cold emphasis.

She threw up her hands. “I could get more out of a stone wall!”

“There’s one.” He indicated the sea wall that protected the front of the house. “Try it.”

Her shoulders sagged. She was too worn out to fight any more today. “Will you at least look at some figures on the press before you kill it?” she asked quietly, determined to set at least that much accomplished.

“All right. But that’s all I’m promising.” That deep south Texas drawl of his was deceptive. It didn’t denote an easygoing disposition. Quite the opposite, in fact. “And I’m not kicking out Ward Johnson.”

“I wouldn’t really want you to go that far,” she confessed. “He has problems at home.”

“And you collect broken things and broken people,” he said perceptively. “Like the stray cat that was badly bitten by a neighborhood dog and had to be taken in,” he recited. “And the pigeon with a broken wing. Then there was, of all things, a garter snake that the gardener cut with a weed eater!”

“It was only a little snake,” she defended herself.

“The bleeding heart of the world,” he scoffed. “You care too much about the wrong things.”

“Somebody has to.”

“I suppose. But don’t look at me. I’ve got a business to run.” He turned his wrist abruptly and glanced at his watch. “I have to get ready to go into Nassau.”

“You wouldn’t like to take a day off?” she asked. He looked surprised. “A day off,” she began, a grin lighting up her face. “It’s when you don’t work for an entire day. You go snorkeling or sunbathe or sight-seeing...”

“A hell of a waste of time!”

“You’re going to wear yourself out from the inside,” she pointed out. “First your brain, then your stomach, then your heart. In no time you’ll be a walking bone-and-skin frame with nothing inside.”

“You don’t say?” He took a handful of her long black hair in one hand and tugged on it as he had done when she was a kid. Only now her head eased back gently, and his eyes dropped to her soft pink mouth and lingered there before he spoke. “You’re sassy,” he said.

“I learned by watching you,” she said. Her voice sounded husky. She couldn’t breathe properly when he was this close, and she was afraid that it might show. “Joshua, you’re hurting my hair,” she whispered unsteadily.

His grip lessened, but only slightly. He actually leaned toward her, so that his coffee-and-smoke-scented breath cooled her parted lips. “Be careful that I don’t decide to take you over,” he said deeply. “You’d make one hell of an acquisition.”

“Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t match the decor in your office at all,” she said with forced lightness. Her body was already burning. “You like dark Mediterranean, and I’m French provincial. Besides, you’re too busy.”

“Is that what you really think? That I only have a cash register for a brain and a slide rule for a heart? You, of all people on earth, should know better,” he added, his voice as sensuous as velvet against bare skin. “I taught you to fight, but I guess you’ll have to learn just about everything else on your own. I’m too jaded to make a proper tutor.” He let her hair fall back to her shoulders and turned away from her.

She studied his long back with pure pleasure. “I have to get my education somewhere, Josh,” she murmured, striking just the right note of amused honesty to raise one of his eyebrows. “If you won’t sacrifice yourself for me, I guess I’ll have to advertise for someone who will.”

“No, you won’t. You don’t know how to play that kind of game. When you give yourself, it will be for keeps.”

She looked up at him openly, appreciating the hard lines of his face, the faint weariness there. “You’re tired. Why don’t you send Brad to Nassau and get some rest?”

Her concern almost pushed him over the edge. He didn’t want it; he didn’t need it! His hand clenched at his side. He took a draw from the cigar and sent up a cloud of smoke.

“Because Brad wouldn’t get any farther than the casino across the bridge on Paradise Island, and you know it,” he said flatly. “I’m going to keep him away from temptation, at least until we close this Saudi Arabian contract.”

Amanda had her own suspicions about how well Brad was avoiding temptation, but she couldn’t sell him out to his brother. Josh made no allowances for weakness.

“You’re hard to argue with,” she commented.

“Then stop doing it. I don’t have time, anyway.” He checked his watch again. “I’ll try to be back in time for dinner.”

“I haven’t seen you for thirty minutes at a stretch since I’ve been here. And I really do have to think about getting back to San Antonio.”

“It’s only a week since the funeral,” he said. “Stay a while longer. Why not fly over to Jamaica with me tomorrow? I’ll make sure I have time for you.”

“Don’t strain yourself,” she said, annoyed at his patronizing one.

“Don’t worry. I won’t,” he said with a pleasant smile.

She threw up her hands. “Every time I’m around you, I feel as if I’ve been dragged backward through a hedge.”

His face seemed faintly troubled. He touched her hair again, but this time he drew his hand away at once. He searched her eyes intently and held them until her heart ran away.

“I’m not a child, Josh,” she said huskily.

“You aren’t superficial, either,” he replied. “You’re as deep as the ocean, as enigmatic as a budding rose in a briar patch. I admire your values as much as I admire your spirit. I could never soil that.”

“You pirate,” she accused softly. “You’re as old-fashioned as I am.”

He nodded slowly. “Don’t tell anyone,” he said with a half smile, and started walking again. “I’d hate to ruin my image.”

CHAPTER FOUR

BRAD DIDN’T GO to Nassau. Josh went himself. But that evening at dinner, Josh did ask his brother to travel to Montego Bay.

“All right,” Brad said pleasantly. “I’ll go to Jamaica for you. But I do need to be back in San Antonio by the end of the week. I’ve got a prospective client to court, an aerospace executive.”

Amanda caught the flicker in Brad’s eyes that Josh missed. Perhaps she simply knew him better, but his reason for going home to Texas didn’t sound completely honest.

“Suit yourself, as long as you hold up your end,” Josh replied. “I have to admit that you’ve made some startling gains in new territory this year.”

Brad fingered his wineglass and didn’t look up. “Enough for a raise?”

“You still owe me six months’ salary,” Josh reminded him. “And you’re paying off a hell of a loan.”

Brad’s dark eyes flashed in anger at his brother. “Go ahead. Rub it in. So I lost. But sometimes I win. When I do, I win big!”

“Nobody wins at a gambling house,” Josh said coldly. “It’s a narcotic. You’re addicted, but you won’t admit it.”

Brad tossed down his napkin and got to his feet. “I’ll take the Learjet to Mo’ Bay in the morning. When I’ve finished there, I’m going home.” He dared his brother to argue.

Josh didn’t. He simply stared at the younger man, ending that argument. Brad glanced at Amanda with a strained smile and left the room.

“You ride him hard,” she told Josh.

“Try the quenelles,” he said, ignoring her comment. “They’re delicious.”

“He’s your brother.”

“That’s why I want him to wake up, before he squanders his inheritance and ruins his life.”

“You can’t drag him into some clinic, Josh,” she persisted. “He’s not a chair that you can send off to be reupholstered.”

He cocked an eyebrow. “You don’t want to start this tonight,” he said firmly, a faint threat in his voice.

She wasn’t going to change his mind. As usual, it was already solidifying as quickly as concrete. She lifted her fork to her mouth. He was right: the quenelles were delicious.

While a taciturn, uncommunicative Brad flew to Jamaica, Josh took Amanda out in the launch to another island, an uninhabited one near Opal Cay.

“You yourself said that I needed some time off,” he reminded her when she seemed surprised at his choice of location. “Harriet packed us a delicious picnic lunch and a bottle of wine.”

She smiled. The prospect of an entire day with Josh was devastating to her senses. Heaven.

Josh dropped the anchor and they disembarked. It was autumn back in San Antonio, but here it was eternal summer. The beach was as white as refined sugar. The sea was every shade of aqua and blue in existence. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. It was, Amanda thought as she waded ashore, a perfect day for a picnic.

She glanced at Josh, trying not to be obvious as she noticed his long, muscular legs in white Bermuda shorts. He was wearing a blue knit shirt with them, one that showed off the breadth of his chest and shoulders. He wore deck shoes and deftly unloaded their things in a few, easy strides. Amanda enjoyed watching him. She loved his hands. They were large and powerful, his fingers ending in broad, flat nails that were immaculately clean.

She’d tied her long hair back in a ponytail for comfort, but she felt smaller and younger than ever as she walked along in his shadow to the shelter of palm trees and sea grape trees along the beach.

“Was this an impulse?” she asked.

He spread the white linen cloth on the ground and put the big wicker hamper on it, leaving Amanda to get out the plates and silverware while he removed the covered containers of food.

“Yes. I do get them every once in a while,” he said. He glared teasingly at her over a tub of chilled tuna salad. “If you make one false move, so help me, I’ll bury you up to your pretty neck in the sand and leave you here.”

She laughed, because he looked so menacing. “Would you, really?”

“Probably not.”

Her eyes met his. “I was only teasing, you know,” she said gently. “I don’t think of you as a...well, I really am old-fashioned about some things.”

“I know.” He took a plate and handed her an open container with a service spoon. “Here. Eat something. You’ve been living on your nerves for too long already.”

“It still hurts, a little,” she confessed, looking up. “Dad didn’t care very much for me, but he was all I had.”

“That isn’t true. You still have Brad and Mirri and me.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” She took the container and filled her plate.

Josh hadn’t brought swimming trunks, but that was just as well, because Amanda was more than content to lie in the sun. She was determined to get an even tan before she went home.

Josh had stripped off his shirt and was lying on the beach bare-chested. She stared at him covertly, enjoying the power and masculine beauty of his body. He was very tan and muscular without being misshapen, as some overenthusiastic bodybuilders seemed to Amanda. He was long and lean, but not thin. His chest had a wedge of dark blond hair that ran in a wide band down to the waistband of his shorts. And probably beyond.

“Are you tanned all over like that?” she asked without thinking.

He didn’t open his eyes. He smiled, and one big hand went to the fastening of his shorts. “Want to see?”

She laughed. The sound was silvery and sweet in the quiet of the island, unbroken except for the bubbling of the surf and the sound of sea gulls sweeping down onto the beach. “No. Thank you,” she added politely.