Escapade (3 page)

She stared at him blankly. “I beg your pardon?”

“Did he do something to make you uncomfortable?” he asked impatiently.
“He’s too outspoken sometimes.
”

She laughed in spite of herself. “As if he ever would. Don’t you know how you intimidate your employees?”

He cocked an eyebrow and smiled. “I don’t intimidate you.”

“Ha, ha,” she said. “Then why am I here?”

He shrugged. “You needed a rest. Mirri couldn’t get you out of town, so she called me.” His eyes narrowed. “She’s a good friend. I can’t figure out her wild taste in clothes, but I like her.”

She smiled. “So do I.” She stretched lazily, feeling as safe with Josh as she always had. “I love it here.”

She looked at ease, and that relaxed him. Turning back to the sea, he stuck one long-fingered hand into his slacks pocket and lifted the cigarette he’d just lit to his mouth. “I bought Opal Cay for this view,” he remarked. “Prettiest damn stretch of beach and horizon in this part of the islands.”

She had to agree. In the distance, the dark outline of trees on the next island was plainly visible, along with the colorful neon lights of the casino that had been built there. It was one of Josh’s holdings, and he liked looking at it at night. The brilliant lights shone in the thick darkness that clung to the horizon, yet the complex was barely visible in daylight.

“I like trees and sunsets,” she remarked.

“I like the look of money being made,” he mused, watching her.

“That’s rotten, Josh!”

“I love to watch you rise to the bait.” His dark eyes
admired the low cut of her sleek silver dress with its thin straps. “You shouldn’t dress like that around this sophisticated crowd,” he cautioned. “No wonder Ted took his time getting back.”

“It’s very modest, compared with what that redhead had on,” she accused, though it pleased her to know he noticed. She wanted to impress him, and she wanted him to see her not as a child, but as a woman.

“That redhead is a stripper.”

“Why did you invite her?”

He shrugged. “One of the sheiks took a liking to her, as they say back home. I didn’t imagine it would hurt the deal to let him bring her along.”

“That’s disgusting,” she said shortly.

His face went bland and vaguely wicked. “No, it isn’t. It’s bu
siness.
” He lifted an eyebrow. “Don’t worry, they won’t be staying the night,” he said knowingly, and smiled.

She flushed, glad he couldn’t see the color in her face. “Why do you always put me in the room next to the main guest room? The last couple you entertained kept me awake all night. She was a redhead, too. And she screamed,” she muttered.

“And that brings back a memory, doesn’t it?”

She hadn’t expected him to bring it up. In eight years they’d never talked about it. She shifted her stance, trying not to let him see her face.

“Aren’t you going to answer?” he chided.

“There’s nothing to say. What I saw happened a long time ago.”

He put his smoldering cigar to his mouth and forced the broad tip back into bright orange life. “Terri and I
…
well, we were enjoying ourselves, Amanda. I had no idea you’d see us on the beach.”

“
Neither did I,” she replied tersely. She tried to blot out the memory of Josh’s aroused, nude body poised over Terri’s writhing form, but it was impossible.

She looked away, shivering with reaction. How that memory had haunted her, the sight of his big hands on Terri’s hips as he’d jerked her up to him in a sharp rhythm. When she’d cried out and convulsed, Amanda had been horrified.

She closed her mind to the rest of it. Turning, she walked along the beach. Her body felt oddly on fire.

“I know it was traumatic for you,” he said quietly, falling easily into step beside her.
“
Maybe I should have brought this all up at the time, but you were pretty naive at fifteen.”

She wrapped her arms across her chest, trying to forget the memory of his face as he’d suddenly given in to his own pleasure. In all her life she’d never seen anything like it.

“There’s no need to explain it all, Josh,” she whispered in anguish, turning her head away. “I understand now what was happening.”

He took a sharp breath and jammed one hand into his pocket. “All right,” he said angrily. “We’ll skirt around it some more, just as we have for the past eight years. I just wanted to clear the air once and for all, and since you mentioned my former guests making love, it seemed like the right time. But I guess you’ve had enough to deal with lately without my bringing up embarrassing memories.”

She stopped walking and turned to him, her face shadowed as she looked up. “Dad protected me s
o,” she began slowly. “I’d…
never even seen a naked man.”

“Your father sheltered you too damned much,” he said.

She lifted her hair away from her hot face without looking at him. Her body felt funny. Hot. Clammy. Throbbing with some sensation she couldn’t understand.

Josh paused in front of her and reached out and touched her shoulder. His fingers fell lightly on her heated flesh. She caught her breath. His touch was the most erotic she’d ever felt, and she couldn’t hide her reaction.

His dark eyes slid down to her thin gown, to the small, hard peaks that betrayed what she was feeling. That, and her ragged breathing and the set of her exquisite body, told him things he didn’t really want to know just yet.

“You’re vulnerable,” he said curtly. “The night, the strain of the past
week, the excitement tonight…
maybe even the memory we share, it’s all knocked the pins out from under you.”

“Yes,” she said, her eyes wide as they searched his in the flood of light that came from the house.

His fingers trailed along the throbbing pulse in her throat, and further, to the faint outline of her collarbone. Her breath caught, but she didn’t protest or push at his hand.

His lips parted as he watched her face. Somewhere in the back of his mind he knew this was dangerous. She was unguarded, and he was aroused. It had been a long time since he’d been with a woman. Just after Terri had left, there had been a Latin heiress with whom he’d conducted a very lukewarm, long-distance affair. And yet the tiny sound that suddenly escaped Amanda’s throat
aroused him more than Louisa Valdez’s naked body in a bed ever had.

Amanda shivered. In one moment she’d recognized the years of frustrated longing she’d felt for him, and suddenly she needed him more than ever.

He couldn’t quite believe the look of desire he saw on her face. It unsettled him. The cigar dangled in his free hand, and he fought the sudden shift in his perception of her.

She still hadn’t moved, but his mind had. His fingers lifted as if her soft skin were white fire. He didn’t dare touch her again. He didn’t move. His face poised above hers as if it had been carved from stone.

“Joshua?” Was that husky whisper her voice?

His gaze fell to the taut thrust of her breasts against her bodice, down to her smooth hips and her long, elegant legs, to her pretty bare feet. Her silver shoes lay scattered on the white sand, the foaming surf just touching them. He had to remember why he couldn’t get involved with a woman, especially not with Amanda.

With a soft curse, he moved away from her all at once. “Here,” he said gruffly, “you’ve lef
t your shoes in the surf. Th
ey’ll be soaked.”

His words brought Amanda back to reality.

“They’re old,” she said. “I touched them up with some of Harriet’s silver hairspray.”

He looked for his cigar and found it lying in the water. He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. He smoked too much anyway. “Harriet’s hairspray?!” he replied suddenly.

She laughed. He sometimes seemed to be listening when really he was miles away. “That will teach you
to pay attention when I talk to you,” she said, and in seconds he was smiling and everything was back to normal.

Afterward Amanda could hardly remember when or how they’d gone inside. But once she was upstairs, she almost collapsed with burning heat on her bed. Her head was really splitting now, and she was feeling particularly vulnerable.

She wanted Josh. She could no longer deny the sensations she felt. But she’d make sure that she stayed in control from now on. Having only just escaped her father’s domination, she was in no hurry to rush back into emotional slavery.

At least Josh wasn’t going to take advantage of her weakness. He’d rejected her a little awkwardly, but not unkindly. She’d heard some of the rumors about his lovers. A lot about Terri. She knew he didn’t want to get married, but that he was an honorable man. He knew Amanda too well to lure her into his bed for a few minutes of pleasure. Maybe that was a good thing, but all the same her body throbbed until dawn. The worst thing was that she hadn’t even had the presence of mind to mention the job press at the newspaper office to him.

J
osh gave up on the idea of sleeping when his company finally departed. He’d won his deal with the oil sheik, and he should have felt satisfied. But he didn’t.

He felt as restless as ever. Imbued with an ongoing urgency about life, he often wore out employees who simply couldn’t meet the demands he placed on them. Like many overachievers, he was impatient with people who lived at a normal pace.

“Go to bed, for God’s sake,” Josh said to Ted. “You’re asleep on your feet.”

Ted chuckled as he rose from his comfortable chair. “I don’t mind keeping you company,” he said. “But a few hours of sleep sounds great. You seem to live on catnaps.”

Josh shrugged. “In the early days it was the only way I could manage to save
the company. Now, it’s a habit.”
He frowned. That wasn’t quite true. What he’d felt with Amanda bothered him. He lit a cigar impatiently.

“That will kill you,” Ted remarked at the door.

“Life kills people, too,” came the sardonic reply. “Dina’s enrolled me in a stop smoking seminar,” he added. “I’ll kick the habit. But not tonight.”

Ted shrugged. “Suit yourself. See you in the morning.”

The door closed, and he was alone with his thoughts, his memories.

He was going to miss Harrison Todd. Amanda’s father had not been a perfect human being, but Joshua had learned a lot from him in the early days. Knowing he wouldn’t have Harrison around had been a blow. Brad was a good salesman, but Harrison had years of experience neither Lawson brother had had a chance to accumulate.

Business, he mused. Even when he was alone, it dominated his mind. Better that than Amanda’s soft, pretty body, he reminded himself. His young life had been a kaleidoscope of affairs not unlike his parents’ adulterous adventures. He could remember his father flirting openly with other women, and it wasn’t a rare
occurrence. His mother had been a little more discreet, but there were always men half her age traveling with her, helping her spend her money.

Sent off to school at the age of six, Josh had never known a family environment or honest love. Amanda’s tender concern for him over the cactus so many years earlier had surprised him. He wasn’t accustomed to people caring about him more than his money.

Amanda stayed near him at the worst times of his life. When he’d broken his leg on a skiing trip, it had been Amanda who’d come to see him in the hospital with potted plants and sympathy. She’d fussed over him when he was sick, teased him when he was well, become an integral part of his life. But in all that time he’d never touched her. Not even under the mistletoe at Christmas.

Everything had changed a few hours earlier on the beach. Now he didn’t recall her nurturing ways. He wanted her, but he didn’t know how to reconcile that with his affection for her, with their friendship.

With other women, relationships were simple. His lovers were experienced, sophisticated women who could settle for sex without emotional involvement. He knew that wouldn’t be possible with Amanda. He equated Amanda and sex with marriage and children and forever after. Since marriage had become an impossibility for him, he had to reconcile himself to keeping his hands off Amanda. Tonight had been a moment out of time. She’d sensed his rejection at once, and with grace and dignity. He had to make sure that he didn’t put her in that position twice, because he didn’t like seeing Amanda humble. It didn’t suit her spirited nature at all. He’d spent years
prodding her t
emper, helping her stand up to h
er father. Now he had to keep her on the right track.

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

CHAPTER

THREE

T
he
ocean off Opal Cay was every shade of min
gled green and bl
ue in the color spectrum. Like
the test 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 ar
en’t supposed to notice that Mirr
i’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 wan
ts 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 clean
er,”
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 Madame Executive?”

She flushed with temper, her green eyes darkening, her face flushing. “You’re for
getting 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 co
rn
ers 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.