by Diana Palmer
“I’ve heard rumors that the Morrison group is in the planning stages of producing a throwaway to go in competition with the Gazette.” That was something Josh hadn’t mentioned to Amanda. She’d had enough stress for the past two weeks. The publication he was talking about was a free newspaper that contained mostly advertising with only a modicum of news. It was a handout, and no weekly newspaper with a subscription list could compete with one. It would rob them of advertisers in no time at all. There was a pause. “Do you know how to cope with competition from a shopper?” he added dryly.
Ward cursed under his breath. “I know all right. If you haven’t got an efficient operation, you might as well close the place down. You can’t compete with a shopper. It attracts advertisers like glue, and you don’t even have to charge for it.”
“That being the case, our revenues will have to be pretty good to stand the competition.”
“I’ll get the figures for you. How’s Amanda?”
“Healing. She’ll be back to work on Monday.”
“Nice girl. Hard worker. A little too involved sometimes. She’s full of ideas that won’t really work.”
“Really?”
Ward smiled to himself. So much for taking the wind out of Miss Todd’s sails. He’d felt threatened for the first time in years when she’d walked in the door. He knew that her family had owned the paper and that she stood to inherit a half interest or so at some point. But he’d been running the operation for fifteen years, answering only to Harrison Todd. For the past few years no one had interfered with his methods. Then Amanda had come to work for him. He wasn’t amenable to having a girl fresh out of college trying to give him orders. It was just as well that Joshua Lawson knew that, right off the bat. After all, Lawson owned the majority of the paper’s stock.
“She’s a good accountant,” Ward added to soften his criticism. It wouldn’t do to sound as if he were threatened, even if he was. “Nice head for figures.”
“So I’ve been told. Are your advertising rates up?”
“No need to raise them,” Ward argued. “We’re undercutting the dailies. We get enough without driving away old customers.”
Josh was too cagey to question that without seeing the figures. He had his finger in too many pies to keep a close check on any of his side interests. For Amanda’s sake, he was going to have to get a closer look at the Gazette.
“What’s the problem about the job press?”
“There are three other print shops with more people and more modern equipment than we have. We’ve lost a lot of customers to the quick-print place that just opened in San Antonio. It does photocopies.”
“I thought Harrison bought you a high-quality copier?”
“The girl who knew how to operate it quit. The new girl just sets type. She doesn’t know much about printing, and Tim, who runs the presses, doesn’t have time to run out and make copies when he’s got negatives and plates to make.”
Josh wanted to argue with that. Just as well he’d asked for those figures. He’d keep his counsel until then.
“All right. Get me those figures.”
“Late this afternoon, for sure. I’ll have to wait until after we put the paper to bed.”
“That’s fine.”
The line went dead.
Josh wondered how much of what Johnson had said was true. Amanda was an eager beaver, but she was sharp, too. There were plenty of holes in Johnson’s management theory. It was possible that Amanda was right about the job press. But the competition could be killing their business. It had happened to other print shops. Now that he had access to the entire operation—something he hadn’t had while Harrison was still alive—he could keep Johnson on his toes and hopefully keep Amanda’s inheritance solvent. He had a feeling the figures weren’t going to be particularly pleasing.
Back in San Antonio, Ward Johnson was certain of it. He ran a hand through his sandy hair and stared with unhappy resignation at the figures as he produced them from the computer. He knew how to run the machine, although Amanda was a whiz at it. But he hadn’t bothered to analyze its performance. He just plugged along from day to day, secure in the knowledge that old advertisers would stay with him and a few new ones would come along. The paper was paying for itself. Barely. He’d had so much turmoil in his private life that he hadn’t wanted complications or problems on the job. He hadn’t wanted to rock the boat and upset people by offering a new price list.
But after he’d studied the spreadsheet, he wished he’d listened when Amanda had first mentioned that things were getting out of hand in the revenue column. Prices had gone up everywhere else, she’d said, and needed to go up here. Ward had laughed at her and said that people would go elsewhere if he raised his prices now, for newspaper ads or job work in the print shop.
But, looking at the figures, he realized that she was right. He was operating in the red because he’d been too involved with his own problems at home to go over the books regularly. Prices would have to be raised, for a certainty. That meant he’d have to put in some late hours working on them.
In addition he had to send this proof of ineptitude to Joshua Lawson. He grimaced. No. He didn’t dare. He was thirty-four years old. He wasn’t in his dotage, but it would be difficult to get another job at his age, even if he wasn’t proven incompetent. Gladys would love it if they fired him. She’d laugh. His wife always laughed at his failures. She enjoyed them. She always had, even before she’d climbed too deep into her bottle of gin to get out again. He didn’t know which was worse, Gladys or his son. Sometimes he felt as if he were carrying the world on his broad shoulders. He couldn’t make enough to keep Gladys in gin and his son in drugs. The boy wouldn’t work. He wasn’t lucid enough to work.
Ward carefully changed a few key figures. With any luck at all, before the next quarter’s figures went out, he’d have boosted them to this altered sum. It wasn’t dishonest. He was only buying a little time.
“I need to ask a question, Ward,” Dora said, interrupting his thoughts.
He looked up. She was so sweet, he thought. Pleasantly voluptuous, with a sweet smile and freckles and reddish-gold hair framing her very blue eyes. He wondered why she looked so sad. She had a successful husband, an educator, and two sons in grammar school.
“Ward?” she prompted, flushing a little at his pointed stare.
“Oh. Sorry.” He smiled, his brown eyes twinkling. “What can I do for you, honey?”
The endearment made her flush even more, and he felt his chest swell. He still had an effect on her. Leaning back in his chair, he looked at her, a faint arrogance creeping over his face. He felt eighteen again, bristling with predatory masculine instincts. Although they’d never been really intimate in high school, they had spent a lot of time together.
“I wondered if you needed me for anything else?” Dora asked. “I only work mornings, you know.” She smiled, seeing Ward as he had been at eighteen when he was captain of the football squad and she’d led the cheerleading team. In her eyes, he’d never aged.
He looked at the computer and grimaced. “I could certainly use some help with this,” he said. “Can you operate a fax machine?”
“Why, yes,” she said. “I did a little part-time work for an insurance company last year, and they had this same model,” she added, moving toward the machine.
“Thank God,” he said. “Amanda Todd always works this one, and she won’t be back until Monday.”
“Is she all right?” Dora asked. “I like Amanda. She’s always been so nice to me.”
“It’s easy to be nice to you, Dora,” he replied quietly. “Yes, she’s fine. Sad, I imagine, but she’s got the Lawsons to pamper her for a week and a luxury island in the Bahamas to lounge on. She’ll manage.”
“Mr. Lawson is very good to her,” she remarked.
“Both Lawsons are,” he mused. “The families go way bac
k.”
He sat up. “Well, I need to get back in there and finish making up the paper. I’ll have to do a lot of this paperwork tonight. Would your family mind sacrificing you for an hour or two a couple of nights a week until I can catch up?”
“I’m sure they won’t,” she replied with a faintly nervous smile. “Edgar is taking a college course on his lunch hour this semester. He’ll be home with the boys at night, grading papers or talking to students or tutoring,” she said with more bitterness than she realized. “And all my boys do is play sports and talk about them. As long as everyone is fed and the house is clean, my time is pretty much my own,” she added miserably.
Ward couldn’t bear the thought of anyone as sweet and loving as Dora being taken for granted. “I’m sorry,” he said gently. “I can’t imagine any man grading papers when you’re in the same room. If you don’t mind my saying so,” he added, careful not to offend her.
But she brightened and flushed a little. “No, of course not!”
He smiled. He grinned. She made him feel like a man again. “Okay, then,” he said. “I’ll see you later.”
“Fine.” She nodded. She started to speak, hesitated, and then plowed ahead. “How...how about your family?” she asked. “Don’t they mind you working such late hours?”
He sighed wearily. “Gladys is...well, I’m sure you’ve heard about her drinking. Everyone else here has. Half the time I don’t think she knows if I’m there or not,” he said. “And my son...” He let out a long breath. “He blames me for his mother’s drinking. They’ll both tell you I’m a total failure.”
“That isn’t the Ward Johnson I remember,” she said gently. She smiled. “You could never be a failure.”
He stared at her. “You really think so?”
She nodded. “I really think so. I’m sorry things are so bad for you.”
The compassion in her blue eyes made him hungry and vulnerable. He wanted that caring for himself. He wanted someone to give a damn that his life was an unbearable mess. Dora appealed to everything masculine in him, and his body reacted suddenly, sharply, to her nearness.
“Can you come back about seven?” he asked.
She nodded. “Yes. Of course. I’ll just paste up the rest of the personals.” She went out quietly.
In the waiting room she hesitated, gnawing her full lower lip. She was going to get in over her head if she wasn’t careful. She was a married woman with young sons, and Ward was a drowning man looking for someone to jump in and save him. The problem with trying to save drowning people was that if you weren’t careful, they’d pull you down with them.
She couldn’t possibly risk getting mixed up romantically with her boss. San Rio was a small community, despite being a cosmopolitan suburb of sprawling San Antonio. She and her husband went to the local Baptist church. He taught Sunday school. Her boys were involved in every sports activity they could find, which meant the family was very well known locally. She was a pillar of the community, as an educator’s wife had to be, even in these permissive times. She couldn’t afford any hint of scandal.
But she’d known Ward forever. He was a part of her happier, carefree past, and she cared about him. She felt sorry for him. Surely it wouldn’t hurt to work late with him. She could listen to his problems and help him get home to his family quicker.
She passed by Lisa Marlowe, who was busily setting type on the computer, and spared the girl a faintly envious glance. Lisa was just eighteen. She had her whole life ahead of her. Right now all she talked about was boys and getting married. Dora wanted to catch her by the arms and warn her that there was no such thing as happily ever after, that romance was the stuff of novels. Be careful, she wanted to say. There are no happy endings. If you choose the wrong man and you’re too weak to break the chains of your relationship, you’ll live to regret it.
But even if she said it, Lisa wouldn’t believe her; she was too full of youthful optimism. With a sad little laugh she went back into the composing room to finish her work.
* * *
AMANDA HAD TAKEN a cup of coffee with her down to the beach while Josh was making telephone calls. Harriet pointed him toward the direction she’d taken. He grinned at the jovial black woman and took his own cup of coffee along with him as he went in search of Amanda.
He found her perched on a sand dune, clad in jeans and a silky top in peacock blue, her long hair blowing around her in the wind.
“Avoiding me?” he asked pleasantly. He sat down beside her, stretching lazily. He was wearing tan slacks with a beige silk shirt, but he didn’t mind the sand.
She had been trying to, yes. She’d hoped against hope the night before that he might kiss her, hold her, tell her that he couldn’t live without her. But she was living on daydreams. The reality was that if Terri couldn’t get a wedding band on his finger, she never would. She loved him, wanted him, would have been happy to live with him any way he liked. But he wouldn’t let her close enough. He’d told her that without saying a single word.
“I just wanted to watch the surf for a while,” she said at last. She stared into her coffee cup. “Can you have the jet fly me back to San Antonio in the morning?”
He drew up his legs and rested his hands, with his own coffee cup, between his knees. “Certainly. Are you sure you’re ready to go?”
“Work will be good for me,” she replied. “It will help keep my mind busy. Too much free time can be uncomfortable.”
He knew why. But he didn’t say so.
She didn’t look at him. Her coffee had gone cold. She let it trickle out onto the sand. “I’ve enjoyed being here,” she said. She felt him beside her. Every cell in her body reacted to him. Her heartbeat was already faster than normal just from the sound of his deep voice, from his company. She loved him, an unrequited love that was only going to hurt her more every time she looked at him. He probably was trying to be kind, but she wanted him so!
His broad shoulders moved as he settled lazily on his side in the soft, warm sand. He sipped coffee. “I just spoke to Ward Johnson.”
“Can you repeat anything he said about me?” she asked with a knowing smile.
“He thinks you’re bright,” he replied. He smiled back. “And ‘inquisitive.’”
“I stick my nose in where it isn’t wanted,” she translated.
“He’s going to fax me some figures on revenue.”
“Voluntarily?”
“Amanda, I know how to read a spreadsheet,” he reminded her gently. “He won’t put anything past me.”
“I know that.” She put down her cup and twisted it into the white sand. “But unless you go there and look things over personally, you won’t get the whole picture.”
“I’m a busy man.”
“Tell me about it,” she murmured dryly.
His dark eyes searched hers. “Why is the job press so important?”
“It’s a challenge,” she said, her eyes kindling with excitement. “There are three other printers in San Antonio, but we’re the only one in San Rio. Customers drive fifteen miles to get the same kind of service we could provide. It wouldn’t even take a lot of new equipment. We’ve got the Heidelberg and the A. B. Dick and the Davidson presses. We can do hot type or offset. The problem is not with the equipment. It’s the management and staff.”
He pursed his lips. “That isn’t what Johnson says.”
“Ward Johnson has an alcoholic wife who’s driving him batty,” she replied. “He has a son who’s been arrested three times for marijuana possession. The boy can’t even hold down a job because he’s stoned most of the time. Ward is trying to run two businesses and cope with a crumbling home life. You yourself would be hard-pressed to manage that situation.”
“Like hell I would. I’d send her and the boy off to a clinic and dry them out.”
“It only works if they want to be helped,” she said. “
You can’t rehabilitate someone who refuses to admit that there’s a problem.”
He thought about his own brother and knew that she was right. He and Amanda didn’t agree on the best treatment for Brad. She wanted to let him go on until he realized his situation, and Josh wanted to slam him into a wall. Perhaps they were both wrong. He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and clipped off the tip.
Amanda stared at his downbent blond head and ached all over. She was going home. He was letting her go. He wouldn’t even touch her.
Well, she was going to give him something to remember, she thought rebelliously. She was going to make him sorry that he didn’t want her for keeps.
She touched his hand when he reached for his lighter. “Don’t,” she said softly.
He lifted an eyebrow. “It isn’t a confined room,” he reminded her.
“I know.”
He dangled it in his fingers, searching her face. “Why not, then?” he asked huskily. Her eyes excited him. The loneliness of the beach, the memory of her soft mouth under his, made him ache.
She took the cigar out of his hand and dropped it beside him. She really had nothing left to lose. She was going home in the morning, and it might be months before she even saw him again. One memory, she thought. Just one, that’s all she wanted.
“Be gentle,” he cautioned.
She laughed as she put her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back against the sand. “Isn’t that my line? You’re not innocent.”
He smiled faintly as her breasts eased down over his broad chest, her hip barely touching his, her legs to one side as she tasted the heady pleasure of seduction.
“Don’t tell me this is the best you can do?” he muttered sardonically. “Schoolgirl stuff.”
He smiled with tender indulgence as she propped herself up on his chest and stared down at him.
She smiled back. “I’m trying,” she teased.
But he became somber, all at once. “Sex is addictive,” he said simply. “I live in a goldfish bowl. It would destroy the company’s conservative image if it got around that I’d seduced my business partner’s daughter and was keeping her as my resident mistress.”