by Diana Palmer
She hesitated, her eyes on the long, elegant line of his back. “I don’t know where to begin. So much has happened.”
“Why isn’t Brad with you?”
“He’s in Atlanta,” she said.
He turned, scowling. “Explain that.”
“Brad’s voluntarily checked himself into an exclusive clinic to kick his gambling habit.”
“I wasn’t told,” he said, and she knew that someone in his office was going to catch hell for that.
“Your office okayed the visit to the clinic,” she told him. “You wanted Brad to realize that he had a problem and ask for help. All right. He’s done both. Have you really got it in you to turn away from him now?”
He hesitated. “No,” he said after a minute. “Was he...all right?”
“If you mean did he have bruises all over him, no. He went to Las Vegas to see Marc Donner personally, and he said he’s had the company set up a garnishment of his wages so that his debt will be paid off in the shortest time possible.” She glanced down at her clasped hands. “I thought you knew. Brad talked as if you did.”
“I knew about the garnishment—not about the clinic!” Josh’s eyes narrowed. “Ted!”
The man came as quickly as Josh called, looking sheepish and guilty.
“Did you know that Brad was going to a rehabilitation clinic in Atlanta and that his salary was being garnished?”
Ted grinned. “I believe Jake was going to be the one to tell you when you got back to San Antonio.”
The taller man gave him a furious scowl, but Ted didn’t back down an inch. When he left the room, Josh shook his head. “Dina had to be in on it with them,” he muttered.
“You have good people on your staff,” Amanda remarked, smiling. “Brad will recover this time. He’ll work hard at it.”
“I hope so.”
“There’s one other little tidbit of news,” she said, diverting him. “Mirri is marrying Nelson Stuart on Monday.”
His eyebrows arched. “I don’t believe it.”
“Neither did I, but after seeing them together, it’s not so hard to imagine.”
“After years of bad-mouthing each other, too.” He chuckled faintly. “Amazing.”
“But none of that is why I came down here.” She moved to the window to stand beside him. “Josh, I’m almost certain that Ward Johnson is having an affair with a very married part-time employee. His wife has just tried to commit suicide because of it, and his son is either an alcoholic or a drug addict. The son telephoned today and threatened to kill Ward’s paramour. Unless something is done, it could be dangerous for anyone connected with Dora.”
He scowled. “Can you prove any of that?”
Her face tightened. “I shouldn’t have to prove it,” she told him. “My word should be enough for you, even after all that’s happened.”
His broad shoulders rose and fell. “You’re right, of course. And it is. I’m sorry.”
“Proof is the problem, though,” she confessed. “Ward said that he’d deny it, and so would Dora if I went to you. He seems to think that he owns the newspaper.”
“He does run it,” he reminded her.
“But my family owned it!” she raged. “Part of it is still mine!”
His eyebrows flew straight up. He could hardly balance this new Amanda against the old image he had of her. He began to smile at the leap she’d made from reticent bookkeeper to independent businesswoman. “Amanda?” he asked.
“Who do I look like, the tooth fairy?” she demanded. “I tell you, I won’t stand for it! I’ve had to go behind his back to print rate sheets, to solicit business. I’ve had to conspire with Tim to upgrade the quality of our printing and hire a typesetter who can spell two words running! I’ve worked nights and holidays and weekends on sample books so that I could go door to door looking for new business. And all the while Ward Johnson is locking up the office at dusk every day so that he can have Dora on his desk!”
He laughed. He couldn’t help it. She wasn’t at all the woman he’d known. Business had honed her, polished her.
“What’s so funny?” she asked belligerently.
“You’re beautiful,” he mused, watching her. “Don’t you really know how much you’ve changed, Amanda?”
“I haven’t changed!”
“Oh, but you have. You’ve taken over the reins of a flagging business and pulled it out of the red, and you’ve done it in record time. Do you really think I don’t know what you’ve done? I’ve certainly had access to the more recent accounts,” he asked with keen scrutiny.
She hesitated. “You mean you knew Ward had altered my figures?”
He nodded. “He isn’t very good at embezzlement. Not that he was trying to steal from me. He didn’t want you to make him look worse than he already did.”
“He’s been destroying the business,” she pointed out.
“I know that, now. I didn’t until you went in there and started pointing out fallacies. Your father must have been blind, deaf, and dumb to hire such a poor manager in the first place.”
“My father didn’t care if the business failed,” she said quietly. “I think you know that already.”
“It’s fairly obvious.” He put down the whiskey and lit a cigar.
“You’re still smoking.”
“Looks like it,” he agreed, and repocketed his lighter. He opened a window with great care.
She laughed. “You’ll never change.”
“It isn’t a perfect world. Since you can’t please everyone, it’s sensible to only please yourself. Within limits,” he added, his dark eyes sweeping over her body.
“How’s Terri?” she asked deliberately.
“That look is a dead giveaway,” he remarked, studying it. “Ted obviously told you that she’s crazy for her own husband and pregnant.”
“You lied,” she returned.
He nodded. “At the time, it seemed the best way.”
“And now?”
He laughed curtly and turned his attention to a passenger ship far off on the horizon.
“About Ward,” she persisted. “What are we going to do?”
“Kick him out,” Josh said.
“Oh, that’s not fair,” she said gently.
“You’re the one who’s been jockeying for his job,” he reminded her.
“Yes, but I don’t want to cheat him out of it.”
“You yourself said that the possibility for tragedy is growing by the day.”
“And I meant it,” she agreed. “But there must be something less drastic. He does have a family to support.”
“Name it.”
“Well...” She was thinking on her feet. “He’s a good journalist, you know. He runs the newspaper itself very well.”
“But not the job press.”
She smiled. “Not that. And the job press helps support the newspaper. I’m sure you know by now that there probably is going to be a shopper publishing in competition with us. Close down the print shop and the newspaper will fold. I promise you it will.”
“I can see the direction your mind is taking. Make them into two separate businesses with two separate managers.”
“Exactly.” She told him what else she’d done, too, outlining the changes one by one.
He listened, smiling at her enterprise. “You are smart, Amanda,” he commented. “And I agree that the job press, properly run, can become a paying enterprise. I won’t say anything else about closing it down. However,” he added, “that doesn’t solve the personnel problem.”
“I hate to suggest it, but firing Dora makes good sense. It does at least get the problem off our property.” She hesitated. “We could fire Ward as well...”
He nodded. “And kiss the newspaper goodbye. You don’t just walk out the door and hire someone off the street to ru
n a newspaper.”
She grimaced. “Point taken.”
“We’ll make personnel decisions when we have to. Meanwhile, you’ll be in charge of the print shop, even if you don’t have control of the stock in both operations until your twenty-fifth birthday,” he continued. “But Ward will run the newspaper on a trial basis. We’ll see how that works.”
Josh saw the disappointment in Amanda’s expression. “You have a good business head, but you’re one person, Amanda. Even if I eventually sign over two percent to you and give you controlling interest in the business—and I haven’t said I will—you’ll still have to have a manager for the newspaper. You know nothing about journalism. Running a newspaper properly requires a reporter.”
“I guess you’re right.”
“I’ll bet it hurt to admit that.”
“Not really.” She smiled at him. “You’re a good businessman.”
“You’re going to make one,” he replied. “You have a flair for it. Harrison underestimated you, right down the line.”
“Thanks.”
He stretched wearily. “I’m tired. I’ve done ten countries in ten days.”
“Idiot.”
He chuckled at the face she made. “Nobody dives in to protect me from myself when you aren’t here.”
“They’re all afraid of you,” she mused.
“And you’re not.”
“Not in any way that matters, I guess.” Her eyes softened on his lean, handsome face.
He met that searching look, and his body began to ache. She was so lovely. Independent, fiery, saucy. His own pixie. But she was a person in her own right now, an independent businesswoman with class and style. He wanted her, needed her, ached for her; she wanted him, too. Would it be so wrong to love her for just one night? He tormented himself with the exquisite thought. No. He couldn’t. He would have to get out of the house...
His hands clenched in his pockets, and it was an effort to stand there and not pull her into his arms. “I won’t be in for dinner,” he said in a forcibly calm tone. “But I’ll see you off in the morning.”
“Okay,” she said huskily, managing to smile. She turned and left the room. When she closed the door, he still hadn’t looked at her. She knew how badly he wanted her. If only she had the nerve to go to him.
She ate a lonely supper and wondered why she’d been so impulsive in coming down to Opal Cay. It had been for nothing. She’d accomplished little more than affecting a change in management at the office. She had cleared the slate about herself and Brad, but it hadn’t made any difference. Josh wouldn’t give in now. She knew how stubborn he could be. She would have to resign herself to it. He was simply going to ignore the feeling between them. He’d made that clear without even discussing it.
When she went to bed the room was uncommonly hot, and the air conditioner seemed to have stopped working. Smothering, she opened a window and let the sound of the sea and the ocean breeze into the room. They calmed her, but only a little.
The touch of even the thin gown on her hot skin made her uncomfortable. Being in Josh’s house, remembering how it had been that day in his study, made her blood run like fire through her body.
She threw off the gown, pulled the lightweight sheet over her, and stretched. With her eyes on the ceiling and the sound of the tide in her ears, she began to drift.
It was the feel of the sheet being lifted from her heated body that awakened her from a faint doze. She opened her eyes, and in the moonlight she saw Josh standing over her.
He was holding up the sheet, his eyes blazing in the dim light as he stared down at her nudity. He himself was nude, his body taut and firm and blatantly aroused.
The breath sighed out of her as she looked up at him. Her breasts began to peak, giving away the fact that she was not only awake, but aware.
His dark eyes levered up to hers. He searched them in a tense, heated silence. His chest rose and fell jerkily, in time with his breathing. His body shivered noticeably with the urgency of his desire for her. He’d fought it all day. And lost. He was giving in to it because he loved her, even if he couldn’t quite admit it.
“I have no right to be here,” he said harshly.
“Yes, you have,” she said, her voice soft and loving. “You’re the only man in the world who does, or ever will. I love you so much, Josh. More than my own life.”
His eyes closed and he shuddered. “It’s wrong. It’s all wrong, Amanda. But, oh, God, I want you so! I can’t sleep, I can’t eat. I can’t work. All I do is ache for you.”
She opened her arms. “Come here, darling,” she whispered. “It’s all right.”
With a groan of utter anguish, he tossed aside the sheet and threw himself down against her.
The contact with his nudity made her gasp. It was like touching a live wire. His skin was hot, his body hard and rough and totally unfamiliar to her. She stiffened a little in reaction.
“You feel good against me,” he whispered, smoothing her against the length of him. “You feel like satin.”
“Your chest is very hairy,” she murmured, awed by the feel of him in her arms like this.
“Hairy, and shocking, too, I imagine. The reality of this is very different from those novels you read, isn’t it, little one?” he asked gently. He shivered as he drew his mouth against hers and down her throat. “I’m terrified of you, Amanda. I’ve never wanted anyone so badly before, and you’re a virgin. If I lose control, despite what I did to you in my study that day, it’s going to hurt. I’m better endowed than most men, and you’re going to be very tight inside.”
The intimacy of the conversation made her blush. She clung to him while his mouth worked its way down her collarbone to her soft breast.
“Josh, I never...never thought it would be like this,” she breathed.
“Are you afraid?”
“A little. But that wasn’t what I meant. It’s so intimate.”
He chuckled, despite the tension that was stringing him out. The feel of her soft body was making his mind spin. “You don’t know the half of it, just yet.”
Her leg drew slowly, sensuously, against his, and she moved into sudden, stark intimacy with the heated masculinity of him. She stopped breathing.
“Ah,” he whispered. “Yes, that’s the idea.” He caught her hip and moved suddenly, pushing forward with a deft, expert lunge.
She cried out in mingled fear and pleasure. It all became clear at once, the role of male and female, the domination of a man’s body, the submission of a woman’s.
“Lie still,” he said, his hand smoothing down her hip and thigh, calming her. He had to stay in control. It was getting more difficult by the second. She was warm and moist, and the touch of her made him crazy to complete his possession. “Yes, darling, that’s it. That’s it, pixie. Now ease close to me. Don’t be afraid, Amanda,” he whispered into her soft mouth as he probed it gently. “Your body is like a flower in the rain. No matter how tight the bud, a raindrop can slip inside and touch it. Yes.” He smiled against her mouth as he began to invade the sweetness of her. She was making soft noises as his fingers tightened on her thigh and pulled gently, steadily. He moved closer, and closer, until she stiffened.
“No, it isn’t possible... I can’t,” she whispered frantically.
“I know.” He stilled and began to kiss her with exquisite tenderness. His hands smoothed down her spine and over the bowl of her hips, tugging rhythmically, pulling her to him in a rocking motion that did incredible things to her senses.
Her nails bit into him and she began to moan. “Josh...what are you...doing?!” she gasped.
“Possessing you,” he breathed into her mouth. “Taking your virginity. Making you my woman. Softly. Softly. Softly!”
He repeated the word like a litany, all the while pulling her into him, over him. She felt her body suddenly expand and contr
act in sensations she’d never experienced in all her life. She began to tremble and then to shudder. She pushed against him, trying to get closer, and all at once he was over her, above her, his hips grinding into hers as he drove against her and into her.
She clutched at his hips and began to wail, her voice distorted, like her face, his face, the room, as the pleasure built and suddenly exploded into a oneness and a heat like the end of the world.
She sobbed rhythmically, her body throbbing with unbearable pleasure as he fulfilled her. He barely managed to look at her abandoned face before the tide caught him, too, and he cried out her name as he let go of his control at last.
He was heavy. His skin was cool now, and damp, and she held him as if she never wanted to let him go. She was shivering, as he was, despite the heat of the room.
She could feel his heart beating down into hers. She could feel his blood flowing through his veins. She could feel his breathing, the very pulse of his life, because they were joined so intimately.
He groaned as he lifted away from her, despite her attempt to cling, and threw himself onto his back. “Damn it!” he whispered.
She sighed and moved close to him, sliding a languorous arm over his broad, hair-roughened chest. “That’s it,” she murmured. “Turn the air blue.”
His fingers slid affectionately over her smooth arm. “I tried to stay away,” he said. “God knows I did. Tonight, all I could think about was the way you looked at me when you walked out of the living room. When I got home, your eyes haunted me. I meant to wake you up, to talk.” He laughed ruefully. “Well, I did wake you up.”
She moved her hand against him, smiling at the delicious feel of his body against her. “In more ways than one,” she murmured.
“Did it hurt?” he asked quietly.
“Oh, no. I think it frightened me, at first,” she confessed. “I wasn’t sure that we were going to, well, to fit.”
He chuckled at the way she put it. “A woman’s body is designed to accommodate a man’s, unless there’s a great disparity in their sizes.”
“I read about that once, though,” she said. “The couple couldn’t get married because of it.”