and now Josh reaped the benefit of her in-house combat training. So to speak.
“What kind of mood is he in?” Brad asked for both of them.
“He brought a houseful of people with him.”
Brad let out a long sigh. “Protection,” he told Amanda with a grin.
“Good thought,” she agreed. “I’m glad he realizes how dangerous I am...”
“I wasn’t talking about you!” Brad grinned, because he knew that Josh never ran from a fight with anyone.
“I hope the two of you haven’t done anything to set him off,” Ted commented. “He got off the plane breathing fire. That Arab he’s trying to sell his new computers to is giving him a hard time. I wouldn’t mention anything upsetting to him, if I were you.”
Amanda thought about the job press.
Brad considered his latest gambling debts.
She glanced at Brad and frowned at his guilty expression. “Brad...you haven’t been to that casino again?” Amanda asked slowly.
Brad wouldn’t meet her eyes. “No,” he said quickly.
She didn’t believe him. Brad didn’t lie well, and he loved to gamble. She’d seen him when he had the fever, so intent on the game that he’d bet anything. Josh had been trying for months to get him into therapy. But Brad refused to admit he had a problem, despite the fact that he lost thousands on the spin of a wheel or the turn of a card.
Amanda stared toward the cay, where Josh’s gray Lincoln was parked at the two-story garage along with at least three other luxury cars. Two launches were moored at the long pier that led up to the white stone house. Dozens of blooming shrubs surrounded the mansion, everything from bougainvillea to hibiscus and jasmine. Opal Cay had satellite cable, an international network of telephone and fax lines, a computer system with its own power supply, and a larder that was always full. Even Amanda, who was born to wealth, couldn’t remember seeing anything comparable to Josh’s island estate.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” she asked lazily.
“Isn’t it expensive?” Brad teased.
She glanced at him over her shoulder, pushing her windblown hair out of the way as she smiled. “Cynic.”
He shrugged. “Maybe I am. Josh is rubbing off on me.” He moved toward the bow of the launch. “Ease her up to the pier, Ted, and I’ll tie her up.”
Amanda felt self-conscious in her white Bermuda shorts and simple gray tank top and sandals. Brad was at least wearing white slacks and a designer shirt, but neither of them was properly dressed to mingle with the crowd Josh was entertaining today. She caught sight of Josh’s blond head towering over dignified men in suits and women in designer dresses, and she beat a hasty retreat upstairs to change. Anyone who was privileged to get an invitation to the cay was automatically included in parties and even social business meetings.
“Did you see the Arab’s wives?” Brad whispered as they darted up the staircase.
“How many has he got?” she queried.
“Two. Don’t put on anything too sexy,” he cautioned with a grin. “You might be targeted for number three.”
“He’d fall short of the mark,” she replied mischievously. “I’ve got it in mind to become a corporate giant, not a used wife.”
Brad burst out laughing, but Amanda was already behind her closed door.
THE DIN OF voices and the kaleidoscope of mingled colognes and perfumes gave Amanda a roaring headache. She’d come back downstairs long before Brad, who returned with a worried look and went straight to the bar.
Amanda, clad in a silver sheath with diamanté straps and matching shoes, put on her best party smile for the curious elite of Josh’s business group. Most of these people were executives of his company and bankers. But two of the men were Arab entrepreneurs whom Josh was hoping might introduce his newest business computer into Saudi Arabia for him. Even Brad’s personable coaxing hadn’t budged the men, so Josh had invited them along with the bankers and two of his executives back to Opal Cay for a buffet dinner. It provided him with a more congenial setting in which to wheel and deal. But this time his hospitality didn’t seem to be working, because the Arab’s black eyes were as cold as anything Amanda had ever seen.
Josh had nodded to her when she came downstairs, but his attention had been on his victims. She felt a little slighted, and that only aggravated her headache. Because she had always looked up to Josh, he could hurt her as no one else ever had. Over the years she’d managed to keep him from knowing it, however.
She watched his guests as they inspected the house with covetous eyes. The enormous white stone mansion in its grove of acacia and silk cotton and sea grape trees was a showplace, tangible evidence of Josh’s business acumen. The Lawson Company had branches in every major city in the United States and was moving slowly into Europe and the Middle East. This year Josh was adding a software division line to the Lawson offerings. His was a profitable public company, listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and although he was answerable to stockholders and a stiff-necked board of directors, he ran the whole organization himself, with key executives from every branch answerable only to him.
He ran his business with the same arrogant bearing and cool efficiency of a military commander. His employees stood in awe of him, as did Amanda. Some of the time.
In the beginning of Josh’s partnership with Amanda’s father, it was Harrison who had the business acumen and the contacts. But for the past few years Joshua had been in almost complete control. That had angered Harrison, who hated the thought of being outdone by a younger man. As a result, he’d tried to break away from the Lawson Company.
The attempt had been disastrous, culminating in Amanda inheriting a minority forty-nine percent of the newspaper that had been in her mother’s family for a hundred years. Before Amanda’s birth, and her own death in childbirth, Amanda’s mother had given Harrison Todd control of her part of the baby’s inheritance until the unborn child was twenty-five, but now Joshua had it. Amanda knew she was going to have to fight to convince him to let her inherit a controlling interest.
She also knew Josh didn’t usually fight fair, but that he would with her, because of their friendship. There had been no hope of her gaining control while her father was alive. But Josh would see things differently now. The Gazette was the only bright spot in her life. She would no longer have her family home because her father had mortgaged it, and the insurance that had saved the newspaper wasn’t going to save the house. Amanda had moved into a small cottage on the property that was free and clear.
Surely Josh would not let her lose control of the newspaper by a tiny percentage after all she’d been through. She desperately needed to retain that precious family heirloom.
She pushed back her long black hair and let it fall against her bare shoulders. Despite the fact that she was still a virgin at twenty-three, she sometimes felt a sensuality as overwhelming as night itself. She felt it most often when Josh was nearby.
Cradling her fluted crystal glass in her slender hands, she walked out into the hall. Secreted in a small alcove, all alone beside a potted palm, she watched Josh hold court in the grand living room.
The sound of footsteps close by broke her trance.
“Mr. Lawson wanted me to ask if you needed anything,” Ted Balmain asked with a smile.
“No, thanks,” she said, grinning up at him. “I have advanced training in this. I spent a lot of time sitting in the hall outside the principal’s office in high school.”
“Not you!” he chided.
“I never stopped talking. Or so they said.” She peered around him. Brad was trying