“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