Escapade (7 page)

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.

A
manda 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 black 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’v
e 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 is 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 li
fe. 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. “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.”

“I won’t be anyone’s mistress. Not even yours.”

“Any more than I’d ask you to,” he agreed. He reached up and touched her lips gently. The feel of her soft, warm body made his own begin to throb. “You’re much too intelligent to settle for being a man’s toy. It would be a waste.”

She sighed with soft contentment. Her fingers smoothed over his lean cheek and down to his square chin. He tensed when she slid her finger under one of the buttons on his shirt and touched his hair-roughened skin.

Her eyes lifted to his. “That arouses you, doesn’t it?” she asked.

He nodded. “I meant it when I told you I don’t want things to go that far. We can’t make love. Not ever.”

She grimaced, pain in her whole look. “Why?!”

“How can I tell you?” He drew her down to him, his ey
es solemn and sad and bleak. “
Go back to San Antonio and use that mathematical brain of yours to save the job press. That should keep you occupied.”

“You could keep me busy here,” she suggested.

“We’ve had this discussion before,” he pointed out. It was harder than ever to breathe normally. She studied his hard face and remembered vividly how it had looked the night she’d seen him on the beach with Terri. Contorted, vulnerable, fiercely passionate. He never let go with Amanda. He was always in total control.

His dark eyes narrowed. “What are you thinking?”

“I was remembering how you looked that night I saw you with Terri,” she said huskily. “Abandoned, carnal. You won’t let yourself be that way with me.”

“How do you think you’d react to a man’s passion, Amanda?” he asked. “Because it’s unmanageable. It requires a submission that I don’t think you can give.” His chest rose and fell heavily. “You aren’t naive. You know exactly what I’d do to you. You saw me do it to Terri.” *

She shivered as the vivid picture imposed itself on her senses. “Yes,” she said unsteadily. “I watched you.” He made a rough sound at the sensuality he read in her eyes, her face, her voice. Without one single thought of the future, he reached up suddenly and dragged her down to lie totally against him while his mouth ground up against hers in urgency and need.

It was immediately explosive. She moaned, and his body clenched. He parted her lips and caught her hair at the nape of her neck so he could grind her mouth against his.

She whimpered with the shock of pleasure it aroused. He caught his breath, but it was already too late to pull back. He was at the mercy of a need that knocked the breath out of him.

He whipped her over onto her back and drew her half under him, expertly guiding one long, powerful leg between both of hers.

She felt his arousal, was shocked and thrilled and intimidated by the intimacy of it. She stiffened uncertainly, and her nails curled into his muscular upper arms.

His breath sighed out roughly against her lips as his head lifted. He searched her turbulent eyes in a silence that magnified the sound of surf and heartbeats.

He scowled. There it was again, that unexpected fragility in her eyes. He tried to imagine seeing her like this with another man, and couldn’t. He smoothed a big, lean hand against her soft cheek and watched her mouth turn to press tenderly against its palm.

That was when he knew. It would have been impossible not to. The infatuation she’d always felt for him was still there, but it was magnified by a sexual awakening. Her strengths were formidable in intelligence and independence and temper. But she would yield to him. The knowledge humbled him. He’d never felt this sort of protectiveness for any other human being.

“Here,” he whispered, and a big hand dropped to ease her legs even farther apart so that he could press down to her. She gasped as his hand contracted, pulling her up rhythmically into the cradle of his hips. His own breath caught at the exquisite thrill of pleasure it gave him.

She’d wanted to be with him like this for so long that the joy of it almost made her faint. This was Josh, holding her, wanting her. She smelled the talc on his powerful body, the faint scent of his cologne, the whisper of coffee on his breath as his mouth poised over hers.

“And you want me…
to leave!” she whimpered.

He shuddered. “The hell I do,” he said huskily.

She moved. Barely, but enough to make him totally aware of her vulnerability, her complicity. She looked up at him unafraid.

“You could use something,” she whispered. She lay trembling on the sand beneath the warm crush of his body, her black hair making a cloudy halo around her oval face. Her eyes were half-closed, misty. “Couldn’t you?” she whispered.

His face hardened. His eyes darkened, and even though he didn’t move, he withdrew from her. She could see it. Feel it.

Her eyes narrowed with hurt. She felt the passion go out of him, and it didn’t surprise her when he suddenly rolled away and sat up. She bit her lip to stop the pain of his rejection. He was still in control, even now. He wanted her, but not enough.

She sat up, too, staring blankly at the bay. “Joshua, don’t make me ashamed that I offered.”

“Shame isn’t a word that has any meaning be
tween you and me,” he said quietl
y. “Love is a very precious gift.”

“Love?!” She panicked. He mustn’t know, he couldn’t! It would push hi
m away. “Josh, it was only…
”

His head tur
ned, and he stared her down. “
Only what? Puerile curiosity about intercourse? A whim? A sudden attack of animal passion?” He scowled at her.

She hesitated. Her shoulders rose and fell. She searched his face with eyes that grew dull with resigned acceptance. “You know.”

“I always have,” he replied. “No other woman has ever had the place in my life that you occupy.”

“What kind of place is it?” she asked with an attempt
at lightness. “That of a friend you can forc
e yourself to kiss occasionally
but nothing more?”

He started to speak, but the effort failed. He averted his eyes to the sand and reached for the cigar she’d taken from him. He did light it this time. The pungent smoke drifted away in the breeze, and he didn’t speak. Neither did she, for several tense, depressed seconds.

“There hasn’t been anyone,” she said dully.
“
I’ve saved it all up for you, for years, ever since I was in my teens. I don’t know what it is to want anyone except you.”