That’s right, she thought, feeling even more guilty by the minute, even though it had been Edgar’s idea for her
to get a part-time job. Her lower lip trembled with mingled dislike and fury. “I like my job. I don’t want to quit. I’m entitled to do something I want to do,” she said.
He laughed. “You sound like a mutinous teenager who’s just been told that she can’t go out with a college senior.”
Her face burned. “You aren’t my father.”
“No. I’m your husband.
” His eyes narrowed. “Dora, this isn’t like you.”
She realized that just in time. Soon she would lose sight of any possible future for her family. What was she doing? She was having an adulterous affair, and she was furious at her husband for asking her to care about him and her children. Perhaps the guilt of her clandestine life was beginning to warp her thought processes.
“Maybe it isn’t,” she faltered.
“You don’t even go to church with us these days.”
She’d found excuses for weeks now. Headaches. Lack of sleep. She knew it was because she felt too tainted to walk into a church. A woman who was having a love affair was betraying everything the church stood for. But she loved Ward! She did!
“I’ll…
go this Sunday,” she promised, knowing she wouldn’t. “I’ll look in on the boys before I go to bed.”
“I’ll see a doctor,” he said wearily as she paused at the doorway.
“What?”
“I know that I have a problem with intimacy,” he replied without looking at her. “You’ve been patient, and I’ve been a fool. I’ll see a doctor, Dora.”
“No! It’s not your fault! I
…
maybe it’s my age, but I don’t
…
I don’t care about that anymore,” she said in a heated rush. “I must go to bed, Edgar, I’m very tired!”
She almost ran out of the room. She’d never felt so guilty or so ashamed in all her life. She had a wonderful, caring husband and two little boys who loved her. She’d tossed all that away for a sleazy affair with a man hanging on the edge of disaster. Now she had to wonder whether a little attention and mediocre sex was worth the devastation of her whole life.
B
rad’s rehabilitation would be in an out-of-state clinic, so that the tabloids didn’t get wind of his problem or the impending solution. Amanda saw him off at the airport.
He looked down at her with quiet regret while he waited to board the plane. She looked worn and sad. “Still mourning Josh, aren’t you?”
She shrugged. “Like you, I’ll get better.”
“I wonder.” He tilted her face up to his, and deep feeling burned in his dark eyes. But when he bent to kiss her, she turned her face so that his lips landed on her cheek. He drew back, a pained expression momentarily hardening his features.
“I’m sorry,” she told him, her green eyes compassionate. “I really am. But it will always be Josh, no matter what happens.”
Brad could have cursed until his face turned blue. Nothing had hurt so much in all his life. Maybe it was only his pride, but he was used to women falling into his arms, and Amanda wouldn’t. His ego was shattered. “I’m sorry,” she repeated helplessly.
“I wanted you to bail me out,” he choked. “That’s how it all started. I was going to use you to bankroll me so that I could get out of trouble with the casino.” He laughed bitterly. “It all came back to haunt me, though. In the end, I couldn’t do it. I cared too much. But like everything else, big brother has you, too.”
“Not the way you mean, Brad,” she said proudly.
“Give him time.” He sounded almost violent. “But I won’t make it easy for him,” he added. “No, I won’t.”
“What are you talking about?”
His handsome face hardened. “He saw us.”
She blinked. “I beg your pardon?
…
”
“In the office, when I kissed you. He came in the door and saw us, and went right back out again,” He watched Amanda’s face go pale. “Try telling him you weren’t kissing me back. Try telling him we aren’t involved He’ll believe me, Amanda, because it will save him from having to admit that he’s human enough to love. You don’t deserve someone that hard. Can’t you see that?”
She leaned against a pillar for support, her eyes wide and tragic in her oval face.
“I love you. My God, I do. If I can’t have you, he certainly shouldn’t! He’s not capable of loving anyone more than his work.”
She could barely find words. A voice came over the intercom, the last call for boarding the plane. “How could you, Brad?” she asked with building anger. “You say you love me, and you could hurt me like this, knowing how I feel about Josh?
You
don’t know what love is! You’re too selfish and vain to learn!”
In a fever of pain, she reached out and struck him across the face as hard as she could. “That’s for me, and
for Josh, and for all the other people you’ve used for your own gain!”
He touched his cheek. “You could love me, if it weren’t for Josh,” he said his voice hoarse.
“Pigs could fly,” she said levelly. “You’re the most self-centered, shallow man I’ve ever known. I thought you were my friend!”
“Friendship is less than I wanted.”
“Now it’s more than you have.”
He smoothed his cheek and looked down at her with blatant hunger. “Maybe you’ll change your mind. After all, Terri has Josh,” he added with a cold smile.
“It doesn’t matter. You won’t have me,” she returned with contempt.
He flushed. After a minute he picked up his suitcase and turned, walking quickly down the boarding ramp. Amanda shivered with pure rage. She’d trusted Brad, and he’d sold her down the river. She could imagine what Josh had thought when he saw her in Brad’s arms. She could, of course, call him and explain. But if he had Terri, it would accomplish nothing to open her heart to him. No. Brad had helped her dig her own grave there.
When Mirri and Nelson Stuart stopped by the office later, she was deep in her own misery.
“My, what a gloom-and-doom look that is,” Mirri said, glowering at her. “I came by to cheer you up. Look!”
She held out her hand. A small but respectable diamond ring graced it.
“Congratulations,” Amanda said, rising to hug her best friend. Obviously she was meant to pretend that Mirri hadn’t already told her about the engagement, so
she did. “I wondered where you’d been the past few days.”
“In heaven, I think,” Mirri murmured, looking up at Nelson with pure adoration. “We were going to just go ahead and get married and not tell anyone, but Nelson said we should do the thing right.”
“I’m very happy for you both,
”
Amanda said warmly. She smiled at Nelson, who looked like a different man altogether in jeans and a casual knit shirt. “When did you propose to her?”
“It was the other way around.” Nelson chuckled and looked down at Mirri in a way that made her blush. “I got the works. Soft music, soft lights, a candlelight dinner, and a proposal of marriage. How could I turn her down? She’s got a good job, so she can keep me in style, and anyone can see she worships the ground I walk on
…
oof!”
Mirri had clipped him in the ribs. “Don’t get conceited,” she told him.
He laughed with pure delight, pulling her close. “Anyway, we’re going to have a small wedding. A quick small wedding,” he added ruefully, “next Monday. You’re invited.”
“I’ll be very happy to come and be a witness. Where and when?”
They told her. Nelson went outside to smoke a cigarette, and Amanda hugged Mirri warmly.
“I’m so happy for you,” she told her friend.
“Me, too.” Mirri laughed. “Can you believe it? He’s nothing like I used to think. We get along so well together. He’d die for me, Amanda,” she added, almost choking on emotion.
“I think that’s mutual. Be happy.”
“I don’t see how we couldn’t. He’s my world.” Long after Mirri and Nelson had left, Amanda sat at her desk and wondered how it would feel to have that kind of happiness. Love, it seemed, didn’t come with guarantees of happiness.
The telephone rang. She answered it, since everyone else was in the makeup room.
“Is this Amanda?” asked a faintly slurred male voice.
“Yes. Who—”
“Listen. That old tart had better stop making a play for my dad, or she’s going to wind up in a cemetery somewhere. My mom just tried to kill herself!”
She caught her breath. “Scotty?”
“Yeah. Scotty. If my dad can drag his ass away from his latest conquest, tell him Mom’s in the hospital. He might like to pretend to care, for the sake of
…
of appearances, you know.”
He hung up. She got to her feet. The boy was obviously under the influence, and he sounded dangerous. The situation here was getting complicated. Too complicated.
“May I speak with you for a minute, Mr. Johnson?” she asked from the doorway.
“Sure.”
He came out into the hall. But Amanda opened the front door and gestured him outside. It was warm and sunny. Birds sang nearby, their songs mingled with the incessant sound of traffic and car horns.
“Well?” he asked impatiently.
“Your son just called,” she said. “Your wife tried to commit suicide. They’ve taken her to the hospital.”
He paled. “Which hospital?”
“He didn’t say. He was intoxicated.”
“I think I know which one,” he said shortly. “God knows it’s not the first time.”
“Your son made a threat, Mr. Johnson,” Amanda said, and met his wary eyes levelly. “I’ll say this one time. If anything happens to involve my mother’s newspaper in a scandal, I will do everything in my power to have your job.”
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” he asked coldly. “Well, better employees than you have tried!”
“I’m not exactly an employee,” she reminded him. “This newspaper has been in my family for over a hundred years, and I stand to inherit forty-nine percent of it.”
“But Josh Lawson owns the other fifty-one,” he countered. “I’ve been here fifteen years. He’ll never agree to fire me.”
“You’re bluffing,” she said with certainty, and watched his eyelids flicker just slightly. “If Josh finds out that you’re having an affair with a married employee, you won’t have a leg to stand on. He’s extraordinarily conservative.”
He took a sharp breath and just barely kept his head. “First you’d have to prove that I’m having one. And you’d better be able to,” he added. “Because I could fire you for defamation of character.”
“Don’t make the mistake of underestimating me,” she replied quietly. “I’m not the only employee here who isn’t blind.”
He didn’t want to back down, but he had no other recourse. He walked back inside. Amanda glared after him in cold fury. He was threatening her business, threatening her job. She was sick of conspiring to save the business. She wasn’t going to let him get away with endangering lives to continue his pitiful love affair. That had to stop, and now!
Late Friday afternoon she got on a plane for Nassau without telling anyone where she was going. She’d learned from Josh’s secretary, Dina, that Josh was at Opal Cay. He was going to get an earful, and not only about the newspaper.
CHAPTER
NINETEEN
A
manda
phoned the house when she arrived in Nassau. Joshua was due in that night, Ted told her. He brought the launch over to fetch her, and she boarded it with patent relief. It would have been a shame to spend the money to come down, only to find Josh gone. Thank God for Visa cards, she mused. Until money was released from her trust fund, she depended totally on her job at the newspaper.
“Did you tell Josh you were coming?” Ted asked her after she had changed into slacks, a white knit shirt, and sneakers and was back downstairs.
“I didn’t dare,” she replied. “He wouldn’t have been here. But I have to talk to him. We’ve got a major problem at the office, and I can’t discuss it over the phone.”
“Business brought you here?” Ted looked disappointed. “I see.”
“You don’t think I came rushing down here in a fit of passion, surely?” She laughed. “Josh would have kittens!”
He frowned. “Why do you say that?”
“I know about Terri, Ted,” she said with forced carelessness. She stiffened. “She isn’t here, on the island?”
“Of course not. Why should she be here? And what do you know?”
“That Josh is having an affair with her,” she said.
“It's news to me,” he replied. “Terri and her husband are in Greece, in fact. They’re very happily married.” He lifted his eyebrows at her disbelieving expression. “Terri’s been sticking very close to home. And there was a rumor that she poured a bowl of conch chowder over a woman who made a pass at her husband just recently.” He laughed. “Besides all that, she’s pregnant. Hardly the best time for a woman to have an affair.”
“Brad said…
”
“Ah. Brad.”
The two words were enough. She searched Ted’s eyes and understood exactly what he was saying.
“I’m glad you came, Amanda,” he added quietly. “Josh has been
…
different since you left.”
That was all he said. But the expression in his voice said much more.
A
manda wandered around the house listlessly all day, waiting for Josh to show up. Ted’s revelations had exhilarated her. She felt like a child on Christmas morning, waiting for permission to tear open the bright wrappings. When she finally heard the whine of the jet engines it was almost dark, and she was a bundle of nerves.
Josh didn’t know she was in residence. She didn't know what kind of mood he’d would be in. He’d made
some violent threats about Brad even before he had seen Amanda in Brad’s arms. She dreaded the confrontation, even as she anticipated the joy of being with him again. If they could just clear up the misunderstandings once and for all, there might yet be hope for them.
Josh walked into the house yelling orders. He tossed his case down and shed his jacket in the living room. On his way to the bar, he noticed Amanda for the first time and froze in place. For one long instant his dark eyes met hers.
She was seated on his big armchair by the window overlooking the bay. Her hair was long and loose, as he like it, and her jeans clung lovingly to her body, like the partially unbuttoned white knit shirt that emphasized the small thrust of her breasts. He felt as if he’d come home, much as he tried to deny the hunger she roused in him.
But he remembered his last sight of her, in his brother’s arms, and his face went hard. “What are you doing here?” he asked coldly. “I don’t remember inviting you.”
“Don’t be sarcastic,” she teased, pretending a serenity that contrasted violently with the turmoil inside her.
He poured himself a drink. Whiskey, she noticed, and no water. He threw it into the back of his throat and bent forward as he swallowed it.
“We have a problem,” she began conversationally.
“Do we?” He turned and set down the shot glass. “Has Brad made you pregnant already?” he asked with a mocking smile.
So it was to be that kind of conversation. She might have expected it.
“If he had, we’d both be on national television doing the talk show circuit,” she informed him. “That was sarcasm,” she added, in case he’d missed the insinuation.
“Forgive my ignorance,” he replied pleasantly, although something in him unclenched. “I had a vivid impression that you and Brad were at least on the way to a love affair when I stopped by his office recently.”
She sat up and folded her cold hands in her lap. “I didn’t come here to talk about Brad,” she said, although she wanted to. This wasn’t the time, when he was so unreceptive. “There’s a problem at the newspaper that I need to discuss with you.”
“Johnson’s trying to seduce you,” he guessed.
“Will you stop?! Nobody’s trying to seduce me,” she said bitterly.
“Pity. Stick around a day or so and I might see what I can do for you.”
“You love to think the worst of me, don’t you?” she demanded. “Even knowing how I felt about you, all it took was one glance at me in your brother’s arms to make you certain I was having a wild affair with him! And believe me, I was there against my will.”
He shifted his eyes and looked uncomfortable. He ran a hand over his thick blond hair. It lingered at his taut nape. He poured himself another drink. But he didn’t throw it down his throat this time. His dark eyes stared into it. “Brad can have children,” he said.
“And you can’t.
”
The bluntness of her remark brought his eyes up.
“That’s right,” he agreed with a cold glare.
“So, that being the case, you very nobly sacrificed yourself so that I could slee
p with Brad and have babies.”
His jaw c
l
enched. He moved away from the bar, one hand idly unfastening his tie and the top buttons of his shirt. He stared out at the ocean. “What do you want?”
“To talk to you.”
“Talk,” he invited. He sipped his whiskey.
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 sa
id 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 jig 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 scrunity.
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 drasti
c. He does have a family to sup
port.”
“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.”