Escapade. Diana Palmer

looked for his cigar and found it lying in the water. He sighed and shoved his hands in his pockets. He smoked too much, anyway. “Harriet’s hairspray?!” he replied suddenly.

      She laughed. He sometimes seemed to be listening when really he was miles away. “That will teach you to pay attention when I talk to you,” she said, and in seconds he was smiling and everything was back to normal.

      Afterward Amanda could hardly remember when or how they’d gone inside. But once she was upstairs, she almost collapsed with burning heat on her bed. Her head was really splitting now, and she was feeling particularly vulnerable.

      She wanted Josh. She could no longer deny the sensations she felt. But she’d make sure that she stayed in control from now on. Having only just escaped her father’s domination, she was in no hurry to rush back into emotional slavery.

      At least Josh wasn’t going to take advantage of her weakness. He’d rejected her, but not unkindly. She’d heard some of the rumors about his lovers. A lot about Terri, the woman she’d seen him with on the beach so long ago. She knew he didn’t want to get married, but that he was an honorable man. He knew Amanda too well to lure her into his bed for a few minutes of pleasure. Maybe that was a good thing, but all the same her body throbbed until dawn. The worst thing was that she hadn’t even had the presence of mind to mention the job press at the newspaper office to him.

      * * *

      JOSH GAVE UP on the idea of sleeping when his company finally departed. He’d won his deal with the oil sheik, and he should have felt satisfied. But he didn’t.

      He felt as restless as ever. Imbued with an ongoing urgency about life, he often wore out employees who simply couldn’t meet the demands he placed on them. Like many overachievers, he was impatient with people who lived at a normal pace.

      “Go to bed, for God’s sake,” Josh said to Ted. “You’re asleep on your feet.”

      Ted chuckled as he rose from his comfortable chair. “I don’t mind keeping you company,” he said. “But a few hours of sleep sounds great. You seem to live on catnaps.”

      Josh shrugged. “In the early days it was the only way I could manage to save the company. Now, it’s a habit.” He frowned. That wasn’t quite true. What he’d felt with Amanda bothered him. He lit a cigar impatiently.

      “That will kill you,” Ted remarked at the door.

      “Life kills people, too,” came the sardonic reply. “Dina’s enrolled me in a stop smoking seminar,” he added. “I’ll kick the habit. But not tonight.”

      Ted shrugged. “Suit yourself. See you in the morning.”

      The door closed, and he was alone with his thoughts, his memories.

      He was going to miss Harrison Todd. Amanda’s father had not been a perfect human being, but Joshua had learned a lot from him in the early days. Knowing he wouldn’t have Harrison around had been a blow. Brad was a good salesman, but Harrison had years of experience neither Lawson brother had had a chance to accumulate.

      Business, he mused. Even when he was alone, it dominated his mind. Better that than Amanda’s soft, pretty body, he reminded himself. His young life had been a kaleidoscope of affairs not unlike his parents’ adulterous adventures. He could remember his father flirting openly with other women, and it wasn’t a rare occurrence. His mother had been a little more discreet, but there were always men half her age traveling with her, helping her spend her money.

      Sent off to school at the age of six, Josh had never known a family environment or honest love. Amanda’s tender concern for him over the cactus so many years earlier had surprised him. He wasn’t accustomed to people caring about him more than his money.

      Amanda stayed near him at the worst times of his life. When he’d broken his leg on a skiing trip, it had been Amanda who’d come to see him in the hospital with potted plants and sympathy. She’d fussed over him when he was sick, teased him when he was well, become an integral part of his life. But in all that time he’d never touched her. Not even under the mistletoe at Christmas.

      Everything had changed a few hours earlier on the beach. Now he didn’t recall her nurturing ways. He wanted her, but he didn’t know how to reconcile that with his affection for her, with their friendship.

      With other women, relationships were simple. His lovers were experienced, sophisticated women who could settle for sex without emotional involvement. He knew that wouldn’t be possible with Amanda. He equated Amanda and sex with marriage and children and forever after. Since marriage had become an impossibility for him, he had to reconcile himself to keeping his hands off Amanda. Tonight had been a moment out of time. She’d sensed his rejection at once and with grace and dignity. He had to make sure that he didn’t put her in that position twice, because he didn’t like seeing Amanda humbled. It didn’t suit her spirited nature at all. He’d spent years prodding her temper, helping her stand up to her father. Now he had to keep her on the right track.

      He flung open a file folder and buried his thoughts in business.

       CHAPTER THREE

      THE OCEAN OFF Opal Cay was every shade of mingled green and blue in the color spectrum. Like the rest of the Bahama Islands chain, the water was crystalline, unpolluted. Virginal.

      Amanda smiled at the unspoiled beauty and hoped that this exquisite sugar-white beach would never go the way of so many other beautiful coves that now boasted casino and hotel complexes.

      She pushed her hands deeper into the pockets of her short white robe. She’d just been swimming, and her slender body was still wet, like her long black hair. She lifted it to the ever-present breeze, feeling the hot, wet wind pull at it, drying it. Under the robe was a yellow bikini with red stripes, the first unconventional statement she’d made since her father’s death.

      She knew she should have felt something. Sadness. Grief. Loss. Emptiness. There was only relief. What a eulogy for Harrison Sanford Todd.

      “I must be heartless,” she said aloud.

      “Why?” came a deep, cynically amused reply from over her shoulder.

      She turned, her pale green eyes wide. They softened helplessly at the masculine perfection of the man who approached her. She pushed back her long, windblown hair to keep it out of her mouth in the crisp breeze. “I thought you were going to Nassau.”

      “Not until eleven-thirty. It’s barely seven. Why are you out so early?”

      “I dreamed about Dad,” she said. It wasn’t the whole truth, but it was close enough. She rammed her hands deep into her pockets. “I wish I could miss him.”

      “He wasn’t exactly a family man, Amanda. Don’t waste time on unnecessary guilt. He gave what he could, and so did you. Let that be enough,” Josh said in his soft, deep Texas accent. His dark eyes flashed like the reflection of the ocean in sunlight as he looked down at her from his imposing height. “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