Escapade (11 page)

“That
really
doesn’t sound like Josh! He wrote the book on moral behavior. I mean, he even chews out executives who cheat on their wives, doesn’t he?”

“He used to. He’s changed,” Amanda said sadly.
“
When I left he sounded as th
ough he almost hated me.
”

“You’ve always been precious to him,” Mirri said worriedly. “He was always on your side, at any cost. Why would he savage you for no reason, and even mention
entertaining one of his ex-mistr
esses when you’re just getting over your father’s death? That’s not like Josh.”

Amanda knew that it wasn’t. His tenderness with her had raised the eyebrows of outsiders for years. “I don’t understand, either. But we’ve both agreed that it’s going to be strictly business from now on.
I
’m going to keep that job press running,” she said, lifting her chin and looking so much like her late father in a temper that Mirri almost grinned. “Nobody’s closing it down without giving me a fighting chance to save it. I’ve heard rumors about a shopper starting up in San Rio. I didn’t mention it to Josh, but it could be true. If it is, the job press may be the only way to save the
Gazette
from going under. I have to save it.”

“Good for you!” Mirri cheered.

“Then,” Amanda added, “I’m going to buy a lacy
black negligee, have myself photographed in the most seductive pose I can manage, have a life-size enlargement made, and ship it Joshua Cabe Lawson!”

The other woman pursed her lips and whistled. “Is this really you? I mean, until a week or so ago, you were pretty much the type of woman who thought that kind of behavior was debasing.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.” Amanda sighed. “I don’t know how I did mean it. Men are the very devil, Mirri!”

She nodded and smiled. “Yes.”

“If he’d only listened to me about Ward Johnson and the mess he’s making of the paper. I can’t prove it, but I know Ward’s juggled the figures in his favor. Josh didn’t believe me.”

“Now that
is
sad,” Mirri replied. “I put trust at the top of any relationship that works.”

“So do I. But then Josh closed the door on any kind of intimate relationship with me. He’s acting strangely lately, very broody and preoccupied. Brad said as much.”

“You watch brother Brad,” Mirri cautioned seriously. “He’s a sweet man, but he can be devious and selfish. I don't trust him at all.”

“I do,” Amanda said, smilin
g. “Brad’s my favorite man at th
e momen
t. At least he’s on my side.”

“So am I.”

“You always were,” Amanda replied. “You’ve been more like a sister than a friend all these years. I don’t know what I’d have done without you.”

“Double that for me,” Mirri told her affectionately. “I think you’re an angel.”

“
No hope of that, not while I’m harboring such evil
thoughts about Josh and Mr. Johnson.” She glanced at her watch. “I’d better go. I have to be back at work Monday, and the cottage is in ruins from lack of clean dishes and clothes. Imagine, I get to convince Mr. Johnson that he needs to manage my mother’s paper in a more responsible manner.”

“It wasn’t fair of your father to tie up the paper this way,” Mirri said angrily. “It was your mother’s legacy to you.”

“Well, these days it’s the prize in a tug-of-war. But I’m going to win this one,” she promised. “I swear I am. It’s mine, and I won’t give it up without a fight. If Mr. Johnson wants to be underhanded and play dirty, so can I. Josh is going to see that I can take care of my own business.”

Mirri laughed. “Now that,” she said, “sounds more like the Amanda I used to know!”

A
manda went in to the office with all flags flying, wearing a natty gray suit with a white blouse and a discreet amount of makeup. Dora, the new part-time employee, scrutinized her while they took a quick coffee break. Both women were breaking later than the others because Dora had been sent to pick up an ad and Amanda had been sidetracked trying to find a lost subscription for an out-of-state customer who insisted on holding on the telephone while she did it.

The
Gazette
was a small, intimate office with no social structure. The full-time employees included Ward; Amanda; the typesetter, Lisa Graham; and pressman Tim Wilson, who doubled as staff photographer in between his duties for die print shop. Dora, who primarily helped
make up the paper, and two college students, Jenny Creigh and Vic Martin, who did a little reporting and a lot of proofreading, pasting, and donkey work, worked part-time. But regardless of their status, everybody took his coffee break at the same time. It was one of the few things Amanda did admire about the way the paper was run.

Ward Johnson, after a quiet greeting to Amanda, had gone out to see a potential advertiser. Amanda had started to ask him about the figures he’d sent Josh, but he was out the door and gone, as if he anticipated that she was going to be asking him some more irritating questions. He had tended to avoid her recently.

Still f
u
ming, Amanda put more sugar in her coffee than she could drink and made a face at it.

“You look very elegant this morning,” Dora began nervously, and forced a smile. “I always feel inadequate when you walk into a room. You’re every inch the executive.”

Amanda grinned at her. She hadn’t thought she presented any image at all. “Please, would you sign an affidavit to that effect and let me send it to Josh Lawson? He thinks I need my hand held in business.”

“Oh, I’m sure that’s not true.” She peered at Amanda over her coffee cup and flushed a little. “Is that South American woman really his latest mistress?” she blurted out. “I saw their photograph in one of the supermarket tabloids. He’s so handsome! And she’s a knockout, isn’t she?”

“Yes.” Amanda hated the Latin woman, and she’d never even met her. She hadn’t asked Josh about her, because she hadn’t wanted to know. Now Terri was back
in his life like a persistent ghost from the past. Josh and his women. Amanda felt she wouldn’t ever escape them.

“How are things going with you?” she asked, changing the subject. “Do you still like it here?”

“Very much.” Dora laughed a little uneasily. “I’ve known Ward since we were in school together. He was always nice to me. I liked staying at home with my boys, but we needed the extra money so that Edgar, my husband, could take a couple of college courses to keep his teaching certificate current.” She hesitated. “I suppose you young women wouldn’t want that kind of life, you’re all so independent and business-minded. I don’t guess most of you want children until you’re settled in your careers. ”

Amanda thought about rocking a baby in her arms on Opal Cay. Josh’s baby. Business and independence were less pleasurable to her mind than living with Josh and loving him night after endless night and raising his children.

She cleared her throat. “It’s a new world,” she told Dora.

“Yes.” The older woman sighed. “I don’t like it very much,” she confessed quietly. “Maybe there are advantages, but in my day a woman was the center of the family. She kept everything organized and got the men and children to church on Sunday and made sure that everyone had nice manners and clean clothes. She cooked and kept a nice house and worked in the garden when she wasn’t helping out at church socials or looking after people who needed it.” She put down her coffee cup. “Forgive me, but it seems to me that these days it’s very much a selfish kind of society, with people doing
only what benefits them. Self-sacrifice, family honor, ethics, compassion—th
ose things don’t even exist any
more.”

“Yes, they do,” Amanda said with a quiet smile. “Don’t believe everything you see in the movies and on
TV about modern
life-styles. In the fifties, television portrayed housewives like Donna Reed, doing dishes in high heels and a Sunday dress. Do you know, some of this mode
rn
generation actually believe women lived like that?”

Dora giggled. “You’re kidding!”

“No, I’m not.” She shook her head. “True history never gets a fair shake. A friend of mine used to say that history was the story of
mankind written by the winners.
”

“Distortions,” Dora agreed. “Yes. I see what you mean.”

“I like my independence,” Amanda continued, “but that doesn’t make me a crazy woman with a seething man hatred. I’m a professional with a lot of hard-bought education and a mind that I want to use. Did you know that there was a woma
n named Hatshepsut who was pha
raoh of Egypt for twenty years?” she added. “Or that the Amazons really existed, hunting and going to war alongside their men? Or that many Indian women in this country really owned all the property in their villages, and men came to power through their mother’s lineage, not their father’s?”

“You’re joking!”

“No, I’m not. Interesting, isn’t it, how history has written the story of women?” She chuckled. “Now we’re finally getting it straight.”

Amanda watched her colleague turn away to finish
pasting up ads, and she wondered at how much alike they were, for all that they were a generation apart.

She went back to her computer to go over the figures that Ward Johnson had given Josh. She wasn’t surprised to find inaccuracies; in fact, she found them quite easily. But she saw the books every day and knew what the figures actually were. Her pulse raced when she realized what a false picture Ward had given Josh.

But she couldn’t call him on it. If
she dared, she’d be
giving him just the weapon he needed to get her out on her ear. Josh had said that he wouldn’t let that happen, but he was in a volatile mood lately. Having her call Ward a liar and make accusations could be construed as sour grapes, after she’d complained that she had no real control of her family’s enterprise. Josh wasn’t on her side anymore. He’d be more than likely to take Ward’s.

Her temper cooled as she realized what she was going to have to do. She had to lie low and jockey for a position of power. It would take cunning and guile, but if she worked at it, she could pull it off.

She began to hum softly to herself as she bypassed Ward’s figures and started on the current accounts. He thought he’d outfoxed her, but he had some surprises coming. She was Harrison Todd’s daughter, with all his genes and, God willing, his shrewd business head as well. If she was careful, she could still win out over Ward. And over Josh as well.

CHAPTER

NINE

J
osh
flew back to San Antonio a few days after Brad and Amanda, putting in
an appearance that dispelled
the relaxed atmosphere at the Lawson Company. Everyone jumped when Josh was to his office just on normal days, but he was more demanding than ever now, impatient and living on his nerves. Even his usual dry humor had gone into eclipse. He spent long hours at his desk. He didn’t seem to sleep.

“I know you don’t like talking about what bothers you,” Brad said the second day he was at work, “but you’re my brother, and I am concerned about you now and then. Can I help?”

Josh glanced at him over a page of figures, dark shadows under his black eyes, new lines to his lean, handsome face. “No. When are you going to talk to Holmes about the shipping holdup on his computer software? Have you contacted the consultant who’s supposed to reengineer the data base for him?”

Brad laughed with cold humor. “So much for that
approach. No, I haven’t, but I will. My God, don’t you ever get tired of the stone man facade?”

“I’ve got several appointments to get through.”

“Why not talk about what’s bothering you, Josh?” Brad complained. “Why is it always business with you?”

“When you get to the top, that’s what’s left,” his brother replied. “Business and solitude.”

“Well, you know all about that. All our lives your only direction has been to make more money and get more power. You’ve sacrificed everything for it.” He rammed his hands into his pockets. “Why don’t you get married and start producing heirs to inherit all this?”

Josh stood up, his dark eyes narrowing with anger. “Don’t you have something to do, little brother?” he asked menacingly. Even his posture was threatening.

“What did I say?” Brad cried, exasperated. “You won’t even talk about a family life—”

“I don’t want it!” Josh said harshly. “I like my life as it is, without complications.”

“And without women?” Brad eyed him curiously. “Terri was supposed to show up at the cay with her husband. Did she?”

“I canceled the visit,” Josh said. His chest rose and fell heavily. “I told you, I don’t need complications.”

“Okay, okay. I’ll change the subject. I’ve had my yearly physical. You’re still going in for yours, right?” he prodded. “The insurance company called again about it.”

“Yes, dammit!” He glared at the younger man. “No one is going to find a brain tumor or anything fatal.”

“I never thought they would.”

“When are you leaving?” Josh asked with casual pleasantness, the anger gone now. He even smiled.

“Tonight. Does that make you happy?” Brad replied, stung.

“It does indeed.”

“I suppose you already know about the jam I’m in?”

There was the slightest hesitation. Josh didn’t like people knowing that he had spies and used them. “Yes,” he said.

“Leave it to you to dig deep.” He rocked back on his heels, his hands in his pockets. “I’m overextended. I can’t borrow any more. I don’t suppose you’d bail me out one more rime if I promised to stay away from the gambling tables and get help?”

“You promised the same thing last time I pulled your irons out of the fire. I believed it then.” Josh shook his head. “I don’t now. You’ll have to get yourself out of trouble this time.”

“Thanks. Nice to know I can count on you when I’m in over my head.”

“The only person any of us can count on in this life is ourselves. You’re overdue learning that.” Josh’s eyes narrowed. “I’ve sheltered you too much already. I felt that you got a bad shake because of Mother’s ongoing marriages and Dad’s neglect and endless affairs. When I got old enough, I took you out of boarding school and tried to make it all up to you. But I’ve done you no favors. Now I have to do right by you. You have to learn to solve your own problems, avoid your own mistakes, pay your debts without a safety net. It’s time to grow up, Brad.”

“I’ll grow under if you don’t help me,” he said in exasperation. “Don’t you understand that they’ll kill
me?”

“No, they won’t. Marc Donner may have mob ties, but he’s no killer. You’re a con man at heart, brother,” Josh said imperturbably. “Con them. After all, you got yourself into this mess.”

“Get myself out,” Brad finished for him. “Sure.” He rammed his hands into his pockets. “Somebody will let you know when to send flowers and pretend to grieve for me.

“I would,” Josh said honestly. “But if I get you out of it again, I’ll spend the rest of our lives doing it. This time you have to do it alone.”

“Thanks for nothing.”

He should be used to it, Brad thought on his way out. He never won an argument, he never got his way. Josh would let the gambling syndicate assassinate him without blinking an eye. They said brotherly love was sacred, but here was Josh dropping him into boiling oil. He was too stubborn to admit that his brother was right. He didn’t want complications either. He wanted to enjoy his life. Gambling had always been part of it. He loved the risks. Why did he have to give them up? Surely, if he worked at it, he could find a way out. He had to, now, if only to show Josh that he could.

W
ard Johnson watched Dora finish up the work on the computer and shut it down, his eyes thoughtful and more wistful than he knew.

“Why didn’t I marry you?” he mused aloud.

She flushed, smiling like a girl as she glanced at him.

“You never noticed me,” she reminded him. “I was always the wallflower, hiding in the back of the class and never raising my hand all through school. I was too shy to even smile at you.”

“Gladys wasn’t,” he said with a bitter laugh. “She seduced me in the gym after class one day, on the floor behind the lockers. Two months later she said she was pregnant by me, and I married her. What a mistake. She wanted a rich man. She tried to make me into one by pushing me and pushing me, but I didn’t have the ambition or the talent.” He rubbed the back of his neck and shook his head. “When she couldn’t force me into brown-nosing for an executive job, she hit the bottle. She’s still hitting it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“So am I. It’s affected our son all his life. These days, he’s forever in trouble with the law,” he added heavily. “When I try to make him stop drinking and smoking pot, he laughs and says I never try to stop Mom, and isn’t alcohol a drug? What do I say to that? Of course it’s a drug, but she won’t stop. She knows I hate it. That’s why she does it, to punish me.”

Dora smiled a little nervously. “Some women don’t seem to take well to marriage, I suppose. Your wife
…
perhaps she’s very ambitious and smart. If she’d gone out for a career, she’d probably have made it to the top and have all that money she wanted.”

“She’d have been happy,” he agreed. “But she thought she wanted me and kids.” He shrugged. “Do any of us know what we really want?” He stared at her. “How about you?”

“Oh, Edgar and I are happy, I suppose. The boys will
both be in junior high next year. Edgar is a deacon in church, and I teach Sunday school.” She stared into her lap. “He teaches, so we have to be so circumspect and above reproach.” She sm
iled wistfully. “Just once I’d l
ove to go to some swank party and throw off my clothes and swim naked in someone’s swimming pool.” She laughed at her own fancy. “Can you imagine my doing something like that, at my age?”

He frowned. “Why not? You have a beautiful figure, Dora.”

Her face changed, became radiant. She flushed
and looked at him. “Do you…
really think so?”

He felt young again. Free again. He stared at her and saw the shy sixteen-year-old he’d gone to school with, just as she must have seen the slim boy who was just as shy around her.

“Come here, honey,” he said softly, standing in front of her. He opened his hands and held them out to her. The look on his face was explicit. Dora hesitated.

“Ward, I can’t
—
”

“Yes, you can,” he said huskily, his face hardening. He reached down and pulled her up, into his arms. They went around her, staying her against die length of his body. “I have nothing! Nothing! Neither do you. We’re both trapped, like mice in a maze. My God, doesn’t life owe us a little happiness?”

“I’m married,” she moaned.

But his mouth covered the frantic words and pushed them back against her teeth. He tasted of coffee and passion, nothing like her very proper Edgar, who hadn’t touched her in two years. She was a voluptuous, mature woman with a passionate core that had barely been
touched in sixteen years of marriage. Often she thought she’d only married Edgar because no other man wanted her. But Ward did. She could feel that he wanted her, feel his desire like a brand against her belly.

She moaned and opened her mouth, trembling a little when his hands went to the skirt of her dress and began to push it up.

The office was closed and locked. The window shades were drawn. No one could see in. They were alone.

Dora felt Ward’s hands on her breasts, her belly. He touched her with desperate need, and she gave in without a protest. She forgot Edgar and all her principles in the heat of what Ward was doing to her starving body.

“Here,” he choked, moving her so that she was sitting on the edge of the desk. He kissed her again and again, drowning her in his need. All the while his hands were working, pushing aside her clothing. There was a metallic rasp.

His mouth grew insistent. She felt his big hands shift her on the desk, and then she felt him in stark intimacy, probing at her. There was a muffled groan, then his body seemed to clench as he pulled roughly at her hips and went into her.

She cried out at the intimacy and the pleasure. Edgar was all but impotent, but Ward wasn’t. She clung to him while he buffeted her, his mouth against her, his gruff moans of pleasure vibrating in his throat. Her last conscious thought as he increased the rhythm was that she was going to have bruises on her hips because his grip was strong and painful. Then a wave of pleasure spread all over her in a shock of heat. She shuddered just as she heard Ward cry out hoarsely and go rigid in her arms.

For a few seconds she was submerged in the drowsy
aftermath of pleasure. Then cam
e reality and shame and self-contempt.

They hadn’t even undressed. She’d given herself to a man to whom she wasn’t married. She’d committed adultery.

She began to cry.

Ward righted their clothing, murmuring soft words of apology the whole time. “God, I’m sorry, Dora,” he said miserably
, holding her close. “I’m so sorr
y! It’s been years since I had a woman!
…
”

She swallowed, dabbing at her wet eyes with the back of her hand. “Doesn’t your wife sleep with you?” she asked through her tears.

“No,” he replied. “Not for years and years.” He lifted her face to his eyes and grimaced. “I’m sorry. You’re so sweet, Dora, so much a woman. I’v
e watched you and wanted you…
b
ut I shouldn’t have let it hap
pen.
”

She gnawed her lower lip. “Edgar,” she began, stopped, and tried again. “Edgar
can’t…
in bed,” she whispered.

“For years and years?” he asked softly.

She hesitated. Then she nodded and lowered her head to his chest. His shirt was damp with perspiration, but he felt comfortable and familiar. “I enjoyed it. I’m so ashamed!” she wept.

His hands were hesitant as he patted her on the back and then began to caress her. “I enjoyed it, too.” He groaned and bent to kiss her, softly. “Will it really hurt anyone if we make each other happy?” he asked miserably. “They don’t want us, and we do want each other.
It would just be that, you know. I wouldn’t make any trouble for you or try to break up your marriage. And no one would ever know. Only the two of us. Who would it hurt?”

“No one, I guess,” she said, rationalizing it because she wanted him, too. She wanted to be loved, needed, adored. She wanted to feel like a desirable woman. She wanted to experience sex as a delightful form of communication instead of as an unpleasant duty.

Ward hugged her close, his eyes closed, trembling at his good fortune. He had Dora, for a little while, at least. He had a woman who enjoyed him, who didn’t rage at him in a drunken frenzy or deny him her bed. It was such a pleasure to hold a woman who smelled of perfume and flowers instead of a bony shadow of a woman who reeked of sour whiskey.

“It will be all right,” he said, clinging to her. He felt the cold chill of desperation as he formulated how they could keep their secret from their spouses, hold on to their little oasis of hope in a desert of despair and hopelessness. “We’ll manage.”

Dora hoped they would. Guilt was riding her, but surely she deserved something besides work and duty and service!

Later Ward walked her to the parking lot, very correct in the distance he kept between them. He didn’t pretend that what they were doing was either all right or noble. He knew that it could easily lead to shame and public disgrace and even tragedy. But he was too weak to fight it. Apparently so was she. He remembered lines from a song or poem, about people leading lives of quiet desperation. He understood now what they meant. He was
stealing a few hours’ pleasure to escape his hopeless loneliness. He hoped the price he and Dora would ultimately have to pay wouldn’t be too high.