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opposite, in fact. “And I’m not kicking out Ward Johnson.”
    “I wouldn’t really want you to go that far,” she confessed. “He has problems at home.”
    “And you collect broken things and broken people,” he said perceptively. “Like the stray cat that was badly bitten by a neighborhood dog and had to be taken in,” he recited. “And the pigeon with a broken wing. Then there was, of all things, a garter snake that the gardener cut with a weed eater!”
    “It was only a little snake,” she defended herself.
    “The bleeding heart of the world,” he scoffed. “You care too much about the wrong things.”
    “Somebody has to.”
    “I suppose. But don’t look at me. I’ve got a business to run.” He turned his wrist abruptly and glanced at his watch. “I have to get ready to go into Nassau.”
    “You wouldn’t like to take a day off?” she asked. He looked surprised. “A day off,” she began, a grin lighting up her face. “It’s when you don’t work for an entire day. You go snorkeling or sunbathe or sight-seeing … ”
    “A hell of a waste of time!”
    “You’re going to wear yourself out from the inside,” she pointed out. “First your brain, then your stomach, then your heart. In no tim e you’ll be a walking bone-and- skin frame with nothing inside.”
    “You don’t say?” He took a handful of her long black hair in one hand and tugged on it as he had done when she was a kid. Only now her head eased back gently, and his eyes dropped to her soft pink mouth and lingered there before he spoke. “You’re sassy,” he said.
    “I learned by watching you,” she said. Her voice sounded husky. She couldn’t breathe properly when he was this close, and she was afraid that it might show. “Joshua, you’re hurting my hair,” she whispered unsteadily.
    His grip lessened, but only slightly. He actually leaned toward her, so that his coffee-and-smoke-scented breath cooled her parted lips. “Be careful that I don’t decide to take you over,” he said deeply. “You’d make one hell of an acquisition.”
    “Don’t be silly. I wouldn’t match the decor in your office at all,” she said with forced lightness. Her body was already burning. “You like dark Mediterranean, and I’m French provincial. Besides, you’re too busy.”
    “Is that what you really think? That I only have a cash register for a brain and a slide rule for a heart? You, of all people on earth, should know better,” he added, his voice as sensuous as velvet against bare skin. “I taught you to fight, but I guess you’ll have to learn just about everything else on your own. I’m too jaded to make a proper tutor.” He let her hair fall back to her shoulders and turned away from her.
    She studied his long back with pure pleasure. “I have to get my education somewhere, Josh,” she murmured, striking just the right note of amused honesty to raise one of his eyebrows. “If you won’t sacrifice yourself for me, I guess I’ll have to advertise for someone who will.”
    “No, you won’t. You don’t know how to play that kind of game. When you give yourself, it will be for keeps.”
    She looked up at him openly, appreciating the hard lines of his face, the faint weariness there. “You’re tired. Why don’t you send Brad to Nassau and get some rest?”
    Her concern almost pushed him over the edge. He didn’t want it, he didn’t need it! His hand clenched at his side. He took a draw from the cigar and sent up a cloud of smoke.
    “Because Brad wouldn’t get any farther than the casino across the bridge on Paradise Island, and you know it,” he said flatly. “I’m going to keep him away from temptation, at least until we close this Saudi Arabian contract.”
    Amanda had her own suspicions about how well Brad was avoiding temptation, but she couldn’t sell him out to his brother. Josh made no allowances for weakness. “You’re hard to argue with,” she commented.
    “Then stop doing it. I don’t have