“Don't you see. This is Barnes's way of getting me back. He probably even had a spy here who tattled on us. He had the bad grace to call at this time of the morning, hoping to interrupt something.” His arms closed around her back and drew her hard against him. “We won't let him, will we?”
But she pushed the heels of her hands against his chest, her arms stiff. “Barnes isn't like that. He wasn't lying.”
“I'm not saying he was being malicious,” Josh said in a conciliatory tone she found highly irritating. “I'm just saying he's playing a little joke on us, paying us both back for the hand-slapping we gave him.”
She pushed off the bed, stomped over to a chair where she'd left her caftan, and pulled it over her head. “This is no joke,” she said tightly.
“All right. So he heard someone griping about me and took his mutterings and ran with them, built a mountain out of a molehill.”
“I think you should consider Clancey's threats as more than mutterings.”
Josh propped up on his elbows, nonchalant in his nakedness. “Megan, why are you getting angry?”
Again his tone annoyed her. “Because you're implying that my employee is either a spiteful sneak with a warped sense of humor or an imbecile. If you think I'd hire such a person, then I have a fair indication of the credibility you give me as a businesswoman.”
“That's not true.”
“The hell it isn't,” she flared. “Have you or have you not argued with Clancey?”
“It wasn't an argument. I told him his copy for the print ads stank to high heaven and gave him two weeks to revise it.”
“And you question his holding a grudge? I know how you can put people down. Apparently Clancey's had enough.”
Angry in his own right now, Josh rolled off the bed, picked up his underwear from the floor where he'd shed it the night before, and tugged it up his legs. Megan's mouth grew dry as she watched him adjust himself to fit comfortably in it.
“Clancey knew that copy was pure crap and needed changing. Usually he's a good man, with creative ideas. But too often he starts thinking of himself as a prima donna, and he can't tell good from bad because his ego gets in the way. I've taken him to task before and he always comes around. He's loyal. He'd never go over to the competition.”
She ground her teeth. “You're so arrogant, so damn sure of yourself. I'm amazed at your self-esteem. Is everyone in the world supposed to share it, to think you're somebody special?”
He cast a sly glance toward the bed. “You do.”
The blood rushing to her head made her dizzy, and she gripped the edge of the dresser. “Get out,” she rasped.
He cursed with more imagination than she'd ever heard in her life, and ran agitated fingers through his hair. “I'm sorry I said that, Megan. You made me so angry—”
“Get out,” she repeated firmly.
He took several steps toward her, but she gave him a venomous look that stopped him stock still in his tracks. “You know I didn't mean it.”
She snorted a laugh. “Yes, you did.”
“I was angry, Megan!”
“So am I, angrier than I've ever been in my life. Not at you, but at myself. Why I didn't keep my mouth shut about Clancey and let you get your just desserts I'll never know. Now, get out!”
In one sweeping motion he picked up the rest of his clothes. “I'll leave you alone for a while to cool off. I'm going to call Atlanta, but I'll be back, and then we'll sit down and finish this discussion calmly.”
He went through the sliding glass doors, wearing only underwear and carrying his pants and shirt. The vague thought crossed her mind that neither could appreciate the humor of the situation now. When he returned to her room, she intended to be far away. Indeed, she felt deadly serious.
The story made the newspapers the next morning. Megan couldn't avoid learning about it when Arlene rushed in waving a copy of the “Have you read this?”
Megan didn't think she could stand any more emotional blows, but her heart twisted with pain for the man she once again told herself she despised. It was all there—how his disenchanted employee had taken all the work already done on the heretofore secret ad campaign for the burgeoning airline and handed it over to the executives of Powell Associates with their promise of an outlandishly high increase over what Josh was paying him.
The reporter, as Megan thought reporters were inclined to do, painted Josh's future as blacker even than it would probably be and hinted at overindulgences such as women and booze as the causes of his lack of astuteness.
Josh's only quoted remark—and Megan suspected it was his only quotable comment—was, “I'll have something to say when the deal is complete.”
She looked at the picture of the man who scowled up at her from the newspaper and smoothed her finger over it as though to erase the lines of worry from his face. There was no sense in wishing away the emptiness she felt inside. It only yawned wider.