They claim wages here are too high. A hundred jobs gone, just like that—” he snapped his fingers “—and me only three years away from retirement.”
“But you said Will Beaumont prided himself on his company being Australian owned and operated. Why would he move it overseas?”
Scowling, Art rose and paced the bedroom. “Money, what else? He’ll make better profits if wages are lower. How do these bastards think the average Joe is going to buy their fancy imported products if they keep shipping jobs out of the country?” he demanded. “Answer me that!”
Behind the fury, she could see that Art was frightened. Not that he would admit such a thing to anyone. Especially to his daughter. “Can’t you do something?” she asked. “Organize the employees to take over the company?”
As quickly as his outrage had flared, it died. Art lowered himself into a chair with the slowness of the aged. “Buy out a multimillion-dollar electronics business that requires ongoing research and development of new products? Not a hope. Will is a proud man. He’d never agree to handing over control, much less being an employee in his own company. Nor could we carry on without him.”
“Oh, Dad.” She knelt beside his chair and put her arms around his shoulders. She’d meant to console him, but she ended up shaking him. If her father sank into inaction, he was lost. “Don’t give up. You can fight it somehow.”
Art seemed to make a conscious effort to straighten his shoulders. “I’ll be right, Sprout, you’ll see. Nothin’ for you to worry about.”
She squeezed his hand and managed a reassuring smile, knowing she would worry, even though she could do nothing about her father’s predicament.
On the other hand, she could control what she did with her life. She was damned if she would work for the man who’d dumped her father back on the unemployment heap. And to think she’d been feeling sorry she’d turned down Will’s invitation to the jazz concert.
“I need to do something,” she said, rising. “Don’t worry about dinner. I’ll pick up some fish and chips for us on my way back. I shouldn’t be more than an hour.”
She was halfway to Sorrento before it occurred to her that she could have called Will Beaumont on the phone to cancel the job. But she’d still have to mail his check back, and, damn it, she wanted to give him a piece of her mind. If she called, he could simply hang up on her.
Her hands gripped the wheel as her foot pressed harder on the accelerator and she took a curve at ten miles an hour over the speed limit. The thought of her father pottering around the house like an old man when all he wanted was to be working and earning his own way fueled her indignation. Art had a right to a job. A right to his full pension after decades in the workforce. She thumped her fist on the steering wheel. A right to dignity.
She came over the rise that led into Sorrento. Before her, the ferry dock jutted into the bay and the limestone heritage buildings mounted the hill, interspersed with trendy boutiques and surf shops.
Will Beaumont seemed like a decent man, she told herself as she drove through town. She should give him the benefit of the doubt, not blast him. But when she pulled up his long driveway and saw him untying his surfboard from the roof rack of his silver-gray Mercedes, she was outraged. While her father had been drowning his sorrows, the man responsible had been out surfing.
Bastard.
“Maeve. G’day,” Will said, his voice lifting in surprise as she got out of the ute. He was still in his wet suit, the top half peeled to his waist, exposing a chest and shoulders lean and hard with muscle. His smile faded as the look on her face registered. “I see you heard the news.”
“I heard, all right. Why are you shutting down the factory and moving it overseas?” She pulled the check he’d given her from her breast pocket, prepared to rip it into pieces. She’d been going to create a wonderland in his backyard. A special place for him and his future family. Not bloody likely.
His warm blue eyes turned cold as he spied the check in her hand. “The move is necessary to save the business.”
“Doesn’t it bother you that you’ll be putting my father and a hundred other workers out of jobs?”
His fingers curled around the edge of his surfboard, knuckles white. “I’m sorry about your father. And the others, too, of course.”
She glared at him, not bothering to hide her anger. Some things were too rotten to gloss over with the mask of politeness. “My father is fifty-seven. Where is he going to get another job at that age? Or do you think he should go overseas and work for fifty cents an hour?”
“It’s not what I wanted to happen. I’ll do my best to help my people find other employment.” His quiet voice held an edge.
“‘Your people’?” she spat. “You don’t own them. Save your hypocritical explanations and useless platitudes for the factory. Just don’t count on anyone believing a word.”
He propped the surfboard against the car and faced her squarely. “You’re a businesswoman. Surely, you can understand that if you’re not turning a profit you won’t stay in business for long.”
“Not turning a profit? How can that be? Your top-selling product is a super-duper alarm system that not even my father can afford to buy.”
“A rip-off model has come on the market, undercutting me,” he countered sharply. “I don’t want to move production offshore, but it’s that or shut the business down altogether.”
“How can you afford this house if your company is doing so poorly?” she demanded. “I don’t see you suffering.”
“I bought this house five years ago, when times were good and real estate prices were low. Not that it’s any of your business.”
“You drive a Mercedes,” she said, grasping for ammunition. She had him on the defensive, so why did she feel she was being backed into a corner?
“I wanted a car with safety features…a family car,” he said, his voice hardening with every word. “Are you finished?”
Damn it, she wanted so badly to hate him. The surfboard caught her eye. Aha, Nero fiddling while Rome burned. “Shouldn’t you have been thinking up ways to save Aussie Electronics, instead of going surfing like some irresponsible teenager?”
He didn’t flinch from her accusing gaze. “Surfing clears my mind. It puts me in a head space where I can see alternatives to problems.”
Intrigued despite herself, she cataloged the information. “Really?” she had to ask. “What is it about surfing that does that for you?”
“I’ve got a theory,” he said slowly, taken aback at her abrupt change of tack, “that the ocean’s horizontal planes promote lateral thinking.”
Was he joking? He looked serious. Yet as she stared at him, he grinned sheepishly, as though he knew that even if his theory made sense to him, it sounded crazy to others.
“But waves are vertical,” she objected.
He slapped the roof of the Mercedes. “This is the surface of the ocean.” Then he slanted his hand at a sixty-degree angle to the roof. “This is the wave.” With his other hand he intersected
