“What jobs did you do, Mac?”
“Anything and everything, honey. The dirtier the job, the better it paid. You have to remember I had no formal qualifications to fall back on, so I couldn’t get a job as a lawyer or a doctor or anything respectable like that.
“To give you some idea of what it was like back then, I vividly remembering working as a deckhand on some godforsaken rust bucket of a trawler that plied its trade off the coast of Argentina. I’ve never seen so many fish in one place.” He shook his head. “Jesus Christ, that was the hardest, most physical job I’d ever done, but the pay was real good. I also worked down the mines in both Colorado and West Virginia. Laid pipeline across Utah. Drilled oil off the coast of Texas. All these jobs were physically demanding, taking their toll on my body, leaving me too tired to spend the money I’d worked so fucking hard to earn. That was no bad thing though. In fact, it was exactly what I wanted, and all part of my plan, because by the time I was twenty-three I was worth a hundred thousand bucks. I’d worked every goddamn hour I could to make that money. Often working double shifts to the point of exhaustion.”
She leaned across and kissed him full on the lips. “Wow. Twenty-three, and a hundred thousand bucks. So you were a driven guy even way back then.”
He took her head in his hands and kissed her right back. “I’ll never be anything else, honey, until the day I die.”
“What happened next?”
“I kept reading.”
“Reading?”
“Yeah, only now I included the financial broadsheets as part of my self-made education. This was just about the smartest move I ever made, Kendall. After a while I learned to recognize which businesses were up and coming and which were on a downward spiral.”
“Let me guess. You put your money in one that was under performing.”
“You got it. You’re one smart girl.”
“Let me guess again. This crippled business was your first newspaper.”
“Yeah, right again, the Ohio Chronicle.” The sheer pride showing in his silver-gray eyes made her feel proud, too. “I did my research as any good investor should and found that the circulation had dropped for seventeen straight years in a row, going from a peak of over one hundred thousand copies a day down to less than six thousand. The paper was a basket case. Badly managed and on its knees, the business was just a few months away from closing down for good. The Chronicle first hit the presses in 1842 and since that time witnessed some great historical events, including the American Civil War and the first moon landing. I didn’t want to see it fold, so I put in an offer and waited. Two weeks later I got a reply. The Ohio Chronicle was mine lock, stock, and barrel. For the giveaway price of seventy-five thousand bucks, I now owned a newspaper that employed eight people.”
He leaned across and tenderly kissed the top of her head. “The kid from the care home was starting to go places, honey.”
“Hollywood could make a film about you, Mac. That’s inspirational.”
“It was touch and go, and for the first three months circulation dipped even lower, dropping below five thousand copies a day at one point, until slowly, myself and my team started to turn it around. Within five years the circulation was running at over a hundred thousand copies again, and the money just kept rolling in.
“My hard work was beginning to pay off, but despite my success I couldn’t afford to sit back and relax. That type of attitude can prove fatal in the newspaper industry.”
“When do you ever relax? You’re a workaholic.”
“You’re right. I did the exact same thing with four other failing newspapers, the Dallas Echo, the Baltimore Planet, the Chicago Herald, and the Boston Spirit, using the profits from my first baby the Ohio Chronicle to finance their purchase.” Kendall watched him puff up with pride. “Goddamn it, if I didn’t turn those bastards around, too, making a huge success out of every single one of them.”
“Wow, that’s just awesome, Mac.”
“Hard work, too.”
When she glanced down, she saw his cock was rock hard again, and instantly knew that Mac was a guy turned on by power and achievement. Well, she was turned on by his power, too. Turned on by the fact that he was incapable of quitting, no matter how hard things became. She searched her mind for the Hollywood blockbuster from the eighties. The one starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner. Ah yes that was it—The Jewel of the Nile. How did the song go again? She caught herself humming the catchy tune, “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” That gladiatorial attitude summed up Mac perfectly.