Paradise

  Meredith didn’t answer, because the reality of what he’d done was beginning to seep through her, and she didn’t want to let it. Not now, not yet. She didn’t want anything to spoil this. She closed her eyes and listened to the lovely things he continued to say to her while he laid his hand against her cheek, idly brushing his thumb over her skin.

  And then he asked something that did need a response and the magic faded, receding beyond her reach. “Why?” he asked her quietly. “Why did you do this tonight? With me?”

  She tensed at the difficult, probing question, sighed with a feeling of loss, and pulled out of his arms, wrapping herself in the afghan lying over the end of the sofa. She’d known about the physical intimacy of sex, but no one had warned her about this strange, uneasy aftermath. She felt stripped bare emotionally; exposed, defenseless, awkward. “I think we’d both better get dressed,” she said nervously, “and then I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. I’ll be right back.”

  In her room, Meredith put on a navy and white robe, tied the belt around her waist, and went back downstairs, still barefoot. As she passed the clock in the hall, she glanced at it. Her father would be home in an hour.

  Matt was on the phone in the study, fully dressed with the exception of his tie, which he’d shoved into his pocket. “What’s the address here?” he asked. She told him and he relayed it to the cab company he had called. “I told them to be here in a half hour,” he said. Walking over to the coffee table in front of the sofa, he picked up his abandoned brandy glass.

  “Can I get you anything else?” Meredith asked, because that question seemed like something a good hostess normally asked a guest when the evening neared its end. Or was that what a waitress asked, she wondered a little hysterically.

  “I’d like an answer to my question,” he said. “What made you decide to do this tonight?”

  She thought she heard a tautness in his voice, but his face was completely expressionless. She sighed and looked away, self-consciously tracing an inlaid square on the desk. “For years my father has treated me like a . . . a closet nymphomaniac, and I’ve never done anything to deserve it. Tonight when you insisted he must have some reason for ‘guarding me,’ something just snapped inside of me. I think I decided that if I was going to be treated like a tramp, I might as well have the experience of sleeping with a man. And at the same time, I had some insane idea of punishing you—and him. I wanted to show you that you were wrong.”

  After several moments of ominous silence, Matt said curtly, “You could have convinced me I was wrong by simply telling me that your father is a tyrannical, suspicious bastard. I would have believed you.”

  In her heart, Meredith knew that was true, and she glanced uneasily at him, wondering if anger had been her only reason for instigating what had just happened, or if she’d simply used anger as an excuse to experience intimately that sexual magnetism she’d felt from him all night. Used. That was the operative word. In a strange sort of way she felt guilty for using a man she had liked enormously to retaliate against her father.

  In the lengthening silence, he seemed to evaluate what she’d said, and what she hadn’t said, and to guess what she was thinking. Whatever conclusions he drew from all that obviously didn’t please him very much, because he abruptly put down his glass and glanced at his watch. “I’ll walk down to the end of the drive.”

  “I’ll show you out.” Polite sentences spoken between two strangers who’d been doing the most intimate possible things together less than one hour ago. That incongruity registered on her as she straightened from the desk. At the same moment his gaze riveted on her bare feet, shot back to her face, and then ricocheted to her hair tumbling loose about her shoulders. Barefoot, hair down, and in a long robe, Meredith did not look quite the way she did in a strapless evening dress with her hair in a sophisticated chignon. She knew before he asked the question what it was going to be.

  “How old are you?”

  “Not . . . quite as old as you think.”

  “How old?” he persisted.

  “Eighteen.”

  She expected some sort of reaction to that. Instead, he looked at her for a long, hard moment, and then he did something that made no sense to her. Turning, he went over to the desk and wrote something on a slip of paper. “This is my phone number in Edmunton,” he said calmly, handing it to her. “You can reach me there for the next six weeks. After that, Sommers will know how to get in touch with me somehow.”

  When he left, she walked upstairs, frowning at the scrap of paper in her hand. If this was Matt’s way of suggesting she give him a call sometime, it was arrogant, rude, and completely obnoxious. And a little humiliating.

  For most of the following week, Meredith jumped every time the phone rang, afraid that it was going to be Matt. Just the recollection of the things they’d done made her face burn with embarrassment, and she wanted to forget it and him.

  By the following week she didn’t want to forget it at all. Once the guilt and fear of discovery had receded, she found herself thinking about him constantly, reliving the same moments she’d wanted to forget. Lying in bed at night, with her face pressed into the pillow, she felt his lips on her cheek and neck, and she recalled each sexy, tender word he’d whispered to her with a tiny thrill. She thought about other things too, like the pleasure of being with him while they talked on the lawn at Glenmoor, and the way he’d laughed at the things she said. She wondered if he was thinking about her, and if he was, why didn’t he call . . .

  When he didn’t phone the week after that, Meredith realized she was obviously very forgettable and that he hadn’t thought her “exciting” or “responsive” at all. She went over and over the things she’d said to Matt just before he left, wondering if something she’d said was the reason for his silence now. She considered the possibility that she might have hurt his pride when she told him the truth about why she’d decided to sleep with him, but she found that very hard to believe. Matthew Farrell wasn’t the least bit insecure about his sexual attraction—he’d carried on that sexual banter with her within minutes of meeting her, when they first danced. It was more likely he hadn’t called because he’d decided she was too young to bother with.

  By the end of the following week, Meredith no longer wanted to hear from him. Her period was two weeks overdue, and she wished to God she’d never met Matthew Farrell at all. As one day drifted into the next, she couldn’t think about anything except the terrifying possibility that she’d gotten pregnant. Lisa was in Europe, so there was no one to turn to or help make the time go faster. She waited and she prayed and she promised fervently that if she wasn’t pregnant, she’d never have intercourse again until she was married.

  But either God wasn’t listening to her prayers or He was immune to bribery. In fact, the only one who seemed to notice and care that she was in a silent agony was her father. “What’s wrong, Meredith?” he asked repeatedly. Not long ago the biggest problem in her life was not being able to go to the college she wanted to attend. Now that problem seemed infinitesimal. “Nothing is wrong,” she told him. She’d been too worried to argue with him over what happened with Matt at Glenmoor, and too distracted to engage in any more battles with him thereafter.

  Six weeks after she met Matt, Meredith’s second period did not occur on its usual date, and her fear escalated to terror. Trying to console herself with the fact that she didn’t feel sick in the mornings or any other time, she made an appointment for a pregnancy examination and test.

  Five minutes after she hung up the phone, her father knocked on her bedroom door. When she called to him to come in, he walked over to her and held out a large envelope. The return address read Northwestern University. “You win,” he said shortly. “I can’t stand any more of this mood you’ve been in. Go to Northwestern if it’s that damned important to you. I’ll expect you home on weekends, however, and that is not negotiable!”

  She opened the envelope that contained the notice that she was official
ly enrolled for the fall semester, and she managed a weak smile.

  Meredith didn’t go to her own doctor because he was one of her father’s cronies. Instead, she went to a dingy family planning clinic near Chicago’s South Side where she was certain no one would know her. The harassed physician there confirmed her worst fears: She was pregnant.

  Meredith heard that with a peculiar dead calm, but by the time she got home, her numbness had given way to mindless, gripping panic. She could not face an abortion, she didn’t think she could face giving the baby up for adoption, and she could not face her father with the news that she was about to become an unwed mother and the newest scandal in the Bancroft family. There was only one other alternative, and Meredith took it: She called the number Matt had given her. When no one answered the phone she called Jonathan Sommers and lied that she’d found something of Matt’s and needed to send it to him. Jonathan provided her with Matt’s address and the information that Matt hadn’t yet left for Venezuela. Her father was out of town, so she packed a small suitcase, left him a note saying that she’d gone to visit friends, got into her car, and drove to Indiana.

  In her despondent state of mind, she saw Edmunton as a bleak town of smokestacks, factories, and steel mills. Matt’s address was in a distant rural area that, to her, was just as bleak. After a half hour of driving up one county highway and then another, Meredith gave up trying to locate the road he’d written down and pulled into a run-down gas station to ask directions.

  A fat, middle-aged mechanic came out, his eyes sweeping over Meredith’s Porsche, and then her, in a way that made her skin crawl. She showed him the address she was trying to find, but instead of telling her where it was, he turned and yelled over his shoulder, “Hey, Matt, isn’t this your road?”

  Meredith’s eyes widened as the man who’d had his head beneath the hood of an old truck in the service station slowly straightened and turned. It was Matt; his hands were covered with grease, his jeans were old and faded, and he looked exactly like a mechanic in some godforsaken little town. She was so stunned by how different he looked, and so panicked about her pregnancy, she couldn’t hide her reaction as he walked up to the car. He saw it, and it doused the surprised smile from his chiseled features; his face hardened, and when he spoke, his voice was devoid of emotion. “Meredith,” he said, acknowledging her with a curt nod. “What brings you here?”

  Instead of looking at her, he was concentrating on wiping his hands on the rag he’d pulled out of his back pocket, and Meredith had the clutching feeling that he’d just guessed why she was there, and that accounted for the sudden chill in his attitude. She wished, very devoutly, that she were dead—and with equal fervency that she hadn’t gone there. He obviously wasn’t going to want to help, and any grudging help he could offer, she didn’t want. “Nothing, really,” she lied with a hollow laugh, her hand already hovering over the gearshift. “I just decided to take a drive and found myself heading this way. I guess I’d better be going though, and—”

  He lifted his gaze from the rag to hers then, and her voice suffocated as a pair of piercing gray eyes locked onto hers . . . cold, probing, speculative eyes. Knowing eyes. Reaching down, he opened the door. “I’ll drive,” he clipped, and in her state of wild tension, Meredith obeyed automatically, getting out of the car and walking around it. Over his shoulder, Matt glanced at the fat man who was hovering at the hood of the car, watching the scenario with disgustingly ill-bred fascination. “I’ll be back in an hour.”

  “Hell, Matt, it’s already three-thirty,” the other mechanic said, his face splitting into a grin that displayed a missing front tooth. “Knock off for the day. A classy piece like this one deserves more than just an hour with you.”

  Meredith’s humiliation was complete, and to add to her misery, Matt looked absolutely incensed as he rammed the Porsche into gear and shot out onto the winding county road, gravel spraying from the tires. “Do you mind slowing down a little?” she asked shakily, surprised and relieved when he immediately eased off the accelerator. Feeling that some sort of conversation was demanded, she said the only thing she could think of at the moment. “I thought you worked in a mill.”

  “I work there five days a week. I moonlight here the other two as a mechanic.”

  “Oh,” she said uneasily. A few minutes later, they rounded a curve and he flipped on the turn indicator, then he pulled into a small clearing in a grove of trees with an old, weathered picnic table in the middle of it. Lying in the grass beside a crumbling brick barbecue was a wooden sign with faded letters carved into it that said MOTORISTS PICNIC GROUNDS. COURTESY, EDMUNTON LIONS CLUB.

  He turned off the ignition and in the silence Meredith could hear her blood pounding frantically in her ears as she stared straight ahead, trying to adjust to the fact that the inscrutable stranger beside her was the same man she’d laughed with and made love with six weeks before. The dilemma that had sent her there hung over her like a stifling pall, indecision raged at her, and tears she refused to shed ached in her eyes. He moved and she jumped, her head jerking toward him—but all he was doing was getting out of the car. He came around to her side and opened her door, and Meredith got out. Looking around with feigned interest, she said, “It’s pretty here,” but her voice sounded strained and taut to her own ears. “I really have to be getting back though.”

  Instead of answering, he leaned his hip on the picnic table, his weight braced on the opposite foot, and quirked an expectant brow at her—waiting, she supposed, for some sort of additional explanation about her visit. His prolonged silence and unwavering scrutiny were tearing away at the control she was fighting to maintain. The thoughts that had screamed through her mind all day began their terrifying chanting again: She was pregnant, and about to become an unwed mother, and her father was going to be demented with rage and pain. She was pregnant! She was pregnant! She was pregnant—and the man who was semi-responsible for her heartbreak was sitting there watching her squirm with the detached interest of a scientist observing a bug wriggling under a microscope. Suddenly and irrationally furious, Meredith rounded on him. “Are you angry about something, or are you just being perverse by refusing to say anything?”

  “Actually,” he replied evenly, “I’m waiting for you to begin.”

  “Oh.” Meredith’s burst of fury gave way to misery and uncertainty as she searched his composed features. She’d ask him for advice, she decided, reversing her decision of a few minutes ago. Just advice, that’s all. God knew, she had to talk to someone! Crossing her arms over her chest as if to protect herself from Matt’s reaction, she tipped her head back, swallowing painfully as she pretended to study the leafy canopy above. “As a matter of fact, I did have a specific reason for coming here today.”

  “I assumed you did.”

  She glanced at him, trying to guess if he’d assumed anything else, but his expression was unreadable. She returned her gaze to the leaves, watching them blur as scalding tears stung her eyes. “I’m here because—” She couldn’t say the words, the ugly, shameful words.

  “Because you’re pregnant,” he finished for her in a flat voice.

  “How did you guess?” she choked bitterly.

  “Only two things could have brought you here. That was one of them.”

  Drowning in isolated misery, she said, “What was the other one?”

  “My superb dancing?”

  He was joking, and the wholly unexpected reaction was Meredith’s undoing. The dam of tears broke; she covered her face with her hands and her body shook with wrenching sobs. She felt his hands close on her shoulders, and she let him pull her forward between his thighs and into his arms. “How can you j-joke at a time like this?” she wept against his chest, but she was painfully glad for the silent comfort he was offering with his embrace. He pressed a handkerchief into her hand, and Meredith shuddered, struggling desperately for control. “Go ahead and say it,” she told him, wiping her eyes. “I was stupid to let this happen.”

  “Y
ou won’t get any argument from me on that.”

  “Thank you,” she said sarcastically, dabbing at her nose. “Now I feel much better.” It dawned on her then that he was reacting with amazing and admirable calm and that her attitude was only making matters worse.

  “Are you absolutely certain you’re pregnant?”

  Meredith nodded. “I went to a clinic this morning, and they said I’m six weeks pregnant. I’m also certain the baby’s yours, in case you’re wondering and you’re too polite to ask.”

  “I’m not that polite,” he said sardonically. Her teary aquamarine eyes snapped to his, blazing with affront at what she mistook for his challenge, and he shook his head to silence her outburst. “It isn’t courtesy that stopped me from asking, it’s a knowledge of basic biology. I don’t doubt that I’m responsible.” She’d half expected recriminations, shock, and disgust from him; the fact that he was reacting with quiet, unemotional logic was incredibly reassuring and utterly baffling. Staring at the button on his blue shirt, she brushed away a tear and heard him calmly ask the question that had been torturing her for hours: “What do you want to do?”

  “Kill myself!” she admitted dismally.

  “What’s your second choice?”

  Her head jerked up at the reluctant smile she heard in his voice. Her brows drawing together in confusion, Meredith looked at him, struck by the indomitable strength in that rugged face, comforted by the surprising understanding she saw in his steady gaze. She pulled back slightly, needing to think, and felt a twinge of disappointment when he dropped his arms immediately. Even so, his calm acceptance of the facts had communicated itself to her, and she felt considerably more rational than she had all day. “All my choices are horrible. The people at the clinic thought an abortion was a logical choice. . . .” She waited, fully expecting him to urge her to do exactly that. If she hadn’t caught the imperceptible tightening of his jaw, she’d have thought him either indifferent to the idea or even in agreement with it. As it was, she still wasn’t completely certain. She looked away and her voice broke. “But I—I don’t think I can face it, not alone. Even if I did, I don’t know if I could live with myself afterward.” She drew a long, quavering breath, trying to steady her voice. “I could have the baby and give it up for adoption, but, oh, God, that wouldn’t solve things. Not for me. I’d still have to tell my father I’m an unwed mother, and that’s going to break his heart. He’ll never forgive me. I know he won’t! And—and I keep thinking of how my baby would feel, later on, wondering why I gave it away. And I know I’d spend the rest of my life looking at children, wondering if that one was mine, and if it’s wondering about me and looking for me.” She brushed away another tear. “I don’t think I could live with the doubt or the guilt.” She glanced at his inscrutable features. “Could you possibly comment on some of this?” she demanded.