Paradise

  “As soon as you say something I disagree with,” he informed her in a tone of authority he’d never used on her before, “I’ll let you know.”

  Daunted by his tone, but comforted by his words, she said, “Oh.” Nervously rubbing her palms on the legs of her tan slacks, Meredith continued, “My father divorced my mother because she slept around. If I go home and tell him I’m pregnant, I think he’ll throw me out. I don’t have any money, but I’ll inherit some when I’m thirty. I can try to raise my baby myself, somehow, until then. . . .”

  He finally spoke. Two words—terse and final. “Our baby.”

  Meredith nodded shakily, relieved to the point of tears that he felt that way. “The last alternative is one you—you aren’t going to like. I don’t like it either. It’s obscene. . . .” She trailed off in humiliated anguish, then she summoned all her courage and began again, her words rushing out. “Matt, would you be willing to help me convince my father we fell in love, and decided to get . . . get married right away? Then we could tell him a few weeks from now that I’m pregnant? Naturally, after the baby is born, we’ll get a divorce. Would you agree to an arrangement like that?”

  “With great reluctance,” he snapped after a prolonged pause.

  Drowning in humiliation at his long hesitation and ungracious acceptance, Meredith turned her face away. “Thank you for being so gallant,” she replied sarcastically. “I’ll be happy to put it in writing that I don’t want anything from you for the baby, and that I promise to give you a divorce. I have a pen in my purse,” she added, starting for the car with some half-formed, angry idea of writing out an agreement there and then.

  His hand locked on her arm as she stalked past him, pulling her to an abrupt halt and turning her around. “How the hell do you expect me to react?” he bit out. “Don’t you think it’s just a little unromantic on your part to begin by telling me you find the idea of marrying me ‘obscene’ and to start talking about a divorce in the same breath you mentioned marriage?”

  “Unromantic?” Meredith repeated, gaping at his harsh features, torn between hysterical laughter at his monumental understatement and alarm at his anger. But then the rest of what he’d said hit her, banishing her mirth and making her feel like a thoughtless child. “I’m sorry,” she said, looking directly into enigmatic silver eyes. “I truly am. I didn’t mean that marrying you is obscene to me. I meant that getting married because I’m already pregnant is an obscene reason for doing something that’s—that’s supposed to happen only because two people are in love.”

  Limp with relief, she watched his expression soften. “If we can make it to the courthouse before five o’clock,” he said, straightening and taking charge, “we can get the license out of the way today and get married on Saturday.”

  Getting a marriage license struck Meredith as being appallingly easy and sickeningly meaningless. She stood beside Matt, producing the necessary documents to prove her age and identity, watching him sign his name and signing hers beneath it. Then they walked out of the old courthouse in the center of town while the janitor waited impatiently to lock the doors behind them. Engaged to be married. As simply and unemotionally as that. “We made it just in time,” she said, her smile bright and brittle, her stomach churning. “Where are we going now?” she added as she slid into the car, automatically letting him drive because she didn’t want to bother.

  “I’m going to take you home.”

  “Home?” she repeated tautly, noticing he didn’t look one bit more pleased about what they’d just done than she felt. “I can’t go home, not until we’re married.”

  “I wasn’t referring to that stone fortress in Chicago,” he corrected her, sliding into the seat beside her. “I was talking about my home.” As tired and bemused as she felt, his disdainful description of her house still made her smile a little. She was beginning to realize that Matthew Farrell wasn’t awed or intimidated by anything, or anyone. Turning, he rested his arm across the back of her seat, and her smile faded at his implacable tone. “I agreed to get a license, but before we take the final step, we’re going to have to come to an agreement on some things.”

  “What things?”

  “I don’t know yet. We’ll talk more at home.”

  Forty-five minutes later, Matt turned off a county road lined with neatly tended cornfields into a rutted driveway. The car rattled and pounded over the wooden planks of a little bridge that spanned a creek, rounded a curve, and Meredith had her first glimpse of the place he called home. In sharp contrast to the well-kept fields in the distance, the quaint frame farmhouse looked forlorn and badly in need of paint. In the yard, weeds were winning the battle for space with grass, and the door on the barn to the left of the house was hanging drunkenly on one hinge. Despite all that, there was evidence that someone had once loved and enjoyed the place; pink roses were blooming riotously on a trellis beside the porch and there was an old wooden porch swing hanging from the limb of a giant oak tree in the front yard.

  On the way there, Matt had told her that his mother had died seven years before, after a long bout with cancer, and that he lived there with his father and his sixteen-year-old sister. Overwhelmed with nervousness at the thought of meeting his family, Meredith tipped her head toward the right, where a farmer was driving a tractor through a field. “Is that your father?”

  Matt paused as he leaned down to open her door, glanced in the direction she indicated, and shook his head. “That’s a neighbor. We sold most of our land years ago, and we lease the rest to him. My father lost what little interest he had in farming when my mother died.” He saw the tension in her face as they started up the porch steps, and he put his hand on her arm. “What’s wrong?”

  “I’m scared to death about facing your family.”

  “There’s nothing to be afraid of. My sister will think you’re exciting and sophisticated because you’re from the big city.” After a hesitant pause, he added, “My father drinks, Meredith. He started when they told him my mother’s illness was terminal. He holds down a regular job and he’s never abusive. I’m telling you this so you’ll understand him and be able to make allowances. He’s been completely sober for a couple of months, but that can end at any time.” It wasn’t an apology, it was a statement of fact, spoken in a calm, nonjudgmental voice.

  “I understand,” she said, though she’d never had any close association with an alcoholic in her life and she didn’t understand at all.

  She was spared the need to worry about it further because at that moment the screen door banged open and a slim girl with Matt’s dark hair and gray eyes raced onto the porch, her gaze glued to the car in the yard. “Omigod, Matt, a Porsche!” Her hair was cut almost as short as his, and it made her pretty features even more vivid. She turned to Meredith, her face alive with reverent wonder. “Is it yours?”

  Meredith nodded, taken aback by the surge of instantaneous liking she felt for the girl who resembled Matt so much, and yet had none of his reserve. “You must be incredibly rich,” she continued ingenuously. “I mean, Laura Frederickson is very rich, but she’s never had a Porsche.”

  Meredith was stunned by the mention of money and curious about Laura Frederickson; Matt looked extremely annoyed by the mention of both. “Knock it off, Julie!” he warned.

  “Oh, sorry,” she said, grinning at him. To Meredith she said, “Hi. I am Matt’s incredibly bad-mannered sister, Julie. Are you guys coming inside?” She opened the screen door. “Dad got up a little while ago,” she added to Matt. “He’s working the eleven o’clock shift this week, so dinner will be at seven-thirty. Is that okay?”

  “Fine,” Matt said, putting his hand on Meredith’s back, ushering her inside. Meredith glanced about her, her heart beating a frantic tattoo as she braced herself to meet Matt’s father. The interior of the house looked much like the exterior—quaint, with signs of neglect and wear that overshadowed its early-American charm. The wooden plank floors were scarred and scuffed, and the braided rugs that were
scattered about were worn and faded. At right angles to a brick fireplace with bookshelves built into the wall, a pair of nubby green armchairs faced a sofa upholstered in a patterned cloth that long ago had resembled autumn leaves. Beyond the living room was a dining room with maple furniture, and beyond that an open door revealed a kitchen with a sink that stood on legs. A stairway on the right led from the dining room to the second floor, and a very tall, thin man with graying hair and a deeply grooved face was walking down it, a folded newspaper in one hand, a glass filled with dark amber liquid in the other. Unfortunately, Meredith hadn’t seen him until that moment, and the uneasiness she felt as she looked around the house was still written across her face when her eyes riveted on the glass in his hand.

  “What’s going on?” he asked as he walked into the living room, glancing from Meredith to Matt to Julie, who was hovering near the fireplace, surreptitiously admiring Meredith’s pleated slacks, Italian sandals, and khaki safari shirt.

  In answer, Matt introduced Meredith to him and to Julie. “Meredith and I met when I was in Chicago last month,” he added. “We’re getting married on Saturday.”

  “You’re whaaat?” his father uttered.

  “Fantastic!” Julie cried, diverting everyone. “I always wanted a big sister, but I never imagined she’d come with her very own Porsche!”

  “Her very own what?” Patrick Farrell demanded of his irrepressible daughter.

  “Porsche,” Julie repeated ecstatically, racing over to the window and drawing the curtain back to show him. Meredith’s car glinted in the sunlight—sleek, white, and expensive. As completely out of place as she was. Patrick evidently thought so too, because when he looked from the car to Meredith, his shaggy brows jerked together until the creases between his faded blue eyes deepened to furrows. “Chicago?” he said. “You were in Chicago for only a few days!”

  “Love at first sight!” Julie declared, leaping into the breach of taut silence. “How romantic!”

  Patrick Farrell, who’d seen the uneasy expression on Meredith’s face when she glanced around the house a moment earlier, attributed her reaction to disdain for his home and for him, not to her own frighteningly uncertain future. Now he glanced out the window at her car, then turned and looked at her frozen face. “Love at first sight,” he repeated, studying her with unconcealed doubt. “Is that what it was?”

  “Obviously,” Matt said in a tone that warned him to drop the subject, then he rescued Meredith by the expedient means of asking her if she’d like to rest before dinner. Meredith would have eagerly grabbed at barbed wire to haul herself out of this. Next to telling Matt she was pregnant, this was the second most humiliating confrontation of her life. She nodded at Matt while Julie insisted that Meredith use her room, and Matt went out to the car for Meredith’s overnight bag.

  Upstairs, Meredith sank morosely onto Julie’s four-poster, and Matt put her single piece of luggage on a chair. “The worst is over with,” he told her quietly.

  Without looking up, she shook her head, twisting her fingers in her lap. “I don’t think so. I think it’s only beginning.” Seizing on the smallest of her looming problems, she said, “Your father hated me on sight.”

  Laughter tinged his voice. “It might have helped if you hadn’t looked at the glass of iced tea he was holding like it was a coiled snake.”

  Flopping back on the bed, she stared at the ceiling and swallowed, ashamed and bewildered. “Did I do that?” she asked hoarsely, closing her eyes as if to shut out the image.

  Matt looked down at the forlorn beauty draped across the bed like a drooping flower, and in his mind he saw her as she’d been at the country club six weeks ago, filled with laughing mischief and doing her effective damnedest to ensure that he enjoyed himself. He noted the changes in her while something strange and unfamiliar tugged heavily at his heart, and his mind pointed out the absurdities of their dilemma:

  They didn’t know each other at all; they knew each other intimately.

  In comparison to every other female he’d had sex with, Meredith was a complete innocent; she was pregnant with his child.

  There was a social gulf between them a thousand miles wide; they were going to bridge that gulf with marriage. And then widen it with divorce.

  They had absolutely nothing in common; nothing except one astonishing night of lovemaking—sweet, hot lovemaking, where the seductive, insistent temptress in his arms had become a panicky virgin, and then a tormenting delight. An unforgettable night of lovemaking that had haunted him for weeks afterward, a night when he had been willingly seduced, only to become the insistent seducer who was more desperate than ever in his life to give them both a climax they’d never forget.

  And he certainly had.

  Thanks to his unsurpassed diligence and determination in that endeavor, he’d made himself a father.

  A wife and child were definitely not a part of Matt’s master plan right now; on the other hand, he’d known when he devised the plan and followed it for ten long years, that sooner or later something was going to happen and he was going to have to adapt it to suit new requirements. The responsibility for Meredith and the baby was coming at a very inopportune time, but Matt was used to shouldering enormous responsibilities. No, the responsibility didn’t bother him as much as other things did—the most immediate of which was the absence of hope and laughter on Meredith Bancroft’s face. The possibility that because of what happened six weeks ago, those two things might never brighten that entrancing face of hers bothered him more than he would have believed possible. Which was why he leaned over her, braced his fists on either side of her shoulders, and in a voice he’d meant to be teasing, he ordered sharply, “Cheer up, sleeping beauty!”

  Her eyes snapped open, narrowed, dropped to the smile on his lips, then lifted to his eyes again in confused misery. “I can’t,” she whispered hoarsely. “This whole idea is insane, I see that now. We’ll only be making things worse for each other, and the baby, by getting married.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Why?” she repeated, flushing with humiliation. “How can you ask me why? My God, you didn’t even want to take me out again after that night. You haven’t even phoned. How can—”

  “I intended to call you,” he interrupted. She rolled her eyes at that unbelievable claim, and he went on. “In a year or two—as soon as I got back from South America.” If she weren’t so miserable, Meredith would have laughed in his face at that one, but his next words, spoken with quiet force, stunned her and doused the impulse. “If I’d thought for one minute you actually wanted to hear from me, I’d have called you long before this.”

  Torn between disbelief and painful hope, Meredith closed her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to deal with her bewildering, uncontrollable reactions. Everything was extremes—extremes of despair, of relief, of hope, of joy.

  “Cheer up!” Matt ordered again, inordinately pleased that she’d apparently wanted to see him again. Among other things, he’d assumed six weeks ago that in the harsh light of day, she’d reevaluate things and decide his combined lack of money and social standing were impossible obstacles to any further relationship. Evidently she hadn’t felt that way. She drew a ragged breath, and not until she spoke did Matt realize that she was trying valiantly to respond to his urging to cheer up. With a tremulous smile she said darkly, “Are you planning to be a nag?”

  “I think that’s supposed to be my line.”

  “Really?”

  “Mmm,” he confirmed. “Wives nag.”

  “What do husbands do?”

  He gave her a look of deliberate superiority. “Husbands command.”

  In contrast to her next words, her smile and voice were angelically sweet. “Would you like to bet on that?”

  Matt tore his gaze from her inviting lips and looked into jewel-bright eyes. Mesmerized, he answered with blunt honesty. “No.”

  And then the last thing that he expected occurred. Instead of cheering her up, he realized she w
as crying, and just when he was blaming himself for making her do that, Meredith put her arms around him and pulled him down to her. Burying her face in the curve of his neck and shoulder, she turned into his arms as he stretched out beside her on the bed, her slim shoulders shaking. When she finally spoke, several moments later, her words were rendered almost indistinguishable by tears. “Does a farmer’s fiancée have to can and pickle things?”

  Matt muffled a stunned laugh, stroking her luxuriant hair. “No.”

  “Good, because I don’t know how.”

  “I’m not a farmer,” he reassured her. “You know that.”

  The real cause of her misery came pouring out in a sob of deep, pure grief. “I was supposed to start college next month. I have to go to college. I p-planned to be president someday, Matt.”

  Astonished, Matt tipped his chin down, trying to see her face. “That’s a hell of a goal,” he said before he could stop himself. “President of the United States . . .”