Paradise

  When she was done, Stuart was silent for such a long time that she was afraid he was guessing the truth, but when he spoke, all he said was “Farrell’s got more control than I have. I’d be gunning for your father.”

  Meredith, who still had to deal with her father over his treachery when he returned from his cruise, let that remark pass. “In any case,” she said, “that’s obviously why Matt has decided to be cooperative.”

  “He’s being more than cooperative,” Stuart said dryly. “According to Levinson, Farrell is deeply concerned about your well-being. He wants to make a financial settlement for you. He also volunteered to sell you the Houston land for very agreeable terms—though at the time I didn’t know what land Levinson was talking about.”

  “I don’t want, nor am I entitled to, a financial settlement from him,” Meredith said emphatically. “If Matt’s willing to sell us the Houston land, that’s wonderful, but there’s no need for a meeting with Matt’s attorneys. I’ve decided to fly to Reno or somewhere and get a divorce right away. That’s why I was calling you—I wanted to ask where I could go to that would be fast and legal.”

  “No dice,” Stuart said flatly. “If you attempt to do that, Farrell’s offer is withdrawn.”

  “What makes you say that?” Meredith cried, feeling as if an invisible trap were closing around her.

  “Because Levinson made that very clear. It seems his client wants to do this thing properly and completely or not at all. If you refuse to meet with him tomorrow, or try to get a quickie divorce, Farrell’s offer to sell you the Houston land will be permanently withdrawn. Levinson implied that either of those actions would be construed by his client as a personal rejection of his goodwill. It boggles the mind,” Stuart concluded with heavy irony, “to discover that Farrell’s reputation for cold ruthlessness is only a cover to hide his sensitive heart, doesn’t it?”

  Meredith sank back into her chair, her attention momentarily diverted by several members of the executive committee who were walking past her office and into the adjoining conference room. “I don’t know what to think,” she admitted. “I’ve been judging Matt so harshly for so long, I don’t know who he really is.”

  “Well,” Stuart cheerfully informed her, “we’re going to find out tomorrow at four o’clock. Farrell wants the meeting at his office, with his attorneys, myself, and you in attendance. I can cancel an appointment. Shall I meet you there, or would you rather I pick you up?”

  “No! I don’t want to go. You can represent me.”

  “Nope. You have to be there. Levinson said his client is not flexible on the date, place, or attendees. Inflexibility,” Stuart remarked with a return of irony, “is an odd trait for a man of such extraordinary benevolence and generosity as we’re being led to believe that Farrell is by his attorneys.”

  Harassed, Meredith glanced at her watch. The meeting was scheduled to begin now. She was loath to relinquish the Houston land if Matt was willing to sell it back to her, and almost as reluctant to endure the emotional strain of having to deal with him face-to-face.

  “Even if you got your Reno divorce,” Stuart reminded her when she didn’t say anything, “You’d still have to deal with the property issue when you came back. There’s an eleven-year snarl of property rights here that can be easily unraveled if Farrell is willing—or that he can drag out in court for years if he isn’t.”

  “God, what a mess,” she said weakly. “All right, I’ll meet you in the lobby at Intercorp at four o’clock. I’d rather not go up there alone.”

  “I understand,” Stuart said kindly. “See you tomorrow. don’t think about all this until then.”

  Meredith tried, very hard, to follow his advice as she sat down at the head of the conference table. “Good morning,” she said with a bright, artificial smile. “Mark, do you want to begin? Any problems to report from the security division?”

  “One nice big fat one,” he said. “Five minutes ago the New Orleans store had a bomb threat. They’re clearing the store, and the bomb squad is on its way.”

  Everyone at the table jerked to attention.

  “Why wasn’t I notified?” Meredith demanded.

  “Both your phone lines were busy, so the store manager followed procedure and called me.”

  “I have a private direct line too.”

  “I know and so does Michaelson. Unfortunately, he panicked and couldn’t find the phone number.”

  At 5:30 that night, after a day of raw tension and helpless waiting, Meredith finally received the phone call she’d been praying for: The New Orleans Bomb and Arson Squad had found no trace of explosives and were going to remove the barriers around the store. That was the good news. The bad news was that the store had lost an entire day’s sales in the most important season of the year.

  Limp with relief and exhaustion, Meredith notified Mark Braden of the news, then she packed a briefcase full of work and went home. Parker hadn’t returned her call yet, but she knew he’d call her as soon as he received her message.

  In her apartment she dumped her coat, gloves, and briefcase onto the chair, and walked over to the answering machine to check her messages, thinking Parker might have called, but the red light was not on. Mrs. Ellis had been there, though, and left a note beside the phone saying she’d done the marketing today instead of Wednesday because she had a doctor’s appointment Wednesday morning.

  The continued silence from Parker was making Meredith increasingly uneasy, and as she walked into the bedroom, she began to imagine him in a Swiss hospital, or, worse, soothing his wounded feelings with some other woman, dancing in some Geneva nightclub. . . . Stop it, just stop it! she warned herself. The mere proximity of Matthew Farrell was causing her to start expecting disaster to befall her at every turn. It was foolish, she knew, but given her past experiences with Matt, not entirely incomprehensible.

  She’d taken her shower and was tucking a silk shirt into her slacks when the hard knocking on her door made her turn in surprise. Whoever it was had a pass key to get through the downstairs security door, which meant it had to be Mrs. Ellis, since Parker was in Switzerland. “Did you forget something, Mrs.—” she began as she opened her door, then she froze in surprise at the sight of Parker’s grim face.

  “I was wondering if you forgot something,” he said curtly, “like the fact that you have a fiancé?”

  Overwhelmed with remorse that he’d actually flown home, Meredith flung herself into his arms, noting the way he hesitated before putting them around her. “I didn’t forget,” she said, kissing his rigid cheek. “I’m so sorry!” she said, pulling him into the apartment. She expected him to take off his coat, but all he did was study her with a cool, hesitant look. “What is it you’re sorry about, Meredith?” he finally asked.

  “For worrying you so much that you thought you needed to leave the conference and fly home! Didn’t you get my message at your hotel this morning? I left word for you at ten-thirty our time.”

  At her answer, the rigidity left his face, but there was a haggard, drawn look about him that she’d never seen before. “No, I didn’t. I’d like a drink,” he said, shrugging out of his coat. “Anything you have is fine, just make it a stiff one.”

  Meredith nodded, but she hesitated, worriedly studying the deep lines etched into his handsome face by strain and fatigue. “I can’t believe you flew home because you couldn’t reach me.”

  “That is one of two reasons I flew home.”

  She tipped her head to the side. “What was the other reason?”

  “Morton Simonson is going to file Chapter 11 tomorrow. I got the word in Geneva last night.”

  Meredith wasn’t certain why he should feel the need to come home because an industrial paint manufacturer was going to file bankruptcy, and she said so as she turned to fix his drink.

  “Our bank has loaned them in excess of one hundred million,” Parker said. “If they go belly-up, we’ll lose most of that. Since I also seemed to be on the verge of losing my fiancée,?
?? he added, “I decided to fly home and see what I could do to salvage one or both.”

  Despite his attempt at flippancy, Meredith now understood the gravity of the Morton Simonson issue, and she felt even worse for adding to Parker’s worry. “You were never on the verge of losing me,” she said with an ache in her voice.

  “Why the hell didn’t you return my phone calls? Where were you? What’s going on with Farrell? Lisa told me what you found out from Farrell’s father. She said you drove to Indiana to see Farrell on Friday night so you could tell him the truth and get him to agree to a divorce.”

  “I did tell him the truth,” Meredith said gently, handing him his drink, “and he’s agreeable to a divorce. Stuart Whitmore and I are going to meet with Matt and his lawyers tomorrow.”

  He nodded, watching her in speculative silence. His next question was one she dreaded—and expected. “Were you with him all weekend?”

  “Yes. He—he was too ill to listen to anything Friday night.” Belatedly recalling that Parker didn’t know Matt had bought the Houston property in retaliation for having his rezoning request denied, Meredith told him about it. Next she explained why she’d felt she needed to get Matt to agree to a truce before she told him about her miscarriage. Finished, she stared at her hands, consumed with guilt for what she hadn’t told Parker, not certain if confessing it was a selfish way of unburdening herself or whether it was the morally and ethically correct thing to do. If the latter were the case, and she still felt that it was, this didn’t seem like the right time to tell him—not when he’d already had one major blow with Morton Simonson.

  She was still trying to decide, when Parker said, “Farrell must have been furious on Sunday when he realized your father had duped him about your miscarriage.”

  “No,” Meredith said, thinking about the wrenching sorrow and regret on Matt’s face. “He’s probably angry with my father now, but he wasn’t then. I started to cry when I told him about Elizabeth’s funeral, and I think Matt was trying very hard not to cry. It wasn’t a time for anger somehow.”

  The guilt she felt for what happened after that was in her eyes, and Parker saw it.

  “No, I suppose it wasn’t.” He’d been sitting hunched slightly forward, his forearms braced on his legs, holding his glass between his knees, watching her. Now he jerked his gaze from her face and began idly rolling the glass in his palms, his jawline tightening. And in the endless moments of lengthening silence, Meredith knew—she knew he’d guessed that she had gone to bed with Matt.

  “Parker,” she said shakily, ready to confess, “if you’re wondering whether Matt and I—”

  “Don’t tell me you went to bed with him, Meredith!” he bit out. “Lie to me if you have to, and then make me believe it, but don’t tell me you slept with him. I couldn’t stand it.”

  He’d already judged her and handed her her penance—and to Meredith, who wanted only to tell the truth and make him understand and someday forgive her, it seemed like a lifelong sentence to purgatory. He waited a minute, evidently to give them both time to put the subject to rest, and then he put the glass down. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he drew her close and tipped her chin up, trying to smile into her shadowed eyes. “From what you told me about your phone call with Stuart this morning, it sounds like Farrell’s going to be reasonably decent about all this.”

  “He is,” Meredith said, but guilt and misery made her smile wobble.

  Parker kissed her forehead. “It’s almost over, then. Tomorrow night we’ll toast your successful divorce negotiations and maybe even the acquisition of that Houston property you want so badly.” He sobered then, and what he said made Meredith belatedly realize how deeply concerned he was about matters at the bank. “I may have to look around and find you another lender to finance that store and the land. Morton Simonson is the third large borrower to file Chapter 11 on us in the last six months. If we aren’t taking the money in, we can’t lend it out unless we borrow it from the fed, and we’re already heavily borrowed there.”

  “I didn’t know you’d had two other big loans go bad.”

  “The economy is scaring the hell out of me. Never mind,” he added, standing up and pulling her to her feet, smiling reassuringly. “The bank isn’t going to collapse. We’re in better shape than most of our competitors. Could you do me a favor though?” he asked half seriously.

  “Anything,” she stated without hesitation.

  He grinned and put his arms around her for a good-night kiss. “Could you make certain that Bancroft and Company continues to make all its loan payments to Reynolds Mercantile Trust on time?”

  “Absolutely!” Meredith replied, smiling tenderly at him. He kissed her then, a long, tired, gentle kiss that Meredith returned with more fervor than ever before. When he left, she refused to compare that kiss to Matt’s demanding, hot, ardent ones. Passion was what Matt’s kisses offered. Parker’s offered love.

  40

  Matt stood in the center of the mammoth conference room that adjoined his office, his hands on his hips, looking at everything through narrowed, critical eyes. In thirty minutes Meredith would be there, and he was desperately, boyishly, determined to impress her with all the trappings of his success. A secretary and the receptionist, whose names he’d heretofore never bothered to learn, had been summoned to the conference room so that he could seek their opinion of the overall effect. He’d called Vanderwild’s office too, and left him an urgent message to come up immediately. Vanderwild was closer to Meredith’s age than Matt was, and he had good taste—it wouldn’t hurt to get his opinion on things. “What do you think, Joanna?” he asked the secretary now, his hand on the dimmer switch that controlled the tiny spotlights high above in the ceiling. “Is this too little light or too much?”

  “I—I think it’s just right, Mr. Farrell,” Joanna replied hastily, trying very hard not to show how shocked she was to discover that their formidable employer was actually subject to a human frailty like doubt, and that, moreover, he had finally put himself to the trouble of learning their names. The fact that he also had a devastating smile was not exactly a surprise. They’d seen him smile in meetings with his executives, in magazines, and newspapers, but until today, no woman at Haskell Electronics had ever had that smile focused upon herself, and both Joanna and Valerie were trying hard not to look as flustered or flattered as they felt.

  Valerie stood back, studying the effect of the centerpiece on the conference table. “I think the fresh flowers on the conference table are a lovely touch,” she assured him. “Shall I arrange to have the florist bring a similar spray every Tuesday?”

  “Why would I want to do that?” Matt asked, so absorbed in the matter of lighting that he momentarily forgot that he’d led both women to think his sudden interest in the appearance of his office and conference room was purely aesthetic and not related to today’s guests in any way. “That looks nice,” he said, watching Joanna arrange a $2,000 crystal water pitcher and matching glasses on one end of the rosewood conference table. When she straightened and backed away from the table, Matt passed a slow, critical glance over the vast room with its silver carpeting and burgundy suede sofas and chairs. Although his office and this conference room took up an entire side of the glass high rise and offered a breathtaking view of the Chicago skyline, he’d decided to close the opaque draperies. With the draperies closed and the room dim, the spotlights highlighted the satin sheen of the thirty-foot rosewood table and sent prisms of light flashing off the deeply faceted crystal on the table. Like the conference table, the interior walls were of rosewood, and a circular bar had been recessed into one of them. The doors to the bar were open now with light glancing off thousands of crystal facets on the gold-rimmed tumblers and decanters that stood upon the shelves.

  Despite that, Matt continued to deliberate about the room. With the draperies closed, the room looked more lush, cozier. Or else like an expensive restaurant, he wasn’t certain anymore. “Open or closed?” he asked the two women
, then he pressed a button that sent eighty feet of draperies gliding open across the glass wall so that the skyline was revealed, and they could help him decide.

  “Open,” Joanna said.

  “Open,” Valerie echoed.

  Matt looked out at the hazy, overcast day. The meeting with Meredith would go on for at least an hour, by which time it would be dark, and the view would be spectacular. “Closed,” he said, pressing the button and watching the draperies whoosh across the glass walls. “I’ll open them when it’s dark out,” he said, thinking aloud.

  Brushing back the sides of his suit coat, he considered the coming meeting, knowing that his obsession with minor details was foolish. Even if Meredith was duly impressed with $40,000 worth of crystal and all the other trappings of his little kingdom—even if she was cordial and relaxed and gracious when she walked in—she sure as hell wasn’t going to like her surroundings, or her host, once the meeting began.

  He sighed, half eager and half reluctant for the battle to begin, then he absently remembered the two women who were waiting to see if he needed anything else. “Thank you both very much. You’ve been very helpful,” he said, his mind going back to the appearance of the suite. He flashed a smile at both women, a warm smile that made them feel appreciated and noticed and admired at last, then he spoiled that utterly by demanding of the secretary, “If you were a woman, would you find this room attractive?”

  “I find it attractive,” Joanna said stiffly, “even as a lowly robot, Mr. Farrell.”

  It took a moment for her icy retort to register on Matt, but when he glanced over his shoulder, both women were walking through the double doors past Eleanor Stern. “What’s she miffed about?” he demanded of his own secretary, whose sole interest, like his own, was on getting work done at the office, not socializing or flirting.