Tenderness and gratitude poured through Meredith at his words. She’d thought that he wanted out of their engagement and now, when things were worse than ever, he was standing by her. Unaware of what she was doing, she smiled softly at the phone.
Matt saw the smile and his jaw tightened, but he kept his mind on the problem at hand. “At one o’clock today,” he informed Parker, and Meredith as well, “You, Meredith, and I are going to give a joint press conference. If and when the details of our divorce decree are made public, Meredith will look like she was the victim of desertion and mental cruelty.”
“I realize that,” Parker bit out.
“Good,” Matt replied sarcastically. “Then you ought to be able to follow the rest of this: During our press conference we’re going to make a show of solidarity. We’re going to proceed on the assumption that the details of the divorce will come out, and we’re going to neutralize them in advance.”
“How?”
“By standing up in front of everyone and behaving like a nice close-knit little family who are wholeheartedly in empathy with one another and particularly with Meredith. I want every journalist who’s present to be able to get enough of an earful and an eyeful this afternoon to last them for weeks so they’ll get out of our lives and stay out. I want them to leave that press conference room drowning in sympathy and convinced there’s no ill will among us.” Pausing, Matt looked at Meredith and said, “Where can we assemble all the reporters? Intercorp’s shareholders room isn’t very large—”
“Our auditorium is,” Meredith said quickly. “It’s already decorated for our annual Christmas pageant, so it’s clean and ready.”
“Did you hear that?” Matt demanded of Parker.
“Yes!”
“Then get over here as soon as you can so we can prepare a statement,” Matt ordered, and immediately hung up. He glanced over at Meredith, and the way she was looking at him went a long way to banish the jealousy that had been eating him since she’d smiled at Parker’s voice; her eyes were filled with admiration, gratitude, and a little awe. And a lot of apprehension.
He was about to say something reassuring, when Lisa Pontini suddenly shoved away from the wall, her lips trembling with amusement. “I used to wonder how you managed to make Meredith throw caution aside and go to bed with you, get pregnant, get married, and nearly go to South America with you—all within a few days. Now I understand what happened. You’re not a tycoon, you’re a typhoon. By any chance,” she asked, “have you ever voted democrat?”
“Yes,” Matt admitted dryly. “Why?”
“I just wondered,” she lied, noting Meredith’s quelling frown. Sobering, Lisa held out her hand to him, and quietly said, “I’m very happy to meet Meredith’s husband at last.”
Matt grinned at her and returned her handclasp. He decided he liked Lisa Pontini immensely.
44
At Matt’s suggestion, Meredith had invited all the store’s senior executives and upper level managers to attend the news conference, in an effort to eliminate speculation among store employees by providing them with fact, albeit secondhand fact, from their managers. In order to soften up the press, Bancroft’s deli department had been ruthlessly raided on Meredith’s orders, and all 150 reporters who were now taking their seats in the auditorium had been partaking of liberal amounts of imported food and expensive wine.
As she waited in the wings offstage with the two men who’d rushed to her aid, Meredith felt not only gratitude, but an odd sense of well-being. Forgotten was the bargain Matt had inflicted on her and the argument she’d had with Parker the other night; all that mattered right then was that both men had wanted to help when she needed them. Trying to hold off an inevitable attack of nervousness, she looked at Matt. He was standing just a few feet away from Parker, glancing over the public statement they’d all collaborated on, but which he had mostly written. Parker was doing exactly the same thing, and Meredith knew why they were: Both men were deliberately avoiding the need to speak to, or even look at, each other. In her office they’d treated each other with cool civility while they debated the exact wording of the statement that was about to be read by Bancroft’s head of public relations, but their mutual dislike had been glaringly obvious. Both of them had agreed that when they walked out on that stage, there would be a show of friendly unity, but Meredith wasn’t certain they’d be able to put up a convincing pretense when they so obviously couldn’t stand each other.
Now, as she studied the pair of them, their instinctive animosity seemed almost funny, because she was suddenly struck with how very similar they were in some ways. Both of them were unusually tall and undeniably handsome—Parker in an impeccably tailored blue three-piece suit with his Phi Beta Kappa key pinned discreetly to his vest pocket, and Matt in a beautiful charcoal suit with a faint gray pinstripe that made his shoulders look even broader. Parker, with his sun-streaked blond hair and blue eyes, had always reminded her of Robert Redford, and never more than today. Glancing at Matt to make a comparison, she studied the tough angles of his jaw and cheek, the sternly molded lips and the thick dark brown hair that had been beautifully cut and shaped. On second thought, Meredith decided abruptly, the two men were not alike at all. Parker was the image of cultured, civilized urbanity, while Matt was . . . not. Even now there was a reckless, brash forcefulness about Matt that not even eleven years of acquired social polish could hide. In all actuality, his face was too rugged, too harsh, to be conventionally handsome—except for his eyelashes, Meredith thought with an inner smile. He had absurdly thick, lush eyelashes.
Suddenly the noise level in the auditorium dropped, lights brightened, a microphone squealed, and Meredith’s pulse began to hammer, banishing all thoughts of anything but the next few minutes. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Bancroft’s P.R. director said, “before Miss Bancroft, Mr. Reynolds, and Mr. Farrell come out here to answer any additional questions you may have, they have asked me to read the following statement, which contains the facts, as they know them, of the incident that has caused you to assemble here today. The statement is as follows: ‘Three weeks ago, the irregularities in the divorce decree supposedly obtained by one Stanislaus Spyzhalski were first noted by Mr. Reynolds. Immediately thereafter, Miss Bancroft and Mr. Farrell met to discuss the matter . . . ’ ”
As the statement neared its end, Parker and Matt put down their copies of it and started toward Meredith, positioning themselves on either side of her. “Ready?” Parker asked her. She nodded, nervously smoothing the collar of her pink wool suit. “You look lovely,” he reassured her, but Matt frowned worriedly at her tense features.
“Relax,” he warned her. “We are all victims, not perpetrators, so don’t go out there looking stiff and secretive or they’ll keep digging, looking for something we’re hiding. Be natural and smile at them. Meredith,” he said urgently, watching her struggling to draw an even breath. “I can’t pull this off alone! I need your help!”
That remark seemed so incredible coming from a man who’d barged past every obstacle she tried to put in his way lately that it wrung a laugh from her when only a moment before she’d been consumed with angry dread at having to discuss her private life in public. “That’s my girl,” he said with an approving grin.
“Like hell she is!” Parker snapped as the P.R. director finished reading and spoke their names, which was their cue to walk onstage.
Blinding flashes exploded the instant they walked onstage, minicam lights tracked them like bright white eyeballs as the trio stepped up to the bank of microphones at the podium. As had been decided, Matt opened up the interview to questions, but Meredith was startled by the humorous tack he used to do it: “So nice of you to attend our little impromptu gala, ladies and gentlemen,” he said. “If we’d have known yesterday that you were going to be here today, we’d have brought in some circus elephants to do justice to the occasion.” He paused for the laughter to subside, and then he said, “We’ll be up here for only five minutes, so let’s kee
p the questions short and to the point. I have all the time in the world to spend with you,” he joked, pausing again for the laughter to subside, “but Meredith has department stores to run and Parker has meetings this afternoon.”
His deliberate, congenial use of Parker’s and Meredith’s first names caused a momentary startled silence, but the anticipated pandemonium erupted almost instantly with questions being shouted from everywhere—the loudest from a CBS reporter in the front row: “Mr. Farrell, why was your marriage to Miss Bancroft kept secret?”
“If you’re asking why you didn’t know about it at the time,” Matt replied smoothly, “the answer is that neither Meredith nor I were of any particular public interest eleven years ago.”
“Mr. Reynolds,” a Chicago Sun-Times reporter called out, “will your marriage to Miss Bancroft be postponed?”
Parker’s smile was brief and cool. “As you heard in the statement that was read, Meredith and F—and Matt,” he corrected himself trying to smile pleasantly at Matt, “will have to go through the process of a legal divorce. Naturally, our marriage will have to be postponed until that’s final. To do otherwise would make Meredith guilty of bigamy.”
The word bigamy was a mistake, and the instant he said it, Meredith could sense Parker’s anger with himself. She could also feel the reporters’ collective mood switch from the relaxed one Matt had tried to create to one of businesslike intensity. Even the questions changed in tone: “Mr. Farrell, have you and Miss Bancroft filed for a divorce yet?” a reporter demanded. “If so, on what grounds and where?”
“No,” Matt said, smoothly stepping in. “We haven’t yet.”
“Why not?” a woman from WBBM demanded.
Matt gave her a look of comic chagrin. “My confidence in attorneys is a little low right now. Would you care to recommend one?”
Meredith knew how hard he was trying to keep the mood light, and when the next question was fired at her, she swore to help him by doing her share. “Miss Bancroft,” a man from USA Today was shouting, “how do you feel about all this?” She saw Matt lean slightly forward and open his mouth to try to fend the question off, but she stepped in herself. “The truth is,” she said with an unconsciously endearing smile, “I haven’t felt this painfully conspicuous since I had to walk onstage in the sixth-grade nutrition play, dressed up like a prune.”
Her unexpected reply startled shouts of laughter from the crowd, but Matt’s unguarded reaction caused flashes to explode all over the room as he turned his head and gazed down at her with a startled, beaming grin.
The question Meredith had dreaded came next: “Mr. Farrell, on what grounds did you two file for divorce eleven years ago?”
“We aren’t certain,” Matt joked with the woman reporter, giving her a disarming smile. “We’ve discovered that the documents we each received from Spyzhalski don’t match.”
“For Miss Bancroft,” a Tribune reporter said, and when Meredith looked at her she said, “Could you tell us why your marriage broke up?”
Meredith knew this was one question Matt couldn’t answer for her and desperation provided inspiration. In what she hoped was an amused voice, she said ruefully, “At the time, I seemed to think that life with Mr. Farrell might be . . . boring.” While they were still laughing, she added more seriously, “I was a city girl, and very young, and Matt left for the wilds of South America just a few weeks after we were married. Our lives were on very different courses.”
“Is there any chance of a reconciliation?” an NBC newsman asked.
“Of course not,” Meredith replied automatically.
“That’s ridiculous after all these years,” Parker added.
“Mr. Farrell?” the same newsman prodded. “Would you care to answer that question?”
“No,” he said implacably.
“Is that your answer, or are you declining to answer?”
“Take it whichever way you’d like,” Matt replied with a slight smile that didn’t reach his eyes, then he nodded to another reporter to ask his question. They came fast and furious, but the worst ones had already been asked, and Meredith let the noise swirl around her, feeling strangely calm. A few minutes later Matt looked around at the audience and said, “Our time is about up. We all hope that you’ve had your questions answered. Parker,” he said with an admirable imitation of conviviality, “do you have anything to add?”
Parker matched his smile. “I think everything has already been said that needed to be, Matt. Now let’s clear out of here and let Meredith get back to running this place.”
“Before you go,” one woman called out imperatively, ignoring the attempt to close the conference, “I’d like to say that you—all three of you are handling this with extraordinary grace. Particularly you, Mr. Reynolds, since you’re rather caught in the middle of something you had no control over—then or now. One might expect you to be feeling a certain amount of antagonism for Mr. Farrell for partially causing the delay of your marriage to Miss Bancroft.”
“There’s no reason for antagonism,” Parker said with a killer smile. “Matt Farrell and I are civilized men and we’re handling this in the friendliest of ways. We—all three of us—are caught in unusual circumstances that can and will be easily remedied. In fact, this whole problem is little different from a business contract that wasn’t properly executed originally and now has to have the T’s crossed.”
Lisa was waiting in the wings to catch Meredith’s hand and give her a hug. “Come upstairs with us,” Meredith whispered, hoping Lisa’s presence might force Matt and Parker to behave more civilly to each other. As they rode upstairs in the same elevator that was crowded with shoppers, a woman in the back nudged the woman beside her. “That’s Meredith Bancroft with her husband and her fiancé,” she said in a carrying whisper. “One of each—isn’t that something? And that’s Matthew Farrell, the husband. He dates movie stars!”
Meredith’s color rose at the first sentence, but no one said anything until they were safely within the privacy of Meredith’s office. Lisa broke the silence by giving Meredith another hug and a laughing look. “You were wonderful, Mer! Brilliant!”
“I wouldn’t go that far,” Meredith said weakly.
“No, you were! I couldn’t believe it when you said you’d had to dress up like a prune in the sixth grade. That’s not at all like your usual proper self.” Turning to Matt, she added, “You have an excellent effect on her.”
“Don’t you have something you’re being paid to do?” Parker snapped.
Lisa, who worked incredibly long hours, often after the store was closed, shrugged. “I put in more hours here than I’m paid for as it is.”
“I do have things I have to do,” Meredith said wryly. Parker stepped forward and kissed her cheek. Smiling into her eyes, he said, “I’ll see you Saturday night.”
Matt gave Meredith two seconds to decline, and when she hesitated, he looked at Parker and stated flatly, “I’m afraid you won’t.”
“Now, look, Farrell! Saturdays may be yours for the next eleven weeks, but this one is mine. It happens to be Meredith’s thirtieth birthday, and our plans were made weeks ago. We’re going to Antonio’s.”
Turning to Lisa, Matt said shortly, “Do you have plans for Saturday?”
“Nothing I can’t change, actually,” Lisa said, startled.
“Fine, we’ll make it a foursome,” he decreed. “But not at Antonio’s. It’s too public and too bright in there. We’ll be recognized in seconds. I’ll pick the place.” Irrationally annoyed because Meredith hadn’t told Parker no, he nodded curtly and left.
Parker followed on his heels, but Lisa lingered, a dazed expression on her face as she sank down on the arm of a chair. “My God, Mer,” she said, laughing, “no wonder you agreed to his bargain. That is the most amazing man I’ve ever met—”
“There’s nothing funny about any of this,” Meredith replied, refusing to comment on Matt’s personal qualities. “My father isn’t supposed to read or watch anything on hi
s cruise that isn’t completely frivolous. If he decides to break the doctor’s rules and watch the news, I’ll be lucky if we don’t have to send a medical evacuation plane for him.”
“If I were you,” Lisa said in disgust, “I’d be sending fighter jets out to get him, after what he did eleven years ago!”
“Don’t make me think about that now, it only drives me insane with frustration. When he comes home, he and I will have it out. I’ve thought about all this for days, though, and in fairness to my father, I think he probably believed he was protecting me from a fortune hunter who would break my heart in the end.”
“So he broke it instead!”
Meredith hesitated then quietly admitted, “Something like that.” Then she forced her personal life out of her mind for now, because that was the only way she could cope. “I’ll see you Saturday,” she told Lisa.
45
At 4:30 the following afternoon Matt glanced up from the conference table where he was meeting with three of his executives and reached for the telephone. “If it’s not an emergency,” he told Eleanor before she could give a reason for interrupting him, “I don’t want to hear about it until I’m done here.”
“Miss Bancroft is on the line,” she said with a smug smile in her voice. “Does that constitute an emergency?”
“Yes, it does,” he said wryly, but as he answered Meredith’s call, he wasn’t feeling especially pleasant. He’d phoned her late the previous afternoon to tell her Spyzhalski was under control and in a place reporters couldn’t get to him. Her secretary had said Meredith was going to be in meetings for several hours, so rather than let her stay in suspense, Matt dictated a carefully worded message to the secretary and asked her to take it to Meredith. When she didn’t bother to call him back last night, he’d wondered if she was too busy celebrating the news in bed with Reynolds to bother. All week the possibility that she was still sleeping with her fiancé had been haunting him. Last night it had kept him awake until dawn. Flicking a curt glance of apology at the men seated around the conference table, Matt picked up the phone.