Paradise Read online

  The truth was that if Alicia had been able to get under his skin as Meredith had, he’d have broken off with her as soon as he felt it happening. He didn’t want, would never permit himself, to be that vulnerable to anyone, ever again. Now that he was in Chicago, Alicia wasn’t likely to let the issue of marriage drop. If she didn’t, he was either going to have to make it clear that was permanently out of the question, or he would have to put an end to their very delightful relationship.

  Shrugging into his black tuxedo jacket, Matt strolled out of the bedroom and into the living room. He still had fifteen minutes before Stanton and Alicia were due to arrive, so he walked over to the far corner of the apartment and up to the raised platform that contained a bar and several sofas comfortably arranged for conversation. He’d chosen this building, and this apartment, because all the outer walls were broad expanses of curved glass that offered a breathtaking view of Lake Shore Drive and the Chicago skyline. For a moment, he stood looking out, then he walked over to the bar, intending to have a brandy. As he did so, his jacket brushed against the newspaper that his housekeeper had left neatly folded on an end table, and the newspaper flipped onto the floor, the sections spilling out.

  And he saw Meredith.

  Her photograph leapt out at him from the last page of the front section—her smile perfect, her hair perfect, her expression perfect. Typical Meredith—he thought with icy revulsion as he picked up the paper and looked at her picture—posed and packaged for effect and appearances. She’d been a beautiful teenager, but whoever did her media photos was going overboard to make her look like Grace Kelly as a young woman.

  His gaze shifted from her picture to the article below it, and for a split second he tensed with surprise: According to the columnist, Sally Mansfield, Meredith had just become engaged to her “childhood sweetheart,” Parker Reynolds III, and Bancroft & Company intended to celebrate her February wedding with a national sale in all their stores.

  A smirk of ironic amusement twisted Matt’s lips as he tossed the paper aside and walked over to the window. He’d been married to the treacherous little bitch, and he didn’t even know she’d had a “childhood sweetheart.” But then, he hadn’t really known her at all, Matt reminded himself. What he did know of her, he despised.

  In the midst of that thought, Matt suddenly realized that what he was thinking didn’t match what he was feeling. Evidently he was reacting out of old habit, because he didn’t actually despise her anymore. All he truly felt for her was cold distaste. What had happened between them was so long ago, time had eroded every strong emotion he’d felt for her, even loathing. In its place there was nothing . . . nothing except disgust and pity. Meredith had been too spineless to be treacherous; spineless and completely dominated by her father. When she was nearly six months pregnant, she’d aborted their baby and sent Matt a telegram afterward, telling him what she’d done and that she was divorcing him. And despite what she’d done to his baby, he’d been so insane about her that he’d flown back with some demented intention of trying to talk her out of an immediate divorce. When he got to the hospital, he was informed at the lobby desk in the Bancroft wing that Meredith did not want to see him, and a security guard accompanied him back out the doors. Thinking those instructions might have been issued by Philip Bancroft, not Meredith, Matt had gone back the next day, only to be met by a cop at the front door who slapped an injunction into his hand, an injunction Meredith herself had obtained that made it illegal for him to go near her.

  For years Matt had pushed those memories, along with the anguish he’d felt over the baby, into some dark, safe recess of his mind, because he couldn’t stand to think of it. Putting Meredith out of his mind had become an art he’d practiced and perfected. At first he did it out of self-preservation. Later, out of habit.

  Now, as he gazed at the twinkling headlights far below on Lake Shore Drive, he realized he didn’t need to do that anymore. She had ceased to exist for him.

  He’d known when he made the decision to spend the next year in Chicago that Meredith and he would be bound to encounter each other, but he’d refused to let it affect his plans. Now he realized he needn’t have bothered to consider it, because it didn’t matter. They were both adults; the past was over. Meredith was nothing if not well-bred. They’d both be able to carry off their meeting with the polite courtesy that was expected of adults in these situations.

  Matt climbed into Stanton’s stretch Mercedes and shook his friend’s hand, then his gaze shifted to Alicia, who was swathed in an ankle-length sable coat the same color as her dark glossy hair. She reached out and put her hand in his, smiling into his eyes—seductive, direct, and appealing. “It’s been a long time,” she said in that rich, soft voice of hers.

  “Too long,” he replied, and he meant that.

  “Five months,” she reminded him. “Do you intend to shake my hand or are you going to kiss me properly?”

  Matt tossed a helpless, amused glance at her father—an explanation of intent. Stanton answered with an indulgent, paternal smile of permission, and Matt tugged Alicia’s hand, pulling her unceremoniously onto his lap. “How properly did you have in mind?” he asked.

  She smiled and said, “I’ll show you.”

  Only Alicia would have dared to kiss a man the way she did in front of her father. But then, not many fathers would have smiled and politely diverted their gaze to the side window while their daughters kissed a man with a lingering sensuality designed to be sexually arousing. Alicia did and Matt was. They both knew it. “I think you’ve really missed me,” she said.

  “And I think,” he told her, “one of us should have the grace to blush.”

  “That’s very provincial of you, darling,” she informed him, laughing as she reluctantly took her hands from his shoulders. “Very middle class.”

  “There was a time,” he reminded her pointedly, “when being middle class would have been an improvement.”

  “You’re proud of that, aren’t you?” she teased.

  “I suppose I am.”

  She slid off his lap, crossed her long legs, and her coat parted to reveal a thigh-high slash in the side of her black sheath gown. “What do you think?” she asked.

  “You can find out later what he thinks,” Stanton said, suddenly impatient with his daughter’s monopoly of his friend. “Matt, what do you know about the rumors that Edmund Mining is going to merge with Ryerson Consolidated? Before you answer that,” he said, “how is your father? Does he still insist on staying at the farm?”

  “He’s fine,” Matt said, and it was true. Patrick Farrell had been sober for eleven years. “I finally convinced him to sell the farm and move to the city. He’ll be staying with me for a few weeks, then he’s going to visit my sister. I have to go out to the farm later this month and pack up family mementos. He doesn’t have the heart to do it.”

  The vast ballroom of the hotel with its soaring marble columns, glittering crystal chandeliers, and magnificent vaulted ceiling was always splendid, but tonight Meredith thought it was especially wonderful. The decorations committee had turned it into a gorgeous winter fairyland, with white gazebos blanketed in artificial snow and filled with red roses and holly. Near the center of the room, a larger gazebo with roses trailing up its columns and “snowbanks” at its sides was occupied by an orchestra playing a salute to Rodgers and Hart. Fountains bearded with glittering artificial icicles spouted geysers of sparkling champagne while waiters circulated among the guests, offering hors d’oeuvres to those who didn’t wish to help themselves from the giant silver-plated tiers laden with food.

  Tonight, the lavishness of the decorations were enhanced by the glitter of jeweled silks and brocaded velvets, as the patrons of the opera, who’d turned out en masse, paused in their laughing conversations to pose for photographers from the media or strolled about, greeting friends. Near the center of the room, Meredith stood beside Parker, his hand possessively at her waist, accepting good wishes from friends and acquaintances who