Paradise Read online

  When he hung up the phone, he walked over to where she was studying the painting and waited in silence for her comments.

  “I—I think it’s wonderful,” Meredith lied.

  “Really?” Matt replied. “What do you like about it?”

  “Oh, everything. The colors . . . the excitement it conveys . . . the imagery.”

  “Imagery,” he repeated, his voice incredulous. “What specifically do you see when you look at it?”

  “Well, I see what could be mountains—or gothic spires upside down—or . . .” Her voice trailed off in sublime discomfort. “What do you see when you look at it?” she asked with forced enthusiasm.

  “I see a quarter-of-a-million-dollar investment,” he replied dryly, “which is now worth a half million.”

  She was appalled, and it showed before she could hide it. “For that?”

  “For that,” he replied, and she almost thought she saw a glint of answering humor in his eyes.

  “I didn’t mean that exactly the way it sounded,” she said contritely, reminding herself of her plan: Calm, tactful . . . “I know very little about modern art, actually.”

  He dismissed the subject with an indifferent shrug. “Shall we go?”

  When he went to get his coat from the closet, Meredith noticed the framed photograph on his desk of a very pretty young woman sitting on a fallen log with her knee drawn up near her chest, her hair tossing in the wind, her smile dazzling. Either she was a professional model, Meredith decided, or judging from that smile, she was in love with the photographer.

  “Who took the picture?” she asked when Matt turned toward her.

  “I did, why?”

  “No reason.” The young woman wasn’t one of the famous starlets or socialites Matt had been photographed with. There was a fresh, unspoiled beauty to the girl in the picture. “I don’t recognize her.”

  “She doesn’t move in your circles,” he said sardonically, shrugging into his suit jacket and coat. “She’s just a girl who works as a research chemist in Indiana.”

  “And she loves you,” Meredith concluded, turning in surprise at the veiled sarcasm in his voice.

  Matt glanced at his sister’s picture. “She loves me.”

  Meredith sensed instinctively that this girl was important to him, and if that was true—if he was possibly thinking of marrying her—then he would be as eager as she to get a swift, simple divorce. Which would make her task this afternoon much easier.

  As they walked through his secretary’s office, Matt stopped to talk to the gray-haired woman. “Tom Anderson is at the Southville zoning commission hearing,” he told her. “If he gets back while I’m at lunch, give him the number at the restaurant and have him call me there.”

  27

  A silver limousine was waiting at the curb for them. Standing beside it was a burly chauffeur with a broken nose and the physique of a buffalo, who held the back door open for her. Normally, Meredith found riding in a limousine restful and luxurious, but as they charged away from the curb, she grasped the armrest in uneasy surprise. She managed to keep her alarm from showing as the chauffeur hurtled the limo around corners, but when he ran a red light and bluffed out a CTA bus, her gaze darted nervously to Matt.

  He responded to her unspoken comment with a mild shrug. “Joe hasn’t given up his dream of driving at Indy.”

  “This isn’t Indy,” Meredith pointed out, clutching the armrest tighter as they swerved around another corner.

  “And he isn’t a chauffeur.”

  Determined to imitate his nonchalance, Meredith pried her fingers loose from the padded armrest. “Really? What is he, then?”

  “A bodyguard.”

  Her stomach lurched at this proof that Matt had done things to make people hate him enough to do him physical harm. Danger had never attracted her; she liked peace and predictability and she found the idea of a bodyguard a little barbaric.

  Neither of them spoke again until after the car lurched to a stop at the canopied entrance of Landry’s, one of Chicago’s most elegant, exclusive restaurants.

  The maître d’, who was also a part owner of the restaurant, was stationed at his usual post near the front door, clad in a tuxedo. Meredith had known John ever since her boarding school days, when her father used to bring her there for lunch and John sent soft drinks to her table, fixed up like exotic bar drinks, with his compliments.

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Farrell,” he intoned formally, but when he turned to Meredith, he added with a twinkling smile: “It’s always a pleasure to see you, Miss Bancroft.” Meredith shot a swift look at Matt’s unreadable face, wondering how he felt at the discovery that she was better known at the restaurant he’d chosen than he was. She forgot about that as they were escorted toward their table, and she realized there were several people whom she knew dining there. Judging from their shocked stares, they recognized Matt and were undoubtedly wondering why she was lunching with a man she’d publicly shunned. Sherry Withers, one of the biggest gossips in Meredith’s circle of acquaintances, lifted her hand in a wave, her gaze leveled on Matt, her brows raised in amused speculation.

  A waiter led them past banks of fresh flowers and around a fanciful white trellis to a table that was far enough away from the ebony grand piano in the center of the room to enjoy the music, but not so close that it hindered conversation. Unless you were a regular patron of Landry’s, it was nearly impossible to reserve a table with less than two weeks notice; reserving a good table, which this one certainly was, was virtually impossible, and Meredith wondered idly how Matt had accomplished it.

  “Would you like a drink?” he asked her when they were seated.

  Her mind shifted abruptly from aimless conjecture over how he got reservations to the very dire confrontation that lay immediately before her. “No, thank you, just ice water—” Meredith began, then she decided a drink might help steady her nerves. “Yes,” she corrected herself. “I would.”

  “What would you like?”

  “I’d like to be in Brazil,” she mumbled on a ragged sigh.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Something strong,” Meredith said, trying to decide what to drink. “A Manhattan.” She shook her head, negating that drink. It was one thing to be calmed, another to be lulled into saying or doing something she shouldn’t. She was a nervous wreck, and she wanted something to soothe her tension. Something she could sip slowly until it did its job. Something she didn’t like. “A martini,” she decided with an emphatic nod.

  “All of that?” he asked, straight-faced. “A glass of water, a Manhattan, and a martini?”

  “No . . . just the martini,” she said with a shaky smile, but her eyes were filled with frustrated dismay and an unconscious appeal for his patience.

  Matt was temporarily intrigued by the combination of startling contrasts she presented at that moment. Wearing a sophisticated black dress that covered her from throat to wrist, she looked both elegant and glamorous. That alone wouldn’t have disarmed him, but combined with the faint blush that was staining her smooth cheeks, the helpless appeal in those huge, intoxicating eyes of hers, and her girlish confusion, she was nearly irresistible. Softened by the fact that she had asked for this meeting to make amends, he abruptly decided to follow the same course of action that he had tried to follow the night he spoke to her at the opera—and that was to let bygones be bygones. “Will I throw you into another bout of confusion if I ask what kind of martini you’d like?”

  “Gin,” Meredith said. “Vodka,” she amended. “No, gin—a gin martini.”

  Her flush deepened and she was too nervous to notice the glint of amusement in his eyes as he solemnly asked, “Dry or wet?”

  “Dry.”

  “Beefeater’s, Tanqueray, or Bombay?”

  “Beefeater’s.”

  “Olives or onion?”

  “Olives.”

  “One or two?”

  “Two.”

  “Valium or aspirin?” he inquired in that