Paradise Read online

  “You’re going to be a brilliant lawyer, just like your father.”

  “Would you like to go out next Saturday night?”

  “What?” Meredith gasped, her gaze snapping to his face. “I mean,” she hastily said, “it’s nice of you to ask, but my father won’t let me date until I’m sixteen.”

  “Thanks for letting me down easily.”

  “I wasn’t!” Meredith replied, but then she forgot everything because one of Rosemary Reynolds’s boyfriends had just cut in on Parker, and he was turning toward the ballroom doors to leave. “Excuse me, Stuart,” she said a little desperately, “but I have something to give to Parker!” Unaware that she was attracting the amused notice of a great many pairs of eyes, Meredith rushed across the deserted dance floor and caught up with Parker just as he was about to leave with his friends. They gave her a curious look, as if she were a clumsy bug that had skittered into their midst, but Parker’s smile was warm and real. “Hello, Meredith. Enjoying your evening?”

  Meredith nodded, hoping he would remember his promise to dance with her, her spirits sinking to a new, unparalleled low when he continued to wait for her to say whatever she’d rushed over there to say. A hot flush of embarrassment stained her cheeks bright pink when she belatedly realized she was gazing at him in worshipful silence. “I—I have something to give you,” she said in a shaky, horrified voice, rummaging in her purse. “I mean, my father wanted me to give you this.” She pulled out the envelope with the opera tickets and birthday card, but the pearl necklace came out too and spilled on the floor. Hastily, she bent down to pick it up at the same instant Parker did and her forehead banged hard against his. “Sorry!” she burst out as he said, “Ouch!” When she lurched upright, Lisa’s lipstick fell out of her open purse and Jonathan Sommers, one of Parker’s friends, bent down to pick that up. “Why don’t you just turn your purse upside down so we can pick everything up at once,” Jonathan joked, his breath reeking of liquor.

  Horribly aware of the titters of laughter from the Eppingham students who were watching, Meredith thrust the envelope at Parker, shoved the pearls and lipstick into her purse, and turned, blinking back tears, intending to beat an ignominious retreat. Behind her, Parker finally remembered their dance. “What about the dance you promised me?” he said good-naturedly.

  Meredith whirled around, her face lighting up, “Oh, that. I’d—forgotten. Do you want to? Dance, I mean?”

  “It’s the best offer I’ve had all evening,” he gallantly replied, and as the musicians began to play “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered,” Meredith walked into Parker’s arms and felt her dream become reality. Beneath her fingertips she could feel the smooth fabric of his black tuxedo jacket and the solid hardness of his back. His cologne smelled spicy and wonderful, and he was a superb dancer. Meredith was so hopelessly overwhelmed that she spoke her thoughts aloud. “You’re a wonderful dancer,” she said.

  “Thank you.”

  “And you look very nice tonight in your tuxedo.”

  He chuckled softly and Meredith tipped her head way back, basking in the warmth of his smile as he said, “You look very nice too.”

  Feeling a fierce blush heat her cheeks, she hastily looked at his shoulder. Unfortunately all the standing up and down and tipping her head back and forth had loosened the pin holding the flower in her hair, and it slid unnoticed to hang drunkenly from its wired stem. Thinking madly for something sophisticated and witty to say, she tipped her head back and said brightly, “Are you enjoying your Christmas break?”

  “Very much,” he said, his gaze dipping to the vicinity of her shoulder and the fallen blossom. “And you?”

  “Yes, very much,” she answered, feeling incredibly gauche.

  Parker’s arms dropped away the instant the music ended, and with a smile, he said good-bye. Knowing she couldn’t stand and stare at him while he walked away, Meredith hastily turned around and caught her reflection in a mirrored wall. She saw the silk flower hanging crazily from her hair and snatched it out, hoping that it had just that very second fallen.

  Waiting in line at the coat check, she stared morosely at the flower in her fingers, horribly afraid it had been dangling on her shoulder the entire time she danced with Parker. She glanced at the girl standing beside her, and as if the other girl read her thoughts, she nodded. “Yep. It was hanging down while you danced with him.”

  “I was afraid of that.”

  The other girl grinned sympathetically, and Meredith remembered her name—Brooke. Brooke Morrison. Meredith had always thought she seemed nice. “Where are you going to school next year?” Brooke asked.

  “Bensonhurst, in Vermont,” Meredith told her.

  “Bensonhurst?” Brooke repeated, wrinkling her nose. “It’s in the middle of nowhere and it’s as regimented as a prison. My grandmother went to Bensonhurst.”

  “So did mine,” Meredith replied with a depressed sigh, wishing her father weren’t so insistent on sending her there.

  Lisa and Mrs. Ellis were slumped in chairs in Meredith’s room when Meredith opened the door. “Well?” Lisa asked, jumping up. “How was it?”

  “Wonderful,” Meredith said with a grimace, “if you don’t count the fact that everything fell out of my purse when I gave Parker the birthday card. Or that I babbled to him about how terrific he looked and danced.” She flopped down in the chair Lisa had just vacated and it belatedly struck her that the chair she was sitting in had been moved. In fact, her entire bedroom had been rearranged.

  “Well, what do you think?” Lisa asked with a sassy grin as Meredith slowly looked around, her face reflecting surprise and pleasure. Besides rearranging the furniture, Lisa had dismantled the vase of silk flowers and now bunches of those flowers were pinned to the tie-backs on Meredith’s canopied bed. Green plants had been purloined from other parts of the house and the austere room had acquired a feminine, garden atmosphere. “Lisa, you’re amazing!”

  “True.” She grinned. “Mrs. Ellis helped.”

  “I,” Mrs. Ellis disagreed, “only provided the plants. Lisa did everything else. I hope your father doesn’t object,” she added uneasily, standing up to leave.

  When she was gone, Lisa said, “I was sort of hoping your father would look in here. I mean, I had this great little speech all prepared. Want to hear it?”

  Meredith returned her grin and nodded.

  Positively oozing good breeding and impeccable diction, Lisa made her speech: “Good evening, Mr. Bancroft. I’m Meredith’s friend, Lisa Pontini. I plan to become an interior designer, and I was practicing up here. I do hope you don’t object, sir?”

  She did it so perfectly that Meredith laughed, then she said, “I didn’t know you plan to be an interior designer.”

  Lisa sent her a derisive look. “I’ll be lucky if I get to finish high school, let alone go to college and study interior design. We don’t have the money for college.” In an awed voice she added, “Mrs. Ellis told me your father is the Bancroft of Bancroft & Company. Is he away on a trip or something?”

  “No, he’s at a dinner meeting with the board of directors,” Meredith answered, and because she assumed Lisa would be as fascinated with the corporate functioning of Bancroft & Company as she was, she continued, “The agenda is really exciting. Two of the directors think Bancroft’s ought to expand into other cities. The controller says it’s fiscally irresponsible, but the merchandising executives all insist that the added buying power we’d have would increase our overall profits.”

  “That’s all mumbo-jumbo to me,” Lisa said, her attention on a big schefflera in the corner of the room. She moved it a few feet forward, and the effect of the simple change was quite startling.

  “Where are you going to high school?” Meredith asked, admiring her transformed bedroom and thinking how unjust it was that Lisa couldn’t go to college and make the most of her talents.

  “Kemmerling,” Lisa answered.

  Meredith winced. She passed Kemmerling on her way to St. Ste