Paradise Read online

  He saw it then—the note propped on the nightstand, written on the same pad of yellow paper she’d used to make her notes for the board of directors meeting. He snatched it up, hope flaring in his chest that she’d merely gone to find a grocery store or something.

  “Matt,” she’d written, “what happened this afternoon should never have happened. It was wrong for both of us—understandable, I suppose—but terribly wrong. We both have our own lives and plans for the future, and we have people in our lives who love and trust us. We betrayed them by doing what we did. I’m ashamed of that. And even so, I will always remember this weekend as something beautiful and special. Thank you for it.”

  Matt stood staring in furious disbelief at the words, feeling absurdly—stupidly—as if he’d been raped! No, not raped, used, like some paid stud who she could take to her bed when she wanted a “special” time, and then dismiss afterward like an insignificant peon whom she was ashamed to have been with.

  She hadn’t changed one damned bit in all these years! She was still spoiled and self-centered and so convinced of her own superiority that it wouldn’t occur to her that maybe, just maybe, someone from a less privileged class than her own might be worth consideration. No, she hadn’t changed at all, she was still a coward, still—

  Matt checked himself in mid-thought, amazed that his anger could actually obliterate his memory of everything that he’d discovered. For the last few minutes he’d been judging her based on all the erroneous things he’d believed of her for eleven years. That was habit; it was not reality. Reality was what he’d learned of her in this room; truths so painful, and so beautiful—that they’d made him ache. Meredith was no coward, she had never run away from him, from motherhood, or even her tyrannical father who she’d had to deal with at the store all these years. She had been eighteen, and she had thought she loved Matt—a slight smile touched his eyes at the memory of her astounding admission—but it vanished when he thought of her lying in the hospital waiting for him. She had sent flowers for their baby, and named her Elizabeth for his mother. . . . And when he never came back, she had picked up the pieces of her life, gone back to college, and faced whatever else the future handed her. Even now it made him cringe to remember the things he’d said and done to her in the last few weeks. Jesus, how she must have hated him!

  He had threatened her and bullied her . . . and yet, when she discovered the facts from Matt’s father, she had braved a snowstorm to come and tell him the truth, and she had done it knowing that when she arrived, she was going to find brutal hostility.

  Leaning a shoulder against the bedpost, he gazed at the bed. His wife, Matt decided with mounting pride, didn’t run away from things that would make most people take to their heels.

  But tonight she had run from him.

  What, he wondered, would make Meredith flee like a frightened rabbit, when, for the first time all weekend, there could have been total harmony between them?

  In his mind he quickly reviewed the past two days, looking for answers. He saw her reaching for his hand, asking for a truce, and he remembered the way she’d watched their hands joining—as if the moment was profoundly meaningful to her. Her fingers had trembled when he touched them. He saw her smiling up at him with those glowing blue-green eyes of hers—I’ve decided to be just like you when I grow up. But most of all he remembered the way she had cried in his arms when she was telling him about their baby . . . the way she had put her own arms around him too, holding him to her as naturally as she had in this bed . . . the way she had moaned beneath him, her nails biting into his back, her body welcoming his with the same exquisite, shattering ardor she had shown him when she was eighteen.

  Matt slowly straightened, struck by the most obvious answer. Meredith had very likely run away tonight because what had happened between them was as shattering to her as it was to him. If it was, then all her plans for her future with Parker and the rest of her life were jeopardized by what had happened in this house and especially in this bed.

  She was no coward, but she was cautious. He’d noticed that when they’d talked about the department store. She took calculated risks, but only when the rewards were great and the likelihood for failure was comparatively small. She’d admitted that herself downstairs.

  Given that, she sure as hell wasn’t going to want to risk her heart or her future on Matthew Farrell again if she could possibly avoid it. The ramifications of making love with him, of getting involved with him again, were too overwhelming for her to face. The last time she’d done it, her life had become a living hell. He realized that to Meredith, the likelihood for failure with him was enormous, and the rewards were . . .

  Matt laughed softly—the rewards were beyond her wildest imaginings. Now all he had to do was convince her of it. To do that, he was going to need time, and she wasn’t going to want to give it to him. In fact, considering the way she’d fled tonight, he half expected her to fly to Reno or somewhere else immediately in order to sever all ties with him at the first possible moment. The longer he thought, the more convinced he became that she’d do exactly that.

  In fact, there were only two things he was more sure of, and that was that Meredith still felt something for him, and that she was going to be his wife in every way. To accomplish that, Matt was now prepared to move heavenand earth; in fact, he was even prepared to permanently forgo the gratification of finding her lousy father and making her an orphan. In the midst of those thoughts, he suddenly realized something that made him stiffen in alarm: The roads that Meredith was driving on were bound to be treacherous in places, and she was not likely to be concentrating very well right now.

  Turning, he headed swiftly down the hall to his room.

  Walking over to his briefcase, he took out the phone and made three calls. The first call was to Edmunton’s new chief of police. Matt instructed him to have a patrolman watch for a black BMW on the overpass and to discreetly escort the car back to Chicago to make certain the driver got home safely. The police chief was perfectly willing to comply with the extraordinary request; Matthew Farrell had contributed a very large sum to his election campaign.

  His next phone call was to the home of David Levinson, senior partner in Pearson & Levinson. Matt instructed Levinson to appear, with Pearson in tow, in Matt’s office at eight sharp the next morning. Levinson was perfectly willing to comply. Matthew Farrell paid them an annual retainer of $250,000 to do their legal utmost—whenever and wherever he wanted it done.

  The last call was to Joe O’Hara. Matt instructed him to get out to the farm and pick him up immediately. Joe O’Hara balked. Matt Farrell paid him a lot of money to be at his beck and call, but Joe also regarded himself as Matt’s protector, and his friend. He didn’t figure it was in Matt’s best interests to have a means of escape from the farm if Meredith wanted him to stay. Instead of agreeing to leave at once, Joe said, “Is everything all patched up between you and your wife?”

  Matt scowled at this unprecedented failure to follow instructions at once. “Not exactly,” he said impatiently.

  “Is your wife still there?”

  “She’s already left.”

  The sadness in O’Hara’s voice banished Matt’s annoyance with his prying and made him again realize the depth of his driver’s loyalty. “So you let her go, huh, Matt?”

  Matt’s smile was in his voice. “I’m going after her. Now, get your tail out here, O’Hara.”

  “I’m on my way!”

  When he hung up the phone, Matt stared out the window, planning his strategy for tomorrow.

  39

  Good morning,” Phyllis said, her forehead creasing in a worried frown as Meredith walked past her Monday morning without her usual greeting, two hours late for work. “Is anything wrong?” she asked, getting up from her new desk outside the president’s office and following Meredith inside. Miss Pauley, who’d been Philip Bancroft’s secretary for twenty years, had decided to take a long-overdue vacation while her employer was on leave.