Paradise Read online

  “Marianna Tighbell?”

  “Yes! don’t bother denying it! It was all over the front page of the National Tattler.”

  Matt swallowed a shout of laughter, watching her pace slowly back and forth, loving the way she moved, the way she clipped her words when she was angry, the way she clutched him when she was close to a climax—as if she weren’t certain she could count on one. Maybe she wasn’t always able to count on one with her other lovers. . . . She was gorgeous and innately passionate; he knew better than to hope she hadn’t been to bed with dozens of men. He settled for hoping they’d all been selfish, inept, or dull. Preferably, all three. And impotent.

  “Well?” she said, rounding on him. “How could you sleep with that—that woman?”

  “I’ve been to a party in her home. I have never slept with her.”

  “Am I supposed to believe that?”

  “Apparently not.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” Meredith said, giving herself a mental shake. “Matt, please,” she implored him, trying for one last time to make him abandon his insane plan. “I’m in love with someone else.”

  “You weren’t on Sunday when you and I were in bed—”

  “Stop talking about that! I’m in love with Parker Reynolds, I swear to you I am. I’ve been in love with him since I was a girl. I was in love with him before I met you!”

  Matt was about to brush that off as highly unlikely for the same reason he thought it was unlikely now, when she added, “Only he had just gotten engaged to someone else, and I’d given up.”

  That information cut him deeply enough to make him stand and brusquely say, “You heard my offer, Meredith, take it or leave it.”

  Meredith stared at him, aware that he’d suddenly turned aloof and hard. He meant it—the discussion was over. Stuart realized it too, and he was already putting on his coat and walking toward Matt’s office, pausing in the doorway to wait for her. Deliberately turning her back on Matt, she walked over to get her purse, taking vengeful pleasure in making him think she was scorning his bargain, but her mind was whirling in panic. She picked up her purse from the conference table, feeling his eyes boring holes through her back, then she walked purposefully to the sofa to get her coat.

  Behind her, Matt spoke in an icy, ominous voice. “Is this your answer, Meredith?”

  Meredith refused to reply. She swallowed, trying for one last moment to think of some way to reach him, to touch his heart. But he had no heart. Passion was all he was capable of; passion and ego and revenge were what he was made of. She picked up her coat from the sofa and draped it over her arm, leaving Matt in the conference room without so much as glancing over her shoulder at him. “Let’s go,” she told Stuart, wanting Matthew Farrell to think, at least for a minute or two, that she’d thrown his ultimatum in his face . . . hoping against hope that he would call out to her that he’d only been bluffing, that he wouldn’t do this to her father or her.

  But the silence behind her was unbroken.

  Matt’s secretary had evidently gone home for the day, and when Stuart had closed the connecting door behind the two offices, Meredith stopped and spoke for the first time. In a suffocated voice, she said, “Can he do what he’s threatening to do to my father?”

  Angry about several different things, including Meredith’s being put under this unreasonable pressure to make a decision, Stuart sighed. “We can’t prevent him from filing the lawsuits, or bringing your father to trial; I don’t think he stands much chance of gaining anything except revenge, if he does it. Win or lose, though, the day he files those lawsuits, your father’s name will be all over the headlines. How is your father’s health?”

  “Not good enough to risk being put to the strain of that kind of publicity.” Her eyes dropped to the documents he was holding, then lifted beseechingly to his. “Are there any loopholes in there we could use?”

  “Not one. No traps either, if that’s any reassurance. They’re fairly simple and forthright, they say exactly what Levinson and Pearson said aloud.” He put them on the secretary’s desk for Meredith to read, but she shook her head, avoiding the sight of the words, and, picking up a pen from the desk, she scribbled her name on the bottom.

  “Give them to him and make him sign them,” she said, tossing the pen aside as if it were dirty. “And make that—that maniac write down the days of the week that he named and initial the changes. And make it read so that if he misses a day, he can’t make it up with another!”

  Stuart almost smiled at that, but he shook his head when she handed the papers back to him. “Unless you want the five million dollars or the Houston land more than you seemed to in there, I don’t think you need to go through with this. He’s bluffing about your father.”

  Her face lit up with eagerness and hope. “Why do you think so?”

  “It’s a hunch. A strong hunch.”

  “A hunch, based on what?”

  Stuart thought of the solemn tenderness on Farrell’s face when he was holding Meredith’s hand. He thought of the way he’d looked when she slapped him and the lack of roughness in the way he’d restrained her afterward. And, although Stuart had originally thought that Farrell had some sort of eleven-week orgy in mind, the man had seemed genuinely taken aback by that accusation. Rather than tell her such nebulous things, Stuart said something more concrete: “If he’s ruthless enough to do this to your father, then why is he being so generous in his offers to you? Why not simply threaten you with suing your father to make you give in?”

  “I suppose he thinks he’ll have more fun if I’m less resistant. I also think he likes my knowing—and my father knowing—that he can throw that kind of money around and not even miss it. Stuart, my father humiliated him terribly when he was twenty-six, and he’s still trying! I can imagine the kind of malice Matt must feel for him, even if you can’t.”

  “I am still willing to bet you that man won’t lift a legal hand against your father whether you agree to this or not.”

  “I want to believe you,” she said, calmer now. “Give me a sound reason to, and we’ll walk out of here and throw those papers in the wastebasket.”

  “This is going to sound . . . odd . . . given what I’ve seen of Farrell today and the reputation he has, but I don’t think he’d do anything to hurt you.”

  She laughed—a short, bitter laugh. “How do you explain intimidation and humiliation, not to mention blackmail? What do you call what he put me through in there?”

  Stuart shrugged helplessly. “Not blackmail—he’s paying you the money, not the reverse. I would call it pulling out all the stops, using every single means you have to get what you want because you want it so badly. I also think it got out of hand in there, thanks to Pearson’s strong-arm tactics and flair for drama. I was watching Farrell most of the time, and every time Pearson got tough with you, Farrell looked angry. I think he picked the wrong attorneys for a gentle finesse attempt like this was supposed to be. Levinson and Pearson play the game only one way—they go for the throat and they play to win.”

  Meredith’s heart sank at Stuart’s flimsy rationale. “I can’t bet my father’s life on anything as flimsy as all that. And I’ll tell you something,” she added sadly. “Matt picked lawyers who think exactly like he does. You could be right when you say Matt doesn’t want to hurt me personally, but you’re wrong about what he’s after. I figured it out just as we left.” She drew a shaky breath. “Matt isn’t after me. He doesn’t even know me. What he wants is revenge against my father, and he’s figured out two ways to get it: Either he takes my father to trial, or he gets his revenge an even sweeter, better way—by using me. I’m the sweetest revenge of all. Forcing my father to see us together after all these years, making him think there’s a chance we’ll stay together—to Matt that’s an eye for an eye. So,” she said, putting her hand on his sleeve, “will you do me a favor when you take this in to him?”

  Stuart nodded, covering her hand. “What do you want me to do?”

  “