Paradise Read online

  With relief he heard Meredith say his name, and he leaned forward to meet the fascinated sixty-two-year-old who was scrutinizing his every feature. “How do you do,” Matt said, leaning forward to shake her outstretched hand. As he did so, a stocking draped itself across his head from the overhead wire, and he had to pause to untangle himself from it. He held out his hand again, and it draped itself languorously over his cashmere-clad shoulder.

  “Why, Meredith!” Mrs. Millicent burst out excitedly, watching him bat the nylon off his shoulder. “He reminds me of Cary Grant!” Meredith cast a skeptical glance at him just in time to see another stocking drape itself over his ear. He yanked this one down and put it on the counter, and she tore her laughing gaze from him, then she quickly concluded her conversation with Mrs. Millicent.

  With Matt in the lead, they retraced their way through the crowd. Unfortunately, when they were almost to the aisle, the shopper who’d mistaken him for a purse-snatcher pointed him out to everyone within hearing. “That’s him!” she called, oblivious to Meredith, who was right on his heels, blocked from view by his shoulders. “That’s Matthew Farrell—Meredith Bancroft’s husband, the one who used to date Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer!”

  A lady on Matt’s right thrust her shopping bag at him. “Could I have your autograph?” she pleaded, searching in her purse for a pen in the apparent hope he would sign the bag. Matt reached for Meredith’s arm, shouldering past the woman. Behind him, she announced in offended anger to everyone else, “Who wants his autograph anyway? I just remembered that he also dated a porn queen!”

  Matt could feel the tension radiating from Meredith even after they dashed through the revolving doors and were outside in the frigid night air. “Despite what you’re thinking,” he said defensively, knowing how much she hated notoriety, “people don’t ask me for autographs. It’s only happening now because our faces are plastered all over the local news.”

  She flashed him a dubious look and said nothing.

  The situation in the restaurant across the street was worse than her store. The place was packed with Christmas shoppers having early dinners, and they were waiting in double lines in the vestibule. “Do you think we should wait?” Meredith asked him. And before the words were out of her mouth, the buzzing started around them. Opposite them, a woman leaned across the three-foot space that separated her line from the one Matt and Meredith were in. “Excuse me,” she said, speaking to Meredith with her eyes on Matt. “Aren’t you Meredith Bancroft?” Without waiting for Meredith to answer, she said to Matt, “And that makes you Matthew Farrell!”

  “Not really,” Matt said shortly, and it didn’t take the pressure he was exerting on Meredith’s arm to make her agree to get out of there.

  “Let’s go to my apartment and order a pizza,” she said when they reached her car in its reserved spot in the parking garage.

  Furious with fate for doing this to him, Matt waited while she unlocked the car and got into it, but he stopped her from closing the door. “Meredith,” he said firmly, “I have never dated a porn queen.”

  “That’s a load off my mind,” she said with a sidelong smile, and Matt was surprised and relieved that she’d evidently regained much of her humor and equilibrium. “And I will admit,” she added, turning on the ignition and waiting for the old BMW to catch, “Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer are both blondes.”

  “I know Michelle Pfeiffer very casually,” he said, helpless not to defend himself, “and I’ve never met Meg Ryan.”

  “Really?” Meredith dryly replied, her hand on the door handle to close it. “Mrs. Millicent was all excited because she was supposedly on your yacht for a cruise.”

  “She was. I wasn’t!”

  46

  They had pizza and wine at her place—picnic-style, on the floor in front of the fire. They’d finished eating and were having the last of the wine before they tackled the work they’d brought in. Matt leaned forward and reached for his wineglass, surreptitiously watching her gazing into the fire, her arms wrapped around her updrawn knees. She was, he thought, an utterly captivating bundle of contradictions. A few weeks ago he’d watched her walk down the grand staircase at the opera, looking like a regal socialite. At her office today, in a business suit, surrounded by her staff, she was every inch an executive. Tonight, sitting before the fire in jeans that hugged her shapely bottom and a bulky cable-knit sweater that came almost to her knees, she was . . . the girl he had known long ago. Maybe that change from executive to artless girl was why he couldn’t gauge her mood or guess her thoughts. Earlier, he’d thought she was upset over the mention of the women allegedly in his life, but all during their meal she’d been delightful company.

  Now, as he watched her staring into the fire, he wondered about the faint smile at her lips that had appeared at odd times throughout their meal.

  “What’s so funny?” he asked idly, and his question unexpectedly made her eyes widen and shoulders start to shake with laughter. “Well?” he prodded, frowning, when she shook her head, folded her arms on her knees, and hid her laughing face in them. “Meredith?” he said a little curtly, and she laughed harder.

  “It’s you,” she managed, giggling. “You, with those stockings clinging to you—” Matt started to grin even before she added merrily, “If you could have seen the look on your face!” She got herself under control, and with her head still in her arms, she turned her laughing face toward him and stole a peek. What she saw made her roll her eyes and dissolve with laughter again. “Cary Grant!” she chortled, her shoulders shaking. “Mrs. Millicent must be getting senile! You no more resemble Cary Grant than a p-panther resembles a p-pussy cat!”

  “Which one am I?” he chuckled, but he already knew she likened him to the panther. Lying back, he folded his arms beneath his head and smiled up at the ceiling, utterly contented with his lot in life—for the first time in his life.

  “I suppose we’d better get to work,” she said finally. “It’s eight forty-five already.”

  Matt rolled reluctantly to his feet, helped her clear away the few remnants of their meal, then walked over to the sofa, unlatched his briefcase, and took out a thirty-page contract he needed to read.

  Across from him, Meredith sat down in a chintz-covered chair and took out her own work. Despite her earlier merriment, she’d been vibrantly and uneasily aware of his nearness throughout their meal. Having Matt there, behaving as tamely as the kitten she’d laughed about, was anything but amusing or soothing to her nerves. For unlike Mrs. Millicent, she didn’t underestimate the threat he posed—he was that panther, patiently stalking his prey. Unhurried, graceful, predatory, and dangerous. She understood the threat he posed—and even so, she was more hopelessly attracted to him with each hour he was near.

  She glanced covertly at him. He was sitting across from her on the sofa, his shirt-sleeves folded back on his forearms, his ankle propped on the opposite knee. As she watched, he put on a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses that looked incredibly sexy on him, opened a file folder on his lap, and started to read the documents inside it.

  He felt her watching him, and he glanced up and saw her staring at the glasses in surprise. “Eyestrain,” he explained mildly, then he bent his head and returned his attention to the documents.

  Meredith admired his ability to reach a state of instant, intense concentration, but she couldn’t come near matching it. She stared into the fire, thinking about what Sam Green had told her. From there her thoughts drifted to the bomb scare in the New Orleans store, the problem with Gordon Mitchell, and the phone call from Parker yesterday, telling her that he’d have to find her another lender to make her the loan for the Houston land. All of it revolved around and around in her mind as fifteen minutes became twenty and then thirty.

  Across from her, Matt said quietly, “Want to talk about it?”

  Her head jerked around and she saw him watching her, the contract he’d been reading lying discarded in his lap. “No,” she said automatically. “It�€