Paradise (100 page)

Meredith didn't notice. She was kissing him back, melting against him, utterly oblivious to all of it... the cheering, the clapping, the laughter, the white flashes from raised cameras. She was already halfway to her destination.

Chapter 57

With her eyes closed and a smile on her lips, Meredith awakened slowly in Matt's bed, letting memories of the previous night drift lazily through her mind like soft music. Together they had mingled with their guests, enduring the good-natured jibes about their prolonged kiss and obvious reconciliation, and she had loved playing the part of his hostess. After the party, in bed with him, she'd loved playing the part of his wife a thousand times more. Trust and commitment, she sleepily decided, evidently had a very profound effect on lovemaking, because last night's stormy lovemaking had completely eclipsed everything else that had gone before.

Sunlight filtered through the draperies across the room, and she rolled over onto her back, opening her eyes. Matt had kissed her good-bye a while ago, and said he was going out to get some sweet rolls for their breakfast. He'd left a cup of coffee on the table beside the bed for her, and she eased up onto the pillows.

She'd just taken a sip when he walked into the room with a white bakery bag in his hand, a folded newspaper under his arm, and an odd, tense expression on his handsome face. "Good morning," she said, smiling as he bent over to kiss her. "What's that?" she added, noting the tabloid-size paper.

Matt had promised her last night never to keep things from her, but at that moment he'd have preferred a public flogging to showing her that newspaper. "It's the
Tattler,
"he said. "I saw it when I was paying for the sweet rolls. Somehow," he added as he reluctantly held it toward her, "they discovered the terms of our eleven-week agreement, and they've interpreted them in their own inimitable fashion." He watched her reach for it, remembering her disgust at the kind of sensational publicity he'd gotten over the years, knowing that this sort of treatment was going to continue to plague her in the future, partly because she was married to him, and partly because of the public fascination with their aborted divorce. Bracing himself for some sort of condemnation, or an explosion of justifiable outrage, he watched her unfold it and look at it.

Meredith's gaze riveted on the lurid headline:

HEIRESS CHARGES HUSBAND $113,000 A NIGHT FOR SEX

"I couldn't figure at first how they came up with that figure," Matt said. "Then it hit me. They multiplied four dates a week times eleven weeks and divided that into the five million 1 promised you. I'm sorry," he said. "If I could control it, I—"

Suddenly she pulled the newspaper against her face and let out a shriek of laughter that drowned out his apology. She laughed so hard that she slid limply down the pillows while the room filled with her musical hilarity. "One hundred and
th
-thirteen
th
-thousand dollars," she choked, her shoulders lifting off the bed, and Matt broke into a grin of profound relief that turned to tenderness, because he knew what she was doing: She was confronting something she hated and finding a way to deal with it so it couldn't harm them.

"Have I ever told you," he whispered huskily, leaning down and bracing his hands on either side of her heaving shoulders, "how proud I am of you?"

She shook her head hard, still laughing, and he pulled the paper away from her face and kissed her flushed cheeks, silencing her giggles with his mouth.

"Are y-you sure," she whispered, overcome with a fresh surge of hilarity even while she put her arms around his shoulders and pulled him down to her, knowing he wanted to make love again, "that you can a-afford to do this again?"

"I think it's within my budget," he tried to tease, but his hand trembled as he reverently smoothed a strand of golden hair off her cheek.

"Yes, but now that I've accepted this as a permanent
job,
do I get periodic wage increases too—over and above the one hundred thirteen thousand?" she joked, her hands cradling his face, her swimming eyes looking into his, "and a benefits package, with medical insurance and guaranteed bonuses?"

"Absolutely," he promised, turning his face into her hand and kissing her palm.

"Oh, no!" she moaned. "You'll send me soaring straight into a higher tax bracket."

Her husband muffled a laugh against her throat, and Meredith turned into his arms. They spent the next hour sending each other soaring straight into the clouds instead.

Chapter 58

On Sunday night the feature story on the six o'clock news was the arrest of Ellis Ray Sampson who'd been charged with the murder of Stanislaus
Spyzhalski
. According to St. Clair County officials,
Spyzhalski
had not been killed by one of his duped clients, as they'd originally believed, but by the outraged husband of a Belleville woman with whom
Spyzhalski
had been having a fling. Mr. Sampson, who had turned himself in and confessed to having beaten up
Spyzhalski
, swore that the bogus attorney had been alive when he dumped him in the ditch. Since the coroner's report indicated that
Spyzhalski
had also had a heart attack that same night, there was a possibility that the legal charges against Sampson might be reduced from murder to manslaughter.

Matt and Meredith watched the newscast together.
Matt sarcastically remarked that Sampson should be given a medal for ridding the world of a human parasite.

Meredith, who knew how it felt to be victimized by
Spyzhalski
, said she hoped the charges against Sampson
would be reduced.

Matt sent Pearson and Levinson down to Belleville to make sure of it.

On Tuesday of the following week, Charlotte Bancroft, president of Seaboard Industries, and her son Jason were officially questioned in Palm Beach, Florida, regarding a series of bomb threats and stock manipulations against Bancroft & Company. Both of them heatedly denied any connection to either as well as any desire to take over Bancroft & Company. On Wednesday, Caroline Edwards Bancroft voluntarily appeared before a Florida grand jury and testified that Charlotte Bancroft had indeed been planning to take over Bancroft & Company, and that Charlotte had further hinted at having planned something that would force B & C's stock to drop.

In the Cayman Islands, where he was vacationing with his lover, Joel Bancroft, former treasurer of Seaboard Industries, read about the suspicions being cast upon his mother and brother. He had resigned six months earlier, when they had both instructed him to open dummy accounts under false names with a particular stockbroker who was willing to collaborate, and to begin buying up blocks of B
&
C stock, which was to then be "parked" in the bogus accounts.

Lying on the beach, looking out at the water, Joel thought about his mother, whose thirty-year plan to avenge herself against Philip Bancroft had been a demented, driving obsession, and about his brother, who— like his mother—had despised Joel for being gay. After several hours he reached a decision and made a phone call.

The following day Charlotte and Jason Bancroft were arrested and charged with several counts of illegal activities on a tip from an anonymous caller who'd told police the names of the fraudulent stock accounts. Charlotte denied any knowledge of those accounts. Jason, who'd opened the accounts and paid off the maker of the bombs at his mother's instructions, soon began to fear that he was about to become his mother's sacrificial lamb. He beat her to the punch by offering to testify against her in return for immunity from prosecution.

The board of directors of Seaboard, seeing an immediate need to salvage their corporate image, and acting on Charlotte's instructions, named Joel Bancroft president and chief operating officer.

In Chicago, Meredith watched it all happening on the television news, and the ache of longing she felt every time someone mentioned Bancroft & Company almost outweighed the shock she had felt at discovering that Charlotte and Jason were responsible for the things she'd believed Matt had done.

Sitting beside her on the sofa, Matt saw the sadness that darkened her eyes whenever her company's name was mentioned, and he reached out for her hand, threading his fingers through hers. "Have you thought about what you want to do next, now that you have so much free time?"

Meredith knew he was referring to a new career to substitute for the one she'd given up when she sided with him, but she had a feeling her answer would upset and alarm him. Deliberately choosing to misunderstand his question about her free time, she looked down at their joined hands and smiled at the 14-carat emerald-cut diamond he'd slid onto her ring finger along with a platinum wedding band. "I might have considered making a career out of going shopping every day," she teased, "but you've already bought me jewels and a luxury car. Anything else I could buy would be an awful anticlimax, don't you think? I mean, what's left?"

"How about a small jet," he said, kissing her nose, "or a large yacht?"

"Don't you dare—" she warned him, but he only laughed at her horrified look.

"There must be something else you want," he said.

Meredith sobered, and decided to tell him the truth. "There is. I want it badly, Matt."

"Name it, and it's yours."

She hesitated, her thumb idly rubbing the new gold wedding band he wore on his finger, then she lifted her eyes to his. "I want to try to have another baby."

His reaction was instantaneous and fierce. "No. Absolutely not. You weren't going to risk it if you married Parker, and you're not going to risk it for me!"

"Parker didn't want children," she countered. "And you did say," she reminded him softly,
"anything
I want. And I do want that."

Normally the look in her eyes would have melted him, but she'd explained to him in bed one night that the odds were high that she'd miscarry again late in her pregnancy. He already knew she’d almost died the last time, and the thought of risking that was absolutely beyond consideration. "Don't do this to me," he warned, his voice terse and pleading.

"There are obstetricians who specialize in women who have problem pregnancies. I went to the library yesterday, and did a lot of reading about it. There are new drugs and some new techniques they're trying out—"

"No!" he interrupted, his voice taut. "Absolutely not. Ask anything else of me, but not that. I couldn't endure the worry. I mean that."

"We'll talk about it again later," she said with a smile that was
both stubborn and serene.

"My answer will be the same," he told her.

He would have said more, but just then the newscaster announced that they had a late-breaking development in the recent Bancroft & Company takeover furor, and Meredith's gaze snapped to the television screen. "Philip A. Bancroft," said the newscaster, "called a news conference late this afternoon to comment on reports that his daughter, Meredith Bancroft, was fired as B and C's acting president as a result of her connection to industrialist Matthew Farrell."

Dread made Meredith's hand tighten on Matt's as her father's grim, unsmiling face appeared on the television screen. Standing stiffly at the podium in Bancroft's auditorium, he read from a prepared statement:

"In response to reports that my daughter's marriage to Matthew Farrell resulted in her termination as B and C's interim president, the board of directors, including myself, categorically deny any such allegations. My daughter is enjoying a brief and long-overdue honeymoon with her husband, at the end of which she is expected to reassume her role here." He paused and looked directly at the camera, and only Meredith realized that he wasn't issuing a statement, he was issuing an
order. To her.

Shock had already sent her halfway to her feet, but that was nothing compared to what she felt a moment later when he commented on something that had been appearing all week in the Chicago papers. "In response to published rumors that there is a long history of continuing ill feeling between Matthew Farrell and myself, I wish to state that until very recently I had no opportunity to know my"—he paused to self-consciously clear his throat—"my,
er
, my son-in-law."

It hit Meredith what he was doing. "Matt," she cried, clutching his arm in laughing disbelief, "he's
apologizing
to you!" Matt shot her a dubious look that abruptly changed to reluctant amusement as Philip Bancroft continued. "As everyone now knows, Matt Farrell and my daughter were married for a few short months many years ago, a marriage which we all believed had been ended by an unfortunate and premature divorce. However, now that they've been reunited, I can only say that having a man of Matthew Farrell's caliber as a son-in-law is something that any father would deem an—" he paused to clear his throat again, and then he absolutely glowered at the camera as he reluctantly but forcefully said—"an
honor!"

Meredith stared at the screen as it switched to the sports scores, and her laughter faded as she looked at her husband. "I made him promise that he'd apologize to you when he found out you were innocent." Laying her fingers against his cheek in an unconscious gesture of appeal, she whispered achingly, "Could you possibly find it in your heart to put the past behind you and try to be friends with him now?"

Privately, Matt thought that nothing Philip Bancroft did, including the televised statement he'd just made, could begin to atone for what he'd done to them, let alone make Matt regard the man as a friend. He considered telling her that, but as he gazed into his wife's shimmering blue eyes, he couldn't quite make himself say that. "I could try," he said. He heard how revolted he sounded by the idea, and he felt obliged to give her additional reassurance, so he dishonestly but forcefully remarked, "That was a very nice speech that he made."