Paradise (11 page)

As if he sensed that Meredith was looking at him, Joel glanced up, his expression carefully noncommittal. He didn't look strange to Meredith or at all threatening. In fact, when she'd last seen him on the occasion of the wedding, Joel had gone out of his way to be nice to her. At the time, Meredith had felt sorry for him because his mother openly preferred Jason, and Jason, who was two years older, seemed to feel nothing for his brother but contempt.

Suddenly Meredith couldn't stand the oppressive atmosphere in the room any longer. "If you'll excuse me," she said to the lawyer, who was spreading some papers out on the desk, "I'll wait outside until you're finished."

"You'll need to sign these papers, Miss Bancroft."

"I'll sign them before you leave, after my father has read them."

Instead of going upstairs, Meredith decided to go outside. It was getting dark and she wandered down the steps, letting the evening breeze cool her face. Behind her, the front door opened, and she turned, thinking it was the lawyer calling her back inside. Joel stood there, arrested in
midstep
, as startled as she by their confrontation. He hesitated as if he wanted to remain but wasn't certain he was welcome.

It had been hammered into her head that one was always gracious to anyone who was one's guest, so Meredith tried to smile. "It's nice out here, isn't it?"

Joel nodded, accepting the unspoken invitation to join her if he wished, and he walked down the steps. At twenty-three, he was shorter by several inches than his older brother, and not as attractive as Jason. He stood, looking at her, as if unable to think what to say. "You've changed," he finally said.

"I imagine I have. I was eleven years old the
last
time I saw you."

"After what just happened in there, you must wish to God you'd never laid eyes on any of us."

Still a little dazed by the terms of her grandfather's will and unable to assimilate what it all meant in terms of the future, Meredith shrugged. "Tomorrow I may feel that way. Right now I just feel—numb."

"I'd like you to know—" he said haltingly, "that I didn't plot to steal your grandfather's affection or his money from your father."

Unable to either hate him or forgive him for cheating her father of his rightful inheritance, Meredith sighed and looked up at the sky. "What did your mother mean in there—about settling a score with my father?"

"All I know is that they've hated each
other for as long as I can remember. I have no idea what started it, but I do know my mother won't stop until she's satisfied with her revenge."

"God, what a mess!"

"Lady," he replied with deadly certainty, "it's only just
begun."

A chill raced up Meredith's spine at that grim prophecy, and she snapped her gaze from the sky to his face, but he merely lifted his brows and refused to elaborate.

Chapter 8

Meredith yanked a dress out of her closet to wear to the Fourth of July party, tossed it across the bed, and pulled off her bathrobe. This summer, which had begun with
a funeral, had degenerated into a five-week battle with her father over which college she would attend—a battle that had escalated into a full-fledged war the previous day. In the past, Meredith had always bent over backward to please him; when he was needlessly strict, she told herself it was only because he loved her and was afraid for her, when he was brusque, she rationalized that he had responsibilities that tired him, but now, now that she'd belatedly discovered that his plans for her were on a collision course with her own, she was not willing to give up her dreams to pacify him.

From the time she was a young girl, she'd assumed that someday she would have the chance to follow in the footsteps of all her forebears and take her rightful place at Bancroft & Company. Each successive generation of Bancroft men had proudly worked their way up through the store's hierarchy, starting there as a department manager, then moving up through the ranks to vice president, and later, president and chief executive officer. Finally, when they were ready to turn the direction of the store over to their sons, they became chairman of the board. Not once in nearly one hundred years had a Bancroft failed to do that, and not once in all that time had any Bancroft ever been ridiculed by the press or by the store's employees for being incompetent or undeserving of the titles they eventually held. Meredith believed, she
knew,
she could prove herself worthy, too, if she were just given the chance. All she wanted or expected was that
chance.
And the only reason her father didn't want to give it to her was that she hadn't had the foresight to be his son instead of his daughter!

Frustrated to the point of tears, she stepped into the dress and pulled it up. Reaching behind her back, she struggled with the zipper as she walked over to the dressing table and looked in the mirror above it. With complete disinterest she surveyed the strapless cocktail dress that she'd bought weeks before for that night's occasion. The bodice was sheared at the sides so that it crisscrossed her breasts, sarong-style, in a multicolored rainbow of pale pastel silk chiffon, then it nipped in at the waist before falling in a graceful swirl to her knees. Picking up a hairbrush, she ran it through her long hair. Rather than expend the effort of doing anything special with it, she brushed it back off her face, twisted it up into a chignon, and pulled a few tendrils loose at her ears to soften the effect. The rose topaz pendant would have been the perfect accent for her dress, but her father was also going to
Glenmoor
tonight, and she refused to give him the satisfaction of seeing her wear it. Instead, she clipped on a pair of ornate gold earrings inset with pink stones that sparkled and danced in the light, and left her shoulders and neck bare. The hairstyle gave her a more sophisticated look and the golden tan she'd acquired looked lovely against the strapless bodice of the dress; if it hadn't, Meredith wouldn't have cared, nor would she have changed into something different. How she looked was a matter of complete indifference to her, the only reason she was going was that she couldn't stand the thought of staying home and letting frustration drive her insane, and that she'd promised Shelly Fillmore and the rest of Jonathan's friends that she'd join them there.

Sitting down at the dressing table, she slipped on a pair of pink silk
moire
heels she'd bought to wear with the dress. When she straightened, her gaze fell on the framed copy of an old issue of
Business Week
that was hanging on the wall. On the cover of the magazine was a picture of Bancroft's stately downtown store, with its uniformed doormen standing at the main entrance. The fourteen-story building was a
Chicago landmark, the doormen a historic symbol of Bancroft's continuing insistence on excellence and service to its customers. Inside the magazine was a long, glowing article about the store, which said that a Bancroft label on an item was a status symbol; the ornate B on its shopping bags the emblem of a discriminating shopper. The article also commented about the remarkable competence of Bancroft heirs when it came to running their business. It said that a talent for—and love of—retailing seemed to have been passed along in Bancroft genes from its founder, James D. Bancroft.

When the writer had interviewed Meredith's grandfather and asked him about that, Cyril had reportedly laughed and said it was possible. He'd added, however, that James Bancroft had begun a tradition that had been handed down from father to son—a tradition of grooming and training the heir from the time he was old enough to leave the nursery and dine with his parents. There, at the dining table, each father began to speak to their sons about whatever was happening at the store. For the child, these daily vignettes about the store's operation constituted the equivalent of ongoing bedtime stories. Excitement and suspense were generated; knowledge was subtly imparted. And absorbed. Later, simplified problems were casually brought up and discussed with the teenager. Solutions were asked for—and listened to, though rarely found. But then, finding solutions wasn't the real goal anyway; the goal was to teach and stimulate and encourage.

At the end of the article, the writer had asked Cyril about his successors and, as Meredith thought about her grandfather's reply, she felt a lump in her throat: "My son has already succeeded me to the presidency," Cyril had said. "He has one child, and when the time comes for her to take over the presidency of Bancroft & Company, I have every faith Meredith will carry on admirably. I only wish I could be alive to see it." Meredith knew that if her father had his way, she would never assume the presidency of Bancroft's. Although he'd always discussed the operation of the store with her, just as his father had done with him, he was adamantly opposed to her ever working there. She made that discovery while they were having dinner soon after her grandfather's funeral. In the past, she'd repeatedly mentioned her intention of following tradition and taking her place at Bancroft's, but either he hadn't listened or he hadn't believed her. That night he did take her seriously, and he informed her with brutal frankness that he did not expect her to succeed him, nor did he
want
her to. That was a privilege he planned to reserve for a future grandson. Then he coldly acquainted Meredith with an entirely different tradition and one he intended she follow: Bancroft women did not work at the store, or anywhere else, for that matter. Their duty was to be exemplary wives and mothers, and to donate whatever additional talents and time they had to charitable and civic endeavors.

Meredith wasn't willing to accept that; she couldn't, not now. It was too late. Long before she'd fallen in love with Parker—or thought she had—she had fallen in love with "her" store. By the time she was six, she was already on a first-name basis with all of the doormen and security clerks. At twelve she knew the names of every vice president and what his responsibilities were. At thirteen she'd asked to accompany her father to
New York
, where she'd spent an afternoon at Bloomingdale's, being shown around the store, while her father attended a meeting in the auditorium. When they left
New York
, she'd already formed her own opinions—not all of them correct— about why Bancroft's was superior to "
Bloomie's
."

Now, at eighteen, she already had a general knowledge of things like workers compensation problems, profit margins, merchandising techniques, and product liability problems. Those were the things that fascinated her, the things she
wanted
to study, and she was
not
going to spend the next four years of her life taking classes in romance languages and Renaissance art!

When she told him that, he had slammed his hand down on the table with a crash that made the dishes jump. "You are going to
Maryville, where both your grandmothers have gone, and you will continue to live at home! At
home!"
he reiterated. "Is that clear? The subject is closed!" Then he'd shoved his chair back and left.

As a child, Meredith had done everything to please him, and please him she had—with her grades, her manners, and her deportment. In fact, she'd been a model daughter. Now, however, she was finally realizing that the price of pleasing her father and maintaining the peace was becoming much higher: It required subjugating her individuality and surrendering all her dreams for her own future, not to mention sacrificing a social life!

His absurd attitude toward her dating or going to parties wasn't her main problem right now, but it had become a sharp point of contention and embarrassment for her this summer. Now that she was eighteen, he appeared to be tightening restrictions instead of loosening them. If Meredith had a date, he personally met the young man at the door and subjected him to a lengthy cross-examination while treating him with an insulting contempt that was intended to intimidate him into never asking her out again. Then he set a ridiculously early curfew of
midnight
. If she spent the night at Lisa's, he invented a reason to call her and make certain she was there. If she went out for a drive in the evening, he wanted an itinerary of where she was going; when she came back home he wanted an accounting of every minute she'd been gone. After all those years in private schools with the strictest possible rules, she wanted a taste of complete freedom. She'd earned it. She
deserved
it. The idea of living at home for the next four years, under her father's increasingly watchful eye, was unbearable and unnecessary.

Until now she'd never openly rebelled, for rebellion only ignited his temper. He hated being opposed by anyone and, once riled, he could remain frigidly angry for weeks. But it wasn't only fear of his anger that had made her acquiesce to him in the past. In the first place, part of her longed for his approval. In the second place, she could understand how humiliated he must have been by her mother's behavior and the scandal that had followed. When Parker had told her about all that, he'd said her father's overprotective attitude toward Meredith was probably due to the fear of losing her—for she was all he had—and partly to the fear that she might inadvertently do something to reawaken the talk about the scandal her mother had created. Meredith didn't particularly like that last idea, but she'd accepted it, and so she'd spent five weeks of the summer trying to reason with him; when that failed, she'd resorted to arguing. Yesterday, however, the hostilities between them had erupted into their first raging battle. The bill for her tuition deposit had come from
Northwestern
University
, and Meredith had taken it to him in his study. Calmly and quietly, she had said, "I am not going to go to
Maryville. I'm going to Northwestern and getting a degree that's worth something."