Paradise (19 page)

They worked in companionable silence for a few moments, then Julie said, "Dad's working double shifts for the next few days. I'm going to spend tonight with a girlfriend, studying. I'll be back in the morning in time to make breakfast though."

Distracted by Julie's remark about studying, Meredith overlooked the fact that she was evidently going to be alone with Matt tonight. "Studying? Aren't you on summer vacation?"

"I'm going to summer school. That way, I'll be able to graduate in December—two days after I turn seventeen."

"That's young to graduate."

"Matt was sixteen."

"Oh," Meredith said, wondering about the quality of a rural school system that let everyone graduate so early. "What will you do after you graduate?"

"Go to college. I'm going to major in one of the sciences, but I haven't decided which one yet. Biology probably."

"Really?"

Julie nodded and said with pride, "I have a full scholarship. Matt's waited until now to go away because he wanted to be certain I'd be okay on my own. It's just as well, though, because it gave him a chance to get his M.B.A. while he was waiting around for me to grow up. Although he'd have had to stay in
Edmunton
and keep working anyway, just to finish paying off Mom's medical bills."

Meredith whirled around and gaped at her. "Matt had a chance to get his what?"

"His M.B.A.—you know, master's degree—business administration. That's what comes after you get your bachelor's degree," she prompted helpfully. "Matt had a dual major for his undergraduate degree—economics and finance. Brains run in our family," she added, then she saw Meredith's blank shock and stopped. Hesitantly, she said, "You—you don't know anything at all about Matt, do you?"

Only how he kisses and makes love, Meredith thought with shame. "Not much," she admitted in a small voice.

"Well, you shouldn't blame yourself. Most people think Matt's hard to get to know, and you two have known each other for only two days." That sounded so sordid that Meredith turned away, unable to face her. She picked up a mug and started wiping it. "Meredith," Julie said, looking worriedly at her averted face, "it's nothing to be ashamed of—I mean it's no big deal to me that you're pregnant." Meredith dropped the mug and it rolled across the linoleum under the sink. "Well, it isn't!" Julie persisted, bending down and scooping it up.

"Did Matt tell you I'm pregnant?" Meredith managed. "Or did you figure it out for yourself?"

"Matt told my dad privately, and I eavesdropped, although I'd already figured it out myself, actually."

"Wonderful," Meredith said, drowning in mortification.

"I thought it was pretty neat," Julie agreed. "I mean, until Matt told Dad all about you, I was starting to feel like I was the only virgin alive over the age of sixteen!"

Meredith closed her eyes, feeling a little faint from the wild leaps of intensely revealing conversation and angry that Matt had discussed her with his father. "That must have been quite a little gossip session they were having," she said bitterly.

"Matt wasn't gossiping about you! He was straightening out my dad about what sort of girl you are." That made Meredith feel immeasurably better, and when Julie saw it, she continued in a slightly different vein. "Thirty-eight of the two hundred girls in my high school class this year are pregnant. Actually," she confided a little dispiritedly, "I've never had to worry about it. Most guys are afraid to kiss me."

Feeling that some reply was in order, Meredith cleared her throat and said, "Why?"

"Because of Matt," Julie said succinctly. "Every guy in
Edmunton
knows Matt Farrell is my brother. They know what Matt would do to them if he found out they tried anything with me. When it comes to guarding a woman's 'virtue,'" she added with a laughing sigh, "having Matt around is like wearing a chastity belt."

"Somehow," Meredith said before she could stop herself, "I didn't find that to be exactly true."

Julie laughed, and Meredith suddenly found herself laughing with her.

When they joined the men in the living room, Meredith braced herself for an awkward couple of hours of watching television, but Julie again took matters into her own hands. "What shall we do?" she asked, looking expectantly from Matt to Meredith. "I know, how about a game or something? Cards? No, wait, how about something really silly—" She turned to the bookshelves, running her finger past several games. "Monopoly!" she said, looking over her shoulder.

"Not me," Patrick said. "I'd rather watch this movie."

Matt had no desire whatsoever to play any game, particularly that one, and he was on the verge of suggesting that Meredith go for a walk with him, when he realized that what she probably needed was some relief from anything intense, which their conversation outside would undoubtedly become. Moreover, she'd established a rapport with Julie and seemed to feel comfortable with her. He nodded, trying to appear as if he enjoyed the prospect, then he glanced to Meredith for a decision. She didn't look any more enthusiastic than he felt, but she smiled and nodded too.

Two hours later he admitted to himself that the Monopoly game had been an unexpected and unqualified success that even he'd enjoyed. With Julie as instigator, the game had immediately become a kind of farce, with both girls trying their damnedest to beat him and, failing that, to cheat him. Twice he'd caught Julie stealing the money he'd already won, and now Meredith was coming up with outrageous reasons for refusing to pay him his due. "No excuses this time," he warned Meredith as her token landed on a property he owned. "You owe me fourteen hundred for that."

"No, I don't," she said with a smug grin. She pointed to the little plastic hotels he'd put on his property, one of which she'd nudged with her finger. "That hotel is encroaching on my easement. You built on my land, therefore you owe me."

"I'll 'encroach on your easement' but good," he threatened, chuckling, "if you don't hand over my money."

Laughing, Meredith turned to Julie. "I have only one thousand. Can you lend me some?"

"Sure thing," Julie said, even though she'd already lost all her money. Reaching out, she snatched several $500 bills from Matt's pile and handed them to Meredith. A few minutes later, Meredith admitted defeat. Julie went to get her books and Meredith finished putting the game away, then she got up to return it to the bookshelf. Behind her, Patrick Farrell stood up. "I'd better get going," he said to Matt. "Did you leave the truck at the garage?" When Matt said he had, and that he'd get a ride into town in the morning to pick it up, Patrick turned to Meredith. Throughout their rowdy Monopoly game, she'd felt his eyes on her. Now he smiled—a grim, uncertain smile. "Good night, Meredith."

Matt stood up, too, and asked her if she felt like going for a walk.

Glad for any reprieve that would keep her from lying in bed, worrying, Meredith said, "That sounds nice."

Outside, the night air was balmy, and the moon painted a wide path across the yard. They'd just walked down the porch steps when Julie came out behind them, a sweater over her shoulders and schoolbooks in her arms. "See you in the morning.
Joelle's
picking me up at the end of the drive. I'm going over to her house to study."

Matt turned, brows pulling together. "At ten at night?"

She paused, her hand on the railing, an exasperated smile on her pretty face. "Matt!" she said, rolling her eyes at his obtuseness.

He caught on then. "Tell
Joelle
I said hello." She left, hurrying toward the car lights at the end of the gravel drive, and Matt turned to Meredith, asking her something that had obviously been puzzling him. "How do you know about encroaching on easements and zoning violations?"

Tipping her head back Meredith gazed at the harvest moon hovering overhead like a huge golden disk. "My father has always talked to me about business. There was a zoning problem when we built our branch store in the suburbs, and a problem with an easement when the developer paved the parking lot." Since he'd already asked a question, Meredith asked him one that had been plaguing her for hours. Pausing, she reached up and pulled a leaf from a low branch overhead while she made an unsuccessful effort to keep the accusation out of her voice. "Julie told me you have an M.B.A. Why did you let me think you were an ordinary steelworker who was heading off to
Venezuela to chase your luck in the oil fields?"

"What makes you think steelworkers are
ordinary and people with M.B.A.'s are special?"

Meredith heard the mild reprimand in those words and she flinched inwardly. Leaning her shoulders against the tree trunk behind her, she said, "Did I sound like a snob?"

"Are you one?" he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets, studying her.

"I—" She hesitated, searching his shadowy features, strangely tempted to say whatever she thought he wanted to hear, and, just as firmly, she resisted the temptation. "I probably am."

She didn't hear the disgust in her voice, but Matt did and the glamour of his sudden, lazy grin made her pulse leap. "I doubt it."

The three words made her feel inordinately pleased. "Why?"

"Because snobs don't worry about whether they are or not. However, to answer your question, part of the reason I didn't say anything about the degree is that it doesn't mean anything unless, and until, I can put it to use. Right now all I have are a bunch of ideas and plans that may not work out the way I think they should."

Julie had said most people found him difficult to get to know, and Meredith could easily believe that. And yet, there were many times, like now, when she felt an odd sense of being so attuned to him that she could almost read his mind. Quietly she said, "I think the other reason you let me go on thinking you're a steelworker was that you wanted to see if it would matter to me. It was a—a test, wasn't it?"

That startled a chuckle from him. "I suppose it was. Who knows—that's all I may ever be."

"And now you've switched from steel mills to oil rigs," she teased, her eyes laughing, "because you wanted a job with more glamour, is that it?"

With an effort, Matt resisted the temptation to snatch her into his arms and muffle his laughter against her lips. She was young and pampered and he was going to a foreign country where many common necessities would be luxuries. This sudden, insane impulse to take her with him that kept prodding at him was just that—insane. On the other hand, she was also brave, sweet, and pregnant with his child.
His
child. Their child. Perhaps the idea wasn't so insane. Tipping his head back, he looked up at the moon, trying to ignore the notion, and even while he was doing it, he found himself suggesting something that would help him decide. "Meredith," he said, "most couples take months learning about each other before they get married. You and I have only a few days before we get married, and less than a week before I have to leave for
South America. Do you think we could try to cram a few months into a few days?"

"I guess so," she said, puzzled by the sudden intensity in his voice.

"Okay, fine," Matt said, strangely at a loss as to how to begin now that she'd agreed. "What would you like to know about me?"

Gulping back a surge of startled, self-conscious laughter, Meredith looked at him, stupefied, and then she wondered if he was referring to genetic questions she might have about him as the father of her baby. Peering at him, she asked hesitantly, "Do you mean that I should ask you things like—like is there any history of insanity in your family, and do you have a police record?"

Matt bit back a shout of laughter at her choice of questions, and said with sham gravity, "No—to both those things. How about you?"

Solemnly, she shook her head. "No insanity, no police record either."

He saw it then—the answering laughter glowing in her eyes, and for the second time in moments he had to restrain the urge to clasp her to him.

"Now it's your turn to ask me something," she offered gamely. "What do you want to know?"

"Just one thing," he said with blunt honesty as he placed his hand high on the tree trunk behind her. "Are you half as sweet as I think you are?"

"Probably not."

He straightened and smiled because he was almost certain she was wrong. "Let's walk, before I forget what we're supposed to be doing out here. In the interest of complete honesty," he added as they turned and strolled down the lane that curved toward the main road, "I've just remembered that I
do
have a police record." Meredith stopped short, and he turned and said, "I was busted twice when I was nineteen."

"What were you doing at the time?"

"Fighting.
Brawling
would be a better word. Before my mother died, I'd managed to convince myself that if she had the best doctors and stayed in the best hospitals— only the best—then she wouldn't die. We got her the best, my father and I. When the insurance ran out, we sold the farm equipment and everything else we could liquidate to keep paying the medical bills. She died anyway," Matt said in a carefully unemotional voice. "My father hit the bottle, and I went looking for something of my own to hit. For months afterward I was spoiling for a fight, and since I couldn't get my hands on the God my mother had such faith in, I settled for any mortal who wanted to take me on. In
Edmunton
it's not hard to find a fight," he added with a wry smile, and not until that moment did Matt realize he was confiding things to an eighteen-year-old girl that he'd never admitted to anyone else, even himself. And the eighteen-year-old girl was looking at him with a quiet understanding that completely belied her years. "The cops broke up two of the fights," he finished, "and they busted all of us. It's no big deal. There's no record of it anywhere except
Edmunton
."