Paradise (22 page)

"Believe me," she said gravely, "it's safer this way."

He'd been home for less than ten minutes and it was the second time Matt had felt as if life was suddenly filled with joy and laughter.

She brought out a blanket and the food, and Matt eventually built a campfire. They spent the evening outside, happily eating hot dogs that were overcooked, buns that were undercooked, and marshmallows that dripped into the fire; they talked about everything from the terrain of
South America, to Meredith's unusual lack of troublesome pregnancy symptoms, to the proper degree of doneness for marshmallows. At twilight, they'd finished eating and Meredith cleared away the plates, then she went into the kitchen to wash the dishes. With his knee drawn up, Matt waited for her to return, his gaze drifting idly from the darkening sky above to the leaves he'd just gathered up and heaped on the fire to surprise her.

When Meredith came back out, the air was pungent with the delicious aroma of autumn, and Matt was sitting on the blanket, trying to look as if there was nothing whatsoever strange about the smell of burning leaves in August. She knelt down on the blanket across from him, looked at the fire, then she raised her face to his, and even in the darkness Matt could see her eyes shining. "Thank you," she said simply.

"You're welcome," he replied, his voice strangely husky to his own ears. He held out his hand to her, then had to fight down a wave of desire when she misunderstood his invitation to sit beside him and, instead, moved between his legs so that she could sit with her back against his chest and watch the fire. Desire was followed by exquisite delight a moment later when she softly confessed, "This is the nicest night I've ever had, Matt."

He slid his arm around her waist from behind, his fingers splaying protectively across her flat stomach, and tried not to sound as touched as he felt. With his free hand he brushed her hair aside and kissed her nape. "What about last night?"

She bent her head forward, offering his mouth better access, and promptly amended, "This is the
second
nicest night I've ever had."

Matt smiled against her skin and nipped her ear, but passion was already erupting through his body, raging through his veins like wildfire, refusing to be delayed or denied. Shaken by the force of it, he turned her face up to his and captured her mouth. Her lips moved against his, sweetly, softly at first, then deliberately provocative as her tongue slipped between his lips. Matt lost control. He forced his hand inside her shirt, his fingers closing over her breast, and her moan of pleasure broke the last fragile thread of his restraint. Turning her in his arms, he laid her down on the blanket, his body half covering hers, and shoved his fingers into her hair, holding her captive for a plundering kiss. He was so attuned to her that he sensed her momentary hesitation as the ferocity of his ardor stunned her into immobility. It stunned him, too, this desperate, demanding need to possess her completely, this necessity to make a conscious effort to slow himself down. It consumed him so completely that he never realized her hesitation came not from fear of his stormy passion, but from her inexperience and uncertainty about how to return and stimulate it. Even if he had realized it, he'd have hesitated about showing her how to do it right then, because pacing himself so that he could prolong their lovemaking was already incredibly difficult. And so he undressed her slowly, with
fingers made awkward because they trembled, and he kissed her until she was writhing beneath him, her hands rushing over his heated skin. The touch of her hands and mouth set him on fire, and each soft sound she made sent his blood roaring as he led her from one plateau to the next higher one, whispering hoarse, heated words of pleasure to her. She followed him, joining him, until he finally made her cry out, her body racked with tremors, and then he poured himself into her.

Afterward, he wrapped the blanket around them, and laid beside her, gazing up at a sky quilted with stars, inhaling the nostalgic fragrance of an early autumn. In the past, making love had always been an act of mutual pleasure; with Meredith it was an act of spellbinding beauty. Exquisite, tormenting, magical beauty. For the first time in his life, Matt felt utterly contented, completely at peace. The future was more complicated than it had ever been, and yet he had never felt more confident that he could shape it to suit them—if only she gave him the chance and the time. Time.

He desperately needed more time with her to strengthen this strange, fragile bond that was drawing them closer together with each hour they spent together. If he could get her to agree to go to
South America with him, he'd have time to strengthen that bond and she'd stay married to him. He believed that. Tomorrow he was going to call Jonathan
Sommers
and without telling him why, he would try to find out what sort of housing and medical facilities were available in the area. For himself, he hadn't given a damn. Meredith and his baby were another story.

If he couldn't take her with him ... That was the problem. He couldn't change his mind about going to
South America. For one thing, he'd signed a contract; for another, he needed the $150,000 bonus for staying over there so that he could use it to capitalize his next investment. Like the foundation of a skyscraper, that $ 150,000 was the foundation for his entire grand plan. It wasn't as much money as he'd have liked it to be, but it would suffice.

As he laid there beside her, he considered forgetting about the whole damned plan and staying in the States with her, but he couldn't do that either. Meredith was accustomed to the best. She was entitled to it, and he wanted her to have it. And the only way he could hope to give it to her was by going to
South America.

The thought of leaving her behind and then losing her because she got tired of waiting for him, or she lost faith in his ability to succeed, would normally have been driving him crazy. But he had one more thing in his favor: She was pregnant with his child. Their baby would give her a strong reason to wait for him and trust him.

The same pregnancy that Meredith had regarded as a calamity, Matt now regarded as an unexpected gift from fate. When he left her in
Chicago, he'd thought it would be at least two years before he could come back and try to court her in style—assuming he hadn't already lost her to someone else. She was beautiful and captivating and hundreds of men would have been after her while he was gone. One of them would have probably caught her, and he'd known that the night he left her.

But now fate had stepped in and handed him the world. The fact that fate had never been very kind to the Farrell family was something that Matt refused to let dampen his spirits. He was now prepared to believe in God, fate, and universal goodness all because of Meredith and the baby.

The only thing he actually found a little hard to believe was that the sophisticated young heiress he'd met at the country club, the bewitching blonde who drank champagne cocktails and handled herself with smiling poise, was actually curled up beside him, asleep in his arms, his baby sheltered inside her.

His baby.

Matt spread his fingers over her abdomen, and smiled against her neck because Meredith had no idea how he actually felt about their child. Or how he felt about her because she hadn't tried to get rid of it—and him. That first day when she'd itemized her options, the mention of the word
abortion
had made him feel like throwing up.

He wanted to talk about the baby with her and tell her exactly how he felt about all this, but for one thing, he felt like a selfish bastard for being so happy about something that distressed her so much. For another thing, she was dreading the confrontation with her father, and any mention of her pregnancy seemed to remind her of what was ahead.

The confrontation with her father ... Matt's smile faded. The man was a son of a bitch, but somehow he'd raised the most amazing woman Matt had ever met, and for that Matt was profoundly grateful to him. He was so grateful that he was willing to do whatever he could to ease things between Meredith and her father when he took her to
Chicago on Sunday. Somehow he was going to keep remembering that Meredith was Philip Bancroft's only child, and that for reasons that could be clear only to Meredith, she loved that arrogant bastard.

Chapter 10

"Where's Meredith?" Matt asked Julie when he came home from work the next afternoon.

She looked up from the dining room table, where she was doing her homework. "She went riding. She said she'd be back before you got home, but you're two hours early." With a grin, she added, "I wonder what the attraction could be here?"

"Brat," Matt said, rumpling her dark hair as he headed for the back door.

Meredith had told Matt yesterday that she enjoyed riding, so Matt had called their neighbor that morning and arranged for Meredith to ride one of Dale's horses.

Outside, he walked across the yard, past the overgrown patch that had been his mother's vegetable garden, while he searched the fields off to the right for a sign of her. He was halfway to the fence when he saw Meredith coming, and the sight sent fear curling up his spine. The chestnut horse was at a smooth, ground-eating gallop, running along the fence line, and Meredith was leaning low over its neck, her hair tossing wildly about her shoulders. As she came nearer, he realized she was going to turn and head the horse toward their barn. Matt changed direction, heading there, too, watching her while his pulse rate slowed to a more even tempo and his fear receded. Meredith Bancroft rode like the aristocrat she was— light and lovely in the saddle and in complete control.

"Hi!" she called, her face flushed and glowing as she brought the horse to a stop in the barnyard beside a bale of rotted hay. "I'll have to cool him down," she said as Matt reached for the horse's bridle, and then everything happened at once: Matt's heel clipped the tines of an old rake left lying on the ground just as Meredith started to swing her leg over the horse's back, and the handle of the rake flew up and hit the horse in the nose. With an outraged snort, the horse lurched and reared. Matt let go of the bridle and made a futile grab for Meredith, and she slid backward, landing on her rump on the hay, then sliding to the ground.

"
Goddammit
!" he burst out, crouching down and clutching her shoulders. "Are you hurt?"

The bale of hay had broken Meredith's short fall, and she wasn't hurt, she was just mortified and confused about what had happened. "Am I
hurt?"
she repeated with a look of comic shock as she pushed herself to her feet. "My pride is worse than hurt. It's demolished— destroyed—"

He watched her, his eyes narrowed with concern. "What about the baby?"

Meredith paused in the act of brushing hay and dirt off the seat of Julie's borrowed jeans. "Matt," she informed him with a wry, superior look, letting her hands rest on the seat of her pants,
"this
is
not
where the baby is."

He finally realized where her hands were and where she'd fallen. Amusement and relief washed through him, and he feigned a perplexed look. "It isn't?"

For several minutes Meredith sat contentedly, watching him cool the horse, then she remembered something and grinned. "I finished crocheting your sweater today," she called.

He stopped short and stared at her, his expression dubious. "You . . . made that long ropy thing into a sweater? For me?"

"Of course not," Meredith said, managing to look hurt. "That long ropy thing was only a practice project. I made the actual sweater today. It's a vest, though, not a sweater. Want to see it?"

He said he did, but he looked so uneasy that Meredith had to bite down on her lip to stop from laughing. When she emerged from the house several minutes later, she was carrying a bulky-knit beige vest with her crochet hook stuck into it, and the skein of beige yarn from yesterday.

Matt was just walking out of the barn, and they converged near the bale of hay. "Here it is," she said, producing everything from behind her back. "What do you think?"

His eyes shifted with unconcealed dread to her hands, riveted on the sweater, then rose to her innocent face. He was stunned, and he was impressed. He was also visibly touched that she'd made it for him. Meredith hadn't expected that, and she felt a little uneasy about her joke. "That's amazing," he said. "Do you think it will fit?"

Meredith was certain it would. She'd checked the sweaters in his drawers to make sure she bought the right size. When she brought this one home, she'd carefully removed the labels. "I think so."

"Let me try it on."

"Right here?" she asked, and when he nodded, she tugged the crochet hook loose, fighting down her increasing guilt. Slowly and with infinite care, he lifted it from her hands and put it on, smoothing it over his striped shirt, tugging his collar into the right position. "How do I look?" he asked, posing with his hands on his hips and his feet planted slightly apart.

He looked absolutely wonderful—broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped, ruggedly handsome, and lethally sexy, even in faded jeans and an inexpensive sweater.

"I like it, especially because you made it for me yourself."

"Matt," she said uneasily, prepared to confess.

"Yes?"

"About the sweater . .."

"No, sweetheart," he interrupted, "don't apologize because you didn't have time to make more of them for me. You can do that tomorrow."