Paradise (33 page)

Thorp Development was a
Houston holding company that owned several office buildings and shopping centers as well as undeveloped land, and it was no secret that the Thorp brothers wanted to sell the entire company, that had been in the
Wall Street Journal.
"Do you believe they really have a buyer? Or is he trying to get us to make a higher opening offer for the land?"

"The latter probably, but I wanted you to know there could be some competition we didn't anticipate."

"Then we'll have to work it out, Sam. I want to build our next store on that piece of property more than I've ever wanted to build any other store anywhere else. The site is perfect.
Houston is starting to recover from its slump, but building prices are still nice and low. By the time we're ready to open, their economy will be booming."

Meredith glanced at her watch and stood up. It was
three o'clock
on a Friday afternoon which meant traffic would already be getting heavy. "I have to run," she said
with
an apologetic smile. "See if your friend in
Houston can find out anything about Thorp having another buyer."

"I've already called him. He's checking around."

Chapter 16

Matt's limousine barged through the Friday afternoon downtown traffic, bullying its way swiftly toward the sixty-story high rise that was Haskell Electronics' national headquarters. In the backseat, Matt glanced up from the report he was reading just as Joe O'Hara swung the limo around a cab, ran a red light, and, hammering repeatedly on the car's horn, bluffed a group of intrepid
Chicago pedestrians into getting out of his way. Less than ten feet from Haskell's underground parking garage, Joe slammed on the brakes and swung the car into the entrance. "Sorry, Matt," he said with a wry grin, glancing up and noticing Matt's scowl in the rearview mirror. "One of these days," Matt replied shortly, exasperated, "I'd like you to explain what makes you want to turn pedestrians into hood ornaments." His voice was drowned out as the nose of the long car dipped down, tires screeching endlessly as they wound around and around, descending to the parking level reserved for chief executives, avoiding the wall beside them by scant inches. No matter how elegant or expensive the car was, O'Hara still drove it like a fearless teenager in a
souped
-up Chevy with a blonde in his lap and a six-pack of beer on the seat. If his reflexes weren't still as quick as any teenager's, he'd have lost his driver's license and probably his life years before.

He was also as loyal as he was daring and, ten years ago in South America, those traits had caused him to risk his life dragging Matt to safety when the truck Matt was driving lost its brakes, plunged down an embankment, and caught fire. For his efforts, Joe had received a case of his favorite whiskey along with Matt's unending gratitude.

Strapped over Joe's shoulder, beneath his jacket, was a .45 automatic that he'd bought years ago when he first drove Matt across the Teamsters' picket lines at a trucking company he'd just bought. Matt privately thought the gun was unnecessary. Although only five feet ten, Joe was 225 pounds of solid muscle with a pugnacious face that verged on ugly, and a scowl that was distinctly menacing. He was better suited to the job of bodyguard than chauffeur: He looked like a sumo wrestler. He drove like a maniac.

"Here we are," Joe called, managing to brake the
car
to a smooth stop near the private elevator beneath the building. "Home sweet home."

"For a year or less," Matt said, closing his briefcase. Normally when Matt bought a company, he remained on the premises for only a month or two—long enough to meet with his own men while they evaluated the management staff and to make recommendations. In the past, however, he'd bought only well-managed companies that were in trouble because they were short of operating capital for one reason or another. The changes he instituted at those companies were mostly minor and done simply to tune up their operation and make it fit in with
Intercorp's
. Haskell was different. Old methods and procedures would have to be discarded in favor of new; benefits
redetermined
, salaries adjusted, loyalties altered, a vast new manufacturing facility constructed in suburban
Southville
, where he'd already bought land. Haskell needed a major overhaul. Between the shipping company he'd just bought and Haskell's reorganization, Matt was going to be working long, arduous days and nights, but he'd been doing that for years. In the beginning, he'd done it out of some desperate compulsive desire to succeed, to prove he could. Even now, when he'd succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings, he kept up his exhausting pace—not because he enjoyed it or the success anymore, but because it was habit. And because nothing else gave him any more satisfaction either. He worked hard, and when he took the time to play, he played hard. Neither was particularly meaningful or gratifying. But streamlining Haskell, making it into all the things it should be, was a challenging goal. Maybe that's where he'd gone wrong, Matt decided as he put his key into the lock of the private express elevator that went to the executive floors of the building. He'd created a huge conglomerate by buying desirable, well-run companies that needed
Intercorp's
financial backing. Maybe he should have bought a few that needed more than that. His takeover team had been here for two weeks, making their evaluations. They were upstairs, waiting to meet with him, and he was eager to get started.

On the sixtieth floor the receptionist answered her telephone and listened to the information being imparted to her by the uniformed guard who also acted as a receptionist in Haskell's lobby on the ground floor. When she hung up, Valerie went over to the secretary seated to her right. "Pete Duncan said a silver stretch limo just turned into the garage," she whispered. "He thinks it's Farrell."

"Silver must be his favorite color," Joanna replied with a meaningful glance at the new six-foot-square silver plaque with the
Intercorp
insignia which had been hung on the rosewood wall behind her desk.

Two weeks after the
Intercorp
takeover, a band of carpenters had arrived, supervised by a man who identified himself as
Intercorp's
interior design manager. When he departed two weeks later, the entire reception area on the one hundredth floor, as well as the conference room and Matt Farrell's future office, had been completely redecorated. Where once there had been time-worn Oriental carpets and dark wood furniture gently scarred with age, there were acres of silvery carpet covering every inch of floor and modern burgundy leather sofas arranged in groups with Lucite coffee tables in front and beside them. It was a well-publicized idiosyncrasy of Matt Farrell's that every division and acquisition of
Intercorp's
was immediately redecorated to look like all his other holdings.

Valerie and Joanna, along with several of the other secretaries on this floor, were now very familiar, not only with Matthew Farrell's reputation and quirks, but with his ruthlessness. Within days after
Intercorp
acquired Haskell, the president—Mr. Vern Haskell—had been forced to take an early retirement. So were two of the senior vice presidents, one of whom had been Vern Haskell's son, the other his son-in-law. Another VP refused to resign and was fired. The offices of those loyal VPs—which were situated on this floor, but on the opposite side of the building—were now occupied by three of
Farrel's
henchmen. Three more of his men were stationed elsewhere in the building—spying on everyone, according to rumor, asking prying questions, and making out lists, undoubtedly of whom to fire next.

To make matters worse, it wasn't just the senior executives who'd been squeezed out of their jobs; Mr. Haskell's secretary had been given her "choice" of either working for some minor executive or leaving with her boss, because Matthew Farrell insisted on sending his
own
secretary in from
California
. That had caused a fresh furor of fear and resentment among the remaining executive secretaries, but that was nothing compared to how they felt about Farrell's secretary when she actually arrived: Eleanor Stern was a stick-straight, skinny, wire-haired tyrant/busybody who watched them like a hawk and who still used words like "impertinence" and "propriety." She arrived at the office before anyone else, left after everyone else, and when the door to her office was open, which it wasn't now, she could hear the quietest feminine laugh or word of casual gossip. When she did, she would get up and come to stand in her doorway like an irate master sergeant until the recreational chat came to its inevitable and awkward end. For that reason Valerie resisted the impulse to call several of the secretaries and tell them Farrell was about to arrive, so they could come over on some invented excuse and at least have a look at him.

The movie magazines and tabloids made him sound like a handsome, sophisticated hunk who dated movie stars and European royalty.
The Wall Street Journal
said he was "a corporate genius with a Midas touch." Mr. Haskell said on the day he left that Matthew Farrell was "an arrogant, inhuman bastard with the instincts of a shark and the morals of a marauding wolf." As Joanna and Valerie waited for a glimpse of him, they were already predisposed to despise him on sight. And they did.

The soft ding of the elevator bell struck the reception area like a hammer on a gong. Matthew Farrell strode out, and the very air suddenly seemed to crackle with the suppressed energy of his presence. Deeply tanned and athletically built, he stalked swiftly toward them, reading a report and carrying a briefcase, a beige cashmere topcoat looped over his forearm. Valerie stood up uncertainly. "Good afternoon, Mr. Farrell." For her courtesy, she received a daunting glance from cool gray eyes, a curt nod, and then he swept past like the wind—powerful, unsettling, and completely indifferent to mere mortals like Valerie and Joanna.

Matt had been here once before to attend an evening meeting, and he walked with unerring certainty into the private suite of offices that had belonged to Haskell's president and his secretary. Not until he closed the door of the secretary's office did he tear his attention from the report he'd been reading in the elevator, and then it was only to glance perfunctorily at his own secretary, who'd worked closely with him for nine long years. They did not greet each other or indulge in small talk; they never had. "How is everything going?"

"Quite well," Eleanor Stern replied.

"Is the agenda ready for the meeting?" he added, already starting toward the tall, rosewood double doors that opened into his private office.

"Of course," she replied, matching his brisk manner perfectly. They'd been an ideal match from the very first day she'd arrived at his office along with twenty other women, most of them young and attractive, who'd been sent over to Matt by an employment agency. Earlier that same day, he'd seen a picture of Meredith in a copy of
Town and Country
magazine that someone had left in the cafeteria. She was lying on a Jamaican beach with a collegiate polo player. The caption said she was vacationing with school friends. More bitterly determined to succeed than ever as a result of that picture, he had begun interviewing the applicants. Most of them were airheads, or openly flirtatious, and he was in no mood to tolerate either stupidity or women's wiles
.
What he wanted, needed, was someone smart and reliable, someone who would keep pace with his newly reinforced drive to make it to the top. He'd just tossed the last applicant's resume in the wastebasket, when he looked up and saw Eleanor Stern marching toward him in her stout-heeled shoes, plain black suit, her gray hair in a prim bun. She thrust her resume into his hand and waited in stoic silence while Matt read the pertinent facts which included the information that she was fifty years old, unmarried, and that she could type 120 words per minute and take shorthand at 160 words per minute. Matt had glanced up at her, intending to question her, only to have her announce in a frosty, defensive voice, "I am not unaware that I'm twenty years older than those other applicants out there, and twenty times less attractive. However, because I have never been a beautiful woman, I've had to develop and rely upon my other qualities."

Taken aback, Matt had asked, "What are those qualities?"

My mind and my skills,"
she'd
replied. "In addition
to my typing and shorthand skills, I am also a paralegal and a full-charge bookkeeper. Furthermore, I can do something that very few twenty-year-olds can do anymore—"

"And that is?"

"I can
spell!"
The
remark with all its prim superiority and implied disdain for anything less than perfection appealed to him. She had a certain aloof pride that Matt admired, and he sensed in her the same rigid determination to get the job done that he felt. Based on that instinctive belief that she was right for the position, he said bluntly, "The hours are long and the salary isn't great now. I'm just getting started. If I make it to the top, I'll take you with me. Your salary will go up according to your contribution."

"Agreed."

"I'll be traveling a great deal. Later, there may be times when you'll have to accompany me."

Amazingly, her pale eyes had narrowed. "Perhaps you ought to be more specific about my duties, Mr. Farrell. Women undoubtedly find you an extremely attractive man; however—"

Dumbfounded that she apparently thought he was planning to make a pass at her, and angered by her censorious, unsolicited opinion of his appeal to other women, Matt had replied in a voice even colder than hers, "Your duties would be purely secretarial, and no more. I'm not interested in an affair or a flirtation; I don't want cake on my birthday, or coddling,
or
your opinions on personal matters that pertain to me alone. All I want is your time and your skills."