Paradise (49 page)

"Friends?" he repeated with
biting irony. "The last time I was friendly with you, it cost me my name, my bachelorhood, and a hell of a lot else."

It has cost you more than you know,
Meredith thought miserably.
It has cost you a factory you want to build in
Southville
, but somehow I will make that right. I'll force my father to rectify the damage he's done and make him agree never to interfere with you again.
"Matt, listen to me," she said, suddenly desperate to make things right between them. "I'm willing to forget the past and—"

"That's gracious of you," he jeered.

Meredith stiffened, sorely tempted to point out that
she
was the injured party, the abandoned spouse, but then she squelched the impulse and continued doggedly. "I said I was willing to forget the past, and I am. If
you'll agree to a quiet, congenial divorce, I'll do everything I can to smooth things over for you here in
Chicago."

"Just how do you think you can smooth things over for me in Chicago, princess?" he asked, his voice reeking with sarcastic amusement.

"Don't call me princess! I'm not being condescending, I'm trying to be fair."

Matt leaned back and regarded her, his eyes shuttered.

"I apologize for being rude, Meredith. What is it that you intend to do for me?"

Relieved by his apparent change in attitude, she said quickly, "For a start, I can make certain you aren't treated like a social outcast. I know my father blocked your membership at our club, but I will try to make him change that—"

"Let's forget about me," he suggested smoothly, revolted by her wheedling and hypocrisy. He'd liked her better when she'd stood her ground at the opera and haughtily insulted him. But she needed something from him now, and Matt was glad it was desperately important to her. Because she wasn't going to get it. "You want a nice, quiet divorce because you want to marry your banker and because you want to be president of Bancroft's, right?" When she nodded, Matt continued. "And the presidency of Bancroft's is very, very important to you?"

"I want it more than I've ever wanted anything in my life," Meredith averred eagerly. "You—you will cooperate, won't you?" she said, searching his unreadable face as the car pulled to a stop in front of Bancroft's.

"No." He said it with such polite finality that for a moment Meredith's mind went blank.

"No?" she repeated in angry disbelief. "But the divorce is—"

"Forget it!" he snapped,

"Forget it? Everything I want hinges on it!"

"That's too damned bad."

"Then I'll get one
without
your consent!" she flung back.

"Try it and I'll make a stink you'll never live down. For starters, I'll sue your spineless banker for alienation of affection."

"Alienation of—" Too stunned to be cautious, Meredith burst out with a bitter laugh. "Have you lost your mind? If you do that, you'll look like an ass, like a heartbroken, jilted husband."

"And
you'll
look like an adulteress," he countered.

Fury erupted through Meredith's entire body. "Damn you!" she raged, her color rising. "If you
dare
to publicly embarrass Parker, I'll kill you with my own two hands! You're not fit to touch his shoes!" she exploded. "He's ten times the man you are! He doesn't
need to try to bed
every woman he meets. He has principles, he's a gentleman, but you wouldn't understand that because underneath that tailor-made suit you're wearing, you're still nothing but a dirty steelworker from a dirty little town with a dirty, drunken father!"

"And you," he said savagely, "are still a vicious, conceited bitch!"

Meredith swung, palm open, then swallowed a gasp of pain as Matt caught her wrist an inch from his face, holding it in a crushing grip, while he warned in a silky voice: "If the
Southville
Zoning Commission doesn't reverse their decision, there will be no further
discussion
of a divorce.
If I
decide to give you a divorce, I'll decide the terms and you and your father will go along with them." Increasing the pressure on her wrist, he jerked her forward until their faces were only inches apart. "Do you understand me, Meredith? You and your father have no power over me. Cross me one more time, and you'll wish to God your mother had aborted
you!"

Meredith jerked her arm free of his grasp. "You are a monster!" she hissed. Rain spattered on her cheek and she snatched up her gloves and purse and threw a quelling look at the chauffeur/bodyguard, who had opened the door for her, and was watching their altercation with the enthusiastic intensity of a spectator at a tennis match.

As she climbed out of the car, Ernest rushed forward, belatedly recognizing Meredith, ready to defend her from whatever peril she might be in. "Did you see the man in that car?" she demanded of the Bancroft doorman. When he said that he had indeed, she said, "Good. If he ever comes near this store, you are to call the police!"

Joe O'Hara pulled the car over to the curb in front of
Intercorp's
building, and before it came to a complete stop, Matt flung open the door and climbed out.

"Tell Tom Anderson to come up here," he ordered Miss Stern as he stalked past her on the way into his office after having lunch with Meredith. "And then try to find me some aspirin."

Two minutes later, she appeared at his desk with a glass of cold water and two aspirin. "Mr. Anderson is on his way up," she said, studying his face as he tossed down the tablets. "You have a very busy schedule. I hope you aren't getting the flu. Mr.
Hursh
is out sick with it, and so are two of the vice presidents and half the word processing department. It starts with a headache."

Since she'd never shown any overt interest in his personal well-being, Matt naturally assumed her only concern was that he be able to stick to his working schedule. "I am not getting the flu," he said shortly. "I never get sick." He ran a hand around the back of his neck, absently massaging the aching muscles. The headache that had been only a minor, nagging discomfort this morning was beginning to pound.

"If it is the flu, it can last for weeks and even turn into pneumonia. That's what happened to Mrs. Morris in advertising and Mr. Lathrup in personnel, and they're both in the hospital. Perhaps you ought to plan on resting instead of going to
Indiana
next week. Otherwise your schedule—"

"I do not have the flu," Matt enunciated tightly. "I have a common, garden-variety headache."

She stiffened at his tone, turned on her heel, and marched out, bumping into Tom Anderson on the way.

"What's Miss Stern's problem?" Tom asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"She's afraid she'll have to reschedule my appointments," Matt said impatiently. "Let's talk about the zoning commission."

"Okay, what do you want me to do?"

"For the time being, ask for a postponement of any ruling."

"And then what?"

In answer, Matt picked up the phone and called
Vanderwild
. "What's Bancroft selling for?" he asked Peter, and when the other man answered, he said, "Start buying it. Use the same technique we used when we decided to acquire Haskell. Keep it quiet." He hung up and looked at Tom. "I want you to check out every member on Bancroft's board of directors. One of them may be for sale. Find out who he is and what his price is."

Not once in the years they'd been together, in the corporate battles they'd fought and won, had Matt ever resorted to anything as indefensible as bribery. "Matt, you're talking about plain bribery—"

"I'm talking about beating Bancroft at his own game. He's using influence to buy votes on the zoning commission. Well use money to buy votes on his board. The only difference between what he's doing and what I'm doing is the medium of exchange. When I'm through with that vindictive old bastard, he'll be taking his orders from me in his own boardroom!"

"All right," Tom said after a hesitant pause. "But this will have to be handled very discreetly."

"There's more," Matt instructed, walking into the conference room that adjoined his office. He pressed a button on the wall and the mirrored panel that concealed the bar slid silently away. Matt jerked a bottle of scotch out of the cabinet, poured some into a glass, and took a long swallow. "I want to know everything there is to know about Bancroft's operation. Work with
Vanderwild
on it. In two days I want to know everything about their finances, their executives. Most of all, I want to know exactly where they're the most vulnerable."

"I gather you intend to take them over."

Matt tossed down another long swallow of his drink. "I'll decide that later. What I want right now is enough stock to control them."

"What about
Southville
? We've got a fortune invested in that land."

A mirthless smile twisted Matt's lips. "I phoned Pearson and Levinson from the car," he said, referring to the
Chicago law firm he kept on retainer, "and told them what I want to do. We'll get our rezoning and we'll also make a handsome profit from Bancroft's."

"How?"

"There's the little matter of that
Houston property they want so badly."

"And?"

"And we now own it."

Anderson
nodded, took two steps toward the door, stopped, and turned back. Hesitantly, he said, "Since I'm going to be in the front lines alongside you in this battle with Bancroft, I'd like to at least know how it got started in the first place."

Had any of his other executives asked that question, Matt would have verbally flayed him. Trust was a luxury that men in Matt's financial stratum couldn't afford. He had learned, as others who'd made it to the top had also learned, that it was risky, even dangerous to confide too much to anyone. More often than not, they used the information to garner favors elsewhere; sometimes they used it simply to prove they were truly a confidant of a famous and successful man. Of all the people he knew, there were only four whom Matt trusted implicitly: his father, his sister, Tom Anderson, and Joe O'Hara. Tom had been with him since the old days, when he was getting by on daring and guts, building an empire on a foundation of audacity and hunches—and very little real capital. He trusted Anderson and O'Hara because they'd
proven
their loyalty. And, to a certain extent, he trusted them because, like him, they didn't come from privileged backgrounds and fancy prep schools. "Ten years ago," Matt replied after a reluctant pause, "I did something Bancroft didn't like."

"Jesus, it must have been pretty damned bad for him to keep up a vendetta all this time. What did you do?"

"I dared to reach above myself and to intrude on his own elite little world."

"How?"

Matt took another swallow of his drink to wash away the bitterness of the words, the memory. "I married his daughter."

"You married his—
Meredith Bancroft?
That daughter?"

"The very same," Matt averred grimly.

When
Anderson gaped at him in stunned silence, Matt added, "There's something else you might as well know. She told me today that the divorce she thought she got eleven years ago wasn't legal. The lawyer was a fraud who never filed the petition with the court. I told Levinson to check that out, but I have a hunch it's the truth."

After another moment of stunned silence,
Anderson's agile mind began to function. "And now she wants a fortune as a settlement, right?"

"She wants a divorce," Matt corrected, "and she and her father would like to ruin me, but beyond that, she claims she doesn't want anything."

Tom reacted with
angry loyalty and a bitter, sarcastic laugh. "When we're through with them, they're going to wish to God they hadn't started this war," he promised, heading for the door.

When he was gone, Matt walked over to the windows and stood looking out on a day as bleak and dreary as his soul.
Anderson was probably right about the outcome of all this, but Matt's sense of triumph was already dissolving. He felt... empty. As he stared out at the rain, Meredith's parting words revolved around and around in his mind:
You're not fit to touch Parker's shoes! He's ten times the man you are! Underneath that tailor-made suit you're wearing, you're still nothing but a dirty steelwork-
er
, from a dirty little town, with a dirty, drunken father!

He tried to blot those two sentences out of his mind, but they stayed, taunting him with his own stupidity, forcibly reminding him again of what a fool he was where she was concerned. For years after he thought they were divorced, he had not been able to drive her completely out of his heart. He had worked himself half to death to build an empire, driven by some stupid, half-formed plan to come back someday and impress Meredith with all he'd achieved and become.

His mouth twisted with bitter self-mockery. Today he'd had his chance to impress her: He was a financial success; the suit he was wearing cost more than the truck he had owned when they met; he'd taken her to a beautiful, expensive restaurant in a chauffeur-driven limousine—and after all that, he was still "nothing but a dirty steelworker" to her. Normally, he was proud of his origins, but Meredith's words had made him feel like some slimy monster dredged up from the bottom of a stagnant swamp, a monster who'd exchanged his scales for skin.