Paradise (69 page)

Meredith nodded, but she hesitated, worriedly studying the deep lines etched into his handsome face by strain and fatigue. "I can't believe you flew home because you couldn't reach me."

"That is one of two reasons I flew home."

She tipped her head
to the side. "What was the other reason?"

"Morton Simonson is going to file Chapter 11 tomorrow. I got the word in
Geneva last night."

Meredith wasn't certain why he should feel the need to come home because an industrial paint manufacturer was going to file bankruptcy, and she said so as she turned to fix his drink.

Our bank has loaned them in excess of one hundred million," Parker said. "If they go belly-up, we'll lose most of that. Since I also seemed to be on the verge of losing my
fiancee
," he added, "I decided to fly home and see what I could do to salvage one or both."

Despite his attempt at flippancy, Meredith now understood the gravity of the Morton Simonson issue, and she felt even worse for adding to Parker's worry. "You were never on the verge of losing me," she said with an ache in her voice.

"Why the hell didn't you return my phone calls? Where were you? What's going on with Farrell? Lisa told me what you found out from Farrell's father. She said you drove to
Indiana
to see Farrell on Friday night so you could tell him the truth and get him to agree to a divorce."

"I did tell him the truth," Meredith said gently, handing him his drink, "and he's agreeable to a divorce. Stuart Whitmore and I are going to meet with Matt and his lawyers tomorrow."

He nodded, watching her in speculative silence. His next question was one she dreaded—and expected. "Were you with
him all weekend?"

"Yes. He—he was too ill to listen to anything Friday night." Belatedly recalling that Parker didn't know Matt had bought the
Houston property in retaliation for having his rezoning request denied, Meredith told him about it. Next she explained why she'd felt she needed to get Matt to agree to a truce
before
she told him about her miscarriage. Finished, she stared at her hands, consumed with guilt for what she hadn't told Parker, not certain if confessing it was a selfish way of unburdening herself or whether it was the morally and ethically correct thing to do. If the latter were the case, and she still felt that it was, this didn't seem like the right time to tell him—not when he'd already had one major blow with Morton Simonson.

She was still trying to decide, when Parker said, "Farrell must have been furious on Sunday when he realized your father had duped him about your miscarriage."

"No," Meredith said, thinking about the wrenching sorrow and regret on Matt's face. "He's probably angry with my father now, but he wasn't then. I started to cry when I told him about
Elizabeth's funeral, and I think Matt was trying very hard
not
to cry. It wasn't a time for anger somehow."

The guilt she felt for what happened after that was in her eyes, and Parker saw it.

"No, I suppose it wasn't." He'd been sitting hunched slightly forward, his forearms braced on his legs, holding his glass between his knees, watching her. Now he jerked his gaze from her face and began idly rolling the glass in his palms, his
jawline
tightening. And in the endless moments of lengthening silence, Meredith knew—she knew he'd guessed that she had gone to bed with Matt.

"Parker," she said shakily, ready to confess, "if you're wondering whether Matt and I—"

"Don't tell me you went to bed with him, Meredith!" he bit out. "Lie to me if you have to, and then make me believe it, but don't tell me you slept with him. I couldn't stand it."

He'd already judged her and handed her
her
penance —and to Meredith, who wanted only to tell the truth and make him understand and someday forgive her, it seemed like a lifelong sentence to purgatory. He waited a minute, evidently to give them both time to put the subject to rest, and then he put the glass down. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he drew her close and tipped her chin up, trying to smile into her shadowed eyes. "From what you told me about your phone call
with Stuart this morning, it sounds like Farrell's going to be reasonably decent about all this."

"He is," Meredith said, but guilt and misery made her smile wobble.

Parker kissed her forehead. "It's almost over, then. Tomorrow night we'll toast your successful divorce negotiations and maybe even the acquisition of that
Houston property you want so badly." He sobered then, and what he said made Meredith belatedly realize how deeply concerned he was about matters at the bank. "I may have to look around and find you another lender to finance that store and the land. Morton Simonson is the third large borrower to file Chapter 11 on us in the last six months. If we aren't taking the money in, we can't lend it out unless we borrow it from the fed, and we're already heavily borrowed there."

"I didn't know you'd had two other big loans go bad."

"The economy is scaring the hell out of me. Never mind," he added, standing up and pulling her to her feet, smiling reassuringly. "The bank isn't going to collapse. We're in better shape than most of our competitors. Could you do me a favor though?" he asked half seriously.

"Anything," she stated without hesitation.

He grinned and put his arms around her for a goodnight kiss. "Could you make certain that Bancroft and Company continues to make all its loan payments to Reynolds Mercantile Trust on time?"

"Absolutely!" Meredith replied, smiling tenderly at him. He kissed her then, a long, tired, gentle kiss that Meredith returned with more fervor than ever before. When he left, she refused to compare that kiss to Matt's demanding, hot, ardent ones. Passion was what Matt's kisses offered. Parker's offered love.

Matt stood in the center of the mammoth conference room that adjoined his office, his hands on his hips, looking at everything through narrowed, critical eyes. In thirty minutes Meredith would be there, and he was desperately, boyishly, determined to impress her with all the trappings of his success. A secretary and the receptionist, whose names he'd heretofore never bothered to learn, had been summoned to the conference room so that he could seek their opinion of the overall effect. He'd called
Vanderwild's
office, too, and left him an urgent message to come up immediately.
Vanderwild
was closer to Meredith's age than Matt was, and he had good taste—it wouldn't hurt to get his opinion on things. "What do you think, Joanna?" he asked the secretary now, his hand on the dimmer switch that controlled the tiny spotlights high above in the ceiling. "Is this too little light or too much?"

"I—I think it's just right, Mr. Farrell," Joanna replied hastily, trying very hard not to show how shocked she was to discover that their formidable employer was actually subject to a human frailty like doubt, and that, moreover, he had finally put himself to the trouble of learning their names. The fact that he also had a devastating smile was not exactly a surprise. They'd seen him smile in meetings with
his executives, in magazines, and newspapers, but until today, no woman at Haskell Electronics had ever had that smile focused upon herself, and both Joanna and Valerie were trying hard not to look as flustered or flattered as they felt.

Valerie stood back, studying the effect of the center-piece on the conference table. "I think the fresh flowers on the conference table are a lovely touch," she assured him. "Shall I arrange to have the florist bring a similar spray every Tuesday?"

"Why would I want to do that?" Matt asked, so absorbed in the matter of lighting that he momentarily forgot that he'd led both women to think his sudden interest in the appearance of his office and conference room was purely aesthetic and not related to today's guests in any way. "That looks nice," he said, watching Joanna arrange a $2,000 crystal water pitcher and matching glasses on one end of the rosewood conference table. When she straightened and backed away from the table, Matt passed a slow, critical glance over the vast room with its silver carpeting and burgundy suede sofas and chairs. Although his office and this conference room took up an entire side of the glass high rise and offered a breathtaking view of the
Chicago skyline, he'd decided to close the opaque draperies. With the draperies closed and the room dim, the spotlights highlighted the satin sheen of the thirty-foot rosewood table and sent prisms of light flashing off the deeply faceted crystal on the table. Like the conference table, the interior walls were of rosewood, and a circular bar had been recessed into one of them. The doors to the bar were open now with light glancing off thousands of crystal facets on the gold-rimmed tumblers and decanters that stood upon the shelves.

Despite that, Matt continued to deliberate about the room. With the draperies closed, the room looked more lush, cozier. Or else like an expensive restaurant, he wasn't certain anymore. "Open or closed?" he asked the two women, then he pressed a button that sent eighty feet of draperies gliding open across the glass wall so that the skyline was revealed, and they could help him decide.

"Open," Joanna said.

"Open," Valerie echoed.

Matt looked out at the hazy, overcast day. The meeting with Meredith would go on for at least an hour, by which time it would be dark, and the view would be spectacular. "Closed," he said, pressing the button and watching the draperies whoosh across the glass walls. "I'll open them when it's dark out," he said, thinking aloud.

Brushing back the sides of his suit coat, he considered the coming meeting, knowing that his obsession with
minor details was foolish. Even if Meredith was duly impressed with $40,000 worth of crystal and all the other trappings of his little kingdom—even if she was cordial and relaxed and gracious when she walked in—she sure as hell wasn't going to like her surroundings, or her host, once the meeting began.

He sighed, half eager and half reluctant for the battle to begin, then he absently remembered the two women who were waiting to see if he needed anything else. "Thank you both very much. You've been very helpful," he said, his mind going back to the appearance of the suite. He flashed a smile at both women, a warm smile that made them feel appreciated and noticed and admired at last, then he spoiled that utterly by demanding of the secretary, "If you were a woman, would you find this room attractive?"

"I find it attractive," Joanna said stiffly, "even as a lowly robot, Mr. Farrell."

It took a moment for her icy retort to register on Matt, but when he glanced over his shoulder, both women were walking through the double doors past Eleanor Stern. "What's she miffed about?" he demanded of his own secretary, whose sole interest, like his own, was on getting work done at the office, not socializing or flirting.

Miss Stern straightened her severely cut gray suit and removed the pencil she'd tucked behind her ear. "I assume," she said with unhidden disdain for the other secretary, "that she hoped you'd be aware that she is a woman. She's been hoping you'd notice that since the day you arrived here."

"She's wasting her time," Matt advised. "Among other things, she's an employee. Only an idiot fools around with his employees."

"Perhaps you ought to get married," Miss Stern sensibly replied, but she was flipping pages in her dictation notebook, looking for some figures she wanted to discuss with him. "In my day, that would have put a stop to female aspirations."

A slow smile broke across Matt's face and he perched his hip on the conference table, suddenly eager to tell someone his newly discovered truth. "I am married," he quietly said, watching for her stunned reaction.

Miss Stern flipped a page, and without looking up, said, "My heartiest congratulations to you both."

"I'm serious," Matt said, his brows pulling together.

"Shall I relay that information to Miss Avery?" she asked with a deadpan look. "She's called twice today."

"Miss Stern," Matt said firmly, and for the first time in their sterile working relationship he truly regretted that he'd never befriended her. "I married Meredith Bancroft eleven years ago. She's coming here this afternoon."

She looked at him over the top of her steel-rimmed glasses. "You have dinner reservations at Renaldo's tonight. Will Miss Bancroft be joining you and Miss Avery? If so, shall I change the reservations to a party of three?"

"I canceled my date with—" Matt began, then his mouth dropped open, and a lazy grin spread across his face. "Do I detect a note of
censure
in your voice?"

"Certainly not, Mr. Farrell. You made it very clear at the beginning that censuring your actions was not part of my job. As I recall, you specifically said that you didn't want my personal opinions, and you didn't want cake on your birthday; you merely wanted my skills and my time. Now, do you want me to be present at this meeting to take notes?"

Matt swallowed back a startled laugh at the discovery that his long-ago remark had evidently been rankling her for all these years. "I think it might be a good idea for you to take notes. Pay particular attention to anything at all that Miss Bancroft or her attorney agree to; I intend to hold them to every concession."

"Very well," she said, and turned to leave.

Behind her, Matt's voice checked her in
midstep
.