Paradise (77 page)

"I'm sorry," he said contritely, a strange, tender light in his eyes. Lifting his hand, Matt laid it against her smooth cheek, amazed and shamelessly delighted that for all her innate sensuality, she obviously hadn't slept around very much. If she had, instead of feeling gauche in bed with him, she'd surely know she turned his body into an inferno with a simple touch. "God, you are lovely," he whispered. "Inside and out." He bent his head, intending to kiss her, but she turned her face away, so he kissed her ear.

"If you'll kiss me back," he whispered huskily, brushing his lips along the curve of her jaw, "I'll make it six million. If you'll go to bed with me tonight," he continued, losing himself in the scent of her perfume and the softness of her skin, "I'll give you the world. But if you'll move in with me," he continued, dragging his mouth across her cheek to the corner of her lips, "I'll do much better than that."

Unable to turn her face farther because his arm was in the way, and unable to turn her body because his body was in the way, Meredith tried to infuse disdain in her voice and simultaneously ignore the arousing touch of his tongue against her ear. "Six million dollars and the whole world!" she said in a slightly shaky voice. "What else could you possibly give me if I move in with you?"

"
Paradise." Lifting his head, Matt took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to meet his gaze. In an aching, solemn voice he said, "I'll give you paradise on a gold platter. Anything you want— everything you want. I come with it, of course. It's a package deal." Meredith swallowed audibly, mesmerized by the melting look in his silver eyes and the rich timbre of his deep voice. "We'll be a family," he continued, describing the paradise he was offering while he bent his head to her again. "We'll have children ... I'd like six," he teased, his lips against her temple. "But I'll settle for one. You don't have to decide now." She drew in a ragged breath and Matt decided he'd pushed matters as far as he dared for one night. Straightening abruptly, he chucked her under her chin. "Think about it," he suggested with
a grin.

Meredith watched in a stupor of shock and disbelief as he turned and headed to the door without another word. It closed behind him, and she stared at it, riveted to the spot, her mind trying to absorb everything he'd said. Reaching blindly for the back of a chair, she walked around it and sank into it, not sure whether to laugh or cry. He had to be lying. He had to be
crazy.
That alone would explain his resolute pursuit of a foolish goal he'd evidently set for himself eleven years earlier—of proving he was good enough to be married to her, to a Bancroft. She'd read articles about his occasional business clashes with competitive companies or takeover targets, and they'd implied that he was almost inhumanly single-minded.

Evidently, Meredith realized with a hysterical, panicky giggle, she really
was
Matthew Farrell's newest "takeover target." She could not—would not—let herself believe he'd actually been hung up on her for years after their parting. My God, he'd never even said I love you to her when they were married—not even at the height of passion or the afterglow.

She did, however, believe some things he'd told her tonight: He probably
had
spent those early years working himself into the ground to prove to her, and undoubtedly her father, that he could make a fortune. That sounded just like Matt, she thought with a wry smile—and so did the champagne toast he said he drank to her the night he was worth a million dollars. Vengeful to the very end, she decided with amusement. No wonder he'd become such a force to be reckoned with in the business world! It occurred to her that her thoughts were a little mild, given the circumstances, and she reluctantly faced the reason for that: One other thing that Matt had said was true— there
had
always been something between them. From the very first night she'd met him, there'd been an immediate and inexplicable rapport that had sprung up between them, a bond that swiftly drew them closer together during those long-ago days at the farm. She'd felt it then, but it came as a shock to discover that Matt had been aware of it too. That same inexplicable rapport had already been struggling to resurface the day of their ill-fated lunch when he had teased her about not knowing what she wanted to drink. It had burst into bloom again at the farm, when she put her hand in his and asked for a truce, then grown stronger, more vibrant, when they sat together in the living room that night, talking about business. In a way, it was almost as if they'd been born friends. It was impossible for her to truly hate Matt for anything.

With a baffled sigh Meredith got up, turned out the lamp, and started toward her bedroom. She was standing beside her bed, unbuttoning her blouse, when the rest of his words, the ones she was adamantly trying not to remember, whispered forcefully through her mind, and her hands stilled on the buttons.
Go to bed with me tonight and I'll give you the world. Move in with me, and I'll give you paradise on a gold platter. Anything you want
—
everything you want. I come with it, of course. It's a package deal.

Mesmerized by the memory, Meredith stood still, then she gave her head a hard shake and finished unbuttoning her blouse. The man was absolutely lethal. No wonder women fell at his feet. Just the memory of his voice whispering those things in her ear was making her hands tremble! Really, she decided as she tried to suppress a halfhearted smile, if he could bottle all that awesome sex appeal, he wouldn't need to work to make money. Her smile faded as she wondered how many other women he'd offered his paradise to, and then she realized the answer had to be none. In all the rabid press coverage of his personal life, she'd never seen a single piece of information that implied he lived other than alone. She felt unaccountably better now that she'd remembered that. And she was too exhausted from the emotional turmoil of the past two days to wonder if that wasn't a little odd.

When she got into bed, her thoughts turned to Parker and her spirits plummeted. She'd hoped all day that he would call. Despite the way they'd parted, she knew in her heart that neither of them wanted to end their engagement. It dawned on her that perhaps he was waiting for her to call. Tomorrow, she decided, she'd call him tomorrow and try again to make him understand.

Chapter 43

"
Mornin
', Matt," Joe said as Matt slid into the back seat of the limo at 8:15 the next morning, then he glanced uneasily at the folded newspaper in Matt's hand and added, "Is—is everything okay? With you and your wife, I mean?"

"Not exactly," Matt replied dryly. Ignoring the
Chicago Tribune,
which he normally read in the car every morning, Matt stretched his legs out in front of him and gazed out the side window. A faint smile played about his mouth as the limo pulled into traffic, and his thoughts drifted to Meredith. Several minutes had passed before Matt noticed that his car was not making its usual daring assault on traffic this morning. Puzzled, he looked up and saw Joe watching him in the rearview mirror. "Something on your mind?" Matt asked.

"No, why?"

"You passed up a chance to cut off that delivery track." Wordlessly, Joe withdrew his gaze from the mirror, stepped on the accelerator, and Matt let his thoughts return pleasurably to Meredith. He let them linger on her until he arrived at Haskell's building, then he forced himself to start thinking of the business day that lay ahead as he got out of the car in the underground garage.

"Good morning, Eleanor," he said with a grin as he walked through his secretary's office and opened his door. "You're looking very well this morning."

"Good morning," she managed to say in an odd, shocked voice. In accordance with their usual morning ritual, she followed him into his office and stood beside his desk with a notepad in one hand, his mail and phone messages in the other, ready to write down his instructions for dealing with each item. Matt saw her gaze ricochet to the newspaper when he tossed it onto his desk, but his attention was diverted by the thick stack of phone messages she was holding. "Who are those calls from?"

"The news media," she replied with disgust as she began flipping through them. "The
Tribune
has called four times and the
Sun-Times
has called three. UPI is on hold on my desk right now, and the Associated Press is downstairs in the main lobby, along with the reporters from the local television and radio stations. All four of the major networks have called, so has CNN.
People
magazine wants to talk to you, but the
National Tattler
wanted to talk to me—they said they 'want to know the dirt from a secretary's point of view.' I hung up on them. You've also had two crank calls from anonymous individuals who inferred you must be homosexual, and one from Miss Avery, who said to tell you that you are a deceitful bastard. Tom Anderson called to ask if he can do anything to help, and the guard in the lobby phoned for reinforcements to stop the press from barging up here." She paused and glanced at him. "I've already handled that."

Frowning, Matt mentally sorted through the business activities of
Intercorp's
various companies, trying to think which would have caused a public furor. "What's happened that I don't know about?"

She nodded grimly to the folded newspaper lying on Matt's desk. "Have you opened that paper yet?"

"No," Matt said, reaching for the
Tribune
and irritably snapping it open, "but if something happened last night to cause an uproar in the press, Anderson should have called me at ho—" He glanced at the front page of the paper and froze, momentarily unable to absorb the shock: Pictures of Meredith, himself, and Parker Reynolds were staring back at him beneath a headline that screamed:

FAKE LAWYER CONFESSES TO DUPING FAMOUS CLIENTS

He snatched up the paper, scanning the accompanying story, his jaw clenching.

Last night, police in Belleville, Illinois, arrested Stanislaus
Spyzhalski
, 45, on charges of fraud and practicing law without a license. According to the Belleville police department,
Spyzhalski
has confessed to duping hundreds of clients over the past fifteen years by falsifying judges' signatures on documents that he never filed, including a divorce decree which he claims to have been hired to obtain a decade ago for department store heiress Meredith Bancroft from her alleged husband, industrialist Matthew Farrell. Meredith Bancroft, whose impending marriage to financier Parker Reynolds was announced this month ...

With a savage curse Matt looked up from the story, rapidly calculating the possible consequences of all this, then he looked at his secretary, and began issuing rapid-fire instructions: "Get Pearson and Levinson on the phone, then find my pilot. Call Joe O'Hara in the car and tell him to stand by for instructions, and get my wife on the phone."

She nodded and left, and Matt finished scanning the article.

Officials say they were originally alerted to
Spyzhalski
by a Belleville man who tried to obtain a copy of his marriage annulment from the St. Clair County courthouse. Belleville police have already recovered some of
Spyzhalski's
files, but the suspect has refused to turn over the rest prior to his hearing tomorrow, where he plans to represent himself. Neither Farrell, Bancroft, nor Reynolds were available for comment tonight. ... Details of the
alleged Bancroft-Farrell divorce remain
undivulged
, but a spokesman for the Belleville police department said that they are confident that
Spyzhalski
, who they describe as flamboyant and unrepentant, will provide them ...

Matt's heart froze at the thought of the details of the divorce being divulged. Meredith had divorced him on grounds of desertion and mental cruelty, which, respectively, would make his proud young wife look pitiful and helpless when the press got through with her. Neither image was anything but devastating for the temporary president of a national corporation who hoped to be permanently appointed to that post when her father retired.

The story was continued on page three, and Matt yanked the page over and ground his teeth at what he saw. Beneath a bold caption that read
Menage
à
Trois
?
there was a picture of Meredith smiling at Parker as they danced at some Chicago charity affair, and a similar picture of Matt—dancing with a redhead at a charity ball in New York. Beneath those was a story that began with a report about Meredith having snubbed Matt at the opera a few weeks before, and then went into the details of their individual dating habits. Matt punched the intercom button just as Eleanor hurried into his office. "What the hell's happening with those calls?" he demanded.

"Pearson and Levinson aren't expected in until nine," she recited. "Your pilot is doing a check flight right now with the new engine, and I left word for him to call the instant he lands, which should be in about twenty minutes. Joe O'Hara is on his way back here with the car
.
I told him to wait in the parking garage, to avoid the reporters in the lobby—"

"What about my wife?" Matt interrupted, unaware that he'd automatically called her that for the second time in five minutes.

Even Eleanor
looked tense. "Her secretary says she's not in yet, and that even if she was, Miss Bancroft's instructions were to tell you that all future communications between the two of you are to be handled through your lawyers."

"That's changed," Matt said shortly. Reaching up, he ran a hand around his nape, absently rubbing the tense muscles, wanting to get to Meredith before she tried to deal with the press on her own. "How did her secretary sound when you talked to her—did she sound like everything was normal over there?"