Paradise (84 page)

"Because she's special," Meredith said with a firm smile. "You know," she added, giving him a puzzled look, "most men think Lisa is stunning."

"I like the way
you
dress," he said, casting an appreciative glance over her bright red velvet bolero jacket trimmed in gold braid and an attached ascot tie that gave the outfit an air of deceptive innocence. The jacket was open now, revealing a strapless red dress that was nipped in at her narrow waist and gently shirred at the hem. Pointedly ignoring her comment about Lisa, he smiled and said, "Why don't you open my present before Farrell gets here?"

Inside the silver wrapping paper was a blue velvet box, and nestled in satin within it was a stunning sapphire and diamond bracelet. Meredith carefully removed it. "It's beautiful," she whispered while her chest contracted painfully and her stomach clenched into knots. Tears burned her eyes, causing the glittering jewels to blur and waver, and at that moment she knew—she knew that neither the bracelet nor Parker could be hers to keep. Not when she'd already betrayed Parker in her mind and her heart because of her helpless obsession with Matt. Lifting her head, she forced herself to meet Parker's expectant gaze and held the bracelet out to him. "I'm sorry," she said in a suffocated voice. "It's magnificent, but I—I can't accept this, Parker."

"Why not?" he began, but he already knew the answer to that, had sensed this moment was coming. "So that's the way it is," he said harshly. "Farrell's won."

"Not completely," she said quietly, "but whatever happens between Matt and me, I still couldn't marry you. Not now. You deserve more than a wife who can't seem to control her feelings for another man."

After a moment of tense silence, he said, "Does Farrell know you're breaking our engagement?"

"No!" she explained a little wildly. "And I'd just as soon he
doesn't
know. It will only make him more persistent."

Again he hesitated, and then he reached out, took the bracelet from her hand, and firmly fastened it on her wrist. "I'm not giving up," he said with a grim smile. "I regard this as a minor setback. I really hate that bastard."

The buzzer sounded, Parker looked up, and his gaze riveted on Lisa, who was standing in the kitchen doorway, holding a tray. "How the hell long have you been there, eavesdropping?" he demanded while Meredith went to let Matt into the apartment.

"Not long," she said in what struck him as an unusually gentle voice. "Would you like a glass of wine?"

"No," he said bitterly, "I'd like the whole bottle."

Instead of gloating over his predicament, she filled a glass and brought it to him, her eyes soft and strangely luminous.

Matt stepped through the doorway, and to Meredith it seemed as if the entire living room was overwhelmed by the sheer force of his presence. "Happy birthday," he said, smiling down at her. "You look fantastic," he added, running his eyes over her from the top of her shining golden hair to the tips of her red shoes.

Meredith said thank you and tried not to notice how breathtakingly handsome he looked in a gray suit and vest, gleaming white shirt, and conservative striped tie. Lisa made the first move to lighten the atmosphere. "Hi, Matt," she said, beaming at him. "You look more like a banker tonight than Parker."

"I don't have a Phi Beta Kappa key," Matt joked, reluctantly reaching out to shake Parker's hand which was extended to him with equal reluctance.

"Lisa hates bankers," Parker said, letting go of Matt's hand and walking over to the wine bottle. He filled his glass and tossed it down.

"Well, Farrell," Parker said with
unprecedented bad manners, "it's Meredith's birthday. Lisa and I remembered it. Where's
your
gift?"

"I didn't bring it here."

"You mean you forgot, don't you?"

"I mean I didn't bring it here."

"Why don't we get going, everyone," Lisa burst out, sharing Meredith's desire to get both men to a public place—preferably a noisy one, where they couldn't spar. "Meredith can open my gift later."

Matt's limousine was waiting at the curb. Lisa got in first, and Meredith followed, deliberately sitting down next to her and effectively eliminating the possibility that the two men would engage in a skirmish over who sat next to whom. The only person who didn't look tense was Joe O'Hara, who added to the tension by saying with a grin, "
Evenin
', Mrs. Farrell."

Two bottles of Dom
Perignon
were reclining in sterling ice buckets beside the car's liquor cabinet. "How about some champagne? I'd love—" Lisa began, but just then the limo rocketed forward into traffic, plastering her to the back of the seat and making her gasp.

"Jesus Christ!" Parker burst out, fighting for balance as he was pressed forward in his rear-facing seat by the same force. "Your idiot driver just cut across four lanes of traffic and ran a red light!"

"He's perfectly competent," Matt replied, raising his voice to be heard over the blaring horns of irate motorists, and no one noticed that an old Chevrolet was racing along in their wake, changing lanes whenever they did, with a kind of defiant desperation. While the limo hurtled toward the expressway, scattering cars in its wake, Matt lifted a bottle of champagne from its icy nest and opened it. "Happy thirtieth birthday," he said, handing Meredith the first glass of champagne. "I'm sorry I missed the last eleven of them—"

"Meredith gets sick on champagne," Parker interrupted. Turning to Meredith with an intimate smile, he added, "Remember the time you got sick on champagne at the
Remingtons
' anniversary party?"

"Not sick, exactly. Dizzy," Meredith corrected him, puzzled by his tone and his choice of topic.

"You were definitely dizzy," he teased. "And a little giddy. You made me stand out on the balcony with you in the freezing cold. Remember—I gave you my coat to wear. And then Stan and
Milly
Mayfield joined us and we made a tent out of our coats and stayed outside." He glanced at Matt and said in a coldly superior voice, "Do you know the
Mayfields
?"

"No," Matt replied, handing Lisa a glass of champagne.

"No, of course you wouldn't," he said dismissively. "
Milly
and Stan Mayfield are old friends of Meredith's and mine." He said it with the intention of making Matt feel like an outsider, and Meredith hastily brought up a new subject. Lisa quickly joined in, drawing Matt into the discussion. Parker had four more glasses of champagne and contributed two more amusing stories about people he and Meredith knew and whom Matt did not.

The restaurant Matt had chosen was one Meredith had never seen or heard of before, but she loved it the moment they walked into the foyer. Patterned after an English pub, with stained glass windows and dark wood paneling, the Manchester House had a large lounge that stretched across the entire back of it. The dining rooms, which were on both sides of the foyer, were small and cozy, separated from the lounge section with ivy-covered trellises. The lounge, where they were escorted to wait until their table was ready, was filled with Christmas revelers, including a party of about twenty. Judging from the raucous bursts of laughter from that table and some of the occupants seated on the stools at the bar, nearly everyone had been indulging liberally in Christmas cheer.

"This sure as hell isn't the sort of place I'd have picked to celebrate Meredith's birthday," Parker said with a scornful look at Matt as they all sat down.

Keeping his impatience under control for Meredith's sake, Matt said flatly, "It's not what I'd have picked either, but if we wanted to eat in peace, it had to be somewhere relatively dark and out of the way."

"Parker, it's going to be fun," Meredith promised, and she really did like it—the English atmosphere and the upbeat music being played by a live band.

"The band is good," Lisa agreed, leaning forward in her chair and watching the musicians. A moment later her eyes widened as Matt's chauffeur sauntered into the lounge and sat down on a stool at the far end of the bar. "Matt," she said with laughing incredulity, "I think your chauffeur just decided to come in out of the cold and have a beer."

Without looking in that direction, Matt replied, "Joe drinks Coke not beer, when he's on duty."

A waiter appeared to take their drinks order, and Meredith decided there was no need to inform Lisa that Joe was also a bodyguard, especially not when she preferred to forget that herself.

"Will that be all, folks?" the waiter asked, and when they told him it was, he walked over to the end of the bar. He was starting to hand the order over to the bartender, when a short man wearing an unusually bulky overcoat walked up beside him and said, "How'd you like to make a quick hundred bucks, buddy?"

The waiter swung around. "How?"

"Just let me stand over there behind that trellis for a while."

"Why?"

"You've got yourself some important guests at one of those tables, and I've got myself a camera under this coat." He held out his hand, and in it was a press pass showing that he was employed by a well-known tabloid, and a neatly folded $100 bill.

"Stay out of sight," the waiter said, palming the money.

At the maitre
d's
desk in the front foyer, the owner of the restaurant picked up the phone and dialed the home phone number of Noel Jaffe, who rated restaurants in his newspaper column. "Noel," he said, turning his shoulder a little to avoid being overheard by the new crowd of customers coming in the doors, "this is Alex over at the Manchester House. You remember I told you someday I'd repay you for the nice write-up you gave my place in your column? Well, guess who's sitting in my restaurant right now."

"No kidding." Jaffe laughed when Alex told him who they were. "Maybe they are the happy little family they seemed like at that press conference."

"Not tonight, they aren't," Alex said, his whisper rising a little. "The
fiance
has a face on him like a storm cloud, and he's had plenty to drink."

There was a brief, thoughtful pause, and then Jaffe chuckled and said, "I'll be right there with a photographer. Find us a table where we can see without being seen."

"No problem. Just remember—when you write about this, spell the name of my place right and put in the address."

Alex hung up the phone, so delighted with the prospect of free publicity about Chicago's rich and famous eating in his restaurant, he called several radio and television stations too.

By the time the waiter brought the second round of drinks—and
the third for Parker—Meredith was well aware that Parker was drinking too much, too fast. That in itself wouldn't have been quite so alarming if he wasn't also determined to infuse the conversation with a steady stream of little vignettes about things he and Meredith had done, most of them beginning with "Remember when..."

Meredith didn't always remember, and she was, moreover, becoming increasingly aware that Matt was getting angry.

Matt wasn't getting angry, he was already coldly furious. For three quarters of an hour he'd been forced to listen to Reynolds relating cute tales about himself and Meredith, designed to point out to Matt that he was, hopelessly and irrevocably, Meredith's and Reynolds's social inferior, no matter how much money he had. Included among them was a story about the time Meredith broke her tennis racquet in a doubles tournament she played with
him at the country club when she was a teenager... another about some damned dance given by some ritzy private school where she'd dropped her necklace ... and yet another about a polo game he'd recently taken her to.

When he started talking about a charity auction they'd worked on together, Meredith stood up quickly. "I'm going to the ladies' room," she said, deliberately interrupting Parker. Lisa stood up too. "I'll go with you."

As soon as they reached the ladies' room, Meredith walked over to the sink, bracing her hands on the tiled counter in a posture of complete misery. "I can't stand much more of this," she told Lisa. "I never imagined tonight would be as bad as this."

"Should I pretend I'm sick and make them take us home?" Lisa said, grinning as she leaned forward to reapply her lipstick. "Remember when you did that for me that time we double-dated when we were at
Bensonhurst
?"

"Parker wouldn't care if we both passed out at his feet tonight," Meredith said irritably. "He's too busy doing everything he can to provoke Matt into an argument."

The tube of lipstick in Lisa's hand stilled, and she shot Meredith an irate sideways glance. "Matt is goading him!"

"He isn't saying a word!"

"That
is how he's goading him. Matt is leaning back in his chair, watching Parker like he's a performing clown! Parker isn't used to losing, and he's lost you. And Matt is sitting there, silently gloating because he knows he's going to win."

"I cannot believe you!" Meredith burst out in a low, angry voice. "For years you've criticized Parker when he was right. Now he's wrong and he's drunk, and you're taking his side! Furthermore, Matt hasn't won anything. And he is
not
gloating. He may be trying to look bored and amused by Parker's antics, but he isn't! Believe me, he's angry—really angry because Parker is making him look like a—a social outcast."

"That's the way you see it," Lisa said with
such fierce indignation that Meredith stepped back in astonishment. It turned to guilt as Lisa added, "I don't know how you could have considered marrying a man for whom you haven't the least bit of sympathy!"