Paradise

by Judith McNaught

  This morning, when she was still half asleep, he had put a breakfast tray on the nightstand and sat down beside her. For as long as she lived, Meredith knew she would remember the boyish glamour of his white smile as he leaned over her and whispered, “Wake up, sleeping beauty, and give this frog a kiss.”

  She looked at him now, and there was nothing boyish about that square jaw and tough chin, but there were other times—times when he laughed, or when he was sleeping and his dark hair was tousled, that his features were absolutely endearing, rather than rugged. And those eyelashes! The other morning she’d noticed those thick, spiked eyelashes lying against his cheek while he slept, and she’d had an absurd impulse to lean down and tuck him in because he looked like a little boy.

  He caught her studying him and teased, “Did I forget to shave this morning?”

  That startled a laugh from her because it was in such conflict with the direction of her thoughts. “Actually, I was thinking that you have eyelashes that a girl would kill for.”

  “You’d better watch it,” he warned, shooting her a mock scowl. “I beat up a kid in the sixth grade for saying I had eyelashes like a girl’s.”

  Meredith laughed, but as they neared her house and the confrontation with her father, the lighthearted mood they’d both tried to preserve began to disintegrate. Matt had to leave for Venezuela in two days, so their time together was quickly running out. And although he’d agreed not to tell her father about her pregnancy yet, he was personally opposed to the idea.

  Meredith didn’t like it either. It added to her feeling of being a child bride, and she hated that feeling. While she waited to join Matt in South America, she intended to learn to cook. In the past few days, the idea of being a real wife, with a husband and a place of their own, had taken on an enormous appeal despite the daunting description he’d given her of what that place of their own would probably be like.

  “Here we are,” Meredith said a few minutes later as they turned into the drive. “Home sweet home.”

  “If your father loves you as much as you think he does,” Matt told her with quiet reassurance, helping her out of the car, “he’ll try to make the best of this once he gets over the shock.” Meredith hoped he was right, because, if he wasn’t, it meant she would have to live at the farm while Matt was gone, and that she didn’t want to do—not with Patrick Farrell feeling about her the way he did.

  “Here goes,” she said, drawing a deep breath as they walked up the steps to the front door. Since she’d called this morning and asked Albert to tell her father she’d be home in the early afternoon, Meredith assumed her father would be waiting.

  She was right. The moment she opened the door, he stalked out of the living room, looking like he hadn’t slept in a week. “Where in the hell have you been?” he thundered, looking ready to shake her. Unaware of Matt, who was standing a few steps behind her, he raged, “Are you trying to drive me out of my goddamned mind, Meredith?”

  “Just be calm for a minute, and I’ll explain,” Meredith said, lifting her hand in Matt’s direction.

  He glanced to the left and saw who Meredith had been with. “Son of a bitch!”

  “It’s not what you’re thinking,” Meredith cried. “We’re married!”

  “You’re what?”

  Matt answered the question in a calm, implacable voice. “Married.”

  In the space of three seconds Philip Bancroft arrived at the only possible reason that Meredith would marry someone she didn’t know. She was pregnant. “Oh, Christ!” The ravaged look on his face, the anguished fury in his voice, hurt Meredith more than anything he could have done or said to her. And just when she knew it couldn’t get worse, she discovered it was only beginning. Rage had replaced his shock and sorrow. Turning on his heel, Philip ordered them both into his study, then he slammed the door behind them with a crash that shook the walls.

  Ignoring Meredith completely, he prowled back and forth across the study like a maddened panther, and every time he looked at Matt, his eyes flashed with murder and hatred. For what seemed like hours, he swore at Matt, he accused him of everything from rape to assault, and he grew more incensed when Matt endured his vicious tirade in an impassive, tight-lipped silence that resembled indifference.

  Shaking with nerves and drowning in shame, Meredith sat beside Matt on the sofa where they’d made love. She was so overwrought that it took several minutes before she finally realized that her father was less infuriated by her pregnancy than he was by her marriage to an “ambitious, low-class degenerate.” When he finally ran out of words, he flung himself into the chair behind his desk and sat there in ominous silence, his gaze riveted on Matt, tapping the end of a letter opener on the desk.

  Her throat aching with unshed tears, Meredith realized that Matt had been wrong. This was not something her father would adjust to or get over. She was going to be cast out of his life, just as her mother had been, and despite all their disagreements, she was utterly shattered. Matt was still a virtual stranger, and from this day forward her father would be a stranger too. There was no point trying to explain or defend Matt, because whenever she’d interrupted her father’s tirade to do that, he’d either ignored her or gotten angrier.

  Standing up, she said with as much dignity as she could, “I was going to stay here until I go to South America. Obviously, that’s impossible. I’ll go upstairs and pack a few things.” She turned to Matt to suggest he wait for her in the car, but her father interrupted her, his voice taut with strain. “This is your house, Meredith, and where you belong. Farrell and I need to have a private talk, however.”

  Meredith didn’t like the sound of that, but Matt nodded curtly for her to go.

  When the door closed behind her, Matt waited for another tirade to begin, but Bancroft seemed to get himself under control. He sat at his desk, his fingers steepled, staring at Matt for several long, hard moments—mentally calculating, Matt suspected, the best way to ram home whatever he planned to say next. His fury hadn’t gotten him anywhere, so Matt knew he would try another tack. He did not, however, expect Philip Bancroft to stumble onto Matt’s only vulnerable place where Meredith was concerned: Guilt. Nor did he expect him to be as eloquently lethal.

  “Congratulations, Farrell,” Bancroft sneered in a bitter, sarcastic voice. “You’ve gotten an innocent eighteen-year-old girl pregnant, a girl with her whole life in front of her—a life that would have given her a college education, traveling, the best of everything.” Raking Matt with a contemptuous stare, he said, “Do you know why there are clubs like Glenmoor?” Matt remained silent, and Philip told him the answer. “They’re to protect our families, our daughters, from smooth-talking filth like you.”

  Bancroft seemed to sense he’d drawn blood with those remarks, and with the instincts of a vampire, he went for more. “Meredith is eighteen and you’ve stolen her youth by getting her pregnant and getting her married. Now you want to drag her all the way down with you—you want to take her to South America to live like a laborer’s drudge. I’ve been to South America, and I know Bradley Sommers. I know exactly what sort of drilling operation he’s planning in Venezuela, where it is, and what it’s really like. You’ll have to hack out paths through the jungle in order to get from what passes for civilization down there to the drilling site. When the next rain comes, the paths will be gone. Supplies are airlifted in and out by helicopter, there’s no phone, no air-conditioning, no nothing! And that humid hellhole is where you intend to take my daughter?”

  Matt had known when he took the job that the $150,000 bonus drilling companies paid was to compensate for certain deprivations, but he was fairly confident he could work things out for Meredith. Despite his loathing for Philip Bancroft, Matt knew the man was entitled to some form of assurance about Meredith’s future well-being. For the first time since he arrived, he spoke. “There’s a large village sixty miles away,” he began in a flat, resolute voice.

  “Bullshit! Sixty miles is eight hours by jeep, assuming th
e path you hacked out last time hasn’t already been reclaimed by the jungle! Is that the village where you’re planning to ditch my daughter for a year and a half? When do you plan to see her? You’ll be working twelve-hour shifts, as I understand it.”

  “There are also cottages on site,” Matt pointed out even though he suspected, and he’d told Meredith, they might not be adequate by his standards, regardless of what Sommers claimed. He also knew Bancroft was right about the terrain and the inconveniences. He was gambling that Meredith might find Venezuela beautiful and their brief time there something of an adventure.

  “That’s a great life you’re offering her,” Philip shot back with cutting scorn. “A shack on site or a hovel in some godforsaken village in the middle of nowhere!” Abruptly, he changed the angle for the next verbal knife. “You’ve got a tough hide, Farrell, I’ll give you that. You took everything I could hand out without so much as a flinch. Do you also have a conscience, I wonder? You’ve sold my daughter your dreams in return for her whole life. Well, she had dreams too, you bastard. She wanted to go to college. She’s been in love with the same man since childhood too— A banker’s son who could have given her the world. She doesn’t think I know about that, but I do. Did you?”

  Matt’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

  “Tell me something, where did she get the clothes she has on?” Without waiting for an answer, Philip jeered. “She’s been with you for a few days and she doesn’t even look the same! She looks like she’s been dressed by Kmart. Now, then,” Philip said, his voice turning businesslike, “that brings us to the next issue which I’m sure is vital to you: Money. You are not going to see one cent of Meredith’s money! Am I making myself clear?” he snapped, leaning forward in his chair. “You’ve already robbed her of her youth and her dreams, but you aren’t ever going to see one cent of her money. I have control of it for twelve more years. If, by some chance she’s still with you in twelve years, before I turn it over to her, I’ll invest every goddamned cent of it in things she can’t sell or trade for twenty-five years.”

  When Matt remained icily silent, he continued. “If you’re thinking I’ll take pity on the way she’s living with you and start doling out money to make things better for her—ergo, for you—you don’t know me very well. You think you’re tough, Farrell, but you don’t know what tough is yet. I’ll stop at nothing to get Meredith free of you, and if that means letting her walk around in rags, barefoot and pregnant, I’ll let it happen! Have I made myself clear so far?” he snapped, his control slipping a notch at Matt’s lack of reaction.

  “Perfectly,” Matt bit out. “And now let me remind you of something,” he continued with an inured expression that belied the battering he’d taken from guilt as Bancroft had hammered away. “There is a child involved here. Meredith is already pregnant, so most of what you’ve said is already immaterial.”

  “She was supposed to go to college,” Philip countered. “Everybody knew that. I’ll send her away, and she can have the baby. Also there is still time to consider another alternative—”

  Fury ignited in Matt’s eyes. “Nothing happens to that baby!” he warned in a low, savage voice.

  “Fine. You want it, you take it.”

  In all the chaos of the past week that was one alternative neither of them had discussed. Because as things had turned out it hadn’t been necessary. With a great deal more conviction than he felt at that moment, Matt said, “This is completely irrelevant. Meredith wants to stay with me.”

  “Of course she does!” Philip flung back. “Sex is a new experience for her.” Casting a knowing, contemptuous look over Matt, he added, “Not for you though, is it?” Like two duelists, they circled mentally, but Philip had the sharpest rapier and Matt was on the defensive. “When you’re gone, and sex isn’t part of your allure, Meredith will think more clearly,” Philip stated with absolute conviction. “She’ll want her dreams, not yours. She’ll want to go to college and go out with her friends. And so,” he concluded, “I’m asking you for a concession, and I’m willing to pay handsomely for it. If Meredith is like her mother, her pregnancy won’t really be apparent until she’s past six months. So that she’ll have time to reconsider, I want you to talk her into keeping this revolting marriage and the pregnancy secret—”

  Rather than let Philip think he’d gotten Matt to agree, Matt said shortly, “She’s already decided to do that until after she joins me in South America.” The look of pleasure on Bancroft’s face made Matt grit his teeth.

  “Good, if no one knows you’re married, that makes everything neater and cleaner when you get divorced. Here is what I’m offering you, Farrell: In return for you letting go of my daughter, I’ll contribute a sizable chunk of money to finance whatever wild-assed scheme she mentioned you have in mind after you leave South America.”

  In frigid silence Matt watched Philip Bancroft take a large checkbook from his desk. Out of petty vengeance, Matt sat there and let Bancroft write out a check because he wanted to put him to the trouble before he refused it. It was small retribution for the inner torment he’d managed to cause Matt.

  Finished, Bancroft threw his pen down and stalked across the room while Matt slowly stood up. “Five minutes after you walk out of this room, I’ll have a stop-payment order put on this check at my bank,” Bancroft warned. “As soon as you convince Meredith to give up on this travesty of a marriage and let you raise the child, I’ll instruct the bank to let the check clear. This money is your reward—one hundred and fifty thousand dollars—for not destroying the life of an eighteen-year-old girl. Take it,” he ordered, holding out his hand.

  Matt ignored it.

  “Take the check, because it’s the last cent of my money you’ll ever see.”

  “I’m not interested in your goddamned money!”

  “I’m warning you, Farrell,” he said, his face darkening with rage again, “take this check.”

  With icy calm Matt said, “Shove it up your—”

  Bancroft’s fist slammed forward with surprising force. Matt dodged the blow, grabbed Bancroft’s arm in mid-swing, then he yanked him forward, spun him around, and jerked his arm up high behind his back. In a soft snarl, he said, “Listen to me very carefully, Bancroft. In a few years I’ll have enough money to buy and sell you, but if you interfere in my marriage, I’ll bury you! Do we understand each other?”

  “Let go of my arm, you son of a bitch.”

  Matt shoved him forward and stalked toward the door.

  Behind him, Bancroft recovered his composure with amazing speed. “We have Sunday dinner at three,” he snapped. “I’d prefer you not upset Meredith by telling her what transpired in here. As you pointed out, she is pregnant.” Pausing with his hand on the door knob, Matt turned, his silence a tacit consent, but Bancroft wasn’t finished. Surprisingly, he seemed to have spent his fury and was now reluctantly accepting that he couldn’t put an end to the marriage, and that further attempts to try might very well cause a permanent estrangement between Meredith and himself. “I don’t want to lose my daughter, Farrell,” he said stonily. “It’s obvious you and I are never going to like each other, however, for her sake, we can at least try to get along.”

  Matt studied the other man’s angry, set face, but there was no sign of duplicity in his expression. Furthermore, what he was suggesting was logical, sensible, and in his own and his daughter’s best interests. After a moment, Matt nodded curtly and accepted the offer at face value. “We can try.”

  Philip Bancroft watched him walk out and close the door, then he slowly tore the check into pieces, a tight smile on his face. “Farrell,” he said derisively, “You’ve just made two enormous mistakes—you refused this check, and you underestimated your adversary.”

  Lying beside Matt, Meredith stared at the shadowy canopy above her bed, alarmed by the change she’d sensed in him ever since he’d spoken with her father. When she’d asked him what took place in the library, all Matt would tell her was, “He tried to talk m
e into getting out of your life.” Since the two men had treated each other civilly ever since their private meeting, Meredith assumed they’d declared a truce, and she’d teasingly asked, “Did he succeed?” Matt had said no, and she’d believed him, but tonight he’d made love to her with a grim determination that was completely unlike him. It was as if he wanted to brand her with his body—or else he were saying good-bye . . .

  She stole a sideways glance at him; he was wide awake, his jaw tight, lost in thought, but she couldn’t tell whether he was angry, sad, or simply preoccupied. They’d known each other for only six days, and now more than ever she realized what a handicap that was, because she couldn’t gauge his mood at all.

  “What are you thinking about?” he asked abruptly.

  Startled by his sudden willingness to talk, she said, “I was thinking we’ve known each other for only six days.”

  A mocking smile twisted his handsome mouth, as if he’d expected her to say something like that. “That’s an excellent reason to give up the idea of staying married, isn’t it?”

  Meredith’s uneasiness escalated to sick panic at his words, and with sudden clarity, she understood the reason for her violent reaction: She was in love with him. Helplessly in love and painfully vulnerable because of it. Hoping to affect a casual attitude, she rolled over onto her stomach and braced herself on her forearms, not certain whether he’d been making a statement or trying to second-guess her thoughts. Her first impulse was to assume that he’d just stated his opinion and to try to salvage her pride by agreeing with him or pretending indifference. But if she did that, she’d never know for certain, and uncertainty was something that drove her crazy. Furthermore, it didn’t seem very mature to go leaping to conclusions, especially right now, when there was so much at stake. She decided to follow her second impulse and to find out what he’d meant. Scrupulously avoiding his gaze she traced a circle on her pillow and, summoning all her courage, she said, “Were you asking me for my opinion just now, or were you telling me yours?”