“Marianna Tighbell?”
“Yes! don’t bother denying it! It was all over the front page of the National Tattler.”
Matt swallowed a shout of laughter, watching her pace slowly back and forth, loving the way she moved, the way she clipped her words when she was angry, the way she clutched him when she was close to a climax—as if she weren’t certain she could count on one. Maybe she wasn’t always able to count on one with her other lovers. . . . She was gorgeous and innately passionate; he knew better than to hope she hadn’t been to bed with dozens of men. He settled for hoping they’d all been selfish, inept, or dull. Preferably, all three. And impotent.
“Well?” she said, rounding on him. “How could you sleep with that—that woman?”
“I’ve been to a party in her home. I have never slept with her.”
“Am I supposed to believe that?”
“Apparently not.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Meredith said, giving herself a mental shake. “Matt, please,” she implored him, trying for one last time to make him abandon his insane plan. “I’m in love with someone else.”
“You weren’t on Sunday when you and I were in bed—”
“Stop talking about that! I’m in love with Parker Reynolds, I swear to you I am. I’ve been in love with him since I was a girl. I was in love with him before I met you!”
Matt was about to brush that off as highly unlikely for the same reason he thought it was unlikely now, when she added, “Only he had just gotten engaged to someone else, and I’d given up.”
That information cut him deeply enough to make him stand and brusquely say, “You heard my offer, Meredith, take it or leave it.”
Meredith stared at him, aware that he’d suddenly turned aloof and hard. He meant it—the discussion was over. Stuart realized it too, and he was already putting on his coat and walking toward Matt’s office, pausing in the doorway to wait for her. Deliberately turning her back on Matt, she walked over to get her purse, taking vengeful pleasure in making him think she was scorning his bargain, but her mind was whirling in panic. She picked up her purse from the conference table, feeling his eyes boring holes through her back, then she walked purposefully to the sofa to get her coat.
Behind her, Matt spoke in an icy, ominous voice. “Is this your answer, Meredith?”
Meredith refused to reply. She swallowed, trying for one last moment to think of some way to reach him, to touch his heart. But he had no heart. Passion was all he was capable of; passion and ego and revenge were what he was made of. She picked up her coat from the sofa and draped it over her arm, leaving Matt in the conference room without so much as glancing over her shoulder at him. “Let’s go,” she told Stuart, wanting Matthew Farrell to think, at least for a minute or two, that she’d thrown his ultimatum in his face . . . hoping against hope that he would call out to her that he’d only been bluffing, that he wouldn’t do this to her father or her.
But the silence behind her was unbroken.
Matt’s secretary had evidently gone home for the day, and when Stuart had closed the connecting door behind the two offices, Meredith stopped and spoke for the first time. In a suffocated voice, she said, “Can he do what he’s threatening to do to my father?”
Angry about several different things, including Meredith’s being put under this unreasonable pressure to make a decision, Stuart sighed. “We can’t prevent him from filing the lawsuits, or bringing your father to trial; I don’t think he stands much chance of gaining anything except revenge, if he does it. Win or lose, though, the day he files those lawsuits, your father’s name will be all over the headlines. How is your father’s health?”
“Not good enough to risk being put to the strain of that kind of publicity.” Her eyes dropped to the documents he was holding, then lifted beseechingly to his. “Are there any loopholes in there we could use?”
“Not one. No traps either, if that’s any reassurance. They’re fairly simple and forthright, they say exactly what Levinson and Pearson said aloud.” He put them on the secretary’s desk for Meredith to read, but she shook her head, avoiding the sight of the words, and, picking up a pen from the desk, she scribbled her name on the bottom.
“Give them to him and make him sign them,” she said, tossing the pen aside as if it were dirty. “And make that—that maniac write down the days of the week that he named and initial the changes. And make it read so that if he misses a day, he can’t make it up with another!”
Stuart almost smiled at that, but he shook his head when she handed the papers back to him. “Unless you want the five million dollars or the Houston land more than you seemed to in there, I don’t think you need to go through with this. He’s bluffing about your father.”
Her face lit up with eagerness and hope. “Why do you think so?”
“It’s a hunch. A strong hunch.”
“A hunch, based on what?”
Stuart thought of the solemn tenderness on Farrell’s face when he was holding Meredith’s hand. He thought of the way he’d looked when she slapped him and the lack of roughness in the way he’d restrained her afterward. And, although Stuart had originally thought that Farrell had some sort of eleven-week orgy in mind, the man had seemed genuinely taken aback by that accusation. Rather than tell her such nebulous things, Stuart said something more concrete: “If he’s ruthless enough to do this to your father, then why is he being so generous in his offers to you? Why not simply threaten you with suing your father to make you give in?”
“I suppose he thinks he’ll have more fun if I’m less resistant. I also think he likes my knowing—and my father knowing—that he can throw that kind of money around and not even miss it. Stuart, my father humiliated him terribly when he was twenty-six, and he’s still trying! I can imagine the kind of malice Matt must feel for him, even if you can’t.”
“I am still willing to bet you that man won’t lift a legal hand against your father whether you agree to this or not.”
“I want to believe you,” she said, calmer now. “Give me a sound reason to, and we’ll walk out of here and throw those papers in the wastebasket.”
“This is going to sound . . . odd . . . given what I’ve seen of Farrell today and the reputation he has, but I don’t think he’d do anything to hurt you.”
She laughed—a short, bitter laugh. “How do you explain intimidation and humiliation, not to mention blackmail? What do you call what he put me through in there?”
Stuart shrugged helplessly. “Not blackmail—he’s paying you the money, not the reverse. I would call it pulling out all the stops, using every single means you have to get what you want because you want it so badly. I also think it got out of hand in there, thanks to Pearson’s strong-arm tactics and flair for drama. I was watching Farrell most of the time, and every time Pearson got tough with you, Farrell looked angry. I think he picked the wrong attorneys for a gentle finesse attempt like this was supposed to be. Levinson and Pearson play the game only one way—they go for the throat and they play to win.”
Meredith’s heart sank at Stuart’s flimsy rationale. “I can’t bet my father’s life on anything as flimsy as all that. And I’ll tell you something,” she added sadly. “Matt picked lawyers who think exactly like he does. You could be right when you say Matt doesn’t want to hurt me personally, but you’re wrong about what he’s after. I figured it out just as we left.” She drew a shaky breath. “Matt isn’t after me. He doesn’t even know me. What he wants is revenge against my father, and he’s figured out two ways to get it: Either he takes my father to trial, or he gets his revenge an even sweeter, better way—by using me. I’m the sweetest revenge of all. Forcing my father to see us together after all these years, making him think there’s a chance we’ll stay together—to Matt that’s an eye for an eye. So,” she said, putting her hand on his sleeve, “will you do me a favor when you take this in to him?”
Stuart nodded, covering her hand. “What do you want me to do?”
“
Try to make Matt agree that this bargain and our marriage will remain a secret. He probably won’t agree—that will deprive him of some of his pleasure, some of his revenge, but try.”
“I will.”
When she left, Stuart flipped to the second page, wrote in the terms he hoped to get Farrell to agree to, then he straightened. Rather than politely knock on Farrell’s office door, Stuart opened it. When he saw that Farrell wasn’t there, he headed quietly toward the conference room, hoping to catch him off guard, to see something—some expression—that would give a clue about the man’s real feelings.
The draperies had been drawn back in the conference room, and Farrell was standing at the windows, his drink in one hand, staring out at the night skyline, his jaw rigid. He looked, Stuart thought with some satisfaction, like a man who had just suffered an enormous defeat and was trying to come to grips with it. In fact, standing in the vast conference room, surrounded by all the trappings of his wealth and power, there was an incongruous quality of isolation in the way he bent his head and stared at the glass in his hand. He lifted his glass then and tossed down the drink as if trying to wash away a bitter taste, and Stuart spoke. “Should I have knocked?” Farrell’s head jerked around, and even in that unguarded instant of surprise, Stuart wasn’t certain whether he saw profound relief—or merely tremendous satisfaction, so quickly did Farrell’s guard go up. He’d been fairly easy to read when Meredith was present—now Stuart watched him become aloof and completely inscrutable as he flicked a glance at the papers in Stuart’s hand to confirm what they were, then started toward the bar.
“I was about to have another drink,” Farrell said, showing no apparent eagerness to get his hands on the signed documents. “Would you care for one, or would you rather get down to business?”
He sounded as if it didn’t matter to him which option Stuart chose, but Stuart seized the opportunity to try to discover some clue to the man’s feelings about Meredith. “The business part won’t take long,” he said, following him over to the bar. “I’ll take you up on the offer of a drink.”
“Another Perrier?” Farrell asked, stepping into the mirrored half circle.
“Bourbon,” Stuart said succinctly. “Straight up.”
That earned a dubious look from Farrell. “Really?”
“Would I lie to a clever, ruthless mogul like yourself?” Stuart said dryly.
Farrell flicked a sarcastic glance at him and reached for the decanter of bourbon. “You’d lie to the devil himself for the sake of a client.”
Surprised and annoyed by the partial truth of that assessment, Stuart put his briefcase down and laid the documents on the bar. “You’re right in this instance,” he admitted. “Meredith and I are friends. In fact,” Stuart continued, striving for a more relaxed atmosphere of confidence, “I used to have a huge crush on her.”
“I know.”
Surprised again, and half convinced Farrell was lying, Stuart said, “Considering that I don’t think Meredith knew it, I have to say you’re remarkably well informed. What else do you know?”
“About you?” Farrell asked casually.
When Stuart nodded, Farrell began fixing his own drink. Dropping ice cubes into his glass, he launched into a brusque, dispassionate recitation of Stuart’s personal history that left him completely astonished and a little chilled. “You’re the oldest son in a family of five,” Farrell said. “Your grandfather and his two brothers founded the law firm where you’re now a senior partner, carrying on with the family tradition of practicing law. At the age of twenty-three you graduated first in your class from Harvard Law School—also a family tradition—where you distinguished yourself by being president of your class and making Law Review. When you graduated, you wanted to work in the district attorney’s office, specializing in prosecuting cases of landlord abuse, but you yielded to family pressure and joined the family firm instead, where you handle cases for wealthy corporate clients, mostly from your own social circle.
“You hate corporate law, but you have a genius for it; you’re a tough negotiator, a brilliant strategist, and a good diplomat unless your personal feelings are involved, as they were today. You’re thorough and you’re meticulous, but you’re lousy with juries because you try to sway them with dry facts instead of emotional logic. For that reason, you usually do the pretrial preparation, then you hand jury cases over to an associate and supervise them. . . .”
Farrell paused in that recitation to hand Stuart his drink. “Shall I go on?”
“By all means, if there’s more,” Stuart replied a little stiffly.
Picking up his own glass, Farrell took a swallow and when Stuart had done likewise, he said, “You’re thirty-three, heterosexual, with a penchant for fast cars, which you don’t indulge, and a love of sailing, which you do. When you were twenty-two, you thought you were in love with a girl from Melrose Park whom you met at the beach, but she was from a blue-collar Italian family, and the cultural gap was too wide for both of you to bridge. You both agreed to call it off. Seven years later you fell in love with Meredith, but she couldn’t reciprocate, so you became friends. Two years ago your family put on a push to marry you off to Georgina Gibbons, whose daddy is also a socialite lawyer, and the two of you got engaged, but you called that one off. You’re worth about eighteen million right now, mostly in blue chip stocks, and you’ll inherit another fifteen when your grandfather dies—less if he continues his junkets to Monte Carlo, where he nearly always loses.”
Pausing in that recitation that had Stuart trapped somewhere between amazement and anger, Farrell gestured to the sofas near the windows, and Stuart picked up the documents and his drink and followed him there. When he was seated across from him, Farrell said blandly, “Did I leave anything important out?”
“Yes,” Stuart replied with a sardonic smile as he lifted his drink in a mocking toast, “what’s my favorite color?”
Farrell looked him straight in the eye. “Red.”
Stuart choked. “You’re right about everything but my thoroughness. Obviously you were better prepared for this confrontation than I was. I’m still waiting for the background check I ordered on you, and it won’t be half so complete. I’m amazed and reluctantly impressed.”
Farrell shrugged. “You shouldn’t be. Intercorp owns a credit reporting bureau as well as a large investigative agency that does a lot of work for multinational corporations.”
It struck Stuart as odd that Farrell had said, “Intercorp owns,” not “I own,” as if he felt no real desire to be personally associated with the corporate empire he had created. In Stuart’s experience, most entrepreneurs with newly amassed wealth were braggarts who were transparently proud of their accomplishments and embarrassingly eager to remind everyone of what they owned. Stuart had expected something like that of Farrell, particularly because the news media normally portrayed him as a flamboyant, international playboy-tycoon who led the completely sybaritic, richly satisfying life of a modern-day sultan.
Stuart had the feeling that the truth was far from that; that at best, Farrell was a guarded, solitary man who was difficult to get to know. At worst, he was a cold, calculating, unemotional man with a wide streak of ruthlessness and an iron control that was almost chilling. This was undoubtedly how his business adversaries thought of him. “How did you know what my favorite color is?” he asked finally, ready to try again to get a better reading on Farrell. “You didn’t get that off a credit report.”
“That was a guess,” Farrell said dryly. “Your briefcase is maroon and so is your tie. Also, most men like red. Women like blue.” For the first time, Farrell actually let his attention stray to the document Stuart had put on the table. “Speaking of women,” he said casually, “I gather Meredith signed that.”
“She added some conditions,” Stuart replied, watching him closely, noting the imperceptible tensing of his adversary’s jaw. “She wants the days you mentioned stipulated in the document and she wants it clarified that if you miss one, you can
’t make it up.”
Farrell’s expression softened, and even in the subdued lighting Stuart saw amusement glinting in those gray eyes. Amusement and . . . pride? He had no time to confirm that, however, because Farrell abruptly got up, walked over to the conference table, and returned with a gold fountain pen he’d left there. When he flipped to the signature page where Stuart had written in the added terms and uncapped the pen, Stuart added, “You’ll see that she also wants it agreed that you will not publicly reveal either this marriage of yours or the eleven-week trial dating period to anyone.”
Farrell’s eyes narrowed, but just as Stuart opened his mouth to argue for Meredith’s terms, Farrell looked down and quickly initialed all three stipulations, then he signed the document and tossed it across the table to Stuart. “Was secrecy your advice,” he asked, “or Meredith’s idea?”
“Hers,” Stuart replied, and then because he was itching to see Farrell’s reaction, he added smoothly, “If she’d have taken my advice, she would have thrown that agreement in the trash.”
Farrell leaned back, studying Stuart with unnerving intensity and something that might have been a glimmer of respect. “If she’d done that,” he countered, “she’d have risked her father’s health and his good name.”
“She wouldn’t have risked anything,” Stuart contradicted flatly. “You were bluffing.” The other man lifted his brows and said nothing, so Stuart pressed harder. “What you’re doing is unethical and extreme. Either you’re a world-class bastard, or you’re insane, or you’re in love with her. Which is it?”
“Definitely the first,” Farrell replied. “Possibly the second. Possibly all three. You decide.”
“I already have.”
“Which is it?”
“The first and the third,” Stuart replied, suddenly enjoying himself, noting Farrell’s slight, reluctant smile at Stuart’s unflattering conclusion. “What do you know about Meredith?” Stuart asked after another swallow of his drink, determined to reaffirm his conclusion that Farrell was in love with her.
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