To her horror, his teasing statements doused her anger and gave her simultaneous impulses to giggle and to do exactly what he suggested.
“If I die in an accident on the way home tonight,” he cajoled softly, his mouth sliding over her cheek toward her lips again, “think how guilty you’ll feel if you don’t.”
Pushed another step toward laughter, Meredith opened her mouth to say something duly flippant or, better yet, sarcastic, and the instant she did, his mouth captured hers. His hand clamped the back of her head, holding her mouth to his while his other arm angled down across her back, holding her hips tightly to his. And Meredith was lost. Locked to him from toe to head, possessed by his hands and mouth and tongue, she went down to ignominious defeat. Against his chest, her fists flattened, her hands sliding up his shirt inside his coat, her fingers splaying wide of their own accord, spreading against the muscled warmth of his chest. His tongue stroked intimately against hers, his mouth inexorably forcing hers to open wider, and suddenly Meredith was welcoming the invasion of his tongue, helplessly kissing him back with all the desperation and confusion rioting inside her. As soon as she did, his arm tightened, his mouth starting to move with fierce, devouring hunger over hers, and Meredith felt his own desire beginning to pour through her veins.
In sheer panic she tore free of his mouth and then his grasp. She stepped back into the doorway, her chest heaving, fists clenched at her sides.
“How could you even consider sleeping with Reynolds when you kiss me like that?” he demanded in a low, accusing voice.
Meredith managed a look of angry scorn. “How could you break your promise to behave impersonally tonight?”
“We aren’t in your apartment,” he pointed out, and his ability to twist everything and everyone to suit himself was the last straw. She stepped back, checked the impulse to slam the door in his face and, at the last second, she shut it with a hard snap. Once inside the protection of her own apartment, however, she slumped against the door and her head bent in anguished defeat. The mere fact that he had blackmailed and coerced her into this arrangement would have been enough to make any woman with a spine be able to withstand him for three short months. But not her, she thought furiously, shoving away from the door. Not her. She hadn’t even lasted three weeks! She was spineless where he was concerned, putty in his hands. Filled with self-disgust, Meredith wandered toward the sofa, stopping at the end table to pick up Parker’s picture. He looked back at her, smiling, handsome, dependable, filled with integrity. Furthermore, he loved her! He’d told her so dozens of times. Matt hadn’t—not once! But was that going to stop her from surrendering her pride, her self-respect, to Matthew Farrell? Probably not, she thought bitterly. Not at this rate.
Stuart had said Matt didn’t want to hurt her. Based on the way he’d swooped to her rescue yesterday, Meredith was inclined to accept that even now, when she was battered by emotions she didn’t want and couldn’t control. No, Matt didn’t want to hurt her. For a variety of obscure and convoluted reasons, what Matt did want was to have her back with him, and that was where she’d get hurt. Matt’s reputation for womanizing was legendary; he was also completely unpredictable and unreliable. The combination was absolutely guaranteed to break her heart.
She sank down on the sofa and put her face in her hands. He didn’t want to hurt her. . . . For a few minutes Meredith contemplated trying to appeal to his protective instinct—the same one that had made him move heaven and earth to help her yesterday. She could tell him honestly, “Matt, I know you don’t really want to hurt me, so please go away. I have a nice life planned for myself. don’t spoil it for me. I don’t mean anything to you—not really. I’m just another conquest to you, a passing fixation you have . . .”
She considered it, but she knew it would be a waste of time. She’d already said as much to him, but to no avail. Matt meant to fight this battle to the very end and emerge victorious—and he was doing it for reasons that were probably clearer to her than to him.
Lifting her head, she stared into the fire, remembering his words: I’ll give you paradise on a gold platter. We’ll be a family, we’ll have children . . . I’d like six, but I’ll settle for one.
If she told him she couldn’t have children, that might make him give up his whole scheme. And the moment she realized it might, Meredith felt as if her heart would shatter, and that reaction made her furious with herself and him. “Damn you!” she told him aloud. “Damn you for making me feel vulnerable like this again.”
He didn’t want to be a family; he just wanted the novelty, the accomplishment of having her live with him for a while. Sexually she would bore him within days, Meredith knew. Matt was an entirely sensual being; he’d slept with movie stars and exotic models. Meredith was sexually repressed and embarrassingly inept, and she knew it. She’d felt that way eleven years ago with Matt. After their divorce it had taken two years to regain just a little of her self-esteem and the ability to feel some desire. Lisa had insisted that the only complete cure was to sleep with someone else, and Meredith had tried. She’d gone to bed with a university track star who’d been chasing her for months, and it had been disastrous. His panting and pawing had revolted her, while her reticence and ineptitude had frustrated and angered him. Even now she could remember his taunts and they made her shudder: C’mon, baby, don’t just lie there, do something for me. . . . What the hell’s the matter with you anyway. . . . How can anybody who looks as hot as you be so cold? When he tried to consummate the act, something inside her had snapped and she’d fought him off, grabbed her clothes, and fled. Sex, she’d decided, was not for her.
Parker had been her only other lover, and he was different—tender, sweet, undemanding. And even he was disappointed with her in bed; he’d never criticized her openly, but she sensed how he felt.
Meredith flopped back and let her head rest against the arm of the sofa, staring dry-eyed at the ceiling, refusing to cry the tears that ached in her throat. Parker could never have made her feel as miserable as she did now. Never. Only Matt could do this to her. And even so, she wanted him.
The realization hit her unbidden, terrifying, unacceptable. Undeniable.
In just a few days Matt had led her this far along the path of utter and humiliating capitulation. Tears of shame and futility sparkled in her eyes. He didn’t even have to say I love you to make her want to throw all her plans for her life away.
Across the room, the antique grandfather clock began to chime the hour of ten. To Meredith it was tolling the end of her peace and serenity.
Matt maneuvered the Rolls out from behind two trucks that were blocking his lane, then he reached for the car phone. The clock on the dash showed ten o’clock, but he didn’t hesitate to make his call. Peter Vanderwild answered Matt’s call on the second ring, sounding startled and honored by this unprecedented late-night call. “My trip to Philadelphia was a complete success, sir,” he told Matt on the erroneous assumption that was why his boss was calling.
“Never mind that now,” Matt said impatiently. “What I want to know is if there’s any way at all that there could be a leak about us buying up Bancroft’s stock—a leak that would start takeover rumors on Wall Street?”
“No way. I’ve taken all the usual precautions to cover our identity until it’s time to file the SEC papers. Their stock is climbing steadily, so it’s naturally costing us more to get it lately.”
“I think there’s another player in the game,” Matt said tersely. “Find out who the hell it is!”
“Someone else actually wants to take them over?” Vanderwild repeated. “I thought that too before, but why? They’re a lousy investment right now unless you have a personal reason like yours.”
“Peter,” Matt warned, “keep your face out of my personal business or you’ll be looking through the want ads.”
“I didn’t mean—that is, I read the newspapers—I apologize—”
“Fine,” Matt interrupted. “Get busy checking out the rumors, find out i
f there really is another player, and if there is one, find out who the hell it is.”
The luxury liner lifted gracefully over the heavy Atlantic swells, then glided down in what seemed to Philip Bancroft to be the most annoying, boringly repetitious movement he’d ever been forced to endure. Seated at the captain’s table between a senator’s wife and a Texas oilman, he listened with feigned interest to the woman who was speaking to him. “We should make port late in the afternoon, the day after tomorrow,” she was saying. “Have you enjoyed the cruise so far?”
“Immensely,” he lied, stealing a glance at his watch beneath the edge of his tuxedo jacket. It was ten o’clock in Chicago. He could be watching the news right now, or playing cards at the country club, instead of being held prisoner on this floating hotel.
“Will you be staying with friends while we’re in Italy?” she asked.
“I don’t have friends there,” Philip replied. Despite the exasperating tedium, he felt better, stronger, every day. His doctor had been right—he had needed to absent himself completely from the concerns of the world and his business for a while.
“No friends in Italy?” she repeated, trying valiantly to carry the one-sided conversation.
“No. Just an ex-wife,” Philip retorted absently.
“Oh. Will you be visiting her?”
“Hardly,” Philip replied, and then his hand stilled in shock that he had even referred to the woman he’d thrown out of his home and his life all those years ago. Obviously, all this enforced relaxation was numbing his brain.
47
From the moment Matt had suggested her birthday celebration become a foursome, Meredith had felt grave doubts about the evening, but when Parker and Lisa arrived within moments of each other, they both looked so determinedly cheerful and festive, she was lulled into thinking it might not be a disaster after all. “Happy birthday, Mer,” Lisa said, wrapping her in a tight hug and handing her a gaily wrapped box. “Happy birthday,” Parker said, and gave her a small, rather heavy oblong box. “Farrell’s not here yet?” he added, glancing around.
“Not yet, but there’s wine and hors d’oeuvres in the kitchen. I was just fixing a tray.”
“I’ll finish and bring it out,” Lisa volunteered. “I’m famished.” She vanished into the kitchen in a cloud of fringed plum silk.
Scowling at her back, Parker demanded of Meredith, “Why does she dress like that? Why can’t she dress like normal people?”
“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 Pérignon 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 t
ime 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.
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