Paradise

by Judith McNaught

  “Yes,” he bit out.

  After he left, Meredith sank down in her chair. Not for one second did she think there was anything to warn Matt about, and yet she felt vaguely as if she’d been subtly manipulated by the need for silence into siding against him. And at the same time, she was profoundly touched by her father’s tacit announcements that he loved her and approved of the job she’d done in his absence. But most of all, what she felt was hope—hope that when the facts all came out and her father apologized to Matt, Matt would be generous enough to accept the apology. The possibility of having the two men she loved become, if not friends, at least not foes, was heady stuff indeed.

  Despite her optimism and confidence, one thing her father had said stayed with her, hovering at the edge of her mind. She had dinner with Matt that night in a dimly lit corner of a local restaurant. When he questioned her about her confrontation with her father, she told him about most of it, excluding her father’s absurd belief that Matt was behind the bomb scares and a nonexistent takeover attempt. That much she was willing to keep from him in return for her father’s promised apology when he was proven wrong. But she purposely waited until later that night, when they’d gone back to her apartment and made love, to ask him about the one comment her father had made that was bothering her. She waited because she didn’t want it to sound like an accusation or a confrontation.

  Beside her in bed, Matt leaned up on his elbow, idly tracing his finger along the curve of her cheek. “Come home with me,” he whispered achingly, “I promised you paradise, and I can’t give it to you when we’re living in two different places and pretending we’re only half married.”

  Meredith gave him a distracted smile, and it was enough to alert him that something else was on her mind.

  Taking her chin between his thumb and forefinger, he turned her face toward his. “What’s wrong?” he said quietly.

  Carefully keeping her tone nonjudgmental, Meredith lifted her eyes to his. “It’s something my father said,” she admitted.

  His jaw hardened at the mention of her father. “What did he say?”

  “He told me that years ago you threatened that you’d buy him and then bury him if he tried to come between us. You didn’t really say that, did you?”

  “Yes,” he replied shortly, then he added more calmly, “When I said that, your father was trying to bribe and then bully me into leaving you. So I made threats of my own if he came between us.”

  “But you didn’t really mean what you said, did you?” she asked, her gaze searching his.

  “At the time I meant every word. I always mean what I say,” he whispered as his mouth came down on hers for a long, deep kiss. “But,” he murmured, his lips feather-light against her cheek, “sometimes I change my mind . . .”

  “And by burying him,” Meredith persisted, “did you actually mean kill him?”

  “I meant that part of the threat figuratively, not literally, although, at the time, I’d have relished doing him serious bodily injury.”

  Soothed but not completely satisfied, Meredith put her fingers over his lips to stop him from distracting her with another kiss. “Why did you tell him you intended to buy him?”

  He lifted his head, frowning at the doubt in her voice. “I’d just finished refusing his bribe and listening to him accuse me of being after your money, not you. I told him I didn’t need your money, that I intended to have enough of my own someday to buy and sell him. I think those were almost my exact words. And I suppose by bury him, I meant the same thing—being able to buy and sell him.”

  Meredith’s expression cleared, and she drew his head down to hers, her fingers sliding caressingly over his cheek. “May I have that kiss now?” she whispered, smiling.

  54

  The smile was still lingering in her heart the next morning when she reached for the newspaper lying outside her apartment door. The headline almost sent her to her knees:

  MATTHEW FARRELL QUESTIONED IN MURDER OF STANISLAUS SPYZHALSKI

  Her heart hammering, she picked up the paper and read the accompanying story. It began by rehashing the entire fiasco of the sham attorney who’d provided them with falsified divorce documents and ended with the ominous statement that Matt had been questioned by the police late yesterday afternoon.

  Meredith stared at that sentence in cold shock. Matt had been questioned yesterday. Yesterday. And he’d not only kept it secret from her last night, he hadn’t looked or acted as if anything at all was wrong! Dumbstruck by this incontrovertible proof of his ability to hide his emotions, to deceive even her, she walked slowly into her apartment to get ready to go to work, intending to call him from the office.

  Lisa was pacing back and forth when she arrived. “Meredith, I have to talk to you,” she said as she closed the door to Meredith’s office.

  Meredith looked at her childhood friend, and her uncertainty about Lisa’s loyalty showed in the hesitancy of her smile. “I was wondering when you were going to get around to that.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Meredith looked blankly at her. “I mean about Parker.”

  That seemed to hurtle Lisa into distracted despair. “Parker? Oh, God, I’ve wanted to talk to you about that, only I hadn’t gotten up the courage yet. Meredith,” she implored, raising her hands and letting them fall helplessly, “I know you must think I’m the biggest liar and phony in the world for the way I made fun of him to you, but I swear I didn’t do it to try to stop you from marrying him. I was trying to stop myself from wanting him, trying to convince myself he was nothing but a—a stuffy banker. And, dammit, you weren’t really in love with him—look how quickly you fell into Matt’s arms when he came back.” Her defiant façade crumbled. “Oh, please, don’t hate me for this. Please don’t. Meredith,” she said, and her voice broke, “I love you more than my own sisters, and I’ve hated myself for loving the man you wanted. . . .”

  Suddenly they were two eighth-graders again who’d had a quarrel and were confronting each other on the school playground at St. Stephen’s, but they were older now, and wiser, and they knew the value of their friendship. Lisa looked at her, tears shimmering in her eyes, her hands clenched into helpless fists at her sides. “Please,” she whispered. “Don’t hate me.”

  Meredith drew a shattered breath. “I can’t hate you,” she said, her smile wobbling. “I love you too, and, besides, I don’t have any other sisters—” With a choked laugh Lisa flung herself into Meredith’s arms, and as they had that long-ago day when they’d worn eighth-grade uniforms, instead of chic designer fashions, they hugged each other and laughed and tried not to cry. “Does it seem a little—incestuous—to you though?” Lisa asked with a sheepish grin when they were standing apart again. “My being with Parker?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact it did—the morning I called you, and you were both obviously in bed. Together.”

  Lisa started to laugh, then she sobered abruptly. “Actually, I didn’t come up here to talk about Parker. I came to ask you about the police questioning Matt yesterday. I saw it in the morning paper and I”—she looked away, her gaze shifting about the room—“and I, well, I guess I came up here looking for reassurance. I mean—do the police think he killed Spyzhalski?”

  Fighting down a surge of angry loyalty, Meredith said calmly, “Why should they? More important, why should you?”

  “I don’t,” Lisa protested miserably. “It’s just that I keep remembering the morning of your press conference, when he was talking to his attorney on the speaker phone. Matt was furious with Spyzhalski, anyone could see that, and desperately determined to protect you from scandal. And then he said something that seemed sort of . . . odd and . . . threatening even then.”

  “What are you talking about?” Meredith demanded, more impatient than upset now.

  “I’m talking about what Matt said when his attorney warned him that Spyzhalski was a crank who wanted to put on a big show in the courtroom. Matt told his attorney to change Spyzhalski’s mind and
get him out of town. And then Matt said that he’d ‘take care of him’ after that. You don’t think,” Lisa finished, her apprehensive gaze searching Meredith’s face, “that Matt’s way of ‘taking care of him’ might have been to have him beaten up and dumped in a ditch, dead, do you?”

  “That is the most absurd, the most outrageous thing I’ve ever heard!” Meredith said in a low, explosive voice, but her father’s words brought them both whirling around.

  “I don’t think the police will find a remark like that absurd,” he announced from the connecting doorway of the conference room. “Furthermore, it’s your duty to inform them of it.”

  “No,” Meredith said, starting to panic at how the police might construe Matt’s remark, and then inspiration struck. She was so relieved, she smiled. “I’m Matt’s wife, I have no duty to repeat that, not even in a courtroom.”

  Philip looked at Lisa. “You heard it, and you’re not married to the bastard.”

  Lisa looked at Meredith and saw the pleading in her eyes. Without further hesitation she took her side. “Actually, Mr. Bancroft,” she lied with an apologetic smile, “I don’t think that’s what Matt said after all. No, I’m sure it wasn’t. You know how imaginative I am,” she added, backing out of the office, “that’s why I’m such a brilliant designer here—a very vivid imagination.”

  When her father transferred his frustrated glower to her, Meredith pointed out something to him that had just occurred to her. “You know,” she told him quietly, “in your desperation to blame Matt for everything, you’re tripping on your own faulty logic. On the one hand, you’re accusing him of having no feelings for me, and of using me merely to get revenge against you. If that’s true, how can you possibly believe he’d actually have Spyzhalski murdered to protect me from scandal?” She scored a point with that one, she knew, because her father swore under his breath and walked out, but an instant later Meredith’s heart missed a beat as something else Matt said came back to haunt her. The same night Spyzhalski’s body was found, she’d been teasing him about his offer to divert the reporters while she drove into his apartment garage. You’d do that? Just for me? she’d joked, but his reply hadn’t been joking, it had been said with deadly earnestness. You have no idea, he’d answered, how much I’d do—just for you.

  Meredith walked over to her desk and shook her head, shoving the thought aside. “Stop it!” she warned herself aloud. “You’re letting everyone else’s suspicions get to you!”

  At six o’clock, however, it became almost impossible not to do exactly that. “Here are your first two pieces of evidence, Meredith,” her father announced, walking in with Mark Braden, and furiously tossing two reports onto her desk.

  Filled with sudden foreboding, Meredith slowly shoved the advertising budget she’d been reviewing aside, glanced at the grim faces of both men, and pulled the reports over in front of her. The first report was a lengthy background check that Mark had run on Matt. On it, Mark had put red circles around the names of every company Matt owned, every legitimate business enterprise he was involved in, and there were dozens of them. Eight of the names had large red X’s beside them. She looked at the other report, which contained the names of the people, institutions, and companies that had recently acquired more than a 1,000-share block of stock in Bancroft’s, and her heart began to thud with dread: Those eight names with the red X’s on the investigative report about Matt also appeared on the list of new shareholders. Combined, Matt had already acquired a gigantic block of stock in B & C, all of it purchased in names other than his own or Intercorp’s.

  “That’s only the beginning,” her father said. “That shareholder list isn’t up-to-date, and the investigative report on Farrell is incomplete. God knows how many additional shares he’s bought or in what names. When our stock prices went up, Farrell obviously decided to put a few bombs in our stores to drive them down, so he could buy them cheaper. Now,” he said, leaning his flattened palms on her desk, “will you admit that he’s behind what’s happening to us?”

  “No!” Meredith said stonily, but God help her, she wasn’t certain whether she was denying that he was right or denying her ability to admit it. “All this proves is that he—he decided to acquire shares of our stock. There could be several reasons for that. Perhaps he realized we’re a good long-term investment and it—it amused him to make money on your own company!” She stood up, her knees shaking, and looked at both men. “That’s a far cry from having bombs planted in our stores or having people murdered!”

  “Why did I ever think you had sense!” Philip said in frustrated fury. “That bastard already owns the property we want in Houston, and God knows how much he owns of us! He’s already got enough shares to vote himself a seat on our board right now—”

  “It’s late,” Meredith interrupted, but her voice was taut with strain as she shoved work into her briefcase. “I’m going to go home and try to work there. You and Mark can continue this—this witch hunt without me!”

  “Stay away from him, Meredith!” her father warned as she started for the door. “If you don’t, you may end up looking like a co-conspirator in all this. By Friday at the latest we’ll have enough proof put together to turn him over to the authorities—”

  She turned, trying to look scornful. “What authorities?”

  “The Securities and Exchange Commission, for starters! If he’s acquired five percent of our stock, and I’m damned sure he has by now, then he’s in violation of the SEC rules because he hasn’t notified them he’s done it! And if he’s violated that law, then the police won’t think he’s as pure as the driven snow when it comes to the death of that lawyer, or bomb threats—”

  Meredith walked out and closed the door behind her. Somehow she managed to smile and say good night to the other executives she passed on her way to the parking garage, but when she slid into the front seat of the car Matt had given her, her composure broke. Clutching the steering wheel with both hands, she stared at the cement wall of the parking garage, shivering uncontrollably. She told herself she was panicking needlessly, that Matt would have a logical, reasonable explanation for all of this. She was not, absolutely was not going to convict him in her head on such circumstantial evidence. She said it over and over again like a chant. Or a prayer. Slowly, the trembling subsided, and she turned the key in the ignition. Matt was innocent, she knew it with every fiber of her being, and she wouldn’t dishonor him by doubting him for one more second.

  Despite that noble resolve, her fears and misgivings could not be so easily banished, and by the time she’d changed clothes she was so miserable she couldn’t concentrate on anything else. She opened her briefcase, listlessly took out the advertising budget, and realized it was pointless to try to work while her mind was in this state. If she could just see Matt, she told herself, see his face and his eyes, and hear his voice, she’d be reassured that he hadn’t done the things her father was accusing him of doing.

  She was still telling herself that her only reason for needing to see him was for the reassurance of his company and to stop her imagination from running away with itself when she pressed the buzzer beside the double doors of the penthouse. Matt had already put her name on the permanent guest list at the security desk, so he had no idea that she was coming. Joe O’Hara opened the door, his homely face splitting into a wide grin when he saw her. “Hiya, Mrs. Farrell! Matt’s gonna be glad to see you! Nothin’ could make him gladder,” he predicted as he lowered his voice and peered around her, “except if you happened to have suitcases with you?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t,” Meredith said, smiling helplessly at his outrageous gall. In Matt’s bachelor household, Joe seemed to be a jack of all trades—not merely chauffeur or bodyguard, but in his off hours he answered the door, the phone, and he even cooked an occasional meal. Now that she was more accustomed to his bulk and that dark, sinister face of his, he reminded her more of a teddy bear—albeit a lethal one.

  “Matt’s in the library,” he said as he cl
osed the door. “He brought a load of work home with him from the office, but he won’t mind the interruption, not a bit! Want me to take you to him?”

  “No thanks,” she said with a smile over her shoulder. “I know the way.”

  “I was just leaving for a couple hours,” he added meaningfully, and Meredith suppressed a silly surge of embarrassment at what he obviously thought was the reason for her visit.

  In the doorway to the library she paused, momentarily cheered and reassured by the sight of Matt. Seated on a leather chesterfield, his ankle propped on the opposite knee, he was reading some documents, making notes in the margins. More documents were spread out on the coffee table in front of him. He glanced up, saw her standing there, and the sudden glamour of his lazy white smile made her heart leap. “This must be my lucky day,” he said, getting up and walking toward her. “I thought you weren’t going to be able to see me tonight—something about your needing to work and get an uninterrupted night’s sleep. I suppose it’s too much to hope,” he added with another grin, “that you brought some suitcases with you?”

  Meredith laughed, but it sounded hollow to her own ears. “Joe asked the same thing.”

  “I definitely ought to fire him for impertinence,” Matt teased, pulling her into his arms for a hungry kiss. She tried to respond, but her heart wasn’t in it, and he sensed it almost at once. Lifting his head, he studied her for a puzzled moment. “Why do I have the feeling,” he asked, “that your mind is on something other than what we’re doing?”

  “You’re obviously more intuitive than I am.”

  His hands slid down her arms, then he let her go and stepped back, frowning slightly. “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that I’m not nearly so good at guessing what’s going on in your mind,” Meredith replied with more force than she’d intended, and she realized with a jolt that she hadn’t come to reassure herself with the sight of him.