Paradise

by Judith McNaught

  She’d come for some answers.

  “Why don’t we go in the living room, where it’s more comfortable, and you can explain the meaning of that remark.”

  Meredith nodded and followed him, but once they were there, she was too restless to sit down and too self-conscious to face him with her unspoken accusations. Uneasy under his steady scrutiny, she let her gaze drift over the room . . . past the collage of old photographs of his sister and father and mother framed on a splendid carved marble table, past the leather-bound photo album lying beside it. Sensing her tension, he remained standing, and when he spoke his voice was both puzzled and a little curt. “What’s on your mind?”

  Startled by his tone, her gaze snapped to his face, and she told him exactly what was on her mind. “Why didn’t you tell me last night the police questioned you about Spyzhalski’s death? How could you spend most of the night with me and never show a sign that you’re a—a suspect in it!”

  “I didn’t tell you because you had enough to deal with without that. Secondly, the police are questioning many of Spyzhalski’s ‘clients,’ and I am not a suspect in his death.” He saw the relief and uncertainty she was trying to hide, and his jaw hardened. “Or am I?”

  “Are you what?”

  “A murder suspect—in your eyes.”

  “No, of course not!” Raking her hair off her forehead in a nervous gesture of confusion and frustration, she looked away from him, unable to stop herself from continuing to prod and hating herself for the mistrust that was making her do it. “I’m sorry, Matt. I’ve had an awful day.” Turning, she studied him with renewed intensity, watching for his reaction as she said, “My father is convinced that someone is about to launch a takeover attempt on us.” His expression remained unchanged, unreadable. Guarded? “He thinks that whoever is putting the bombs in our stores might be the same person or group who’s planning to take us over.”

  “It’s possible he’s right,” he said, and from his cool, clipped tone, she knew he was beginning to realize that she suspected him, and that he was going to despise her for it. In profound misery she looked away again, and her gaze fell on the framed photograph of his mother and father smiling at each other on their wedding day. A similar photo had been in one of the albums she’d packed away at the farm. The photographs . . . The names beneath them . . . The names. His mother’s maiden name was COLLIER. The Collier Trust had bought up Bancroft & Company’s loans. If she hadn’t been so beset with other problems, she’d have made the connection before.

  Her gaze shot to Matt’s face, while the dawning pain of betrayal slashed through her like a thousand jagged knives. “Your mother’s name was Collier, wasn’t it?” she said, her voice ragged with anguish. “You are the Collier Trust, aren’t you!”

  “Yes,” he said, watching her, as if almost uncertain of how or why she was reacting like this.

  “Oh, my God!” she said, backing away a step. “You’re buying up our stock, and you’ve bought up all our loans. What are you planning to do, foreclose and take us over if we’re late with a payment?”

  “That’s ridiculous,” he said, but there was urgency in his voice as he started toward her. “Meredith, I was trying to help you.”

  “How?” she cried, wrapping her arms around her stomach and jerking back out of his reach. “By buying up our loans or buying up our stock?”

  “Both—”

  “You’re lying!” she said as everything fell into place, and her blinding obsession with him gave way to agonizing reality. “You started buying our stock the day after we had lunch—right after you found that my father blocked your rezoning request. I’ve seen the dates. You weren’t trying to help me!”

  “No, not then I wasn’t,” he answered with desperate sincerity. “I bought the original blocks of stock with every intention of accumulating enough to gain either a seat on your board of directors or possibly a controlling interest.”

  “And you’ve kept right on buying them ever since,” she flung back. “Only now the shares you’re buying are costing you a lot less, aren’t they, because our stock has dropped after those bomb threats! Tell me something,” she demanded shakily, “just this once, tell me the truth—the complete and entire truth! Did you have Spyzhalski killed? Are you behind those bomb threats?”

  “No, goddammit!”

  Shuddering with fury and anguish, she ignored his protest. “The first bomb scare took place the same week we had lunch and you found out my father had your rezoning request denied! don’t you find that just a little bit coincidental?”

  “I’m not responsible for any of that,” he argued urgently. “Listen to me! If you want the entire truth, I’ll give it to you.” His voice gentled. “Will you listen to me, darling?”

  Her treacherous heart slammed against her ribs at the sound of his voice calling her darling and the expression in those gray eyes. She nodded, but she knew she’d never be able to believe he was telling her the complete truth, not when he’d already hidden so much from her, and so skillfully.

  “I’ve already admitted I started buying shares of your stock to retaliate against your father. Later, after we were together at the farm, I began to realize how important that department store is to you, and I also knew that when your father came home and found us together again, he’d pull out every stop to dissuade you from staying with me. I figured that sooner or later he’ll make you choose: him or me. Bancroft and Company and the presidency of it, or nothing, if you choose me. I decided to keep buying up your stock so that he couldn’t do that. I was prepared to buy however much stock it would take to gain control of the board of directors so that he couldn’t threaten you with the loss of the presidency, because I’d control the board.”

  Meredith stared at him, her trust demolished by his secrecy over this and all the other things. “But you couldn’t confide your noble motives to me,” she said, glaring her disdain.

  “I wasn’t sure how you’d react.”

  “And yesterday you let me make a fool of myself telling you about our new lender—the Collier Trust, when you’re the Collier Trust.”

  “I was afraid you’d see it as—charity!”

  “I’m not that stupid,” she retorted, but her voice was trembling and tears were burning the backs of her eyes. “It wasn’t charity, it was a brilliant tactical move! You promised my father you’d own him someday, and now you do! With the help of a few bombs, and my unwitting cooperation.”

  “I know it looks that way—”

  “Because it is that way!” she cried. “From the day I came to the farm to tell you what really happened eleven years ago, you’ve been ruthlessly using everything I’ve told you to manipulate things until they happen the way you want them to. You’ve lied to me—”

  “No, I haven’t!”

  “You’ve deliberately misled me, and that’s the same thing! Your methods are all dishonest, and yet you expect me to believe your motives are noble? Well, I can’t!”

  “Don’t do this to us,” he warned, his voice hoarse with angry desperation as he realized he was losing her. “You’re letting eleven years of mistrust color everything you’ve discovered I’ve done.”

  In some part of herself Meredith wasn’t sure he was wrong. All she was sure of was that a bogus lawyer who got in Matt’s way was dead, and her father, who’d gotten in his way, would soon be little more than a puppet dancing on the end of Matt’s financial strings. And so was she. “Prove it to me,” she cried on the verge of hysteria. “I want proof.”

  His face tightened. “Someone has to prove to you I’m not an arsonist or a murderer, is that it? You have to have proof that I’m not guilty of all the rest of that, and if I can’t give it to you, you’re going to believe the worst?”

  Battered by the truth of his words, she looked at him, feeling as if her heart were being torn to pieces. When he spoke again, his deep voice was aching with emotion. “All you have to do is trust me for a few weeks until the authorities find out the truth.” He h
eld out his hand for hers. “Trust me, darling,” he said tenderly.

  With uncertainty clawing at her, Meredith looked at his outstretched hand, but she couldn’t move. The bomb threats were too convenient . . . the police weren’t questioning all Spyzhalski’s clients, because they hadn’t questioned her.

  “Either give me your hand,” he said, “or end it now, and put us both out of our misery.”

  Meredith willed herself to put her hand in his and trust him, but she couldn’t do it. “I can’t,” she whispered brokenly. “I want to, but I just can’t!” His hand fell to his side, his face wiped clean of all expression. Unable to endure the way he was looking at her, she turned to leave. Her fingers closed around the keys in her pocket, the keys to the car he’d given her. She pulled them out and turned, holding them toward him. “I’m sorry,” she said, fighting to keep her voice from shaking, “I’m not allowed to accept gifts of over twenty-five dollars from anyone with whom my company has business dealings.”

  He stood unmoving, a muscle leaping in his clenched jaw, refusing to reach for the keys, and Meredith felt as if she were dying inside. She dropped them on the table and fled. Downstairs she hailed a cab.

  Sales at the Dallas, New Orleans, and Chicago stores picked up surprisingly well the next morning; Meredith felt relief but no particular joy as she watched the figures change on the computer screen in her office. The way she’d felt eleven years ago when she’d lost Matt could not compare to the anguish she felt now—because eleven years ago, she’d been helpless to change the outcome of events. This time, the choice had been entirely hers, and she could not shake the agonizing uncertainty that she might have made a hideous mistake, not even when Sam Green brought her an updated report that indicated Matt had bought even more shares of Bancroft stock than they’d originally realized.

  Twice during the day, she made Mark Braden phone the Bomb and Arson squads in Dallas, New Orleans, and Chicago, hoping against hope that one of them might have turned up a lead and failed to notify her. She was looking for something, anything, that would justify her changing her mind and calling Matt, but there were no leads in the bombings.

  After that, she moved listlessly through the rest of her day, her head aching from a sleepless night. The afternoon paper was lying outside her door when she got home that night and, without bothering to take off her coat, Meredith scanned it anxiously, looking for some news that the police had a suspect in Spyzhalski’s murder, but there was none. She turned on the television set to catch the 6 o’clock news for the same reason—and with the same result.

  In a futile effort to stop herself from wallowing in her misery, she decided to put her Christmas tree up. She’d finished decorating it and was arranging the little nativity scene beneath the tree at 10 o’clock, when the late television news came on. Her heart pounding with hope, she sat on the floor beside the tree, her arms wrapped around her knees, her attention riveted on the screen.

  But although the Spyzhalski murder was mentioned, as were Bancroft’s bomb scares, there was nothing said that might exonerate Matt.

  Despondent, Meredith turned off the television, but remained where she was, staring at the twinkling lights on the Christmas tree. Matt’s deep voice spoke in her mind, tormentingly familiar, quietly profound: Sooner or later, you’re going to have to take a risk and trust me completely, Meredith. You can’t outwit fate by trying to stand on the sidelines and place little side bets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in and risk everything to play the game, or you don’t play at all. And if you don’t play, you can’t win. When the time had actually come for her to make the choice, she hadn’t been able to take the risk.

  She thought of other things he’d said to her too, beautiful things spoken with tender solemnity. If you’ll move in with me, I’ll give you paradise on a gold platter. Anything you want—everything you want. I come with it, of course. It’s a package deal . . .

  The poignancy of his words made her chest ache. She wondered what Matt was doing now and if he was waiting, hoping she would call. The answer to that question was in his parting words last night. Now, for the very first time, the import of his words, the finality of them, actually hit her, and she realized he wouldn’t be waiting for her to call now or ever. The choice he’d forced her to make last night had been irrevocable in his opinion: Either give me your hand, or end it now, and put us both out of our misery.

  When she left him standing there last night, she hadn’t completely understood that her decision had to be permanent, that he had absolutely no intention of giving her another chance to go back to him if—when—he was proven innocent of the things she believed he’d done. She understood that now. She should have realized it then. And even if she had, she still wouldn’t have been able to trust him and give him her hand. The evidence was against him, all of it.

  Permanent . . .

  The figures in the little nativity scene wavered as scalding tears filled her eyes, and she put her head in her arms. “Oh, please,” Meredith wept brokenly, “don’t let this happen to me. Please, don’t.”

  55

  At five o’clock the following afternoon, Meredith was summoned to the boardroom where an emergency board of directors meeting had been under way for several hours. When she walked into the room, she was surprised to see that the head of the table had evidently been reserved for her. Trying not to feel overly alarmed by the cold, grim faces that watched her as she sat down, she looked around at everyone, including her father. “Good afternoon, gentlemen.” In the chorus of “good afternoons” that answered, the only really friendly voice belonged to old Cyrus Fortell. “Afternoon, Meredith,” the old man replied, “and may I say you’re looking lovelier than ever.”

  Meredith looked terrible and she knew it, but she flashed him a grateful smile when normally his patently transparent references to her sex during meetings like this had annoyed her. She’d assumed that part of the reason for this emergency meeting had to do with Matt and that they were going to insist on explanations from her, but she’d also assumed they were going to ask for updates on other matters. So she was completely taken aback when the board’s chairman, who was seated on her right, nodded to the folder on the table in front of her and said in an icy voice, “We’ve had those documents prepared for your signature, Meredith. At the conclusion of this meeting, we’ll file them with the appropriate authorities. Take a moment to look them over. Since most of us participated in drafting them, there’s no need for us to do likewise.”

  “I haven’t seen them,” Cyrus protested, opening his folder at the same time she did.

  For a second Meredith couldn’t believe what she was seeing, and when she did accept it, bile rose up in her throat, strangling and sickening her. The first document was an official complaint to the Securities and Exchange Commission, stating that she had personal knowledge that Matthew Farrell was deliberately manipulating Bancroft’s stock, that he was using the insider information that he’d gleaned from her to make his transactions, and demanding that he be halted and investigated. The second complaint was to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and to the chiefs of police in Dallas, New Orleans, and Chicago, stating that she believed, and had reason to believe, that Matthew Farrell was responsible for the bomb scares in Bancroft & Company’s stores in those cities. The third complaint was also directed to the police department; it stated that she had overheard Matthew Farrell threaten the life of Stanislaus Spyzhalski during a phone call with his attorney, and that she was waiving her right to silence as Matthew Farrell’s wife, and herewith issuing a public statement that she believed he was responsible for Spyzhalski’s murder.

  Meredith looked at the grotesque words, the carefully phrased and damning half truths, the vicious accusations, and her entire body began to tremble. A voice screamed in her mind that she’d been a fool and a traitor to ever believe there was a shred of truth in the garbage pile of circumstantial evidence against her husband. The daze of helplessness and suspicion that had held
her in a kind of stupor for the two days since she left Matt suddenly evaporated, and she saw everything with crystal clarity—her mistakes, the board’s motives, her father’s handiwork.

  “Sign it, Meredith,” Nolan Wilder said, shoving his pen at her.

  Sign it.

  Meredith made her choice, an irrevocable choice—perhaps even a choice that was already too late. Slowly she stood up. “Sign it?” she repeated contemptuously. “I’ll do nothing of the sort!”

  “We had hoped you’d appreciate this chance to exonerate yourself and to disassociate yourself from Farrell as well as to see the truth brought out and justice done,” Wilder said icily.

  “Is that what you’re interested in?” Meredith demanded, leaning her palms on the table and glaring at all of them. “Truth and justice?” Several of the men glanced away as if they weren’t entirely comfortable with the documents she’d been told to sign. “Then I’ll tell you the truth!” she continued, her voice ringing with conviction. “Matthew Farrell had nothing to do with those bomb scares, and he had nothing to do with the murder of Stanislaus Spyzhalski, and he is not guilty of violating any SEC rules. The truth,” she said with scathing disdain, “is that you’re all terrified of him. In comparison to his triumphs, your successes in your own businesses are puny, and the thought of having him as a major shareholder of this company, or on this board, makes you feel insignificant! You’re vain and you’re terrified and, if you honestly believed I’d sign these papers because you’ve ordered me to do it, you’re also fools!”

  “I suggest you reconsider your decision very carefully right now, Meredith,” another board member warned her, his face stiff with affront over what she’d said. “Either you are going to act in the best interests of Bancroft and Company, and sign those documents, which is your duty as acting interim president of this corporation—or we can only assume your loyalties lie with an enemy of this corporation.”