Paradise by Judith McNaught
38
Still buttoning his shirt, Matt strode purposefully down the stairs. Meredith whirled around as he stalked past the kitchen doorway, pulling on a leather flight jacket, heading for the front door. “Where are you going?”
“I’m going outside to find your keys. Do you remember where you dropped them?”
Her lips parted in surprise when she saw the granite determination that hardened his jaw. “I—I dropped them as I walked around the front of the car, but there’s no reason for you to go out there now—”
“Yes,” he said flatly, “there is. This charade has gone on long enough. don’t look so surprised,” he snapped. “You’re as bored with this pretense at marital bliss as I am.” She drew in a sharp breath as though he had slapped her, and Matt added coldly, “I admire your tenacity, Meredith. You want the Houston property for twenty million, and you need a quick, congenial divorce with no publicity. You’ve spent two days catering to me so that I’ll be more agreeable to both. You tried and you failed. Now, go back to the city and behave like the competent executive you are. Take me to court over the Houston property and file for divorce, but knock off this nauseating farce! The role of humble, loving wife doesn’t suit you, and you must be as sick of it as I am.”
He turned on his heel and strode out the front door. Meredith stared at the place where he had stood, her heart twisting with panic, disappointment, and humiliation. He’d suddenly decided these last two days were a boring charade! Blinking away frustrated tears, she bit down on her lip and turned back to the frying pan. She’d obviously passed up her best opportunities to tell him she hadn’t had an abortion, and she didn’t have the slightest, the vaguest idea why his mood had suddenly turned so hostile. She hated that volatile unpredictability that was Matt; he’d always been that way. You never knew what he thought or what he was going to do next! Before she left this house, she was going to tell him the truth about what had happened eleven years ago, but now she wasn’t certain he was going to care, even if he believed her. She picked up an egg and hit it so hard against the side of the frying pan that the yolk slid down the outside.
For ten minutes Matt pawed through the snow near the BMW’s front tire in a futile effort to find Meredith’s damned keys; he dug and sifted until his gloves were soaked and his hands were frozen, and then he gave up and checked out her alarm system, looking through the window. There was no sign of a keypad, which probably meant hers could be disabled only with her car key. Even if he jimmied her door lock and got in to hot-wire the damned car, an alarm system like hers was designed to disable the vehicle so it couldn’t be driven.
“Breakfast is ready,” Meredith said uneasily, walking into the living room when she heard the front door slam. “Did you find the keys?”
“No,” Matt said, striving to keep his temper under control. “There’s a locksmith in town, but he isn’t open on Sunday.”
Meredith served the scrambled eggs she’d made, then she sat down across from him. Desperately trying to restore some semblance of the relationship they’d shared yesterday, she asked in a quiet, reasonable voice, “Do you mind telling me why you’ve suddenly decided this whole weekend has been a boring plot on my part?”
“Let’s just say my faculties have returned along with my health,” he said shortly. For ten minutes, while they ate, Meredith tried to engage him in conversation, only to have him rebuff her attempts with curt, brief replies. The moment he was finished eating, he got up and said he was going to start packing up the things in the living room.
With a sinking heart, Meredith watched him go, then she automatically began to tidy up the kitchen. When the last dish had been washed and put away, she went into the living room. “There’s a lot to pack,” she said, determined to find a way to make him more receptive. “What can I do to help?”
Matt heard the soft plea in her voice and his body responded with a fresh surge of lust as he straightened and looked at her. You could go upstairs with me and offer me that delectable body of yours. “Suit yourself.”
Why, Meredith wondered fiercely, did he have to be so damned unapproachable now, and why did he suddenly find her boring and irritating? His father had said Matt had been wild with grief over her alleged abortion and that, when Meredith had refused to see him, it nearly killed him. She’d thought at the time Patrick must be grossly exaggerating Matt’s feelings for her; now she was certain of it, and the certainty made her feel strangely, inexplicably, despondent. It didn’t surprise her though. Matt had always been capable of shouldering great responsibility, but it was impossible to know what he was really thinking and feeling. Hoping against hope his mood would improve if she left him alone, she went upstairs and spent the morning packing away linens and bedding and the contents of the closets, most of which he’d told her at breakfast were to be donated to a charity. Only the family mementos were being kept, and she carefully sorted through his parents’ closet, making certain that nothing of sentimental value went into the boxes destined for charity. When she took a break, she sat down on the bed and opened a photograph album that had evidently belonged to Matt’s mother. It was filled with pictures that were so old, most of them were fading. Many of them were of relatives in the old country: sweet-faced girls with long hair and bonnets, and handsome, unsmiling men with Irish surnames like Lanigan, O’Malley, and Collier. Beneath each picture was the date it was taken and the name of whoever was in the photograph. The last picture in the album was the most current—it was a wedding photograph of Matt’s mother and father. April 24, 1949 was written beneath the picture in her neat script. Judging from the variety of names in that album, Elizabeth Farrell had lots of cousins and aunts and uncles in the old country, Meredith thought with a soft smile, wondering wistfully what it would be like to come from a big family.
At noon she went downstairs. They had sandwiches for lunch, and although Matt wasn’t friendly, at least he answered her questions and comments with aloof courtesy, and she took that as an encouraging sign that his mood was improving. When she’d finished cleaning up after lunch, she gave a final satisfied glance at the gleaming kitchen, then she walked into the living room, where Matt was methodically packing books and knickknacks into boxes. She paused in the doorway, watching the way his chamois shirt stretched taut across his broad, muscled shoulders and tapered back whenever he lifted his arm. He’d taken off the jeans that had gotten damp while he was searching outside for her keys, and in their place he was wearing a pair of gray slacks that molded themselves to his hips and the long length of his muscled legs. For one hopeless moment she actually considered walking up behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist, and laying her cheek against the solid wall of his back. She wondered what he’d do. Push her away, probably, Meredith decided dismally.
Mentally, she braced herself for a rebuff and stepped forward, but after a half day of enduring his unpredictable temper, her nerves were scraped raw and her own temper was strained to the breaking point. She watched him taping the last box of books shut, and said, “Can I do anything to help you?”
“Hardly, since I’m already finished,” he said without bothering to turn.
Meredith stiffened, her frayed temper sending bright spots of warning color to her high cheekbones. With a last effort to sound polite, she said, “I’m going up to Julie’s room to pack some things she left behind. Would you like me to fix you a cup of coffee before I do?”
“No,” he snapped.
“Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“Oh, for God’s sake!” he exploded, swinging around. “Stop acting like a patient, saintly wife, and get out of here!”
Fury blazed in her eyes, and she clenched her hands into fists, fighting back tears and the simultaneous urge to slap him. “Fine,” she retorted, trying valiantly to hold on to her shattered dignity. “You can make your own damned dinner and eat it alone.” Turning on her heel, she stalked up the stairs.
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” he demanded
She turned on the landing, looking down at him like an angry, haughty goddess, her hair tumbling over her shoulders. “It means I think you’re rotten company!”
That was such an understatement that Matt would have laughed if he weren’t already so furious with himself for wanting her—even now as she stood up there, glowering at him. He watched her turn her back on him and disappear down the hall, then he wandered over to the window. Bracing his hand high on the sill, he stared out across the drive. The plowed drive. Dale O’Donnell had evidently come while they’d been having lunch. For several minutes Matt stood at the windows, his jaw clenched, fighting against the impulse to go upstairs and discover for himself if Meredith actually wanted the Houston property badly enough to climb into bed with him. There were worse ways to spend a wintry day and night—and no better revenge than to let her do it, then send her on her way, empty-handed. And still he hesitated, held back by some vague scruple . . . or sense of self-preservation. Shoving away from the window, he got his jacket from the closet and went back outside, absolutely determined to find her car keys this time. He found them only inches away from where he’d stopped looking before.
“The drive is clear,” he announced, walking into Julie’s room where Meredith was putting old scrapbooks into a box. “Pack your things.”
Meredith lurched around, stung by his icy tone, her hopes for a reprieve, for a return to the mood of yesterday, dying. Gathering her courage, she slowly finished wrapping the last scrapbook. Now that it was time to tell him about her miscarriage, she fully expected him to react with the equivalent of “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” Just thinking of that possibility made her seethe with anger. After a half day of enduring his sarcasm and frigid silence, her nerves and her temper were strained to the breaking point. Carefully, she put the wrapped book into the box, then she straightened and looked at him. “Before I leave, there’s something I have to tell you.”
“I’m not interested,” he bit out, striding forward. “Get going.”
“Not until I tell you what I actually came here to say!” she said, then cried out in shocked alarm when he grabbed her arm.
“Meredith,” he snapped, “cut the crap and get moving!”
“I can’t!” she burst out, jerking her arm free. “I—I don’t have my keys.” He saw it then; the small suitcase lying beside the bed. Matt wasn’t clear on much about the night she arrived, but he sure as hell would have noticed if she’d been carrying a suitcase when she got out of that car. The shock of seeing it would have registered on him. Her car was supposedly locked, but she’d managed to get a suitcase out of it! Turning on his heel, he yanked her purse off the dresser, turned it upside down, and unceremoniously dumped the contents out. A set of car keys landed on top of her wallet and makeup case. “So,” he said in a silky voice, “You don’t have any keys?”
In her panic and desperation, Meredith unthinkingly put her hand on his chest. “Matt, please listen to me—” She watched his gaze rivet on her hand, then it slowly lifted to her face, and when his eyes met hers, there was a distinct change in him, though she was unaware that it was the intimacy of her gesture that caused it. The rigidity left his jaw, his body relaxed; his eyes were no longer hard and indifferent, but lazy and speculative; even his voice was different—smooth, soft, like satin over cold steel. “Go ahead and talk, sweetheart, I’m hanging on to every word.”
Meredith’s mind rang out an alarm as she looked into those heavy-lidded gray eyes, but she was too desperate to speak to heed the warning or even to notice that his hands were slowly gliding up and down her arms. Drawing a quick, steadying breath, she launched into the speech she’d rehearsed all morning: “Friday evening, I went to your apartment to try to reason with you—”
“I already know that,” he interrupted.
“What you don’t know is that your father and I had a raging argument.”
“I’m sure you didn’t rage, sweetheart,” he said with thinly veiled sarcasm. “A well-bred woman like you would never stoop so low.”
“Well, I did,” Meredith said, shaken by his attitude but determined to forge ahead. “You see, your father told me to stay away from you—he accused me of destroying our baby and nearly destroying your life. I—I didn’t know what he was talking about at first.”
“I’m sure the fault was his for not making himself clear—”
“Stop talking to me in that condescending way,” Meredith warned with a mixture of panic and desperation. “I’m trying to make you understand!”
“I’m sorry. What is it I’m supposed to understand?”
“Matt, I didn’t have an abortion—I had a miscarriage. A miscarriage,” she repeated, searching his impassive features for some sign of reaction.
“A miscarriage. I see.” His eyes dropped to her lips and his hand slid up her arm, curving around her nape. “So beautiful . . .” he whispered huskily. “You always were so damned beautiful . . .”
Stunned into blank immobility by his words and the husky timbre of his voice, she stared at him, not certain what he was thinking, unable to believe he’d accepted her explanation so easily and calmly. “So beautiful,” he repeated, his hand tightening on her nape, “and such a liar!” Before she could summon a coherent thought, his mouth swooped down, seizing hers in a kiss of ruthless sensuality, grinding her lips apart. His fingers shoved into her hair and twisted, forcing her head back and holding her captive as his tongue drove insolently into her mouth.
The kiss was intended to punish and degrade her, and Meredith knew it, but instead of fighting him as he obviously expected her to do, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her body to his, and kissed him back with all the shattering tenderness and aching contrition in her heart, trying to convince him in this way that she spoke the truth. Her response made him stiffen in shock; he tensed, as if he intended to shove her away, and then with a low groan he gathered her into his arms and kissed her with a slow, melting hunger that demolished her defenses completely and drove her mad with helpless yearning. The kiss deepened dramatically, his mouth moving urgently, persuasively, on hers, and against her, Meredith felt the rigid pressure of his aroused body.
When he finally lifted his head, she was too dazed to immediately grasp the meaning of his caustic question, “Are you using birth control? Before we get into bed so you can show me how badly you really want that Houston property, I want to be certain there won’t be another child from this encounter—or another abortion.”
Meredith lurched back, staring at him in stunned anger.
“Abortion!” she choked. “Didn’t you hear what I just told you? I had a miscarriage.”
“Damn you, don’t lie to me!”
“You have to listen—”
“I don’t want to talk anymore,” he said roughly, and his mouth captured hers in a bruising kiss.
Frantic to stop him, to make him listen before it was too late, Meredith struggled and finally managed to tear her mouth from his. “No!” she cried, wedging her hands against his chest, burying her face against his shirt. His hand clamped against the back of her head as if he intended to force her head up again, and Meredith fought with a strength born of terror and panic, shoving his hands away and tearing out of his grasp. “I didn’t have an abortion—I didn’t!” she cried, backing up a step, her chest rising and falling in sharp, shallow breaths, her words spilling out with all the pent-up pain and fury she felt. Gone was the carefully rehearsed speech she’d planned, and in its place came a torrent of anguished words. “I had a miscarriage, and I nearly died. A miscarriage! No one will perform an abortion when you’re nearly six months pregnant—”
Minutes ago his eyes had been smoldering with desire, now they raked over her with savage contempt. “Evidently they will if you’ve given an entire wing to the hospital where it’s performed.”
“It’s not a question of legality, it’s too dangerous!”
“Apparently it was, since you were in there for almost
Meredith realized he’d already considered all this long ago, arrived at his own logical, if erroneous, conclusions, and that nothing she said was going to make any difference. The realization was shattering, and she turned her head aside, brushing at the tears of futility starting to spill from her eyes, but she could not stop talking to him. “Oh, please,” she implored brokenly, “listen to me. I hemorrhaged, and I lost our baby. I asked my father to send you a telegram to tell you what happened and to ask you to come home. I never imagined he’d lie to you, or stop you from getting into the hospital, but your father said that’s what he did . . .” The dam of tears broke loose, flooding her eyes and shattering her voice as she wept. “I thought I was in love with you! I waited for you to come to the hospital. I waited and waited,” she cried, “but you never did.”
She bent her head, her shoulders jerking with sobs she couldn’t suppress any longer. Matt knew she was crying, but he was rendered incapable of reaction by a memory that had started screaming through his brain when she mentioned her father—a vision of Philip Bancroft standing in his study, white-faced with rage: You think you’re tough, Farrell, but you don’t even know what tough is yet. I’ll stop at nothing to get Meredith free of you! After that tirade, after Bancroft’s rage was spent, he’d asked Matt if they could try to get along for Meredith’s sake. Bancroft had seemed sincere. He’d seemed to accept the marriage, albeit reluctantly. But had he really, Matt wondered now. I’ll stop at nothing to get Meredith free of you . . .
Meredith raised her eyes to his then, wounded blue-green eyes. In a state of paralyzed uncertainty, Matt looked into those eyes, and what he saw nearly sent him to his knees: They were filled with tears and pleading. And truth. Naked, soul-destroying, unbearable truth. “Matt,” she whispered achingly, “we—we had a baby girl.”