Paradise by Judith McNaught
“How?” she chuckled.
“You can go to bed with me instead.”
She stiffened and backed away a hasty step, still smiling, but more out of self-consciousness than mirth. “I—I have to call the police about my car,” she said, launching into diversionary conversation and hastily starting toward her desk. She peered out the window as she passed. “Oh, good, there’s the tow truck now,” she babbled brightly, picking up the phone to call the police. “I told the security clerk to have that car removed from my spot.”
An odd expression flashed across his face at that announcement, but Meredith was too preoccupied by the fact that he was following her to her desk to wonder about it. When he reached out and firmly pressed down on the button to disconnect her call to the police, she eyed him with wary alarm. He wasn’t finished trying to get her into bed, she knew, and her resistance was almost gone. He was so appealing, and it had felt so good to laugh with him . . . Instead of reaching for her, as she half expected him to do, he said mildly, “What’s the phone number for the security desk?”
She told him, then watched in startled confusion as he called it.
“This is Matt Farrell,” he told the security guard. “Please go down to the garage and tell the tow truck to leave my wife’s car where it is.” When the security guard argued that Miss Bancroft’s car was an ’84 BMW, while the car in her parking space was a blue Jag, Matt said, “I know that. The Jaguar is her birthday present.”
“My what?” Meredith gasped.
He hung up the phone and turned to her, a smile lurking at his mouth, but Meredith wasn’t smiling—she was dumbstruck by the overwhelming generosity of the gift, panicked at the web he was weaving around her, and thoroughly alarmed by the treacherous leap her heart gave at the sound of his deep voice quietly saying “my wife.” She started with the least important issues first, because she wasn’t quite ready to address the others yet. “Where is my own car?”
“In the night clerk’s space, one level below yours.”
“But—but how did you start my car to move it? You said at the farm that even if you could start it without the keys, the alarm would disable it.”
“That wasn’t a problem for Joe O’Hara.”
“I knew when I saw that gun that he was probably a—a felon.”
“No, he’s not,” Matt said dryly. “He’s an expert with wiring.”
“I can’t possibly accept the other car—”
“Yes, darling,” he said, “You can.”
Meredith felt it happening again, that awesome magnetic pull of his body and voice, the melting inside her when he called her darling. She backed away a step, and her voice shook. “I—I’m going to the office.”
“I don’t think so,” Matt said softly.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean we have something more important to do.”
“What is it?”
“I’ll show you,” he promised huskily, “in bed.”
“Matt, don’t do this to me—” she pleaded, holding her hand up as if to fend him off and backing away two steps.
He stalked her, step for step. “We want each other. We have always wanted each other.”
“I really do have to go to the office. I have tons of work.”
She backed away again in the same avoidance waltz Matt had teased her about, but her eyes were warm and frightened because she knew. . . . She knew it was too late to dance out of his reach now.
“Give in gracefully, darling. This dance is over. The next one is ours.”
“Please don’t call me that,” she cried, and Matt realized that for some reason she was truly frightened.
“Why are you afraid?” he asked, stalking her slowly around the back of the sofa, trying to head her toward the bedroom.
Why was she afraid, Meredith thought a little wildly. How could she explain that she didn’t want to love a man who didn’t love her . . . that she never wanted to be as vulnerable to being hurt as she’d been eleven years ago . . . that she didn’t think he’d be satisfied with her for very long, and she didn’t think she could bear it if she lost him again because he wasn’t.
“Matt, listen to me. Stand still and listen to me, please!”
Matt stopped short, stunned by the terrified desperation in her voice.
“You said you want children,” she blurted out, “and I can’t have any. There’s something physically wrong with me—it would be too risky.”
He didn’t miss a beat. “We’ll adopt.”
“What if I said I don’t want any children?” she flung back.
“Then we won’t adopt.”
“I have no intention of giving up my career—”
“I don’t expect you to.”
“God, you are making this so hard!” she cried. “Can’t you leave me just a little pride? I’m trying to tell you that I couldn’t bear being married to you—not living as husband and wife, which is what you say you want.”
His face paled as the sincerity in her voice hit him. “Do you mind if I ask you why the hell not?”
“Yes, I do mind.”
“Let’s hear it anyway,” he said tautly.
She folded her arms protectively over her chest, absently rubbing them with her hands as if to ward off the sudden chill of his expression. “It’s too late for us,” she began. “We’ve changed. You’ve changed. I can’t pretend I don’t—don’t feel something for you. You know I do. I always did,” she admitted miserably, her gaze searching his shuttered gray eyes, looking for understanding and finding only cold impassivity while he waited to hear the rest of what she had to say. “Maybe if we’d stayed together, it would have worked, but it couldn’t now. You like sexy movie stars and—and seductive European princesses, and I can’t be those things for you!”
“I’m not asking you to be anything but what you are, Meredith.”
“It won’t be enough!” she argued miserably. “And I couldn’t bear living with you and knowing that I’m not enough—knowing that someday you’ll start wanting things I can’t give you.”
“If you’re talking about children, I thought we just settled that.”
“I don’t think we settled it, I think you made a reckless concession because you’re willing to say anything right now to make me agree with what you want. But I’m not talking about you wanting children, I’m talking about you wanting other women! I could never be enough for you. I know I couldn’t.”
His eyes widened. “I beg your pardon?”
“I tried to explain to you once before about—about how I feel when we make love. Matt,” she said almost choking on her words, “people—men, I mean—they think I’m . . . I’m frigid. Even in college they thought that. I don’t think I am exactly, but I’m not—I’m not like most women.”
“Go on,” he insisted gently when she stopped, but there was an odd light in his eyes.
“In college, two years after you left, I tried to sleep with a boy and I hated it. So did he. Other women on campus were sleeping around and enjoying it, but I didn’t. I couldn’t.”
“If they’d all been through what you had,” Matt said, so filled with tenderness and relief that he could hardly keep his voice steady, “they wouldn’t have been very damned eager to do it again either.”
“I thought that, too, but that wasn’t it. Parker isn’t a clumsy, oversexed college boy, and I know he thinks I’m not—not very responsive. Parker didn’t mind so very much, but you—you would.”
“You’re out of your mind, sweetheart.”
“You’re not used to me yet! You haven’t noticed that I feel awkward and inept. No, I am awkward and inept!”
Matt bit back a grin and gravely said, “Inept too? As bad as that?”
“Worse.”
“And are those all the reasons you have for being afraid to pick up where we left off eleven years ago?”
You don’t love me, dammit, she thought. “Those are all the important ones,” she said dishonestly.
&
Helplessly affected by the husky timbre of his voice, the sensuality in his beautiful eyes, and the incredibly touching things he was saying, Meredith watched him slowly strip off his sport jacket and toss it over the back of the sofa, but the import of his action didn’t register because she was absorbed in what he was saying. “As far as your being frigid is concerned, that is absurd. The memory of what it was like to be in bed with you haunted me for years. And if you think,” he continued gravely, “that you’re the only one who’s harbored some insecurities about those times we spent in bed, then I’ve got news for you, darling. There were times I felt inadequate. No matter how often I told myself to slow down, to make love to you for hours and make us both wait for a climax, I couldn’t seem to do it because being in bed with you made me crazy with wanting.”
Tears of relief and joy burned the backs of Meredith’s eyes; he’d meant to give her an expensive sports car for a birthday present, but the gift he was giving her with his words meant a thousand times more. Mesmerized, she heard him say, “When I got your father’s telegram, I tortured myself for years, thinking you might have stayed married to me if I could have made our lovemaking better, longer, hotter . . .” A smile suddenly drifted across his handsome face, and his tone changed to one of amused gravity. “That takes care of the issue of frigidity, I think.”
Matt saw the warm flush on her smooth cheeks—evidence that his words had affected her. “That leaves us with only one minor objection of yours about being married to me.”
“What’s that?”
“Your feeling that you’re inept and—?”
“Clumsy,” she provided, distracted by the way he was lazily stripping off his tie. “And . . . and inferior.”
“I can see how distressing that might be for you,” he agreed with sham gravity. “I suppose we’d better take care of that next.” He began unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.
“What are you doing!” she demanded, her eyes widening.
“I’m getting undressed so you can have your way with me.”
“Don’t unbutton that second button—I mean it, Matt.”
“You’re right. You should be doing this. Nothing gives a person a greater sense of power and superiority than forcing another person to stand perfectly still while they’re being undressed.”
“You should know. You’ve probably done it dozens of times.”
“Hundreds. Come here, darling.”
“Hundreds?!”
“I was joking.”
“It wasn’t funny.”
“I can’t help it. When I’m nervous, I make jokes.”
She stared at him. “Are you nervous?”
“Terrified,” he said half seriously. “This is the greatest gamble of my life. I mean, if everything doesn’t go perfectly in this little experiment, I might as well face the fact that we weren’t meant for each other, after all.”
Meredith’s last vestige of resistance crumbled as she looked at him. She loved him; she had always loved him. And she wanted him so badly—almost as badly as she wanted him to love her. “That’s not true.”
His voice hoarse with tenderness at her words, Matt opened his arms to her. “Come to bed with me, darling. I promise you that you’ll never have any doubts about yourself, or me, after this.”
Meredith hesitated and then walked straight into his arms.
In the bedroom Matt did exactly four things to make certain his promise was kept: He made her drink some champagne to relax; he told her that any kiss or caress of his that she’d enjoyed, he would find just as exciting. And then he turned his body into a hands-on teaching instrument for a woman whose very voice excited him. Last, he made no effort to hide or control his reactions to anything she did to him. In so doing, Matt managed to turn the next two hours of his life into an agony of almost unendurable passionate torment, a torment which his wife, after overcoming her shyness, was now doing her gloriously effective damnedest to heighten.
“But I’m not completely certain you like this,” she whispered, touching her lips to his swollen body.
“Please don’t do that,” Matt gasped.
“You don’t like it?”
“You can see that I do.”
“Then why do you want me to stop?”
“Keep doing it, and you’ll know why in about one minute.”
“Do you like this?” Her tongue flicked against his nipples, and he held his breath to stifle his gasp.
“Yes,” he finally managed in a strangled voice. He reached up and grabbed the headboard, gritting his teeth as she mounted him and began to move, determined to let her do it all, have it all. “This is what I get for falling in love with a CEO instead of some nice dumb starlet—” he joked, so dazed with passion, he didn’t know what he was saying. “I should have known a CEO would want to be on top—”
It took a moment to realize she had gone perfectly still.
“If you stop now, without letting me have a climax, there’s every chance I’ll die right here, darling.”
“What?” she whispered.
“Please, don’t stop, or I’ll take over no matter what I promised,” he gasped, already lifting his hips to get higher and deeper into her tight, wet warmth.
“You’re in love with me?”
He closed his eyes and swallowed, his voice thick with lust and amusement. “What the hell do you think this is all about?” He opened his eyes, and even in the darkened room he could see the tears shimmering in her eyes.
“Don’t look at me like that,” he pleaded, letting go of the headboard and pulling her down against his chest. “Please, don’t cry. I’m sorry I said it,” he whispered, kissing her in helpless desperation because he thought she didn’t want to hear how he felt, and he’d spoiled their lovemaking. “I didn’t mean to say it so soon.”
“Soon?” she repeated fiercely, her shoulders shaking with teary laughter. “Soon?” she wept brokenly. “I’ve been waiting almost half my life for you to say you love me.” With her wet cheek pressed to his chest and her body still intimately joined to his, she whispered, “I love you, Matt.”
The moment she said it, Matt climaxed involuntarily inside her, shuddering, clutching her fiercely, his fingers digging into her back, his face buried against her neck, helpless yet omnipotent because she’d finally said the words.
Her body tightened, holding him. “I’ve always loved you,” she whispered. “I’ll always love you.”
The climax that should have been nearly over exploded with new force, his body jerking spasmodically, and he groaned long and low, twisting higher into her, brought to the most volcanic moment of his life, not by stimulation or technique, but words. Her words.
Meredith rolled over in Matt’s arms and snuggled closer to him, sated and happy.
In New Orleans, a well-dressed man walked into one of the dressing rooms at Bancroft & Company’s crowded store. In his right hand he carried a suit he’d taken off the rack. In his left hand he carried a Saks Fifth Avenue bag with a small plastic explosive in it. Five minutes later he left the dressing room, carrying only the suit, which he returned to the rack.
In Dallas, a woman walked into a stall in the ladies’ room at Bancroft & Company, carrying a Louis Vuitton purse and a bag from Bloomingdale’s. When she left, she was carrying only her purse.
In Chicago, a man
In Meredith’s apartment, several miles away and several hours later, Matt glanced at his watch, then he rolled to his feet and helped Meredith clear away the debris from the meal they had eaten after making love again in front of the fire. They’d taken her car out for a test drive, stopped at a little Italian restaurant, and brought their meal back because they both wanted to be alone together.
Meredith was putting the last of the dishes into the dishwasher when he came up silently behind her. She felt his presence like a tangible force even before his hands settled on her waist, and he drew her back against him. “Happy?” he asked huskily, brushing a kiss on her temple.
“Very happy,” she whispered, smiling.
“It’s ten o’clock.”
“I know.” Her smile wavered as she braced herself for what she suspected was coming next—and she was right.
“My bed is bigger than yours. So is my apartment. I can have a moving van here in the morning.”
Drawing a long, steadying breath, she turned in his arms and laid her hand against his face as if to soften the blow of her refusal. “I can’t move in with you—not yet.”
Beneath her fingers she felt his jaw tense. “Can’t or don’t want to?”
“Can’t.”
He nodded as if accepting her answer, but he dropped his arms. “Let’s hear why you think you can’t.”
Shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her robe, Meredith stepped back and launched her argument. “To begin with, I stood beside Parker last week and let him make a public statement that we were getting married as soon as the divorce was final. If I move in with you now, I’ll make Parker look like an ass, and myself like a fool who can’t make up her mind—or else a woman who’s so shallow and silly that she goes with whatever man wins a fistfight.”