Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

Glad for any reprieve that would keep her from lying in bed, worrying, Meredith said, "That sounds nice."

Outside, the night air was balmy, and the moon painted a wide path across the yard. They'd just walked down the porch steps when Julie came out behind them, a sweater over her shoulders and schoolbooks in her arms. "See you in the morning. Joelle's picking me up at the end of the drive. I'm going over to her house to study."

Matt turned, brows pulling together. "At ten at night?"

She paused, her hand on the railing, an exasperated smile on her pretty face. "Matt!" she said, rolling her eyes at his obtuseness.

He caught on then. "Tell Joelle I said hello." She left, hurrying toward the car lights at the end of the gravel drive, and Matt turned to Meredith, asking her something that had obviously been puzzling him. "How do you know about encroaching on easements and zoning violations?"

Tipping her head back Meredith gazed at the harvest moon hovering overhead like a huge golden disk. "My father has always talked to me about business. There was a zoning problem when we built our branch store in the suburbs, and a problem with an easement when the developer paved the parking lot." Since he'd already asked a question, Meredith asked him one that had been plaguing her for hours. Pausing, she reached up and pulled a leaf from a low branch overhead while she made an unsuccessful effort to keep the accusation out of her voice. "Julie told me you have an M.B.A. Why did you let me think you were an ordinary steelworker who was heading off to Venezuela to chase your luck in the oil fields?"

"What makes you think steelworkers are ordinary and people with M.B.A.'s are special?"

Meredith heard the mild reprimand in those words and she flinched inwardly. Leaning her shoulders against the tree trunk behind her, she said, "Did I sound like a snob?"

"Are you one?" he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets, studying her.

"I—" She hesitated, searching his shadowy features, strangely tempted to say whatever she thought he wanted to hear, and, just as firmly, she resisted the temptation. "I probably am."

She didn't hear the disgust in her voice, but Matt did and the glamour of his sudden, lazy grin made her pulse leap. "I doubt it."

The three words made her feel inordinately pleased. "Why?"

"Because snobs don't worry about whether they are or not. However, to answer your question, part of the reason I didn't say anything about the degree is that it doesn't mean anything unless, and until, I can put it to use. Right now all I have are a bunch of ideas and plans that may not work out the way I think they should."

Julie had said most people found him difficult to get to know, and Meredith could easily believe that. And yet, there were many times, like now, when she felt an odd sense of being so attuned to him that she could almost read his mind. Quietly she said, "I think the other reason you let me go on thinking you're a steelworker was that you wanted to see if it would matter to me. It was a—a test, wasn't it?"

That startled a chuckle from him. "I suppose it was. Who knows—that's all I may ever be."

"And now you've switched from steel mills to oil rigs," she teased, her eyes laughing, "because you wanted a job with more glamour, is that it?"

With an effort, Matt resisted the temptation to snatch her into his arms and muffle his laughter against her lips. She was young and pampered and he was going to a foreign country where many common necessities would be luxuries. This sudden, insane impulse to take her with him that kept prodding at him was just that—insane. On the other hand, she was also brave, sweet, and pregnant with his child. His child. Their child. Perhaps the idea wasn't so insane. Tipping his head back, he looked up at the moon, trying to ignore the notion, and even while he was doing it, he found himself suggesting something that would help him decide. "Meredith," he said, "most couples take months learning about each other before they get married. You and I have only a few days before we get married, and less than a week before I have to leave for South America. Do you think we could try to cram a few months into a few days?"

"I guess so," she said, puzzled by the sudden intensity in his voice.

"Okay, fine," Matt said, strangely at a loss as to how to begin now that she'd agreed. "What would you like to know about me?"

Gulping back a surge of startled, self-conscious laughter, Meredith looked at him, stupefied, and then she wondered if he was referring to genetic questions she might have about him as the father of her baby. Peering at him, she asked hesitantly, "Do you mean that I should ask you things like—like is there any history of insanity in your family, and do you have a police record?"

Matt bit back a shout of laughter at her choice of questions, and said with sham gravity, "No—to both those things. How about you?"

Solemnly, she shook her head. "No insanity, no police record either."

He saw it then—the answering laughter glowing in her eyes, and for the second time in moments he had to restrain the urge to clasp her to him.

"Now it's your turn to ask me something," she offered gamely. "What do you want to know?"

"Just one thing," he said with blunt honesty as he placed his hand high on the tree trunk behind her. "Are you half as sweet as I think you are?"

"Probably not."

He straightened and smiled because he was almost certain she was wrong. "Let's walk, before I forget what we're supposed to be doing out here. In the interest of complete honesty," he added as they turned and strolled down the lane that curved toward the main road, "I've just remembered that I do have a police record." Meredith stopped short, and he turned and said, "I was busted twice when I was nineteen."

"What were you doing at the time?"

"Fighting. Brawling would be a better word. Before my mother died, I'd managed to convince myself that if she had the best doctors and stayed in the best hospitals— only the best—then she wouldn't die. We got her the best, my father and I. When the insurance ran out, we sold the farm equipment and everything else we could liquidate to keep paying the medical bills. She died anyway," Matt said in a carefully unemotional voice. "My father hit the bottle, and I went looking for something of my own to hit. For months afterward I was spoiling for a fight, and since I couldn't get my hands on the God my mother had such faith in, I settled for any mortal who wanted to take me on. In Edmunton it's not hard to find a fight," he added with a wry smile, and not until that moment did Matt realize he was confiding things to an eighteen-year-old girl that he'd never admitted to anyone else, even himself. And the eighteen-year-old girl was looking at him with a quiet understanding that completely belied her years. "The cops broke up two of the fights," he finished, "and they busted all of us. It's no big deal. There's no record of it anywhere except Edmunton."