Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

She held his gaze, her head tipped back, a knowing smile curving her vermilion lips. "You are the only man," she softly told him, "who can make 'that's quite a gown' sound like an irresistible invitation to join you in bed for at least a week."

Matt chuckled at that as they started toward the dazzling lights and noisy clamor of the party. Ahead, he saw two photographers snapping pictures and a television crew roaming through the crowd, and he braced himself for the inevitable descent of the press.

"Was it?" Alicia asked as soon as her father stopped to talk to friends.

"Was it what?" Matt said, pausing to take two glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter.

"An invitation for a week of glorious fucking like the one we had two months ago?"

"Alicia," Matt admonished her mildly, nodding politely to two men he knew, "behave yourself." He would have started forward, but Alicia remained stubbornly where she was, studying him with deepening intensity. "Why haven't you ever married?"

"Let's discuss that some other time."

"I tried the last two times we were together, but you evaded it."

Annoyed with her obstinacy, her topic, and her timing, Matt put his hand beneath her black-gloved arm and guided her off to the side. "I gather," he told her, "that you intend to discuss it here and now."

"I do," she said, meeting his gaze, chin proudly high.

"What's on your mind?"

"Marriage."

He paused and Alicia saw the sudden chill in his eyes, but what he said was even more cutting than his expression: "To whom?"

Stung by his deliberate insult and furious with her tactical blunder in trying to force his hand, she glared at his implacable expression, and then the tension drained from her. "I suppose I deserved that," she admitted.

"No," Matt said shortly, angry with his own excessive tactlessness, "you didn't."

Alicia stared at him, confused, wary, and then she smiled a little. "At least we know where we stand—for now."

His answering smile was brief, cool, and distinctly unencouraging. With a sigh Alicia tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. "You are," she told him bluntly as he led her forward, "the hardest man I've ever met!" Trying to inject some levity into the moment, she sent him a seductive sideways glance and added truthfully, "Physically, as well as emotionally, of course."

Lisa shoved her engraved invitation at the doorman stationed outside the ballroom. Stopping just long enough to pull off her coat and check it, she scanned the milling throng, looking for Parker or Meredith. Spotting Parker’s blond head near the bandstand, she headed toward him, brushing past Alicia Avery, who was strolling slowly beside a very tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered man whose profile seemed vaguely familiar. As Lisa wended her way through the crowd, men turned to gaze appreciatively at the figure she presented—a willowy redhead clad in billowing red satin lounge pants and a black velvet jacket, with a beaded black band tied around her forehead—an utterly incongruous and inappropriate ensemble that somehow—on Lisa—looked exactly right.

Other men thought that, but not Parker. "Hi," she said, coming up beside him as he filled his glass from one of the champagne fountains.

He turned, his gaze narrowing with disapproval on her clothes, and Lisa bridled at his unvoiced criticism. "Oh, no!" she speculated dramatically, looking at his handsome, glowering face with sham alarm. "Has the prime rate gone up again?"

His irate gaze jerked from the cleavage exposed by her jacket to her taunting expression. "Why dont you dress like other women?" he demanded.

"I don't know," Lisa said, pausing as if to think it over, then with a bright smile, she announced, "It's probably the same stroke of perversity that makes you enjoy foreclosing on widows and orphans. Where's Meredith?

"In the ladies' lounge."

Having thus indulged in the sort of uncharacteristic rudeness that had festered between both of them for years, they both stoically sought to avoid looking at each other by focusing their attention on the crowd. Simultaneously, a subdued commotion erupted off to their right, and they both looked in that direction, watching as television crews and newspaper reporters, who'd been wandering among the guests or standing on the sidelines, suddenly galvanized into action, rushing toward their prey. Flashes from cameras started going off, and Lisa leaned farther to the right, catching a glimpse of the press mobbing the dark-haired man she'd noticed with Alicia Avery. Television cameras were aiming at his face as he escorted her forward through the explosion of flashbulbs and the throng of reporters waving microphones at him. "Who is that?" she asked, glancing uncertainly at Parker.

"I can't see—" Parker began, watching the uproar with mild interest, but when the crowd parted, he tensed. "It's Farrell."

The last name, combined with the full view of Farrell's tanned face, was enough to tell Lisa that the man with Alicia was Meredith's faithless, heartless, former husband. Hostility exploded inside her as she watched him stop to answer questions being called out to him by reporters, while Alicia Avery hung on his arm, smiling for the photographers. For a long moment Lisa stood there, remembering the anguish he'd caused Meredith and contemplating the wholly satisfying idea of marching up to him in front of the fawning media and calling him a son of a bitch right to his face! Meredith wouldn't like that, she knew; Meredith hated scenes and, besides, no one but Parker and Lisa knew that Meredith and he had ever been involved in any way. Meredith! The thought hit her at the same instant it struck Parker, wiping the bland, civilized expression from his own face as he watched Farrell. "Did Meredith know he was going to be here?" she gasped at the same instant Parker clasped her arm and ordered, "Find Meredith and warn her that Farrell's here."

As Lisa sidled and shoved her way into the crowd, Matthew Farrell's name was already passing through them like a whispered chant. He'd broken away from the press, except for Sally Mansfield, who was standing behind him as he spoke with Stanton Avery near the foot of the grand staircase. Keeping one eye on Farrell so she could warn Meredith where he was, and her other eye on the balcony, Lisa plunged forward, then stopped in helpless dismay as Meredith suddenly appeared and started down the staircase.

Since she couldn't get to her before she reached the bottom step and passed by Farrell, Lisa stood still, taking grim satisfaction in the fact that Meredith had never looked more stunning than she did right now—when her lousy ex-husband was about to see her for the first time in eleven years! In complete defiance of the current slinky fashions, Meredith was wearing a full-skirted strapless gown of shimmering white satin with a tightly fitted bodice sewn with seed pearls and strewn with white sequins and tiny crystals. At her throat was a magnificent ruby and diamond necklace that was either a gift from Parker, which Lisa was inclined to doubt, or on loan from the estate jewelry department of Bancroft's, which Lisa figured was more likely.