Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

Partway down the staircase, Meredith stopped to speak to an elderly couple, and Lisa held her breath. Parker stepped up beside her, his gaze shifting restlessly from Farrell to Sally Mansfield to Meredith.

His attention on what Stanton was saying to him, Matt looked around for Alicia, who'd gone to the powder room, and someone called his name—or what sounded like his name. Turning his head, he looked for the source of the voice, looked higher, toward the staircase.... And he froze. With his champagne glass arrested halfway to his mouth, Matt stared at the woman on the staircase who had been a girl, and his wife, the last time he saw her. And at that moment he understood why the media loved to compare her to a young Grace Kelly. With her blond hair caught up in an elegant cluster at the nape, entwined with small white roses, Meredith Bancroft was a breathtakingly beautiful image of breeding and serenity. In the years since he'd last seen her, her figure had ripened, and her delicately boned face had acquired a radiance that was mesmerizing. Matt's shock vanished as quickly as it had hit him, and he managed to drink his champagne and nod at whatever Stanton was saying to him, but he continued to study the lush beauty on the staircase—only now it was with the detached interest of an expert examining a piece of art he already knows is flawed and a fake.

Except that even he could not entirely harden his heart against her as she stood there, listening to an older couple who were stopping her from descending the stairs. She had always gotten along well with people much older than she was, Matt remembered, thinking of the night she had taken him under her wing at her country club, and his heart softened yet more. He searched for signs of the brittle woman executive in her, but what he saw was an entrancing smile, shining turquoise eyes, and an unexpected aura of being—he searched his mind for the word and all he could think of was untouched. Perhaps it was the virginal white she wore, or the fact that while most of the other women were wearing seductive gowns that were slashed down to the navel and up to the thigh, Meredith had bared only her shoulders, and she still managed to look more provocative than they. Provocative and regal and unattainable.

Within him he felt the last vestiges of bitterness subside. More than beauty, there was a gentleness about her that he'd forgotten—a gentleness that had to have been overridden by nothing less than stark terror in order for her to have gone through with that abortion. She had been so young when she was forced to marry him, Matt thought now, and she hadn't really known him at all. No doubt she expected to end up living in some dirty town like Edmunton, married to a drunk—as Matt's father had been—and trying to raise their child. Her father would have damned sure tried to convince her that was going to happen; he'd have done anything to put an end to her alliance with a nobody—including convincing her to have an abortion and divorce him. Matt had realized all that shortly after their divorce. Unlike her father, Meredith had never been a snob, not really. Well-bred and carefully raised, yes, but never actually such a complete snob that she'd have done those things to Matt and their child. Fear and youth and pressure from her domineering father had done that. He realized that now. After eleven years it had taken seeing her again to realize what she had been. And what she still was.

"Beautiful, isn't she?" Stanton said, nudging Matt.

"Very."

"Come with me, I'll introduce you to her and her fiance. I need to speak to her fiance anyway. By the way, you should get to know Parker—he controls one of the biggest banks in Chicago."

Matt hesitated, and then he nodded. Meredith and he were bound to see each other at all sorts of social functions; it seemed best to get past the hurdle of the first confrontation now rather than later. At least this time, when he was introduced to her, he wouldn't have need to feel like a social leper.

Scanning the crowd for Parker, Meredith descended the last step, then stopped at the sound of Stanton Avery's bluff, jovial voice beside her. "Meredith," he said, putting a detaining hand on her arm, "I'd like to introduce you to someone."

She was already smiling, already beginning to extend her hand as she shifted her gaze from Stanton's grin to a very tall man's tanned throat and then to his face. Matthew Farrell's face. Mind reeling, stomach churning, she heard Avery's voice as if in a tunnel, saying, "This is my friend, Matt Farrell ..." And she saw the man who had let her lie alone in the hospital when she lost his baby, then sent her a telegram telling her to get a divorce.

Now he was smiling down at her—that same, unforgettable, intimate, charming, loathsome smile, while he reached out to take her hand, and something inside of Meredith burst. She jerked her hand out of Matt's reach, looked him over with freezing contempt, and turned to Stanton Avery. "You really ought to be more selective about your friends, Mr. Avery," she said with cool hauteur. "Excuse me." Turning her back, Meredith walked away, leaving behind her a fascinated Sally Mansfield, a stunned Stanton Avery, and an infuriated Matthew Farrell.

It was three a.m. before the last of Meredith and Parker's guests left Meredith's apartment, leaving only the two of them with her father. "You shouldn't be up so late," Meredith told him as she sank down on a chintz-covered Queen Anne chair. Even now, hours after confronting Matthew Farrell, she still shook inside when she thought of it, only now it was anger with herself that haunted her—that, and the savage fury in his eyes when she left him standing there with his hand outstretched to her, looking like a fool.

"You know perfectly well why I'm still here," Philip said, pouring himself a glass of sherry. He hadn't learned of Meredith's meeting with Farrell until an hour ago when Parker told him, and he obviously intended to hear the details.

"Don't drink that. The doctors said you shouldn't."

"Damn the doctors, I want to know what Farrell said to you. Parker tells me you cut Farrell dead."

"He didn't have a chance to say a word to me," Meredith replied, and she told him exactly what had transpired. When she was finished, she watched in frustrated silence as he swallowed down the forbidden sherry—an aging, impressive, silver-haired man in a custom-tailored tuxedo. He had dominated and manipulated her for most of her life, until she had finally found the courage and fortitude to withstand the force of his iron will and volcanic temper. And despite all that, she loved him and worried about him. He was all the family she had, and his face was drawn from illness and fatigue. As soon as his leave of absence was arranged he was taking an extended cruise, and his doctor had made him promise that he'd neither worry about Bancroft & Company, world affairs, or anything whatsoever. For the six weeks he was away, he wasn't to watch the news, read the paper, or do anything that wasn't completely frivolous and restful. Tearing her gaze from her father, she looked at Parker and said, "I wish you hadn't told my father what happened tonight. It wasn't necessary."