Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

She felt Matt's fingers digging into her back, and somehow the suppressed force of his reaction gave her strength. Drawing a long breath, she finished, "Because she was so little, she couldn't breathe properly. Dr. Arledge asked me what I wanted to do, and when I realized he was asking me if I wanted her to have a name and a—a funeral, I started begging him to let me see you. My father was furious at him for upsetting me, and he told me he'd sent you a telegram, but that you weren't there. Dr. Arledge said I couldn't wait for days to make these decisions. And so I—I decided," Meredith concluded brokenly. "I named her Elizabeth because I thought you would like that, and I told my father I wanted her to have dozens and dozens of pink roses. And I said I wanted all the cards to be from us and to say, 'We loved you.'"

Matt's voice was raw. "Thank you," he whispered, and she suddenly realized the wetness on her cheek was not only from her tears, but also his.

"And then I waited," she told him with a ragged sigh. "I waited for you to come, because I thought that somehow, if you were there, everything would start to be better." Within moments after she finished, Meredith felt a sense of relief, of calm sweeping over her.

When Matt finally spoke, he, too, had gotten control of his emotions. "Your father's telegram reached me three days after he sent it. It said that you'd had an abortion, and that you wanted nothing more from me except a divorce, which you were already instituting. I flew home anyway, and one of your maids told me where you were, but when I got to the hospital, they informed me you'd specifically said you didn't want me allowed up to see you. I went back the next day with some half-formed plan of getting past the security guards at the desk of the Bancroft Wing, but I never got that far. A cop was waiting at the doors to serve me with a signed court injunction that made it a criminal act for me to go near you."

"And all that time," she whispered, "I was in there, waiting for you."

"I promise you," he said tightly, "that if I'd thought there was a chance you wanted to see me, no court order, no force on this earth, would have stopped me from getting to you!"

She tried to reassure him with a simple truth: "You couldn't have helped me."

His body seemed to stiffen. "I couldn't?"

She shook her head. "Everything medically possible was already being done for me, just as it had been for Elizabeth. There wasn't anything you could have done to help." Meredith was so relieved to have the truth out in the open at last that she abandoned her pride and took it one step further. "You see, despite what I had put on the cards with the roses, I knew in my heart how you really felt about the baby—and about me."

"Tell me," he said gruffly, "how did I really feel?"

Surprised by the sudden terseness in his tone, Meredith tipped her head back. With a soft smile to prove she meant no criticism, she said, "The answer to that is as obvious now as it was then: You were stuck with both of us. You slept one time with a silly eighteen-year-old virgin who did her best to seduce you, and who didn't have sense enough to use birth control, and look what happened."

"What happened, Meredith?" he demanded.

"What happened? You know what happened. I came looking for you to give you the glad news, and you did the noble thing—you married a girl you didn't want."

"Didn't want?" he exploded, his harsh voice in complete opposition to the poignancy of his words. "I've wanted you every day of my godforsaken life."

Meredith stared at him, mesmerized, doubtful, joyous, shattered.

"And you were wrong about something else too," he said, his expression gentling as he framed her tear-streaked face between his palms, his fingers brushing the wetness away. "If I'd been able to see you in the hospital, I could have helped."

Her voice dropped to a shaken whisper. "How?"

"Like this," he said, and still cradling her face, he bent his head and brushed his lips over hers. The exquisite tenderness of his kiss, the caressing way his fingers slid over her face, destroyed Meredith's defenses completely, and fresh tears welled up just when she thought she had cried them all. "And like this—" His mouth slid to the corners of her eyes, and she felt the touch of his tongue on her tears. "I'd have taken you home from the hospital with me, and held you in my arms—like this—" he promised achingly, drawing her against his full length, his breath against her ear sending shivers down her spine. "When you were well enough, we'd have made love, and later, when you wanted me to, I'd have given you another baby—" He didn't say "like this," but when he shifted her backward onto the bed and followed her down, Meredith knew that was what he meant. She knew it as surely as she knew it was wrong to let him take off her sweater and unfasten her jeans, as surely as she knew it was impossible for her to have another baby. But, oh, the sweetness of pretending, just this once, that all of this was reality and the past was only a dream that could be altered.

Her heart wanted desperately to try, but some tiny voice of reason warned that it was a mistake. "This is wrong—" she whispered when he leaned over her, his chest and arms bare and bronze.

"This is right," he said fiercely, and his lips covered hers, parting them with familiar, insistent skill.

Meredith closed her eyes and let the dream begin.

Only in this dream she wasn't merely an observer, she was a participant—hesitant at first; as shy and awkward as she'd always been when confronted with his bold sexuality and unerring expertise. His mouth tormented and enticed hers, his tongue sliding on her lips, flicking at the crease, while his hands shifted endlessly down her sides, her legs, sliding with tantalizing languor upward toward her breasts. Meredith moaned inwardly with a combination of awakening delight and recurring inhibition, and slid her hands uncertainly into the crisp, curly hairs on his muscular chest, touching. His mouth became more demanding, his hands so near her aching breasts, but not touching, thumbs playing over her ribs. Just when she thought she would die from the need, he drove his tongue into her mouth, and his hands took hard possession of her breasts, kneading, teasing, instinctively rubbing hardened nipples, and the cry that Meredith had been suppressing erupted at the same moment her restraint broke. Her body arched toward his, and she ran her hands feverishly down the bunched muscles of his arms, welcoming the invasion of his tongue, giving him hers, rolling with him onto her side. He tore his mouth from hers, and she moaned in protest at the loss, then shivered in delight as he kissed her ear, sliding his lips down her neck, then over her breasts, until they closed hard on her nipples. Lost in the dark, silent wanting, she felt his hand slide to the triangle between her legs, seeking and finding every hot, damp place, touching and caressing, until she writhed against him.