Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

He sounded as if it didn't matter to him which option Stuart chose, but Stuart seized the opportunity to try to discover some clue to the man's feelings about Meredith. "The business part won't take long," he said, following him over to the bar. "I'll take you up on the offer of a drink."

"Another Perrier?" Farrell asked, stepping into the mirrored half circle.

"Bourbon," Stuart said succinctly. "Straight up."

That earned a dubious look from Farrell. "Really?"

"Would I lie to a clever, ruthless mogul like yourself?" Stuart said dryly.

Farrell flicked a sarcastic glance at him and reached for the decanter of bourbon. "You'd lie to the devil himself for the sake of a client."

Surprised and annoyed by the partial truth of that assessment, Stuart put his briefcase down and laid the documents on the bar. "You're right in this instance," he admitted. "Meredith and I are friends. In fact," Stuart continued, striving for a more relaxed atmosphere of confidence, "I used to have a huge crush on her."

"I know."

Surprised again, and half convinced Farrell was lying, Stuart said, "Considering that I don't think Meredith knew it, I have to say you're remarkably well informed. What else do you know?"

"About you?" Farrell asked casually.

When Stuart nodded, Farrell began fixing his own drink. Dropping ice cubes into his glass, he launched into a brusque, dispassionate recitation of Stuart's personal history that left him completely astonished and a little chilled. "You're the oldest son in a family of five," Farrell said. "Your grandfather and his two brothers founded the law firm where you're now a senior partner, carrying on with the family tradition of practicing law. At the age of twenty-three you graduated first in your class from HarvardLawSchool—also a family tradition—where you distinguished yourself by being president of your class and making Law Review. When you graduated, you wanted to work in the district attorney's office, specializing in prosecuting cases of landlord abuse, but you yielded to family pressure and joined the family firm instead, where you handle cases for wealthy corporate clients, mostly from your own social circle.

"You hate corporate law, but you have a genius for it; you're a tough negotiator, a brilliant strategist, and a good diplomat unless your personal feelings are involved, as they were today. You're thorough and you're meticulous, but you're lousy with juries because you try to sway them with dry facts instead of emotional logic. For that reason, you usually do the pretrial preparation, then you hand jury cases over to an associate and supervise them...."

Farrell paused in that recitation to hand Stuart his drink. "Shall I go on?"

"By all means, if there's more," Stuart replied a little stiffly.

Picking up his own glass, Farrell took a swallow and when Stuart had done likewise, he said, "You're thirty-three, heterosexual, with a penchant for fast cars, which you don't indulge, and a love of sailing, which you do. When you were twenty-two, you thought you were in love with a girl from Melrose Park whom you met at the beach, but she was from a blue-collar Italian family, and the cultural gap was too wide for both of you to bridge. You both agreed to call it off. Seven years later you fell in love with Meredith, but she couldn't reciprocate, so you became friends. Two years ago your family put on a push to marry you off to Georgina Gibbons, whose daddy is also a socialite lawyer, and the two of you got engaged, but you called that one off. You're worth about eighteen million right now, mostly in blue chip stocks, and you'll inherit another fifteen when your grandfather dies—less if he continues his junkets to Monte Carlo, where he nearly always loses."

Pausing in that recitation that had Stuart trapped somewhere between amazement and anger, Farrell gestured to the sofas near the windows, and Stuart picked up the documents and his drink and followed him there. When he was seated across from him, Farrell said blandly, "Did I leave anything important out?"

"Yes," Stuart replied with a sardonic smile as he lifted his drink in a mocking toast, "what's my favorite color?"

Farrell looked him straight in the eye. "Red."

Stuart choked. "You're right about everything but my thoroughness. Obviously you were better prepared for this confrontation than I was. I'm still waiting for the background check I ordered on you, and it won't be half so complete. I'm amazed and reluctantly impressed."

Farrell shrugged. "You shouldn't be. Intercorp owns a credit reporting bureau as well as a forge investigative agency that does a lot of work for multinational corporations."

It struck Stuart as odd that Farrell had said, "Intercorp owns," not "I own," as if he felt no real desire to be personally associated with the corporate empire he had created. In Stuart's experience, most entrepreneurs with newly amassed wealth were braggarts who were transparently proud of their accomplishments and embarrassingly eager to remind everyone of what they owned. Stuart had expected something like that of Farrell, particularly because the news media normally portrayed him as a flamboyant, international playboy-tycoon who led the completely sybaritic, richly satisfying life of a modern-day sultan.

Stuart had the feeling that the truth was far from that; that at best, Farrell was a guarded, solitary man who was difficult to get to know. At worst, he was a cold, calculating, unemotional man with a wide streak of ruthlessness and an iron control that was almost chilling. This was undoubtedly how his business adversaries thought of him. "How did you know what my favorite color is?" he asked finally, ready to try again to get a better reading on Farrell. "You didn't get that off a credit report."

"That was a guess," Farrell said dryly. "Your briefcase is maroon and so is your tie. Also, most men like red. Women like blue." For the first time, Farrell actually let his attention stray to the document Stuart had put on the table. "Speaking of women," he said casually, "I gather Meredith signed that."

"She added some conditions," Stuart replied, watching him closely, noting the imperceptible tensing of his adversary's jaw. "She wants the days you mentioned stipulated in the document and she wants it clarified that if you miss one, you can't make it up."

Farrell's expression softened, and even in the subdued lighting Stuart saw amusement glinting in those gray eyes. Amusement and ... pride? He had no time to confirm that, however, because Farrell abruptly got up, walked over to the conference table, and returned with a gold fountain pen he'd left there. When he flipped to the signature page where Stuart had written in the added terms and uncapped the pen, Stuart added, "You'll see that she also wants it agreed that you will not publicly reveal either this marriage of yours or the eleven-week trial dating period to anyone."