Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

Matt's limousine was waiting at the curb. Lisa got in first, and Meredith followed, deliberately sitting down next to her and effectively eliminating the possibility that the two men would engage in a skirmish over who sat next to whom. The only person who didn't look tense was Joe O'Hara, who added to the tension by saying with a grin, "Evenin', Mrs. Farrell."

Two bottles of Dom Perignon were reclining in sterling ice buckets beside the car's liquor cabinet. "How about some champagne? I'd love—" Lisa began, but just then the limo rocketed forward into traffic, plastering her to the back of the seat and making her gasp.

"Jesus Christ!" Parker burst out, fighting for balance as he was pressed forward in his rear-facing seat by the same force. "Your idiot driver just cut across four lanes of traffic and ran a red light!"

"He's perfectly competent," Matt replied, raising his voice to be heard over the blaring horns of irate motorists, and no one noticed that an old Chevrolet was racing along in their wake, changing lanes whenever they did, with a kind of defiant desperation. While the limo hurtled toward the expressway, scattering cars in its wake, Matt lifted a bottle of champagne from its icy nest and opened it. "Happy thirtieth birthday," he said, handing Meredith the first glass of champagne. "I'm sorry I missed the last eleven of them—"

"Meredith gets sick on champagne," Parker interrupted. Turning to Meredith with an intimate smile, he added, "Remember the time you got sick on champagne at the Remingtons' anniversary party?"

"Not sick, exactly. Dizzy," Meredith corrected him, puzzled by his tone and his choice of topic.

"You were definitely dizzy," he teased. "And a little giddy. You made me stand out on the balcony with you in the freezing cold. Remember—I gave you my coat to wear. And then Stan and Milly Mayfield joined us and we made a tent out of our coats and stayed outside." He glanced at Matt and said in a coldly superior voice, "Do you know the Mayfields?"

"No," Matt replied, handing Lisa a glass of champagne.

"No, of course you wouldn't," he said dismissively. "Milly and Stan Mayfield are old friends of Meredith's and mine." He said it with the intention of making Matt feel like an outsider, and Meredith hastily brought up a new subject. Lisa quickly joined in, drawing Matt into the discussion. Parker had four more glasses of champagne and contributed two more amusing stories about people he and Meredith knew and whom Matt did not.

The restaurant Matt had chosen was one Meredith had never seen or heard of before, but she loved it the moment they walked into the foyer. Patterned after an English pub, with stained glass windows and dark wood paneling, the Manchester House had a large lounge that stretched across the entire back of it. The dining rooms, which were on both sides of the foyer, were small and cozy, separated from the lounge section with ivy-covered trellises. The lounge, where they were escorted to wait until their table was ready, was filled with Christmas revelers, including a party of about twenty. Judging from the raucous bursts of laughter from that table and some of the occupants seated on the stools at the bar, nearly everyone had been indulging liberally in Christmas cheer.

"This sure as hell isn't the sort of place I'd have picked to celebrate Meredith's birthday," Parker said with a scornful look at Matt as they all sat down.

Keeping his impatience under control for Meredith's sake, Matt said flatly, "It's not what I'd have picked either, but if we wanted to eat in peace, it had to be somewhere relatively dark and out of the way."

"Parker, it's going to be fun," Meredith promised, and she really did like it—the English atmosphere and the upbeat music being played by a live band.

"The band is good," Lisa agreed, leaning forward in her chair and watching the musicians. A moment later her eyes widened as Matt's chauffeur sauntered into the lounge and sat down on a stool at the far end of the bar. "Matt," she said with laughing incredulity, "I think your chauffeur just decided to come in out of the cold and have a beer."

Without looking in that direction, Matt replied, "Joe drinks Coke not beer, when he's on duty."

A waiter appeared to take their drinks order, and Meredith decided there was no need to inform Lisa that Joe was also a bodyguard, especially not when she preferred to forget that herself.

"Will that be all, folks?" the waiter asked, and when they told him it was, he walked over to the end of the bar. He was starting to hand the order over to the bartender, when a short man wearing an unusually bulky overcoat walked up beside him and said, "How'd you like to make a quick hundred bucks, buddy?"

The waiter swung around. "How?"

"Just let me stand over there behind that trellis for a while."

"Why?"

"You've got yourself some important guests at one of those tables, and I've got myself a camera under this coat." He held out his hand, and in it was a press pass showing that he was employed by a well-known tabloid, and a neatly folded $100 bill.

"Stay out of sight," the waiter said, palming the money.

At the maitre d's desk in the front foyer, the owner of the restaurant picked up the phone and dialed the home phone number of Noel Jaffe, who rated restaurants in his newspaper column. "Noel," he said, turning his shoulder a little to avoid being overheard by the new crowd of customers coming in the doors, "this is Alex over at the Manchester House. You remember I told you someday I'd repay you for the nice write-up you gave my place in your column? Well, guess who's sitting in my restaurant right now."

"No kidding." Jaffe laughed when Alex told him who they were. "Maybe they are the happy little family they seemed like at that press conference."

"Not tonight, they aren't," Alex said, his whisper rising a little. "The fiance has a face on him like a storm cloud, and he's had plenty to drink."

There was a brief, thoughtful pause, and then Jaffe chuckled and said, "I'll be right there with a photographer. Find us a table where we can see without being seen."

"No problem. Just remember—when you write about this, spell the name of my place right and put in the address."

Alex hung up the phone, so delighted with the prospect of free publicity about Chicago's rich and famous eating in his restaurant, he called several radio and television stations too.

By the time the waiter brought the second round of drinks—and the third for Parker—Meredith was well aware that Parker was drinking too much, too fast. That in itself wouldn't have been quite so alarming if he wasn't also determined to infuse the conversation with a steady stream of little vignettes about things he and Meredith had done, most of them beginning with "Remember when..."