Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

Elated, she found a can opener, and poured some into a glass. It looked awfully thick, and when she read the directions they said it could be used directly from the can or diluted with water. Not certain which way Matt preferred it, she tasted it and shuddered. Diluting wasn't going to help this stuff, and she couldn't imagine why he liked it, but he evidently did. When the toast was ready, she went into the living room, took the top off a TV snack table, and used that as a tray so that she could carry medicines, ice bag, and breakfast upstairs in one trip.

Matt's throbbing head tugged him from a drugged sleep to an aching semi-awareness that it must be morning. Turning his face on the pillow, he forced his eyes open, and was momentarily confused by the sight of an old-fashioned white plastic alarm clock with black hands indicating 8:30, instead of the digital clock radio in his bedroom. Memory came drifting back then; he was in Indiana, and he'd been sick. Judging from the amazing effort it took to roll over and lean up on his forearm so that he could reach for the bottles of pills beside the clock, he was still sick. Trying to clear his head, he shook it, then winced at the trip-hammers that began to thunder in his temples. His fever had broken, though, because his shirt was drenched with sweat. As he picked up the glass of water on the table and swallowed the pills, he considered trying to get up so that he could take a shower and get dressed, but he felt so exhausted, he decided to sleep another hour and then give it a try. The label on one of the bottles warned, caution, causes drowsiness, and he dimly wondered if that was the reason he couldn't shake off this stupor. He laid back down on the pillows and closed his eyes, but some fuzzy memory was hovering at the edges of his mind. Meredith. He'd had that demented dream that she'd come in a snowstorm and helped him up to bed. He wondered how his subconscious had conjured up an image as bizarre as that one. Meredith might help him off a bridge or over the edge of a mountain or into bankruptcy if she thought she could, but anything less destructive was ludicrous.

He'd just started to drift back to sleep when he heard footsteps moving stealthily up the creaky steps. Jolted into startled awareness, he lurched into a sitting position, reeling dizzily from the sudden movement, but as he started to shove back the covers, the intruder knocked on the door. "Matt?" a soft voice called, a unique voice, musical, cultured.

Meredith's voice.

His hand froze as he stared blankly at the wall across from him, and for one crazy moment he was completely disoriented.

"Matt, I'm coming in—" The doorknob turned, and reality hit him—it had not been a bizarre dream. Meredith was there.

Using her shoulder to shove open the door, Meredith backed slowly into the room, deliberately giving him time to get under the covers in case he was up but not yet dressed. Lulled into a false sense of security because he'd been reasonably pleasant the previous night, she almost dropped the tray when his infuriated voice erupted behind her like steam hissing from a volcano. "What are you doing here!"

"I brought you a tray," she explained, turning toward him and heading around the bed, surprised by his furious expression. But that expression was nothing compared to the menace that tightened his face an instant later when his gaze riveted on the red rubber bag.

"What in the living hell," he exploded, "do you think you're going to do with that?"

Determined not to let him ruffle or intimidate her, Meredith lifted her chin and calmly replied, "It's for your head."

"Is that supposed to be your idea of a dirty joke?" he demanded, looking murderous.

Completely disconcerted, Meredith put the tray down on the bed beside his hip and said soothingly, "I put ice in it for you—"

"You would," he bit out, and then he said in an awful voice, "I'll give you exactly five seconds to get the hell out of this room and one minute more to get out of this house, before I throw you out." He leaned forward, and Meredith realized he intended to shove back the bedcovers and overturn the tray.

"No," she cried, but there was as much pleading as protest in her voice. "There's no use threatening me, because I can't leave. I lost my car keys out in front when I got out of the car. And even if I hadn't, I still couldn't leave until I tell you everything I came here to say."

"I'm not interested," Matt said savagely, reaching out to jerk the covers off, furious because he had to wait for a wave of dizziness to pass.

"You weren't behaving like this last night," she argued desperately, and whisked the tray off the blankets before he dumped it onto the floor. "I didn't think you'd get this upset just because I made an ice bag for your head!"

He stopped, his hand arrested on the edge of the blankets, an indescribable expression of blank, comic shock on his chiseled features. "You did what?" he uttered in a choked whisper.

"I just told you. I made up an ice bag for your head—"

Meredith broke off in alarm as he suddenly covered his face with his hands and fell backward against the pillows, his shoulders shaking. His body shook from head to foot, and muffled sounds came from behind his hands. He shook so violently, his head left the pillows and the bedsprings squeaked. He shook so hard that Meredith thought he was having a seizure or choking to death.

"What's wrong?" she burst out. Her question seemed to make the bed shake harder and his strangled sounds increase. "I'm calling an ambulance!" she cried, putting the tray down and running for the door. "There's a phone in my car—" She was out of the room and starting down the steps when Matt's laughter exploded behind her: great, gusty shouts of laughter; huge, prolonged bursts of uncontrollable mirth ...

Meredith stopped dead, turned, and listened, realizing that the seizure she'd witnessed had in actuality been a fit of wild hilarity. Arrested on the steps, her hand on the railing, she reflected upon his outburst of laughter and speculated uneasily over its possible cause. That long rubber tube had bothered her from the beginning, but the assembled contraption had borne not the slightest resemblance to the disposable hygiene products one usually saw in drugstores. Furthermore, she thought a little fiercely in her own defense as she started slowly back up the stairs, that red rubber bag had been hanging on the back of the bathroom door the last time she'd been there! Surely, if it was a hygiene product, it shouldn't have been left in full view.

Outside his door, she paused, feeling excruciatingly self-conscious. It occurred to her then that whatever discomfort she felt, it was probably worth it. After all, mirth had diverted him from his furious attempt to eject her. Even when he was flat on his back, Matthew Farrell was the most formidable foe she'd ever confronted. And when he was angry, he was actually terrifying. But no matter what he said or did, no matter how angry or unreasonable he might become, it was time for her to try to make peace with him.