Paradise (Second Opportunities 1)

"Oh, and I may as well warn you that he intends to put you up for membership at the Glenmoor Country Club. The ball is the perfect spot to introduce you to some of the members and get their vote, so he'll try to drag you all over if you let him get by with it. Not that he needs to bother," she added. "You’ll be a shoo-in. Oh, and the press will be there en masse, so prepare to be mobbed when they see you. It's very humiliating, Mr. Farrell," she teased, "to know my date is going to cause more of a sensation tonight than I am...."

The mention of the Glenmoor Country Club, where he'd met Meredith that long-ago Fourth of July, made Matt's jaw tighten with grim irony, and he hardly heard the rest of what Alicia said. He already held memberships in two country clubs, both of them as exclusive as Glenmoor. He rarely used the clubs he belonged to, and if he joined one in Chicago, which he had no desire to do, it sure as hell wouldn't be Glenmoor. "Tell your father I appreciate the thought, but I'd rather he didn't." Before he could say more, Stanton Avery picked up an extension. "Matt," he said in his bluff, hearty voice. "You haven't forgotten the opera benefit shindig tonight, have you?"

"I remembered it, Stanton."

"Good, good. I thought we'd pick you up at nine, stop at the Yacht Club for drinks, and then go on to the hotel. That way, we won't have to sit through La Traviata before the serious drinking and partying begins. Or are you especially fond of La Traviata?"

"Operas make me comatose," Matt joked, and Stanton chuckled in agreement. In the past several years Matt had attended dozens of operas and symphonies because he moved in a social stratum where sponsorship of, and attendance at, cultural functions was necessary from a business standpoint. Now that he was unwillingly familiar with most famous symphonies and operas, his original opinion of them hadn't changed: He found most of them boring as hell and all of them overlong. "Nine is fine," he added.

Despite his dislike of operatic music and of being mobbed by the press, Matt was generally looking forward to the evening as he buckled on his wristwatch and picked up his shaver. He had met Stanton Avery in Los Angeles four years before, and whenever Matt was in Chicago or Stanton was in California, they tried to get together. Unlike many of the dilettante socialites Matt had met, Stanton was a tough, blunt, down-to-earth businessman, and Matt liked him immensely. In fact, if he could choose a father-in-law, Stanton would have been his choice. Alicia was much like her father— sophisticated and polished but direct as hell when it came to getting what she wanted. They had both wanted him to accompany them to the opera benefit tonight, and they wouldn't take no for an answer. He'd ended up not only agreeing to attend, but agreeing to contribute $5,000 as well.

Two months ago, when Alicia was with him in California and blatantly hinting that they ought to get married, Matt had briefly entertained the idea, but the impulse had passed very quickly. He enjoyed Alicia in bed and out of it, and he liked her style, but he'd already had one disastrous marriage to a spoiled, rich, Chicago socialite, and he had no intention of repeating the experience. Conversely, he'd never seriously considered remarrying because he'd never been able to duplicate the feelings he'd had for Meredith—that violent, possessive, insane need to see and touch and laugh with her, that volcanic passion that controlled him and couldn't be sated. No other woman had looked up at him and made him feel humbled and powerful at the same time—or ignited that same desperate desire to prove that he could be more and better than he was. To marry someone who didn't do that to him was settling for second-best, and second-best in anything wasn't good enough. At the same time, he had absolutely no desire to ever again experience those tormenting, stormy, crushing emotions again. They'd been as painful as they were pleasant, and when his misbegotten marriage was over, the mere memory of them—and of the traitorous young wife he'd adored— had made his life a hell for years afterward.

The truth was that if Alicia had been able to get under his skin as Meredith had, he'd have broken off with her as soon as he felt it happening. He didn't want, would never permit himself, to be that vulnerable to anyone, ever again. Now that he was in Chicago, Alicia wasn't likely to let the issue of marriage drop. If she didn't, he was either going to have to make it clear that was permanently out of the question, or he would have to put an end to their very delightful relationship.

Shrugging into his black tuxedo jacket, Matt strolled out of the bedroom and into the living room. He still had fifteen minutes before Stanton and Alicia were due to arrive, so he walked over to the far corner of the apartment and up to the raised platform that contained a bar and several sofas comfortably arranged for conversation. He'd chosen this building, and this apartment, because all the outer walls were broad expanses of curved glass that offered a breathtaking view of Lake Shore Drive and the Chicago skyline. For a moment, he stood looking out, then he walked over to the bar, intending to have a brandy. As he did so, his jacket brushed against the newspaper that his housekeeper had left neatly folded on an end table, and the newspaper flipped onto the floor, the sections spilling out.

And he saw Meredith.

Her photograph leapt out at him from the last page of the front section—her smile perfect, her hair perfect, her expression perfect. Typical Meredith—he thought with icy revulsion as he picked up the paper and looked at her picture—posed and packaged for effect and appearances. She'd been a beautiful teenager, but whoever did her media photos was going overboard to make her look like Grace Kelly as a young woman.

His gaze shifted from her picture to the article below it, and for a split second he tensed with surprise: According to the columnist, Sally Mansfield, Meredith had just become engaged to her "childhood sweetheart," Parker Reynolds III, and Bancroft & Company intended to celebrate her February wedding with a national sale in all their stores.

A smirk of ironic amusement twisted Matt's lips as he tossed the paper aside and walked over to the window. He'd been married to the treacherous little bitch, and he didn't even know she'd had a "childhood sweetheart." But then, he hadn't really known her at all, Matt reminded himself. What he did know of her, he despised.

In the midst of that thought, Matt suddenly realized that what he was thinking didn't match what he was feeling. Evidently he was reacting out of old habit, because he didn't actually despise her anymore. All he truly felt for her was cold distaste. What had happened between them was so long ago, time had eroded every strong emotion he'd felt for her, even loathing. In its place there was nothing ... nothing except disgust and pity. Meredith had been too spineless to be treacherous; spineless and completely dominated by her father. When she was nearly six months pregnant, she'd aborted their baby and sent Matt a telegram afterward, telling him what she'd done and that she was divorcing him. And despite what she'd done to his baby, he'd been so insane about her that he'd flown back with some demented intention of trying to talk her out of an immediate divorce. When he got to the hospital, he was informed at the lobby desk in the Bancroft wing that Meredith did not want to see him, and a security guard accompanied him back out the doors. Thinking those instructions might have been issued by Philip Bancroft, not Meredith, Matt had gone back the next day, only to be met by a cop at the front door who slapped an injunction into his hand, an injunction Meredith herself had obtained that made it illegal for him to go near her.