Paradise

by Judith McNaught

  Miss Stern straightened her severely cut gray suit and removed the pencil she’d tucked behind her ear. “I assume,” she said with unhidden disdain for the other secretary, “that she hoped you’d be aware that she is a woman. She’s been hoping you’d notice that since the day you arrived here.”

  “She’s wasting her time,” Matt advised. “Among other things, she’s an employee. Only an idiot fools around with his employees.”

  “Perhaps you ought to get married,” Miss Stern sensibly replied, but she was flipping pages in her dictation notebook, looking for some figures she wanted to discuss with him. “In my day, that would have put a stop to female aspirations.”

  A slow smile broke across Matt’s face and he perched his hip on the conference table, suddenly eager to tell someone his newly discovered truth. “I am married,” he quietly said, watching for her stunned reaction.

  Miss Stern flipped a page, and without looking up, said, “My heartiest congratulations to you both.”

  “I’m serious,” Matt said, his brows pulling together.

  “Shall I relay that information to Miss Avery?” she asked with a deadpan look. “She’s called twice today.”

  “Miss Stern,” Matt said firmly, and for the first time in their sterile working relationship he truly regretted that he’d never befriended her. “I married Meredith Bancroft eleven years ago. She’s coming here this afternoon.”

  She looked at him over the top of her steel-rimmed glasses. “You have dinner reservations at Renaldo’s tonight. Will Miss Bancroft be joining you and Miss Avery? If so, shall I change the reservations to a party of three?”

  “I canceled my date with—” Matt began, then his mouth dropped open, and a lazy grin spread across his face. “Do I detect a note of censure in your voice?”

  “Certainly not, Mr. Farrell. You made it very clear at the beginning that censuring your actions was not part of my job. As I recall, you specifically said that you didn’t want my personal opinions, and you didn’t want cake on your birthday; you merely wanted my skills and my time. Now, do you want me to be present at this meeting to take notes?”

  Matt swallowed back a startled laugh at the discovery that his long-ago remark had evidently been rankling her for all these years. “I think it might be a good idea for you to take notes. Pay particular attention to anything at all that Miss Bancroft or her attorney agree to; I intend to hold them to every concession.”

  “Very well,” she said, and turned to leave.

  Behind her, Matt’s voice checked her in midstep. “Miss Stern?” She turned back, her posture primly erect, her pencil poised for his instructions. Teasingly, Matt asked, “Do you have a first name?”

  “Certainly,” she replied, her eyes narrowing.

  “May I use it?”

  “Of course. Although, I don’t think Eleanor suits you quite as well as Matthew.”

  Matt gaped at her deadpan expression and swallowed a sharp bark of laughter, uncertain whether she was serious or making a joke. “Do you suppose,” he said gravely, “You and I could be . . . a little less formal around here?”

  “I assume you’re suggesting a more relaxed relationship, the sort one might find more typical between a secretary and her employer?”

  “Yes, actually I was.”

  She lifted a thoughtful gray brow, but this time Matt saw it—the gleam of an answering smile in her pale eyes. “Will I have to bring you cake on your birthday?”

  “Probably,” he said with a sheepish grin.

  “I’ll make a note of it,” she replied, and when she actually did, Matt burst out laughing. “Will there be anything else?” she asked, and for the first time in all these years Eleanor Stern smiled at him. The smile had an electrifying effect on her face.

  “There is one more thing,” Matt added. “It’s very important, and I’d like your complete attention.”

  She sobered immediately. “You have it.”

  “In your opinion, is this conference room extremely impressive, or merely ostentatious?”

  “I feel quite confident,” she replied straightfaced, after looking the room over, “that Miss Bancroft will be dumbstruck with admiration.”

  Matt gaped as she turned on her heel without asking if he wanted anything and practically fled from the room, but he could have sworn her shoulders were shaking.

  Peter Vanderwild was pacing nervously in Miss Stern’s office, waiting for the old bat to emerge from Farrell’s office and give him permission to enter. She came walking out with unusual haste, and Peter braced himself to be made to feel a truant schoolboy facing the principal. “Mr. Farrell wants to see me,” he told her, trying to hide his agitation over Matt’s urgent summons. “He said it was very important, but he didn’t say what it was about and I—I didn’t know which files to bring.”

  “I do not think,” she said in an odd, choked voice, “You will need your files, Mr. Vanderwild. You may go in.”

  Peter gave her a queer, curious glance, then he hurried in to see Mr. Farrell. Two minutes later Peter backed out of Matt’s office, inadvertently banging into the corner of Miss Stern’s desk in his state of preoccupied worry.

  She looked up at him. “Were you able to answer Mr. Farrell’s question without your files?”

  Desperately in need of reassurance, Peter braved what he knew would be her scorn. “Yes, but I—I’m not certain I gave the right answer. Miss Stern,” he implored, “in your opinion, is the conference room impressive or ostentatious?”

  “Impressive,” she said.

  Peter’s shoulders sagged with relief. “That’s what I said.”

  “That was the right answer.”

  Peter stared at her in amazement; she was looking at him, her eyes positively glinting with sympathetic amusement. Shocked at the realization that there was actually some warmth beneath her glacial surface, he wondered if his own rigidity had somehow caused her to regard him with such disfavor in the past. He decided to buy her a box of candy at Christmas.

  Stuart was waiting, briefcase in hand, when Meredith walked into the lobby of Intercorp’s building. “You look wonderful,” he said, taking Meredith’s hand in his. Perfect. Calm and collected.”

  After an hour’s deliberation that morning, Meredith had finally decided to wear a jonquil-yellow wool dress with a contrasting navy coat trimmed in jonquil, for the sole reason that she’d read somewhere that men interpreted yellow as being assertive but not hostile. In hopes of carrying that assertive impression one step further, she’d twisted her hair into a chignon instead of wearing it loose.

  “Farrell will take one look at you and give us anything we ask for,” Stuart gallantly predicted as they walked toward the elevators. “How could he resist?”

  It was the fact that Matt’s last look at her had been when she was naked in bed with him that was making Meredith so excruciatingly uneasy about confronting him now. “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she said shakily, stepping into the elevator in front of Stuart.

  She stared blindly at the shiny brass doors, trying to concentrate on the memory of the laughter and quiet conversation she’d shared with Matt at the farm. It was wrong to think of him as her adversary now, she reminded herself. She’d cried in his arms over the loss of their baby, and he’d held her, trying to comfort her. That’s what she needed to remember, so she wouldn’t be so foolishly nervous. Matt was not her adversary.

  The receptionist on the sixtieth floor stood up as soon as Stuart gave her their names. “Right this way, please. Mr. Farrell is expecting you both. The others are already here.”

  The poise Meredith was clinging to took a minor blow when she walked into Matt’s office and didn’t completely recognize it. The wall at the left end had been slid back so that his office opened into a conference room the size of an indoor tennis court. Two men were seated at the conference table, talking desultorily with Matt. He glanced up, saw her, and instantly arose, starting toward her with long, purposeful strides, his expression war
m and relaxed. He was wearing a beautiful dark blue suit that fit him to perfection, a gleaming white shirt, and a handsome maroon and blue silk tie. For some reason, his formal business attire made her feel even more uneasy about this meeting. “Let me help you with your coat,” he said ignoring Stuart, who shrugged out of his own coat.

  Too nervous and self-conscious to meet his gaze, Meredith obeyed automatically, turning slightly, trying to stop the compulsive shiver that ran through her as he lifted her coat and his fingers brushed her shoulders. Afraid he’d noticed her reaction, she bent her head and concentrated on stripping off her navy kid gloves and transferring them to the hand with her navy handbag. Stuart had walked over to the conference table to shake hands with the opposing counsel, so Meredith headed toward him, but when he would have introduced her to the other two attorneys, Matt suddenly arrived at her elbow and began to act incongruously, as if this were an intimate social gathering being hosted by him in her honor. “Meredith,” he said with a smile in his eyes as he looked at her, “I’d like you to meet Bill Pearson and Dave Levinson.”

  Aware of the subtly possessive, protective way Matt was standing beside her, Meredith tore her startled gaze from his and looked at the two men, extending her hand to each of them. They were both over six feet tall, impeccably dressed in tailor-made three-piece suits with an aura of confident elegance and decisiveness about them. In comparison to their height and distinguished looks, Stuart, who was standing opposite them, appeared small in stature and insignificant in appearance, with his thinning brown hair and studious horn-rimmed eyeglasses. In fact, Meredith thought nervously as Stuart introduced himself to Matt, Stuart looked outnumbered, outflanked, and outclassed.

  As if he sensed her thoughts, Matt said, “Bill and Dave are here to safeguard your interests as much as my own.” That remark caused Stuart to pause in the act of sitting down, and to give Meredith a look of unabashed derision that warned her not to believe that for an instant. Meredith saw the look and felt vastly reassured. Stuart might be younger and shorter than the other two, but he was neither fooled nor outflanked.

  Matt saw the look too, but he ignored it. Turning to Meredith, who was about to sit down, he put his hand under her elbow to stop her, beginning to execute his plan. “We’d just decided to have a drink when you arrived,” he lied when she was standing again, looking at him in confusion. He glanced pointedly at his attorneys. “What will you have, gentlemen?”

  “Scotch and water,” Levinson promptly replied, understanding that he’d just been told to have one whether he wanted it or not, and obediently shoving aside the folder he’d been about to open.

  “The same,” Pearson echoed, taking his cue and relaxing back in his chair as if they had all the time in the world.

  Turning to Stuart, Matt said, “What would you like to drink?”

  “Perrier,” he said succinctly. “With a lime, if you have it.”

  “We have it.”

  Matt looked to Meredith, but she shook her head and said, “I don’t care for anything.”

  “In that case, will you help me carry the drinks?” he countered, determined to get the chance to speak privately with her. “These three men have faced one another across conference tables before, I’m told. I’m certain they’ll be able to find something to talk about while we get their drinks.” Having thus instructed Levinson and Pearson to keep Stuart occupied, he put his hand under Meredith’s elbow. Behind him, Levinson was already launching into an animated dialogue about a controversial trial in the newspapers, with Pearson contributing additional remarks—all of it done in sufficiently loud voices to give Matt the cover of privacy they understood he wanted with Meredith.

  The bar was a deep half circle made entirely of narrow, vertical strips of beveled mirror, and because it was recessed into a wall, Matt was out of sight of the men at the conference table the moment he stepped around the counter. Meredith, however, was stubbornly hovering on the opposite side of the counter, gazing fixedly at the beveled mirrors as if hypnotized by the reflection of colored light dancing off crystal glasses. Removing the top of the ice bucket, Matt put ice into five glasses, then he pulled the stopper out of a crystal decanter and splashed scotch into three glasses, and vodka into another. Glancing at the refrigerator that was beneath the counter on his side, he casually said, “Would you mind getting me the Perrier?”

  She nodded, and he watched her move with visible reluctance around the bar to do as he asked. Scrupulously avoiding his gaze, she took out a bottle of Perrier and a lime, and put both on the counter, then she started to turn. “Meredith,” Matt said quietly, putting a detaining hand on her arm, “why can’t you look at me?”

  She jumped at his touch and he let go of her arm, but she lifted her eyes to his, and when she did, much of the tension drained from her elegant face. She even managed a rueful little smile as she admitted, “I don’t know why exactly, but I’m finding this whole ordeal excruciatingly awkward.”

  “It serves you right,” he teased, trying to divert her with humor. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you it’s not nice to leave a man in bed with nothing but a note to say good-bye? It makes him wonder if you still respect him.”

  She swallowed a startled giggle at his pointed quip, and he grinned back at her. “Leaving you that way was foolish,” she admitted, and it didn’t occur to either of them to wonder why, no matter how long their separation, or how tense the circumstances surrounding each meeting, they fell easily into conversation with each other. “I can’t explain why I did it. I don’t understand it myself.”

  “I think I do,” Matt said. “Here, drink this.” He handed her the vodka and soda he’d made for her. When she started to decline and give it back to him, he shook his head. “It will help make this meeting a little easier to endure.” He waited until she’d taken a sip and then he said what he’d gotten her over there to say. “I’d like to ask a favor of you now.”

  Meredith heard the sudden solemnity in his voice, and she looked at him closely. “What sort of favor?”

  “Do you remember at the farm—you asked me for a truce?”

  She nodded, remembering with poignant clarity the way she’d stood beside his bed, watching his hand close over hers.

  “I’m asking you for the same thing now— a kind of a truce, a cease-fire, from the time my attorneys begin talking until you leave this room.”

  Alarm tingled through her, vague and unfocused, and she slowly put her glass down, warily searching his unreadable features. “I don’t understand.”

  “I’m asking you to listen to the terms of my offer and to remember that, no matter how—” Matt paused, trying to think of a suitably descriptive word for how his terms were likely to strike her. Infuriating? Outrageous? Obscene? “No matter how unusual my terms may seem, I’m doing what I honestly believe is best for both of us. My attorneys are going to explain my legal alternatives if you refuse my offer, and you’re bound to feel backed into a corner at first, but I’m asking you not to get up and walk out of here, or to tell the three of us to go to hell, no matter how angry you become. Last, I’m asking you to give me five minutes in here alone with you, after the meeting, during which time I will try to convince you to go along with what I’m suggesting. If I can’t do that, you’re free to tell me to go to hell and walk out of here. Will you agree to that?”

  Meredith’s alarm escalated to new heights, and yet he was only asking her to stay there, and stay calm, for an hour or so.

  “I agreed to your terms at the farm,” he reminded her. “Is it so much to ask that you agree to mine now?”

  Unable to withstand the quiet force of his argument, Meredith slowly shook her head. “I suppose not. All right, I agree. Truce,” she said, then watched in surprise as Matt held his hand out to her just as she had held hers out to him at the farm, except that he turned his hand palm-up. Her heart gave an inexplicable little bump as she laid her hand in his and his fingers closed tightly around it.

  “Thank you,” he sai
d.

  It hit her that she had said exactly that to him. Amazed that this moment at the farm had obviously seemed poignant to him, too, she tried to smile back at him as she echoed his former words: “You’re welcome.”

  Fully aware of the ploy that Farrell had used to draw Meredith away, Stuart permitted the two attorneys to carry on their barrage of diversionary conversation while he mentally ticked off the amount of time necessary to fix five drinks. When that time had elapsed, he swiveled around his chair, rudely turned his back on Levinson and Pearson and, without bothering to hide what he was doing, he craned his neck to see the occupants of the bar. He half expected to see Farrell trying to badger Meredith; what he saw was a couple in profile, captured in a pose so thoroughly startling that Stuart felt momentarily disoriented. Far from trying to badger her, Farrell was holding his hand out to her, looking at her with a somber smile that struck Stuart as decidedly . . . tender. And Meredith, who was almost always completely composed, was putting her hand in his and looking up at him with an expression that Stuart had never seen on her face before: a vulnerable expression of naked caring.

  Abruptly, he pulled his gaze from the couple and turned to the attorneys, but he still hadn’t come up with a suitable explanation for Meredith’s expression a minute later, when she and Farrell brought the drinks to the conference table.

  When Farrell had seated Meredith, Pearson said, “Matt, shall we begin?” The seating arrangement had struck Stuart as odd from the minute he’d walked into the room: Pearson was deliberately positioned at the head of the conference table, where Farrell would normally have been. Meredith had been seated on Pearson’s left, with Stuart next to her. Levinson was on Pearson’s right, directly across from her, and now Farrell walked around the table, sitting down next to Levinson. Ever aware of subtleties, Stuart wondered if Farrell had deliberately put Pearson in the hot seat to make Meredith think that Pearson rather than himself was responsible for whatever she was about to hear. Either that, Stuart decided, watching Farrell angle his chair back and prop his ankle atop his knee, or else Farrell wanted to be able to observe Meredith throughout the proceedings without having to make it obvious, which it would have been if he’d been at the head of the table.