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.
For years Matt had pushed those memories, along with the anguish he’d felt over the baby, into some dark, safe recess of his mind, because he couldn’t stand to think of it. Putting Meredith out of his mind had become an art he’d practiced and perfected. At first he did it out of self-preservation. Later, out of habit.
Now, as he gazed at the twinkling headlights far below on Lake Shore Drive, he realized he didn’t need to do that anymore. She had ceased to exist for him.
He’d known when he made the decision to spend the next year in Chicago that Meredith and he would be bound to encounter each other, but he’d refused to let it affect his plans. Now he realized he needn’t have bothered to consider it, because it didn’t matter. They were both adults; the past was over. Meredith was nothing if not well-bred. They’d both be able to carry off their meeting with the polite courtesy that was expected of adults in these situations.
Matt climbed into Stanton’s stretch Mercedes and shook his friend’s hand, then his gaze shifted to Alicia, who was swathed in an ankle-length sable coat the same color as her dark glossy hair. She reached out and put her hand in his, smiling into his eyes—seductive, direct, and appealing. “It’s been a long time,” she said in that rich, soft voice of hers.
“Too long,” he replied, and he meant that.
“Five months,” she reminded him. “Do you intend to shake my hand or are you going to kiss me properly?”
Matt tossed a helpless, amused glance at her father—an explanation of intent. Stanton answered with an indulgent, paternal smile of permission, and Matt tugged Alicia’s hand, pulling her unceremoniously onto his lap. “How properly did you have in mind?” he asked.
She smiled and said, “I’ll show you.”
Only Alicia would have dared to kiss a man the way she did in front of her father. But then, not many fathers would have smiled and politely diverted their gaze to the side window while their daughters kissed a man with a lingering sensuality designed to be sexually arousing. Alicia did and Matt was. They both knew it. “I think you’ve really missed me,” she said.
“And I think,” he told her, “one of us should have the grace to blush.”
“That’s very provincial of you, darling,” she informed him, laughing as she reluctantly took her hands from his shoulders. “Very middle class.”
“There was a time,” he reminded her pointedly, “when being middle class would have been an improvement.”
“You’re proud of that, aren’t you?” she teased.
“I suppose I am.”
She slid off his lap, crossed her long legs, and her coat parted to reveal a thigh-high slash in the side of her black sheath gown. “What do you think?” she asked.
“You can find out later what he thinks,” Stanton said, suddenly impatient with his daughter’s monopoly of his friend. “Matt, what do you know about the rumors that Edmund Mining is going to merge with Ryerson Consolidated? Before you answer that,” he said, “how is your father? Does he still insist on staying at the farm?”
“He’s fine,” Matt said, and it was true. Patrick Farrell had been sober for eleven years. “I finally convinced him to sell the farm and move to the city. He’ll be staying with me for a few weeks, then he’s going to visit my sister. I have to go out to the farm later this month and pack up family mementos. He doesn’t have the heart to do it.”
The vast ballroom of the hotel with its soaring marble columns, glittering crystal chandeliers, and magnificent vaulted ceiling was always splendid, but tonight Meredith thought it was especially wonderful. The decorations committee had turned it into a gorgeous winter fairyland, with white gazebos blanketed in artificial snow and filled with red roses and holly. Near the center of the room, a larger gazebo with roses trailing up its columns and “snowbanks” at its sides was occupied by an orchestra playing a salute to Rodgers and Hart. Fountains bearded with glittering artificial icicles spouted geysers of sparkling champagne while waiters circulated among the guests, offering hors d’oeuvres to those who didn’t wish to help themselves from the giant silver-plated tiers laden with food.
Tonight, the lavishness of the decorations were enhanced by the glitter of jeweled silks and brocaded velvets, as the patrons of the opera, who’d turned out en masse, paused in their laughing conversations to pose for photographers from the media or strolled about, greeting friends. Near the center of the room, Meredith stood beside Parker, his hand possessively at her waist, accepting good wishes from friends and acquaintances who
’d read about their engagement. When the last group drifted away, Meredith looked at Parker, her face lit up with sudden laughter.
“What’s so funny?” he asked with a tender smile.
“The song the orchestra is playing,” she explained. “It’s the same one we danced to when I was thirteen.” When he looked puzzled, she added, “At Miss Eppingham’s party at the Drake Hotel.”
Parker’s expression cleared and he grinned at the memory. “Ah, yes—Miss Eppingham’s mandatory night of misery.”
“It was miserable,” Meredith agreed. “I dropped my purse, and bumped your head, and stepped all over your feet while we danced.”
“You dropped your purse, and we bumped heads,” he said with the same gentle sensitivity to her feelings that she’d come to love, “but you did not step on my feet. You were adorable that night. In fact, that was the first night I actually noticed what amazing eyes you have,” he continued with a reminiscent smile. “You looked up at me with the oddest, most intent expression—”
Meredith burst out laughing. “I was probably considering the best way to propose to you!”
He grinned, his arm tightening around her. “Really?”
“Absolutely.” Her smile wavered when she noticed a gossip columnist bearing down on them. “Parker,” she said quickly, “I’m going up to the lounge for a few minutes. Sally Mansfield is headed this way, and I don’t want to talk to her until I find out on Monday who at Bancroft’s told her that nonsense about Bancroft’s celebrating our wedding with a national sale.
“The person who did it will have to ask her to print a retraction,” Meredith said with finality as she reluctantly pulled away from his encompassing arm, “because there isn’t going to be any such sale. Please watch for Lisa,” she added as she started toward the grand staircase that led up to the mezzanine. “She should have been here long ago.”
“We timed it perfectly, Matt,” Stanton said as Matt lifted the fur coat off Alicia’s shoulders and handed it to the coat-check girl stationed off the ballroom. Matt heard him, but his attention was momentarily diverted by the daring expanse of creamy flesh exposed by the wide, plunging neckline of Alicia’s black velvet sheath. “That’s quite a gown,” he told her, his expression warm with amusement and frank desire.
She held his gaze, her head tipped back, a knowing smile curving her vermilion lips. “You are the only man,” she softly told him, “who can make ‘that’s quite a gown’ sound like an irresistible invitation to join you in bed for at least a week.”
Matt chuckled at that as they started toward the dazzling lights and noisy clamor of the party. Ahead, he saw two photographers snapping pictures and a television crew roaming through the crowd, and he braced himself for the inevitable descent of the press.
“Was it?” Alicia asked as soon as her father stopped to talk to friends.
“Was it what?” Matt said, pausing to take two glasses of champagne from the tray of a passing waiter.
“An invitation for a week of glorious fucking like the one we had two months ago?”
“Alicia,” Matt admonished her mildly, nodding politely to two men he knew, “behave yourself.” He would have started forward, but Alicia remained stubbornly where she was, studying him with deepening intensity. “Why haven’t you ever married?”
“Let’s discuss that some other time.”
“I tried the last two times we were together, but you evaded it.”
Annoyed with her obstinacy, her topic, and her timing, Matt put his hand beneath her black-gloved arm and guided her off to the side. “I gather,” he told her, “that you intend to discuss it here and now.”
“I do,” she said, meeting his gaze, chin proudly high.
“What’s on your mind?”
“Marriage.”
He paused and Alicia saw the sudden chill in his eyes, but what he said was even more cutting than his expression: “To whom?”
Stung by his deliberate insult and furious with her tactical blunder in trying to force his hand, she glared at his implacable expression, and then the tension drained from her. “I suppose I deserved that,” she admitted.
“No,” Matt said shortly, angry with his own excessive tactlessness, “You didn’t.”
Alicia stared at him, confused, wary, and then she smiled a little. “At least we know where we stand—for now.”
His answering smile was brief, cool, and distinctly unencouraging. With a sigh Alicia tucked her hand in the crook of his arm. “You are,” she told him bluntly as he led her forward, “the hardest man I’ve ever met!” Trying to inject some levity into the moment, she sent him a seductive sideways glance and added truthfully, “Physically, as well as emotionally, of course.”
Lisa shoved her engraved invitation at the doorman stationed outside the ballroom. Stopping just long enough to pull off her coat and check it, she scanned the milling throng, looking for Parker or Meredith. Spotting Parker’s blond head near the bandstand, she headed toward him, brushing past Alicia Avery, who was strolling slowly beside a very tall, dark-haired, broad-shouldered man whose profile seemed vaguely familiar. As Lisa wended her way through the crowd, men turned to gaze appreciatively at the figure she presented—a willowy redhead clad in billowing red satin lounge pants and a black velvet jacket, with a beaded black band tied around her forehead—an utterly incongruous and inappropriate ensemble that somehow—on Lisa—looked exactly right.
Other men thought that, but not Parker. “Hi,” she said, coming up beside him as he filled his glass from one of the champagne fountains.
He turned, his gaze narrowing with disapproval on her clothes, and Lisa bridled at his unvoiced criticism. “Oh, no!” she speculated dramatically, looking at his handsome, glowering face with sham alarm. “Has the prime rate gone up again?”
His irate gaze jerked from the cleavage exposed by her jacket to her taunting expression. “Why don’t you dress like other women?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” Lisa said, pausing as if to think it over, then with a bright smile, she announced, “It’s probably the same stroke of perversity that makes you enjoy foreclosing on widows and orphans. Where’s Meredith?”
“In the ladies’ lounge.”
Having thus indulged in the sort of uncharacteristic rudeness that had festered between both of them for years, they both stoically sought to avoid looking at each other by focusing their attention on the crowd. Simultaneously, a subdued commotion erupted off to their right, and they both looked in that direction, watching as television crews and newspaper reporters, who’d been wandering among the guests or standing on the sidelines, suddenly galvanized into action, rushing toward their prey. Flashes from cameras started going off, and Lisa leaned farther to the right, catching a glimpse of the press mobbing the dark-haired man she’d noticed with Alicia Avery. Television cameras were aiming at his face as he escorted her forward through the explosion of flashbulbs and the throng of reporters waving microphones at him. “Who is that?” she asked, glancing uncertainly at Parker.
“I can’t see—” Parker began, watching the uproar with mild interest, but when the crowd parted, he tensed. “It’s Farrell.”
The last name, combined with the full view of Farrell’s tanned face, was enough to tell Lisa that the man with Alicia was Meredith’s faithless, heartless former husband. Hostility exploded inside her as she watched him stop to answer questions being called out to him by reporters, while Alicia Avery hung on his arm, smiling for the photographers. For a long moment Lisa stood there, remembering the anguish he’d caused Meredith and contemplating the wholly satisfying idea of marching up to him in front of the fawning media and calling him a son of a bitch right to his face! Meredith wouldn’t like that, she knew; Meredith hated scenes and, besides, no one but Parker and Lisa knew that Meredith and he had ever been involved in any way. Meredith! The thought hit her at the same instant it struck Parker, wiping the bland, civilized expression from his own face as he watched Farrell. “Did Meredith kno
w he was going to be here?” she gasped at the same instant Parker clasped her arm and ordered, “Find Meredith and warn her that Farrell’s here.”
As Lisa sidled and shoved her way into the crowd, Matthew Farrell’s name was already passing through them like a whispered chant. He’d broken away from the press, except for Sally Mansfield, who was standing behind him as he spoke with Stanton Avery near the foot of the grand staircase. Keeping one eye on Farrell so she could warn Meredith where he was, and her other eye on the balcony, Lisa plunged forward, then stopped in helpless dismay as Meredith suddenly appeared and started down the staircase.
Since she couldn’t get to her before she reached the bottom step and passed by Farrell, Lisa stood still, taking grim satisfaction in the fact that Meredith had never looked more stunning than she did right now—when her lousy ex-husband was about to see her for the first time in eleven years! In complete defiance of the current slinky fashions, Meredith was wearing a full-skirted strapless gown of shimmering white satin with a tightly fitted bodice sewn with seed pearls and strewn with white sequins and tiny crystals. At her throat was a magnificent ruby and diamond necklace that was either a gift from Parker, which Lisa was inclined to doubt, or on loan from the estate jewelry department of Bancroft’s, which Lisa figured was more likely.