“Very well, thank you.”
“I’m amazed Arturo couldn’t have given you something better than this. This place is little more than a cottage.” She said nothing, and that goaded Philip into mentioning her last lover, the one who had caused their divorce. “Spearson never amounted to anything, did you know that, Caroline? He’s still trying to eke out a living by training horses and giving riding lessons.”
Unbelievably, she smiled at that and, turning, she poured herself a glass of wine. In silence she took a sip, her big blue eyes studying him over the rim. Caught off guard and feeling stupid and churlish, Philip returned her gaze unflinchingly.
“Surely you aren’t finished?” she said quietly after a long moment. “You must have dozens more of my imagined indiscretions and infidelities to throw in my face. Evidently, they still bother you after thirty years.”
Taking a long breath, Philip tipped his head back and sighed. “I’m sorry,” he said truthfully. “I don’t know why I started in on you like that. What you do is none of my business.”
She smiled, that same serene, unruffled smile he found so unsettling. “You started in on me,” she said, “because you’re still completely unaware of the truth.”
“What truth?” he asked sarcastically.
“Dennis Spearson didn’t break up our marriage, Philip, and neither did Dominic. You did.” Anger sparked in his eyes and she shook her head, her voice gentle. “You couldn’t help it. You’re like a frightened little boy who’s scared to death that someone is going to take something or someone away from you, and who can’t bear the fear and uncertainty of it happening. And so, rather than sitting around and impotently waiting for it to happen, you take matters into your own hands and force it to happen—so that you can get the pain over with. You begin by putting restrictions on the people you love—restrictions that they can’t bear, and when they finally break one, you feel betrayed and furious. Then you avenge yourself on them—on the same people who you forced to hurt you, and because you’re not a boy, but a man with money and power, your revenge against imaginary trespassers is terrible. Your father did virtually the same thing to you.”
“Where did you acquire that piece of psychological garbage—from some shrink you had an affair with?” he demanded scathingly.
“I acquired it from a lot of books I read to try to figure you out,” she replied, her gaze level.
“And that’s what you want me to believe happened to our marriage? That you were innocent and I was irrationally jealous and possessive?” he asked, draining his glass.
“I’ll be happy to tell you the whole truth if you think you’re well enough to handle it.”
Philip frowned at her, taken aback by her unshakable calm and the gentle beauty of her smile. She had been glamorous in her twenties; in her fifties she had faint lines at her eyes and some lines on her forehead; her face had acquired character and it made her strangely more appealing. And quite disarming.
“Give the truth a try,” he suggested dryly.
“Okay,” she said, walking closer to him. “Let’s see if you’re old enough and sensible enough now to believe it when you hear it. I have a feeling you will believe it.”
Philip had pretty much decided to the contrary already. “Why is that?”
“Because,” she answered, leaning her left shoulder against the window, “You’re going to realize that I have absolutely nothing to gain or to lose by admitting it all to you, do I?”
She waited, forcing him to admit that much. “No, I suppose not.”
“Then, here is the truth,” she said calmly. “When we met, I was utterly dazzled by you. You weren’t a Hollywood phony; you weren’t like any of the men I’d known before. You had breeding and class and style. I fell in love with you on our second date, Philip.” She watched shock and then disbelief flicker across his face at that, but she continued with quiet determination. “I was so much in love and so filled with insecurity and inferiority that I could hardly breathe when we were together, for fear I’d make a mistake. Instead of telling you the truth about my background and the men I’d slept with, I told you the same fiction about my origins that the studio publicity office had invented for me. I told you I grew up in an orphanage, and that I’d had one tiny little affair when I was a foolish teenager.”
When he didn’t say anything, she drew an unsteady breath and said, “The truth is that my mother was a whore who had no idea who my father was, and that I ran away when I was sixteen. I took a bus to Los Angeles and got a job in a cheap diner, where this jerk who worked as a messenger for a film company discovered me. I auditioned for him on the couch in his boss’s office that night. Two weeks later I met his boss and got auditioned again—the same way. I couldn’t act, but I was photogenic, so the boss got me an appointment at a modeling agency, and I started making money doing magazine ads. I went to acting school, and eventually I got some bit parts in movies after I auditioned for them in someone’s bed, of course. Later I got some better parts, and then I met you.”
Caroline waited for him to react, but all he did was shrug and say coldly, “I know all that, Caroline. I had you investigated a year before I actually filed for divorce. You aren’t telling me anything I didn’t find out or assume on my own.”
“No, but I’m about to. By the time I met you, I’d gotten some pride and confidence, and I no longer slept with men because I was desperate or too weak to say no.”
“You did it because you liked it!” he spat out. “And not with one but with hundreds of them!”
“Not nearly hundreds,” she corrected him with a sad smile, “but many of them. It was just—just something you did. It was part of the business, like shaking hands is to men in your business.”
She heard his snort of contempt and ignored it. “And then I met you, and I fell in love, and for the first time in my life I felt shame—shame for all the things I’d been and done. And so I tried to change my past by reinventing it to suit your standards. Which, of course, was a hopeless endeavor.”
“Hopeless,” he agreed shortly.
Her eyes were soft as they looked into his, her voice ringing with quiet sincerity. “You’re right. But what I could—and did—change was the present. Philip, no man touched me but you from the day we met.”
“I don’t believe you,” he snapped.
But Caroline only smiled wider and shook her head. “You have to believe me—because you already agreed that I have absolutely nothing to gain by lying to you. What possible reason could I have to humble myself like this? It’s the sad truth,” she continued, “that I actually thought I could atone for my past by cleaning up my present. Meredith is your daughter, Philip. I know you used to think she was either Dominic’s or Dennis Spearson’s, but all Dennis ever gave me was riding lessons. I wanted to fit in with your crowd, and all the women knew how to ride, so I was sneaking out to Spearson’s for lessons.”
“That was the lie you told at the time.”
“No, my love,” she said without thinking, “that was the truth. I won’t pretend that I didn’t have an affair with Dominic Arturo before I met you. He gave me this house as a way to atone for that stupid, drunken pass that you caught him making at me.”
“It wasn’t a pass,” Philip hissed, “he was in our bed when I came home a day early from a business trip.”
“I wasn’t in it with him!” she retorted. “And he was out cold.”
“No, you weren’t in it with him,” he agreed sarcastically. “You had snuck off to Spearson’s, leaving a house full of guests, all of whom were gossiping about your absence.”
To his shock, she laughed at that—a sad, whimsical laugh—and confidingly asked, “Isn’t it ironic that I never got caught up in any of the lies about my past? I mean, everyone in the world believed that fairy tale about my being an orphan, and the affairs I did have before we were married never came out.” She shook her head, making her heavy, shoulder-length hair shimmer in the waning sunlight. “I got away unscathed
when I was guilty, but when I was truly innocent, you convicted me on circumstantial evidence. Is that poetic justice, do you think?”
Philip was utterly at a loss for words, unable to believe her, unable to completely doubt her. It wasn’t so much the things she’d told him that made him believe she’d been innocent, it was her attitude toward it all—the serene acceptance of her fate, the lack of rancor, the frankness and honesty in those eyes of hers. Her next question made his head jerk toward her in surprise. “Do you know why I married you, Philip?”
“Presumably you wanted the financial security and social prestige I could offer.”
She chuckled at that and shook her head. “You underrate yourself. I already told you I was dazzled by your looks and breeding, and I was in love with you, but I’d never have married you if it hadn’t been for one more thing.”
“What was that?” Philip asked in spite of himself.
“I believed,” she confessed somberly, “I honestly believed that I had something to offer you too—something you needed. Do you know what it was?”
“I can’t imagine.”
“I thought I could teach you how to laugh and enjoy life.”
Silence hung over the room for a long moment, then she looked at him from beneath her thick lashes and there was a funny catch in her voice as she asked softly, “Did you ever learn how to laugh, darling?”
“Don’t call me that!” Philip almost shouted, but his chest felt tight with emotions he didn’t want to feel—hadn’t felt in decades—and he slammed his empty glass down on a table. “I should be going.”
She nodded. “Regrets are an awful burden. The sooner you leave, the sooner you’ll be able to convince yourself you were actually right thirty years ago. But if you stay, who knows what would happen?”
“Nothing would happen,” he said, referring to going to bed with her, startled then that the idea would even occur to him.
“Good-bye,” she said quietly. “I’d ask you to give my love to Meredith, but you won’t, will you?”
“No.”
“She doesn’t need it,” Caroline said with a winsome smile. “From everything I’ve been reading, she’s remarkable and wonderful. And,” she added with pride, “whether you like it or not, there’s a part of me in her. She,” Caroline informed him, “knows how to laugh.”
Philip stared at her in blank confusion. “What do you mean, from what you’ve been reading? What are you talking about?”
Caroline tipped her head toward the pile of Chicago newspapers and gave a throaty chuckle. “I was referring to the way she’s handling being married to Matthew Farrell and engaged to Parker Reynolds—”
“How the hell do you know about that?” Philip exploded, his face turning cold and pale.
“It’s all over the papers,” Caroline began, then she faltered, watching him stalk over to the newspapers and yank them up. His entire body seemed to vibrate with fury as he clutched the paper that broke the news of the arrest of Stanislaus Spyzhalski, and he glared at the pictures of Meredith, Matt, and Parker on the front page. He threw that one down and yanked up the next one, which contained excerpts from their joint news conference with a picture of Farrell grinning at her. Another newspaper was opened to an article about a bomb scare in the New Orleans store, and it slid from his fingers. “He warned me what he’d do eleven years ago,” he said in a strangled whisper, more to himself than to her. “He warned me, and he’s doing it!” He looked up at Caroline, his eyes alive with fury. “Where’s the nearest telephone?”
51
Matt was pacing in the foyer of his apartment when Meredith finally arrived at seven o’clock that night—thirty minutes late. He pulled open the door, jerked her into his arms, and said furiously, “Dammit, if you’re going to be late, and bombs are going off all over the place, call me to let me know you’re all right!” He held her away, tempted to shake her, and instantly regretted his outburst. She looked exhausted.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t think you’d imagine anything like that.”
“I evidently have an overactive imagination where you’re concerned,” Matt said wryly, smiling to take the sting out of his greeting. He led her toward the back of the apartment and up the steps to the lounge area because it was the coziest part of the place, and because the view from the corner windows was the best.
“I was at the police station most of the afternoon,” she explained as she sat down on the leather sofa, “trying to give them any information I could that might help them find whoever put the bomb in the store. When I went home to change and come over here, Parker called, and we were on the phone for almost an hour.”
Meredith trailed off, remembering Parker’s phone call. Neither of them had brought up the fact that he’d spent the night at Lisa’s. Parker was no liar, and his deliberate failure to offer an explanation was silent confirmation to Meredith that the night had not been platonic. It felt strange to imagine those two being involved—strange and yet almost reassuring somehow, because Meredith loved them both.
Before he hung up, Parker had wished her happiness, but he’d sounded dubious and worried about her ability to be happy with Matt. About Matt he’d said little—except that he regretted starting the fistfight with him. “The only thing I regret more,” Parker had said dryly, “is that I missed my punch.”
The rest of their conversation had been about business, and it had not been either reassuring or pleasant.
Pulling herself out of her reverie, she said, “I’m sorry if I seem preoccupied. This has been an incredible day, from beginning to end.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Meredith looked up at him, struck anew by the aura of quiet command, of absolute competence that surrounded him. Casually dressed in dark trousers with his white shirt open at the throat and the cuffs folded back on his forearms, Matthew Farrell positively exuded indomitable power and strength. It was stamped on his jaw and etched into every one of his hard, chiseled features.
And yet, she thought with an unconscious smile, in bed she could make this bold, powerful man groan with need and turn to her in stormy desperation. She loved knowing that. She loved him.
His question pulled her back to less pleasant thoughts: “Would you rather try to forget about the day?”
“I feel guilty about burdening you,” Meredith said, though she was longing for his advice and perhaps reassurance.
His lips quirked, and there was a decidedly sensual note in his eyes. “Having you burden me again is a fantasy that kept me awake until dawn.” He watched the telltale glow of knowledge and memory in her eyes and he smiled, but he didn’t try to distract her further. Sobering, he said, “Let’s hear about your day.”
With a conscious effort Meredith pulled herself from the sensual spell of his fantasy. “Actually, it’s easy to sum up,” she said, curling her legs beneath her and twisting toward him. “Last but not least, our stock closed down three points this afternoon.”
“It’ll come back up once the bomb thing dies down,” Matt said.
Nodding, she continued. “This morning, the chairman of the board called. They want an explanation from me about the fight Saturday night. I was talking to him when the first bomb call came through, so we never finished our conversation.”
“The bomb scares will distract them for a while.”
With a weak attempt at humor, she added, “I guess every cloud really does have a silver lining.” Averting her gaze from Matt’s quiet scrutiny, she stared out the windows.
“What else is bothering you?”
It was obvious from his insistent tone that Matt knew there was something else and that he fully intended to hear about it. Feeling excruciatingly self-conscious, she looked at him and said, “Could I have more time to arrange financing to buy the Houston land from you? Parker had arranged for another lender to make us the loan since his bank couldn’t. Today, when that lender heard about the bomb threats, they called Parker and pulled out of the deal.
They said they want to wait and see what happens at Bancroft’s for a couple of months.”
“It was nice of Reynolds to unload all that on you today,” Matt said sarcastically.
“He called to be certain I was all right and to apologize for what happened Saturday. The rest—the part about the money—came up because we’d had a meeting scheduled to negotiate the terms of the loan tomorrow with the new lender. Parker had to tell me the new lender had called off the meeting—” A loud beeping noise from her pager made Meredith stop talking and reach for the purse she’d put down beside the sofa. She removed the pager, looked at the message on it, and with a silent, frustrated moan she let her head fall back against the sofa, her eyes closed. “This is all I needed to make today perfect.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s my father,” she sighed, reluctantly looking at Matt. The warmth had left his eyes at the mention of her father, and his jaw was rigid. “My father wants me to call him. It’s two or three A.M. in Italy. Either he’s calling to say hello in the middle of the night, or else he’s finally seen a newspaper. May I use your phone?”
Her father was in Rome at the airport, waiting for a flight home, and when his voice exploded over the phone, Matt scowled and Meredith flinched. “What in the living hell are you doing!” he shouted the moment the operator connected him.
“Calm down, please,” Meredith began, but there was no calming him.
“Have you lost your mind!” he thundered. “I leave you alone for a couple of weeks and your face is plastered all over the newspapers next to that bastard’s face and then we have bomb threats—”
Ignoring the issue of Matt for the time being, Meredith tried to soothe him about that day’s bomb scares, which she thought he’d discovered. “Don’t give yourself a stroke over them,” she pleaded, holding on to her temper and her strained nerves. “All three bombs were found and removed with no harm to anyone—”