Touched by his confidence, Meredith said softly, "You must have loved her very much." Aware that she was treading on shaky ground, she said, "I never knew my own mother. She went to
Italy after my parents' divorce. I guess I was lucky, don't you, not to have known her and loved her all those years, and then lost her?"
Matt realized exactly what point she was trying to make, and he didn't deride her efforts. "Very nice," he said with quiet gravity, then he shook off the mood and wryly announced, "I have amazingly excellent taste in women."
Meredith burst out laughing, then felt a jolt of delight when his hand slid across her back, curving around her waist to draw her tightly against his side as they walked. A few steps later, she thought of something that brought her up short. "Have you ever been married before?"
"No. Have you?" he added, teasing.
"You know perfectly well I haven't—hadn't done—" She stopped, uneasy with the topic.
"Yes, I do know," he confirmed. "What I can't understand is how anyone who looks like you could have reached the age of eighteen without losing your virginity to some rich, smooth-talking preppy boy along the way."
"I don't like preppy boys," Meredith replied, then she glanced at him, bemused. "I never actually realized that before."
That pleased Matt immensely because she sure as hell wasn't marrying one. He waited for her to say more. When she didn't, he prompted her disbelievingly. "That's it? That's the answer?"
"That's part of it. The whole truth is that I was so homely until I was sixteen that boys stayed completely away from me. By the time I wasn't homely anymore, I was so mad at them for ignoring me all those years that I didn't have a very high opinion of them on the whole."
Matt looked at her beautiful face, her tempting mouth, and radiant eyes, and he grinned. "Were you really homely?"
"Let me put it this way," she said dryly, "if we have a little girl, she'll be better off if she looks like
you
when she's young!"
Matt's sharp crack of laughter exploded into the soft night silence and he yanked her into his arms. Laughing, he buried his face in her fragrant hair, surprised by his feelings of tenderness because she'd apparently been homely, touched that she had confided it to him, and elated because ... because ... He refused to think of why. All that mattered was that she was laughing, too, and that her arms had slid around his waist. With a solemn smile, he rubbed his jaw against her head and whispered, "I have
exquisite
taste in women."
"Well, you wouldn't have thought that a couple of years ago," she said, laughing and leaning back in his arms.
"I'm a man of vision," he assured her quietly. "I would have thought it even then."
An hour later they were sitting on the porch steps facing each other, their backs propped against the railing. Matt was one step higher, his long legs stretched out in front of him. A step below him, Meredith was
sitting with her knees drawn up against her chest, her arms wrapped around them. They were no longer making a conscious effort to get to know each other because Meredith was pregnant and they were getting married. They were simply a couple sitting outside on a late summer night, enjoying one another's company.
Leaning her head back, Meredith listened to a cricket chirping, her eyes half closed.
"What are you thinking about?" he asked quietly.
"I'm thinking that it will be autumn soon," she said, lifting her gaze to his. "Autumn is my absolute favorite season. Spring is overrated. It's soggy and the trees are still bare from winter. Winter drags on and on, and summer is nice, but it's all the same. Autumn is different. I mean, is there any perfume in the world that can compare with the smell of burning leaves?" she asked with an engaging smile. Matt thought she smelled a hell of a lot better than burning leaves, but he let her continue. "Autumn is exciting—things are changing. It's like dusk."
"Dusk?"
"Dusk is my favorite time of day, for the same reason. When I was young, I used to walk down our driveway at dusk in the summer and stand at the fence, watching all the cars going by with their headlights on. Everyone had a place to go, something to do. The night was just beginning ..." She trailed off in embarrassment. "That must sound incredibly silly."
"It sounds incredibly lonely."
"I wasn't lonely, not really. Just daydreaming. I know you got an awful impression of my father at
Glenmoor
that night, but he's not the ogre you imagine. He loves me, and
all
he's ever tried to do is to protect me and give me the best." Without warning, Meredith's lovely mood dissolved, and reality came crashing over her with sickening force. "And in return I'm going to go home in a few days, pregnant and—"
"We agreed not to worry about any of that tonight," he interrupted.
Meredith nodded and tried to smile, but she couldn't control her thoughts as easily as he apparently could. Suddenly she saw her child standing at the end of some driveway in
Chicago, alone, watching the cars going by on the road. No family, no brothers and sisters, no father. Just her. And she wasn't sure she could be enough.
"If autumn is your favorite thing, what's your least favorite?" Matt asked, trying to divert her.
She thought a moment. "Christmas tree lots on the day after Christmas. There's something sad about those beautiful trees that no one picked out. They're like orphans no one want—" She broke off, realizing what she was saying and quickly looked away.
"It's after
midnight
," Matt said, rolling to his feet, knowing her mood was beyond salvaging. "Why don't we go to bed?"
It sounded as if he was taking it for granted they would, or should, go to bed together, and Meredith suddenly felt a sick lurch of panic at that. She was pregnant and he was going to marry her because he had to; the whole situation was already so sordid, it made her feel cheap and humiliated as it was.
In silence they turned off the living room lights and walked up the stairs. The door to Matt's room was immediately off the landing, while Julie's was to the left, at the end of the hall, with
a bathroom in between. When they approached his door, Meredith took matters into her own hands. "Good night, Matt," she said shakily. Stepping around him, she tossed a fixed smile over her shoulder, and left him standing in his doorway. When he made no attempt to stop her, her emotions veered crazily from relief to chagrin. Apparently, she decided as she stepped into Julie's room, pregnant women had no sex appeal whatsoever, not even to the same man who'd gone crazy in bed with you a few weeks prior. She opened the door and walked into Julie's room.
Behind her, Matt spoke in a flat, calm voice. "Meredith?"
She turned and saw him still standing in the doorway of his room, his shoulder propped against the door frame, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. "Yes?"
"Do you know what my least favorite thing is?"
His implacable tone told her the question wasn't casual, and she shook her head, wary at whatever he was getting at. He didn't keep her in doubt. "It's sleeping alone when there's someone down the hall who I know damned well should be sleeping with me." Matt had meant that to be more an invitation than a curt observation, and his lack of tact with her surprised him. A dozen expressions chased themselves across her lovely face— embarrassment, unease, doubt, uncertainty—and then she gave him a small smile, hesitated, and said firmly, "Good night."
Matt watched her walk into Julie's room and close the door behind her, and he stood for a long moment, knowing perfectly well that if he went after her and tried tender persuasion he could very likely convince her to come to bed with him. And yet, for some reason, he was suddenly, adamantly, unwilling to do it. Turning, he went into his room, but he left his door open, still convinced that she wanted to be with him, and that if she did, she'd come back here when she had gotten ready for bed.
Clad in pajama bottoms that he'd had to search through his drawers to find, he stood at the window, looking out at the moonlit lawn. He heard Meredith leave the bathroom after her shower, and he tensed, listening to her footsteps. They retreated down the hall into Julie's room and then a door closed. She'd made her decision, he realized with
equal parts of surprise, annoyance, and disappointment. And yet, none of those three emotions had as much to do with unrequited sexual desire as they did with something deeper and more general. He had wanted some sign from her that she was ready for an actual relationship with him; as much as he hoped for that, he wasn't willing to do anything to try to persuade her that she was. It had to be her decision, her choice, freely made. She'd made that choice when she walked away from him and down the hall. If she'd had any doubts about what he wanted her to do, what he'd said to her in the hall would have removed them.
Turning away from the window, he breathed a sigh of frustrated irritation, and faced the fact that he was probably expecting far too much from an eighteen-year-old. The thing was, it was damned hard to remember how young Meredith actually was. Pulling back the sheet, he got into bed and linked his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, thinking about her. Tonight she'd told him about Lisa
Pontini
and how they'd become friends, and he'd realized from what she said that Meredith was not only at ease in country clubs and mansions, she was also totally at home with the
Pontini
family as well. She was utterly without artifice or affectation, Matt thought, and yet there was an unmistakable gentility in her, an inherent elegance that was as appealing to him as her intoxicating face and entrancing smile.
Weariness finally nudged him and he closed his eyes. Unfortunately, none of those attributes were going to help her or make the idea of going off to
South America with him seem the slightest bit enticing, unless she
felt
something for him. And she obviously didn't, or she'd have been with him now. The idea of trying to persuade a reluctant, pampered eighteen-year-old to go to Venezuela with him when she didn't have the courage or the conviction to walk down a hall to him was not only repugnant, it was futile.
With her head bent, Meredith stood beside Julie's bed, torn apart with yearnings and misgivings she couldn't seem to control or predict. Her pregnancy wasn't having any physical effects yet, but it was evidently playing havoc with her emotions. Less than an hour ago she hadn't wanted to be in bed with Matt, and now she did. Common sense warned her that her future was already terrifyingly uncertain, and that giving in to her growing attraction to him would only make things more complicated. At twenty-six he was much older than she and far more experienced in every facet of life—a life that was completely alien to her. Six weeks ago, when he was wearing a tuxedo and she was in familiar surroundings, he'd seemed almost like other men she'd known. But here, clad in jeans and a shirt, there was an earthiness about him that both attracted her and alarmed her. He'd wanted her to come to bed tonight, and he'd made that emphatically clear. When it pertained to women and sex, Matt was obviously so sure of himself that he could stand there and baldly tell her what he wanted her to do. Not
ask
her or try to persuade her, but tell her! No doubt he was considered quite a stud around
Edmunton
, and why not—the night she'd met him, he'd been able to make her writhe with passion even though she was scared sick. He knew just where to touch and how to move to make her lose her mind, and all that sexual expertise hadn't been gotten from books! He'd probably made love hundreds of times in hundreds of ways with hundreds of women.
And even while she thought it, her mind rebelled at believing Matt had no feeling for her other than sexual. True, he hadn't called her in the six weeks since he'd left
Chicago; equally true, she'd been so upset that night, she couldn't have given him the idea she wanted him to call her. His claim that he'd intended to call her when he got back from South
America in two years had seemed ludicrous when he said it. Now, in the silent darkness, after listening to him talk tonight about his plans for the future, she had the feeling he'd wanted to
be
somebody when he called her the next time. She thought of what he'd told her about his mother's death; surely that boy who'd grieved and raged couldn't have grown into a shallow, irresponsible man whose only real interest in women was—Meredith brought herself up short. Matt was far from being irresponsible. Not once since she'd gotten there had he tried to evade any responsibility for the baby. Furthermore, based on things he'd said and some remarks of Julie's, Matt had been shouldering much of the responsibility for the entire family for years.
If sex was all he had on his mind tonight, why hadn't he tried to persuade her to come to bed with him, when he'd made it eloquently clear he wanted her there? She remembered the tender look in his eyes when he'd asked if she was as sweet as he thought she was. That same look had warmed those gray eyes repeatedly while they sat on the porch.
Why
hadn't he tried to talk her into going to bed with him?
The answer hit her, and it made her feel weak with relief and strangely terrified. He'd definitely wanted to make love, and he certainly knew how to convince her they should, but he'd refused to do that. He wanted something even more tonight from her than her body. She knew it without knowing how she did.