But she couldn't choose just any competent attorney, not when Matt was being represented by a firm as powerful and prestigious as Pearson & Levinson. Whoever she chose had to have as much political clout and as much skill as Matt's renowned lawyers possessed; otherwise his lawyers would intimidate hers into submission with the sort of legal muscle-flexing and out-of-court game-playing that lawyers seemed to especially enjoy. Secondly, and equally important, whoever she chose had to be someone who would guard her privacy as well as he guarded her legal interests; someone who wouldn't discuss her case with his friends over drinks at the Lawyers' Club ... someone she could trust implicitly.
Parker had suggested a friend of his, but Meredith wanted someone
she
knew and liked. She didn't want to mix business problems with personal ones, so Sam Green was out of the question. Idly, she picked up her pen and wrote down the names of attorneys she knew socially, then she slowly crossed out each one. All of them were very successful, and all of them belonged to her country club; they played golf with one another; they also probably
gossiped together.
There was only one man who met her criteria, although she hated to tell him about all this. "Stuart," she sighed with a mixture of reluctance and affection. Stuart Whitmore had been the only boy to like her when she was a homely thirteen-year-old, the only boy to voluntarily ask her to dance at Miss
Eppingham's
party. At thirty-three, he was as physically unimpressive as ever, with narrow shoulders and thinning brown hair. He was also a brilliant lawyer from a long line of brilliant lawyers, a fascinating conversationalist, and—most of all—her friend. Two years ago he'd made his last—and most determined—effort to get her to go to bed with him; he did it in a typical Stuart fashion: As if he were delivering a well-prepared legal argument to a jury, he itemized all the reasons that she
ought
to go to bed with him, ending with "including, but not limited to, the future possibility of matrimony."
Surprised and touched that he'd considered marrying her, Meredith had gently turned him down while trying to make him understand that his friendship mattered very much to her. He'd listened intently to her rejection, and dryly replied, "Would you then consider letting me represent you in some legal action? That way I can tell myself that ethics, not lack of reciprocity of feelings, prohibit our getting involved." Meredith was still trying to decipher that sentence when she belatedly heard the wry humor in it, and her answering smile had been filled with gratitude and affection. "I will! I'll steal a bottle of aspirin from a drugstore tomorrow morning, and you can bail me out of jail."
Stuart had grinned at her, and stood up, but his good-bye was warm and endearing. Handing her his business card, he said, "Plead the fifth until I get there."
The following morning, Meredith had coerced Mark Braden into calling a friend of his—a lieutenant at the local precinct, who then called Stuart and told him that Meredith had been busted for shoplifting in a drugstore. Suspecting a prank, Stuart had hung up, called back, and discovered there
was
a Lieutenant
Reicher
, and that Meredith
was
supposedly in custody.
Perched on a step outside the police station, Meredith watched Stuart's Mercedes sedan screech to a stop in the
towaway
zone in front. Not until she saw him leap out of the car, leaving it with the motor running, did she realize how much he really cared for her.
"Stuart!" she called when he ran up the steps right past her. He paused and spun around, and instantly realized he was the victim of a joke. "I'm so sorry," she whispered. "I only meant to show you how far I was willing to go to preserve a friendship that means very much to me."
The anger drained from his expression, he drew a long, steadying breath, then he grinned. "I left two opposing parties of a bitter divorce alone in our conference room, waiting for the other attorney. By now they've either killed each other or, worse, reconciled, and in so doing cheated me out of my very exorbitant fee."
Still smiling at the memory, Meredith picked up the phone and pressed the intercom button. "Phyllis, would you please get Stuart Whitmore at Whitmore and Northridge on the phone for me?"
The moment she put down the phone, nervous tension began to build in her, and her hand trembled as she reached for a stack of computer printouts on her desk. She hadn't seen Stuart more than twice in the last year. What if he didn't return her call... what if he didn't want to get involved with her personal problems... what if he was out of town? The sharp, short buzz of the intercom made her jump.
"Mr. Whitmore is on line one, Meredith."
Meredith drew a steadying breath and picked up the phone. "Stuart, thank you very much for calling me back so quickly."
"I was on my way to a deposition when I heard my secretary take your call," he replied, his tone businesslike but polite.
"I have a small legal problem," she explained. "Actually, it isn't a small problem. It's rather large. No, enormous."
"I'm listening," he said when she hesitated.
"Do you want me to tell you what it is now? On the phone, when you're in a hurry to leave?"
"Not necessarily. You could give me a hint though—to whet my legal appetite."
She heard it then—the dry veiled humor in his voice—and she breathed a sigh of relief. "To put it briefly, I need advice about—about my divorce."
"In that case," he gravely and immediately replied, "my advice is to marry Parker first. We can get a better settlement that way."
"This isn't a joke like the last time, Stuart," she warned, but there was something about him that inspired so much confidence that she smiled a little. "I'm in the most amazing legal mess you've ever encountered. I need to get out of it right away."
"I normally like to drag things out—it builds up the fees," he drolly replied. "However, for an
old friend, I suppose I could sacrifice avarice for compassion just once. Are you free for dinner tonight?"
"You're an
angel!"
"Really? Yesterday the opposing counsel told the judge I was a manipulative son of a bitch."
"You are not!" Meredith protested loyally.
He laughed softly. "Yes, my beauty, I am."
Far from being judgmental, or appalled by her behavior as an eighteen-year-old, Stuart listened to her entire tale without a sign of emotion—not even surprise when she told him the identity of the father of her baby. In fact, so disconcerting was his bland expression and unwavering silence, that when Meredith finished her recitation, she said hesitantly, "Stuart, have I made everything clear?"
"Perfectly clear," he said, and as if to prove that, he added, "You've just finished telling me that your father is now willing to use his influence to get Farrell's zoning request approved with the same disregard for the illegality of influence peddling that he displayed when he had Senator Davies block it? Right?"
"I—I think so," she replied, uneasy about his smoothly worded condemnation of her father's actions.
"Pearson and Levinson represent Farrell?"
"Yes."
"That's it, then," he declared, signaling the waiter for the check. "I'll
call
Bill Pearson in the morning and tell him that his client is unjustly putting my favorite client to a lot of needless mental anguish."
"Then what?"
"Then I will ask him to have his client sign some nice papers, which I will
draw up and send over to him."
Meredith smiled with a mixture of hope and uncertainty. "Is that all there is to it?"
"Could be."
Late the next afternoon, Stuart finally called.
"Did you speak to Pearson?" Meredith asked, her stomach churning with anticipation and apprehension.
"I just hung up a minute ago."
"Well?" she prodded eagerly when he didn't go on. "Did you tell him about my father's offer? What did he say?"
"He
said,"
Stuart replied sardonically, "that the entire matter between you and Farrell is a highly
personal
one, which his client wishes to first deal with from that aspect and later—when his client is ready—
his client
will dictate the terms under which a divorce will be obtained."
"My God," she breathed. "What does that mean? I don't understand!"
"In that case, I shall endeavor to strip away the polite legalese and translate for you," Stuart offered. "Pearson was telling me to go fuck myself."
The profanity, which was completely out of character for Stuart, told Meredith that he was far more annoyed than he was letting on, and that alarmed her almost as much as the incomprehensible attitude of Matt's lawyer. "I still don't understand!" she said, lurching forward in her chair. "Matt was very cooperative that day at lunch —until he got the phone call about the
Southville
rezoning thing. Now I'm offering to see that his rezoning request is approved, and he won't even
listen."
"Meredith," Stuart said firmly. "Did you hold anything back when you described your relationship with Farrell to me?"
"No, nothing. Why do you ask?"
"Because," he replied, "from everything I've read and heard about him, Farrell is a logical, intelligent man— coldly, almost inhumanly logical according to some people. Logical, busy men don't go out of their way to get revenge for petty grievances. It's a waste of their time, and in Farrell's case, his time is worth a great deal of money. But every man has a limit to what he's willing to take. It's as if Farrell's been pushed past that limit, and he
wants
a fight, he's spoiling for it! And that makes me very, very uneasy."
It made Meredith more than uneasy. "Why would he want a fight?"
"I have to assume he wants the satisfaction of revenge."
"Revenge for what?" Meredith implored in an alarmed cry. "Why would you say such a thing?"
"It was something Pearson said—he warned me that any attempt on your part to push this divorce through court without prior and complete approval from his client would result in what he called even more unpleasantness for you."
"More unpleasantness?" she repeated, flabbergasted. "Why would he want that now? When I had lunch with him last week, he tried to be nice. He honestly did. He joked with me even though he really despises me—"
"Why?" he interrupted intently. "Why would he despise you? What makes you think he does?"
"I don't know. It's just something I sense." Dismissing that unanswerable question, she continued. "He's understandably furious over the
Southville
thing, and he was undoubtedly offended by the things I said to him in the car after lunch. Could that be what got under his skin and 'pushed him past the limit'?"
"Could be," Stuart replied, but he sounded unconvinced.
"What are we going to do now?"
"I'll think about it over the weekend. I'm leaving for
Palm Beach in an hour to spend the weekend with Teddy and Liz Jenkins on their yacht. We'll work out our strategy when I get back. Try not to worry too much."
"I'll try," Meredith promised, and when she hung up she made a
herculean
effort to thrust Matthew Farrell out of her mind by immersing herself in work. She'd succeeded reasonably well two hours later when Sam Green asked to see her right away. As he'd promised, Sam had rushed his staff to complete the project that was preventing him from going to
Houston and negotiating with Thorp for the
Houston property. Three days ago, Sam had called them, hoping to arrange a meeting this week, only to have Ivan Thorp tell him there was no point in coming down until next week.
Smiling, Meredith watched him heading toward her desk. "Are you ready for your
Houston trip?"
"Thorp just called me and canceled our meeting," he said, and sank into the chair across from her, looking angry and harassed. "It seems that they accepted a twenty-million-dollar contract on that land. The purchaser wanted the deal kept confidential until now, which is why Thorp stalled about meeting with me. The property is now owned by the real estate division of a large conglomerate."
Sick with disappointment and adamantly unwilling to accept defeat, Meredith said, "Contact the new owners, and find out if they'll sell it."
"I already have, and they're perfectly willing to sell," Sam said, his voice edged
with
sarcasm.
Surprised by his tone, Meredith prodded, "Then let's stop wasting time and start negotiating with them."
"I've already tried. They want thirty million and that figure
isn't
negotiable."
"Thirty million! That's ridiculous!" Meredith exclaimed, half rising from her chair. "It's insane! The property is worth twenty-seven million, tops, in today's economy and they paid only twenty for it!"
"I pointed that out to the director of their real estate division, but his attitude is take it or leave it."
Meredith got up and restlessly walked over to the windows, trying to decide what to do next. The
Houston property, with its location near The Galleria, was the most desirable site for a Bancroft's branch that she'd ever seen anywhere. She wanted that store built there, and she wasn't going to relent. "Are they planning to develop it themselves?" she asked, returning to her desk and
leaning on the edge, her arms crossed over her chest, lost in thought.