Mentally, she braced herself for a rebuff and stepped forward, but after a half day of enduring his unpredictable temper, her nerves were scraped raw and her own temper was strained to the breaking point. She watched him taping the last box of books shut, and said, "Can I do anything to help you?"
"Hardly, since I'm already finished," he said without bothering to turn.
Meredith stiffened, her frayed temper sending bright spots of warning color to her high cheekbones. With a last effort to sound polite, she said, "I'm going up to Julie's room to pack some things she left behind. Would you like me to fix you a cup of coffee before I do?"
"No," he snapped.
"Is there anything else I can get for you?"
"Oh, for God's sake!" he exploded, swinging around. "Stop acting like a patient, saintly
wife,
and get out of here!"
Fury blazed in her eyes, and she clenched her hands into fists, fighting back tears and the simultaneous urge to slap him. "Fine," she retorted, trying valiantly to hold on to her shattered dignity. "You can make your own damned dinner and eat it alone." Turning on her heel, she stalked up the stairs.
"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he demanded.
She turned on the landing, looking down at him like an angry, haughty goddess, her hair tumbling over her shoulders. "It means I think you're rotten company!"
That was such an understatement that Matt would have laughed if he weren't already so furious with himself for wanting her—even now as she stood up there, glowering at him. He watched her turn her back on him and disappear down the hall, then he wandered over to the window. Bracing his hand high on the sill, he stared out across the drive. The plowed
drive. Dale
O'Donnell had evidently come while they'd been having lunch. For several minutes Matt stood at the windows, his jaw clenched, fighting against the impulse to go upstairs and discover for himself if Meredith actually wanted the
Houston property badly enough to climb into bed with him. There were worse ways to spend a wintry day and night—and no better revenge than to let her do it, then send her on her way, empty-handed. And still he hesitated, held back by some vague scruple ... or sense of self-preservation. Shoving away from the window, he got his jacket from the closet and went back outside, absolutely determined to find her car keys this time. He found them only inches away from where he'd stopped looking before.
"The drive is clear," he announced, walking into Julie's room where Meredith was putting old scrapbooks into a box. "Pack your things."
Meredith lurched around, stung by his icy tone, her hopes for a reprieve, for a return to the mood of yesterday, dying. Gathering her courage, she slowly finished wrapping the last scrapbook. Now that it was time to tell him about her miscarriage, she fully expected him to react with the equivalent of "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn." Just thinking of that possibility made her seethe with anger. After a half day of enduring his sarcasm and frigid silence, her nerves and her temper were strained to the breaking point. Carefully, she put the wrapped book into the box, then she straightened and looked at him. "Before I leave, there's something I have to tell you."
"I'm not interested," he bit out, striding forward. "Get going."
"Not until I tell you what I actually came here to say!" she said, then cried out in shocked alarm when he grabbed her arm.
"Meredith," he snapped, "cut the crap and get moving!"
"I can't!" She burst out, jerking her arm free. "I—I don't have my keys." He saw it then; the small suitcase lying beside the bed. Matt wasn't clear on much about the night she arrived, but he sure as hell would have noticed if she'd been carrying a suitcase when she got out of that car. The shock of seeing it would have registered on him. Her car was supposedly locked, but she'd managed to get a suitcase out of it! Turning on his heel, he yanked her purse off the dresser, turned it upside down, and unceremoniously dumped the contents out. A set of car keys landed on top of her wallet and makeup case. "So," he said in a silky voice, "you don't have any keys?"
In her panic and desperation, Meredith unthinkingly put her hand on his chest. "Matt, please listen to me—" She watched his gaze rivet on her hand, then it slowly lifted to her face, and when his eyes met hers, there was a distinct change in him, though she was unaware that it was the intimacy of her gesture that caused it. The rigidity left his jaw, his body relaxed; his eyes were no longer hard and indifferent, but lazy and speculative; even his voice was different—smooth, soft, like satin over cold steel. "Go ahead and talk, sweetheart, I'm hanging on to every word."
Meredith's mind rang out an alarm as she looked into those heavy-lidded gray eyes, but she was too desperate to speak to heed the warning or even to notice that his hands were slowly gliding up and down her arms. Drawing a quick, steadying breath, she launched into the speech she'd rehearsed all morning: "Friday evening, I went to your apartment to try to reason with you—"
"I already know that," he interrupted.
"What you don't know is that your father and I had a raging argument."
"I'm sure you didn't rage, sweetheart," he said with thinly veiled sarcasm. "A well-bred woman like you would never stoop so low."
"Well, I did," Meredith said, shaken by his attitude but determined to forge ahead. "You see, your father told me to stay away from you—he accused me of destroying our baby and newly destroying your life. I—I didn't know what he was talking about at first."
"I'm sure the fault was his for not making himself clear—"
"Stop talking to me in that condescending way," Meredith warned with a mixture of panic and desperation. "I'm trying to make you understand!"
"I'm sorry. What is it I'm supposed to understand?"
"Matt, I didn't have an abortion—I had a miscarriage. A miscarriage," she repeated, searching his impassive features for some sign of reaction.
"A miscarriage. I see." His eyes dropped to her lips and his hand slid up her arm, curving around her nape. "So beautiful. . ." he whispered huskily. "You always were so damned beautiful.. ."
Stunned into blank immobility by his words and the husky timbre of his voice, she stared at him, not certain what he was thinking, unable to believe he'd accepted her explanation so easily and calmly. "So beautiful," he repeated, his hand tightening on her nape, "and such a
liar!"
Before she could summon a coherent thought, his mouth swooped down, seizing hers in a kiss of ruthless sensuality, grinding her lips apart. His fingers shoved into her hair and twisted, forcing her head back and holding her captive as his tongue drove insolently into her mouth.
The kiss was intended to punish and degrade her, and Meredith knew it, but instead of fighting him as he obviously expected her to do, she wrapped her arms around his neck, pressed her body to his, and kissed him back with all the shattering tenderness and aching contrition in her heart, trying to convince him in this way that she spoke the truth. Her response made him stiffen in shock; he tensed, as if he intended to shove her away, and then with a low groan he gathered her into his arms and kissed her with a slow, melting hunger that demolished her defenses completely and drove her mad with helpless yearning. The kiss deepened dramatically, his mouth moving urgently, persuasively, on hers, and against her, Meredith felt the rigid pressure of his aroused body.
When he finally lifted his head, she was too dazed to immediately grasp the meaning of his caustic question, "Are you using birth control? Before we get into bed so you can show me how badly you really want that
Houston property, I want to be certain there won't be another child from this encounter—or another abortion."
Meredith lurched back, staring at him in stunned anger.
"Abortion!" she choked. "Didn't you hear what I just told you? I had a
miscarriage."
"Damn you, don't lie to me!"
"You have to listen—"
"I don't want to talk anymore," he said roughly, and his mouth captured hers in a bruising kiss.
Frantic to stop him, to make him listen before it was too late, Meredith struggled and finally managed to tear her mouth from his. "No!" she cried, wedging her hands against his chest, burying her face against his shirt. His hand clamped against the back of her head as if he intended to force her head up again, and Meredith fought with a strength born of terror and panic, shoving his hands away and tearing out of his grasp. "I didn't have an abortion—I
didn't!"
she cried, backing up a step, her chest rising and falling in sharp, shallow breaths, her words spilling out with all the pent-up pain and fury she felt. Gone was the carefully rehearsed speech she'd planned, and in its place came a torrent of anguished words. "I had a miscarriage, and I nearly died. A miscarriage! No one will perform an abortion when you're nearly six months pregnant—"
Minutes ago his eyes had been smoldering with desire, now they raked over her with savage contempt. "Evidently they will if you've given an entire wing to the hospital where it's performed."
"It's not a question of legality, it's too dangerous!"
"Apparently it was, since you were in there for almost two weeks."
Meredith realized he'd already considered all this long ago, arrived at his own logical, if erroneous, conclusions, and that nothing she said was going to make any difference. The realization was shattering, and she turned her head aside, brushing at the tears of futility starting to spill from her eyes, but she could not stop talking to him. "Oh, please," she implored brokenly, "listen to me. I hemorrhaged, and I lost our baby. I asked my father to send you a telegram to tell you what happened and to ask you to come home. I never imagined he'd lie to you, or stop you from getting into the hospital, but your father said that's what he did ..." The dam of tears broke loose, flooding her eyes and shattering her voice as she wept. "I thought I was in love with you! I waited for you to come to the hospital. I waited and waited," she cried, "but you never did."
She bent her head, her shoulders jerking with sobs she couldn't suppress any longer. Matt knew she was crying, but he was rendered incapable of reaction by a memory that had started screaming through his brain when she mentioned her father—a vision of Philip Bancroft standing in his study, white-faced with rage:
You think you're tough, Farrell, but you don't even know what tough is yet, I'll stop at nothing to get Meredith free of you!
After that tirade, after Bancroft's rage was spent, he'd asked Matt if they could try to get along for Meredith's sake. Bancroft had seemed sincere. He'd seemed to accept the marriage, albeit reluctantly. But had he really, Matt wondered now.
I'll stop at nothing to get Meredith free of you . . .
Meredith raised her eyes to his then, wounded blue-green eyes. In a state of paralyzed uncertainty, Matt looked into those eyes, and what he saw nearly sent him to his knees: They were filled with tears and pleading. And truth. Naked, soul-destroying, unbearable truth. "Matt," she whispered achingly, "we—we had a baby girl."
"Oh, my
God!
he groaned, and he yanked her into his arms.
"Oh, God!"
Meredith clung to him, her wet cheek pressed against his shirt, unable to stop the outpouring of grief and sorrow, now that she was in his arms. "I—I named her
Elizabeth for your mother."
Matt scarcely heard
her;his
entire being was tormented with the image of Meredith, lying alone in a hospital room, waiting in vain for him. "Please, no," he pleaded with fate, clasping her tighter to him, rubbing his jaw against her hair. "Please no."
"I couldn't go to her funeral," she whispered hoarsely, "because I was so sick. My father said he went... you d-don't think he lied about that too, do you?"
The agony Matt felt when she mentioned a funeral and being sick almost doubled him over. "Oh, Christ!" he groaned, holding her tighter, running his hands over her back and shoulders, helplessly trying to heal the hurt he had unwittingly caused her years before. She lifted her tear-drenched face to his and begged him for reassurance: "I told him to be sure
Elizabeth had dozens of flowers at her funeral. I told him they had to be pink roses. You ... you don't think he lied to me when he said he sent them?"
"He sent them!" Matt promised her fiercely. "I'm sure he did."
"I couldn't—couldn't bear it if she didn't have any flowers ..."
"Oh, please, darling," Matt whispered brokenly. "Please don't. No more."
Through the haze of her own sorrow and relief, Meredith heard the anguish clogging his voice, saw the ravaged sorrow on his face, and tenderness poured through her, its sweetness filling her heart until she ached with
it. "Don't cry," she whispered, her own tears falling unchecked as she reached up and laid her fingers on his hard
cheek. "It's all over now. Your father told me the truth. That's why I came here, you see ... I had to tell you what really happened. I had to ask you to forgive me—"
Leaning his head back, Matt closed his eyes and swallowed, trying to clear the painful lump of emotion that was clogging his throat. "Forgive you?" he repeated in a ragged whisper. "For what?"
"For hating you all these years."
He forced his eyes to open and he looked down at her beautiful face. "You couldn't possibly have hated me as much as I hate myself at this moment."