Nudged from his sleep by a sound somewhere in the house, Matt opened his eyes and stared in mild confusion at the empty pillow beside him. The room was dark, and he rolled onto his side, squinting at his watch. It was almost
six o'clock
, and he leaned up on his elbow, surprised that he'd slept for almost three hours. For a moment or two, he was perfectly still, listening, trying to decide where Meredith was, but the first sound he heard was the last one he expected: It came from outdoors—a car engine firing, motor revving.
For a moment of ignorant bliss he decided she must have been worried about her battery running down in the cold, and he tossed off the quilts and rolled out of bed. Combing his hand through his hair, he walked over to the window and pushed the curtain aside, intending to open the window and call to her to let him take care of that. What he saw was a pair of red taillights glowing brightly as the BMW sped down the long drive toward the main road.
He was so stunned that his first reaction was to worry that she was driving too damned fast—and then reality hit him. She had left! For a split second his mind couldn't seem to absorb the shock. She had crawled out of bed and crept off in the night! Swearing savagely under his breath, he turned on the lamp and yanked on his pants, then he stood, hands on his hips, glaring at the empty bed in a state of near paralysis. He could not believe she'd run away as if they'd done something she was ashamed of and couldn't bear to face in daylight.
He saw it then—the note propped on the nightstand, written on the same pad of yellow paper she'd used to make her notes for the board of directors meeting. He snatched it up, hope flaring in his chest that she'd merely gone to find a grocery store or something.
"Matt," she'd written, "what happened this afternoon should never have happened. It was wrong for both of us—understandable, I suppose—but terribly wrong. We both have our own lives and plans for the future, and we have people in our lives who love and trust us. We betrayed them by doing what we did. I'm ashamed of that. And even so, I will always remember this weekend as something beautiful and special. Thank you for it."
Matt stood staring in furious disbelief at the words, feeling absurdly—stupidly—as if he'd been raped! No, not raped, used, like some paid stud who she could take to her bed when she wanted a "special" time, and then dismiss afterward like an insignificant peon whom she was ashamed to have been with.
She hadn't changed one damned bit in all these years! She was still spoiled and self-centered and so convinced of her own superiority that it wouldn't
occur
to her that maybe, just maybe, someone from a less privileged class than her own might be worth consideration. No, she hadn't changed at all, she was still a coward, still—
Matt checked himself in mid-thought, amazed that his anger could actually obliterate his memory of everything that he'd discovered. For the last few minutes he'd been judging her based on all the erroneous things he'd believed of her for eleven years. That was habit; it was not reality. Reality was what he'd learned of her in this room; truths so painful, and so beautiful—that they'd made him ache. Meredith was no coward, she had never run away from him, from motherhood, or even her tyrannical father who she'd had to deal with
at the store all these years. She had been eighteen, and she had thought she loved Matt—a slight smile touched his eyes at the memory of her astounding admission—but it vanished when he thought of her lying in the hospital waiting for him. She had sent flowers for their baby, and named her
Elizabeth for his mother.... And when he never came back, she had picked up the pieces of her life, gone back to college, and faced whatever else the future handed her. Even now it made him cringe to remember the things he'd said and done to her in the last few weeks. Jesus, how she must have hated him!
He had threatened her and bullied her... and yet, when she discovered the facts from Matt's father, she had braved a snowstorm to come and tell him the truth, and she had done it knowing that when she arrived, she was going to find brutal hostility.
Leaning a shoulder against the bedpost, he gazed at the bed. His wife, Matt decided with mounting pride, didn't run away from things that would make most people take to their heels.
But tonight she had run from him.
What, he wondered, would make Meredith flee like a frightened rabbit, when, for the first time all weekend, there could have been total harmony between them?
In his mind he quickly reviewed the past two days, looking for answers. He saw her reaching for his hand, asking for a truce, and he remembered the way she'd watched their hands joining—as if the moment was profoundly meaningful to her. Her fingers had trembled when he touched them. He saw her smiling up at him with those glowing blue-green eyes of hers—
I've decided to be just like you when I grow up.
But most of all he remembered the way she had cried in his arms when she was telling him about their baby ... the way she had put her own arms around him, too, holding him to her as naturally as she had in this bed ... the way she had moaned beneath him, her nails biting into his back, her body welcoming his with the same exquisite, shattering ardor she had shown him when she was eighteen.
Matt slowly straightened, struck by the most obvious answer. Meredith had very likely run away tonight because what had happened between them was as shattering to her as it was to him. If it was, then all her plans for her future with Parker and the rest of her life were jeopardized by what had happened in this house and especially in this bed.
She was no coward, but she was cautious. He'd noticed that when they'd talked about the department store. She took calculated risks, but only when the rewards were great and the likelihood for failure was comparatively small. She'd admitted that herself downstairs.
Given that, she sure as hell wasn't going to want to risk her heart or her future on Matthew Farrell again if she could possibly avoid it. The ramifications of making love with
him, of getting involved with him again, were too overwhelming for her to face. The last time she'd done it, her life had become a living hell. He realized that to Meredith, the likelihood for failure with him was enormous, and the rewards were ...
Matt laughed softly—the rewards were beyond her wildest imaginings. Now all he had to do was convince her of it. To do that, he was going to need time, and she wasn't going to want to give it to him. In fact, considering the way she'd fled tonight, he half expected her to fly to
Reno or somewhere else immediately in order to sever all ties with him at the first possible moment. The longer he thought, the more convinced he became that she'd do exactly that.
In fact, there were only two things he was more
sure of, and that was that Meredith still felt something for him, and that she was going to be his wife in every way. To accomplish that, Matt was now prepared to move heaven and earth; in fact, he was even prepared to permanently forgo the gratification of finding her lousy father and making her an orphan. In the midst of those thoughts, he suddenly realized something that made him stiffen in alarm: The roads that Meredith was driving on were bound to be treacherous in places, and she was not likely to be concentrating very well right now.
Turning, he headed swiftly down the hall to his room.
Walking over to his briefcase, he took out the phone and made three calls. The first call was to
Edmunton's
new chief of police. Matt instructed him to have a patrolman watch for a black BMW on the overpass and to discreetly escort the car back to
Chicago to make certain the driver got home safely. The police chief was perfectly willing to comply with the extraordinary request; Matthew Farrell had contributed a very large sum to his election campaign.
His next phone call was to the home of David Levinson, senior partner in Pearson & Levinson. Matt instructed Levinson to appear, with
Pearson in tow, in Matt's office at eight sharp the next morning. Levinson was perfectly willing to comply. Matthew Farrell paid them an annual retainer of $250,000 to do their legal utmost—whenever and wherever he wanted it done.
The last call was to Joe O'Hara. Matt instructed him to get out to the farm and pick him up immediately. Joe O'Hara balked. Matt Farrell paid him a lot of money to be at his beck and call, but Joe also regarded himself as Matt's protector, and his friend. He didn't figure it was in Matt's best interests to have a mean of escape from the farm if Meredith wanted him to stay. Instead of agreeing to leave at once, Joe said, "Is everything all patched up between you and your wife?"
Matt scowled at this unprecedented failure to follow instructions at once. "Not exactly," he said impatiently.
"Is your wife still there?"
"She's already left."
The sadness in O'Hara's voice banished Matt's annoyance with his prying and made him again realize the depth of his driver's loyalty. So you let her go, huh, Matt?"
Matt's smile was in his voice. "I'm going after her. Now, get your tail out here, O'Hara."
"I'm on my way!"
When he hung up the phone, Matt stared out the window, planning his strategy for tomorrow.
"Good morning," Phyllis said, her forehead creasing in a worried frown as Meredith walked past her Monday morning without her usual greeting, two hours late for work. "Is anything wrong?" she asked, getting up from her new desk outside the president's office and following Meredith inside. Miss Pauley, who'd been Philip Bancroft's secretary for twenty years, had decided to take a long-overdue vacation while her employer was on leave.
Meredith sat down at her desk, leaned her elbows on it, and massaged her temples. Everything was wrong. "Nothing, really. I have a slight headache. Do I have any phone messages?"
"A pile of them," Phyllis said. "I'll get them, and I'll bring you some coffee too. You look like you could use some."
Meredith watched Phyllis leave, and she leaned back in her chair, feeling like she'd aged a hundred years since she'd left this office on Friday. Besides having lived through the most cataclysmic weekend of her life, she'd also managed to demolish her pride by going to bed with Matt, betraying her
fiance
, and then compounding her wrongs by running away and leaving Matt a note. Guilt and shame had haunted her throughout the drive home, and to finish it all off nicely, she'd actually thought she was being followed by some demented Indiana patrolman who slowed down whenever she did, stopped for gasoline when she did, and then stayed behind her until she lost sight of him a few blocks from her apartment. By the time she got home she was a mass of guilt and shame and fear—and that was
before
she played back the messages on her answering machine and listened to the ones from Parker.
He'd called Friday night to say that he missed her and needed to hear the sound of her voice. His Saturday morning message had been mildly confused at her lack of reply. Saturday night he'd been worried by her silence, and he'd asked if her father had gotten ill on his cruise. Sunday morning he said he was alarmed and that he was going to call Lisa. Unfortunately, Lisa had evidently explained that Meredith had gone to see Matt on Friday to tell him the truth and get things straightened out. Parker's
sunday
night message was furious and hurt: "Call me,
dammit
!" he'd said. "I want to believe you have a legitimate reason for spending the weekend with Farrell, if that's what you've done, but I'm running out of excuses." Meredith sustained that part better than his next words, which were filled with confusion and tenderness, "Darling, where are you, really? I know you aren't with Farrell. I'm sorry I said that, my imagination is running wild. Did he agree to a divorce? Has he murdered you? I'm terribly worried about you."
Meredith closed her eyes, trying to banish the sensation of impending doom so that she could attempt to get on with her day. The note she'd left Matt had been cowardly and childish, and she couldn't understand why she'd been unable to stay there until he woke up and then say good-bye to him like a mature adult. Every time she went near Matt Farrell, she said and did things that she'd never do under ordinary circumstances—foolish, wrong, dangerous things! In less than forty-eight hours with him, she'd thrown away her scruples and forgotten about things that mattered to her, like decency and principles. Instead, she'd gone to bed with a man she didn't love, and she had betrayed Parker. Her conscience was on a rampage.
She thought of the way she'd responded to him in bed, and bright color ran up her pale cheeks. At eighteen she'd been awed by the fact that Matt seemed to know all the right places to touch her, all the right things to whisper to her, in order to drive her into a frenzy of defenseless desire. To discover, when she was twenty-nine, that he could still do it—only much more so—filled her with despondent shame. Yesterday she'd practically begged him for a climax—she, who was helplessly modest in bed with her own
fiance
.
Meredith drew herself up short. These sorts of recriminations, these thoughts, weren't fair to either Matt or her. The things she'd told him yesterday had shaken him deeply. They'd gone to bed together as a way to ... to console each other. He had
not
merely used that as an excuse to get her into bed. At least, she thought a little wildly, it hadn't
seemed
like it at the time.
She was doing it again, she realized in frustrated alarm—losing focus, concentrating on all the wrong things. It was counterproductive to sit, on the verge of tears, filled with remorse and obsessed with anything as silly as his sexual expertise. She needed to take action, to do something to banish this strange, nameless panic that had been growing inside her from the moment she'd left Matt's bed. At
four o'clock
that morning she'd arrived at certain conclusions, and she'd made a decision. Now she needed to
stop
going over the problems and follow through with that decision.