"You look lovely," he said quietly, ignoring her jibe.
Still without looking at him, she turned on her heel and walked over to the closet to get a coat. "Since you didn't have the courtesy to let me know where we're going," she said to the inside of the closet, "I had no idea what I should wear."
Matt said nothing, he knew she was going to put up a fight when she found out, and so he'd simply not told her. "You're dressed perfectly," he said instead.
"Thank you, that's extremely informative," Meredith answered. She pulled out her coat from the closet, turned around, and collided with his chest. "Would you mind moving?"
"I'll help you with your coat."
"Don't help me!" she said, stepping sideways and tugging her coat. "Don't help me with anything! Don't ever help me again!"
His hand locked on her upper arm, pulling her gently but forcibly around. "Is this the way it's going to be all night?" he asked quietly.
"No," she said bitterly, "this is the
good
part."
"I know how angry you are—"
Meredith lost her fear of looking at him. "No, you don't know!" she said, her voice shaking with ire. "You think you know, but you can't even begin to imagine!" Abandoning her vow to stay aloof and silent and to
bore
him to death, she said, "You asked me to trust you in your office, then you took everything I told you about what happened eleven years ago, and used it against me! Did you honestly think you could tear my life to pieces on Tuesday, and walk in here on Wednesday, and everything would be all sweet and rosy, you—you heartless hypocrite!"
Matt gazed into her stormy eyes and honestly considered saying, "I'm in love with you." But she wouldn't believe that after what happened yesterday—and if by some chance he could make her believe it, she'd use it against him and walk out on their agreement. And that he could not let her do. Yesterday she'd told him that all there was between them was a horrible past. He desperately needed the time he'd bargained for—time to breach her defenses and prove to her that a future relationship with him would not cause a repeat of the pain of the past. So instead of trying to explain or argue, he embarked on phase one of the psychological campaign he'd mentally mapped out—which was to get her to break the habit of blaming him completely for that past. Taking her coat, he held it out for her. "I know I seem like a ruthless hypocrite to you now, and I don't blame you for thinking it. But at least do me the justice of remembering that I was
not
the villain eleven years ago." She slid her arms into the sleeves and wordlessly started to step away, but he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around, waiting until she lifted her resentful eyes to his. "Hate me for what I'm doing now," he told her with quiet force, "I can accept that, but don't hate me for the past. I was as much a victim of your father's scheming as you were!"
"You were heartless even then!" Meredith said as she shrugged off his hands and picked up her purse. "You hardly bothered to write when you were in South America."
"I wrote you dozens of letters," he said, and opened the door for her. Wryly he added, "I even mailed half of them. And you're in no position to criticize on that score," he added as they started down the carpeted hallway. "You only wrote six to me in all those months!"
Meredith watched his hand rise and press the down button for the elevator, telling herself that to exonerate himself, he was lying about the letters, but something was niggling at the back of her mind, something he'd told her during his phone call from Venezuela that she'd interpreted at the time as a criticism of her letter writing style.
You
aren
't much of a correspondent, are you . . . ?
Until the doctor had restricted her activity, she'd been in the habit of taking her letters to Matt out to the mailbox at the end of the driveway herself but anyone could have removed those letters afterward—her father, a servant. The only five letters she'd gotten from Matt were ones that had come when she was hovering at the mailbox and got the mail herself from the postman's hand. Perhaps the only letters Matt received were the ones she'd given to the postman personally.
The awful suspicion grew inside her, and she glanced unwillingly at Matt, fighting down an impulse to question him further about the letters. The elevator doors slid open and he ushered her through the lobby and outside to the street, where a maroon Rolls-Royce was waiting at the curb, gleaming like a polished jewel in the light of a streetlamp.
Meredith slid into the luxurious barley leather interior, and gazed fixedly out the windshield as Matt put the car into gear and they glided into traffic. The Rolls was beautiful, but she'd have died rather than say anything that sounded admiring about his car, and besides, her mind was still on the letters.
Evidently, so was Matt's, because as they stopped at a light, he said, "How many letters did you actually get from me?"
She tried not to answer, honestly tried to ignore him, but while she could hold her own in an open confrontation, she was incapable of silent sulking. "Five," she said
flatly, staring at her gloved hands.
"How many did you write?" he persisted.
She hesitated, then she shrugged. "I wrote you at least twice a week at first. Later, when you didn't answer, I cut back to once a week."
"I wrote dozens of letters to you," he said again, more emphatically. "I presume your father was intercepting our mail, and evidently failed to catch the five that got through?"
"It doesn't matter now."
"Doesn't it?" he said with biting irony. "God, when I think of the way I used to wait for mail from you, and the way I felt when it never came!"
The intensity of his voice stunned her almost as much as the words he'd uttered. She glanced at him in shock because he'd never given the slightest indication back then that she meant anything to him as a person. In bed, yes, but not out of it. The muted light of the dashboard played over the harsh, rugged contours of his face and jaw, highlighting the sculpted mouth and arrogant chin. Suddenly she was hurtled back in time, and she was sitting beside him in the Porsche, watching the wind ruffle his thick, dark hair, attracted and repelled by those sternly handsome features and his blatant sensuality. He was more handsome than ever, and the relentless ambition she'd sensed in him in the past had been channeled and realized; it was power now—irrefutable, harsh, and terribly potent. And it was being used on her. After several minutes she finally said, "Is it too much to expect to be told where you're taking me?"
She saw him smile because she'd at last broken the silence. "Right here," he said, and he flipped on the turn indicator and swung the Rolls into the underground parking garage beneath his apartment building.
"I should have known you'd try this," she burst out, fully prepared to get out of the car the instant he stopped and walk home if necessary.
"My father wants to see you," Matt said calmly, pulling into a parking space directly in front of the elevator, between a limousine with California license plates and a midnight-blue Jaguar convertible that was so new it had only temporary license plates. Reluctantly willing to go upstairs if his father was there, Meredith got out of the car.
Matt's burly chauffeur opened the door, and behind him, Patrick Farrell was already walking up the foyer steps, his face wreathed in a smile.
"Here she is," Matt told his father with grim humor, "delivered to you just as I promised she'd be—safe, sound, and mad as hell at me."
Patrick held his arms out to Meredith, beaming at her, and she walked into his embrace, turning her face away from Matt.
Looping his arm over her shoulders, he turned her to the chauffeur. "Meredith," he said, "this is Joe O'Hara. I don't think you two have ever been formally introduced."
Meredith managed a weak, embarrassed smile as she recollected the two highly emotional scenes that the chauffeur had witnessed. "How do you do, Mr. O'Hara."
"It's a pleasure
t'meet
you, Mrs. Farrell."
"My name is Bancroft," Meredith said firmly.
"Right," he said, shooting a challenging grin at Matt. "Pat," he said, starting for the door, "I'll pick you up out front later on."
The last time she'd been there, Meredith had been too distracted to notice the extravagant luxury of the apartment. Now she was too tense to look at anyone, so she glanced around her and was reluctantly impressed. Since Matt's penthouse occupied the entire top floor, all the exterior walls were made entirely of glass, offering a spectacular view of the city lights. Three shallow steps led down from the marble foyer to the various living areas, but instead of being divided by walls, they were left wide open, indicated only by pairs of marble columns. Directly ahead of her was a living room large enough to accommodate several sofas and numerous chairs and tables. To the right of the living room was a dining room, which was elevated like the foyer, and just above and behind that was a cozy sitting room with its own intricately carved English bar to serve it. It was an apartment that had been designed and furnished to entertain in; it was showy and impressive and opulent with its various levels and marble floors; it was also the exact opposite of Meredith's own apartment. And even so, she liked it immensely.
"So," Patrick Farrell said,
beaming, "how do you like Matt's place?"
"It's very nice," she admitted. It hit her then that Patrick's being there could be the answer to her prayer. Not for a moment did she believe he knew the full extent of Matt's heavy-handed tactics, and she vowed to speak to him, privately if possible, and beg him to intervene.
"Matt likes marble, but I'm not so comfortable around it," he teased, grinning. "It makes me feel like I've died and been interred."
"I can imagine how you must feel in his black marble bathtubs, then," Meredith said with a slight smile.
"Entombed,"
Patrick promptly agreed, walking beside her past the dining room and up the three steps to the sitting room.
When she sat down, Patrick remained standing and Matt walked over to the bar. "What would you both like to drink?"
"Ginger ale for me," Patrick said.
"I'll have ginger ale too," Meredith said.
"You'll have sherry," Matt countered arbitrarily.
"He's right," Patrick said. "It doesn't bother me a bit to watch everyone else drink. So," he said, "you know all about Matt's marble bathtubs?"
Meredith devoutly wished she'd never blurted that out. "I—I saw some pictures of the apartment in the Sunday newspaper."
"I knew it!" Patrick declared, winking at her. "All these years, whenever Matt's picture was in a magazine or somewhere, I'd say to myself, I hope Meredith Bancroft sees this. You were keeping track of him, weren't you?"
"No!" Meredith exclaimed defensively. "I most certainly was not!"
Oddly, it was Matt who rescued her from the embarrassing discussion. Glancing up from the bar, he said to her, "While we're on the subject of notoriety, I'd like you to tell me how you expect to keep our seeing each other a secret, which is what your attorney said you want."
"A secret?" Patrick said to her. "Why do you want to do that?"
Meredith thought of at least a dozen angry and highly descriptive reasons, but she couldn't very well tell them to his father, and Matt interceded anyway. "Because Meredith is still engaged to someone else," he told his father, then he shifted his gaze to her. "You've been all over the news here for years. People will recognize you wherever we go."
Patrick spoke up. "I think I'll go see when dinner can be ready," he said, and walked off toward the dining room, leaving Meredith with the impression that he was either starving or eager to make himself scarce.
Meredith waited until he was out of earshot, then she said with angry satisfaction, "I won't be recognized, but you will.
You're
America's corporate sex symbol; you're the one whose motto is 'If it moves, take it to bed.' You're the one who sleeps with rock stars and then seduces their housemaids—are you
laughing
at me?" she gasped, her gaze riveting on his shaking shoulders.
Uncapping the ginger ale, he slid her a sideways grin. "Where are you getting all this junk about housemaids?"
"Several of the secretaries at Bancroft's are among your
many
admirers," Meredith retorted with scathing disdain. "They read about you in the
Tattler."
"The
Tattler?"
Matt said, trying to hide his laughter behind a thoughtful frown. "Is that the tabloid that said I was taken aboard a UFO and told by clairvoyant aliens what business decisions to make?"
"No, that was
The World Star!"
Meredith retorted, growing more frustrated by his amused dismissal of the whole topic. "I saw it in the grocery store."
His amusement vanished and his voice took on an edge. "I seem to recall reading somewhere that you
were having an affair with a playwright."
"That was in the
Chicago Tribune,
and they didn't say I was having an affair with Joshua Hamilton, they said we were seeing a lot of each other!"
He picked up the glasses and carried them over to her. "Were you having an affair with him?" he persisted.
Hating the feeling of being dwarfed by him, Meredith stood up and took the glass from his hand. "Hardly. Joshua Hamilton happens to be in love with my stepbrother, Joel."