She looked so beautiful and so flustered and so irate that Matt's shoulders began to shake with laughter. "Is that all?"
"No. There's one more little thing I didn't mention about last night."
"What's that?"
"This—" she announced triumphantly, and pulled off her sunglasses. "I have a black eye! A shiner. A—a—"
Torn between laughter and regret, Matt lifted his finger and touched the tiny blue smudge at the outer corner of her lower lid. "That," he said with a sympathetic grin, "doesn't have the dignity of a shiner or a black eye; it's just a little mouse."
"Oh, good," she said. "I've learned a new term!"
Ignoring her jibe, Matt studied the well-concealed little bruise with thoughtful admiration. "It barely shows. What are you using to hide it?"
"Makeup," she answered, disconcerted by his question. "Why?"
Almost choking with laughter, Matt took off his sunglasses. "Do you think I could borrow some?"
Meredith gaped incredulously at the identical mark at the corner of his eye, and suddenly her emotions veered crazily to mirth. She saw the wry grin tugging at his lips, and she started to giggle. She clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle the sound, her eyes widened, and the giggles erupted into great gales of gusty mirth. She laughed so hard that her eyes
teared
, and Matt started laughing too. When he reached out and drew her quaking body against his own, she collapsed against him and laughed harder.
Wrapping his arms around her, Matt buried his laughing face in her hair, filled with the joy of her. Despite his surface nonchalance a few minutes earlier, the things she'd accused him of were mostly true. He'd been guilt-stricken when he saw the morning papers; he was
turning her life upside down, and if she'd have raged at him, he'd have deserved it. The fact that she was seeing the humor while she recognized the dire consequences filled him with profound gratitude.
When most of her hilarity had passed, Meredith leaned back in his arms. "Did," she asked, swallowing another irrepressible giggle, "Parker give you your— mouse?"
"I'd be less mortified if he had," Matt teased. "The truth is, your friend Lisa nailed me with a right hook. How did you get yours?"
"You did it."
His smile faded. "I did not."
"Yes, you did." She nodded emphatically, her intoxicating face still flushed with merriment. "Y-you hit me with your elbow when I bent down to rescue Parker. Although, if it happened today, I'd probably jump on him with both feet!"
Matt's smile widened with delight. "Really? Why?"
"I told you," she said, drawing a shaky, laughing breath. "I called Lisa this morning to see if she was all right, and they were in bed together."
"I'm shocked!" he said. "I gave her credit for better taste!"
Meredith bit her lip to stop herself from laughing at his quip. "It's really terrible, you know—your best friend in bed with your
fiance
."
"It's an outrage!" Matt declared with sham indignation.
"Yes, it is," she agreed, grinning helplessly at the laughter gleaming in his eyes.
"You have to get even."
"I can't," she said on a suffocated giggle.
"Why not?"
"Because," she said, dissolving into fresh gales of laughter. "Lisa doesn't
have
a
fiance
!" She collapsed in his arms again, overcome with the absurdity of her own joke, burying her laughing face in his chest, her hands sliding around his nape as they used to—clinging to him as instinctively as they had during those long-ago nights of passion. Her body knew she still belonged to him, Matt realized. He tightened his arms around her, his voice turning low-pitched and suggestive. "You can still get even."
"How?" she chuckled.
"You can go to bed with me instead."
She stiffened and backed away a hasty step, still smiling, but more out of self-consciousness than mirth. "I—I have to call the police about my car," she said, launching into diversionary conversation and hastily starting toward her desk. She peered out the window as she passed. "Oh, good, there's the tow truck now," she babbled brightly, picking up the phone to rail the police. "I told the security clerk to have that car removed from my spot."
An odd expression flashed across his face at that announcement, but Meredith was too preoccupied by the fact that he was following her to her desk to wonder about it. When he reached out and firmly pressed down on the button to disconnect her call to the police, she eyed him with wary alarm. He wasn't finished trying to get her into bed, she knew, and her resistance was almost gone. He was so appealing, and it had felt so good to laugh with him ... Instead of reaching for her, as she half expected him to do, he said mildly, "What's the phone number for the security desk?"
She told him, then watched in startled confusion as he called it
"This is Matt Farrell," he told the security guard. "Please go down to the garage and tell the tow truck to leave my wife's car where it is." When the security guard argued that Miss Bancroft's car was an '84 BMW, while the car in her parking space was a blue Jag, Matt said, "I know that. The Jaguar is her birthday present."
"My
what?"
Meredith gasped.
He hung up the phone and turned to her, a smile lurking at his mouth, but Meredith wasn't smiling—she was dumbstruck by the overwhelming generosity of the gift, panicked at the web he was weaving around her, and thoroughly alarmed by the treacherous leap her heart gave at the sound of his deep voice quietly saying "my wife." She started with the least important issues first, because she wasn't quite ready to address the others yet. "Where is my own car?"
"In the night clerk's space, one level below yours."
"But—but how did you start my car to move it? You said at the farm that even if you could start it without the keys, the alarm would disable it."
"That wasn't a problem for Joe O'Hara."
"I
knew
when I saw that gun that he was probably a—a felon."
"No, he's not," Matt said dryly. "He's an
expert with
wiring."
"I can't possibly accept the other car—"
"Yes, darling," he said, "you
can."
Meredith felt it happening again, that awesome magnetic pull of his body and voice, the melting inside her when he called her darling. She backed away a step, and her voice shook. "I—I'm going to the office."
"I don't think so," Matt said softly.
"What do you mean?"
"I mean we have something more important to do."
"What is it?" .
"I'll show you," he promised huskily, "in bed."
"Matt, don't do this to me—" she pleaded, holding her hand up as if to fend him off and backing away two steps.
He stalked her, step for step. "We want each other. We have
always
wanted each other."
"1 really do have to go to the office. I have tons of work."
She backed away again in the same avoidance waltz Matt had teased her about, but her eyes were warm and frightened because she knew.... She knew it was too late to dance out of his reach now.
"Give in gracefully, darling. This dance is over. The next one is ours."
"Please don't call me that," she cried, and Matt realized that for some reason she was truly frightened.
"Why are you afraid?" he asked, stalking her slowly around the back of the sofa, trying to head her toward the bedroom.
Why was she afraid, Meredith thought a little wildly. How could she explain that she didn't want to love a man who didn't love her ... that she never wanted to be as vulnerable to being hurt as she'd been eleven years ago ... that she didn't think he'd be satisfied with her for very long, and she didn't think she could bear it if she lost him again because he wasn't.
"Matt, listen to me. Stand still and listen to me, please!"
Matt stopped short, stunned by the terrified desperation in her voice.
"You said you want children," she blurted out, "and I can't have any. There's something physically wrong with me—it would be too risky."
He didn't miss a beat. "We'll adopt."
"What if I said I don't want any children?" she flung back.
"Then we won't adopt."
"I have no intention of giving up my career—"
"I don't expect you to."
"God, you are making this so hard!" she cried. "Can't you leave me just a little pride? I'm trying to tell you that I couldn't bear being married to you—not living as husband and wife, which is what you say you want."
His face paled as the sincerity in her voice hit him. "Do you mind if I ask you why the hell not?"
"Yes, I
do
mind."
"Let's hear it anyway," he said tautly.
She folded her arms protectively over her chest, absently rubbing them with her hands as if to ward off the sudden chill of his expression. "It's too late for us," she began. "We've changed. You've changed. I can't pretend I don't—don't feel something for you. You know I do. I always did," she admitted miserably, her gaze searching his shuttered gray eyes, looking for understanding and finding only cold impassivity while he waited to hear the rest of what she had to say. "Maybe if we'd stayed together, it would have worked, but it couldn't now. You like sexy movie stars and—and seductive European princesses, and I can't be those things for you!"
"I'm not asking you to be anything but what you are, Meredith."
"It won't be enough!" she argued miserably. "And I couldn't bear living with you and knowing that I'm not enough—knowing that someday you'll start wanting things I can't give you."
"If you're talking about children, I thought we just settled that."
"I don't think we settled it, I think you made a reckless concession because you're willing to say anything right now to make me agree with what you want. But I'm not talking about you wanting children, I'm talking about you wanting other women! I could never be enough for you. I
know
I couldn't."
His eyes widened. "I beg your pardon?"
"I tried to explain to you once before about—about how I feel when we make love. Matt," she said almost choking on her words, "people—men, I mean—they think I'm . .. I'm frigid. Even in college they thought that. I don't think I am exactly, but I'm not—I'm not like most women."
"Go on," he insisted gently when she stopped, but there was an odd light in his eyes.
"In college, two years after you left, I tried to sleep with a boy and I hated it. So did he. Other women on campus were sleeping around and enjoying it, but I didn't. I couldn't."
"If they'd all been through what you had," Matt said, so filled with tenderness and relief that he could hardly keep his voice steady, "they wouldn't have been very damned eager to do it again either."
"I thought that, too, but that wasn't it. Parker isn't a clumsy, oversexed college boy, and I know he thinks I'm not—not very responsive. Parker didn't mind so very much, but you—you would."
"You're out of your mind, sweetheart."
"You're not
used
to me yet! You haven't noticed that I feel awkward and inept. No, I
am
awkward and inept!"
Matt bit back a grin and gravely said, "Inept too? As bad as that?"
"Worse."
"And are those all the reasons you have for being afraid to pick up where we left off eleven years ago?"
You don't love me,
dammit
,
she thought. "Those are all the important ones," she said dishonestly.
Weak with relief, Matt quietly said, "I think we can overcome those hurdles right here. I meant what I said about children. I also meant what I said about your career. That takes care of two out of your three concerns. The situation about other women," he continued, "is only slightly more complex. If I'd have known that this day was going to come for us, I'd have lived my life very differently while I waited for it. Unfortunately, I can't change the past. I can, however, tell you that my past isn't nearly as lurid or indiscriminate as what you've been led to believe. And I can promise you," he added with a tender smile at her upturned face, "that you are enough for me—in every way."
Helplessly affected by the husky timbre of his voice, the sensuality in his beautiful eyes, and the incredibly touching things he was saying, Meredith watched him slowly strip off his sport jacket and toss it over the back of the sofa, but the import of his action didn't register because she was absorbed in what he was saying. "As far as your being frigid is concerned, that is absurd. The memory of what it was like to be in bed with you haunted me for years. And if you think," he continued gravely, "that you're the only one who's harbored some insecurities about those times we spent in bed, then I've got news for you, darling. There were times I felt inadequate. No matter how often I told myself to slow down, to make love to you for hours and make us both wait for a climax, I couldn't seem to do it because being in bed with you made me crazy with wanting."
Tears of relief and joy burned the backs of Meredith's eyes; he'd meant to give her an expensive sports car for a birthday present, but the gift he was giving her with his words meant a thousand times more. Mesmerized, she heard him say, "When I got your father's telegram, I tortured myself for years, thinking you might have stayed married to me if I could have made our lovemaking better, longer, hotter..." A smile suddenly drifted across his handsome face, and his tone changed to one of amused gravity. "That takes care of the issue of frigidity, I think."