Matt saw the warm flush on her smooth cheeks— evidence that his words had affected her. "That leaves us with only one minor objection of yours about being married to me."
"What's that?"
"Your feeling that you're inept and—?"
"Clumsy," she provided, distracted by the way he was lazily stripping off his tie. "And ... and inferior."
"I can see how distressing that might be for you," he agreed with
sham gravity. "I suppose we'd better take care of that next" He began unbuttoning the top button of his shirt.
"What are you doing!" she demanded, her eyes widening.
"I'm getting undressed so you can have your way with me."
"Don't unbutton that second button—I mean it, Matt."
"You're right. You should be doing this. Nothing gives a person a greater sense of power and
superiority
than forcing another person to stand perfectly still while they're being undressed."
"You should know. You've probably done it dozens of times."
"Hundreds. Come here, darling."
"Hundreds?!"
"I was joking."
"It wasn't funny."
"I can't help it. When I'm nervous, I make jokes."
She stared at him. "Are you nervous?"
"Terrified," he said half seriously. "This is the greatest gamble of my life. I mean, if everything doesn't go perfectly in this little experiment, I might as well face the fact that we weren't meant for each other, after all."
Meredith's last vestige of resistance crumbled as she looked at him. She loved him: she had always loved him. And she wanted him so badly—almost as badly as she wanted him to love her. "That's not true."
His voice hoarse with tenderness at her words, Matt opened his arms to her. "Come to bed with me, darling. I promise you that you'll never have any doubts about yourself, or me, after this."
Meredith hesitated and then walked straight into his arms.
In the bedroom Matt did exactly four things to make certain his promise was kept: He made her drink some champagne to relax; he told her that any kiss or caress of his that she'd enjoyed, he would find just as exciting. And then he turned his body into a hands-on teaching instrument for a woman whose very voice excited him. Last, he made no effort to hide or control his reactions to anything she did to him. In so doing, Matt managed to turn the next two hours of his life into an agony of almost unendurable passionate torment, a torment which his wife, after overcoming her shyness, was now doing her gloriously effective damnedest to heighten.
"But I'm not completely
certain
you like this," she whispered, touching her lips to his swollen body.
"Please don't do that," Matt gasped.
"You don't like it?"
"You can see that I do."
"Then why do you want me to stop?"
"Keep doing it, and you'll know why in about one minute."
"Do you like this?" Her tongue flicked against his nipples, and he held his breath to stifle his gasp.
"Yes," he finally managed in a strangled voice. He reached up and grabbed the headboard, gritting his teeth as she mounted him and began to move, determined to let her do it all, have it all. "This is what I get for falling in love with a CEO instead of some nice dumb starlet—" he joked, so dazed with passion, he didn't know what he was saying. "I should have known a CEO would want to be on top—"
It took a moment to realize she had gone perfectly still.
"If you stop now, without letting me have a climax, there's every chance I'll die right here, darling."
"What?" she whispered.
"Please, don't stop, or I'll take over no matter what I promised," he gasped, already lifting his hips to get higher and deeper into her tight, wet warmth.
"You're in
love
with
me?"
He closed his eyes and swallowed, his voice thick with lust and amusement. "What the hell do you think this is all about?" He opened his eyes, and even in the darkened room he could see the tears shimmering in her eyes.
"Don't look at me like that," he pleaded, letting go of the headboard and pulling her down against his chest. "Please, don't cry. I'm sorry I said it," he whispered, kissing her in helpless desperation because he thought she didn't want to hear how he felt, and he'd spoiled their lovemaking. "I didn't mean to say it so soon."
"Soon?" she repeated fiercely, her shoulders shaking with teary laughter.
"Soon?"
she wept brokenly. "I've been waiting almost half my life for you to say you love me." With her wet cheek pressed to his chest and her body still intimately joined to his, she whispered, "I love you, Matt."
The moment she said it, Matt climaxed involuntarily inside her, shuddering, clutching her fiercely, his fingers digging into her back, his face buried against her neck, helpless yet omnipotent because she'd finally said the words.
Her body lightened, holding him. "I've always loved you," she whispered. "I'll always love you."
The climax that should have been nearly over exploded with new force, his body jerking spasmodically, and he groaned long and low, twisting higher into her, brought to the most volcanic moment of his life, not by stimulation or technique, but words. Her words.
Meredith rolled over in Matt's arms and snuggled closer to him, sated and happy.
In
New Orleans, a well-dressed man walked into one of the dressing rooms at Bancroft & Company's crowded store. In his right hand he carried a suit he'd taken off the rack. In his left hand he carried a
Saks Fifth Avenue
bag with a small plastic explosive in it. Five minutes later he left the dressing room, carrying only the suit, which he returned to the rack.
In
Dallas, a woman walked into a stall in the ladies' room at Bancroft & Company, carrying a Louis
Vuitton
purse and a bag from Bloomingdale's. When she left, she was carrying only her purse.
In
Chicago, a man took the escalator to the toy department of Bancroft's downtown store, his arms laden with packages from Marshall Field's. He left one small package stuck beneath the ledge of Santa Claus's
house, where children were lined up to have their pictures taken on Santa's knee.
In Meredith's apartment, several miles away and several hours later, Matt glanced at his watch, then he rolled to his feet and helped Meredith clear away the debris from the meal they had eaten after making love again in front of the fire. They'd taken her car out for a test drive, stopped at a little Italian restaurant, and brought their meal back because they both wanted to be alone together.
Meredith was putting the last of the dishes into the dishwasher when he came up silently behind her. She felt his presence like a tangible force even before his hands settled on her waist, and he drew her back against him. "Happy?" he asked huskily, brushing a kiss on her temple.
"Very happy," she whispered, smiling.
"It's
ten o'clock
."
"I know." Her smile wavered as she braced herself for what she suspected was coming next—and she was right.
"My bed is bigger than yours. So is my apartment. I can have a moving van here in the morning."
Drawing a long, steadying breath, she turned in his arms and laid her hand against his face as if to soften the blow of her refusal. "I can't move in with you—not yet."
Beneath her fingers she felt his jaw tense. "Can't or don't want to?"
"Can't."
He nodded as if accepting her answer, but he dropped his arms. "Let's hear why you think you can't."
Shoving her hands into the deep pockets of her robe, Meredith stepped back and launched her argument. "To begin with, I stood beside Parker last week and let him make a public statement that we were getting married as soon as the divorce was final. If I move in with you now, I'll make Parker look like an ass, and myself like a fool who can't make up her mind—or else a woman who's so shallow and silly that she goes with whatever man wins a fistfight."
She waited for him to argue or agree. Instead, he leaned a hip against the table behind him, his face impassive, and remained silent Meredith realized that his own disregard for public opinion was probably making him view her concerns as trivial, so she brought up another, larger problem. "Matt, I haven't wanted to think about the ramifications of that fight last night, but I can tell you right now, there's a ninety-percent chance I'll be called before the board of directors to give an explanation. Don't you understand the compromising predicament I'm in? Bancroft and Company is an old and dignified operation; the board of directors is rigid, and they didn't want me in the president's office in the first place. A few days ago I stood up in a news conference held at Bancroft and Company and said we hardly know each other and there was no chance of a reconciliation. If I move in with you right away, my credibility as an officer of Bancroft's will suffer just as much as my honesty as a person. And that isn't all. Last night I was part of, and the cause of, a public brawl—a fiasco that could have gotten us all arrested if the police had been called. I'll be lucky if the board doesn't threaten to invoke the morals clause in my contract and ask
me to step down."
"They wouldn't dare invoke the morals clause over a thing like that!" Matt said, looking more contemptuous of the notion than alarmed by it.
"They could and they might."
"I'd get myself a new board of directors," he said.
"I wish I could," Meredith said with a wry smile. "I take it your board pretty much does what you want done?" When he nodded curtly, she sighed. "Unfortunately, neither my father nor I control our board. The point is, I'm a woman, and I'm young, and they weren't any too crazy about my becoming interim president in the first place. Can't you see why I'm worried about what they're going to think of all this?"
"You're a competent executive, that's all in the hell they need to be concerned with. If they call a meeting and demand an explanation, or threaten to invoke the morals clause if you don't step down, then take the offensive, not the defensive. You weren't pushing drugs or running a house of prostitution; you were present during a fight."
"Is that what you'd tell them—that you weren't running drugs or anything?" she asked, fascinated with his business methods.
"No," he said brusquely.
"I'd
tell them to fuck off."
Meredith swallowed a giggle at the ludicrous prospect of standing up in front of twelve conservative businessmen and doing such a thing. "You aren't seriously suggesting I say that?" she said when he didn't seem to share her humor.
"That's exactly what I'm suggesting. You can alter the words slightly if you think you should, but the point is that you can't live your life to suit other people. The harder you try, the more restrictions they'll put on you just for the fun of seeing you jump through their hoops."
Meredith knew he was right, but not in this instance or in her specific circumstances. For one thing, she wasn't willing to incur the board's wrath; for another, she was using her predicament as an excuse to stall before making the commitment Matt wanted. She loved him, but in many ways he was still a complete stranger to her. She wasn't ready to promise herself completely to him. Not yet. Not until she was absolutely certain the paradise he promised her—the part about the life they would have together—really existed. And from the expression on Matt's face, she had an awful feeling he suspected she was stalling. His next words confirmed that he knew exactly what she was doing and that he didn't like it.
"Sooner or later, Meredith, you're going to have to take a risk and trust me completely. Until you do, you're cheating me and you're cheating yourself. You can't outwit fate by trying to stand on the sidelines and place little side bets about the outcome of life. Either you wade in and risk everything to play the game, or you don't play at all. And if you don't play, you can't win."
It was, she thought, a beautiful philosophy on the one hand and a terrifying one on the other—a philosophy, moreover, that was far better suited to him than her.
"How about a compromise," she suggested with a winsome smile that Matt reluctantly found irresistible. "Why don't I wade in—but stay in the shallow end for a while until I get accustomed to it?"
After a tense moment he nodded. "How long?"
"A little while."
"And while you're debating about how deep you dare to go, what am I supposed to do? Am I supposed to wait and pace and wonder if your father will be able to convince you not to live with me or to go through with the divorce?"
"I have plenty of courage to withstand my father regardless of whether he comes around and sees things our way or not," she said so forcefully that he smiled a little. "What I'm worried about is whether or not you'll try to meet him halfway if he does—for my sake?
She rather expected him to agree, for her sake, but she'd misjudged the depth of Matt's hatred, because he shook his head. "He and I have an old score to settle first, and it's going to be settled my way."
"He's ill, Matt," she warned, an awful feeling of foreboding shaking through her. "He can't take a lot of stress anymore."