his is home," Meredith said as he pulled to a stop in front of the house.

He looked up at the imposing stone structure with its leaded glass windows while Meredith unlocked the front door. "It looks like a museum."

"At least you didn't say mausoleum," she said, smiling over her shoulder.

"No, but I thought it."

Meredith was still smiling at his blunt quip as she showed him into the darkened library at the back of the house and turned on a lamp, but when he went directly to the phone on the desk and picked it up, her heart sank. She wanted him to stay, she wanted to talk, she wanted to do anything to fend off the despair that she knew would overwhelm her again when she was alone. "There's no reason for you to leave so soon. My father will play cards until the club closes at two A.M."

He turned at the note of desperation in her voice. "Meredith, I'm not a bit worried about your father for my own sake, but you have to live with him. If he comes home and finds me here—"

"He won't," Meredith promised. "My father wouldn't let death interrupt his card games; he's an obsessive cardplayer."

"He's damned obsessive about you too," Matt said flatly, and Meredith held her breath while he hesitated before finally hanging up the phone. This was probably going to be the last pleasant evening she would have for months, and she was determined to make it last. "Would you like a brandy? I'm afraid I can't offer you anything to eat because the servants are already in bed."

"Brandy will be fine."

Meredith went over to the liquor cabinet and took out the brandy decanter. Behind her, he said, "Do the servants lock the refrigerator at night?" She paused, a brandy snifter in her hand. "Something like that," she evaded.

But Matt wasn't fooled—she realized it the moment she brought his glass over to the sofa and saw the amusement gleaming in his eyes. "You can't cook, can you, princess?"

"I'm sure I could," she joked, "if someone showed me where the kitchen is, and then pointed out the stove and refrigerator."

The corners of his mouth deepened into an answering smile, but he leaned forward and purposefully put his glass on the table. She knew exactly what he intended to do even before he caught her wrists and firmly pulled her toward him. "I know you can cook," he said, tipping her chin up.

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because," he whispered, "less than an hour ago you set me on fire."

His mouth was a fraction of an inch from hers when the shrill ring of the telephone made her lurch out of his arms. When she answered it, her father's voice was like an arctic blast. "I'm glad to see that you had sense enough to do as I told you. And Meredith," he added, "I was on the verge of permitting you to go to Northwestern, but you can forget about that now. Your behavior tonight is living proof that you can't be trusted." He hung up on her.

With shaking fingers, Meredith replaced the receiver. Her arms began to tremble and then her knees, until her whole body was quaking with futility and rage, and she braced her palms on the desk to steady herself.

Matt came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. "Meredith?" he said, his voice deep with concern. "Who was that? Is anything wrong?"

Even her voice shook. "That was my father checking to make certain that I came home as ordered."

He was silent for a moment, and then he said quietly, "What have you done to make him distrust you like this?"

Matt's thinly veiled accusation tore at her heart, hacking away at her rapidly disintegrating control. "What have I done?" she repeated, her voice rising with hysteria. "What have I done?"

"You must have given him some reason to think he has to guard you like this."

Savage resentment boiled up inside of Meredith, erupting into a mass of churning rage. Her eyes bright with tears and some half-formed purpose, she swung around on him and slid her hands up his hard chest "My mother was promiscuous. She couldn't keep her hands off other men. My father guards me because he knows I'm like her."

Matt's eyes narrowed as she wrapped her arms fiercely around his neck. "What the hell do you think you're doing?"

"You know what I'm doing," she whispered, and before he could answer, she pressed herself against his full length and kissed him long and lingeringly.

He wanted her—Meredith knew it the moment his arms encircled her, pulling her tightly against his hardening body. He wanted her. His mouth seized hers in a hungry, consuming kiss, and she tried to do her best to make certain he didn't change his mind—and that she couldn't change hers. Her fingers clumsy and urgent, she tugged the studs loose from his shirtfront and opened his shirt, sliding her hands up his chest, spreading the white cloth wide apart, baring what looked to be an acre of bronzed muscle with springy dark hairs, then she closed her eyes tightly, reached behind her back and started tugging on the zipper of her dress. She wanted this, she'd earned it, she told herself fiercely.

"Meredith?"

His quiet voice made her head jerk up, but she didn't have the courage to lift her gaze above his chest.

"I'm flattered as hell, but I've never actually seen a woman rip off her clothes in the throes of passion, particularly after only one kiss."

Defeated before she'd begun, Meredith leaned her forehead against his chest. His hand slid over her shoulder, long fingers curving around her nape, his thumb stroking, while his other hand slid around her waist and moved her closer. Then his fingers moved down her bare back to the zipper of her dress. The bodice of a very expensive chiffon gown came loose.

Swallowing audibly, she started to lift her arms to shield herself from view, and hesitated. "I'm... not very good at this," she said, raising her eyes to his.

His lids drifted down, his gaze shifting to the tops of her breasts. "Aren't you?" he whispered huskily as he bent his head.

Meredith wanted to find nirvana; she sought it in that next kiss. And she found it. Her fingers flexing against the corded muscles in his back, she kissed him with blind need, and when his parted lips moved insistently against hers, she welcomed the suggestive invasion of his tongue. She returned it, and made him gasp and clench her tighter. And then, suddenly, she wasn't in control anymore; she wasn't aware of anything except sensations. His mouth seized hers in stormy desire, her clothes came loose and a cold draft hit her. Her hair tumbled down over her shoulders, freed by his hands, and the room tilted as she was brought down onto the sofa beside a hard, demanding, naked male body.

And then it stopped, and Meredith surfaced a little from a dark, sweet world where she felt only his mouth and the stirring stroking of his hands over her flesh. She opened her eyes and saw him leaning up on his forearm, studying her face in the mellow glow of the desk lamp. "What are you doing?" she whispered, but the thin, wispy voice didn't sound like hers.

"Looking at you." As he said it, his gaze moved down along the sides of her breasts past her waist, then down her thighs and legs. Embarrassed, Meredith stopped him from what he was doing by touching her lips to his chest. His muscles flinched reflexively as she brushed her lips over his skin, and his hand sank slowly into the hair at her nape, lifting her forward. This time when she raised her gaze to his, he bent his head. His mouth captured hers almost roughly, his tongue parting her lips and driving into her mouth in a fiercely erotic kiss that sent flames shooting through her entire body. Leaning over her, he kissed her until she heard herself moaning softly, and then his mouth was at her breasts, making them ache while his fingers explored and tormented and made her back arch against his hand. He moved, his body shifting on top of her, his hips insistent, his lips rough and tender against the curve of her neck and cheek. His mouth returned to hers again, parting her lips; his legs wedged between hers, parting her thighs, and all the while his tongue was tangling with hers, withdrawing and plunging deep. And then he stopped.

Cradling her face between his palms, he ordered hoarsely, "Look at me." Somehow Meredith managed to surface from her sensual daze; she forced her lids open and looked into his scorching gray eyes. The moment she did, Matt drove into her with a force that tore a low cry from her throat and made her body arch like a bow. In that split second he recognized he'd just taken her virginity, and his reaction was more violent than hers.

He froze, his eyes clenched shut. His shoulders and arms taut, he stayed there inside her, unmoving. "Why?" he demanded in a raw whisper.

She shivered at the accusation she thought she heard and misunderstood his question. "Because I haven't done it before."

That answer made his eyes open and what she saw wasn't disappointment or accusation, it was tenderness and regret. "Why didn't you tell me? I could have made this much easier for you."

Spreading her fingers over his cheek, Meredith said with a soft, reassuring smile, "You did make it easy. And perfect."

That accomplished what nothing else had. It made him groan. He covered her lips with his and, with infinite gentleness, began to move inside her, withdrawing almost all the way and slowly plunging deep, steadily increasing the tempo of his driving strokes, giving and giving and giving until Meredith was wild beneath him. Her fingernails bit into his back and hips, clutching him to her, while the passion raging inside her built into a holocaust, and still it went on and on, until it finally exploded in long soul-destroying bursts of extravagant pleasure. Gathering her into his arms, Matt shoved bis fingers into her hair, kissing her with fiery urgency, and drove into her one more time. The deep raw hunger of his kiss, the sudden surge of liquid from his body into hers, made Meredith clasp him tighter and moan with the exquisite sensation.

Her heart beating frantically, she moved onto her side with him, her face pressed against his chest, his arms tight around her. "Do you have any idea," he whispered in a shaken, hoarse voice, his lips brushing her cheek, "how exciting you are, and how responsive?"

Meredith didn't answer, because the reality of what she'd done was beginning to seep through her, and she didn't want to let it. Not now, not yet. She didn't want anything to spoil this. She closed her eyes and listened to the lovely things he continued to say to her while he laid his hand against her cheek, idly brushing his thumb over her skin.

And then he asked something that did need a response and the magic faded, receding beyond her reach. "Why?" he asked her quietly. "Why did you do this tonight? With me?"

She tensed at the difficult, probing question, sighed with a feeling of loss, and pulled out of his arms, wrapping herself in the afghan lying over the end of the sofa. She'd known about the physical intimacy of sex, but no one had warned her about this strange, uneasy aftermath. She felt stripped bare emotionally; exposed, defenseless, awkward. "I think we'd both better get dressed," she said nervously, "and then I'll tell you whatever you want to know. I'll be right back."

In her room, Meredith put on a navy and white robe, tied the belt around her waist, and went back downstairs, still barefoot. As she passed the clock in the hall, she glanced at it. Her father would be home in an hour.

Matt was on the phone in the study, fully dressed with the exception of his tie which he'd shoved into his pocket. "What's the address here?" he asked. She told him and he relayed it to the cab company he had called. "I told them to be here in a half hour," he said. Walking over to the coffee table in front of the sofa, he picked up his abandoned brandy glass.

"Can I get you anything else?" Meredith asked, because that question seemed like something a good hostess normally asked a guest when the evening neared its end. Or was that what a waitress asked, she wondered a little hysterically.

"I'd like an answer to my question," he said. "What made you decide to do this tonight?"

She thought she heard a tautness in his voice, but his face was completely expressionless. She sighed and looked away, self-consciously tracing an inlaid square on the desk. "For years my father has treated me like a... a closet nymphomaniac, and I've never done anything to deserve it. Tonight when you insisted he must have some reason for 'guarding me,' something just snapped inside of me. I think I decided that if I was going to be treated like a tramp, I might as well have the experience of sleeping with a man. And at the same time, I had some insane idea of punishing you—and him. I wanted to show you that you were wrong."

After several moments of ominous silence, Matt said curtly, "You could have convinced me I was wrong by simply telling me that your father is a tyrannical, suspicious bastard. I would have believed you."

In her heart, Meredith knew that was true, and she glanced uneasily at him, wondering if anger had been her only reason for instigating what had just happened, or if she'd simply used anger as an excuse to experience intimately that sexual magnetism she'd felt from him all night. Used. That was the operative word. In a strange sort of way she felt guilty for using a man she had liked enormously to retaliate against her father.

In the lengthening silence, he seemed to evaluate what she'd said, and what she hadn't said, and to guess what she was thinking. Whatever conclusions he drew from all that obviously didn't please him very much, because he abruptly put down his glass and glanced at his watch. "I'll walk down to the end of the drive."

"I'll show you out." Polite sentences spoken between two strangers who'd been doing the most intimate possible things together less than one hour ago. That incongruity registered on her as she straightened from the desk. At the same moment his gaze riveted on her bare feet, shot back to her face, and then ricocheted to her hair tumbling loose about her shoulders. Barefoot, hair down, and in a long robe, Meredith did not look quite the way she did in a strapless evening dress with her hair in a sophisticated chignon. She knew before he asked the question, what it was going to be. "How old are you?"

"Not... quite as old as you think."

"How old?" he persisted.

"Eighteen."

She expected some sort of reaction to that. Instead, he looked at her for a long, hard moment, and then he did something that made no sense to her. Turning, he went over to the desk and wrote something on a slip of paper. "This is my phone number in Edmunton," he said calmly, handing it to her. "You can reach me there for the next six weeks. After that, Sommers will know how to get in touch with me somehow."

When he left, she walked upstairs, frowning at the scrap of paper in her hand. If this was Matt's way of suggesting she give him a call sometime, it was arrogant, rude, and completely obnoxious. And a little humiliating.

For most of the following week, Meredith jumped every time the phone rang, afraid that it was going to be Matt. Just the recollection of the things they'd done made her face burn with embarrassment, and she wanted to forget it and him.

By the following week she didn't want to forget it at all. Once the guilt and fear of discovery had receded, she found herself thinking about him constantly, reliving the same moments she'd wanted to forget. Lying in bed at night, with her face pressed into the pillow, she felt his lips on her cheek and neck, and she recalled each sexy, tender word he'd whispered to her with a tiny thrill. She thought about other things too, like the pleasure of being with him while they talked on the lawn at Glenmoor, and the way he'd laughed at the things she said. She wondered if he was thinking about her, and if he was, why didn't he call...

When he didn't phone the week after that, Meredith realized she was obviously very forgettable and that he hadn't thought her "exciting" or "responsive" at all. She went over and over the things she'd said to Matt just before he left, wondering if something she'd said was the reason for his silence now. She considered the possibility that she might have hurt his pride when she told him the truth about why she'd decided to sleep with him, but she found that very hard to believe. Matthew Farrell wasn't the least bit insecure about his sexual attraction—he'd carried on that sexual banter with her within minutes of meeting her, when they first danced. It was more likely he hadn't called because he'd decided she was too young to bother with.

By the end of the following week, Meredith no longer wanted to hear from him. Her period was two weeks overdue, and she wished to God she'd never met Matthew Farrell at all. As one day drifted into the next, she couldn't think about anything except the terrifying possibility that she'd gotten pregnant. Lisa was in Europe, so there was no one to turn to or help make the time go faster. She waited and she prayed and she promised fervently that if she wasn't pregnant, she'd never have intercourse again until she was married.

But either God wasn't listening to her prayers or He was immune to bribery. In fact, the only one who seemed to notice and care that she was in a silent agony was her father. "What's wrong, Meredith?" he asked repeatedly. Not long ago the biggest problem in her life was not being able to go to the college she wanted to attend. Now that problem seemed infinitesimal. "Nothing is wrong," she told him. She'd been too worried to argue with him over what happened with Matt at Glenmoor, and too distracted to engage in any more battles with him thereafter.

Six weeks after she met Matt, Meredith's second period did not occur on its usual date, and her fear escalated to terror. Trying to console herself with the fact that she didn't feel sick in the mornings or any other time, she made an appointment for a pregnancy examination and test.

Five minutes after she hung up the phone, her father knocked on her bedroom door. When she called to him to come in, he walked over to her and held out a large envelope. The return address read Northwestern University. "You win," he said shortly. "I can’t stand any more of this mood you've been in. Go to Northwestern if it's that damned important to you. I'll expect you home on weekends, however, and that is not negotiable!"

She opened the envelope that contained the notice that she was officially enrolled for the fall semester, and she managed a weak smile.

* * *

Meredith didn't go to her own doctor because he was one of her father's cronies. Instead, she went to a dingy family planning clinic near Chicago's South Side where she was certain no one would know her. The harassed physician there confirmed her worst fears: she was pregnant.

Meredith heard that with a peculiar dead calm, but by the time she got home, her numbness had given way to mindless, gripping panic. She could not face an abortion, she didn't think she could face giving the baby up for adoption, and she could not face her father with the news that she was about to become an unwed mother and the newest scandal in the Bancroft family. There was only one other alternative, and Meredith took it: she called the number Matt had given her. When no one answered the phone she called Jonathan Sommers and lied that she'd found something of Matt's and needed to send it to him. Jonathan provided her with Matt's address and the information that Matt hadn't yet left for Venezuela. Her father was out of town, so she packed a small suitcase, left him a note saying that she'd gone to visit friends, got into her car, and drove to Indiana.

In her despondent state of mind, she saw Edmunton as a bleak town of smokestacks, factories, and steel mills. Matt's address was in a distant rural area that, to her, was just as bleak. After a half hour of driving up one county highway and then another. Meredith gave up trying to locate the road he'd written down and pulled into a run-down gas station to ask directions.

A fat, middle-aged mechanic came out, his eyes sweeping over Meredith's Porsche, and then her, in a way that made her skin crawl. She showed him the address she was trying to find, but instead of telling her where it was, he turned and yelled over his shoulder, "Hey, Matt, isn't this your road?"

Meredith's eyes widened as the man who'd had his head beneath the hood of an old truck in the service station slowly straightened and turned. It was Matt; his hands were covered with grease, his jeans were old and faded, and he looked exactly like a mechanic in some godforsaken little town. She was so stunned by how different he looked, and so panicked about her pregnancy, she couldn't hide her reaction as he walked up to the car. He saw it, and it doused the surprised smile from his chiseled features; his face hardened, and when he spoke, his voice was devoid of emotion. "Meredith," he said, acknowledging her with a curt nod. "What brings you here?"

Instead of looking at her, he was concentrating on roping his hands on the rag he'd pulled out of his back pocket, and Meredith had the clutching feeling that he'd just guessed why she was there, and that accounted for the sudden chill in his attitude. She wished, very devoutly, that she were dead—and with equal fervency that she hadn't gone there. He obviously wasn't going to want to help, and any grudging help he could offer, she didn't want. "Nothing really," she lied with a hollow laugh, her hand already hovering over the gearshift. "I just decided to take a drive and found myself heading this way. I guess I'd better be going though, and—"

He lifted his gaze from the rag to hers then, and her voice suffocated as a pair of piercing gray eyes locked onto hers... cold, probing, speculative eyes. Knowing eyes. Reaching down, he opened the door. "I'll drive," he clipped, and in her state of wild tension, Meredith obeyed automatically, getting out of the car and walking around it. Over his shoulder, Matt glanced at the fat man who was hovering at the hood of the car, watching the scenario with disgustingly ill-bred fascination. "I'll be back in an hour."

"Hell, Matt, it's already three-thirty," the other mechanic said, his face splitting into a grin that displayed a missing front tooth. "Knock off for the day. A classy piece like this one deserves more than just an hour with you."

Meredith's humiliation was complete, and to add to her misery, Matt looked absolutely incensed as he rammed the Porsche into gear and shot out onto the winding county road, gravel spraying from the tires. "Do you mind slowing down a little?" she asked shakily, surprised and relieved when he immediately eased off the accelerator. Feeling that some sort of conversation was demanded, she said the only thing she could think of at the moment. "I thought you worked in a mill."

"I work there five days a week. I moonlight here the other two as a mechanic."

"Oh," she said uneasily. A few minutes later, they rounded a curve and he flipped on the turn indicator, then he pulled into a small clearing in a grove of trees with an old, weathered picnic table in the middle of it. Lying in the grass beside a crumbling brick barbecue was a wooden sign with faded letters carved into it that said MOTORISTS PICNIC GROUNDS. COURTESY, EDMUNTON LIONS CLUB.

He turned off the ignition and in the silence Meredith could hear her blood pounding frantically in her ears as she stared straight ahead, trying to adjust to the fact that the inscrutable stranger beside her was the same man she'd laughed with and made love with six weeks before. The dilemma that had sent her there hung over her like a stifling pall, indecision raged at her, and tears she refused to shed ached in her eyes. He moved and she jumped, her head jerking toward him—but all he was doing was getting out of the car. He came around to her side and opened her door, and Meredith got out. Looking around with feigned interest, she said, "It's pretty here," but her voice sounded strained and taut to her own ears. "I really have to be getting back though."

Instead of answering, he leaned his hip on the picnic table, his weight braced on the opposite foot, and quirked an expectant brow at her—waiting, she supposed, for some sort of additional explanation about her visit. His prolonged silence and unwavering scrutiny were tearing away at the control she was fighting to maintain. The thoughts that had screamed through her mind all day began their terrifying chanting again: She was pregnant, and about to become an unwed mother, and her father was going to be demented with rage and pain. She was pregnant! She was pregnant! She was pregnant—and the man who was semi-responsible for her heartbreak was sitting there watching her squirm with the detached interest of a scientist observing a bug wriggling under a microscope. Suddenly and irrationally furious, Meredith rounded on him. "Are you angry about something, or are you just being perverse by refusing to say anything?"

"Actually," he replied evenly, "I'm waiting for you to begin."

"Oh." Meredith's burst of fury gave way to misery and uncertainty as she searched his composed features. She'd ask him for advice, she decided, reversing her decision of a few minutes ago. Just advice, that's all. God knew, she had to talk to someone! Crossing her arms over her chest as if to protect herself from Matt's reaction, she tipped her head back, swallowing painfully as she pretended to study the leafy canopy above. "As a matter of fact, I did have a specific reason for coming here today."

"I assumed you did."

She glanced at him, trying to guess if he'd assumed anything else, but bis expression was unreadable. She returned her gaze to the leaves, watching them blur as scalding tears stung her eyes. "I'm here because—" She couldn't say the words, the ugly, shameful words.

"Because you're pregnant," he finished for her in a flat voice.

"How did you guess?" she choked bitterly.

"Only two things could have brought you here. That was one of them."

Drowning in isolated misery, she said, "What was the other one?"

"My superb dancing?"

He was joking, and the wholly unexpected reaction was Meredith's undoing. The dam of tears broke; she covered her face with her hands and her body shook with wrenching sobs. She felt his hands close on her shoulders, and she let him pull her forward between his thighs and into his arms. "How can you j-joke at a time like this?"

she wept against his chest, but she was painfully glad for the silent comfort he was offering with his embrace. He pressed a handkerchief into her hand, and Meredith shuddered, struggling desperately for control. "Go ahead and say it," she told him, wiping her eyes. "I was stupid to let this happen."

"You won't get any argument from me on that."

"Thank you," she said sarcastically, dabbing at her nose. "Now I feel much better." It dawned on her then that he was reacting with amazing and admirable calm and that her attitude was only making matters worse.

"Are you absolutely certain you're pregnant?"

Meredith nodded. "I went to a clinic this morning, and they said I'm six weeks pregnant. I'm also certain the baby's yours, in case you're wondering and you're too polite to ask."

"I'm not that polite," he said sardonically. Her teary aquamarine eyes snapped to his, blazing with affront at what she mistook for his challenge, and he shook his head to silence her outburst "It isn't courtesy that stopped me from asking, it's a knowledge of basic biology. I don't doubt that I'm responsible." She'd half expected recriminations, shock, and disgust from him; the fact that he was reacting with quiet, unemotional logic was incredibly reassuring and utterly baffling. Staring at the button on his blue shirt, she brushed away a tear and heard him calmly ask the question that had been torturing her for hours: "What do you want to do?"

"Kill myself!" she admitted dismally.

"What's your second choice?"

Her head jerked up at the reluctant smile she heard in his voice. Her brows drawing together in confusion, Meredith looked at him, struck by the indomitable strength in that rugged face, comforted by the surprising understanding she saw in his steady gaze. She pulled back slightly, needing to think, and felt a twinge of disappointment when he dropped his arms immediately. Even so, his calm acceptance of the facts had communicated itself to her, and she felt considerably more rational than she had all day. "All my choices are horrible. The people at the clinic thought an abortion was a logical choice...." She waited, fully expecting him to urge her to do exactly that. If she hadn't caught the imperceptible tightening of his jaw, she'd have thought him either indifferent to the idea or even in agreement with it. As it was, she still wasn't completely certain. She looked away and her voice broke. "But I—I don't think I can face it, not alone. Even if I did, I don't know if I could live with myself afterward." She drew a long, quavering breath, trying to steady her voice. "I could have the baby and give it up for adoption, but, oh, God, that wouldn't solve things. Not for me. I'd still have to tell my father I'm an unwed mother, and that's going to break his heart. He'll never forgive me. I know he won't! And—and I keep thinking of how my baby would feel, later on, wondering why I gave it away. And I know I'd spend the rest of my life looking at children, wondering if that one was mine, and if it's wondering about me and looking for me." She brushed away another tear. "I don't think I could live with the doubt or the guilt." She glanced at his inscrutable features. "Could you possibly comment on some of this?" she demanded.

"As soon as you say something I disagree with," he informed her in a tone of authority he'd never used on her before, "I'll let you know."

Daunted by his tone, but comforted by his words, she said, "Oh." Nervously rubbing her palms on the legs of her tan slacks, Meredith continued, "My father divorced my mother because she slept around. If I go home and tell him I'm pregnant, I think he'll throw me out. I don't have any money, but I'll inherit some when I'm thirty. I can try to raise my baby myself, somehow, until then..."

He finally spoke. Two words—terse and final "Our baby."

Meredith nodded shakily, relieved to the point of tears that he felt that way. "The last alternative is one you— you aren't going to like. I don't like it either. It's obscene...." She trailed off in humiliated anguish, then she summoned all her courage and began again, her words rushing out. "Matt, would you be willing to help me convince my father we fell in love, and decided to get... get married right away? Then we could tell him a few weeks from now that I'm pregnant? Naturally, after the baby is born, we'll get a divorce. Would you agree to an arrangement like that?"

"With great reluctance," he snapped after a prolonged pause.

Drowning in humiliation at his long hesitation and ungracious acceptance, Meredith turned her face away. "Thank you for being so gallant," she replied sarcastically. "I'll be happy to put it in writing that I don't want anything from you for the baby, and that I promise to give you a divorce. I have a pen in my purse," she added, starting for the car with some half-formed, angry idea of writing out an agreement there and then.

His hand locked on her arm as she stalked past him, pulling her to an abrupt halt and turning her around. "How the hell do you expect me to react?" he bit out. "Don't you think it's just a little unromantic on your part to begin by telling me you find the idea of marrying me 'obscene' and to start talking about a divorce in the same breath you mentioned marriage?"

"Unromantic?" Meredith repeated, gaping at his harsh features, torn between hysterical laughter at his monumental understatement and alarm at his anger. But then the rest of what he'd said hit her, banishing her mirth and making her feel like a thoughtless child. "I'm sorry," she said, looking directly into enigmatic silver eyes. "I truly am. I didn't mean that marrying you is obscene to me. I meant that getting married because I'm already pregnant is an obscene reason for doing something that's—that's supposed to happen only because two people are in love."

Limp with relief, she watched his expression soften. "If we can make it to the courthouse before five o'clock," he said, straightening and taking charge, "we can get the license out of the way today and get married on Saturday."

Getting a marriage license struck Meredith as being appallingly easy and sickeningly meaningless. She stood beside Matt, producing the necessary documents to prove her age and identity, watching him sign his name and signing hers beneath it. Then they walked out of the old courthouse in the center of town while the janitor waited impatiently to lock the doors behind them. Engaged to be married. As simply and unemotionally as that. "We made it just in time," she said, her smile bright and brittle, her stomach churning. "Where are we going now?" she added as she slid into the car, automatically letting him drive because she didn't want to bother.

"I'm going to take you home."

"Home?" she repeated tautly, noticing he didn't look one bit more pleased about what they'd just done than she felt. "I can't go home, not until we're married."

"I wasn't referring to that stone fortress in Chicago," he corrected her, sliding into the seat beside her. "I was talking about my home." As tired and bemused as she felt, his disdainful description of her house still made her smile a little. She was beginning to realize that Matthew Farrell wasn't awed or intimidated by anything, or anyone. Turning, he rested his arm across the back of her seat, and her smile faded at his implacable tone. "I agreed to get a license, but before we take the final step, we're going to have to come to an agreement on some things."

"What things?"

"I don't know yet. We'll talk more at home."

Forty-five minutes later, Matt turned off a county road lined with neatly tended cornfields into a rutted driveway. The car rattled and pounded over the wooden planks of a little bridge that spanned a creek, rounded a curve, and Meredith had her first glimpse of the place he called home. In sharp contrast to the well-kept fields in the distance, the quaint frame farmhouse looked forlorn and badly in need of paint. In the yard, weeds were winning the battle for space with grass, and the door on the barn to the left of the house was hanging drunkenly on one hinge. Despite all that, there was evidence that someone had once loved and enjoyed the place; pink roses were blooming riotously on a trellis beside the porch and there was an old wooden porch swing hanging from the limb of a giant oak tree in the front yard.

On the way there, Matt had told her that his mother had died seven years before, after a long bout with cancer, and that he lived there with his father and his sixteen-year-old sister. Overwhelmed with nervousness at the thought of meeting his family, Meredith tipped her head toward the right, where a farmer was driving a tractor through a field. "Is that your father?"

Matt paused as he leaned down to open her door, glanced in the direction she indicated, and shook his head. "That's a neighbor. We sold most of our land years ago, and we lease the rest to him. My father lost what little interest he had in farming when my mother died." He saw the tension in her face as they started up the porch steps, and he put his hand on her arm. "What's wrong?"

"I'm scared to death about facing your family."

"There's nothing to be afraid of. My sister will think you're exciting and sophisticated because you're from the big city." After a hesitant pause, he added, "My father drinks, Meredith. He started when they told him my mother's illness was terminal. He holds down a regular job and he's never abusive. I'm telling you this so you'll understand him and be able to make allowances. He's been completely sober for a couple of months, but that can end at any time." It wasn't an apology, it was a statement of fact, spoken in a calm, nonjudgmental voice.

"I understand," she said, though she'd never had any close association with an alcoholic in her life and she didn't understand at all.

She was spared the need to worry about it further because at that moment the screen door banged open and a slim girl with Matt's dark hair and gray eyes raced onto the porch, her gaze glued to the car in the yard. "Omigod, Matt, a Porsche!" Her hair was cut almost as short as his, and it made her pretty features even more vivid. She turned to Meredith, her face alive with reverent wonder. "Is it yours?"

Meredith nodded, taken aback by the surge of instantaneous liking she felt for the girl who resembled Matt so much, and yet had none of his reserve. "You must be incredibly rich," she continued ingenuously. "I mean, Laura Frederickson is very rich, but she's never had a Porsche."

Meredith was stunned by the mention of money and curious about Laura Frederickson; Matt looked extremely annoyed by the mention of both. "Knock it off, Julie!" he warned.

"Oh, sorry," she said, grinning at him. To Meredith she said, "Hi. I am Matt's incredibly bad-mannered sister, Julie. Are you guys coming inside?" She opened the screen door. "Dad got up a little while ago," she added to Matt. "He's working the eleven o'clock shift this week, so dinner will be at seven-thirty. Is that okay?"

"Fine," Matt said, putting his hand on Meredith's back, ushering her inside. Meredith glanced about her, her heart beating a frantic tattoo as she braced herself to meet Matt's father. The interior of the house looked much like the exterior—quaint, with signs of neglect and wear that overshadowed its early-American charm. The wooden plank floors were scarred and scuffed, and the braided rugs that were scattered about were worn and faded. At right angles to a brick fireplace with bookshelves built into the wall, a pair of nubby green armchairs faced a sofa upholstered in a patterned cloth that long ago had resembled autumn leaves. Beyond the living room was a dining room with maple furniture, and beyond that an open door revealed a kitchen with a sink that stood on legs. A stairway on the right led from the dining room to the second floor, and a very tall, thin man with graying hair and a deeply grooved face was walking down it, a folded newspaper in one hand, a glass filled with dark amber liquid in the other. Unfortunately, Meredith hadn't seen him until that moment, and the uneasiness she felt as she looked around the house was still written across her face when her eyes riveted on the glass in his hand.

"What's going on?" he asked as he walked into the living room, glancing from Meredith to Matt to Julie, who was hovering near the fireplace, surreptitiously admiring Meredith's pleated slacks, Italian sandals, and khaki safari shirt.

In answer, Matt introduced Meredith to him and to Julie. "Meredith and I met when I was in Chicago last month," he added. "We're getting married on Saturday."

"You're whaaat?" his father uttered.

"Fantastic!" Julie cried, diverting everyone. "I always wanted a big sister, but I never imagined she'd come with her very own Porsche!"

"Her very own what?" Patrick Farrell demanded of his irrepressible daughter.

"Porsche," Julie repeated ecstatically, racing over to the window and drawing the curtain back to show him. Meredith's car glinted in the sunlight—sleek, white, and expensive. As completely out of place as she was. Patrick evidently thought so, too, because when he looked from the car to Meredith, his shaggy brows jerked together until the creases between his faded blue eyes deepened to furrows. "Chicago?" he said. "You were in Chicago for only a few days!"

"Love at first sight!" Julie declared, leaping into the breach of taut silence. "How romantic!"

Patrick Farrell, who'd seen the uneasy expression on Meredith's face when she glanced around the house a moment earlier, attributed her reaction to disdain for his home and for him, not to her own frighteningly uncertain future. Now he glanced out the window at her car, then turned and looked at her frozen face. "Love at first sight," he repeated, studying her with unconcealed doubt. "Is that what it was?"

"Obviously," Matt said in a tone that warned him to drop the subject, then he rescued Meredith by the expedient means of asking her if she'd like to rest before dinner. Meredith would have eagerly grabbed at barbed wire to haul herself out of this. Next to telling Matt she was pregnant, this was the second most humiliating confrontation of her life. She nodded at Matt while Julie insisted that Meredith use her room, and Matt went out to the car for Meredith's overnight bag.

Upstairs, Meredith sank morosely onto Julie's four-poster, and Matt put her single piece of luggage on a chair. "The worst is over with," he told her quietly.

Without looking up, she shook her head, twisting her fingers in her lap. "I don't think so. I think it's only beginning." Seizing on the smallest of her looming problems, she said, "Your father hated me on sight."

Laughter tinged his voice. "It might have helped if you hadn't looked at the glass of iced tea he was holding like it was a coiled snake."

Flopping back on the bed, she stared at the ceiling and swallowed, ashamed and bewildered. "Did I do that?" she asked hoarsely, closing her eyes as if to shut out the image.

Matt looked down at the forlorn beauty draped across the bed like a drooping flower, and in his mind he saw her as she'd been at the country club six weeks ago, filled with laughing mischief and doing her effective damnedest to ensure that he enjoyed himself. He noted the changes in her while something strange and unfamiliar tugged levity at his heart, and his mind pointed out the absurdities of their dilemma.

They didn't know each other at all; they knew each other intimately.

In comparison to every other female he'd had sex with, Meredith was a complete innocent; she was pregnant with his child.

There was a social gulf between them a thousand miles wide; they were going to bridge that gulf with marriage. And then widen it with divorce.

* * *

They had absolutely nothing in common; nothing except one astonishing night of lovemaking—sweet, hot lovemaking, where the seductive, insistent temptress in his arms had become a panicky virgin, and then a tormenting delight. An unforgettable night of lovemaking that had haunted him for weeks afterward, a night when he had been willingly seduced, only to become the insistent seducer who was more desperate than ever in his life to give them both a climax they'd never forget.

And he certainly had.

Thanks to his unsurpassed diligence and determination in that endeavor, he'd made himself a father.

A wife and child were definitely not a part of Matt's master plan right now; on the other hand, he'd known when he devised the plan and followed it for ten long years, that sooner or later something was going to happen and he was going to have to adapt it to suit new requirements. The responsibility for Meredith and the baby was coming at a very inopportune time, but Matt was used to shouldering enormous responsibilities. No, the responsibility didn't bother him as much as other things did—the most immediate of which was the absence of hope and laughter on Meredith Bancroft's face. The possibility that because of what happened six weeks ago, those two things might never brighten that entrancing face of hers bothered him more than he would have believed possible. Which was why he leaned over her, braced his fists on either side of her shoulders, and in a voice he'd meant to be teasing, he ordered sharply, "Cheer up, sleeping beauty!"

Her eyes snapped open, narrowed, dropped to the smile on his lips, then lifted to his eyes again in confused misery. "I can't," she whispered hoarsely. "This whole idea is insane, I see that now. We'll only be making things worse for each other, and the baby, by getting married."

"Why do you say that?"

"Why?" she repeated, flushing with humiliation. "How can you ask me why? My God, you didn't even want to take me out again after that night. You haven't even phoned. How can—"

"I intended to call you," he interrupted. She rolled her eyes at that unbelievable claim, and he went on. "In a year or two—as soon as I got back from South America." If she weren't so miserable, Meredith would have laughed in his face at that one, but his next words, spoken with quiet force, stunned her and doused the impulse. "If I'd thought for one minute you actually wanted to hear from me, I'd have called you long before this."

Torn between disbelief and painful hope, Meredith closed her eyes, trying unsuccessfully to deal with her bewildering, uncontrollable reactions. Everything was extremes—extremes of despair, of relief, of hope, of joy.

"Cheer up!" Matt ordered again, inordinately pleased that she'd apparently wanted to see him again. Among other things, he'd assumed six weeks ago that in the harsh light of day, she'd reevaluate things and decide his combined lack of money and social standing were impossible obstacles to any further relationship. Evidently she hadn't felt that way. She drew a ragged breath, and not until she spoke did Matt realize that she was trying valiantly to respond to his urging to cheer up. With a tremulous smile she said darkly, "Are you planning to be a nag?"

"I think that's supposed to be my line."

"Really?"

"Mmm." he confirmed. "Wives nag."

"What do husbands do?"

He gave her a look of deliberate superiority. "Husbands command."

In contrast to her next words, her smile and voice were angelically sweet. "Would you like to bet on that?"

Matt tore his gaze from her inviting lips and looked into jewel-bright eyes. Mesmerized, he answered with blunt honesty. "No."

And then the last thing that he expected occurred. Instead of cheering her up, he realized she was crying, and just when he was blaming himself for making her do that, Meredith put her arms around him and pulled him down to her. Burying her face in the curve of his neck and shoulder, she turned into his arms as he stretched out beside her on the bed, her slim shoulders shaking. When she finally spoke, several moments later, her words were rendered almost indistinguishable by tears. "Does a farmer's fiancée have to can and pickle things?"

Matt muffled a stunned laugh, stroking her luxuriant hair. "No."

"Good, because I don't know how."

"I'm not a farmer," he reassured her. "You know that."

The real cause of her misery came pouring out in a sob of deep, pure grief. "I was supposed to start college next month. I have to go to college. I p-planned to be president someday, Matt."

Astonished, Matt tipped his chin down, trying to see her face. "That's a hell of a goal," he said before he could stop himself. "President of the United States..."

That last, perfectly serious remark, startled a shriek of teary laughter from the unpredictable young woman in his arms. "Not of the United States, of a store!" she corrected him, and the gorgeous eyes she raised to his were suddenly swimming with tears of laughter now instead of despair.

"Thank God for that," he teased, so eager to keep her smiling that he paid no attention to the implications of what he was saying. "I expect to be a reasonably rich man in the next few years, but buying you the presidency of the United States might be beyond my means even then."

"Thank you," she whispered.

"For what?"

"For making me laugh. I haven't cried this much since I was a child. Now I can't seem to stop."

"I hope you weren't laughing at what I said about being rich."

Despite his light tone, Meredith sensed that he was extremely serious about that, and she sobered. She saw the determination in that square jaw, the intelligence and hard-bitten experience in those gray eyes. His life had not given him any of the advantages that it offered men of her own class, but she sensed instinctively that Matt Farrell had a rare kind of strength coupled with an indomitable will to succeed. She sensed something else about him too—that despite his arbitrary attitude and the mild cynicism she'd glimpsed, there was a core of gentleness within him. His behavior today was proof of that. She had initiated their lovemaking six weeks ago, and this pregnancy and hasty marriage was undoubtedly as disastrous to bis life as it was to hers. Yet, not once had he torn into her for her stupidity or carelessness, nor had he told her to go to hell when she asked him if he would marry her—which she'd half expected him to do.

Watching her study him, Matt knew she was rating his chances to succeed and make good his claim; he also knew how incongruous that claim would seem to her, particularly now. The night he'd met her, he'd at least looked successful. Now, however, she knew what sort of place he came from; she'd seen him with his head under the hood of a truck and grease all over his hands, and he remembered that momentary flash of shock and repugnance on her face. And so, as he looked down at that beautiful face of hers, he waited for her to laugh at his pretension—no, not laugh—she was much too well bred to laugh in his face; she'd say something condescending, and he'd know it in an instant, because those expressive eyes of hers would give away her real thoughts.

She finally spoke, her voice quiet, thoughtful, smiling. "Planning to set the world on fire, are you?"

"With a torch," he averred.

To his complete shock, Meredith Bancroft lifted her hand and shyly laid it against his tense jaw, her fingers spreading over his cheek. The smile on her lips transferred to her eyes, making them glow. Softly, but with absolute conviction, she whispered, "I'm sure you will, Matt."

Matt opened his mouth to say something, and he couldn't speak; the touch of her fingers, the proximity of her body, and the look in her eyes suddenly drugged his mind. Six weeks ago, he'd been wildly attracted to her; in the space of a moment, that latent attraction erupted with a force that made him lean down and seize her mouth with hard, demanding hunger. He devoured its sweetness, stunned by his own urgency, astonished when he had to slow down and coax her lips apart, because he knew instinctively she was feeling a little of what he was feeling. And when her lips did part and begin to move with his, he was shocked by the surge of triumph he felt. Common sense fled; Matt leaned up and over her, his body already rigid with desire, and almost groaned a few minutes later when she tore her mouth from his and held her hands against his chest to keep him away. "Your family," she gasped desperately. "They're downstairs..."

Matt reluctantly dragged his hand from her bared breast. His family. He'd forgotten about all that. Downstairs it had been obvious that his father had leapt to the correct conclusion as to the reason for their sudden marriage—and the wrong conclusions about the sort of woman Meredith was. He needed to go downstairs and straighten that out, he did not need to reinforce his father's opinion that Meredith was a rich slut by staying up in this bedroom with her right now. He was amazed he'd forgotten that; he was more amazed by his unparalleled lack of control where she was concerned. Slow, gorgeous lovemaking hadn't been what he'd intended just then—swift, total possession had been his goal, and that had never happened to him before.

Tipping his head back, Matt drew a steadying breath and got off the bed, removing himself from the proximity of temptation. Leaning a shoulder against the bedpost, he watched her scoot up into a sitting position. She glanced uneasily at him, hastily straightening her clothes, and he grinned as she modestly covered the breasts he'd been kissing and caressing a moment before. "At the risk of sounding outrageously impulsive," he remarked casually, "I'm beginning to find the notion of a marriage in name only not only gothic, but impractical. It's obvious we have a strong sexual attraction to each other. We've also made a baby together. Maybe we ought to consider taking a shot at living like married people. Who knows," he added, lifting his broad shoulders in a shrug, a smile tugging at his lips, "we might like it"

Meredith wouldn't have been more surprised if he'd grown wings and started flying around the room, then she realized he was merely tossing the idea around as a possibility, not making a suggestion. Torn between resentment at his offhand attitude and an odd kind of pleasure and gratitude that he'd even brought the idea up, she said nothing.

"There's no hurry," he added with a roguish grin as he straightened. "We have a few days to make up our minds."

When he left, Meredith stared at the closed door in exhausted disbelief, completely dazed by the speed with which he reached conclusions, gave orders, and switched directions. There were very distinct and startlingly different sides to Matthew Farrell, and she wasn't at all certain who he really was. The night she met him, she'd seen a chilling harshness in him; yet, that same night, he had smiled at her jokes, quietly talked to her about himself, kissed her into insensibility, and made love to her with demanding passion and exquisite tenderness. Even so, she had a feeling that the gentleness he nearly always showed her wasn't necessarily his norm, and that he wasn't to be underestimated. She had an even stronger feeling that whatever Matthew Farrell chose to do with the rest of his life, someday he was going to be a force to be reckoned with. She fell asleep thinking he already was a force to be reckoned with.

Whatever Matt had said to his father before Meredith came down to dinner was evidently effective, because Patrick Farrell seemed to accept without further challenge the fact that they were getting married. Even so, it was Julie's determined chatter that kept the meal from being a nerve-racking ordeal for Meredith. Matt was generally silent and thoughtful during most of it. At the same time, he seemed to dominate the room and even the conversation, simply by being present and listening to what was being said.

Patrick Farrell, who should have been the head of the household, had clearly abdicated that role to Matt. A slender, brooding man with a face that bore traces of dissipation and tragedy, he deferred to Matt whenever a question came up about who ought to do what. Meredith thought him both pitiful and somehow frightening, and she continued to feel that he didn't particularly like her either.

Julie, who seemed to have willingly accepted the role of cook and housekeeper to the two men, was like a Fourth of July sparkler, every thought she had burst from her lips in a torrent of enthusiastic words. Her devotion to Matt was obvious and total; she jumped up to get him coffee, asked his advice, and listened to whatever he said as if God Himself were rendering an opinion. Meredith, who was trying desperately not to think about her own problems, wondered how Julie had kept her enthusiasm and optimism here; she wondered how any girl who seemed as bright as Julie could willingly forsake some sort of career for a future of looking after her father, which Meredith assumed was what she planned to do. Immersed in her thoughts, it took Meredith a moment to realize Julie was talking to her.

"There's a department store in Chicago called Bancroft's," Julie told her. "I see their ads in Seventeen sometimes, but mostly in Vogue. They have fantastic stuff. Matt brought me a silk scarf from there once. Do you ever shop there?"

Meredith nodded, her smile unconsciously warming at the mention of the store, but she didn't elaborate. There hadn't been time to tell Matt of her connection to Bancroft's, and Patrick had already reacted so negatively to her car that she didn't want to do it there. Unfortunately, Julie gave her no choice.

"Are you any relation to those Bancrofts—the people who own the department store, I mean?"

"Yes."

"A close relation?"

"Pretty close," she said, helplessly amused by the excited glee in Julie's big gray eyes.

"How close?" Julie asked, putting her fork down, peering at her. Matt paused, his coffee cup halfway to his mouth, staring at her. Patrick Farrell leaned back in his chair, frowning at her.

With a silent sigh of defeat, Meredith admitted, "My great-great-grandfather founded the store."

"That's fantastic! Do you know what my great-great-great grandfather did?"

"No, what?" Meredith asked, so drawn into Julie's contagious enthusiasm that she forgot to look at Matt to see how he'd reacted.

"He immigrated to this country from Ireland and started a horse ranch," Julie told her, standing up and beginning to clear the table.

Meredith smiled and got up to help her. "Mine was a horse thief!" Behind her, both men picked up their coffee cups and took them into the living room.

"Was he really a horse thief?" Julie asked as she filled the sink with soapy water. "Are you sure?"

"Positive," Meredith averred, adamantly refusing to turn to watch Matt walk away. "They hanged him for it."

They worked in companionable silence for a few moments, then Julie said, "Dad's working double shifts for the next few days. I'm going to spend tonight with a girlfriend, studying. I'll be back in the morning in time to make breakfast though."

Distracted by Julie's remark about studying, Meredith overlooked the fact that she was evidently going to be alone with Matt tonight. "Studying? Aren't you on summer vacation?"

"I'm going to summer school. That way, I'll be able to graduate in December—two days after I turn seventeen."

"That's young to graduate."

"Matt was sixteen."

"Oh," Meredith said, wondering about the quality of a rural school system that let everyone graduate so early. "What will you do after you graduate?"

"Go to college. I'm going to major in one of the sciences, but I haven't decided which one yet. Biology probably."

"Really?"

Julie nodded and said with pride, "I have a full scholarship. Matt's waited until now to go away because he wanted to be certain I'd be okay on my own. It's just as well, though, because it gave him a chance to get his M.B.A. while he was waiting around for me to grow up. Although he'd have had to stay in Edmunton and keep working anyway, just to finish paying off Mom's medical bills."

Meredith whirled around and gaped at her. "Matt had a chance to get his what?"

"His M.B.A.—you know, master's degree—business administration. That's what comes after you get your bachelor's degree," she prompted helpfully. "Matt had a dual major for his undergraduate degree—economics and finance. Brains run in our family," she added, then she saw Meredith's blank shock and stopped. Hesitantly, she said, "You—you don't know anything at all about Matt, do you?"

Only how he kisses and makes love, Meredith thought with shame. "Not much," she admitted in a small voice.

"Well, you shouldn't blame yourself. Most people think Matt's hard to get to know, and you two have known each other for only two days." That sounded so sordid that Meredith turned away, unable to face her. She picked up a mug and started wiping it. "Meredith," Julie said, looking worriedly at her averted face, "it's nothing to be ashamed of—I mean it's no big deal to me that you're pregnant." Meredith dropped the mug and it rolled across the linoleum under the sink. "Well, it isn't!" Julie persisted, bending down and scooping it up.

"Did Matt tell you I'm pregnant?" Meredith managed. "Or did you figure it out for yourself?"

"Matt told my dad privately, and I eavesdropped, although I'd already figured it out myself, actually."

"Wonderful," Meredith said, drowning in mortification.

"I thought it was pretty neat," Julie agreed. "I mean, until Matt told Dad all about you, I was starting to feel like I was the only virgin alive over the age of sixteen!"

Meredith closed her eyes, feeling a little faint from the wild leaps of intensely revealing conversation and angry that Matt had discussed her with his father. "That must have been quite a little gossip session they were having," she said bitterly.

"Matt wasn't gossiping about you! He was straightening out my dad about what sort of girl you are." That made Meredith feel immeasurably better, and when Julie saw it, she continued in a slightly different vein. "Thirty-eight of the two hundred girls in my high school class this year are pregnant. Actually," she confided a little dispiritedly, "I've never had to worry about it. Most guys are afraid to kiss me."

Feeling that some reply was in order, Meredith cleared her throat and said, "Why?"

"Because of Matt," Julie said succinctly. "Every guy in Edmunton knows Matt Farrell is my brother. They know what Matt would do to them if he found out they tried anything with me. When it comes to guarding a woman's 'virtue,'" she added with a laughing sigh, "having Matt around is like wearing a chastity belt."

"Somehow," Meredith said before she could stop herself, "I didn't find that to be exactly true."

Julie laughed, and Meredith suddenly found herself laughing with her.

When they joined the men in the living room, Meredith braced herself for an awkward couple of hours of watching television, but Julie again took matters into her own hands. "What shall we do?" she asked, looking expectantly from Matt to Meredith. "I know, how about a game or something? Cards? No, wait, how about something really silly—" She turned to the bookshelves, running her finger past several games. "Monopoly!" she said, looking over her shoulder.

"Not me," Patrick said. "I'd rather watch this movie."

Matt had no desire whatsoever to play any game, particularly that one, and he was on the verge of suggesting that Meredith go for a walk with him, when he realized that what she probably needed was some relief from anything intense, which their conversation outside would undoubtedly become. Moreover, she'd established a rapport with Julie and seemed to feel comfortable with her. He nodded, trying to appear as if he enjoyed the prospect, then he glanced to Meredith for a decision. She didn't look any more enthusiastic than he felt, but she smiled and nodded too.

Two hours later he admitted to himself that the Monopoly game had been an unexpected and unqualified success that even he'd enjoyed. With Julie as instigator, the game had immediately become a kind of farce, with both girls trying their damnedest to beat him and, failing that, to cheat him. Twice he'd caught Julie stealing the money he'd already won, and now Meredith was coming up with outrageous reasons for refusing to pay him his due. "No excuses this time," he warned Meredith as her token landed on a property he owned. "You owe me fourteen hundred for that."

"No, I don't," she said with a smug grin. She pointed to the little plastic hotels he'd put on his property, one of which she'd nudged with her finger. "That hotel is encroaching on my easement. You built on my land, therefore you owe me."

"I'll 'encroach on your easement' but good," he threatened, chuckling, "if you don't hand over my money."

Laughing, Meredith turned to Julie. "I have only one thousand. Can you lend me some?"

"Sure thing," Julie said, even though she'd already lost all her money. Reaching out, she snatched several $500 bills from Matt's pile and handed them to Meredith. A few minutes later, Meredith admitted defeat. Julie went to get her books and Meredith finished putting the game away, then she got up to return it to the bookshelf. Behind her, Patrick Farrell stood up. "I'd better get going," he said to Matt. "Did you leave the truck at the garage?" When Matt said he had, and that he'd get a ride into town in the morning to pick it up, Patrick turned to Meredith. Throughout their rowdy Monopoly game, she'd felt his eyes on her. Now he smiled—a grim, uncertain smile. "Good night, Meredith."

Matt stood up, too, and asked her if she felt like going for a walk.

Glad for any reprieve that would keep her from lying in bed, worrying, Meredith said, "That sounds nice."

Outside, the night air was balmy, and the moon painted a wide path across the yard. They'd just walked down the porch steps when Julie came out behind them, a sweater over her shoulders and schoolbooks in her arms. "See you in the morning. Joelle's picking me up at the end of the drive. I'm going over to her house to study."

Matt turned, brows pulling together. "At ten at night?"

She paused, her hand on the railing, an exasperated smile on her pretty face. "Matt!" she said, rolling her eyes at his obtuseness.

He caught on then. "Tell Joelle I said hello." She left, hurrying toward the car lights at the end of the gravel drive, and Matt turned to Meredith, asking her something that had obviously been puzzling him. "How do you know about encroaching on easements and zoning violations?"

Tipping her head back Meredith gazed at the harvest moon hovering overhead like a huge golden disk. "My father has always talked to me about business. There was a zoning problem when we built our branch store in the suburbs, and a problem with an easement when the developer paved the parking lot." Since he'd already asked a question, Meredith asked him one that had been plaguing her for hours. Pausing, she reached up and pulled a leaf from a low branch overhead while she made an unsuccessful effort to keep the accusation out of her voice. "Julie told me you have an M.B.A. Why did you let me think you were an ordinary steelworker who was heading off to Venezuela to chase your luck in the oil fields?"

"What makes you think steelworkers are ordinary and people with M.B.A.'s are special?"

Meredith heard the mild reprimand in those words and she flinched inwardly. Leaning her shoulders against the tree trunk behind her, she said, "Did I sound like a snob?"

"Are you one?" he asked, shoving his hands into his pockets, studying her.

"I—" She hesitated, searching his shadowy features, strangely tempted to say whatever she thought he wanted to hear, and, just as firmly, she resisted the temptation. "I probably am."

She didn't hear the disgust in her voice, but Matt did and the glamour of his sudden, lazy grin made her pulse leap. "I doubt it."

The three words made her feel inordinately pleased. "Why?"

"Because snobs don't worry about whether they are or not. However, to answer your question, part of the reason I didn't say anything about the degree is that it doesn't mean anything unless, and until, I can put it to use. Right now all I have are a bunch of ideas and plans that may not work out the way I think they should."

Julie had said most people found him difficult to get to know, and Meredith could easily believe that. And yet, there were many times, like now, when she felt an odd sense of being so attuned to him that she could almost read his mind. Quietly she said, "I think the other reason you let me go on thinking you're a steelworker was that you wanted to see if it would matter to me. It was a—a test, wasn't it?"

That startled a chuckle from him. "I suppose it was. Who knows—that's all I may ever be."

"And now you've switched from steel mills to oil rigs," she teased, her eyes laughing, "because you wanted a job with more glamour, is that it?"

With an effort, Matt resisted the temptation to snatch her into his arms and muffle his laughter against her lips. She was young and pampered and he was going to a foreign country where many common necessities would be luxuries. This sudden, insane impulse to take her with him that kept prodding at him was just that—insane. On the other hand, she was also brave, sweet, and pregnant with his child. His child. Their child. Perhaps the idea wasn't so insane. Tipping his head back, he looked up at the moon, trying to ignore the notion, and even while he was doing it, he found himself suggesting something that would help him decide. "Meredith," he said, "most couples take months learning about each other before they get married. You and I have only a few days before we get married, and less than a week before I have to leave for South America. Do you think we could try to cram a few months into a few days?"

"I guess so," she said, puzzled by the sudden intensity in his voice.

"Okay, fine," Matt said, strangely at a loss as to how to begin now that she'd agreed. "What would you like to know about me?"

Gulping back a surge of startled, self-conscious laughter, Meredith looked at him, stupefied, and then she wondered if he was referring to genetic questions she might have about him as the father of her baby. Peering at him, she asked hesitantly, "Do you mean that I should ask you things like—like is there any history of insanity in your family, and do you have a police record?"

Matt bit back a shout of laughter at her choice of questions, and said with sham gravity, "No—to both those things. How about you?"

Solemnly, she shook her head. "No insanity, no police record either."

He saw it then—the answering laughter glowing in her eyes, and for the second time in moments he had to restrain the urge to clasp her to him.

"Now it's your turn to ask me something," she offered gamely. "What do you want to know?"

"Just one thing," he said with blunt honesty as he placed his hand high on the tree trunk behind her. "Are you half as sweet as I think you are?"

"Probably not."

He straightened and smiled because he was almost certain she was wrong. "Let's walk, before I forget what we're supposed to be doing out here. In the interest of complete honesty," he added as they turned and strolled down the lane that curved toward the main road, "I've just remembered that I do have a police record." Meredith stopped short, and he turned and said, "I was busted twice when I was nineteen."

"What were you doing at the time?"

"Fighting. Brawling would be a better word. Before my mother died, I'd managed to convince myself that if she had the best doctors and stayed in the best hospitals— only the best—then she wouldn't die. We got her the best, my father and I. When the insurance ran out, we sold the farm equipment and everything else we could liquidate to keep paying the medical bills. She died anyway," Matt said in a carefully unemotional voice. "My father hit the bottle, and I went looking for something of my own to hit. For months afterward I was spoiling for a fight, and since I couldn't get my hands on the God my mother had such faith in, I settled for any mortal who wanted to take me on. In Edmunton it's not hard to find a fight," he added with a wry smile, and not until that moment did Matt realize he was confiding things to an eighteen-year-old girl that he'd never admitted to anyone else, even himself. And the eighteen-year-old girl was looking at him with a quiet understanding that completely belied her years. "The cops broke up two of the fights," he finished, "and they busted all of us. It's no big deal. There's no record of it anywhere except Edmunton."

Touched by his confidence, Meredith said softly, "You must have loved her very much." Aware that she was treading on shaky ground, she said, "I never knew my own mother. She went to Italy after my parents' divorce. I guess I was lucky, don't you, not to have known her and loved her all those years, and then lost her?"

Matt realized exactly what point she was trying to make, and he didn't deride her efforts. "Very nice," he said with quiet gravity, then he shook off the mood and wryly announced, "I have amazingly excellent taste in women."

Meredith burst out laughing, then felt a jolt of delight when his hand slid across her back, curving around her waist to draw her tightly against his side as they walked. A few steps later, she thought of something that brought her up short. "Have you ever been married before?"

"No. Have you?" he added, teasing.

"You know perfectly well I haven't—hadn't done—" She stopped, uneasy with the topic.

"Yes, I do know," he confirmed. "What I can't understand is how anyone who looks like you could have reached the age of eighteen without losing your virginity to some rich, smooth-talking preppy boy along the way."

"I don't like preppy boys," Meredith replied, then she glanced at him, bemused. "I never actually realized that before."

That pleased Matt immensely because she sure as hell wasn't marrying one. He waited for her to say more. When she didn't, he prompted her disbelievingly. "That's it? That's the answer?"

"That's part of it. The whole truth is that I was so homely until I was sixteen that boys stayed completely away from me. By the time I wasn't homely anymore, I was so mad at them for ignoring me all those years that I didn't have a very high opinion of them on the whole."

Matt looked at her beautiful face, her tempting mouth, and radiant eyes, and he grinned. "Were you really homely?"

"Let me put it this way," she said dryly, "if we have a little girl, she'll be better off if she looks like you when she's young!"

Matt's sharp crack of laughter exploded into the soft night silence and he yanked her into his arms. Laughing, he buried his face in her fragrant hair, surprised by his feelings of tenderness because she'd apparently been homely, touched that she had confided it to him, and elated because... because... He refused to think of why. All that mattered was that she was laughing, too, and that her arms had slid around his waist. With a solemn smile, he rubbed his jaw against her head and whispered, "I have exquisite taste in women."

"Well, you wouldn't have thought that a couple of years ago," she said, laughing and leaning back in his arms.

"I'm a man of vision," he assured her quietly. "I would have thought it even then."

An hour later they were sitting on the porch steps facing each other, their backs propped against the railing. Matt was one step higher, his long legs stretched out in front of him. A step below him, Meredith was sitting with her knees drawn up against her chest, her arms wrapped around them. They were no longer making a conscious effort to get to know each other because Meredith was pregnant and they were getting married. They were simply a couple sitting outside on a late summer night, enjoying one another's company.

Leaning her head back, Meredith listened to a cricket chirping, her eyes half closed.

"What are you thinking about?" he asked quietly.

"I'm thinking that it will be autumn soon," she said, lifting her gaze to his. "Autumn is my absolute favorite season. Spring is overrated. It's soggy and the trees are still bare from winter. Winter drags on and on, and summer is nice, but it's all the same. Autumn is different. I mean, is there any perfume in the world that can compare with the smell of burning leaves?" she asked with an engaging smile. Matt thought she smelled a hell of a lot better than burning leaves, but he let her continue. "Autumn is exciting—things are changing. It's like dusk."

"Dusk?"

"Dusk is my favorite time of day, for the same reason. When I was young, I used to walk down our driveway at dusk in the summer and stand at the fence, watching all the cars going by with their headlights on. Everyone had a place to go, something to do. The night was just beginning..." She trailed off in embarrassment. "That must sound incredibly silly."

"It sounds incredibly lonely."

"I wasn't lonely, not really. Just daydreaming. I know you got an awful impression of my father at Glenmoor that night, but he's not the ogre you imagine. He loves me, and all he's ever tried to do is to protect me and give me the best." Without warning, Meredith's lovely mood dissolved, and reality came crashing over her with sickening force. "And in return I'm going to go home in a few days, pregnant and—"

"We agreed not to worry about any of that tonight," he interrupted.

Meredith nodded and tried to smile, but she couldn't control her thoughts as easily as he apparently could. Suddenly she saw her child standing at the end of some driveway in Chicago, alone, watching the cars going by on the road. No family, no brothers and sisters, no father. Just her. And she wasn't sure she could be enough.

"If autumn is your favorite thing, what's your least favorite?" Matt asked, trying to divert her.

She thought a moment. "Christmas tree lots on the day after Christmas. There's something sad about those beautiful trees that no one picked out. They're like orphans no one want—" She broke off, realizing what she was saying and quickly looked away.

"It's after midnight," Matt said, rolling to his feet, knowing her mood was beyond salvaging. "Why don't we go to bed?"

It sounded as if he was taking it for granted they would, or should, go to bed together, and Meredith suddenly felt a sick lurch of panic at that. She was pregnant and he was going to marry her because he had to; the whole situation was already so sordid, it made her feel cheap and humiliated as it was.

In silence they turned off the living room lights and walked up the stairs. The door to Matt's room was immediately off the landing, while Julie's was to the left, at the end of the hall, with a bathroom in between. When they approached his door, Meredith took matters into her own hands. "Good night, Matt," she said shakily. Stepping around him, she tossed a fixed smile over her shoulder, and left him standing in his doorway. When he made no attempt to stop her, her emotions veered crazily from relief to chagrin. Apparently, she decided as she stepped into Julie's room, pregnant women had no sex appeal whatsoever, not even to the same man who'd gone crazy in bed with you a few weeks prior. She opened the door and walked into Julie's room.

Behind her, Matt spoke in a flat, calm voice. "Meredith?"

She turned and saw him still standing in the doorway of his room, his shoulder propped against the door frame, his arms crossed loosely over his chest. "Yes?"

"Do you know what my least favorite thing is?"

His implacable tone told her the question wasn't casual, and she shook her head, wary at whatever he was getting at. He didn't keep her in doubt. "It's sleeping alone when there's someone down the hall who I know damned well should be sleeping with me." Matt had meant that to be more an invitation than a curt observation, and his lack of tact with her surprised him. A dozen expressions chased themselves across her lovely face— embarrassment, unease, doubt, uncertainty—and then she gave him a small smile, hesitated, and said firmly, "Good night."

Matt watched her walk into Julie's room and close the door behind her, and he stood for a long moment, knowing perfectly well that if he went after her and tried tender persuasion he could very likely convince her to come to bed with him. And yet, for some reason, he was suddenly, adamantly, unwilling to do it. Turning, he went into his room, but he left his door open, still convinced that she wanted to be with him, and that if she did, she'd come back here when she had gotten ready for bed.

Clad in pajama bottoms that he'd had to search through his drawers to find, he stood at the window, looking out at the moonlit lawn. He heard Meredith leave the bathroom after her shower, and he tensed, listening to her footsteps. They retreated down the hall into Julie's room and then a door closed. She'd made her decision, he realized with equal parts of surprise, annoyance, and disappointment. And yet, none of those three emotions had as much to do with unrequited sexual desire as they did with something deeper and more general. He had wanted some sign from her that she was ready for an actual relationship with him; as much as he hoped for that, he wasn't willing to do anything to try to persuade her that she was. It had to be her decision, her choice, freely made. She'd made that choice when she walked away from him and down the hall. If she'd had any doubts about what he wanted her to do, what he'd said to her in the hall would have removed them.

Turning away from the window, he breathed a sigh of frustrated irritation, and faced the fact that he was probably expecting far too much from an eighteen-year-old. The thing was, it was damned hard to remember how young Meredith actually was. Pulling back the sheet, he got into bed and linked his hands behind his head, staring at the ceiling, thinking about her. Tonight she'd told him about Lisa Pontini and how they'd become friends, and he'd realized from what she said that Meredith was not only at ease in country clubs and mansions, she was also totally at home with the Pontini family as well. She was utterly without artifice or affectation, Matt thought, and yet there was an unmistakable gentility in her, an inherent elegance that was as appealing to him as her intoxicating face and entrancing smile.

Weariness finally nudged him and he closed his eyes. Unfortunately, none of those attributes were going to help her or make the idea of going off to South America with him seem the slightest bit enticing, unless she felt something for him. And she obviously didn't, or she'd have been with him now. The idea of trying to persuade a reluctant, pampered eighteen-year-old to go to Venezuela with him when she didn't have the courage or the conviction to walk down a hall to him was not only repugnant, it was futile.

With her head bent, Meredith stood beside Julie's bed, torn apart with yearnings and misgivings she couldn't seem to control or predict. Her pregnancy wasn't having any physical effects yet, but it was evidently playing havoc with her emotions. Less than an hour ago she hadn't wanted to be in bed with Matt, and now she did. Common sense warned her that her future was already terrifyingly uncertain, and that giving in to her growing attraction to him would only make things more complicated. At twenty-six he was much older than she and far more experienced in every facet of life—a life that was completely alien to her. Six weeks ago, when he was wearing a tuxedo and she was in familiar surroundings, he'd seemed almost like other men she'd known. But here, clad in jeans and a shirt, there was an earthiness about him that both attracted her and alarmed her. He'd wanted her to come to bed tonight, and he'd made that emphatically clear. When it pertained to women and sex, Matt was obviously so sure of himself that he could stand there and baldly tell her what he wanted her to do. Not ask her or try to persuade her, but tell her! No doubt he was considered quite a stud around Edmunton, and why not—the night she'd met him, he'd been able to make her writhe with passion even though she was scared sick. He knew just where to touch and how to move to make her lose her mind, and all that sexual expertise hadn't been gotten from books! He'd probably made love hundreds of times in hundreds of ways with hundreds of women.

And even while she thought it, her mind rebelled at believing Matt had no feeling for her other than sexual. True, he hadn't called her in the six weeks since he'd left Chicago; equally true, she'd been so upset that night, she couldn't have given him the idea she wanted him to call her. His claim that he'd intended to call her when he got back from South America in two years had seemed ludicrous when he said it. Now, in the silent darkness, after listening to him talk tonight about his plans for the future, she had the feeling he'd wanted to be somebody when he called her the next time. She thought of what he'd told her about his mother's death; surely that boy who'd grieved and raged couldn't have grown into a shallow, irresponsible man whose only real interest in women was—Meredith brought herself up short. Matt was far from being irresponsible. Not once since she'd gotten there had he tried to evade any responsibility for the baby. Furthermore, based on things he'd said and some remarks of Julie's, Matt had been shouldering much of the responsibility for the entire family for years.

If sex was all he had on his mind tonight, why hadn't he tried to persuade her to come to bed with him, when he'd made it eloquently clear he wanted her there? She remembered the tender look in his eyes when he'd asked if she was as sweet as he thought she was. That same look had warmed those gray eyes repeatedly while they sat on the porch.

Why hadn't he tried to talk her into going to bed with him?

The answer hit her, and it made her feel weak with relief and strangely terrified. He'd definitely wanted to make love, and he certainly knew how to convince her they should, but he'd refused to do that. He wanted something even more tonight from her than her body. She knew it without knowing how she did.

Or, perhaps, she was just being as overemotional now as she'd been for days.

Meredith straightened, shaking with uncertainty, her hand unconsciously splaying over her flat belly. She was scared and confused and wildly attracted to a man she didn't know or understand. Her heart thundering, she silently opened the door to Julie's room. He'd left his door open—she'd seen that when she came out of the bathroom after her shower. If he was already asleep, she decided, she'd come back and go to bed. She'd leave this up to fate.

He was asleep, she realized as she stood in his doorway, watching him in the moonlight that spilled through the sheer curtains on the window. Her heart slowed to a normal tempo, and still she stood there, marveling at this fierce tug on her emotions that had sent her to him in the first place. Awkwardly aware that she was standing in his doorway, watching him sleeping, she turned silently.

Matt had no idea what woke him, or how long she'd been standing in that doorway, but when he opened his eyes, she was leaving. He stopped her with the first careless words that came to mind. "Don't do that, Meredith!"

The harsh order brought Meredith whirling around, her hair spilling over her left shoulder. Not certain what he'd meant or what he was thinking, she tried to see his expression through the darkness, and when she couldn't, she started forward.

Matt watched her moving toward him. She was wearing a short silk nightshirt that barely covered the tops of her shapely thighs. He shifted sideways and moved the covers back for her. She hesitated, and instead sat down beside him, her hip against his, her eyes wide with confusion as they searched his. When she spoke, her voice was low and shaky. "I don't know why, but I'm more scared this time than I was the last."

Matt smiled somberly as his hand lifted to her cheek, then curved around her nape. "So am I." In the lengthening silence, they remained perfectly still, the only movement the slow stroking of Matt's thumb against her neck, as both of them sensed that they were about to take the first step down a new uncharted path. Meredith sensed it subconsciously; Matt recognized it with complete clarity and, even so, there was something infinitely right about what they were going to do. No longer was she an heiress from another world; she was the woman he had wanted to possess the moment he saw her, and she was sitting beside him, her hair cascading over his arm like a thick satin waterfall. "I think it's only fair to warn you," he whispered as his hand tightened on her nape, beginning to exert pressure to draw her mouth down to his, "that this could turn out to be an even bigger risk than the one you took six weeks ago." Meredith looked into his smoldering eyes and knew that he was warning her about some sort of deep emotional involvement. "Make up your mind," he whispered huskily.

She hesitated, and then her gaze dropped from his compelling eyes to that mobile mouth. Her heart stopped, she stiffened and lurched back, and his hand fell away. "I—" she said, starting to shake her head and stand up, and then something stopped her. With a smothered moan, Meredith leaned down and kissed him, crushing her mouth against his, and Matt's arms swept around, holding her close, then tightening like a vise as he rolled her onto her back, his mouth fierce and insistent.

The magic began again as it had six weeks ago, only different this time, because it was hotter, sweeter, more turbulent.

And a thousand times more meaningful.

When it was finished, Meredith turned onto her side, limp and damp and sated, feeling his legs and thighs pressing against the backs of hers. She drifted toward sleep, his hand still moving lazily over her arm, then coming to rest against her breast in a way that was both possessive and deliberately provocative. Her last waking thought was that he wanted her to know he was there; that he was claiming another kind of right that he hadn't asked for and she hadn't granted. It was just like him to do that. She fell asleep smiling.

"Did you sleep well?" Julie asked the next morning as she stood at the kitchen counter, buttering toast.

"Very well," Meredith said, trying desperately not to look as if she'd spent the night making love with Julie's brother. "Can I do anything to help with breakfast?"

"Not a thing. Dad's working double shifts for the next week, from three in the afternoon to seven in the morning. When he gets home all he'll want to do is eat and go to sleep. I've already got his breakfast ready. Matt doesn't eat breakfast. Do you want to bring him his coffee? I usually bring it up to him just before his alarm goes off, which is"—she glanced up at the kitchen clock, a plastic thing shaped like a teakettle—"in ten minutes."

Pleased with the idea of doing something as domestic as waking him up with coffee, Meredith nodded and poured some into a mug, then she looked at the sugar bowl and hesitated uncertainly.

"He drinks it black," Julie said, smiling at Meredith's confusion. "And, by the way, he's a bear in the morning, so don't expect cheerful conversation."

"Is he really?" Meredith considered that new tidbit of information.

"He isn't mean, he's just silent."

Julie was partially right. When Meredith knocked on his door and went inside, Matt rolled over onto his back, looking completely disoriented. His only greeting was a slight grateful smile as he levered himself into a sitting position, reaching out for the mug of coffee. Meredith hovered uncertainly by the bed, watching him drink it as if he needed it to survive the next few minutes, then she turned to go, feeling unnecessary and intrusive. He caught her wrist to stop her, and she obediently sat down beside him. "Why am I the only one who's exhausted this morning?" he finally asked, his voice still a little husky with sleep.

"I'm a morning person," Meredith told him. "I'll probably be drooping this afternoon."

His eyes moved over Julie's plaid shirt which she'd tied in a knot at the midriff, then it slid over Julie's white shorts. "On you, that outfit looks like it belongs on a billboard."

It was the first compliment he had ever paid her, except for the things he murmured to her when they were making love. Meredith, who normally didn't think much of compliments, memorized that one. Not because of what he said, but the tender way he'd said it.

Patrick came home, ate breakfast, and went to bed. Julie left at 8:30 with a cheery wave and the announcement that she was going to her girlfriend's house after school and intended to stay the night there again. At 9:30, Meredith decided to call home and leave a message for her father with the butler. Albert answered the phone and gave her a message from her father instead. Her father said that she was to come home immediately, and that she'd better damned well have a good explanation for vanishing like this. Meredith asked Albert to tell her father that she had a wonderful reason for staying away, and that she'd see him Sunday.

After that, time seemed to drag. Careful not to wake up Patrick, she went into the living room, looking for something to read. The bookshelves offered several possibilities, but she was too restless to concentrate on a long novel. Among the copies of magazines and periodicals on the top shelf, Meredith found an old pamphlet on crocheting. She studied it with mounting interest while fanciful and artistic baby booties took shape in her mind.

With no other diversions available, she decided to give crocheting a try, and she drove into town. At Jackson's Dry Goods, she purchased a magazine dedicated to crocheting, a half-dozen skeins of thick yarn and a fat wooden crochet hook as big around as her finger, which the sales clerk assured her was best for a beginner to use. She was unlocking her car, which she'd parked in front of the Tru Value Hardware store, when it occurred to her that the responsibility for dinner tonight might fall to her. Tossing the bag with the yarn into the car, she recrossed the street and went into the grocery store. For several minutes she wandered the aisles, assailed by justifiable doubts about her cooking ability. At the meat counter, she scanned the packages, biting her lip. Julie's meat loaf had been wonderful last night; whatever Meredith made was going to have to be simple. Her gaze drifted past the steaks, pork chops, and calf's liver, then riveted on the packages of hot dogs as inspiration struck her. With luck, she might be able to turn dinner into an adventure in nostalgia tonight instead of a culinary catastrophe. Smiling, she bought the hot dogs, a package of buns, and a huge bag of fat marshmallows.

Back at the house, Meredith put away the groceries and sat down with her crochet hook and the magazine with the illustrated crocheting instructions. According to the introduction, the chain stitch was the basis for all crochet stitches and beginners were not to proceed to the next step until they were able to make at least a hundred perfectly uniform chain stitches. Meredith obediently began to make chain stitches, each one of which was about a half inch around due to the enormous crochet hook and thick yarn she was using.

As morning wore into afternoon, the worries she'd been hiding from came back to plague her, so she crocheted harder to keep them away. She would not think about pediatricians... or what labor felt like... whether Matt would want visiting rights for their baby... nursery school... whether Matt really meant what he'd said about their having a real marriage...

Chain stitches cascaded from her crochet hook, fat and uniform, landing in a large pool of soft cream rope at her feet. She looked down, knowing perfectly well it was long past time to stop and to proceed to step two, but she didn't feel up to the challenge, and besides, there was a certain grim satisfaction, a sense of badly needed control, that came from the repetitive task. At two o'clock, the pregnancy that did not yet seem real made itself known with sudden demands for sleep, and Meredith put the crochet hook down. Curling up almost thankfully on the sofa, she glanced at the clock. She could grab a quick nap and still be up in time to put her yarn away and be ready when Matt came home. When Matt came home... The thought of him returning to her after a hard day at work filled her with delight. As she laid her cheek against her hand, she remembered the way he had made love to her, and she had to make herself think of something else, because the memory was so powerful and stirring that she ached for him. She was in serious danger of falling in love with the father of her baby. Serious danger? she thought with a smile. What could possibly be lovelier—as long as Matt felt the same way. And she rather thought he did.

The sound of gravel crunching beneath tires drifted in through the open window, and her eyes snapped open, her gaze flying to the clock. It was 4:30. She lurched to a sitting position and combed her fingers through her hair, shoving it off her forehead. As she reached out to pick up the yarn and put it away, the front door swung open and her heart responded with a leap of joy to the sight of him. "Hi," she said, and she had a sudden vision of other evenings just like this one, when Matt would come home to her. She wondered if he'd thought about her at all, and then chided herself for being foolish. She was the one with too much time on her hands; he had been busy and undoubtedly preoccupied. "How was your day?"

Matt looked at her standing near the sofa, while visions of more days like this paraded across his mind, months and years of days when he'd come home to a golden-haired goddess with a smile that always made him feel as if he'd just single-handedly slain a dragon, cured the common cold, and found a means to world peace. "My day was fine," he said, smiling. "What did you do with yours?"

She'd spent part of it worrying and the rest thinking and dreaming of him. Since she couldn't very well tell him that, she said, "I decided to take up crocheting." She held up the skein of yarn to prove her claim.

"Very domestic," Matt teased, then his gaze slid down the rope of chain stitches that descended from the skein and ended beneath the coffee table. His eyes widened. "What are you making?"

Meredith stifled an embarrassed giggle because she didn't have the remotest idea. "Guess," she said, trying to save face, hoping he'd think of something.

Walking over, Matt bent down, picked up the end of the stitches, and began backing up until he'd stretched the chain out twelve feet to the end of the room. "A carpet?" he ventured gravely.

Somehow she managed to control her features and look wounded. "Of course it's not a carpet."

He sobered at once and started toward her, instantly contrite. "Give me a hint," he said gently.

"You shouldn't really need a hint. It's obvious what it's going to be." Fighting to keep her face straight, she

announced, "I'm planning to add a few more rows to what I've already crocheted—so it will be wider—then I'm going to starch the whole thing, and you can use it to fence your property!"

His shoulders shaking with laughter, Matt hauled her into his arms, oblivious to the crochet hook jabbing in his chest.

"I bought some things for dinner tonight," she told him, leaning back in his arms.

Matt had intended to take her out. He tipped his chin down, smiling with surprise. "I thought you said you don't know how to cook."

"You'll understand when you see what I bought," she said, and he put his arm around her shoulders and walked into the kitchen. She took out the hot dogs and his gaze shot to the marshmallows.

"Very clever," he said with a grin. "You figured out a way to make me do the cooking."

"Believe me," she said gravely, "it's safer this way."

He'd been home for less than ten minutes and it was the second time Matt had felt as if life was suddenly filled with joy and laughter.

She brought out a blanket and the food, and Matt eventually built a campfire. They spent the evening outside, happily eating hot dogs that were overcooked, buns that were undercooked, and marshmallows that dripped into the fire; they talked about everything from the terrain of South America, to Meredith's unusual lack of troublesome pregnancy symptoms, to the proper degree of doneness for marshmallows. At twilight, they'd finished eating and Meredith cleared away the plates, then she went into the kitchen to wash the dishes. With his knee drawn up, Matt waited for her to return, his gaze drifting idly from the darkening sky above to the leaves he'd just gathered up and heaped on the fire to surprise her.

When Meredith came back out, the air was pungent with the delicious aroma of autumn, and Matt was sitting on the blanket, trying to look as if there was nothing whatsoever strange about the smell of burning leaves in August. She knelt down on the blanket across from him, looked at the fire, then she raised her face to his, and even in the darkness Matt could see her eyes shining. "Thank you," she said simply.

"You're welcome," he replied, his voice strangely husky to his own ears. He held out his hand to her, then had to fight down a wave of desire when she misunderstood his invitation to sit beside him and, instead, moved between his legs so that she could sit with her back against his chest and watch the fire. Desire was followed by exquisite delight a moment later when she softly confessed, "This is the nicest night I've ever had, Matt."

He slid his arm around her waist from behind, his fingers splaying protectively across her flat stomach, and tried not to sound as touched as he felt. With his free hand he brushed her hair aside and kissed her nape. "What about last night?"

She bent her head forward, offering his mouth better access, and promptly amended, "This is the second nicest night I've ever had."

Matt smiled against her skin and nipped her ear, but passion was already erupting through his body, raging through his veins like wildfire, refusing to be delayed or denied. Shaken by the force of it, he turned her face up to his and captured her mouth. Her lips moved against his, sweetly, softly at first, then deliberately provocative as her tongue slipped between his lips. Matt lost control. He forced his hand inside her shirt, his fingers closing over her breast, and her moan of pleasure broke the last fragile thread of his restraint. Turning her in his arms, he laid her down on the blanket, his body half covering hers, and shoved his fingers into her hair, holding her captive for a plundering kiss. He was so attuned to her that he sensed her momentary hesitation as the ferocity of his ardor stunned her into immobility. It stunned him, too, this desperate, demanding need to possess her completely, this necessity to make a conscious effort to slow himself down. It consumed him so completely that he never realized her hesitation came not from fear of his stormy passion, but from her inexperience and uncertainty about how to return and stimulate it. Even if he had realized it, he'd have hesitated about showing her how to do it right then, because pacing himself so that he could prolong their lovemaking was already incredibly difficult. And so he undressed her slowly, with fingers made awkward because they trembled, and he kissed her until she was writhing beneath him, her hands rushing over his heated skin. The touch of her hands and mouth set him on fire, and each soft sound she made sent his blood roaring as he led her from one plateau to the next higher one, whispering hoarse, heated words of pleasure to her. She followed him, joining him, until he finally made her cry out, her body racked with tremors, and then he poured himself into her.

Afterward, he wrapped the blanket around them, and laid beside her, gazing up at a sky quilted with stars, inhaling the nostalgic fragrance of an early autumn. In the past, making love had always been an act of mutual pleasure; with Meredith it was an act of spellbinding beauty. Exquisite, tormenting, magical beauty. For the first time in his life, Matt felt utterly contented, completely at peace. The future was more complicated than it had ever been, and yet he had never felt more confident that he could shape it to suit them—if only she gave him the chance and the time. Time.

He desperately needed more time with her to strengthen this strange, fragile bond that was drawing them closer together with each hour they spent together. If he could get her to agree to go to South America with him, he'd have time to strengthen that bond and she'd stay married to him. He believed that. Tomorrow he was going to call Jonathan Sommers and without telling him why, he would try to find out what sort of housing and medical facilities were available in the area. For himself, he hadn't given a damn. Meredith and his baby were another story.

If he couldn't take her with him... That was the problem. He couldn't change his mind about going to South America. For one thing, he'd signed a contract; for another, he needed the $150,000 bonus for staying over there so that he could use it to capitalize his next investment. Like the foundation of a skyscraper, that $ 150,000 was the foundation for his entire grand plan. It wasn't as much money as he'd have liked it to be, but it would suffice.

As he laid there beside her, he considered forgetting about the whole damned plan and staying in the States with her, but he couldn't do that either. Meredith was accustomed to the best. She was entitled to it, and he wanted her to have it. And the only way he could hope to give it to her was by going to South America.

The thought of leaving her behind and then losing her because she got tired of waiting for him, or she lost faith in his ability to succeed, would normally have been driving him crazy. But he had one more thing in his favor: She was pregnant with his child. Their baby would give her a strong reason to wait for him and trust him.

The same pregnancy that Meredith had regarded as a calamity, Matt now regarded as an unexpected gift from fate. When he left her in Chicago, he'd thought it would be at least two years before he could come back and try to court her in style—assuming he hadn't already lost her to someone else. She was beautiful and captivating and hundreds of men would have been after her while he was gone. One of them would have probably caught her, and he'd known that the night he left her.

But now fate had stepped in and handed him the world. The fact that fate had never been very kind to the Farrell family was something that Matt refused to let dampen his spirits. He was now prepared to believe in God, fate, and universal goodness all because of Meredith and the baby.

The only thing he actually found a little hard to believe was that the sophisticated young heiress he'd met at the country club, the bewitching blonde who drank champagne cocktails and handled herself with smiling poise, was actually curled up beside him, asleep in his arms, his baby sheltered inside her.

His baby.

Matt spread his fingers over her abdomen, and smiled against her neck because Meredith had no idea how he actually felt about their child. Or how he felt about her because she hadn't tried to get rid of it—and him. That first day when she'd itemized her options, the mention of the word abortion had made him feel like throwing up.

He wanted to talk about the baby with her and tell her exactly how he felt about all this, but for one thing, he felt like a selfish bastard for being so happy about something that distressed her so much. For another thing, she was dreading the confrontation with her father, and any mention of her pregnancy seemed to remind her of what was ahead.

The confrontation with her father... Matt's smile faded. The man was a son of a bitch, but somehow he'd raised the most amazing woman Matt had ever met, and for that Matt was profoundly grateful to him. He was so grateful that he was willing to do whatever he could to ease things between Meredith and her father when he took her to Chicago on Sunday. Somehow he was going to keep remembering that Meredith was Philip Bancroft's only child, and that for reasons that could be clear only to Meredith, she loved that arrogant bastard.