unlight slanted through the windshield, and Meredith watched it gleaming on the gold wedding band that Matt had slid onto her finger the previous day during a simple civil ceremony performed by a local judge and witnessed only by Julie and Patrick. In comparison to the lavish formal church weddings she'd attended, her own had been brief and businesslike; the "honeymoon" that followed it in Matt's bed had been anything but that. With the house to themselves, he had kept her awake until dawn, making love to her again and again—trying to atone, she suspected, for not being able to take her on a proper honeymoon.

Meredith thought about that as she idly rubbed her ring against the sundress she'd borrowed from Julie. In bed, Matt always gave, and he gave, and he gave—yet he seemed not to want or need her to do anything to please him in return. Sometimes when he was making love to her, she longed to give him the same soul-destroying pleasure that he was lavishing on her, but she was hesitant to take the initiative without some form of encouragement from him first. It bothered her that he seemed to give more than he received—but when he shifted on top of her and drove deeply into her melting body, Meredith forgot about it. She forgot the world.

This morning, when she was still half asleep, he had put a breakfast tray on the nightstand and sat down beside her. For as long as she lived, Meredith knew she would remember the boyish glamour of his white smile as he leaned over her and whispered, "Wake up, sleeping beauty, and give this frog a kiss."

She looked at him now, and there was nothing boyish about that square jaw and tough chin, but there were other times—times when he laughed, or when he was sleeping and his dark hair was tousled, that his features were absolutely endearing, rather than rugged. And those eyelashes! The other morning she'd noticed those thick, spiked eyelashes lying against his cheek while he slept, and she'd had an absurd impulse to lean down and tuck him in because he looked like a little boy.

He caught her studying him and teased, "Did I forget to shave this morning?"

That startled a laugh from her because it was in such conflict with the direction of her thoughts. "Actually, I was thinking that you have eyelashes that a girl would kill for."

"You'd better watch it," he warned, shooting her a mock scowl. "I beat up a kid in the sixth grade for saying I had eyelashes like a girl's."

Meredith laughed, but as they neared her house and the confrontation with her father, the lighthearted mood they'd both tried to preserve began to disintegrate. Matt had to leave for Venezuela in two days, so their time together was quickly running out. And although he'd agreed not to tell her father about her pregnancy yet, he was personally opposed to the idea.

Meredith didn't like it either. It added to her feeling of being a child bride, and she hated that feeling. While she waited to join Matt in South America, she intended to learn to cook. In the past few days, the idea of being a real wife, with a husband and a place of their own, had taken on an enormous appeal despite the daunting description he'd given her of what that place of their own would probably be like.

"Here we are," Meredith said a few minutes later as they turned into the drive. "Home sweet home."

"If your father loves you as much as you think he does," Matt told her with quiet reassurance, helping her out of the car, "he'll try to make the best of this once he gets over the shock." Meredith hoped he was right, because, if he wasn't, it meant she would have to live at the farm while Matt was gone, and that she didn't want to do—not with Patrick Farrell feeling about her the way he did.

"Here goes," she said, drawing a deep breath as they walked up the steps to the front door. Since she'd called this morning and asked Albert to tell her father she'd be home in the early afternoon, Meredith assumed her father would be waiting.

She was right. The moment she opened the door, he stalked out of the living room, looking like he hadn't slept in a week. "Where in the hell have you been?" he thundered, looking ready to shake her. Unaware of Matt, who was standing a few steps behind her, he raged, "Are you trying to drive me out of my goddamned mind, Meredith?"

"Just be calm for a minute, and I'll explain," Meredith said, lifting her hand in Matt's direction.

He glanced to the left and saw who Meredith had been with. "Son of a bitch!"

"It's not what you're thinking," Meredith cried. "We're married!"

"You're what?"

Matt answered the question in a calm, implacable voice. "Married."

In the space of three seconds Philip Bancroft arrived at the only possible reason that Meredith would marry someone she didn't know. She was pregnant. "Oh. Christ!" The ravaged look on his face, the anguished fury in his voice, hurt Meredith more than anything he could have done or said to her. And just when she knew it couldn't get worse, she discovered it was only beginning. Rage had replaced his shock and sorrow. Turning on his heel, Philip ordered them both into his study, then he slammed the door behind them with a crash that shook the walls.

Ignoring Meredith completely, he prowled back and forth across the study like a maddened panther, and every time he looked at Matt, his eyes flashed with murder and hatred. For what seemed like hours, he swore at Matt, he accused him of everything from rape to assault, and he grew more incensed when Matt endured his vicious tirade in an impassive, tight-lipped silence that resembled indifference.

Shaking with nerves and drowning in shame, Meredith sat beside Matt on the sofa where they'd made love. She was so overwrought that it took several minutes before she finally realized that her father was less infuriated by her pregnancy than he was by her marriage to an "ambitious, low-class degenerate." When he finally ran out of words, he flung himself into the chair behind his desk and sat there in ominous silence, his gaze riveted on Matt, tapping the end of a letter opener on the desk.

Her throat aching with unshed tears, Meredith realized that Matt had been wrong. This was not something her father would adjust to or get over. She was going to be cast out of his life, just as her mother had been, and despite all their disagreements, she was utterly shattered. Matt was still a virtual stranger, and from this day forward her father would be a stranger too. There was no point trying to explain or defend Matt, because whenever she'd interrupted her father's tirade to do that, he'd either ignored her or gotten angrier.

Standing up, she said with as much dignity as she could, "I was going to stay here until I go to South America. Obviously, that's impossible. I'll go upstairs and pack a few things." She turned to Matt to suggest he wait for her in the car, but her father interrupted her, his voice taut with strain. "This is your house, Meredith, and where you belong. Farrell and I need to have a private talk, however."

Meredith didn't like the sound of that, but Matt nodded curtly for her to go.

When the door closed behind her, Matt waited for another tirade to begin, but Bancroft seemed to get himself under control. He sat at his desk, his fingers steepled, staring at Matt for several long, hard moments —mentally calculating, Matt suspected, the best way to ram home whatever he planned to say next. His fury hadn't gotten him anywhere, so Matt knew he would try another tack. He did not, however, expect Philip Bancroft to stumble onto Matt's only vulnerable place where Meredith was concerned: Guilt. Nor did he expect him to be as eloquently lethal.

"Congratulations, Farrell," Bancroft sneered in a bitter, sarcastic voice. "You've gotten an innocent eighteen-year-old girl pregnant, a girl with her whole life in front of her—a life that would have given her a college education, traveling, the best of everything." Raking Matt with a contemptuous stare, he said, "Do you know why there are clubs like Glenmoor?" Matt remained silent, and Philip told him the answer. "They're to protect our families, our daughters, from smooth-talking filth like you."

Bancroft seemed to sense he'd drawn blood with those remarks, and with the instincts of a vampire, he went for more. "Meredith is eighteen and you've stolen her youth by getting her pregnant and getting her married. Now you want to drag her all the way down with you—you want to take her to South America to live like a laborer's drudge. I've been to South America, and I know Bradley Sommers. I know exactly what sort of drilling operation he's planning in Venezuela, where it is, and what it's really like. You'll have to hack out paths through the jungle in order to get from what passes for civilization down there to the drilling site. When the next rain comes, the paths will be gone. Supplies are airlifted in and out by helicopter, there's no phone, no air-conditioning, no nothing! And that humid hellhole is where you intend to take my daughter?"

Matt had known when he took the job that the $ 150,000 bonus drilling companies paid was to compensate for certain deprivations, but he was fairly confident he could work things out for Meredith. Despite his loathing for Philip Bancroft, Matt knew the man was entitled to some form of assurance about Meredith's future well-being. For the first time since he arrived, he spoke. "There's a large village sixty miles away," he began in a flat, resolute voice.

"Bullshit! Sixty miles is eight hours by jeep, assuming the path you hacked out last time hasn't already been reclaimed by the jungle! Is that the village where you're planning to ditch my daughter for a year and a half? When do you plan to see her? You'll be working twelve-hour shifts, as I understand it."

"There are also cottages on site," Matt pointed out even though he suspected, and he'd told Meredith, they might not be adequate by his standards, regardless of what Sommers claimed. He also knew Bancroft was right about the terrain and the inconveniences. He was gambling that Meredith might find Venezuela beautiful and their brief time there something of an adventure.

"That's a great life you're offering her," Philip shot back with cutting scorn. "A shack on site or a hovel in some godforsaken village in the middle of nowhere!" Abruptly, he changed the angle for the next verbal knife. "You've got a tough hide, Farrell, I'll give you that. You took everything I could hand out without so much as a flinch. Do you also have a conscience, I wonder? You've sold my daughter your dreams in return for her whole life. Well, she had dreams, too, you bastard. She wanted to go to college. She's been in love with the same man since childhood too— A banker's son who could have given her the world. She doesn't think I know about that, but I do. Did you?"

Matt's jaw tightened, but he said nothing.

"Tell me something, where did she get the clothes she has on?" Without waiting for an answer, Philip jeered. "She's been with you for a few days and she doesn't even look the same! She looks like she's been dressed by K-Mart. Now, then," Philip said, his voice turning businesslike, "that brings us to the next issue which I'm sure is vital to you: Money. You are not going to see one cent of Meredith's money! Am I making myself clear?" he snapped, leaning forward in his chair. "You've already robbed her of her youth and her dreams, but you aren't ever going to see one cent of her money. I have control of it for twelve more years. If, by some chance she's still with you in twelve years, before I turn it over to her, I'll invest every goddamned cent of it in things she can't sell or trade for twenty-five years."

When Matt remained icily silent, he continued. "If you're thinking I'll take pity on the way she's living with you and start doling out money to make things better for her—ergo, for you—you don't know me very well. You think you're tough, Farrell, but you don't know what tough is yet. I'll stop at nothing to get Meredith free of you, and if that means letting her walk around in rags, barefoot and pregnant, I'll let it happen! Have I made myself clear so far?" he snapped, his control slipping a notch at Matt's lack of reaction.

"Perfectly," Matt bit out. "And now let me remind you of something," he continued with an inured expression that belied the battering he'd taken from guilt as Bancroft had hammered away. "There is a child involved here. Meredith is already pregnant, so most of what you've said is already immaterial."

"She was supposed to go to college," Philip countered. "Everybody knew that. I'll send her away, and she can have the baby. Also there is still time to consider another alternative—"

Fury ignited in Matt's eyes. "Nothing happens to that baby!" he warned in a low, savage voice.

"Fine. You want it, you take it."

In all the chaos of the past week that was one alternative neither of them had discussed. Because as things had turned out it hadn't been necessary. With a great deal more conviction than he felt at that moment, Matt said, "This is completely irrelevant. Meredith wants to stay with me."

"Of course she does!" Philip flung back. "Sex is a new experience for her." Casting a knowing, contemptuous look over Matt, he added, "Not for you though, is it?" Like two duelists, they circled mentally, but Philip had the sharpest rapier and Matt was on the defensive. "When you're gone, and sex isn't part of your allure, Meredith will think more clearly," Philip stated with absolute conviction. "She'll want her dreams, not yours. She'll want to go to college and go out with her friends. And so," he concluded, "I'm asking you for a concession, and I'm willing to pay handsomely for it. If Meredith is like her mother, her pregnancy won't really be apparent until she's past six months. So that she'll have time to reconsider, I want you to talk her into keeping this revolting marriage and the pregnancy secret—"

Rather than let Philip think he'd gotten Matt to agree, Matt said shortly, "She's already decided to do that until after she joins me in South America." The look of pleasure on Bancroft's face made Matt grit his teeth.

"Good, if no one knows you're married, that makes everything neater and cleaner when you get divorced. Here is what I'm offering you, Farrell: In return for you letting go of my daughter, I'll contribute a sizable chunk of money to finance whatever wild-assed scheme she mentioned you have in mind after you leave South America."

In frigid silence Matt watched Philip Bancroft take a large checkbook from his desk. Out of petty vengeance, Matt sat there and let Bancroft write out a check because he wanted to put him to the trouble before he refused it. It was small retribution for the inner torment he'd managed to cause Matt.

Finished, Bancroft threw his pen down and stalked across the room while Matt slowly stood up. "Five minutes after you walk out of this room, I'll have a stop-payment order put on this check at my bank," Bancroft warned. "As soon as you convince Meredith to give up on this travesty of a marriage and let you raise the child, I'll instruct the bank to let the check clear. This money is your reward—one hundred and fifty thousand dollars—for not destroying the life of an eighteen-year-old girl. Take it," he ordered, holding out his hand.

Matt ignored it.

"Take the check, because it's the last cent of my money you'll ever see."

"I'm not interested in your goddamned money!"

"I'm warning you, Farrell," he said, his face darkening with rage again, "take this check."

With icy calm Matt said, "Shove it up your—"

Bancroft's fist slammed forward with surprising force. Matt dodged the blow, grabbed Bancroft's arm in midswing, then he yanked him forward, spun him around, and jerked his arm up high behind his back. In a soft snarl, he said, "Listen to me very carefully, Bancroft. In a few years I'll have enough money to buy and sell you, but if you interfere in my marriage, I'll bury you! Do we understand each other?"

"Let go of my arm, you son of a bitch."

Matt shoved him forward and stalked toward the door.

Behind him, Bancroft recovered his composure with amazing speed. "We have Sunday dinner at three," he snapped. "I'd prefer you not upset Meredith by telling her what transpired in here. As you pointed out, she is pregnant." Pausing with his hand on the door knob, Matt turned, his silence a tacit consent, but Bancroft wasn't finished. Surprisingly, he seemed to have spent his fury and was now reluctantly accepting that he couldn't put an end to the marriage, and that further attempts to try might very well cause a permanent estrangement between Meredith and himself. "I don't want to lose my daughter, Farrell," he said stonily. "It's obvious you and I are never going to like each other, however, for her sake, we can at least try to get along."

Matt studied the other man's angry, set face, but there was no sign of duplicity in his expression. Furthermore, what he was suggesting was logical, sensible, and in his own and his daughter's best interests. After a moment, Matt nodded curtly and accepted the offer at face value. "We can try."

Philip Bancroft watched him walk out and close the door, then he slowly tore the check into pieces, a tight smile on his face. "Farrell," he said derisively, "you've just made two enormous mistakes—you refused this check, and you underestimated your adversary."

Lying beside Matt, Meredith stared at the shadowy canopy above her bed, alarmed by the change she'd sensed in him ever since he'd spoken with her father. When she'd asked him what took place in the library, all Matt would tell her was, "He tried to talk me into getting out of your life." Since the two men had treated each other civilly ever since their private meeting, Meredith assumed they'd declared a truce, and she'd teasingly asked, "Did he succeed?" Matt had said no, and she'd believed him, but tonight he'd made love to her with a grim determination that was completely unlike him. It was as if he wanted to brand her with his body—or else he were saying good-bye...

She stole a sideways glance at him; he was wide awake, his jaw tight, lost in thought, but she couldn't tell whether he was angry, sad, or simply preoccupied. They'd known each other for only six days, and now more than ever she realized what a handicap that was, because she couldn't gauge his mood at all.

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

Startled by his sudden willingness to talk, she said, "I was thinking we've known each other for only six days."

A mocking smile twisted his handsome mouth, as if he'd expected her to say something like that. "That's an excellent reason to give up the idea of staying married, isn't it?"

Meredith's uneasiness escalated to sick panic at his words, and with sudden clarity, she understood the reason for her violent reaction: She was in love with him. Helplessly in love and painfully vulnerable because of it. Hoping to affect a casual attitude, she rolled over onto her stomach and braced herself on her forearms, not certain whether he'd been making a statement or trying to second-guess her thoughts. Her first impulse was to assume that he'd just stated his opinion and to try to salvage her pride by agreeing with him or pretending indifference. But if she did that, she'd never know for certain, and uncertainty was something that drove her crazy. Furthermore, it didn't seem very mature to go leaping to conclusions, especially right now, when there was so much at stake. She decided to follow her second impulse and to find out what he'd meant. Scrupulously avoiding his gaze she traced a circle on her pillow and, summoning all her courage, she said, "Were you asking me for my opinion just now, or were you telling me yours?"

"I was asking if that's what you were thinking."

Relief surged through her, and Meredith smiled as she shook her head and explained, "I was thinking it's hard for me to understand you tonight because we've only known each other for such a short time." When he didn't reply to that, she looked at him and saw that he still looked grim and preoccupied. "It's your turn now," she said with a nervous, determined smile. "What have you been thinking about?"

His silence tonight had unnerved her, now that he was talking, his words chilled her. "I was thinking that the reason we got married was because you wanted the baby legitimized, and because you didn't want to tell your father you were pregnant. The baby's legitimized. Your father already knows you're pregnant. Instead of trying to make this marriage work, there's another solution, one we didn't consider before, but we should now: I can take the baby and raise it."

Her resolve to react with calm maturity collapsed, and she leapt straight to an obvious conclusion. "That would relieve you of the burden of an unwanted wife, wouldn't it."

"I didn't suggest it for that reason."

"Didn't you?" she said scornfully.

"No." He shifted onto his side and touched her arm, sliding his hand caressingly over her skin.

Meredith's temper exploded. "Don't you dare try to make love to me again!" she burst out, jerking her arm away. "I may be young but I still have a right to know what's going on, and not be used all night like a—a— body with no mind! If you want out of this marriage, just say so!"

His reaction was nearly as volatile as hers. "Dammit, I'm not trying to get out of anything! I am drowning in guilt, Meredith. Guilt, not cowardice! I got you pregnant and you came to me in a panic, so I got you married too. As your father eloquently phrased it," he added with bitter self-contempt, "I have stolen your youth. I've stolen your dreams and sold you mine."

Overjoyed that guilt, not regret, was causing his mood, Meredith expelled her breath in a rush of relief and started to say something, but Matt was now intent on proving to her that he was truly guilty of stealing her youth and that her expectations for the future were probably unrealistic. "You said you didn't want to stay at the farm while I'm gone," he pointed out. "Has it occurred to you that the farm is one hell of a lot nicer than where you're going? Or are you under some infantile impression that you'll live like this in Venezuela, or after we come back? Because if you are, you're in for a shock. Even if things work out exactly like I think they should, it will be years before I can afford to support you in the manner to which you're accustomed. Hell, I may never be able to afford a house like this—"

"A house like this—" Meredith interrupted, gaping at him in laughing horror, then she flopped face down on the pillow and dissolved into gales of muffled mirth.

Above her, his voice was taut with angry bewilderment. "This is not a damned bit funny!"

"Yes it is," she said, laughing into the pillow. "Th-this is an awful house! It's unwelcoming and I've never liked it." When he didn't respond, Meredith got herself under partial control and shoved back up onto her forearms, then she pushed her hair aside and stole a laughing peek at his inscrutable face. "Want to know something else?" she teased, thinking of his confession that he'd stolen her youth.

Determined to make her understand the sacrifices he was causing her to make, Matt restrained the urge to run his hand over the shimmering mass of waving hair that spilled over her back, but he couldn't keep the answering smile from his voice. "What is it?" he whispered tenderly.

Meredith's shoulders trembled with fresh merriment. "I didn't like my youth, either!" She'd hoped for a favorable response to that announcement, and she got one. He seized her mouth in a hard kiss that robbed her of breath and the ability to think. While she was still trying to recover from the effects of it, he said harshly, "Promise me one thing, Meredith. If you change your mind about anything while I'm gone, promise me you won't get rid of the baby. No abortion. I'll arrange to raise it myself."

"I'm not going to change my—" "Promise me you won't get rid of the baby!" Realizing it was senseless to argue, she nodded, looking deeply into those ominous gray eyes. "I promise," she said with a soft smile.

Her reward for that promise was another hour of lovemaking, but this time he was the man she knew.

Meredith stood in the driveway and kissed Matt good-bye for the third time that morning. The day had not started off very well. At breakfast, her father had asked if anyone else knew about their marriage, and that reminded Meredith that she'd called Jonathan Sommers last week when no one answered the phone at the Edmunton house.

To save face, she'd told Jonathan she'd found a credit card of Matt's in her car after she gave him a ride home from Glenmoor, and that she didn't know where to send it. Jonathan had provided the information that Matt was still in Edmunton. As her father pointed out, it made the idea of announcing their marriage just two days after that phone call to Jonathan ridiculous. He suggested that Meredith go to Venezuela and let everyone think they'd gotten married there. Meredith knew he was right, but she wasn't good at deception, and she was angry because she'd inadvertently created the need for more of it.

Now Matt's departure was hanging over her like a cloud. "I'll call you from the airport," he promised. "Once I get to Venezuela and check out the facilities, I'll call you from there, but it won't be on a phone. We'll have radio communications with a base station that has an actual telephone. The connection won't be very good, and I'm not going to have access to it except in emergencies. I'll convince them this time that calling you to tell you I arrived safely constitutes an emergency," he added.

"I won't be able to pull off something like that again though."

"Write to me," she said, trying to smile.

"I will. The mail service will probably be lousy, so don't be surprised if days go by with no letters and then they arrive in a group."

She stayed there in the drive, watching him leave, then she walked slowly back into the house, concentrating on thinking of a few weeks from now when, with luck, they'd be together. Her father was standing in the hall, and he gave her a pitying look. "Farrell is the sort of man who needs new women, new places, new challenges all the time. He'll break your heart if you let yourself count on him."

"Stop it," Meredith warned, refusing not to let what he said bother her. "You're wrong. You'll see."

Matt kept his promise to call her from the airport, and Meredith spent the next two days finding things in the house to keep her occupied while she waited for him to call from Venezuela. The call came on the third day, but Meredith wasn't there; she was waiting nervously to see her obstetrician because she was afraid she was miscarrying.

"Spotting during the first three months isn't that unusual an occurrence," Dr. Arledge said when she was dressed and sitting in his office. "It may not mean anything. However, most miscarriages occur during the first three months." He said it as if he half expected her to be relieved. Dr. Arledge was a friend of her father's. She'd known him for years, and Meredith had no doubt that he'd already done what her father had—assumed she'd gotten married because she was pregnant. "At this point," he added, "there's no reason to presume you're in jeopardy of miscarrying."

When she asked him about going to Venezuela, he frowned a little. "I can't advise it unless you're absolutely certain about the quality of available medical facilities."

Meredith had spent nearly a month hoping fiercely that if she was pregnant, she'd miscarry; now she was incredibly relieved that she wasn't going to lose Matt's baby.... Their baby.

The thought kept her smiling all the way home.

"Farrell called," her father said with the same disdainful voice he used whenever he spoke of Matt. "He said he'd try to call you again tonight."

Meredith was sitting by the phone when it rang, and Matt hadn't exaggerated when he said the phone connection would be bad. "Sommers's idea of adequate is a joke," he told her. "There's no way you can come down here right away. It's mostly barracks housing. The good news is that one of the cottages should be vacant in a few months."

"Okay," she said, trying to sound cheerful because she didn't want to tell him why she'd gone to the doctor.

"You don't sound very disappointed."

"I am disappointed!" she said emphatically. "But the doctor said miscarriages occur in the first three months, so it's probably better if I stay here 'til then."

"Is there a particular reason you've started worrying about miscarrying?" he asked during the next pause in the static and racket.

Meredith assured him she was feeling just fine. When he'd originally told her he wouldn't be able to call her after the first time, she'd been disappointed, but it was so hard to hear him above the static and shouting voices all around him, she didn't mind so much. Letters, she decided when she hung up, would be almost as good.

Lisa came back from Europe to start college when Matt had been gone two weeks, and her reaction to Meredith's story about meeting and marrying Matt was almost comic—once she realized Meredith wasn't at all unhappy about anything that had happened. "I can't believe this!" she said over and over again as she gaped at Meredith, who was sitting on her bed. "There is something wrong with this picture," she teased. "I was the reckless one and you were Bensonhurst's own Mary Poppins, not to mention the most cautious person alive! If anyone fell for a guy on first sight, got pregnant, and had to get married, it was supposed to be me!"

Meredith grinned at her infectious merriment. "It's about time I got to be first doing something."

Lisa sobered a little. "Is he wonderful, Mer? I mean, if he isn't really, really wonderful, then he isn't good enough for you."

Talking about Matt and her feelings for him was a new and complicated experience, particularly because Meredith knew how odd it would seem if she said she loved him after knowing him for six days. Instead, she nodded and smiled and said feelingly, "He's pretty wonderful." Once she started, however, she found it a little difficult to stop talking about him. Curling her legs beneath her, she tried to explain. "Lisa, have you ever met anyone and then known within minutes that he's the most special person you're ever going to meet in your life?"

"I generally feel that way about everybody I date at first—I'm kidding!" She laughed when Meredith threw a pillow at her.

"Matt is special, I mean that. I think he's brilliant—I mean literally brilliant. He's incredibly strong and a little dictatorial at times, but inside him there's something else, something fine and gentle and—"

"Do we by any chance happen to have a picture of this paragon?" Lisa interrupted, as fascinated by the glowing look on Meredith's face as the words she said.

Meredith promptly produced a picture. "I found it in a family photo album his sister showed me, and Julie said I could have it. It was taken a year ago, and even though it's just a snapshot and not very good, it reminds me of more than just his face—there's some of his personality too." She handed Lisa the snapshot of Matt; he was squinting a little in the sunlight, his hands shoved into the back pockets of his jeans, grinning at Julie who was taking the picture.

"Oh, my God!" Lisa said, wide-eyed. "Talk about animal magnetism! Talk about male charisma... sex appeal..."

Laughing, Meredith snatched the picture away. "That is my husband you are drooling over."

Lisa gaped at her. "You always liked clean-cut, blond, all-American types."

"Actually, I didn't think Matt was especially good-looking when I first saw him. My taste has improved since then though."

Sobering, Lisa said, "Mer, do you think you're in love with him?"

"I love being with him."

"Isn't that the same thing?"

Meredith smiled helplessly and said, "Yes, but it sounds less foolish than saying you're in love with somebody you've known only a few days."

Satisfied, Lisa shot to her feet. "Let's go out and celebrate! Dinner's on you."

"You're on," Meredith laughed, already walking toward her closet to change clothes.

The mail service from Venezuela was much worse than Matt had said it would be. In the following eight weeks, Meredith wrote Matt three or four times a week, but she got only five letters—a fact her father regularly remarked upon with more gravity than satisfaction. Meredith invariably reminded him that the letters she did get were very long—ten or twelve pages. Furthermore, Matt was working twelve-hour days doing hard physical labor, and he couldn't be expected to write as often as she did. Meredith pointed that out to him too. What she never mentioned was that the last two letters had been much less personal than the preceding ones. Where at first Matt had written about missing her and making plans, he began to write more about the scene at the oil rig and the Venezuelan countryside. But whatever he wrote about, he made it come vividly alive for her. She told herself he was writing about these things not because he was losing interest in her, but because he wanted to keep her own interest piqued in the country she'd be visiting.

Trying to keep busy to help the days pass, Meredith read books on pregnancy and child rearing, shopped for baby things, and planned and dreamed. The baby that had not seemed real at first was now making its presence known by causing the periodic bouts of nausea and fatigue that should have occurred earlier, combined with some ferocious headaches that sent Meredith to bed in a dark room. Even so, she bore it with good humor and the absolute conviction that this was a special experience. As the days wore on, she fell into the habit of talking to the baby as if, by placing her hand on her still-flat stomach, it could hear her. "I hope you are having a good time in there," she teased one day as she lay on her bed, her headache finally fading, "because you are making me sick as a dog, young lady." In the interest of impartiality, she varied "young man" with "young lady," since she didn't have the slightest preference.

By the end of October, Meredith's four-month pregnancy was thickening her waist, and her father's regular comments about Matt wanting out of the marriage were beginning to ring with truth. "It's a damned good thing you didn't tell anyone but Lisa you married him," he remarked a few days before Halloween. "You still have options, Meredith, don't forget that," he added with rare gentleness. "When this pregnancy starts to show, we'll tell everyone you've gone away to college for the winter semester."

"Stop talking like that, dammit!" Meredith exploded, and marched up to her room. She'd decided to make a point to Matt about his lack of writing by cutting way back on her own letters to him. Besides, she was beginning to feel like a lovelorn idiot, writing to him all the time when he couldn't be bothered to send a postcard.

Lisa called late that afternoon. In two minutes she sensed Meredith's strained nerves and assessed the cause. "No letter from Matt today?" she guessed. "And your father is playing his favorite tune, right?"

"Right," Meredith said. "It's been two weeks since letter number five arrived."

"Let's go out," Lisa announced. "We'll get all dressed up—that always makes you feel better, and we'll go somewhere nice."

"How about going to Glenmoor for dinner?" Meredith said, executing a plan she'd been toying with for weeks. "And maybe," she confessed a little grimly, "Jon Sommers will be there. He usually is. You could ask him all about oil drilling, and maybe he'll bring up Matt."

"Okay, fine," Lisa said, but Meredith knew that Lisa's opinion of Matt was sinking with each day that no letter arrived.

Jonathan was in the lounge with several other men, talking and drinking. When Meredith and Lisa walked in, they caused quite a stir, and it was absurdly easy to wangle an invitation to join the men at their table. For nearly an hour, Meredith sat only a few feet from where she had stood with Matt near the bar four months before, watching as Lisa gave an Academy Award-winning performance that fooled Jonathan into believing she was thinking about switching her major to geology and specializing in oil exploration. Meredith learned more about drilling than she wanted to know, and virtually nothing about Matt.

Two weeks later Meredith's doctor wasn't smiling and confident when he talked to her. She was spotting again, seriously. When she left, she was under instructions to restrict all activities. Meredith wished more than ever before that Matt were there. When she got home, she called Julie just to talk to someone close to him. She'd called Matt's sister twice before for the same reason, and each time, Julie and her father had heard from Matt that week.

In bed that night, Meredith lay awake, willing the baby to be all right, and willing Matt to write to her. It had been a month since his last letter. In it, he'd said he was extremely busy and very tired at night. She could understand that, but she couldn't understand why Matt had time to write to his family and not to her. Meredith laid her hand protectively over her abdomen. "Your daddy," she whispered to the baby, "is going to get a very stern letter from me about this."

She assumed that worked, because Matt drove eight hours to get to a telephone and called her. She was so glad to hear from him, she almost left handprints on the receiver, but he sounded a little abrupt and a little cool. "The cottage on the site isn't available yet," he told her. "I've found another place here, in a small village. I'll be able to get there only on weekends though."

Meredith couldn't go, not now, when the doctor wanted to see her every week, and she wasn't supposed to walk around more than a little. She couldn't go and she didn't want to scare Matt by telling him the doctor thought she might be on the verge of losing the baby. On the other hand, she was so angry with him for not writing, and so frightened for the baby, she decided to scare him anyway. "I can't come down," she said. "The doctor wants me to stay home and not move around very much."

"How odd," he shot back. "Sommers was down here last week and he told me you and your friend, Lisa, were at Glenmoor dazzling all the men in the lounge."

"That was before the doctor told me to stay home."

"I see."

"What do you expect me to do," Meredith shot back with rare sarcasm, "hang around here day after day and wait for your occasional letters."

"You might give that a try," he snapped. "By the way, you're not much of a correspondent."

Meredith took that to be a criticism of her letter-writing style, and she was so furious that she almost hung up.

"I gather you don't have anything else to say?"

"Not much."

When they hung up, Matt leaned his hand against the wall beside the phone and closed his eyes, trying to block out the phone call and the agony of what was happening. He'd been gone three months, and Meredith no longer wanted to come to South America. She hadn't written him in weeks; she was already resuming her old social life and then lying to him about being home in bed. She was only eighteen, he reminded himself bitterly. Why wouldn't she want a social life? "Shit!" he whispered in helpless futility, but after a few minutes he straightened with resolve. In a few months things at the drilling site would be under better control, and he'd insist that they give him four days off so that he could fly home and see her. Meredith wanted him and she wanted to be married to him; no matter how few letters she wrote or what she did, he knew in his heart that was still true. He'd fly home, and when they were together, he'd be able to talk her into coming back with him.

Meredith hung up the phone, flung herself across the bed, and cried her eyes out. When he'd told her about the house he'd found, he certainly hadn't tried to make it sound nice, and he hadn't acted like he particularly cared whether she came or not. When she finished, she dried her eyes and wrote him a long letter apologizing for being a "bad correspondent." She apologized for losing her temper and, surrendering all her pride, she told him how much his letters meant to her. She explained in great detail what the doctor had told her.

When she finished, she carried the letter downstairs and left it for Albert to mail. She'd already given up hovering by the mailbox out at the road, waiting for letters from Matt that never came. Albert, who served as butler-chauffeur and maintenance man, walked in right then with a dustcloth in his hand. Mrs. Ellis had taken three months off for her first vacation in years, and he'd reluctantly assumed some of her tasks too. "Would you please mail this for me, Albert?" she asked.

"Of course," he said. When she left, Albert took the letter down the hall to Mr. Bancroft's study, unlocked an antique secretary, and tossed that letter on top of all the others, half of which were postmarked from Venezuela.

Meredith went upstairs to her bedroom and was halfway to the chair at her desk when the hemorrhaging started.

She spent two days in the Bancroft wing of Cedar Hills Hospital, a wing named after her family in honor of their huge endowments, praying the bleeding wouldn't start again and that Matt would miraculously decide to come home. She wanted her baby and she wanted her husband, and she had a terrible feeling she was losing both.

When Dr. Arledge released her from the hospital, it was on condition that she remain in bed for the duration of her pregnancy. As soon as she came home, Meredith wrote Matt a letter that not only informed him she was in danger of losing their baby, but that was, moreover, meant to scare him into worrying about her. She was ready to do almost anything to stay on his mind.

Complete bedrest seemed to solve the problem of impending miscarriage, but with nothing to do but read or watch television or worry, Meredith had ample time to reflect on painful reality: Matt had obviously found her a convenient bed partner, and now that they were apart, he had found her completely forgettable. She started thinking about the best ways to raise her baby alone.

That was one problem she had worried about needlessly. At the end of her fifth month, in the middle of the night, Meredith hemorrhaged. This time none of the skills known to medical science were able to save the baby girl who Meredith named Elizabeth in honor of Matt's mother. They nearly failed to save Meredith who remained in critical condition for three days.

For a week after that she lay in bed with tubes running into her veins, listening anxiously for the sound of Matt's long, quick strides in the corridor. Her father had tried to call him, and when he couldn't get through, he'd sent him a telegram.

Matt didn't come. He didn't call.

During her second week in the hospital, however, he answered her telegram with one of his own. It was short, direct and lethal:

A DIVORCE IS AN EXCELLENT IDEA, GET ONE.

Meredith was so emotionally battered by those eight words that she refused to believe he was capable of sending a telegram like that—not when she was in the hospital. "Lisa," she'd wept hysterically, "he'd have to hate me before he'd do this to me, and I haven't done anything to make Matt hate me! He didn't send that telegram—he didn't! He couldn't!" She talked Lisa into putting on another performance for the benefit of the staff at Western Union in order to find out who sent it. Western Union reluctantly provided the information that the telegram had indeed been sent by Matthew Farrell from Venezuela and charged to his credit card.

On a cold December day Meredith emerged from the hospital with Lisa walking on one side of her and her father on the other. She looked up at the bright blue sky, and it looked different, alien. The whole world seemed alien.

At her father's insistence, she enrolled for the winter semester at Northwestern and arranged to share a room with Lisa. She did it because they seemed to want her to, but in time, she remembered why it had once meant so much to her. She remembered other things too—like how to smile, and then how to laugh. Her doctor warned her that any future pregnancy would carry an even greater risk to her baby and herself. The thought of being childless had hurt terribly, but somehow she coped with that, too.

Life had dealt her several major blows, but she had survived them and, in doing so, she found in herself an inner strength she didn't know she possessed.

Her father hired an attorney who handled the divorce. From Matt she heard nothing, but she finally reached the point where she could think of him without pain or animosity. He had obviously married her because she was pregnant and because he was greedy. When he realized that her father had complete control of her money, he simply had no further use for her. In time, she stopped blaming him. Her reasons for marrying him had not been unselfish either, she had gotten pregnant and been afraid to face the consequences alone. And even though she had thought she loved him, he had never deceived her by claiming to love her—she had deceived herself into believing he did. They had married each other for all the wrong reasons, and the marriage had been doomed from the start.

During her junior year she saw Jonathan Sommers at Glenmoor. He told her his father had liked an idea of Matt's so well that he'd formed a limited partnership with him and put up the additional capital for the venture.

That venture paid off. In the eleven years that followed, a great many more of Matt's ventures also paid off. Articles about him and pictures of him appeared frequently in magazines and newspapers. Meredith saw them, but she was busy with her own career, and it no longer mattered what he did. It mattered to the press though. As year faded into year, the press became increasingly obsessed with his flamboyant corporate successes and his glamorous bedroom playmates, who included several movie stars. To the common man, Matt apparently represented the American Dream of a poor boy making good. To Meredith, he was simply a stranger with whom she had once been intimate. Since she never used his name and only her father and Lisa knew that she had ever been married to him, his widely publicized romances with other women never caused her any personal embarrassment.