'm sorry, sir, you aren't allowed to park here," the doorman said as Matt got out of his car in front of Meredith's apartment building.

His mind on his impending first date with his wife, Matt put a $100 bill into the man's gloved hand and continued toward the entrance without breaking stride.

"I'll keep an eye on it for you, sir," the doorman called behind him.

The oversize tip was also payment for future favors as needed, but Matt didn't pause to tell him that, nor would it have been necessary; doormen all over the world were masters of diplomacy and economics who understood that enormous tips such as that were advance payment for small future services, not merely present ones. At the moment Matt wasn't certain what future services he might require, but ingratiating himself with Meredith's doorman seemed like a wise precaution in any case.

The guard at the desk checked his guest list, saw Matt's name, and nodded politely. "Miss Bancroft—Apartment 505," he said. "I'll buzz her to let her know you're on the way up. Elevators are right there."

Meredith was so tense that her hands shook as she combed her fingers through the sides of her hair, shoving it into a casual, windblown style that fell about her shoulders. Stepping back from the mirror, she glanced at the bright green silk shirt and matching wool crepe skirt she was wearing, adjusted the slender hammered-gold belt at her waist, then she clipped a pair of large gold squares at her ears and slid a gold bracelet onto her wrist. Her face was abnormally pale, so she applied more blusher to her cheekbones; she was just about to add more lipstick when the buzzer shrilled twice, and the tube slid from her trembling fingers, leaving a coral streak across the polished wood of her dressing table. Ignoring the fact that Matt was obviously on his way up, she picked up the tube, intending to use it, then she changed her mind, capped it, and tossed it into her purse. Looking nice for Matthew Farrell, who hadn't even had the courtesy to let her know where they were going so that she could have a clue as to what to wear, was completely unnecessary. In fact, if he had seduction in mind, the worse she looked the better!

She walked to the door, stoically ignoring her trembling knees, jerked it open, and, raising her eyes no higher than his chest, she said very truthfully, "I was hoping you'd be late."

The ungracious greeting was no less than Matt expected, but she looked so damned beautiful in emerald green with her shining hair swinging loose and artless about her shoulders, he had to suppress the urge to laugh and drag her into his arms. "How late were you hoping I'd be?"

"About three months, actually."

He did laugh then, a rich, throaty chuckle that made Meredith's head snap up a few inches, but she couldn't quite look him in the face yet. "Are you enjoying yourself already?" she asked, staring fixedly at a pair of very broad shoulders encased in a soft fawn cashmere sport coat and an open-necked cream shirt that seemed to glow against his tanned throat.

"You look lovely," he said quietly, ignoring her jibe.

Still without looking at him, she turned on her heel and walked over to the closet to get a coat. "Since you didn't have the courtesy to let me know where we're going," she said to the inside of the closet, "I had no idea what I should wear."

Matt said nothing, he knew she was going to put up a fight when she found out, and so he'd simply not told her. "You're dressed perfectly," he said instead.

"Thank you, that's extremely informative," Meredith answered. She pulled out her coat from the closet, turned around, and collided with his chest. "Would you mind moving?"

"I'll help you with your coat."

"Don't help me!" she said, stepping sideways and tugging her coat. "Don't help me with anything! Don't ever help me again!"

His hand locked on her upper arm, pulling her gently but forcibly around. "Is this the way it's going to be all night?" he asked quietly.

"No," she said bitterly, "this is the good part."

"I know how angry you are—"

Meredith lost her fear of looking at him. "No, you don't know!" she said, her voice shaking with ire. "You think you know, but you can't even begin to imagine!" Abandoning her vow to stay aloof and silent and to bore him to death, she said, "You asked me to trust you in your office, then you took everything I told you about what happened eleven years ago, and used it against me! Did you honestly think you could tear my life to pieces on Tuesday, and walk in here on Wednesday, and everything would be all sweet and rosy, you—you heartless hypocrite!"

Matt gazed into her stormy eyes and honestly considered saying, "I'm in love with you." But she wouldn't believe that after what happened yesterday—and if by some chance he could make her believe it, she'd use it against him and walk out on their agreement. And that he could not let her do. Yesterday she'd told him that all there was between them was a horrible past. He desperately needed the time he'd bargained for—time to breach her defenses and prove to her that a future relationship with him would not cause a repeat of the pain of the past. So instead of trying to explain or argue, he embarked on phase one of the psychological campaign he'd mentally mapped out—which was to get her to break the habit of blaming him completely for that past. Taking her coat, he held it out for her. "I know I seem like a ruthless hypocrite to you now, and I don't blame you for thinking it. But at least do me the justice of remembering that I was not the villain eleven years ago." She slid her arms into the sleeves and wordlessly started to step away, but he put his hands on her shoulders and turned her around, waiting until she lifted her resentful eyes to his. "Hate me for what I'm doing now," he told her with quiet force, "I can accept that, but don't hate me for the past. I was as much a victim of your father's scheming as you were!"

"You were heartless even then!" Meredith said as she shrugged off his hands and picked up her purse. "You hardly bothered to write when you were in South America."

"I wrote you dozens of letters," he said, and opened the door for her. Wryly he added, "I even mailed half of them. And you're in no position to criticize on that score," he added as they started down the carpeted hallway. "You only wrote six to me in all those months!"

Meredith watched his hand rise and press the down button for the elevator, telling herself that to exonerate himself, he was lying about the letters, but something was niggling at the back of her mind, something he'd told her during his phone call from Venezuela that she'd interpreted at the time as a criticism of her letter writing style. You aren 't much of a correspondent, are you...?

Until the doctor had restricted her activity, she'd been in the habit of taking her letters to Matt out to the mailbox at the end of the driveway herself but anyone could have removed those letters afterward—her father, a servant. The only five letters she'd gotten from Matt were ones that had come when she was hovering at the mailbox and got the mail herself from the postman's hand. Perhaps the only letters Matt received were the ones she'd given to the postman personally.

The awful suspicion grew inside her, and she glanced unwillingly at Matt, fighting down an impulse to question him further about the letters. The elevator doors slid open and he ushered her through the lobby and outside to the street, where a maroon Rolls-Royce was waiting at the curb, gleaming like a polished jewel in the light of a streetlamp.

Meredith slid into the luxurious barley leather interior, and gazed fixedly out the windshield as Matt put the car into gear and they glided into traffic. The Rolls was beautiful, but she'd have died rather than say anything that sounded admiring about his car, and besides, her mind was still on the letters.

Evidently, so was Matt's, because as they stopped at a light, he said, "How many letters did you actually get from me?"

She tried not to answer, honestly tried to ignore him, but while she could hold her own in an open confrontation, she was incapable of silent sulking. "Five," she said flatly, staring at her gloved hands.

"How many did you write?" he persisted.

She hesitated, then she shrugged. "I wrote you at least twice a week at first. Later, when you didn't answer, I cut back to once a week."

"I wrote dozens of letters to you," he said again, more emphatically. "I presume your father was intercepting our mail, and evidently failed to catch the five that got through?"

"It doesn't matter now."

"Doesn't it?" he said with biting irony. "God, when I think of the way I used to wait for mail from you, and the way I felt when it never came!"

The intensity of his voice stunned her almost as much as the words he'd uttered. She glanced at him in shock because he'd never given the slightest indication back then that she meant anything to him as a person. In bed, yes, but not out of it. The muted light of the dashboard played over the harsh, rugged contours of his face and jaw, highlighting the sculpted mouth and arrogant chin. Suddenly she was hurtled back in time, and she was sitting beside him in the Porsche, watching the wind ruffle his thick, dark hair, attracted and repelled by those sternly handsome features and his blatant sensuality. He was more handsome than ever, and the relentless ambition she'd sensed in him in the past had been channeled and realized; it was power now—irrefutable, harsh, and terribly potent. And it was being used on her. After several minutes she finally said, "Is it too much to expect to be told where you're taking me?"

She saw him smile because she'd at last broken the silence. "Right here," he said, and he flipped on the turn indicator and swung the Rolls into the underground parking garage beneath his apartment building.

"I should have known you'd try this," she burst out, fully prepared to get out of the car the instant he stopped and walk home if necessary.

"My father wants to see you," Matt said calmly, pulling into a parking space directly in front of the elevator, between a limousine with California license plates and a midnight-blue Jaguar convertible that was so new it had only temporary license plates. Reluctantly willing to go upstairs if his father was there, Meredith got out of the car.

Matt's burly chauffeur opened the door, and behind him, Patrick Farrell was already walking up the foyer steps, his face wreathed in a smile.

"Here she is," Matt told his father with grim humor, "delivered to you just as I promised she'd be—safe, sound, and mad as hell at me."

Patrick held his arms out to Meredith, beaming at her, and she walked into his embrace, turning her face away from Matt.

Looping his arm over her shoulders, he turned her to the chauffeur. "Meredith," he said, "this is Joe O'Hara. I don't think you two have ever been formally introduced."

Meredith managed a weak, embarrassed smile as she recollected the two highly emotional scenes that the chauffeur had witnessed. "How do you do, Mr. O'Hara."

"It's a pleasure t'meet you, Mrs. Farrell."

"My name is Bancroft," Meredith said firmly.

"Right," he said, shooting a challenging grin at Matt. "Pat," he said, starting for the door, "I'll pick you up out front later on."

The last time she'd been there, Meredith had been too distracted to notice the extravagant luxury of the apartment. Now she was too tense to look at anyone, so she glanced around her and was reluctantly impressed. Since Matt's penthouse occupied the entire top floor, all the exterior walls were made entirely of glass, offering a spectacular view of the city lights. Three shallow steps led down from the marble foyer to the various living areas, but instead of being divided by walls, they were left wide open, indicated only by pairs of marble columns. Directly ahead of her was a living room large enough to accommodate several sofas and numerous chairs and tables. To the right of the living room was a dining room, which was elevated like the foyer, and just above and behind that was a cozy sitting room with its own intricately carved English bar to serve it. It was an apartment that had been designed and furnished to entertain in; it was showy and impressive and opulent with its various levels and marble floors; it was also the exact opposite of Meredith's own apartment. And even so, she liked it immensely.

"So," Patrick Farrell said, beaming, "how do you like Matt's place?"

"It's very nice," she admitted. It hit her then that Patrick's being there could be the answer to her prayer. Not for a moment did she believe he knew the full extent of Matt's heavy-handed tactics, and she vowed to speak to him, privately if possible, and beg him to intervene.

"Matt likes marble, but I'm not so comfortable around it," he teased, grinning. "It makes me feel like I've died and been interred."

"I can imagine how you must feel in his black marble bathtubs, then," Meredith said with a slight smile.

"Entombed," Patrick promptly agreed, walking beside her past the dining room and up the three steps to the sitting room.

When she sat down, Patrick remained standing and Matt walked over to the bar. "What would you both like to drink?"

"Ginger ale for me," Patrick said.

"I'll have ginger ale too," Meredith said.

"You'll have sherry," Matt countered arbitrarily.

"He's right," Patrick said. "It doesn't bother me a bit to watch everyone else drink. So," he said, "you know all about Matt's marble bathtubs?"

Meredith devoutly wished she'd never blurted that out. "I—I saw some pictures of the apartment in the Sunday newspaper."

"I knew it!" Patrick declared, winking at her. "All these years, whenever Matt's picture was in a magazine or somewhere, I'd say to myself, I hope Meredith Bancroft sees this. You were keeping track of him, weren't you?"

"No!" Meredith exclaimed defensively. "I most certainly was not!"

Oddly, it was Matt who rescued her from the embarrassing discussion. Glancing up from the bar, he said to her, "While we're on the subject of notoriety, I'd like you to tell me how you expect to keep our seeing each other a secret, which is what your attorney said you want."

"A secret?" Patrick said to her. "Why do you want to do that?"

Meredith thought of at least a dozen angry and highly descriptive reasons, but she couldn't very well tell them to his father, and Matt interceded anyway. "Because Meredith is still engaged to someone else," he told his father, then he shifted his gaze to her. "You've been all over the news here for years. People will recognize you wherever we go."

Patrick spoke up. "I think I'll go see when dinner can be ready," he said, and walked off toward the dining room, leaving Meredith with the impression that he was either starving or eager to make himself scarce.

Meredith waited until he was out of earshot, then she said with angry satisfaction, "I won't be recognized, but you will. You're America's corporate sex symbol; you're the one whose motto is 'If it moves, take it to bed.' You're the one who sleeps with rock stars and then seduces their housemaids—are you laughing at me?" she gasped, her gaze riveting on his shaking shoulders.

Uncapping the ginger ale, he slid her a sideways grin. "Where are you getting all this junk about housemaids?"

"Several of the secretaries at Bancroft's are among your many admirers," Meredith retorted with scathing disdain. "They read about you in the Tattler."

"The Tattler?" Matt said, trying to hide his laughter behind a thoughtful frown. "Is that the tabloid that said I was taken aboard a UFO and told by clairvoyant aliens what business decisions to make?"

"No, that was The World Star!" Meredith retorted, growing more frustrated by his amused dismissal of the whole topic. "I saw it in the grocery store."

His amusement vanished and his voice took on an edge. "I seem to recall reading somewhere that you were having an affair with a playwright."

"That was in the Chicago Tribune, and they didn't say I was having an affair with Joshua Hamilton, they said we were seeing a lot of each other!"

He picked up the glasses and carried them over to her. "Were you having an affair with him?" he persisted.

Hating the feeling of being dwarfed by him, Meredith stood up and took the glass from his hand. "Hardly. Joshua Hamilton happens to be in love with my stepbrother, Joel."

She had the satisfaction of finally seeing Matthew Farrell at a complete loss. "He's in love with your what?"

"Joel is my step-grandmother's son, but he's close to my age, so we agreed years ago to call each other stepbrother and sister. Her other son's name is Jason."

Matt's lips twitched. "I gather," he said dryly, "that Joel is gay?"

Meredith's satisfied smile vanished and her eyes narrowed at his tone. "Yes, but don't you dare say anything ugly about Joel! He's the kindest, dearest man I've ever known! Jason is straight and he's an utter pig!"

His expression softened at her militant defense of the one brother, and he lifted his hand, unable to restrain the urge to touch her. "Who would have guessed," he said, smiling into her stormy eyes as he brushed his knuckles over her arm, "that the prim and proper debutante I met long ago would actually have so many skeletons in her closet?"

Oblivious to Patrick Farrell, who was arrested on the bottom step, listening to their altercation with fascinated interest, Meredith jerked her arm away. "At least I haven't slept with all of mine," she retorted hotly, "and not one of them," she added, "has pink hair!"

"Who," Patrick asked in a choked, laughing voice as he finally made his presence known, "has pink hair?"

Matt glanced up distractedly and saw the cook carrying in a tray and placing it on the dining room table. "It's too early for dinner," he said, frowning.

"That's my fault," Patrick said. "I thought my plane left at midnight tonight, but just after you went to get Meredith, I realized it leaves at eleven o'clock. I asked Mrs. Wilson to set dinner forward an hour."

Meredith, who was eager to get the evening over with, was delighted with an early dinner, and immediately decided to ask Patrick to drop her off at home when he left. Buoyed up by that, she managed to make it through the entire meal with relative equanimity, and Patrick made that easier by keeping up a stream of impersonal conversation in which she participated only when and if Matt didn't. In fact, though Matt was seated at the head of the table and she was on his immediate right, Meredith managed to avoid not only speaking to him, but looking at him—until dessert was cleared away. The end of the meal seemed to chart an entirely new course for the evening.

Before that, she'd believed that Patrick had no idea of the unethical extremes his son had gone to, but as he arose from the table, she discovered his apparent lack of knowledge, and even his neutrality, was an illusion. "Meredith," he said in a censorious tone, "you haven't spoken a word to Matt since we sat down at this table. Silence isn't going to get you anywhere. What you two need is a nice big fight to get everything out in the open and clear the air." He glanced at Matt with a meaningful smile. "You can start just as soon as I kiss Meredith good-bye. Joe will be waiting out in front."

Meredith stood up quickly. "We're not going to have a fight. In fact, I have to leave. Could you drop me off at home on your way to the airport?"

Patrick's tone was as implacable as it was paternal and kind. "Don't be foolish, Meredith. You'll stay here with Matt and he'll take you home later."

"I'm not being foolish! Mr. Farrell—"

"Dad."

"I'm sorry—Dad," she corrected herself, and then because she realized this was going to be her only chance to enlist his support, she said, "I don't think you realize why I'm here right now. I'm here because your son has blackmailed and coerced me into seeing him for an eleven-week period."

She expected him to be surprised, to demand an explanation from Matt. She did not expect him to look at her unflinchingly, and then side with his son against her. "He did what was necessary to stop you from doing something you might both regret for the rest of your lives."

Meredith stepped back as if he had slapped her, and she struck back verbally with quiet force. "I never should have told either one of you the truth about what happened years ago. Tonight, all night, I've thought you didn't realize why I'm here now—" Her voice dropped and she shook her head at her own naivete. "I was planning to explain it to you, and to ask you to intercede."

Patrick lifted his hand in a gesture of helpless appeal to be understood, then he looked worriedly to Matt, who stood there, unmoved by the little tableau. "I have to go," he said, and lamely added, "Do you want me to give a message to Julie for you?"

"You can give her my sympathy," she quietly replied, turning around and looking for her purse and coat, "for being raised in a family of heartless men." She missed the tensing of Matt's jaw, but she felt Patrick's hand on her shoulder, and though she stopped, she refused to turn back. His hand dropped away and then he left.

The moment the door closed behind him, silence fell over the apartment... heavy, waiting, stifling. Meredith took one step, intending to get her things, but Matt caught her arm and drew her back. "I'm getting my coat and purse and I'm leaving," she said.

"We're going to talk, Meredith," he said in the cool, authoritative tone she particularly hated.

"You'll have to physically restrain me to make me stay here," she warned him, "and if you try, I'll swear out a warrant for your arrest in the morning, so help me God!"

Torn between frustration and amusement, Matt reminded her, "You said you wanted our meetings to be private."

"I said secret!"

Matt realized he was getting nowhere, that her animosity was building by the moment, and so he did the last thing he wanted to do; he issued a threat. "We had a bargain! Or do you no longer care what happens to your father?" The look she gave him was so filled with contempt that for the first time, he wondered if he'd been wrong about her ability to hate. "We're going to talk tonight," he said, gentling his tone, "either here or at your place. You decide where."

"My place," she said bitterly.

They made the fifteen-minute trip in complete silence. By the time she opened her apartment door, the atmosphere was vibrating with tension.

Meredith went directly to a lamp, turned it on, then she walked over to the fireplace because it was as far as she could possibly get from him. "You said you wanted to talk," she reminded him ungraciously. Crossing her arms over her chest, she leaned her shoulders against the mantel, waiting for him to start trying to bully and coerce her, which she was positive he meant to do. For that reason, she was slightly disconcerted when he made no effort to do either, and instead shoved his hands into his pockets and stood in the center of the living room, slowly looking around at the cozy room as if he were fascinated by every piece of furniture and each knick-knack.

Baffled, she watched as he took one hand out of his pocket and picked up a photograph of Parker in an ornate antique frame from the end table near his hip. He put the picture back, and then let his gaze drift from the antique secretary she used as a desk to the dining room table with its silver candlesticks, to the chintz-covered Queen Anne chairs before the fire. "What are you doing?" Meredith demanded warily.

He looked around at her then, and the quiet amusement in his eyes was almost as startling as what he said. "I'm satisfying years of curiosity."

"About what?"

"About you," he said, and if Meredith hadn't known better, she'd have believed there was tenderness in his expression. "About how you live."

Wishing she'd stayed out in the open instead of backing herself into a wall, she watched him walk forward, finally stopping in front of her, both hands in his pockets again. "You like chintz," he said with a boyish half smile. "Somehow I never imagined you with chintz. It suits you though—the antiques and bright flowers; it's warm and inviting. I like it very much."

"Good, then I can die happy," Meredith said, increasingly wary of the warmth in his eyes and his smile. "Now, what did you want to talk about?"

"For one thing, I'd like to know why you're even angrier tonight than you were yesterday."

"I'll tell you why," she said, her voice shaking with suppressed resentment. "Yesterday I yielded to your blackmail and agreed to see you for eleven weeks, but I will not—will not—participate in this farce you apparently want to enact!"

"What farce?"

"The farce of pretending you want a reconciliation, which is what you did in front of the lawyers on Tuesday and your father tonight! What you want is revenge, and you found a subtler, cheaper way of getting it than suing my father!"

"In the first place," he pointed out, "I could have staged a public massacre in a courtroom for the five million dollars I'm giving you if this doesn't work out. Meredith," he said forcefully, "this is not about revenge! I told you at that meeting exactly why I was asking for this time with you. There's something between us— there has always been something between us—and not even eleven years could kill it! I want it to have a chance."

Meredith's mouth fell open, and she gaped at him, torn between ire at his outrageous lie and mirth that he actually expected her to believe it. "Am I supposed to think"—she had to stop to swallow back an angry, hysterical laugh—"that you've been carrying some sort of torch for me for all these years?"

"Would you believe it if I said it's true?"

"I'd have to be an idiot to believe it! I told you tonight that I and everybody who subscribes to a magazine or reads a newspaper knows about hundreds of your affairs!"

"That statement is an outrageous exaggeration, and you damned well know it!" In skeptical silence she raised her brows. "Dammit!" Matt swore, angrily shoving a hand through the side of his hair. "I didn't expect this. Not this." He walked away from her, then he turned on his heel, his voice ringing with harsh irony. "Will it help convince you if I admit that you haunted me for years after our divorce? Well, you did! Would you like to know why I worked myself into the ground and took insane gambles, trying to double and triple every cent I made? Would you like to know what I did the day my net worth actually reached one million dollars?"

Dazed, incredulous, and unwillingly enthralled, Meredith stared at him, and without meaning to she nodded slightly.

"I did it," he snapped, "out of some obsessive, demented determination to prove to you I could do it! The night an investment paid off and put me over the one-million-dollar mark, I opened a bottle of champagne, and I toasted you with it. It wasn't a friendly toast, but it was eloquent in its way. I said, To you, my mercenary wife—may you long regret the day you turned your back on me."

"Shall I tell you," he continued bitterly, "how I felt when I finally realized that every woman I took to bed was blond, like you, with blue eyes, like yours, and that I was unconsciously making love to you?"

"That's disgusting," Meredith whispered, her eyes wide with shock.

"That's exactly how I felt!" He walked back to stand in front of her, and he softened his voice, but not much. "And since we're having confession time here, it's your turn."

"What do you mean?" Meredith said, unable to believe everything he'd said, and yet half convinced that somehow he was telling her what he believed was true.

"Let's start with your incredulous reaction when I said I think there's been something between us all this time."

"There is nothing between us!"

"You don't find it odd that neither of us remarried during all these years?"

"No."

"And, at the farm, when you asked for a truce, you weren't feeling anything for me then?"

"No!" Meredith said, but she was lying and she knew it.

"Or in my office," he demanded, firing questions at her like an inquisitor, "when I asked you for a truce?"

"I didn't feel anything, either of those times, except... except a casual sort of friendship," she said a little desperately.

"And you're in love with Reynolds?"

"Yes!"

"Then what the hell were you doing in bed with me last weekend?"

Meredith drew a shaky breath. "Well, it was something that just happened. It didn't mean anything. We were trying to comfort each other, that's all. It was... pleasant enough, but no more than that."

"Don't lie to me! We couldn't get enough of each other in that bed, and you damned well know it!" When she remained stubbornly, resistantly silent, he pushed her harder. "And you have absolutely no desire to make love with me again, is that it?"

"That's it!"

"How would you like to give me five minutes to prove you're wrong?"

"I wouldn't," Meredith flung back.

"Do you honestly think," he said more quietly, "I'm naive enough not to know you wanted me as badly as I wanted you, that day in bed?"

"I'm sure you're experienced enough to gauge how a woman feels to within a fraction of a sigh!" she shot back, too angry to realize what she was admitting as she added, "But at the risk of wounding your damnable confidence, I'll tell you exactly how I felt that day! I felt like I've always felt in bed with you—naive, clumsy, and gauche!"

He looked ready to explode. "You what?"

"You heard me," she said, but her satisfaction at his stunned reaction was short-lived, because instead of being enraged at his overestimation of her feelings, he put his hand against the mantel for support and started to laugh. He laughed until Meredith got so angry that she tried to move away, and then he sobered abruptly.

"I'm sorry," he said contritely, a strange, tender light in his eyes. Lifting his hand, Matt laid it against her smooth cheek, amazed and shamelessly delighted that for all her innate sensuality, she obviously hadn't slept around very much. If she had, instead of feeling gauche in bed with him, she'd surely know she turned his body into an inferno with a simple touch. "God, you are lovely," he whispered. "Inside and out." He bent his head, intending to kiss her, but she turned her face away, so he kissed her ear.

"If you'll kiss me back," he whispered huskily, brushing his lips along the curve of her jaw, "I'll make it six million. If you'll go to bed with me tonight," he continued, losing himself in the scent of her perfume and the softness of her skin, "I'll give you the world. But if you'll move in with me," he continued, dragging his mouth across her cheek to the corner of her lips, "I'll do much better than that."

Unable to turn her face farther because his arm was in the way, and unable to turn her body because his body was in the way, Meredith tried to infuse disdain in her voice and simultaneously ignore the arousing touch of his tongue against her ear. "Six million dollars and the whole world!" she said in a slightly shaky voice. "What else could you possibly give me if I move in with you?"

"Paradise." Lifting his head, Matt took her chin between his thumb and forefinger and forced her to meet his gaze. In an aching, solemn voice he said, "I'll give you paradise on a gold platter. Anything you want— everything you want. I come with it, of course. It's a package deal." Meredith swallowed audibly, mesmerized by the melting look in his silver eyes and the rich timbre of his deep voice. "We'll be a family," he continued, describing the paradise he was offering while he bent his head to her again. "We'll have children... I'd like six," he teased, his lips against her temple. "But I'll settle for one. You don't have to decide now." She drew in a ragged breath and Matt decided he'd pushed matters as far as he dared for one night. Straightening abruptly, he chucked her under her chin. "Think about it," he suggested with a grin.

Meredith watched in a stupor of shock and disbelief as he turned and headed to the door without another word. It closed behind him, and she stared at it, riveted to the spot, her mind trying to absorb everything he'd said. Reaching blindly for the back of a chair, she walked around it and sank into it, not sure whether to laugh or cry. He had to be lying. He had to be crazy. That alone would explain his resolute pursuit of a foolish goal he'd evidently set for himself eleven years earlier—of proving he was good enough to be married to her, to a Bancroft. She'd read articles about his occasional business clashes with competitive companies or takeover targets, and they'd implied that he was almost inhumanly single-minded.

Evidently, Meredith realized with a hysterical, panicky giggle, she really was Matthew Farrell's newest "takeover target." She could not—would not—let herself believe he'd actually been hung up on her for years after their parting. My God, he'd never even said I love you to her when they were married—not even at the height of passion or the afterglow.

She did, however, believe some things he'd told her tonight: He probably had spent those early years working himself into the ground to prove to her, and undoubtedly her father, that he could make a fortune. That sounded just like Matt, she thought with a wry smile—and so did the champagne toast he said he drank to her the night he was worth a million dollars. Vengeful to the very end, she decided with amusement. No wonder he'd become such a force to be reckoned with in the business world! It occurred to her that her thoughts were a little mild, given the circumstances, and she reluctantly faced the reason for that: One other thing that Matt had said was true— there had always been something between them. From the very first night she'd met him, there'd been an immediate and inexplicable rapport that had sprung up between them, a bond that swiftly drew them closer together during those long-ago days at the farm. She'd felt it then, but it came as a shock to discover that Matt had been aware of it too. That same inexplicable rapport had already been struggling to resurface the day of their ill-fated lunch when he had teased her about not knowing what she wanted to drink. It had burst into bloom again at the farm, when she put her hand in his and asked for a truce, then grown stronger, more vibrant, when they sat together in the living room that night, talking about business. In a way, it was almost as if they'd been born friends. It was impossible for her to truly hate Matt for anything.

With a baffled sigh Meredith got up, turned out the lamp, and started toward her bedroom. She was standing beside her bed, unbuttoning her blouse, when the rest of his words, the ones she was adamantly trying not to remember, whispered forcefully through her mind, and her hands stilled on the buttons. Go to bed with me tonight and I'll give you the world. Move in with me, and I'll give you paradise on a gold platter. Anything you want—everything you want. I come with it, of course. It's a package deal.

Mesmerized by the memory, Meredith stood still, then she gave her head a hard shake and finished unbuttoning her blouse. The man was absolutely lethal. No wonder women fell at his feet. Just the memory of his voice whispering those things in her ear was making her hands tremble! Really, she decided as she tried to suppress a halfhearted smile, if he could bottle all that awesome sex appeal, he wouldn't need to work to make money. Her smile faded as she wondered how many other women he'd offered his paradise to, and then she realized the answer had to be none. In all the rabid press coverage of his personal life, she'd never seen a single piece of information that implied he lived other than alone. She felt unaccountably better now that she'd remembered that. And she was too exhausted from the emotional turmoil of the past two days to wonder if that wasn't a little odd.

When she got into bed, her thoughts turned to Parker and her spirits plummeted. She'd hoped all day that he would call. Despite the way they'd parted, she knew in her heart that neither of them wanted to end their engagement. It dawned on her that perhaps he was waiting for her to call. Tomorrow, she decided, she'd call him tomorrow and try again to make him understand.