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.