When she handed him the bill, he tossed it aside and regarded her with an expression that made her stomach cramp. "Really?" he jeered. "And just how do you plan to pay your tuition? I've told you I won't pay it, and you can't touch a cent of your inheritance until you're thirty. It's too late to try for a scholarship now, and you'll never qualify for a student loan, so you can forget about it. You will live here at home and go to
Maryville. Do you understand me, Meredith?"
Years of suppressed resentment came spilling out, bursting past Meredith's dam of control. "You're completely irrational'!" she cried. "Why can't you understand—"
He stood up slowly, deliberately, his gaze slicing over her with savage contempt. "I understand perfectly!" he sneered furiously. "I understand there are things you want to do—and people you want to do them
with
— that you know damned well I wouldn't approve of.
That's
why you want to go to a big university and live on campus! What appeals to you most, Meredith? Is it the opportunity to live in coed dorms
with
boys swarming through the halls and crawling into your bed? Or is it—"
"You are
sick!"
"And you are just like your mother! You've had the best of everything and all you want is the chance to crawl into bed with the scum of the world—"
"Damn you!" Meredith had blazed, stunned by the force of her own uncontrollable rage. "I'll never forgive you for that. Never." Pivoting on her heel, she had headed for the door.
Behind her, his voice boomed like a thunderclap. "Where do you think you're going!"
"Out!" she had flung over her shoulder. "And another thing, I won't be home by
midnight
. I'm through with
curfews!"
"Come back here!" he shouted. Meredith ignored him and walked down the hall and out the front door. Her fury only intensified as she flung herself into the white Porsche he'd given her on her sixteenth birthday. Her father was demented. He was sick! She spent the evening with Lisa and deliberately stayed out until almost
three
a.m.
Her father was waiting up for her when she returned, pacing in the foyer. He roared and called her names that tore at her heart, but for the first time in her life Meredith wasn't intimidated by his wrath. She endured his vicious verbal attack, and with every cruel word he said, her resolve to defy him increased.
Protected from interlopers and sight-seers by a tall iron fence and a guard at the gatehouse, the
Glenmoor
Country Club sprawled across acres of majestic lawns dotted with flowering shrubs and flower beds. A long, curving drive lit by ornamental gas lamps meandered through stately oak and maple trees to the front door of the club, then curved back again to the main road. The club itself, a rambling three-story white-brick structure with
wide pillars marching across its stately facade, was surrounded by two championship golf courses and rows of tennis courts off to the side. At the back, French doors opened onto wide terraces covered with umbrella tables and potted trees. Flagstone steps descended from the lowest terrace to the two Olympic-size pools below. The pools were closed to swimmers tonight, but thick, bright yellow cushions had been left on the chaise
longues
for those members who might desire to watch the fireworks display from a prone position, or recline between dances when the orchestra came outside to play after that.
Dusk was just beginning to fall as Meredith drove past the main doors where attendants were busy helping members out of their cars. She pulled into the crowded parking lot on the side of the building and parked her car between a gleaming new Rolls belonging to the wealthy founder of a textile mill and an eight-year-old Chevrolet sedan belonging to a much wealthier financier. Normally there was something about dusk that lifted her spirits, but as she got out of her car, she was thoroughly depressed and preoccupied. Other than her clothes, she owned nothing she could sell to raise the money she needed to pay her own college expenses. Her car was in her father's name and her inheritance was under his control. She had exactly $700 in her bank account, $700 to her name. Racking her brain for some way to pay her own tuition, she walked slowly toward the club's main doors.
On special nights like this the club's lifeguards did double duty as parking attendants. One of them hurried up the front steps to hold the door open for her. "Good evening, Miss Bancroft," he said, flashing her a killer smile. He was muscular and good-looking, a med student at the
University
of
Illinois
. Meredith knew all that because he'd told her last week when she was trying to sunbathe. "Hello, Chris," she said absently.
In addition to being Independence Day, the Fourth of July also marked the founding of
Glenmoor
, and the club was alive with laughter and conversation as members with cocktails in their hands wandered from room to room, clad in the tuxedos and evening dresses that were mandatory attire for tonight's dual celebration. The interior of
Glenmoor
was far less imposing and elegant than some of the newer country clubs around
Chicago. The Oriental carpets that covered the polished wood floors were fading, and the sturdy antique furniture in the various rooms created an aura of stuffy complacency rather than glamour. In that respect,
Glenmoor
was like most of the other premier country clubs in the nation. Old and intensely exclusive, its prestige and desirability came not from its furnishings or even its facilities, but from the social standing of its membership. Wraith alone could not gain one a coveted membership at
Glenmoor
unless it was also accompanied by sufficient social prominence. On those rare occasions when an applicant for membership met those two standards, he was still required to have the unanimous approval of all fourteen men on
Glenmoor's
membership committee before submission for comments to the general membership. Those rigid requirements had, in the last few years, scotched the membership aspirations of several newly successful entrepreneurs, countless physicians, innumerable congressmen, a number of players for the White Sox and Bears, and a state supreme court justice.
Meredith, however, was impressed by neither the club's exclusivity nor by its members. They were simply familiar faces, some of whom she knew fairly well, others not well at all. As she walked down the hallway, she nodded and smiled automatically at those people she knew, while she looked into the various rooms for the people she was supposed to meet. One of the dining rooms had been turned into a mock casino for the evening; the other two had been set up for a lavish buffet. All of them were crowded. Below, on the ground floor, an orchestra was tuning up in the club's main banquet room and, judging from the volume of noise coming up the stairwell as she passed it, Meredith assumed there was a crowd down there as well. As she passed the card room, she glanced warily in it. Her father was an inveterate
cardplayer
, as were most of the other people in the room, but he wasn't there and neither was Jon's group. Having checked out all the rooms on this floor except the club's main lounge, Meredith went there next.
Despite its large size, the decor of the lounge had been intended to create an atmosphere of coziness. Overstuffed sofas and wing chairs were grouped around low tables, and the brass wall sconces were always dimmed so that they cast a warm glow against the mellow oak paneling. Normally the heavy velvet draperies were drawn across the French doors at the back of the lounge; tonight they'd been opened so that guests could stroll out onto the narrow terrace off the lounge, where a band was playing soft music. A bar stretched the entire length of the room on the left, and bartenders moved back and forth from the guests seated at the bar to the mirrored wall behind, where hundreds of liquor bottles were stacked on shelves beneath subdued spotlights.
Tonight the lounge was crowded, too, and Meredith was about to turn around and head downstairs when she spotted Shelly Fillmore and Leigh Ackerman, who'd both phoned to remind her she was expected to join them tonight. They were standing at the far end of the bar along with several more of Jonathan's friends and an older couple who Meredith finally identified as Mr. and Mrs. Russell
Sommers
—Jonathan's aunt and uncle. Pinning a smile on her face, Meredith walked up to them, and then froze as she noticed her father standing with another group of people just to their left. "Meredith," Mrs.
Sommers
said when Meredith had said hello to everyone, "I love your dress. Where on earth did you find that?"
Meredith had to glance down to see what she was wearing. "It came from Bancroft's."
"Where else!" Leigh Ackerman teased.
Mr. and Mrs.
Sommers
turned aside to speak to other friends, and Meredith kept one eye on her father, hoping he would stay completely away from her. She'd been standing still for several moments, letting his presence completely unsettle her, when it suddenly struck her that he was even managing to ruin this evening for her! That made her angrily decide to show him he couldn't do it and that, furthermore, she wasn't beaten yet. She turned and ordered a champagne cocktail from one of the bartenders, then she beamed her brightest smile on Doug Chalfont and gave an excellent imitation of being fascinated with whatever he was telling her.
Outside, twilight deepened into night; inside, conversations escalated in volume in direct proportion to the liquor being consumed, while Meredith sipped her second champagne cocktail and wondered if she ought to try to get a job and, in so doing, present her father with further proof of her resolve to go to a good college. She glanced at the mirror behind the bar and caught him watching her, his eyes narrowed with cool displeasure. Idly she wondered what he disapproved of now. Possibly it was her strapless dress, or, more likely, it was the attention Doug Chalfont was paying to her. It couldn't have been the glass of champagne she was holding, however. Just as Meredith had been required to speak like an adult as soon as she learned to talk, she had also been expected to conduct herself as an adult. When she was twelve, her father had started permitting her to stay at the table when he had a few guests in for dinner. By the time she was sixteen, she was learning to act as his hostess, and she sipped wine with dinner guests—in moderation, of course.
Beside her, Shelly Fillmore said it was probably time to go into the dining room or else risk losing their reserved table, and Meredith gave herself a mental shake, belatedly remembering her vow to have a good time tonight. "Jonathan said he'd join us in here before dinner," Shelly added. "Has anybody seen him?" Craning her neck, Shelly looked around the thinning crowd in the lounge, many of whom were also starting to proceed to the dining rooms. "My God!" she burst out, staring at the entrance of the lounge. "Who is that? He's absolutely gorgeous!" That remark, made in a louder tone than she'd intended, caused a ripple of interest, not only among the entire group Meredith was with, but with several other people who'd overheard her exclamation and were turning around.
"Who are you talking about?" Leigh Ackerman asked, peering about the room. Meredith, who was facing the entrance, glanced up and knew instantly
exactly
who had caused that awed, avaricious expression on Shelly's face! Standing in the doorway, with his right hand thrust into his pants pocket, was a man who was at least six feet two, with hair almost as dark as the tuxedo that clung to his wide shoulders and long legs. His face was sun-bronzed, his eyes light, and as he stood there, idly studying the elegantly dressed members of
Glenmoor
, Meredith wondered how Shelly could ever have described him as "gorgeous." His features looked as if they had been chiseled out of granite by some sculptor who had been intent on portraying brute strength and raw virility—not male beauty. His chin was square, his nose straight, his jaw hard with iron determination. All in all, Meredith thought he looked arrogant, proud, and tough. But then, she'd never been very attracted to dark, overly macho men.
"Look at those shoulders," Shelly rhapsodized, "look at that face. Now, that,
Douglas," she teased, turning to Doug Chalfont, "is pure, undiluted sex appeal!"
Doug considered the man
and shrugged, grinning. "He doesn't do a thing for me." Turning to one of the other men in their party whom Meredith had met for
the first
time tonight, he asked, "How about you, Rick? Does he turn you on?"
"I won't know until I see his legs," Rick joked. "I'm a leg man, which is why
Meredith
turns me on."
At that moment, Jonathan appeared in the doorway, looking a little unsteady on his feet, and looped his arm around the newcomer's shoulders while glancing about the room. Meredith saw the triumphant little smile he fired at his friends when he spotted all of them at the end of the bar, and she realized instantly that he appeared to be semi-drunk, but she was completely baffled by the groaning laugh that issued from both Leigh and Shelly. "Oh, no!" Leigh said, looking from Shelly to Meredith with comic dismay. "Please don't tell me that magnificent male specimen is the laborer who Jonathan hired to work on one
o
f their oil rigs!"
Doug Chalfont's burst of laughter had drowned out most of Leigh's words, and Meredith leaned closer to Leigh. "I'm sorry—what did you say?"
Speaking quickly so that she could finish before the two men reached them, Leigh explained, "The man with Jonathan is actually a steelworker from
Indiana
! Jon's father made him hire the guy to work on their oil rig in
Venezuela."