t 1:30 the following afternoon, Meredith left the advertising department and headed toward her own office. All day long, wherever she went, people were turning to stare at her, and she had no doubt about why they were doing it. She slapped the button for the elevator, thinking of Sally Mansfield's infuriating blurb in this morning's Tribune:

Friends of Meredith Bancroft who were stunned to see her snub Chicago's most eligible bachelor, Matthew Farrell, at the opera benefit two weeks ago, have another shock in store for them: The couple was lunching together at one of Landry's cozy back tables! Our newest bachelor is certainly a busy man—that same night he escorted gorgeous Alicia Avery to the opening of Taming of the Shrew at the Little Theater.

In her office, Meredith opened her desk drawer with an angry jerk, marveling anew at the petty vindictiveness of the columnist who was a close friend of Parker's ex-wife, That mention of her lunch with Matt was nothing but a ploy to make Parker look like a fool in imminent danger of being jilted.

"Meredith," Phyllis said, her voice tense. "Mr. Bancroft's secretary just called. She said he wants to see you in his office immediately."

Unscheduled, abrupt summonses from Meredith's father were extremely rare; he preferred to oversee the activities of his executives with regularly scheduled weekly meetings and to handle anything else by telephone. In the moment of silence that Meredith and her secretary looked at each other, they both assumed the reason might be related to the naming of an interim president.

That conclusion was borne out when Meredith reached the reception area outside her father's office and saw that all the other executive vice presidents had also been summoned, including Allen Stanley, who'd been on vacation for the past week.

"Miss Bancroft," her father's secretary said, motioning her forward, "Mr. Bancroft would like you to go right in." Meredith's heart soared as she walked toward his door—since she was the first to be advised of the board's choice, it was only logical that she was that choice. Like her father, and his father, and all the other Bancrofts before them, Meredith Bancroft was going to be granted her birthright. More correctly, she was going to be allowed to prove her worthiness for the next six months.

Foolishly close to sentimental tears, Meredith knocked on the door and walked into his office. No one but a Bancroft had ever occupied this office or sat behind that desk; how could she have imagined that such a grand tradition would be ignored by her father?

Her father was standing at the windows, his hands clasped behind him. "Good morning," she said brightly to his back.

"Good morning, Meredith," he said, turning around, his voice and expression unusually friendly. He sat down behind his desk, watching her as she came forward. Although there was a sofa and coffee table at the far end of his office, he never sat there or offered anyone else a seat there. Instead, it was his habit to sit in the high-backed swivel chair behind his desk and to speak to people formally, across the expansive barrier of a large, antique baronial desk. Meredith wasn't certain whether he did that unconsciously, or whether it was with the deliberate intention of intimidating people. Either way, it was subtly unnerving to everyone, including Meredith at times, to have to traipse across the wide expanse of carpet to reach his desk, while he sat there, watching and waiting.

Now, Meredith noted, he waited with an unusual degree of patience, although he did not stand up. While good breeding and custom caused him to stand up whenever a woman arrived anyplace else, if that woman worked for Bancroft's at the management level or above, he remained seated, even when every other man arose. It was Meredith knew, his way of silently criticizing their presence in the executive ranks. And yet, when she was with him away from the store, he observed all the formalities. In the years she'd worked at the store, Meredith had learned to accept his two distinct and very different personas, even though there were still times when it disconcerted her to kiss him good night and have him walk past her the next morning at work with barely a curt nod.

"I like that dress you're wearing," he said, looking at her beige cashmere dress.

"Thank you," Meredith replied with surprised sincerity.

"I hate seeing you in those business suits you wear most of the time. Women should wear dresses." Without giving her a chance to reply, he inclined his head toward one of the chairs in front of his desk, and Meredith sat down, desperately trying to hide her nervousness.

"I've sent for the entire executive staff because I have an announcement to make, but I wanted to speak with you first. The board of directors has decided upon an interim president." He paused, and Meredith leaned forward in her chair, tense with expectation. "They've chosen Allen Stanley."

"What?" she said in a gasp, reeling from a combination of shock, anger, and disbelief.

"I said, they've chosen Allen Stanley. I'm not going to lie to you—they did it on my recommendation."

"Allen Stanley," Meredith interrupted, coming to her feet and speaking in a stunned, furious voice, "has been on the verge of a nervous breakdown ever since his wife died! furthermore, he doesn't have the expertise or experience to run a retail operation—"

"He's been Bancroft's controller for twenty years," her father snapped, but Meredith wasn't intimidated and she wasn't finished. Outraged, not only because she'd been cheated of the opportunity she should have been given, but at the sheer stupidity of the choice of successor, she braced her hands on his desk. "Allen Stanley is a glorified accountant! You couldn't have made a worse choice, and you know it! Any one of the others, any of them, would have been a better choice...." It hit her then, a realization that nearly sent her to her knees. "That's why you recommended Stanley, isn't it? Because he can't possibly run Bancroft's as well or better than you have. You're deliberately jeopardizing this company because your ego—"

"I won't tolerate that sort of talk from you!"

"Don't you dare try to exert parental authority on me now!" Meredith warned furiously. "You've told me a thousand times that at this store our relationship doesn't exist. I am not a child, and I am not speaking as your daughter. I am a vice president and major shareholder of this company."

"If any of the other vice presidents dared to speak to me as you are now, I'd fire them on the spot—"

"Then fire me!" she flung back. "No, I won't give you that much satisfaction! I resign. Effective immediately. You'll have a letter on your desk in fifteen minutes."

Before she could take the first step to leave, he sank into his chair. "Sit down!" he ordered her. "Since you're determined to have it out at this inopportune moment, let's lay all our cards on the table."

"That will be a welcome change!" Meredith retorted, sitting down.

"Now," he said with biting sarcasm, "the truth is that you are not angry about my choosing Allen Stanley, you're angry because I didn't choose you."

"I'm angry about both those things."

"Either way, I had sound reasons for not choosing you, Meredith. For one thing, you are not old enough or experienced enough to take over the reins of this company."

Really?" Meredith shot back. "How did you arrive at that conclusion? You were less than a year older than I am now when Grandfather put you in charge."

"That was different."

"It certainly was," she agreed, her voice shaking with anger. "Your record at this store when you were put in charge was a great deal less impressive than mine is! In fact, the only thing you really accomplished was to come to work on time!" She saw him put his hand to his chest, as if he were having a pain, and that only made her more furious. "Don't you dare fake a heart attack, because it won't stop me from saying what I should have said years ago." His hand fell from his jacket and he glared at her white-faced as she pronounced, "You are a bigot. And the real reason you won't give me a chance is because I am a female."

"You're not far from wrong," he gritted out with a suppressed rage that nearly matched hers. "There are five men out there in that reception room who have invested decades of their lives in this store. Not a few years, but decades!"

"Really?" she retorted sarcastically. "How many of them have invested four million dollars of their own money in it? Furthermore, you're not only bluffing, you're lying. Two of those men came to work here the same year I did, and for higher salaries, I might add."

His hands closed into fists on his desk. "This discussion is pointless."

"Yes, it is," she agreed bitterly, standing up. "My resignation still stands."

"Just where do you think you'll go from here?" he said in a voice that implied she'd never find a comparable job.

"To any major retailer in the country!" Meredith countered, too furious to consider the anguish such an act of disloyalty would cause her. Bancroft's was her history, her life. "Marshall Field's would hire me in five minutes, so would the May Company or Neimans—"

"Now you're bluffing!" he snapped.

"Just watch me!" she warned, but she was already sickened by the thought of working for Bancroft's competitors and exhausted by the holocaust of emotions inside her. Almost wearily, she said, "Just once, could you possibly be completely honest with me—"

When he waited in stony silence for her question, she said, "You never intended to turn the store over to me, did you? Not now, and not in the future, no matter how long or how hard I worked here?"

"No."

In her heart she'd always known that, but even so, she reeled from the shock of having him say it. "Because I'm a woman," she stated.

"That's one reason. Those men out there won't work for a woman."

"That's garbage," Meredith replied numbly. "And it's illegal. It's also untrue, but you already know that. Dozens of men report to me, directly or indirectly, in the departments under my control. It's your own egotistical bigotry that makes you believe I shouldn't run this organization."

"Maybe it's partly that," he shot back. "And maybe it's also because I refuse to aid and abet you in your blind determination to build your entire life around this company! In fact, I will do anything in my power to prevent you from building your life around any career with any store! Those are my motives for keeping you from inheriting this office, Meredith. And whether you like my motives or not, at least I know what they are. You, on the other hand, don't even know why you're determined to turn yourself into Bancroft's next president."

"What!" she uttered in blank, angry confusion. "Suppose you tell me why you think I am."

"Very well, I will. Eleven years ago you married a bastard who was after your money and who'd gotten you pregnant; you lost his baby and you discovered you could never have more children. And suddenly," he finished with bitter triumph, "you developed an abiding love for Bancroft and Company and a driving ambition to mother it!"

Meredith stared at him while all the flaws in his argument raged through her brain and a lump of emotion swelled painfully in her throat. Fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, "I have loved this place since I was a little girl; I loved it before I met Matthew Farrell and I loved it after he was out of my life. In fact, I can tell you exactly when I decided to work here and be president someday. I was six years old, and you brought me here to wait for you while you met with the board. And you told me," she continued raggedly, "that I could sit there, in your chair, while I waited for you. And I did. I sat there, touching your fountain pens and I buzzed your secretary on the intercom, and she came in and let me dictate a letter. It was a letter to you," she said—and from the way his face paled, she knew he suddenly remembered that letter. "The letter said"—she paused to draw another shattered breath, adamantly refusing to let him see her cry—'Dear Father, I am going to study and work very hard, so that someday you will be so proud of me that you'll let me work here like you and Grandfather. And if I do, will you let me sit in your chair again?'

"You read the letter that day, and you said 'of course,'" Meredith finished, looking at him with proud disdain. "I kept my word; you never meant to keep yours. Other little girls played house, but not me," she added on a choked laugh. "I played department store!"

Lifting her chin, she added, "I used to think you loved me. I knew you wished I'd been a boy, but I never realized you didn't give a damn about me because I was merely a girl. All my life you've made me despise my mother for leaving us, but now I wonder if she left or you drove her away, exactly as you've just driven me away. My resignation will be on your desk tomorrow." She saw the look of knowing satisfaction on his face at her postponement, and she lifted her chin higher. "I have meetings scheduled, and I won't be able to get to it before then."

"If you aren't here when I make the announcement to the others," he warned her as she turned toward the side door of his office that led through the conference room and then out into the hall, "they'll all suspect you ran out of here crying because you weren't the choice."

Meredith paused long enough to give him a look of magnificent contempt. "Don't fool yourself, Father. Even though you treat me like an unwanted millstone, there isn't one of them who truly believes you are as heartless and indifferent to me as you actually are. They'll think you told your own daughter days ago who the choice was going to be."

"They'll know differently when you resign," he warned, and for a split second there was something like alarm in his voice.

"They'll be too busy helping poor Allen Stanley run this place to think about it."

"I'll be running Allen Stanley."

She paused with her hand on the doorknob and looked at him over her shoulder, so numb inside that she actually managed to laugh. "I know that. Did you think I was arrogant enough to believe I could handle Bancroft's on my own, without guidance from you while you're on leave? Or were you afraid I'd try?" Without waiting for his reply, Meredith opened the door into the conference room and left him standing there.

Her disappointment at not having the chance to prove herself as Bancroft's temporary president was completely eclipsed by the pain of having just realized that she actually meant very little to him. For years she'd been telling herself he loved her, but he just didn't know how to show it. Now, as she waited for the elevator, Meredith felt as if someone had turned her world upside down and inside out. The doors opened and she stepped inside, then she stared at the double panel of lit numbers, not knowing which one to press because she didn't know where she was going. Or who she really was. All her life she'd been Philip Bancroft's daughter. That was her past. Her future had always been here, at the store. Now her past was a lie and her future was... a void. Masculine voices were coming down the hall and she reached out and pressed the button for the mezzanine, praying the doors would close before anyone saw her.

The mezzanine was actually a balcony that looked out across the first floor of the store, and not until Meredith walked over to the polished brass railing and looked down did she realize that she had automatically come here, to her favorite place. Her hands gripping the cool, smooth brass railing, she stood there looking down at the noisy bustle in the aisles below, feeling isolated and entirely alone in a crowded department store teeming with Christmas shoppers while "White Christmas" played over the speaker system. Off to her right, at the lingerie counters, women were pawing through slips and nightgowns, while Mrs. Hollings, the manager of the lingerie department and Meredith's former supervisor, presided over the main counter with the same stern, unflappable calm she'd exhibited for all twenty-five of her years at Bancroft's. She gave Meredith a brief smile, but Meredith turned away, pretending not to have seen the silent greeting. She turned away because she could not manage even a pretense of a smile in return.

Behind her, shoppers were searching through the racks of silk peignoirs. On the balcony across the store from where she stood, the men's lounge wear department was doing a brisk business in bathrobes. She heard the voices, and the music, and the constant hum of computerized cash registers churning out sales tickets, but she felt nothing. Overhead, the store's paging system began to chime—two short bells, a pause, then one more; it was her paging code, but she didn't react. Not until someone actually spoke directly to her did she manage to move. "Do you work here?" an impatient shopper demanded.

Did she work here? With an effort Meredith dragged her mind into focus. "I mean," the woman continued as she thrust a peignoir at Meredith, "since you aren't wearing a coat, I assume you do."

"Yes," Meredith replied. For today, she worked here.

"Then where will I find the sale peignoirs in your ad?

This one is $425.00 and the ad in Sunday's Tribune said you had them for $89.95."

"Those are on the fifth floor," Meredith explained.

Her paging code sounded again, and still she stood there—not certain whether she was saying good-bye to the store, her dreams, or merely tormenting herself.

The third time the page sounded, Meredith reluctantly walked over to the counter near the bathrobes and dialed the number for the store's main operator. "This is Meredith Bancroft," she said. "You paged me?"

"Yes, Miss Bancroft. Your secretary says it's urgent that you call your office."

When she hung up, Meredith glanced at her watch. She had two more meetings scheduled for that afternoon— assuming she could make it through them as if everything were normal. And even if she could, what was the point of putting herself to the trouble of doing it? Reluctantly Meredith called Phyllis's extension. "It's me," she said. "You had me paged?"

"Yes, I'm sorry to bother you, Meredith," Phyllis began and from her sad, uneasy tone Meredith assumed that the meeting her father had called to announce his temporary successor was over, and the news was already out. "It's Mr. Reynolds," Phyllis continued. "He's called twice in the last half hour. He says he has to talk to you. He sounds awfully upset."

Meredith realized Parker had apparently heard the news too. "If he calls again, please tell him I'll get back to him later." She couldn't bear his sympathy right now without breaking down. And if he tried to tell her this was somehow for the best... she couldn't bear that either.

"All right," Phyllis said. "You have a meeting with the director of advertising in a half hour. Do you want me to cancel it?"

Again Meredith hesitated, her gaze roving almost lovingly over the frenetic activity all around her. She couldn't bear to just walk out—not with the Houston deal still up in the air and several other projects still needing her attention. If she worked hard for the next two weeks, she could complete much of her work and get the rest of it ready to be turned over to her successor. To leave things in a mess—to leave without taking care of some of her projects—was not in the best interest of her store. Her store. Hurting Bancroft's was like hurting herself. No matter where she went or what she did, this place would always be a part of her and she of it. "No, don't cancel anything. I'll be up there in a little while."

"Meredith?" Phyllis said hesitantly. "If it's any consolation, as far as most of us are concerned, you should have been given the president's job."

Meredith's laugh was short and choked. "Thanks," she said, and hung up the phone. Phyllis's words of support were sweet, but just now they didn't do much to lift her heavy spirits.