y noon the pills had worn off, and Matt felt vastly better, although he was surprised to discover how weak he was after doing nothing more strenuous than take a shower and put on a pair of jeans. Behind him the bed beckoned invitingly, and he ignored it. Downstairs, Meredith was evidently making lunch, and he could hear her moving about in the kitchen. He took the tiny electric travel shaver he'd bought in Germany out of its case, plugged it into the current converter, looked in the mirror, and forgot the shaver was running quietly in his hand. Meredith was downstairs...

Impossible. Inconceivable. But true nonetheless. Fully awake now, her motives for being here and her calm acceptance of his verdict about Houston seemed improbable at best. Matt knew it, but as he began to shave, his mind skated away from reexamining her behavior too closely. No doubt the reason was that it was far more pleasant not to do that right now. Outside, it was snowing again, and cold as the Arctic, judging from the icicles clinging to the tree limbs. But inside there was warmth, and unexpected companionship, and the simple truth was he wasn't fit to resume his packing tasks and he wasn't sick enough to be contented lying in bed staring at the walls. Meredith's company, although not restful by any wild stretch of the imagination, was going to be a pleasant diversion.

In the kitchen, Meredith heard him moving above her head, and she smiled as she put the canned soup she'd prepared into a bowl and the sandwich she'd made for him onto a plate. From the moment Matt's hand had closed around hers, a strange peace had swept over her, a peace that had now burst into bloom like roses in springtime. She had never really known Matt Farrell, she realized, and she wondered if anyone truly did. According to everything she had read and heard about him, his business foes feared and hated him; his executives admired and were awed by him. Bankers courted him, CEOs asked his advice, and the Securities & Exchange Commission that presided over the stock exchange watched him like a hawk.

With few exceptions, she realized as she considered the stories she'd read, even people who admired him subtly gave the impression that Matthew Farrell was a dangerous predator to be handled gently and never angered.

And yet, Meredith thought with another soft smile, he had lain upstairs in that bed, still believing that she had coldly aborted his child and divorced him as if he were some insignificant beggar... and he had still taken her hand in his. He had been willing to forgive her. The memory of that moment, the sweetness of it, was incredibly poignant.

Obviously, Meredith decided, all those people who talked of him with fear and awe didn't know Matt well at all! If they did, they'd realize that he was capable of enormous understanding and great compassion. She picked up the tray and headed upstairs. Tonight, or in the morning, she would tell him about what had happened to their baby, but not right now. On the one hand, she was desperately eager to have it done with, to eradicate completely and forever the hurt, the anger, the confusion that they had both felt. Then the slate would be wiped clean; they could find real peace with each other, perhaps even real friendship, and they could put a graceful, congenial end to this ill-fated, tumultuous marriage of theirs. But as much as Meredith wanted to have it all out in the open, she was dreading the actual confrontation as she'd never dreaded anything before. This morning Matt had been willing to let bygones be bygones, but she did not like to think about his probable reaction when he discovered the extent of her father's treachery and duplicity.

For now she was content to let him exist in blissful ignorance of what was coming, and to give herself a short respite from what had been a wildly stressful and draining twenty-four hours... and what was bound to be a painful and wrenching discussion for her as well as for him. It occurred to her that she was inordinately satisfied at the prospect of spending a quiet evening in his company, if he was well enough, but she didn't think that was in the least significant or alarming. After all, they were old friends in a way. And they deserved this chance to renew their friendship.

Pausing outside his door, she knocked and called, "Are you decent?"

With amused dread, Matt sensed instinctively that she was bringing him another tray. "Yes. Come in."

Meredith opened the door and saw him standing in front of the mirror with his shirt off, shaving. Stunned by the odd intimacy of seeing him like that again, she jerked her gaze from the sight of his bronze back and rippling muscles. In the mirror his brows rose when he noted her reaction. "It's nothing you haven't seen before," he remarked dryly.

Chastising herself for acting like an inexperienced, unsophisticated virgin, she tried to say something suitably flippant and blurted out the first banal thing that came to mind. "True, but I'm an engaged woman now."

His hand stilled. "You've got yourself a problem," he said lightly after a pulsebeat of silence. "A husband and a fiancé."

"I was homely and unpopular with boys when I was young," she joked, putting down the tray. "Now I'm trying to collect men to make up for lost time." Turning toward him she added on a more sober note, "From something your father said, I gather I'm not the only one who has a problem with a spouse as well as a fiancé. Evidently you're thinking of marrying the girl whose picture is on your desk."

With an outward appearance of nonchalance, Matt tipped his head back and ran the shaver up his neck to his jaw. "Is that what my father said?"

"Yep. Is it true?"

"Does it matter?"

She hesitated, oddly unhappy with the direction the conversation was taking, but she answered honestly. "No."

Matt unplugged the razor, feeling physically weak and loath to deal with the future right now. "Could I ask a favor?"

"Yes, of course."

"I've had an exhausting two weeks, and I was actually looking forward to coming out here to find some peace and quiet—"

Meredith felt as if he'd slapped her. "I'm sorry I've interrupted your peace."

Warm amusement sent a wry smile to his lips. "You've always cut up my peace, Meredith. Every time we come within sight of each other, all cosmic hell breaks loose. I didn't mean that I'm sorry you're here, I only meant that I'd like to spend a pleasant, restful afternoon with you, and not have to deal with anything heavy right now."

"I feel the same way, actually."

In complete accord, they stood silently contemplating each other, and then Meredith turned away and picked up the heavy navy-blue bathrobe with a Neiman-Marcus label that was lying over the back of the chair. "Why don't you put this on, and then you can sit here and eat your lunch."

He shrugged obligingly into the robe, knotted it at the waist, and sat down, but Meredith saw the uneasy way he was looking at the covered plates. "What's under that bowl?" he asked warily.

"A string of garlic," she lied with sham solemnity, "to hang around your neck." He was still laughing when she swept off the cover. "Even I can manage to cook a can of soup and slap sandwich meat between two slices of bread," she informed him, smiling back at him.

"Thank you," he said sincerely. "This is very nice of you."

After he finished eating, they went downstairs and sat in front of the fire he insisted on building. For a while they talked pleasantly about nothing more controversial than the weather, his sister, and finally the book he'd been reading. Obviously, Matt had amazing recuperative powers, she thought, but even so, she could see that he was getting tired. "Wouldn't you like to go back up to bed?" she asked.

"No, I like it better down here," he answered, but he was already stretching out on the sofa, leaning his head against a throw pillow. When Matt awoke an hour later, he had the same thought he'd had that morning when he first opened his eyes—that he'd only dreamed Meredith was there. But when he turned his head slightly and looked over at the chair she'd been sitting in earlier, he saw that it was no dream. She was there—jotting notes on a yellow writing tablet propped on her lap, her legs curled beneath her. Firelight gilded her hair, brushed her smooth cheeks with a faint rosy glow, and cast shadows off her long curly lashes. He watched her as she worked, smiling inwardly because she looked more like a schoolgirl doing her homework than the interim president of a national retail chain. In fact, the longer he watched her, the more impossible the truth seemed. That misconception was immediately disproved when he quietly asked, "What are you working on?"

Instead of "algebra" or "geometry," the woman in the chair smiled and said, "I'm writing a market trend summary to present at the next board of directors meeting—one that I hope will convince them to let me expand our private label merchandise. Department stores," she explained when he looked genuinely interested, "particularly stores like Bancroft's, make a large profit from selling merchandise with their own labels on it, but we're not taking full advantage of it the way Neiman's and Bloomingdale's and some of the others have."

As he had been last week at lunch, Matt was instantly intrigued by this business persona of hers, partially because it was in such contrast to the other images he'd had of her in the past. "Why haven't they taken advantage of it?" he asked. Several hours later, when their discussion had ranged from Bancroft's merchandising to its financial operations, to its problems with product liability and expansion plans, Matt was no longer merely intrigued, he was impressed as hell with her... and, in a crazy way, extremely proud of her.

Sitting across from him, Meredith was vaguely aware of having somehow earned his approval, but she was so wrapped up in their discussion, so awed by his instantaneous grasp of complicated concepts, she'd lost all track of time. The page she'd been writing on was now filled with notes she'd made about his suggestions, suggestions that she was eager to think about further. His last suggestion, however, was out of the question. "We'd never be able to pull that off," she explained when he urged her to look into buying their own clothing production facilities in Taiwan or Korea.

"Why not? Owning your own facilities would eliminate all your problems with quality control and loss of consumer confidence."

"You're right, but I couldn't possibly afford it. Not now and not in the near future."

His brow furrowed at her apparent lack of understanding. "I'm not suggesting you use your own money! Borrow it from the bank—that's what bankers are for," he added, forgetting for the moment that her fiancé was a banker. "Bankers lend you your own money when they're certain that what you're borrowing it for is a sure thing, then they charge you interest for borrowing it back from them—and when the loans are paid off, they tell you how lucky you are to have them taking risks on you. You surely know how that works by now."

Meredith burst out laughing. "You remind me of my friend Lisa—she's not very impressed with my fiancé's profession. She thinks Parker ought to just give me the money whenever I need it without insisting on the usual collateral."

Matt's smile faded a little at the reminder of her fiance's existence, and then it turned to shock when she added lightly, "Believe me, I'm becoming an expert on commercial borrowing. Bancroft's is borrowed out, and so am I, to be honest."

"What do you mean, so are you?"

"We've been expanding very rapidly. If we go into a mall that's being developed by someone else, the costs go down but so do the profits, so we usually develop the mall ourselves, then lease part of it out to other retailers. It costs a fortune to do that, and we've been borrowing the money for it."

"I understand, but what does that have to do with you personally?"

"It takes collateral to get loans," she reminded him.

"Bancroft and Company has already put up all the collateral it has, as well as the actual stores, of course. The corporation ran out of collateral when we built the store in Phoenix. I wanted to go into New Orleans and Houston, so I'm putting the stocks and property in my trust fund up for collateral. I'll be thirty in a week, and the trust my grandfather set up for me comes under my control then."

She saw him scowl and hastily added, "There's no reason to be concerned. The New Orleans store has been easily able to make the payments on its loan, just as I knew it would. So long as the store can make its payments, I have nothing to worry about."

Matt was utterly dumbstruck. "You're not telling me that in addition to putting up your own things as collateral, you've also personally guaranteed that loan for the New Orleans store?"

"I had to," she explained calmly.

Matt tried, with incomplete success, not to sound like an irate professor lecturing a backward student from his lofty podium of superior knowledge. "Never do that again," he warned her. "Never, ever put your own money up for a business deal. I told you, that's what banks are for. They make the profit on the interest, let them take the risk. If business were to fall off, and the New Orleans store couldn't make its payments, you'd have to, and if you couldn't, the bank would clean you out."

"There was no other way—"

"If your bank told you that, it's a crock," he interrupted. "Bancroft and Company is an established, profitable corporation. The only time a bank has the right to ask you to personally guarantee a business loan or put up your own holdings as collateral is when you're an unknown quantity without a decent credit history." She opened her mouth to object, and Matt forestalled her by raising his hand. "I know they'll try to get you to sign personally," he admitted, "they'd love to have fifty cosigners on an ordinary home mortgage if they could get it, because it eliminates their risk. But never, ever agree to sign your name for a Bancroft loan again. Do you think for a damn second that General Motors executives are asked by a lender to sign corporate loans for GM?

"No, of course not. But our case is a little different."

"That's what banks always try to tell you. Who the hell is Bancroft's banker, anyway?"

"My fiance... Reynolds Mercantile Trust," she clarified, watching shock and then annoyance chase across his face in the firelight.

"That's one great deal your fiance cut for you," he said sarcastically.

Meredith wondered if that remark came from male competitiveness. "You're not being reasonable," she quietly informed him. "There's something you're forgetting. There are bank examiners who scrutinize a bank's loans, and now, with banks failing everywhere, the examiners are frowning on banks getting too heavily invested in any one borrower. Bancroft and Company is in debt to the tune of hundreds of millions to Reynolds Mercantile. Parker couldn't continue to loan us money, particularly now that he and I are engaged, without bringing down censure on himself—unless we put up enough collateral."

"There must have been some other form of collateral you could have used as security. What about your stock in the store?"

She chuckled and shook her head. "I've already used that, and so has my father. There's only one major family stockholder in B and C who hasn't already put her stock up."

"Who's that?"

Meredith was already wishing for a way to divert the conversation to another track, and he'd just handed her the opportunity. "My mother."

"Your mother?"

"I did have one of those, you know," she reminded him dryly. "She was given a large block of stock as part of the divorce settlement."

"Why doesn't your mother put her stock up for the bank? It's not unreasonable, since she's going to reap the profits. The value of her stock is going up every day that B and C continues to expand and prosper."

Laying aside the notepad, Meredith looked at him. "She hasn't done it because she hasn't been asked to do it."

"Would you feel comfortable telling me why not?" Matt asked, hoping she wouldn't think he was prying instead of trying to help.

"She wasn't asked because she lives in Italy somewhere, and neither my father nor I have had anything to do with her since I was a year old." When he heard that without any outward sign of emotion, Meredith suddenly decided to tell him something she normally chose to forget. Watching him for reaction, she said with a smile, "My mother was—is—Caroline Edwards."

His dark brows drew together into a baffled frown, and she prodded, "Think about an old Cary Grant movie, where he was on the Riviera, and the princess of a mythical kingdom was running away—"

She knew from his smile exactly when he identified the movie—and its female star. Leaning against the back of the sofa, he regarded her with smiling surprise. "She is your mother?"

Meredith nodded.

In thoughtful silence, Matt compared the elegant perfection of Meredith's features to the memory he had of the star of the movie. Meredith's mother had been beautiful, but Meredith was more so. She had a glow that lit her from within and illuminated her expressive eyes; a natural elegance that she hadn't acquired in some acting school. She had a dainty nose that sculptors would envy, delicate cheekbones, and a romantic mouth that invited a man to kiss it at the same time everything else about her warned a man to keep his distance.

Even if that man was her husband...

Matt pushed that thought out of his mind the moment he had it. They were married to each other only by a technicality; in reality, they were strangers. Intimate strangers, the demon in his mind reminded him, and Matt suddenly had to force himself not to look below the bright yellow V at the throat of her sweater. He didn't need to look. Once he had explored and kissed every inch of the breasts that were now filling out that sweater so provocatively. He still remembered exactly the way they filled his hands, the softness of her skin, the tautness of her nipples, the scent... Annoyed with the persistent sexual direction his thoughts were suddenly taking, he tried to tell himself it was merely the natural, appreciative reaction of any male who was confronted by a female who had the alluring ability to look both innocent and seductive in a simple sweater and slacks. Realizing that he'd been looking at her without speaking, he returned to the discussion at hand. "I always wondered where you got that beautiful face of yours—God knows your looks couldn't have come from your father."

Shocked by his unprecedented compliment and inordinately pleased that he evidently thought her face beautiful even now, when she was crowding thirty, Meredith acknowledged the compliment with a smile and a slight shrug, because she honestly didn't know what to say.

"How is it I never knew who your mother is until now?"

"There wasn't much time to talk before."

Because we were too busy making love, his mind replied, forcibly reminding him of those hot, endless nights he'd held her in his arms, joining his body to hers, trying to satisfy the need he'd felt to please her and be close to her.

Meredith was finding it surprisingly pleasant to confide in him, and so she told him something else: "Have you ever heard of Seaboard Consolidated Industries?"

Matt mentally sifted through the disjointed names and facts he'd accumulated over the years. "There's a Seaboard Consolidated somewhere in the southeast— Florida, I think. It's a holding company that originally owned a couple of large chemical companies and later diversified into mining, aerospace, computer component manufacturing, and chains of drugstores."

"Supermarkets," Meredith corrected him with that jaunty sideways smile of hers that used to make him yearn to drag her into his arms and kiss it off her lips. "Seaboard was founded by my grandfather."

"And now it's yours?" Matt said, abruptly recalling that a woman supposedly headed Seaboard.

"No, it's owned by my stepgrandmother and her two sons. My grandfather married his secretary seven years before he died. Later he adopted her two sons, and when he died he left Seaboard to them."

Matt was impressed. "She must be quite a businesswoman—she's built Seaboard into a large and very profitable conglomerate."

Meredith's dislike of her stepgrandmother prompted her to deny the woman any such undue praise, and in doing so she revealed more than she intended. "Charlotte has expanded it, but the corporation was always very diversified. In fact, Seaboard owned everything the family had acquired for generations, and Bancroft and Company—the department store, I mean—was less than one quarter of its total assets. So you see, it's not as if she built Seaboard up from nothing."

Meredith saw Matt's surprised expression and realized he'd already noted that the division of her grandfather's estate seemed very off balance. At any other time, she wouldn't have confided as much as she already had, but there was something special about today. There was the pleasure of sitting across from Matt in quiet friendship after all these years; the warmth of knowing that she was mending a relationship that never should have ended with enmity in the first place; the flattering realization that he seemed to be very interested in whatever she said. All of that, combined with the coziness of a fire crackling in the grate while snow piled up on the windows, created an atmosphere that positively encouraged confidences. Since he'd courteously refrained from prying any further into the matter they'd been discussing, Meredith voluntarily provided the answers. "Charlotte and my father detested each other, and when my grandfather married her, it caused a breach between the two men that never truly healed. Later on—perhaps in retaliation because my father was shunning him, my grandfather legally adopted Charlotte's sons. We didn't even know he'd done it until his will was read. He divided his estate into four equal parts, and left one to my father and the rest to Charlotte and her sons, with Charlotte in control of their share, of course."

"Do I detect a note of cynicism in your voice every time you mention the woman?"

"Probably."

"Because she got her hands on three quarters of your grandfather's estate," Matt speculated, "instead of half of it, which would be more normal?"

Meredith glanced at her watch, realized she needed to do something about dinner, and hurried through the rest of her explanation. "That isn't why I can't stand her. Charlotte is the hardest, coldest woman I've ever known, and I think she deliberately widened the breach between my father and grandfather. Not that it took much effort on her part," Meredith concluded with a wry smile. "My father and grandfather were hardheaded and hot-tempered—entirely too much alike to have a nice, peaceful relationship. Once, when they were quarreling about the way my father was running the store, I heard my grandfather shout at my father that the only smart thing my father had ever done in his life was to marry my mother—and then he'd loused that up just like he was lousing up the store." With an apologetic glance at the clock, she stood up then and said, "It's gotten late, and you must be hungry. I'll fix something for dinner."

Matt realized he was famished, and he stood up too. "Was your father really lousing up the store?" he asked as they walked into the kitchen.

Meredith laughed and shook her head. "No, I'm certain he wasn't. My grandfather had a weakness for beautiful women. He was crazy about my mother and furious at the time because of the divorce. He's the one who gave her the block of Bancroft's stock, actually. He said it served my father right because he'd know that every time the store made one dollar of profit, she was getting a piece of it in dividends."

"He sounds like a great guy," Matt said sarcastically.

Meredith's mind had already shifted to dinner, and she opened the cupboard, trying to decide what he might be able to eat. Matt went straight to the refrigerator and took out the steaks. "How about these?"

"Steaks? Do you feel like eating something that heavy?"

"I think so. I haven't eaten a full meal in days." Despite his interest in dinner, Matt was strangely reluctant to end their conversation, perhaps because idle conversation like this between the two of them was such a novel experience. Almost as novel, but not quite as unbelievable, as having her there now, playing the part of a devoted, attentive wife looking after her recuperating husband. As he unwrapped the meat, he watched her standing at his shoulder, tying a towel around her narrow waist for a makeshift apron. Hoping to get her to talk to him again, he made a joking reference to one of the last things she'd said. "Does your father tell you that you're lousing up the store?"

Taking down the loaf of bread, she gave him a bright sideways smile, but the smile didn't quite reach those expressive eyes of hers. "Only when he's in an unusually good mood."

Meredith saw sympathy flicker in his eyes, and she immediately endeavored to show him that it wasn't necessary. "It's embarrassing when he rants at me in meetings with store executives, but they're all accustomed to it by now. Besides, all of them have come under fire from him, too, though not as often or in the same way I get it. You see, they realize my father is the sort of man who—who hates to be confronted with proof that someone else is perfectly capable of accomplishing something without his advice or interference. He hires competent, knowledgeable people with good ideas, then he bullies them into submitting to his own ideas. If the idea works, he takes the credit; if it fails, they're his scapegoat. Those who defy him and stick to their guns get promotions and raises if their ideas succeed, but they don't get thanks or recognition. And they're in for the same battle the very next time they want to do something innovative."

"And you," Matt asked, leaning a shoulder against the wall beside her, "how do you handle things now that you're running the show?"

Meredith paused in the act of taking silverware from the drawer and looked at him, her thoughts drifting to the meeting he'd held in his office the day she'd gone there. Unfortunately, she was distracted by the sight of his bare chest, which was now at eye level and which was clearly exposed to view by the gaping front of his robe. Looking at all that bronze skin and muscle with its sprinkling of dark curly hairs had an unexpected and disquieting effect on her. With a funny catch in her breath, she lifted her gaze to his and the feeling subsided, but not the intimacy of the moment. "I handle things the way you do," she said softly, not bothering to hide the admiration she'd felt.

He quirked a dark brow at her. "How do you know how I handle things?"

"I watched you the day I came to your office. I've always known there was a better way to deal with executives than what I've seen my father do, but I wasn't certain if I'd be mistaken for being weak and feminine if I tried for a more open dialogue when I became president."

"And?" he prodded, grinning slightly.

"And you were doing exactly that with your staff that day—yet no one would ever accuse you of being weak or feminine. And so," she finished with a breathless, self-conscious laugh as she turned back to the silverware drawer, "I decided to be just like you when I grow up!"

Silence hung in the room like a living, breathing thing—Meredith uneasily self-conscious, and Matt far more pleased by her praise than he wanted to admit. "That's very flattering," he said formally. "Thank you." "You're welcome. Now, why don't you sit down and I'll fix dinner."

After dinner they went back to the living room, and Meredith wandered over to the bookcase, surveying the old books and games there. She'd had a beautiful, unforgettable day, and that fact was making her feel guilty about Parker and vaguely uneasy about... about something she couldn't quite name. Yes, she could, she thought with brutal honesty, she could name it easily, though she couldn't understand why it was affecting her. There was too much overpowering masculinity in this house for her peace of mind, too much male charm, too many memories starting to stir. She hadn't anticipated any of that when she came here. She hadn't expected a close-up view of Matt's bare chest to set off a chain of memories of other times when she'd seen it—times when she was lying on her back with Matt above her, inside her.

She ran her finger slowly along dusty spines of novels without actually seeing their titles, and she wondered idly how many other women shared those same intimate memories of Matt's body joined with theirs. Dozens, she decided, no hundreds, probably. And in a funny, purely impartial way, she no longer condemned Matt for all his well-publicized sexual exploits any more than she could find it in her heart to continue looking down her nose at the women who offered him their bodies. Now, as a grown woman herself, she fully recognized what she had only partially understood as a girl, and that was that Matt Farrell positively exuded bold sex appeal and potent masculinity. In itself, that was a lethal attraction, but when one added in the enormous wealth he'd accumulated and the power he now wielded, she could see why the combination would be absolutely irresistible to most women.

She herself wasn't endangered by it. Not a bit! The last thing she wanted in her life was an unpredictable sexual athlete who had women panting for him. She vastly preferred dependable, morally upright men. Like Parker. But she enjoyed Matt's company, she admitted that much to herself. Possibly, she was enjoying it too much.

On the sofa, Matt watched her, hoping she wouldn't find a book and lose herself in it for the rest of the evening. When she remained in front of the shelf with the old games on it for a rather long time, he thought maybe she was looking at the Monopoly game... and remembering the last time they'd played it. "Would you like to play?" he asked.

Her head jerked around, her expression inexplicably wary. "Play what?"

"I thought you were looking at one of the games—the one on top."

Meredith saw it then, the Monopoly game, and all her preoccupation and worries vanished in the anticipation of spending the next few hours doing something as completely frivolous and silly as playing Monopoly with him. She smiled at him over her shoulder, reaching for it. "Do you want to?"

Matt suddenly wanted to as much as she apparently did. "I suppose we could," he said, already pulling the quilt off the sofa so they could sit there with the game board between them.

Two hours later, Matt owned Boardwalk, Park Place, the set of green properties, the set of red properties, the set of yellow properties, all four railroads, and both utilities; and the board was literally covered with his houses and hotels, which Meredith had to pay rent for every time her token landed on one of his properties. "You owe me two thousand dollars for that last move," he pointed out, utterly contented with his evening—and utterly enchanted with the woman who could turn a Monopoly game into one of the most enjoyable nights he'd had in years. "Hand it over."

Meredith gave him a limpid look that made him chuckle even before she said, "I have only five hundred left. Would you consider a loan?"

"Not a chance. I've won. Hand it over."

"Slumlords have no heart," she said, and she plopped the money into his open palm. She tried to scowl and ended up smiling at him. "I should have known from the last time we played this game—when you bought up everything in sight and took everyone's money—that you were going to turn out to be a famous, rich tycoon."

Instead of smiling, he looked at her for a moment and then asked quietly, "Would it have mattered if you had known?"

Meredith's heart skipped a beat at the sheer unexpectedness of such a momentous question. Trying desperately to pass the matter off lightly and restore their former mood, she gave him a comic look of a woman who has been grievously maligned and began to clear the game board. "I'll thank you not to imply that I might have been mercenary in my youth, Mr. Farrell. You've humiliated me enough for one night by winning away all my money."

"You're right, I have." Matt matched her light tone, but he was amazed that he'd asked the question out loud and furious with himself for suddenly starting to wonder what he might have done to make her want to stay married to him. Getting up, he made certain the fire wouldn't flare up while they slept. By the time he finished, he'd gotten himself under firm control. "Speaking of money," he said as she put the game back on the shelf, "if you ever personally guarantee a loan for your company again, at least insist that your fiance's bank agree to release you from that guarantee after two or three years. That's long enough for them to have proof that the loan is solid."

Relieved by the change of topic, Meredith turned around. "Do banks do that?"

"Ask your fiance." Matt heard the sarcasm in his voice, and he hated the absurd stab of jealousy that was causing it. And while he was still berating himself for what he'd already said, he said even more. "And if he won't agree, get yourself another banker."

Meredith knew she was suddenly on shaky ground, but she couldn't understand how she got there. "Reynolds Mercantile," she explained patiently, "has been Bancroft's bank for nearly a century. I'm certain, if you knew all the details of our finances, you'd agree that Parker has been more than accommodating."

Irrationally annoyed by her persistent defense of Parker, he purposely said something he'd wanted to say all night. "Is he responsible for that ring you're wearing on your left hand?"

She nodded, watching him warily.

"He has lousy taste. It's ugly as hell."

He said it with such magnificent disdain, and what he said was so true about the ring, Meredith felt uncontrollable laughter welling up inside her. He stood still, brows raised in challenge, daring her to deny it, and she bit down on her lip, trying not to giggle. "It's an heirloom."

"It's ugly."

"Well, an heirloom is a—"

"It is any object," Matt said bluntly, "with deep sentimental value that is too ugly to sell and too valuable to throw out."

Instead of being irate, as he half expected her to be, Meredith burst out laughing, slumping against the wall. "You're right," she laughed.

Watching her, Matt struggled to remember that she meant nothing to him anymore, then he tore his gaze from that flushed, intoxicating face of hers and glanced at the clock on the mantel. "It's after eleven o'clock," he said. "We may as well call it a night."

Startled by his curt tone, Meredith quickly turned off the lamp beside the sofa. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have kept you up so late. I didn't realize what time it is."

Like Cinderella's magic coach that turned into a pumpkin at the end of the night, the mood of pleasant conviviality had completely disintegrated when they walked up the stairs together to go to bed. Meredith sensed it, but she didn't know why it was happening. Matt sensed it, and he knew exactly why it was happening. With cool courtesy he escorted her to Julie's room and said good night.