ood morning," Phyllis said, her forehead creasing in a worried frown as Meredith walked past her Monday morning without her usual greeting, two hours late for work. "Is anything wrong?" she asked, getting up from her new desk outside the president's office and following Meredith inside. Miss Pauley, who'd been Philip Bancroft's secretary for twenty years, had decided to take a long-overdue vacation while her employer was on leave.

Meredith sat down at her desk, leaned her elbows on it, and massaged her temples. Everything was wrong. "Nothing, really. I have a slight headache. Do I have any phone messages?"

"A pile of them," Phyllis said. "I'll get them, and I'll bring you some coffee too. You look like you could use some."

Meredith watched Phyllis leave, and she leaned back in her chair, feeling like she'd aged a hundred years since she'd left this office on Friday. Besides having lived through the most cataclysmic weekend of her life, she'd also managed to demolish her pride by going to bed with Matt, betraying her fiance, and then compounding her wrongs by running away and leaving Matt a note. Guilt and shame had haunted her throughout the drive home, and to finish it all off nicely, she'd actually thought she was being followed by some demented Indiana patrolman who slowed down whenever she did, stopped for gasoline when she did, and then stayed behind her until she lost sight of him a few blocks from her apartment. By the time she got home she was a mass of guilt and shame and fear—and that was before she played back the messages on her answering machine and listened to the ones from Parker.

He'd called Friday night to say that he missed her and needed to hear the sound of her voice. His Saturday morning message had been mildly confused at her lack of reply. Saturday night he'd been worried by her silence, and he'd asked if her father had gotten ill on his cruise. Sunday morning he said he was alarmed and that he was going to call Lisa. Unfortunately, Lisa had evidently explained that Meredith had gone to see Matt on Friday to tell him the truth and get things straightened out. Parker's sunday night message was furious and hurt: "Call me, dammit!" he'd said. "I want to believe you have a legitimate reason for spending the weekend with Farrell, if that's what you've done, but I'm running out of excuses." Meredith sustained that part better than his next words, which were filled with confusion and tenderness, "Darling, where are you, really? I know you aren't with Farrell. I'm sorry I said that, my imagination is running wild. Did he agree to a divorce? Has he murdered you? I'm terribly worried about you."

Meredith closed her eyes, trying to banish the sensation of impending doom so that she could attempt to get on with her day. The note she'd left Matt had been cowardly and childish, and she couldn't understand why she'd been unable to stay there until he woke up and then say good-bye to him like a mature adult. Every time she went near Matt Farrell, she said and did things that she'd never do under ordinary circumstances—foolish, wrong, dangerous things! In less than forty-eight hours with him, she'd thrown away her scruples and forgotten about things that mattered to her, like decency and principles. Instead, she'd gone to bed with a man she didn't love, and she had betrayed Parker. Her conscience was on a rampage.

She thought of the way she'd responded to him in bed, and bright color ran up her pale cheeks. At eighteen she'd been awed by the fact that Matt seemed to know all the right places to touch her, all the right things to whisper to her, in order to drive her into a frenzy of defenseless desire. To discover, when she was twenty-nine, that he could still do it—only much more so—filled her with despondent shame. Yesterday she'd practically begged him for a climax—she, who was helplessly modest in bed with her own fiance.

Meredith drew herself up short. These sorts of recriminations, these thoughts, weren't fair to either Matt or her. The things she'd told him yesterday had shaken him deeply. They'd gone to bed together as a way to... to console each other. He had not merely used that as an excuse to get her into bed. At least, she thought a little wildly, it hadn't seemed like it at the time.

She was doing it again, she realized in frustrated alarm—losing focus, concentrating on all the wrong things. It was counterproductive to sit, on the verge of tears, filled with remorse and obsessed with anything as silly as his sexual expertise. She needed to take action, to do something to banish this strange, nameless panic that had been growing inside her from the moment she'd left Matt's bed. At four o'clock that morning she'd arrived at certain conclusions, and she'd made a decision. Now she needed to stop going over the problems and follow through with that decision.

"I had to wait for a fresh pot of coffee to brew," Phyllis said, heading toward Meredith's desk with a steaming mug in one hand and a fistful of pink message slips in the other. "Here are your messages. Don't forget, you rescheduled the executive committee meeting for today at eleven."

Meredith managed not to look as harassed and miserable as she felt. "Okay, thanks. Will you get Stuart Whitmore on the phone for me? And will you see if you can reach Parker at his hotel in Geneva? If he isn't in his suite, leave a message."

"Who do you want first?" Phyllis asked with her usual cheerful efficiency.

"Stuart Whitmore," Meredith said. First she would tell Stuart of her decision. Next she would talk to Parker, and try to explain. Explain? she thought miserably.

Trying to think of something less daunting, she picked up the phone messages and leafed disinterestedly through them. The fifth one brought her halfway to her feet, her heart beginning to hammer. The message said that Mr. Matthew Farrell had called at 9:10 A.M.

The harsh buzz of her intercom jerked Meredith's attention to the phone, and she saw that both her lines were lit up, their hold buttons flashing.

"I have Mr. Whitmore on line one," Phyllis said when Meredith answered the intercom, "and Matthew Farrell is on line two. He says it's urgent."

Meredith's pulse rate doubled. "Phyllis," she said shakily, "I don't want to speak to Matt Farrell. Would you tell him that I want us to communicate with each other through our attorneys from now on? And also tell him I'm going out of town for a week or two. Be polite to him," she added nervously, "but very firm."

"I understand."

Meredith put down the phone, her hand shaking, watching the flashing light on line two become constant. Phyllis was giving Matt the message. She started to reach for the phone; she should at least talk to him and find out what he wanted, she thought, then she jerked her hand back. No, she shouldn't! It didn't matter. As soon as Stuart told her where to go to get a quick, legal divorce, whatever Matt wanted would be irrelevant. She'd arrived at the obvious solution of a Reno divorce—or something like it—in the small hours of the morning, and it made perfect sense. Now that there was no more enmity between them, she knew Matt wouldn't consider carrying out the threats he'd made in the car that day after lunch. All that was in the past.

The light on Matt's call went out, and she couldn't stand the suspense. She buzzed Phyllis and asked her to come in. "What did he say?" Meredith asked her.

Phyllis bit back a puzzled smile at Meredith's complete loss of serenity. "He said he understood perfectly."

"Was that all?"

"Then he asked if your trip was a sudden, unscheduled one, and I told him it was. Is that okay?"

"I don't know," Meredith said helplessly. "Did he say anything when you told him my trip was sudden?"

"Not exactly."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What he did was laugh, but not loud. I guess you'd call it a chuckle—sort of low and deep. Then he thanked me and said good-bye."

For some reason, Matt's entire reaction made Meredith feel acutely uneasy. "Was there anything else?" she asked when Phyllis continued to hover in the doorway.

"I was just wondering," the secretary replied a little sheepishly. "I mean, do you think he has really dated Michelle Pfeiffer and Meg Ryan, or do you think the movie magazines just make that stuff up?"

"I'm sure he has," Meredith said, struggling to keep her voice and face completely blank.

Nodding, Phyllis glanced at the phone. "Did you forget Stuart Whitmore is still on your line?"

Horrified, Meredith snatched up the phone and asked Phyllis to close her door. "Stuart, I'm sorry for making you wait," she began, nervously raking her hair off her forehead. "I'm not having a very good morning."

Stuart's reply was amused. "I'm having a fascinating morning, thanks to you."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that Farrell's attorneys suddenly want a parlay. David Levinson called me at nine-thirty this morning so filled with goodwill that you'd almost think the arrogant bastard had had a profound religious experience over the weekend."

"What exactly did he say?" Meredith asked, her trepidation mounting.

"Well, first Levinson treated me to a lecture on the sanctity of marriage, particularly among Catholics, which he delivered in his most pious voice. Meredith," Stuart pointed out on a suffocated laugh, "Levinson is an orthodox Jew on his fourth marriage and sixth mistress! Jesus, I couldn't believe his nerve!"

"What did you say?"

"I told him I couldn't believe his nerve," Stuart said, then he stopped trying to make her see the humor of it all because he sensed she couldn't. "All right, never mind all that. According to Levinson, his client is suddenly willing to let the divorce go through, which strikes me as odd, and odd always makes me nervous."

"It isn't that odd," Meredith said quietly, ignoring the painful and irrational thought that Matt was dumping her with embarrassing abruptness after she'd gone to bed with him. He was only doing the decent thing by calling an end to hostilities immediately. "I saw Matt this weekend, and we talked."

"About what?" When she hesitated, he said, "Don't keep secrets from your lawyer. Levinson's sudden eagerness for a meeting is setting off all kinds of alarm bells in my head. I smell an ambush."

Because Meredith knew it wasn't fair or wise to keep the events of the weekend from Stuart, she told him what had happened—from her discovery that Matt had purchased the Houston land to her stormy confrontation with Matt's father. "Matt was too sick to listen to me when I first got to the farm," she continued, "but yesterday I told him the truth about what my father had done, and he believed me." She didn't tell Stuart she'd gone to bed with Matt; that was something no one had a right to know except, perhaps, Parker.

When she was done, Stuart was silent for such a long time that she was afraid he was guessing the truth, but when he spoke, all he said was "Farrell's got more control than I have. I'd be gunning for your father."

Meredith, who still had to deal with her father over his treachery when he returned from his cruise, let that remark pass. "In any case," she said, "that's obviously why Matt has decided to be cooperative."

"He's being more than cooperative," Stuart said dryly. "According to Levinson, Farrell is deeply concerned about your well-being. He wants to make a financial settlement for you. He also volunteered to sell you the Houston land for very agreeable terms—though at the time I didn't know what land Levinson was talking about."

"I don't want, nor am I entitled to, a financial settlement from him," Meredith said emphatically. "If Matt's willing to sell us the Houston land, that's wonderful, but there's no need for a meeting with Matt's attorneys. I've decided to fly to Reno or somewhere and get a divorce right away. That's why I was calling you—I wanted to ask where I could go to that would be fast and legal."

"No dice," Stuart said flatly. "If you attempt to do that, Farrell's offer is withdrawn."

"What makes you say that?" Meredith cried, feeling as if an invisible trap were closing around her.

"Because Levinson made that very clear. It seems his client wants to do this thing properly and completely or not at all. If you refuse to meet with him tomorrow, or try to get a quickie divorce, Farrell's offer to sell you the Houston land will be permanently withdrawn. Levinson implied that either of those actions would be construed by his client as a personal rejection of his goodwill. It boggles the mind," Stuart concluded with heavy irony, "to discover that Farrell's reputation for cold ruthlessness is only a cover to hide his sensitive heart, doesn't it?"

Meredith sank back into her chair, her attention momentarily diverted by several members of the executive committee who were walking past her office and into the adjoining conference room. "I don't know what to for so long, I don't know who he really is."

"Well," Stuart cheerfully informed her, "we're going to find out tomorrow at four o'clock. Farrell wants the meeting at his office, with his attorneys, myself, and you in attendance. I can cancel an appointment. Shall I meet you there, or would you rather I pick you up?"

"No! I don't want to go. You can represent me."

"Nope. You have to be there. Levinson said his client is not flexible on the date, place, or attendees. Inflexibility," Stuart remarked with a return of irony, "is an odd trait for a man of such extraordinary benevolence and generosity as we're being led to believe that Farrell is by his attorneys."

Harassed, Meredith glanced at her watch. The meeting was scheduled to begin now. She was loath to relinquish the Houston land if Matt was willing to sell it back to her, and almost as reluctant to endure the emotional strain of having to deal with him face-to-face.

"Even if you got your Reno divorce," Stuart reminded her when she didn't say anything, "you'd still have to deal with the property issue when you came back. There's an eleven-year snarl of property rights here that can be easily unraveled if Farrell is willing—or that he can drag out in court for years if he isn't."

"God, what a mess," she said weakly. "All right, I'll meet you in the lobby at Intercorp at four o'clock. I'd rather not go up there alone."

"I understand," Stuart said kindly. "See you tomorrow. Don't think about all this until then."

Meredith tried, very hard, to follow his advice as she sat down at the head of the conference table. "Good morning," she said with a bright, artificial smile. "Mark, do you want to begin? Any problems to report from the security division?"

"One nice big fat one," he said. "Five minutes ago the New Orleans store had a bomb threat. They're clearing the store, and the bomb squad is on its way."

Everyone at the table jerked to attention.

"Why wasn't I notified?" Meredith demanded.

"Both your phone lines were busy, so the store manager followed procedure and called me."

"I have a private direct line too."

"I know and so does Michaelson. Unfortunately, he panicked and couldn't find the phone number."

At 5:30 that night, after a day of raw tension and helpless waiting, Meredith finally received the phone call she'd been praying for. The New Orleans Bomb and Arson Squad had found no trace of explosives and were going to remove the barriers around the store. That was the good news. The bad news was that the store had lost an entire day's sales in the most important season of the year.

Limp with relief and exhaustion, Meredith notified Mark Braden of the news, then she packed a briefcase full of work and went home. Parker hadn't returned her call yet, but she knew he'd call her as soon as he received her message.

In her apartment she dumped her coat, gloves, and briefcase onto the chair, and walked over to the answering machine to check her messages, thinking Parker might have called, but the red light was not on. Mrs. Ellis had been there, though, and left a note beside the phone saying she'd done the marketing today instead of Wednesday because she had a doctor's appointment Wednesday morning.

The continued silence from Parker was making Meredith increasingly uneasy, and as she walked into the bedroom, she began to imagine him in a Swiss hospital, or, worse, soothing his wounded feelings with some other woman, dancing in some Geneva nightclub.... Stop it, just stop it! she warned herself. The mere proximity of Matthew Farrell was causing her to start expecting disaster to befall her at every turn. It was foolish, she knew, but given her past experiences with Matt, not entirely incomprehensible.

She'd taken her shower and was tucking a silk shirt into her slacks when the hard knocking on her door made her turn in surprise. Whoever it was had a pass key to get through the downstairs security door, which meant it had to be Mrs. Ellis, since Parker was in Switzerland. "Did you forget something, Mrs.—" she began as she opened her door, then she froze in surprise at the sight of Parker's grim face.

"I was wondering if you forgot something," he said curtly, "like the fact that you have a fiance?"

Overwhelmed with remorse that he'd actually flown home, Meredith flung herself into his arms, noting the way he hesitated before putting them around her. "I didn't forget," she said, kissing his rigid cheek. "I'm so sorry!" she said, pulling him into the apartment. She expected him to take off his coat, but all he did was study her with a cool, hesitant look. "What is it you're sorry about, Meredith?" he finally asked.

"For worrying you so much that you thought you needed to leave the conference and fly home! Didn't you get my message at your hotel this morning? I left word for you at ten-thirty our time"

At her answer, the rigidity left his face, but there was a haggard, drawn look about him that she'd never seen before. "No, I didn't. I'd like a drink," he said, shrugging out of his coat. "Anything you have is fine, just make it a stiff one."

Meredith nodded, but she hesitated, worriedly studying the deep lines etched into his handsome face by strain and fatigue. "I can't believe you flew home because you couldn't reach me."

"That is one of two reasons I flew home."

She tipped her head to the side. "What was the other reason?"

"Morton Simonson is going to file Chapter 11 tomorrow. I got the word in Geneva last night."

Meredith wasn't certain why he should feel the need to come home because an industrial paint manufacturer was going to file bankruptcy, and she said so as she turned to fix his drink.

Our bank has loaned them in excess of one hundred million," Parker said. "If they go belly-up, we'll lose most of that. Since I also seemed to be on the verge of losing my fiancee," he added, "I decided to fly home and see what I could do to salvage one or both."

Despite his attempt at flippancy, Meredith now understood the gravity of the Morton Simonson issue, and she felt even worse for adding to Parker's worry. "You were never on the verge of losing me," she said with an ache in her voice.

"Why the hell didn't you return my phone calls? Where were you? What's going on with Farrell? Lisa told me what you found out from Farrell's father. She said you drove to Indiana to see Farrell on Friday night so you could tell him the truth and get him to agree to a divorce."

"I did tell him the truth," Meredith said gently, handing him his drink, "and he's agreeable to a divorce. Stuart Whitmore and I are going to meet with Matt and his lawyers tomorrow."

He nodded, watching her in speculative silence. His next question was one she dreaded—and expected. "Were you with him all weekend?"

"Yes. He—he was too ill to listen to anything Friday night." Belatedly recalling that Parker didn't know Matt had bought the Houston property in retaliation for having his rezoning request denied, Meredith told him about it. Next she explained why she'd felt she needed to get Matt to agree to a truce before she told him about her miscarriage. Finished, she stared at her hands, consumed with guilt for what she hadn't told Parker, not certain if confessing it was a selfish way of unburdening herself or whether it was the morally and ethically correct thing to do. If the latter were the case, and she still felt that it was, this didn't seem like the right time to tell him—not when he'd already had one major blow with Morton Simonson.

She was still trying to decide, when Parker said, "Farrell must have been furious on Sunday when he realized your father had duped him about your miscarriage."

"No," Meredith said, thinking about the wrenching sorrow and regret on Matt's face. "He's probably angry with my father now, but he wasn't then. I started to cry when I told him about Elizabeth's funeral, and I think Matt was trying very hard not to cry. It wasn't a time for anger somehow."

The guilt she felt for what happened after that was in her eyes, and Parker saw it.

"No, I suppose it wasn't." He'd been sitting hunched slightly forward, his forearms braced on his legs, holding his glass between his knees, watching her. Now he jerked his gaze from her face and began idly rolling the glass in his palms, his jawline tightening. And in the endless moments of lengthening silence, Meredith knew—she knew he'd guessed that she had gone to bed with Matt.

"Parker," she said shakily, ready to confess, "if you're wondering whether Matt and I—"

"Don't tell me you went to bed with him, Meredith!" he bit out. "Lie to me if you have to, and then make me believe it, but don't tell me you slept with him. I couldn't stand it."

He'd already judged her and handed her her penance —and to Meredith, who wanted only to tell the truth and make him understand and someday forgive her, it seemed like a lifelong sentence to purgatory. He waited a minute, evidently to give them both time to put the subject to rest, and then he put the glass down. Putting his arm around her shoulders, he drew her close and tipped her chin up, trying to smile into her shadowed eyes. "From what you told me about your phone call with Stuart this morning, it sounds like Farrell's going to be reasonably decent about all this."

"He is," Meredith said, but guilt and misery made her smile wobble.

Parker kissed her forehead. "It's almost over, then. Tomorrow night we'll toast your successful divorce negotiations and maybe even the acquisition of that Houston property you want so badly." He sobered then, and what he said made Meredith belatedly realize how deeply concerned he was about matters at the bank. "I may have to look around and find you another lender to finance that store and the land. Morton Simonson is the third large borrower to file Chapter 11 on us in the last six months. If we aren't taking the money in, we can't lend it out unless we borrow it from the fed, and we're already heavily borrowed there."

"I didn't know you'd had two other big loans go bad."

"The economy is scaring the hell out of me. Never mind," he added, standing up and pulling her to her feet, smiling reassuringly. "The bank isn't going to collapse. We're in better shape than most of our competitors. Could you do me a favor though?" he asked half seriously.

"Anything," she stated without hesitation.

He grinned and put his arms around her for a goodnight kiss. "Could you make certain that Bancroft and Company continues to make all its loan payments to Reynolds Mercantile Trust on time?"

"Absolutely!" Meredith replied, smiling tenderly at him. He kissed her then, a long, tired, gentle kiss that Meredith returned with more fervor than ever before. When he left, she refused to compare that kiss to Matt's demanding, hot, ardent ones. Passion was what Matt's kisses offered. Parker's offered love.