ow did it go with Farrell?" Parker asked the minute he walked into Meredith's apartment to take her out for what he'd predicted would be a dinner to celebrate her almost-divorced status. His smile faded as she raked her hair off her forehead and mutely shook her head. "Meredith, what happened?" he said, putting his hands on her arms.

"I think you'd better sit down," she warned him.

"I'll stand," he said, already looking upset.

Ten minutes later, when she'd finished telling him the whole thing, he no longer looked upset, he looked furious—with her. "And you agreed to that?"

"What choice did I have?" Meredith cried. "I didn't have anything to bargain with. He was holding all the cards, and he handed out the ultimatum. It's not so very bad," she said, trying to smile and make him feel better. "I've had a couple hours to think it over, and it's more of a gross inconvenience—an annoyance—than anything else. I mean, when you're objective."

"I'm damned objective, and I disagree," Parker said harshly.

Unfortunately, Meredith was so overwrought, so guilt-stricken, she failed to consider that Parker might feel better if she felt worse about having to go out with Matt. "Look," she said with another encouraging smile, "even if I could have flown somewhere and gotten a divorce, I'd still be all snarled up in the property issues after the divorce because they have to be settled separately. As it stands now, everything will be completely settled and finished in six months—the divorce, the property, the works."

"Right," Parker snapped furiously. "And three of those six months are supposed to be spent with Farrell!"

"I told you, he specifically said that we wouldn't have to be intimate. And—and that still leaves almost half of every week for us to be together."

"That's certainly fair-minded of the son of a bitch!"

"You're losing your perspective!" Meredith warned, stunned at the belated realization that everything she was saying was angering him more. "He's doing this to retaliate against my father, not because he wants me!"

"Don't bullshit me, Meredith! Farrell's not gay or blind, and he intends to have a piece of you whenever and however he can get it. As you pointed out to me three times in your recitation of the meeting, that bastard's lawyers repeatedly said that Farrell regards himself as your husband! And do you know what I find the most infuriating about all this?"

"No," she said, feeling frustrated tears in her throat, "suppose you tell me, if you can do it without being vulgar and overbearing—"

I'm vulgar and overbearing, am I? Farrell flips you a proposition like this, and I'm the one who's being vulgar and overbearing? I'll tell you what I find the most painful, the most disgusting, about all this—it's that you aren't particularly upset about it! He offers you five million dollars for rolling in the hay with him four times a week, and I'm vulgar? That's what—a hundred thousand dollars or so per time?"

"If you want to get all technical and precise," Meredith flung back as her exhaustion and frustration built to a mindless fury, "he is technically my husband!"

"What the hell am I technically—a wart?"

"No, you're my fiance."

"How much do you intend to charge me?"

"Get out, Parker." She said it quietly. She meant it utterly.

"Fine." He snatched up his coat from the back of the chair, and Meredith tugged her engagement ring off her finger, fighting back tears.

"Here," she said hoarsely, thrusting it at him, "take this with you."

Parker looked at the ring in her hand and much of his anger faded. "Keep it for now," he said. "We're both too angry to think clearly. No, that's wrong, and that's what bothers me. I'm furious and you're trying to pass this whole thing off like a goddamned lark!"

"Dammit, I was trying to soothe things over so you wouldn't be so angry."

He hesitated uncertainly, then reached out and closed her fingers over the ring. "Is that what you were doing, Meredith, or is that what you think you were doing? I feel like the world has caved in, and you—who have to face the next three months—are taking it better than I am. I think maybe I should stay away until you've had time to decide just how important I really am to you."

"And I think," Meredith countered tautly, "you ought to spend some of that time wondering why you couldn't have offered me some sympathy and understanding instead of seeing this whole thing like some sexual challenge to your private property!"

He left then, closing the door behind him, and Meredith sank down on the sofa. The world, which had seemed so bright and promising just a few days before, had collapsed around her feet—exactly as it always did when she went near Matthew Farrell.