t 4:30 the following afternoon Matt glanced up from the conference table where he was meeting with three of his executives and reached for the telephone. "If it's not an emergency," he told Eleanor before she could give a reason for interrupting him, "I don't want to hear about it until I'm done here."

"Miss Bancroft is on the line," she said with a smug smile in her voice. "Does that constitute an emergency?"

"Yes, it does," he said wryly, but as he answered Meredith's call, he wasn't feeling especially pleasant. He'd phoned her late the previous afternoon to tell her Spyzhalski was under control and in a place reporters couldn't get to him. Her secretary had said Meredith was going to be in meetings for several hours, so rather than let her stay in suspense, Matt dictated a carefully worded message to the secretary and asked her to take it to Meredith. When she didn't bother to call him back last night, he'd wondered if she was too busy celebrating the news in bed with Reynolds to bother. All week the possibility that she was still sleeping with her fiance had been haunting him. Last night it had kept him awake until dawn. Flicking a curt glance of apology at the men seated around the conference table, Matt picked up the phone.

"Matt," she said, sounding harassed, "I know this is your night, but I have a meeting at five o'clock, and I'm swamped with work."

"At the risk of sounding inflexible," he said in a cool, implacable voice, "a deal's a deal."

"I know," she replied with an exasperated sigh, "but besides having to be here late, I also have to bring some work home with me, and come in again tomorrow morning. I'm really not up to a big night out or a big confrontation with you either," she added with a trace of wry humor.

In a tone that conveyed his unwillingness to cooperate, he said, "What are you suggesting?"

"I was hoping you'd be willing to meet me here, and we could have an early dinner, somewhere casual and close by."

Matt's annoyance evaporated, but on the off chance she was trying to taper him off by setting a precedent for quick public dates, he added in a polite but firm voice, "That's fine. I have a briefcase full of my own work. I'll bring it along and after dinner we can spend a quiet, productive evening at—your place or mine?"

She hesitated. "Will you promise we'll work? I mean, I don't want to have to... to have to..."

His lips twitched with a smile as her voice trailed off. Obviously she did have pressing work, and equally obviously she was worried that he would try to maneuver her into bed. "We'll work," he promised.

Her relief came out in a laughing sigh. "Okay. Why don't you meet me here about six o'clock? There's a good restaurant just across the street. We can go to my apartment afterward."

"Good enough," he said, completely willing to adapt his schedule to hers as long as she didn't try to avoid him. "Are the reporters leaving you alone?"

"I've had a few calls, but we gave them such a show yesterday, I think it's all going to die a natural death now. I talked to Parker last night and again this morning, and he's being left alone too."

Matt didn't give a damn if reporters devoured Parker alive, and he wasn't thrilled by the discovery that she'd talked to him twice since the press conference when she'd not bothered to call Matt until then. Conversely, he was vastly relieved that she apparently hadn't been with him last night, so he said that was good news, and that he'd come up to her office around six o'clock.

After shouldering his way through the crowds of Christmas shoppers on the main floor at six o'clock, the relative silence on Meredith's floor when Matt stepped off the elevator was a welcome relief. Off to his right, two secretaries were working late, but the receptionist and all the others had already left. At the opposite end of the carpeted corridor, Meredith's office door was open and he could see a group of men and one woman seated in there. Her secretary's desk was cleared, her computer covered for the night, so rather than sitting down in the reception area, Matt took off his coat and perched his hip on the secretary's desk, pleased with this unexpected opportunity to see how Meredith worked and what sorts of things occupied her days. Everything about her intrigued him. It always had.

Unaware of Matt's presence outside her office, Meredith looked at the invoice Gordon Mitchell, the general merchandise manager in charge of women's dresses and accessories, had just handed her. "You bought three hundred dollars worth of gold metal buttons?" she said with a puzzled smile. "Why are you showing me this? It's certainly within your budget."

"Because," he replied blandly, "those gold buttons are the reason for that sales increase in women's dresses and ready to wear that you've been watching happen all week. I thought you'd like to know."

"You bought them and had them sewn on locally, is that it?"

"That's it," he said, stretching out his legs and looking pleased. "If a dress or a suit has gold metal buttons on it, they walk out of here. It's a craze."

Meredith gazed at him levelly, avoiding looking at Theresa Bishop, the vice president of creative merchandising, whose job it was to predict fashion trends far in advance. "I can't completely share your satisfaction," she told him quietly. "Theresa advised us long ago, after she returned from a trip to New York, that one of the continuing fashion trends was going to be clothing decorated with gold metal buttons. You ignored her. The fact that you belatedly bought the buttons and had them sewn on now can't possibly compensate for the sales we lost before and while you were doing it. What else do you have to report?"

"Very little," he snapped.

Ignoring his attitude, Meredith reached out and pressed a button on the computer screen that showed sales in the past four hours in all the departments under his supervision there and in the branch stores across the country. "Your accessory sales are fifty-four percent higher than over this same day last year. You're doing something right there."

"Thank you, Madam President," he said snidely.

"I seem to recall that you hired a new manager for accessories, and he brought in a new buyer. Is that right?"

"Perfectly correct, as always!"

"What's happening with Donna Karan's DKNY line you bought so much of?" she continued, impervious to his tone.

"It's doing fantastic, exactly as I thought it would."

"Good. What do you intend to do with all those moderate skirts and blouses you bought?"

"I'm going to keystone them and get them out of here."

"All right," she said reluctantly, "but mark them all Special Purchase and keep our labels out of them. I mean that. I was on the third floor today and I saw some blouses with Bancroft labels in them and a price tag of eighty-five dollars. They weren't worth forty-five dollars."

"They are when they have a Bancroft label in them!" he shot back. "That label is worth something to customers. I shouldn't have to remind you of that."

"It won't be if we start sticking it on junk. Get those blouses off that floor and onto clearance racks tomorrow. I mean that, and cut the labels out of them. You know which ones I mean. What about the bucket goods you were so high on?"

"I bought them. I've seen the merchandise—mostly costume jewelry, some of it very nice."

Ignoring his sulky, clipped reply, Meredith said levelly, "Just keep the bucket goods on the right counters. I don't want to see that stuff mixed in with expensive costume jewelry."

"I said," he bit out, "it's nice stuff."

Meredith leaned back in her chair, studying him in lengthening silence, while the other vice presidents looked on. "Gordon, why are you and I suddenly at odds over the kind of merchandise that Bancroft's will and will not sell? You used to be adamant about maintaining only high-quality merchandise. All of a sudden you're making buying decisions that are better suited to a low-end department store chain than to us."

When he didn't deign to reply, Meredith abruptly leaned forward in her chair, dropped the subject, dismissed him as if he weren't still there, and turned her attention to Paul Norman, the general merchandising manager in charge of home products, and the only one she hadn't yet addressed. "As usual, your departments are all looking good, Paul," she said, smiling at him. "Appliances and furniture sales are up twenty-six percent over this week last year."

"Twenty-seven," he corrected her with a grin. "The computers adjusted from twenty-six to twenty-seven just before I walked in."

"Nice work," she said sincerely, then she chuckled, recalling the sales flyers they'd been able to put in the newspapers, offering stereo components for extraordinarily low prices. "Electronic items are running out of our stores like they had legs. Are you trying to put Highland Superstores out of business?"

"I would love to."

"So would I," she admitted, then she sobered and looked at the entire group assembled around the desk. "We're looking good nationwide—everywhere but the New Orleans store. We lost sales the day of the bomb scare, and they stayed down for the next four days for the same reason." She glanced at the vice president of advertising. "Is there any possibility that we'll get some additional advertising time on any of the New Orleans radio stations, Pete?"

"Not in a time slot worth having. We've gone ahead with the increased print advertising. That will help recover some of our losses from the bomb scare."

Satisfied they'd covered everything, Meredith glanced around at the group and smiled warmly. "That about does it. We're acquiring the property for the Houston store, and we're hoping to break ground on the project in June. Have a nice weekend, everyone."

As the group started to stand, Matt went over to a sofa in the reception area and picked up a magazine as if he'd been reading it, but he was so damned proud of the way she'd handled herself that he couldn't stop grinning. The only thing that hadn't pleased and impressed him was her interaction with the one executive who'd hassled her; it seemed to Matt that stronger measures had been called for, then and there, to cut him down to size. The executives filed out of her office and passed him by without a glance, their conversations a jumbled garble of retailing terms and wishes for a good weekend. Putting the magazine down, Matt started back to Meredith's doorwav, then drew up short because two men had remained in her office. And Meredith wasn't smiling at whatever they were telling her.

With equal parts of guilt and curiosity, Matt resumed his former position at the secretarial desk, only now he stood in open view with his coat folded over his arm.

Unaware of how late it was, Meredith studied the memo Sam Green had just handed her, which showed a continuing and dramatic increase in the number of shares of Bancroft's stock being bought up on the stock exchange. "What do you make of it?" she asked the attorney, frowning.

"I hate to tell you this," he said, "but I did some checking today, and there are whispers on Wall Street that someone wants to take us over."

Meredith made a physical effort to look calm and collected, but inwardly she was reeling from the thought of a takeover attempt. "Not now. It wouldn't make any sense. Why would another department store chain, or any other entity, decide to take us over at a time like this, when we're in debt up to our ears for all our expansion costs?"

"For one thing, because we couldn't afford to fight off an attempt right now—we don't have the money to put up a long, serious battle."

Meredith already knew that, but she still shook her head and said, "It wouldn't make sense to go after us now. All they'd get by acquiring us is a lot of debts they'd have to pay off." But she and Sam both knew that as a long-range investment, Bancroft & Company could be a very attractive acquisition. "How long before you'll know the names of whoever is buying our stock?"

"Another few weeks before we get notification from all the stockbrokers who handle the individual transactions, but we're only notified if the new shareholder actually takes custody of the stock certificates. If the certificates stay in the brokers' custody, we're never notified of the shareholder's identity."

"Can you put together an updated list of new shareholders whose names we do know?"

"Sure thing," he said, and turned, leaving Meredith alone in the office with Mark Braden. Since what she needed to discuss with the director of security was very confidential, Meredith got up to close her office door and glanced at her watch to see how much time she had until Matt arrived. Her gaze ricocheted from her watch, which showed 6:20, to the tall figure in her doorway, and her heart gave an inexplicable lurch at the sight of him. "How long have you been waiting?" she asked Matt, starting forward.

"Not long." Unwilling to rush her when she obviously had something more to do, he added, "I'll wait out here until you finish."

Meredith paused to consider if there was any reason to close Matt out of the discussion she needed to have with Mark about Gordon Mitchell. Deciding there wasn't, she smiled at him and said, "You can come in, but will you close the door?" Matt did as she asked, and Meredith quickly introduced Mark Braden to him, then she turned to Mark. "You heard Gordon's explanations and you witnessed his attitude for yourself. It's a complete departure from everything he used to say and do. What do you think?"

Mark shot a speculative glance at Matt, but when Meredith nodded for him to go on, he said bluntly, "I think he's on the take."

"You keep saying that, but can you show me one piece of evidence to prove he's getting kickbacks from anyone?"

"No," he said, looking frustrated. "He hasn't acquired any expensive new toys like boats and planes, and he hasn't bought any new real estate that I can trace. He has a mistress, but she's been around for years. He and his wife and kids still live pretty much like they always have. In short, there's no evidence he's living any higher than before, and there's no motive either—he doesn't have expensive habits like drugs or gambling."

"Maybe he's innocent," Meredith said, but she didn't believe it.

"He's not innocent, he's cautious and he's smart,"

Mark argued. "He's been in retailing long enough to know how closely we watch merchandisers and buyers for any sign they're taking kickbacks. He's covering his tracks. I'll keep digging around," Mark promised, and with a curt nod he walked past Matt.

"I'm sorry," Meredith told Matt as she loaded her briefcase with work she needed to do tonight. "I didn't realize how long that other meeting went"

"I enjoyed listening to it," he said, and she shot a stunned look at him as she snapped the locks closed on her briefcase.

"How much of it did you hear?"

"About twenty minutes of it."

"Any questions?" she teased, but the warmth of his smile, the lazy boldness in his heavy-lidded gray gaze, made her feel overheated, so she hastily looked away and kept her gaze averted.

"Three questions," Matt said, watching the way she was avoiding looking at him. "Four actually," he amended.

"What questions are those?" she asked, coming toward him and feigning absorption in flicking an imaginary speck off her coat.

"What are bucket goods, what is keystone, and why are you avoiding my eyes?"

She made a valiant attempt to give him a long, direct, calm look, but his wicked grin was almost her undoing. "I didn't realize I was avoiding your eyes," she lied, then she explained. "Keystone means to sell something for only twice what we paid for it. Bucket goods are things like jewelry and accessories that we occasionally buy in large quantities, sight unseen, for a dollar each—usually they're overstock from our regular suppliers. What was your fourth question?" she asked while they waited for the elevators.

How long is it going to be before you trust me? he thought. How long before you'll go to bed with me? How long before you stop dancing out of my reach? He asked the last question because it was the least inflammatory one, and because he was curious to see her reaction:

"How long are you going to keep dancing this avoidance waltz with me?"

She started at his bluntness, then she shot him an amused, cocky look that made him long to kiss her. "Just as long as you keep trying to call the tune."

"I think you're starting to enjoy it," Matt remarked with a disgruntled, sidelong glance.

Meredith stared at the lighted down arrow on the elevator buttons, but she smiled and said with more candor than she'd intended, "I always enjoyed your company, Matt. I don't like your motives this time around."

"I told you the other night what my motives are," Matt said firmly, the footsteps behind them silenced by the thick blue carpet.

"I don't like the motives behind your motives," she clarified.

"I don't have motives behind my motives!" Matt said in a low, forceful voice.

Behind them a laughing male voice said, "Maybe not, but what you do have are people behind your people, and your conversation is getting awfully deep for us to follow without a map."

Their heads jerked around in unison, and Mark Braden raised his brows, his smile veiling the warning that he'd deliberately given them that other employees were listening. "Have a nice weekend, everyone," Meredith said with a bright artificial smile at the three secretaries.

On the first floor they wended their way, leading with their briefcases, through the throngs of shoppers as they headed for the restaurant across the street. At one of the counters, however, Meredith stopped. "I want to introduce you to Mrs. Millicent," she told Matt. "She retired a year ago and comes back to help us out at Christmas. She'll be thrilled to meet you—she's kept a record of all the famous people she's seen here for over twenty-five years, and she especially dotes on movie stars."

"I don't qualify in either category," Matt pointed out.

"You are famous, and besides, you've dated all sorts of glamorous movie stars, so she'll think she's died and gone to heaven."

Vaguely displeased at Meredith's deliberate and ostensibly unconcerned reminder of what she perceived to be the women he'd slept with, Matt automatically followed her as she sidled through a six-deep throng of women shoppers blocking the counter and part of the aisle.

His briefcase banged into a wide derriere and hooked on a purse strap, but Meredith was obviously an old hand at this, because she sidled right through. He was looking down, untangling his briefcase handle from the purse strap when the owner of the purse, mistaking him for an inept purse-snatcher, let out an outraged cry of alarm and yanked on her purse. "Your strap caught on my briefcase—" Matt explained, glancing up at her.

Her mouth dropped open in shock as she recognized his face. "Aren't you—aren't you Matt Farrell?"

"No," Matt lied, and rudely shouldered past her, trying to get to Meredith through the sea of coats and purses. Meredith looked over her shoulder, obviously impatient at his delay, and held out her gloved hand to pull him forward through the throng, then she turned back to the elderly salesclerk she was talking to. The loudspeakers were playing "Jingle Bells," and the page system was chiming, and over it all was the loud hum of women calling for salesclerks to help them. In growing discomfort Matt waited beside her at a crowded counter which he now realized was surrounded by women who were pawing through the nylon stockings and pantyhose that dripped from revolving chrome racks. They hung from overhead wires, too, waving in front of his nose, blowing enticingly in the air currents from the heating vents and revolving doors just beyond.

With relief he heard Meredith say his name, and he leaned forward to meet the fascinated sixty-two-year-old who was scrutinizing his every feature. "How do you do," Matt said, leaning forward to shake her outstretched hand. As he did so, a stocking draped itself across his head from the overhead wire, and he had to pause to untangle himself from it. He held out his hand again, and it draped itself languorously over his cashmere-clad shoulder.

"Why, Meredith!" Mrs. Millicent burst out excitedly, watching him bat the nylon off his shoulder. "He reminds me of Cary Grant!" Meredith cast a skeptical glance at him just in time to see another stocking drape itself over his ear. He yanked this one down and put it on the counter, and she tore her laughing gaze from him, then she quickly concluded her conversation with Mrs. Millicent.

With Matt in the lead, they retraced their way through the crowd. Unfortunately, when they were almost to the aisle, the shopper who'd mistaken him for a purse-snatcher pointed him out to everyone within hearing. "That's him!" she called, oblivious to Meredith, who was right on his heels, blocked from view by his shoulders. "That's Matthew Farrell—Meredith Bancroft's husband, the one who used to date Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer!"

A lady on Matt's right thrust her shopping bag at him. "Could I have your autograph?" she pleaded, searching in her purse for a pen in the apparent hope he would sign the bag. Matt reached for Meredith's arm, shouldering past the woman. Behind him, she announced in offended anger to everyone else, "Who wants his autograph anyway? I just remembered that he also dated a porn queen!"

Matt could feel the tension radiating from Meredith even after they dashed through the revolving doors and were outside in the frigid night air. "Despite what you're thinking," he said defensively, knowing how much she hated notoriety, "people don't ask me for autographs. It's only happening now because our faces are plastered all over the local news."

She flashed him a dubious look and said nothing.

The situation in the restaurant across the street was worse than her store. The place was packed with Christmas shoppers having early dinners, and they were waiting in double lines in the vestibule. "Do you think we should wait?" Meredith asked him. And before the words were out or her mouth, the buzzing started around them. Opposite them, a woman leaned across the three-foot space that separated her line from the one Matt and Meredith were in. "Excuse me," she said, speaking to Meredith with her eyes on Matt. "Aren't you Meredith Bancroft?" Without waiting for Meredith to answer, she said to Matt, "And that makes you Matthew Farrell!"

"Not really," Matt said shortly, and it didn't take the pressure he was exerting on Meredith's arm to make her agree to get out of there.

"Let's go to my apartment and order a pizza," she said when they reached her car in its reserved spot in the parking garage.

Furious with fate for doing this to him, Matt waited while she unlocked the car and got into it, but he stopped her from closing the door. "Meredith," he said firmly, "I have never dated a porn queen."

"That's a load off my mind," she said with a sidelong smile, and Matt was surprised and relieved that she'd evidently regained much of her humor and equilibrium. "And I will admit," she added, turning on the ignition and waiting for the old BMW to catch, "Meg Ryan and Michelle Pfeiffer are both blondes."

"I know Michelle Pfeiffer very casually," he said, helpless not to defend himself, "and I've never met Meg Ryan."

"Really?" Meredith dryly replied, her hand on the door handle to close it. "Mrs. Millicent was all excited because she was supposedly on your yacht for a cruise."

"She was. I wasn't!"