rom the moment Matt had suggested her birthday celebration become a foursome, Meredith had felt grave doubts about the evening, but when Parker and Lisa arrived within moments of each other, they both looked so determinedly cheerful and festive, she was lulled into thinking it might not be a disaster after all. "Happy birthday, Mer," Lisa said, wrapping her in a tight hug and handing her a gaily wrapped box. "Happy birthday," Parker said, and gave her a small, rather heavy oblong box. "Farrell's not here yet?" he added, glancing around.

"Not yet, but there's wine and hors d'oeuvres in the kitchen. I was just fixing a tray."

"I'll finish and bring it out," Lisa volunteered. "I'm famished." She vanished into the kitchen in a cloud of fringed plum silk.

Scowling at her back, Parker demanded of Meredith, "Why does she dress like that? Why can't she dress like normal people?"

"Because she's special," Meredith said with a firm smile. "You know," she added, giving him a puzzled look, "most men think Lisa is stunning."

"I like the way you dress," he said, casting an appreciative glance over her bright red velvet bolero jacket trimmed in gold braid and an attached ascot tie that gave the outfit an air of deceptive innocence. The jacket was open now, revealing a strapless red dress that was nipped in at her narrow waist and gently shirred at the hem. Pointedly ignoring her comment about Lisa, he smiled and said, "Why don't you open my present before Farrell gets here?"

Inside the silver wrapping paper was a blue velvet box, and nestled in satin within it was a stunning sapphire and diamond bracelet. Meredith carefully removed it. "It's beautiful," she whispered while her chest contracted painfully and her stomach clenched into knots. Tears burned her eyes, causing the glittering jewels to blur and waver, and at that moment she knew—she knew that neither the bracelet nor Parker could be hers to keep. Not when she'd already betrayed Parker in her mind and her heart because of her helpless obsession with Matt. Lifting her head, she forced herself to meet Parker's expectant gaze and held the bracelet out to him. "I'm sorry," she said in a suffocated voice. "It's magnificent, but I—I can't accept this, Parker."

"Why not?" he began, but he already knew the answer to that, had sensed this moment was coming. "So that's the way it is," he said harshly. "Farrell's won."

"Not completely," she said quietly, "but whatever happens between Matt and me, I still couldn't marry you. Not now. You deserve more than a wife who can't seem to control her feelings for another man."

After a moment of tense silence, he said, "Does Farrell know you're breaking our engagement?"

"No!" she explained a little wildly. "And I'd just as soon he doesn't know. It will only make him more persistent."

Again he hesitated, and then he reached out, took the bracelet from her hand, and firmly fastened it on her wrist. "I'm not giving up," he said with a grim smile. "I regard this as a minor setback. I really hate that bastard."

The buzzer sounded, Parker looked up, and his gaze riveted on Lisa, who was standing in the kitchen doorway, holding a tray. "How the hell long have you been there, eavesdropping?" he demanded while Meredith went to let Matt into the apartment.

"Not long," she said in what struck him as an unusually gentle voice. "Would you like a glass of wine?"

"No," he said bitterly, "I'd like the whole bottle."

Instead of gloating over his predicament, she filled a glass and brought it to him, her eyes soft and strangely luminous.

Matt stepped through the doorway, and to Meredith it seemed as if the entire living room was overwhelmed by the sheer force of his presence. "Happy birthday," he said, smiling down at her. "You look fantastic," he added, running his eyes over her from the top of her shining golden hair to the tips of her red shoes.

Meredith said thank you and tried not to notice how breathtakingly handsome he looked in a gray suit and vest, gleaming white shirt, and conservative striped tie. Lisa made the first move to lighten the atmosphere. "Hi, Matt," she said, beaming at him. "You look more like a banker tonight than Parker."

"I don't have a Phi Beta Kappa key," Matt joked, reluctantly reaching out to shake Parker's hand which was extended to him with equal reluctance.

"Lisa hates bankers," Parker said, letting go of Matt's hand and walking over to the wine bottle. He filled his glass and tossed it down.

"Well, Farrell," Parker said with unprecedented bad manners, "it's Meredith's birthday. Lisa and I remembered it. Where's your gift?"

"I didn't bring it here."

"You mean you forgot, don't you?"

"I mean I didn't bring it here."

"Why don't we get going, everyone," Lisa burst out, sharing Meredith's desire to get both men to a public place—preferably a noisy one, where they couldn't spar. "Meredith can open my gift later."

Matt's limousine was waiting at the curb. Lisa got in first, and Meredith followed, deliberately sitting down next to her and effectively eliminating the possibility that the two men would engage in a skirmish over who sat next to whom. The only person who didn't look tense was Joe O'Hara, who added to the tension by saying with a grin, "Evenin', Mrs. Farrell."

Two bottles of Dom Perignon were reclining in sterling ice buckets beside the car's liquor cabinet. "How about some champagne? I'd love—" Lisa began, but just then the limo rocketed forward into traffic, plastering her to the back of the seat and making her gasp.

"Jesus Christ!" Parker burst out, fighting for balance as he was pressed forward in his rear-facing seat by the same force. "Your idiot driver just cut across four lanes of traffic and ran a red light!"

"He's perfectly competent," Matt replied, raising his voice to be heard over the blaring horns of irate motorists, and no one noticed that an old Chevrolet was racing along in their wake, changing lanes whenever they did, with a kind of defiant desperation. While the limo hurtled toward the expressway, scattering cars in its wake, Matt lifted a bottle of champagne from its icy nest and opened it. "Happy thirtieth birthday," he said, handing Meredith the first glass of champagne. "I'm sorry I missed the last eleven of them—"

"Meredith gets sick on champagne," Parker interrupted. Turning to Meredith with an intimate smile, he added, "Remember the time you got sick on champagne at the Remingtons' anniversary party?"

"Not sick, exactly. Dizzy," Meredith corrected him, puzzled by his tone and his choice of topic.

"You were definitely dizzy," he teased. "And a little giddy. You made me stand out on the balcony with you in the freezing cold. Remember—I gave you my coat to wear. And then Stan and Milly Mayfield joined us and we made a tent out of our coats and stayed outside." He glanced at Matt and said in a coldly superior voice, "Do you know the Mayfields?"

"No," Matt replied, handing Lisa a glass of champagne.

"No, of course you wouldn't," he said dismissively. "Milly and Stan Mayfield are old friends of Meredith's and mine." He said it with the intention of making Matt feel like an outsider, and Meredith hastily brought up a new subject. Lisa quickly joined in, drawing Matt into the discussion. Parker had four more glasses of champagne and contributed two more amusing stories about people he and Meredith knew and whom Matt did not.

The restaurant Matt had chosen was one Meredith had never seen or heard of before, but she loved it the moment they walked into the foyer. Patterned after an English pub, with stained glass windows and dark wood paneling, the Manchester House had a large lounge that stretched across the entire back of it. The dining rooms, which were on both sides of the foyer, were small and cozy, separated from the lounge section with ivy-covered trellises. The lounge, where they were escorted to wait until their table was ready, was filled with Christmas revelers, including a party of about twenty. Judging from the raucous bursts of laughter from that table and some of the occupants seated on the stools at the bar, nearly everyone had been indulging liberally in Christmas cheer.

"This sure as hell isn't the sort of place I'd have picked to celebrate Meredith's birthday," Parker said with a scornful look at Matt as they all sat down.

Keeping his impatience under control for Meredith's sake, Matt said flatly, "It's not what I'd have picked either, but if we wanted to eat in peace, it had to be somewhere relatively dark and out of the way."

"Parker, it's going to be fun," Meredith promised, and she really did like it—the English atmosphere and the upbeat music being played by a live band.

"The band is good," Lisa agreed, leaning forward in her chair and watching the musicians. A moment later her eyes widened as Matt's chauffeur sauntered into the lounge and sat down on a stool at the far end of the bar. "Matt," she said with laughing incredulity, "I think your chauffeur just decided to come in out of the cold and have a beer."

Without looking in that direction, Matt replied, "Joe drinks Coke not beer, when he's on duty."

A waiter appeared to take their drinks order, and Meredith decided there was no need to inform Lisa that Joe was also a bodyguard, especially not when she preferred to forget that herself.

"Will that be all, folks?" the waiter asked, and when they told him it was, he walked over to the end of the bar. He was starting to hand the order over to the bartender, when a short man wearing an unusually bulky overcoat walked up beside him and said, "How'd you like to make a quick hundred bucks, buddy?"

The waiter swung around. "How?"

"Just let me stand over there behind that trellis for a while."

"Why?"

"You've got yourself some important guests at one of those tables, and I've got myself a camera under this coat." He held out his hand, and in it was a press pass showing that he was employed by a well-known tabloid, and a neatly folded $100 bill.

"Stay out of sight," the waiter said, palming the money.

At the maitre d's desk in the front foyer, the owner of the restaurant picked up the phone and dialed the home phone number of Noel Jaffe, who rated restaurants in his newspaper column. "Noel," he said, turning his shoulder a little to avoid being overheard by the new crowd of customers coming in the doors, "this is Alex over at the Manchester House. You remember I told you someday I'd repay you for the nice write-up you gave my place in your column? Well, guess who's sitting in my restaurant right now."

"No kidding." Jaffe laughed when Alex told him who they were. "Maybe they are the happy little family they seemed like at that press conference."

"Not tonight, they aren't," Alex said, his whisper rising a little. "The fiance has a face on him like a storm cloud, and he's had plenty to drink."

There was a brief, thoughtful pause, and then Jaffe chuckled and said, "I'll be right there with a photographer. Find us a table where we can see without being seen."

"No problem. Just remember—when you write about this, spell the name of my place right and put in the address."

Alex hung up the phone, so delighted with the prospect of free publicity about Chicago's rich and famous eating in his restaurant, he called several radio and television stations too.

By the time the waiter brought the second round of drinks—and the third for Parker—Meredith was well aware that Parker was drinking too much, too fast. That in itself wouldn't have been quite so alarming if he wasn't also determined to infuse the conversation with a steady stream of little vignettes about things he and Meredith had done, most of them beginning with "Remember when..."

Meredith didn't always remember, and she was, moreover, becoming increasingly aware that Matt was getting angry.

Matt wasn't getting angry, he was already coldly furious. For three quarters of an hour he'd been forced to listen to Reynolds relating cute tales about himself and Meredith, designed to point out to Matt that he was, hopelessly and irrevocably, Meredith's and Reynolds's social inferior, no matter how much money he had. Included among them was a story about the time Meredith broke her tennis racquet in a doubles tournament she played with him at the country club when she was a teenager... another about some damned dance given by some ritzy private school where she'd dropped her necklace... and yet another about a polo game he'd recently taken her to.

When he started talking about a charity auction they'd worked on together, Meredith stood up quickly. "I'm going to the ladies' room," she said, deliberately interrupting Parker. Lisa stood up too. "I'll go with you."

As soon as they reached the ladies' room, Meredith walked over to the sink, bracing her hands on the tiled counter in a posture of complete misery. "I can't stand much more of this," she told Lisa. "I never imagined tonight would be as bad as this."

"Should I pretend I'm sick and make them take us home?" Lisa said, grinning as she leaned forward to reapply her lipstick. "Remember when you did that for me that time we double-dated when we were at Bensonhurst?"

"Parker wouldn't care if we both passed out at his feet tonight," Meredith said irritably. "He's too busy doing everything he can to provoke Matt into an argument."

The tube of lipstick in Lisa's hand stilled, and she shot Meredith an irate sideways glance. "Matt is goading him!"

"He isn't saying a word!"

"That is how he's goading him. Matt is leaning back in his chair, watching Parker like he's a performing clown! Parker isn't used to losing, and he's lost you. And Matt is sitting there, silently gloating because he knows he's going to win."

"I cannot believe you!" Meredith burst out in a low, angry voice. "For years you've criticized Parker when he was right. Now he's wrong and he's drunk, and you're taking his side! Furthermore, Matt hasn't won anything. And he is not gloating. He may be trying to look bored and amused by Parker's antics, but he isn't! Believe me, he's angry—really angry because Parker is making him look like a—a social outcast."

"That's the way you see it," Lisa said with such fierce indignation that Meredith stepped back in astonishment. It turned to guilt as Lisa added, "I don't know how you could have considered marrying a man for whom you haven't the least bit of sympathy!"

The waiter had just told Matt that his table was ready, and over his shoulder Matt saw Lisa and Meredith emerge from the ladies' room and wend their way through the crowded lounge.

Parker had stopped talking about the things he and Meredith had done and was now thoroughly antagonizing Matt by questioning him about his background and sneering at Matt's answers. "Tell me, Farrell," he said in a loud, slurred voice that made several people at neighboring tables turn around, "where did you go to college? I've forgotten."

"Indiana State," Matt bit out, watching Lisa and Meredith.

"I went to Princeton."

"So what!"

"I was just curious. What about sports? Did you play any?"

"No," he clipped, sliding back his chair and standing up so that the four of them could go to their table in the dining room as soon as the women arrived.

"What did you do with your free time?" Parker persisted, sliding back his chair and standing up, too, a little unsteadily.

"I worked."

"Where?"

"In the steel mills and as a mechanic."

"I played some polo, boxed a little bit And," he added with a disdainful look down Matt's entire length, "I gave Meredith her first kiss."

"I took her virginity," Matt snapped back, baited past endurance, but his eyes were on Meredith and Lisa, who were less than ten feet away.

"You son of a bitch!" Parker hissed, and, drawing back his arm, he aimed a punch at Matt.

Matt barely saw it coming in time to avoid it. Reacting instinctively, he threw up his left arm and swung hard with his right. Pandemonium erupted; women screamed, men jumped out of their chairs, Parker crashed to the floor, and white lights exploded in the background. Lisa called him a bastard, Matt looked toward her, and a small fist connected with his eye at the same instant Meredith bent down to help Parker off the floor. Matt instinctively drew back his fist to return the blow, realized it was Lisa who'd hit him, and checked the motion, but his elbow connected with something hard behind him and Meredith cried out. Joe was hurtling forward, plowing through the fleeing diners, and Matt caught Lisa's wrists to stop the hellcat from punching him again while photographers appeared out of nowhere, crowding in for more shots. With his free hand Matt yanked Meredith away from Parker's prone body and thrust her at Joe. "Get her out of here!" he yelled, trying to block her from view of the cameras with his own body. "Take her home!"

Suddenly Meredith felt herself being half lifted off her feet and shoved through the shouting crowd toward the kitchen's swinging doors. "There's a back way out," Joe panted, dragging her in his wake past startled cooks hovering over steaming pots and gaping waiters with loaded dinner trays. He threw his shoulder at the back door, sending it flying open and crashing against the back of the brick building, and they plunged into the frigid night air and into the rear parking lot, ignoring the parking lot attendant. Jerking the door of the limo open, Joe shoved her into the back of it and down onto the floor. "Stay down," he shouted, already slamming her door and running for the driver's door.

In a blur of unreality, Meredith stared at the fuzzy threads of the dark blue carpet a half inch from her wide eyes, unable to believe this was happening! Refusing t cower on the floor, she shoved herself upward, trying to crawl into the seat just as the car engine roared to life. The Cadillac blasted out of the parking lot, tires screaming, careening around the corner on two wheels, dumping Meredith back onto the floor in an ignominious heap. Streetlights flew by the windows in a white blur as the car raced crazily down one street and up another, and it belatedy occurred to her that they weren't circling and going back to the restaurant for Lisa.

Gingerly, she crawled up into the seat that faced the rear of the car, so that she could order Matt's maniac chauffeur to slow down and go back. "Excuse me—Joe," she called, but he was either too busy breaking the speed limit and traffic laws to hear her, or the blaring horns from irate motorists they were cutting off had drowned out her voice. With an angry sigh Meredith got up onto her knees, leaned her chest against the seat back, and poked her head through the connecting window. "Joe," she said, her voice breaking with fear as they swerved onto the right shoulder and passed a semi truck with only inches between them. "Please! You're scaring me!"

"Don't you worry none, Miz Farrell," he said, glancing at her in the rearview mirror, "ain't nobody goin' to stop us. Even if they could catch us, they won't bother us, because I'm packin'."

"Packing?" Meredith repeated numbly, glancing at the empty seat beside him, half expecting to see an open suitcase. "Packing what?"

"A rod."

"Pardon me?"

"I'm packin' a rod," he reiterated.

"You're going fishing? Now?"

He let out a sharp bark of laughter, shook his big head, and by way of explanation he pulled open his black suit coat. "I'm packin' a rod," he repeated, and Meredith stared in wide-eyed horror at the butt of the handgun that protruded from a lethal-looking shoulder holster.

"Oh, my God," she breathed and, turning limply, she slid back down on the seat and devoted herself to agonizing over Lisa's fate. In her current frame of mind she didn't particularly care if Matt and Parker both spent the night in jail for disturbing the peace, but she was worried about Lisa. Meredith had seen Parker swing at Matt first; she had no doubt who'd started the fistfight, but she also saw Parker miss his target, and she wasn't the least bit inclined to forgive Matt, who was sober, for turning a missed, drunken punch into a barroom brawl! Lisa, Meredith recalled, had been fiddling with the catch on her purse at about the time Parker had swung at Matt, and she'd looked up only when someone screamed—just in time to see Matt floor Parker. Which was why she'd launched herself into the fray out of some misbegotten— and incomprehensible—desire to defend Parker, whom she'd always seemed to dislike. The entire scenario passed before Meredith's eyes, and if she weren't so disgusted with the lot of them, she'd have laughed at the memory of Lisa drawing back her fist to poke Matt right in the eye. Having a lot of brothers certainly paid off at such times, Meredith decided grimly. She had no idea if Lisa had actually connected with her target, because, at the time, she herself had been bending down to help Parker up, and when she looked up, Matt's elbow had smacked her in the eye. It dawned on her then that the area around her right eye felt funny and she touched her fingertips to it. It felt tender.

A few minutes later she jumped when the phone rang, its ordinary sound glaringly out of place in a fleeing Cadillac limousine being driven by a man who was probably an ex-mobster.

"It's for you," Joe called cheerfully. "It's Matt. They got out of the restaurant okay. Everyone's fine. He wants to talk to you."

The news that Matt was calling her now, after everything he'd put her through, had an effect on Meredith like spontaneous combustion. She jerked the phone out of its built-in cradle in the side panel and put it to her ear. "Joe says you're fine," Matt began, his deep voice subdued. "I have your coat and—" Meredith didn't hear the rest of what he said. Very slowly, very deliberately, and with infinite satisfaction, she hung up on him.

Ten minutes later, when the curb in front of her apartment building was already racing by the side windows, Matt's chauffeur finally slammed on the brakes and, with all the delicacy of a pilot landing a 727 on the far end of a short runway, he brought the car to a teeth-jarring stop. Having failed to kill her on the highway or cause her to die of fright, he then got out of the car while it was still rocking, opened the back door with a flourish, and, with a satisfied grin, announced, "Here we are, Miz Farrell, safe and sound."

Meredith doubled up her fist.

Thirty years of civilized behavior and good breeding could not be overcome, however, so she forced her fingers to relax, climbed out of the car on legs that shook like jelly, and courteously, if dishonestly, wished him a good night. She walked into the building, escorted by Joe, who insisted he had to do it, and everyone in the lobby turned to stare at her askance—the doorman, the desk guard, and several tenants who were returning from an early evening. "G-good evening, Miss Bancroft," the desk guard babbled, gaping at her open-mouthed.

Meredith assumed her appearance must be a sight. She put up her chin and brazened it out. "Good evening, Terry," she replied with a gracious smile while yanking her arm from Joe's protective grasp.

A few moments later, however, when she unlocked her apartment door and saw herself reflected in the foyer mirror, she stopped dead, her eyes widening, her breath catching on a burst of horrified laughter. Her hair was standing straight out on one side, and the other side looked like it had been arranged with an electric mixer, her bolero jacket, which had looked pert earlier, was hanging drunkenly off the back of one shoulder, and the ascot tie was slung over the other shoulder. "Very nice," she sarcastically informed her reflection, and closed the apartment door.

"I should really go home," Parker said, gingerly rubbing his sore jaw. "It's eleven o'clock."

"Your place will be crawling with news people," Lisa told him firmly. "You may as well stay here tonight."

"What about Meredith?" he said a few minutes later when she returned from the kitchen and handed him another cup of tea.

Lisa felt a funny ache in her heart at his frustrating concentration on a woman who was not in love with him and who was, moreover, the last woman in the world he should be in love with. "Parker," she said softly, "it's over."

He lifted his head and looked at her in the muted light from the lamp, realizing she was referring to his future with Meredith. "I know," he said somberly.

"It's not the end of the world," Lisa continued, sitting beside him. Parker noticed, not for the first time, the way lamplight struck ruby lights off her hair. "The relationship was comfortable for you and Meredith, but do you know what happens to comfortable after a few years?"

"No, what?"

"It degenerates to dull."

Without answering, he drank the tea and put the mug down, then he looked around her living room because he felt an odd reluctance to look at her. The room was an eclectic combination of starkly modern and charmingly traditional, with unusual art pieces thrown in. It was like her—daring, dazzling, unsettling. An Aztec mask stood upon a modernistic mirrored pedestal beside a chair upholstered in pale peach leather with a basket of ivy next to it. The mirror above the fireplace was modern American; the Chelsea porcelain figurines on the mantel were English. Restless and uneasy with the questions drifting persistently through his mind, Parker stood up and went over to the fireplace to inspect the porcelain figurines. "This is beautiful," he said sincerely. "Seventeenth century, isn't it?"

"Yes," Lisa said quietly.

He came back and stopped in front of her, gazing down at her but carefully keeping his eyes from the cleavage above the bright plum V of her dress, then he asked the question that baffled him the most. "What made you take a swing at Farrell, Lisa?"

Lisa started and stood up abruptly, picking up the cup. "I don't know," she lied, angry because his nearness in the apartment, the implied and longed-for intimacy of his being there, was making her voice tremble.

"You can't stand me, yet you went leaping to my defense like an avenging angel," Parker persisted. "Why?"

Swallowing, Lisa debated about what to tell him; whether to shrug the question off with a joke about his need for a defender, or whether to risk everything and tell him the truth before some other woman grabbed him again. He was puzzled and he wanted an explanation, but she knew instinctively he didn't want or anticipate an avowal of love. "What makes you think I can't stand you?"

"You're joking," he said sarcastically. "You've never failed to make it eloquently clear how you feel about me and my profession."

"Oh, that," she said. "That was—that was teasing." Her gaze skated away from those piercing blue eyes of his, and she headed for the kitchen, dismayed when he picked up the tea tray and followed.

"Why?" he persisted, referring to her assault on Farrell.

"Why have I teased you, you mean?"

"No, but you could start with that."

Lisa shrugged, making an adventure in fastidiousness out of putting away the tea things and wiping the sink, but her mind was working frantically. Parker was a banker, everything had to add up to him, and her actions and explanations weren't doing that. She could either try to bluff, which she was dismally aware wasn't going to work—not with him—or she could take the biggest gamble of her life and tell him the truth. She decided to gamble. She had lost her heart to him long ago; she had nothing left to lose now but her pride. "Can you remember when you were a kid, say nine or ten years old?" she began, hesitantly continuing to wipe nonexistent crumbs from the countertop.

"I'm capable of that, yes," he said dryly.

"Did you ever like a girl back then, and try to get her attention?"

"Yes."

Swallowing audibly, she plunged ahead because it was too late to turn back. "I don't know how preppy boys did it, but in my neighborhood a boy usually threw a stick at you. Or teased you terribly. They did that," she finished achingly, "because they didn't know any other way to make you notice them."

Gripping the countertop with both hands, Lisa waited for him to speak behind her, and when he said absolutely nothing, her stomach clenched. Drawing a long, shattered breath, she stared fixedly ahead and said, "Do you have any idea how I feel about Meredith? Everything I am and have—all the good things—are because of her. She is the kindest, the finest person I've ever known. I love her more than my own sisters. Parker," she finished brokenly, "can you imagine how... how horrible it feels to be in love with a man—and have him propose to the friend you also love?"

Parker spoke then, his voice blunt and incredulous. "I've obviously passed out somewhere, stinking drunk, and I'm hallucinating," he pronounced. "In the morning when they bring me around, some psychoanalyst is going to want to know all about this dream. Just so I can be completely accurate when I describe it, are you trying to tell me you've been in love with me?"

Lisa's shoulders shook with teary laughter. "It was very stupid of you not to notice."

His hands settled on her shoulders. "Lisa, for God's sake... I don't know what to say. I'm sorr—"

"Don't say anything!" she cried. "And especially not that you're sorry!"

"Then what am I supposed to do?"

She tipped her head back, tears streaming from her eyes, and addressed the ceiling in a tone of frustrated misery. "How could I possibly fall in love with such an unimaginative man?" The pressure on her shoulders increased, and she reluctantly let him turn her around. "Parker," she said, "on a night like this, when two people are badly in need of comfort, and they happen to be a man and a woman, doesn't the answer seem obvious to you?"

Her heart stopped beating when he remained still, then it hammered madly when his fingers touched her chin, tipping it up. "The odds are that it's a very bad idea," he said, looking down at her wet lashes, surprised and touched by what she'd said and what she was offering.

"Life is one big gamble," she told him, and Parker belatedly realized that she was laughing and crying at the same time. And then he forgot to think at all, because Lisa's arms were twining around his neck and he was suddenly the recipient of the sweetest, hottest kiss... a kiss that brought his arms reflexively around her, pulling her tighter and closer. Lisa matched his ardor, subtly pushing it one step further, almost daring him to hold back. And then he wasn't holding back anymore....