Now, as he watched her staring into the fire, he wondered about the faint smile at her lips that had appeared at odd times throughout their meal.

"What's so funny?" he asked idly, and his question unexpectedly made her eyes widen and shoulders start to shake with laughter. "Well?" he prodded, frowning, when she shook her head, folded her arms on her knees, and hid her laughing face in them. "Meredith?" he said a little curtly, and she laughed harder.

"It's you," she managed, giggling. "You, with those stockings clinging to you—" Matt started to grin even before she added merrily, "If you could have seen the look on your face!" She got herself under control, and with her head still in her arms, she turned her laughing face toward him and stole a peek. What she saw made her roll her eyes and dissolve with laughter again. "Cary Grant!" she chortled, her shoulders shaking. "Mrs. Millicent must be getting senile! You no more resemble Cary Grant than a p-panther resembles a p-pussy cat!"

"Which one am I?" he chuckled, but he already knew she likened him to the panther. Lying back, he folded his arms beneath his head and smiled up at the ceiling, utterly contented with his lot in life—for the first time in his life.

"I suppose we'd better get to work," she said finally. "It's eight forty-five already."

Matt rolled reluctantly to his feet, helped her clear away the few remnants of their meal, then walked over to the sofa, unlatched his briefcase, and took out a thirty-page contract he needed to read.

Across from him, Meredith sat down in a chintz-covered chair and took out her own work. Despite her earlier merriment, she'd been vibrantly and uneasily aware of his nearness throughout their meal. Having Matt there, behaving as tamely as the kitten she'd laughed about, was anything but amusing or soothing to her nerves. For unlike Mrs. Millicent, she didn't underestimate the threat he posed—he was that panther, patiently stalking his prey. Unhurried, graceful, predatory, and dangerous. She understood the threat he posed— and even so, she was more hopelessly attracted to him with each hour he was near.

She glanced covertly at him. He was sitting across from her on the sofa, his shirt-sleeves folded back on his forearms, his ankle propped on the opposite knee. As she watched, he put on a pair of gold wire-rimmed glasses that looked incredibly sexy on him, opened a file folder on his lap, and started to read the documents inside it.

He felt her watching him, and he glanced up and saw her staring at the glasses in surprise. "Eyestrain," he explained mildly, then he bent his head and returned his attention to the documents.

Meredith admired his ability to reach a state of instant, intense concentration, but she couldn't come near matching it. She stared into the fire, thinking about what Sam Green had told her. From there her thoughts drifted to the bomb scare in the New Orleans store, the problem with Gordon Mitchell, and the phone call from Parker yesterday, telling her that he'd have to find her another lender to make her the loan for the Houston land. All of it revolved around and around in her mind as fifteen minutes became twenty and then thirty.

Across from her, Matt said quietly, "Want to talk about it?"

Her head jerked around and she saw him watching her, the contract he'd been reading lying discarded in his lap. "No," she said automatically. "It's probably nothing. Nothing you'd be interested in at least."

"Why don't you try me?" he offered in that same calmly reassuring voice.

He looked so competent, so decisive and invincible, sitting there, that Meredith decided to take advantage of what he was offering. She leaned her head against the back of her chair and briefly closed her eyes, but her voice was a ragged sigh. "I have the strangest—the uneasiest—feeling," she admitted, lifting her head and looking at him with unguarded candor, "that something is happening, or going to happen, and it's terrible. Whatever it is, it's terrible."

"Can you isolate the source of your uneasiness?"

"I thought you'd laugh at what I just said," she admitted.

"It's not a laughing matter if you're actually sensing something you're unconsciously aware of. That's instinct, and you should pay close attention to it. On the other hand, your feeling could be coming from stress, or even from my reentry into your life. The last time I was in your life, all hell broke loose for you. You could be superstitiously fearing the same thing will happen again."

She flinched at his accurate summary of her feelings, but she shook her head at the idea that this was the source of her uneasiness. "I don't think it's coming from stress or you. I can't seem to put my finger on what's bothering me."

"Start with remembering as closely as you can—to the hour, if possible—when you first felt it. I don't mean when you stopped to notice it and think it out, but before that. Think back to a sudden feeling of restlessness, or mild confusion, or—"

She gave him a weary, laughing look. "I feel that way most of the time lately."

Matt returned her grin. "That's my fault, I hope." She caught his meaning, drew a shaky breath, obviously to warn him that he'd promised not to get personal tonight, so he returned to the subject at hand. "I meant more a feeling that something is odd—even if it seemed very good, very fortunate at the time."

His last words led her effortlessly to the way she felt when her father told her the presidency was hers, but only because Gordon Mitchell had turned it down. She told Matt about that and he considered it, and said, "Okay, good. That was your instinct warning you that Mitchell wasn't acting predictably or sensibly. Your instincts were right. Look what's happened since then: He's become an executive you can't trust—one who you suspect is taking bribes. Furthermore, he's violating established standards for your store's merchandise and openly opposing you in meetings."

"You put a lot of faith in your instincts, don't you?" she asked with surprise.

He thought of how much he was already gambling on his instinctive belief that the feelings she'd had for him before were still there—faint embers that he was trying to fan into a blaze again. He was letting himself dream of their heat, letting the need for it grow within him with every additional moment he spent with her. If he failed, his defeat would be even more devastating because he was counting so desperately on success. And knowing all that, he was still taking the full risk. "You have no idea," he said with feeling, "how much faith I place in them."

Meredith considered all that, and finally said, "The source of my feeling of impending disaster is probably easier to locate than I made it seem. For one thing, we had a bomb scare at our New Orleans store on Monday that cost us a great deal in lost revenue. That's our newest store, and it's barely breaking even. I'm personally guaranteed on its loans. If it starts running at a loss, the income from our other stores will make up the difference, of course."