In twenty minutes she had to make a formal presentation to the board of directors on the Houston store, and although they'd already given a tentative nod to the project, she couldn't proceed any further and finalize arrangements without their formal approval this morning.

Four other women were gathered around Meredith's secretary's desk when Meredith got off the elevator on the fourteenth floor. Stopping at Phyllis's desk, she peered over their shoulders, half expecting to see another issue of Playgirl magazine like the one they'd huddled over last month. "What's up?" she asked. "Another male centerfold?"

"No, not that," Phyllis said as the other secretaries hastily disbanded and she followed Meredith into her office. Rolling her eyes in amusement, she explained, "Pam ordered another printout of her astrological forecast for next month. This one says true love is coming her way, along with fortune and fame."

Lifting her brows in shared amusement, Meredith said, "I thought that's what the last one said."

"It did. I told her for fifteen dollars, I'd do her next one." The two women regarded each other in laughing harmony, and then they switched to business. "You have a board of directors meeting in five minutes," Phyllis reminded her.

Meredith nodded and picked up the folder with her notes in it. "Is the architect's model in the boardroom?"

"Yes. And I got the projector set up for the slides."

"You're a complete jewel," Meredith said, and she meant it. With the folder in hand, she started for the door, then she turned and added, "Call Sam Green and ask him to be available to meet with me as soon as I finish with the board of directors. Tell him I'd like to go over the preliminary purchase contract he's drawn up for the Houston land. I want to get it to Thorp Development by the end of the week. With a little luck," Meredith added, "I'll have the board's approval on the Houston project by this afternoon."

Phyllis picked up the telephone on Meredith's desk to call the chief counsel and gave a thumbs-up sign. "Knock 'em dead," she said.

The boardroom was very much as it had been fifty years earlier, only now, in the age of glass and brass and chrome, there was a nostalgic grandeur about the immense room with its Oriental carpeting, the intricate molding on dark-paneled walls, and the English landscapes hanging in their baroque frames. Stretching down the center of the huge room was a massive carved mahogany table, thirty feet in length, with twenty ornately carved chairs upholstered in scarlet velvet arranged around it at precise intervals. In the center of the table was an enormous and elaborate antique sterling silver bowl filled with red and white roses. Beside it was a matching tea and coffee service with delicate Sevres porcelain coffee cups rimmed in gold and hand-painted with tiny roses and vines. Silver pitchers, frosted from the ice water within them, had also been placed at intervals down the table.

The room, with its oversize, heavily carved furniture, had the atmosphere of a throne room, which Meredith often suspected was exactly what her grandfather had wanted when he commissioned the furnishings to be made a half century before. There were times when she couldn't decide whether the room was impressive or ugly, but either way, every time she entered it, she felt as if she were stepping into history. This morning, however, her thoughts were more on making history by opening another store than on feeling a part of past history. "Good morning, gentlemen," she said with a bright, businesslike smile at the twelve conservatively dressed men fanned around the table who had the power to accept or reject her proposal for the Houston project.

With the exception of Parker, whose smile was warm, and old Cyrus Fortell, whose smile was lecherous, there was a marked reticence in the chorus of polite "good mornings" that answered her greeting. Part of their reserve, Meredith knew, sprang from their awareness of the power and responsibility they held; part of it was due to the simple fact that she had repeatedly forced and cajoled them into investing Bancroft's profits into expansion rather than using it to pay large dividends to shareholders—including themselves. Most of all, however, they were restrained and guarded with her because she was an enigma and because they didn't know exactly how to deal with her. Although she was an executive vice president, she was not a member of the board, therefore they outranked her. On the other hand, she was a Bancroft—a direct descendant of the founder of the company—and entitled to be treated with a measure of respect. And yet her own father, who was both a Bancroft and a member of the board, treated her with curt tolerance and nothing more. It was no secret that he'd never wanted her to work for Bancroft & Company; it was also no secret that she'd excelled in every way, and that her contribution to the company had been great. As a result of all that, the board members were caught in a situation guaranteed to make successful, confident men become temperamental and brusque—uncertainty. And because Meredith was indirectly the cause of that unpleasant feeling for them, they reacted to her with frequent and unprovoked negativity.

Meredith understood all that, and she refused to let their unencouraging expressions ruffle her confidence as she took her place at the foot of the table where the projector had been set up, and wait for her father's permission to begin.

"Since Meredith is here," he said, his tone implying she was late and had kept them waiting, "I believe we can now get down to business."

Meredith waited through the interminable reading of the minutes of the last board meeting, but her attention was on the architectural scale model of the Houston store that Phyllis had wheeled in earlier. Looking at the magnificent Spanish-style mall the architect had designed with space for other shops in its enclosed courtyard, she felt her resolve harden and her confidence soar. Houston was the perfect place for this newest and largest member of Bancroft's growing family, and the proximity of the land to Houston's Galleria would ensure its success from the moment Bancroft's opened its doors. When the minutes had been accepted as read, Nolan Wilder, who was the board's chairman, formally stated that Meredith wished to present the final figures and plans for the Houston store for their approval.

Twelve perfectly groomed, masculine heads turned to her as she stood up and walked over to the slide projector. "Gentlemen," she began, "I gather you've all had ample opportunity to look over the architect's model?"

Ten of them nodded, her father glanced at the model, but Parker quietly regarded her with the half-proud, half-puzzled smile he usually wore whenever he watched her perform her job—as if he couldn't quite fathom how or why she insisted on doing it, but was pleased with how well she did it. His position as Bancroft's banker gave him his seat on the board, but Meredith knew she couldn't always count on his support. He was his own man; she'd understood that from the beginning, and she respected him for it.