14 You knew how I felt?

When she did become intimate with someone, she wanted it to be someone she admired and trusted; she wanted tenderness and understanding, and she wanted romance too. Whenever she thought of having a sexual relationship, she envisioned more than making love; she envisioned long walks on the beach, holding hands and talking; long nights in front of a fireplace, watching the flames—and talking.

After trying unsuccessfully for years to truly communicate with, and be close to, her father, Meredith was determined that her eventual lover would be someone she could talk to and who would share his thoughts with her. And whenever she envisioned that ideal lover, he was always Parker.

During the years she'd been at Bensonhurst, Meredith had managed to see Parker fairly often when she was home on vacations—an endeavor that was made easier by the fact that both Parker's family and hers belonged to the Glenmoor Country Club. At Glenmoor, it was traditional for the membership to appear en masse at the club's major dances and sports events. Until a few months before, when she'd turned eighteen, Meredith had been prohibited from attending the club's adult functions, but she'd managed to avail herself of those opportunities Glenmoor did offer. Each summer she'd invited Parker to be her partner in the junior-senior tennis matches. His acceptance had always been gracious; their matches had always been dismal defeats, owing mostly to Meredith's extreme nervousness at playing with him.

She'd used other ruses, too, over the years, like convincing her father to give several dinner parties each summer, one of which always included Parker and his family. Since Parker's family owned the bank in which all of Bancroft & Company's funds were deposited, and since Parker was already an officer of that bank, he was practically obliged to come to dinner both for business reasons and to act as Meredith's dinner partner.

At Christmas time, Meredith had twice managed to be standing under the mistletoe, which she'd hung in the foyer, when Parker and his family came to pay their annual holiday call on the Bancrofts, and she always went with her father when it was time to return the visit to the Reynoldses. As a result of the mistletoe trick during her freshman year, Parker was the one who gave Meredith her first kiss; she'd lived on the memory of that until the next Christmas, dreamed about the way he felt and smelled and smiled at her before he kissed her.

Whenever he came to dinner, she loved listening to him talk about business at the bank, and she especially loved the walks they began taking afterward, while their parents lingered over brandy. It was during their walk last summer that Meredith made the mortifying discovery that Parker had always known she had a crush on him. He'd begun by asking her how the skiing had been the past winter in Vermont, and Meredith had regaled him with a funny story about going skiing with the captain of Litchfield's ski team.

When Parker stopped laughing at the fact that her date had to chase her ski down the face of the mountain, which he'd done with style and flair, he said with smiling solemnity, "Every time I see you, you're more beautiful than the time before. I guess I've always known that someone was going to eventually take my place in your heart, but I never thought it would be usurped by some jock who rescued your ski. Actually," he teased, "I was getting used to being your favorite romantic hero."

Pride and common sense kept Meredith from blurting out that he'd misunderstood and that no one had taken his place; maturity stopped her from pretending he'd never had a place in her heart. Since he obviously wasn't destroyed by her imagined defection, she did the only thing she could do, which was to try to salvage their friendship and simultaneously treat her crush on him as if she, too, regarded it as an amusing thing of her youthful past.

"You knew how I felt?" she asked, managing to smile.

"I knew," he averred, returning her smile. "I used to wonder if your father would notice and come looking for me with a gun. He's very protective of you."

"I've noticed that too," Meredith joked, although that particular issue was far from a laughing matter then or now. Parker had chuckled at her quip, and then he'd sobered and said, "Even though your heart belongs to a skier, I hope this doesn't mean our walks and dinners and tennis games are over. I've always enjoyed them, I mean that."

They'd ended up talking about Meredith's college plans and her intention to follow in her ancestors' footsteps, all the way to the president's office at Bancroft & Company. He alone seemed to understand how she felt about taking her rightful place at Bancroft's, and he sincerely believed she could do it if she wanted it badly enough.

Now, as Meredith stood in the dorm room, thinking about seeing him again after an entire year had passed, she was already trying to prepare herself for the possibility that all Parker would ever be was a friend. The prospect was disheartening, but she felt certain of his friendship, and that meant a great deal to her too.

Behind Meredith, Lisa walked out of the closet with her last armload of clothes and dumped them on the bed beside an open suitcase. "You're thinking of Parker," she teased. "You always get that dreamy look on your—" She broke off as Nick Tierney arrived in the doorway, his two friends blocked from view behind him.

"I've told both these guys," he announced, tipping his head toward his unseen friends, "that they're about to see more beauty in one room than they've seen in the entire state of Connecticut, but that since I was here first, I have first choice, and my choice is Meredith."

Winking at Lisa, he stepped aside. "Gentlemen," he said with a sweeping gesture of his hand, "allow me to introduce you to my 'second choice.'" The other two walked in looking bored, cocky, and collegiate, a matched pair of Ivy League models. They took one look at Lisa and stopped dead.