Double Standards

"Of course he is!" she teased, "Or else he'd never wear a houndstooth jacket with a paisley tie."

Nick grinned. "Does he really?"

Lauren nodded, and for her the companionable moment became strangely charged with an unexplainable, deepening awareness. Now, as she smiled at him, she saw more than just an extremely handsome male. She saw a mild cynicism in his eyes that was tempered with warmth and humor; the hardbitten experience that was stamped on his strongly chiseled face. To Lauren it made him even more attractive. There was no denying the power of his sexual magnetism, either. It emanated from every rugged, self-assured inch of his body, pulling her to him.

"It doesn't feel swollen," he commented, bending his head toward her ankle again. "Does it hurt at all?"

"Very little. Not nearly as much as my dignity."

"In that case, by tomorrow your ankle and your dignity will probably be fine."

Still crouching, he cupped her heel in his left hand and reached over to pick up her sandal with his right.

Just as he was about to slip the sandal onto her foot, he glanced up at her and his lazy smile sent Lauren's pulse racing as he asked, "Isn't there some fairy tale about a man who searches for the woman whose foot fits into a glass slipper?"

She nodded, her eyes bright. "Cinderella."

"What happens to me if this slipper fits?"

"I turn you into a handsome frog," she quipped.

He laughed, a rich, wonderful sound as their gazes held, and something flickered in the silver depths of his eyes—a brief flame of sexual attraction that he abruptly doused. The companionable bantering was over. He buckled her sandal, then stood up. Picking up his drink, he drained it quickly and set the glass down on the coffee table. It was, Lauren sensed, an unwelcome signal that their time together was at an end. She watched him lean over, pick up the telephone on the far side of the coffee table and punch a four-digit number. "George," he said into the phone, "This is Nick Sinclair. The young lady you were chasing as a trespasser has recovered from her fall. Would you bring the security car around to the front of the building and drive her to wherever she left her car? Right, I'll meet you down in front in five minutes."

Lauren's heart sank. Five minutes. And Nick wasn't even going to be the one who drove her to her car! She had an awful feeling that he wasn't going to ask how he could get in touch with her, either. That thought was so depressing that it totally eclipsed her embarrassment at having discovered that she had been fleeing from a security guard tonight. "Do you work for the company that built this high-rise?" she asked, trying to postpone their parting and discover something about him.

Nick glanced almost impatiently at his watch. "Yes, I do."

"Do you like construction work?"

"I enjoy building things," he answered briefly. "I'm an engineer."

"Will you be sent somewhere else once this building is finished?"

"I'll spend most of my time here for the next few years," he said.

Lauren stood up and picked up her jacket, her thoughts confused. Perhaps with sophisticated computers running everything from heating systems to elevators in the new high-rises, it was necessary to keep an engineer of some sort on staff. Not that it really mattered one way or another, she thought with an awful sense of foreboding. She probably wasn't going to see him again. "Well, thank you for everything. I hope the president doesn't discover that you raided his liquor cabinet."

Nick shot her a wry glance. "It's already been raided by all the janitors. It will have to be locked to stop that."

On the way down in the elevator, he seemed preoccupied and in a hurry. He probably already had a date tonight, Lauren thought glumly. With some beautiful woman—a model, at least, if she were to match his own striking good looks. Of course, he might be married—but he wasn't wearing a wedding ring, and he didn't seem like a married man.

A white car with the words Global Industries Security Division had pulled up on the packed dirt in front of the building and was waiting, a uniformed security guard at the steering wheel. Nick walked her out to the car and held the door open while she slid into the passenger seat beside the guard. Using his body to block the chilly air from her, he leaned his forearm on the roof of the car and bent his head to speak to her through the narrow opening. "I know people at Sinco; I'll give someone a call and see if they can't persuade Weatherby to change his mind."

Lauren's spirits soared at this indication that he liked her enough to try to intercede for her, but when she recalled the way she had deliberately bungled her tests, she shook her head in genuine dismay. "Don't bother. He won't change his mind—I made a terrible impression on him. But thank you for offering."

Ten minutes later Lauren paid the parking-garage attendant and pulled out onto the rainswept boulevard. Forcing her thoughts of Nick Sinclair aside, she followed the directions Philip's secretary had given her and somberly contemplated her forthcoming meeting with the Whitworth family.

In less than a half hour she was going to walk into their Grosse Pointe mansion again. Memories of her humiliating weekend at their elegant home fourteen years before invaded her mind, and she shivered with dread and embarrassment. The first day had not been bad; she had spent it virtually on her own. The awful part had begun just after lunch on the second day. Carter, the Whitworths' teenage son, had appeared in the doorway of Lauren's bedroom and announced that his mother had instructed him to get her out of the house because she was expecting some friends and didn't want them to see Lauren. For the rest of the afternoon, Carter had made her feel as miserable, insignificant and frightened as he possibly could.

Besides calling her Four Eyes because she wore glasses, he constantly referred to her father, a professor at a Chicago university, as The Schoolteacher, and her mother, a concert pianist, as The Piano Player.

While giving Lauren a tour of their formal gardens, he "accidentally" tripped her and sent her sprawling into a huge bed of thorny roses. A half hour later, after Lauren had changed her dirty, torn dress, Carter abjectly apologized and offered to show her the family dogs.

He seemed so sincere and so boyishly eager to show her his dogs that Lauren instantly decided the rosebush incident must have truly been an accident. "I have a dog at home," she had confided proudly, hurrying to keep up with him as he stalked across the lush manicured lawns toward the rear of the estate. "Her name is Fluffy, and she's white," she'd added as they came to a clipped hedge, which concealed a huge dog pen enclosed by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. Lauren beamed at the two Doberman pinschers and then at Carter, who was removing the heavy padlock from the gate. "My best friend has a Doberman pinscher. He plays tag with us all the time, and he does tricks

too."

"These two know some tricks of their own," Carter promised, opening the gate and stepping aside for Lauren to enter.

Lauren walked into the pen without fear. "Hi, dogs," she said softly, approaching the silent, watchful animals. As she stretched out her hand to pet them, the gate clanged shut behind her and Carter ordered sharply, "Hold, boys! Hold!"

Both dogs stiffened instantly, baring their gleaming white fangs and snarling as they advanced on a petrified Lauren. "Carter," she screamed, backing away until she was pressed against the fence, "Why are they doing that?"

"I wouldn't move if I were you," Carter mocked silkily from behind her on the other side of the fence. "If you do, they'll go for your throat and tear out your jugular vein." With that he sauntered off, whistling cheerfully.

"Don't leave me here!" Lauren screamed. "Please—don't leave me here!"

Thirty minutes later, when the gardener found her, she was screaming no more. She was whimpering hysterically, her eyes riveted on the snarling dogs.

"Get out of there!" the man ordered, flinging open the gate and striding angrily into the pen. "What's the matter with you, stirring up these damned dogs!" he snapped, catching her arm and practically dragging her out.

When he slammed the gate shut, something about his total lack of fear finally registered on Lauren, freeing her paralyzed vocal chords. "They were going to rip my throat open," she whispered hoarsely, tears racing unchecked down her cheeks.

The gardener looked at her terror-glazed blue eyes, and his voice lost some of its irritation. "They wouldn't have hurt you. Those dogs are trained to raise an alarm and to frighten off intruders, that's all. They know better than to bite anyone."

Lauren spent the rest of the afternoon sprawled across her bed contemplating a variety of bloodthirsty ways to get even with Carter, but while it was immensely satisfying to imagine him on his knees, begging for her mercy, all of the schemes she devised were highly impractical.

By the time her mother came upstairs to get her for dinner that night, Lauren was resigned to the fact that she was going to have to swallow her pride and pretend that nothing had happened. There was no point in telling her mother about Carter, because Gina Danner was an Italian American who possessed the deep, sentimental Italian devotion to family, no matter how distant and obscure that "family" relationship might be. Her mother would charitably assume that Carter had merely been playing some boyish pranks.