Double Standards

Lauren straightened self-consciously and tried to put a bright smile on her sleepy face, which Nick observed with a gleam of humor. "I think," he said, "that Lauren is ready for bed."

The older man glanced at her, then winked at Nick. "Lucky you." With a brief wave, he turned and strolled off toward the house.

Wrapping his arms around her, Nick hugged her tightly to his muscular chest and buried his face in her fragrant hair. "Am I, Lauren?"

Lauren snuggled closer into the warmth of his arms. "Are you what?" she murmured.

"Going to be lucky tonight?"

"No," Lauren sleepily replied.

"I thought not," he chuckled against her hair. Leaning back he looked down at her sleepy face and wryly shook his head. "Come on—you're already half asleep." He put his arm around her shoulders and started walking her back to the house.

"I like Mr. Numbers," she commented.

Nick's sidelong look was filled with amusement. "Actually, his name happens to be Mason. Numbers is a nickname."

"He's a mathematical wizard," Lauren remarked admiringly. "And he's very nice. He's friendly, and he's—"

"A bookie," Nick provided.

"He's a what?" Lauren almost stumbled in her surprise.

Despite the lateness of the hour, the house was lit up and the party was at a fever pitch. "Don't these people ever sleep?" Lauren asked when Nick opened the front door, and the noisy laughter exploded around them.

"Not if they can help it," he answered, casually surveying the scene. He asked a servant which room Lauren had been given, then led her up the staircase. "I'm going to stay at the Cove tonight. We'll spend the day there tomorrow—alone." He opened the door to Lauren's room and added, "The keys to your car are with the butler. All you have to do is turn north out of the driveway and come two miles to the first road on the left. The Cove is at the end of that road, and it's the only house there—you can't miss it. I'll expect you at eleven."

His arrogant assumption that she would be perfectly willing to come to the Cove—and do anything else he wanted—filled Lauren with exasperated amusement. "Shouldn't you ask if I want to be alone with you there?"

He chucked her under the chin. "You do." Grinning at her as if she were an entertaining nine-year-old, he mocked lightly, "If you don't, you can always turn south out of the driveway and head for Missouri." Curving his arms around her he claimed her lips in a long, smoldering kiss. "I'll see you at eleven."

Rankled, Lauren contradicted flippantly, "Unless I decide to leave for Missouri."

When he left, she sank down onto the bed, an unwilling smile trembling on her lips. How could any one man be so outrageously self-confident, so arrogant—and so utterly wonderful? She had been too busy with school, her job and her music to ever become deeply involved with a man, but she was a grown woman. She knew what she wanted, and she wanted Nick. He was everything a man should be—strong, gentle, intelligent, wise—and he had a sense of humor. He was handsome and sexy…

Picking up her pillow, Lauren happily wrapped her arms around it and hugged it to her chest, rubbing her cheek against the white material as if it was his shirt. He was playing a game with desire, but she wanted to make him care for her too—she wanted to win him. If she was going to make him care for her, if she was ever going to be special to him, she had to be different from the other women he'd known.

Lauren flopped down on her back and gazed at the ceiling. He was entirely too sure of her, she decided. For example, he was perfectly confident that she would come to the Cove. A good dose of uncertainty might throw him off balance and help her cause. Therefore, she would be just late enough to make him think she wasn't coming. Eleven-thirty would be perfect—by then he would have decided she wasn't coming, but he wouldn't have left yet to go anywhere else.

With the pillow still wrapped in her arms and the smile still on her lips, Lauren fell asleep. She slept with the inner peace and profound joy of a woman who knows she has found the man whose destiny lies with hers.

6

« ^ »

In accordance with her plan to arrive at the Cove a bit late, Lauren asked the butler for the keys to her car and walked out onto the drive at eleven-twenty, only to find that there were at least six cars blocking hers.

By the time the owners had been identified, the keys found and the cars moved, it was eleven forty-five, and Lauren was a little frantic. Her hands clenched the steering wheel as she swung her car out onto the main road. What if he had decided not to wait?

Exactly two miles from the Middletons' she saw a blacktop driveway on the left with a small wooden sign that read The Cove, and she turned in to it, racing up the steep winding incline, sending startled rabbits and squirrels into the dense forest as she drove by.

An L-shaped house loomed into view at the end of the driveway, a spectacular structure of glass and rough-sawn cedar that looked as if it belonged on a cliff overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Lauren braked the car to a jarring stop beside the house, grabbed her purse and hurried up the wide flagstone walk to the front door.

She rang the bell and waited, then she rang it again and waited even longer. But when she pressed it the third time, she already knew that no one was going to answer. No one was there.

Turning, Lauren gazed despondently at the small manicured lawn. There was no point in going around to the back because the house was perched on the very edge of a bluff, with nothing behind it but a sheer drop of a hundred feet down to the water and a cedar deck that was breathtakingly suspended in midair.

Nick hadn't been willing to wait very long for her, she thought bitterly. When she didn't arrive on time he must have thought that she'd left for Missouri. He didn't have a car of his own, so he must have gone off somewhere with the owner of this magnificent home.

She started walking back down the path, feeling very stupid and very much like crying. She couldn't just sit down on the doorstoop and hope Nick eventually came back there to sleep that night, and she couldn't return to the Middletons', since she was there as his guest. She should have known better than to try to play games with a man who was obviously a master at them. Because of her scheming, she was going to end up spending this glorious day driving back to Missouri after all.

Swallowing the lump in her throat, Lauren opened the car door and put her purse on the passenger seat. As she paused to look once more at the wild beauty of her surroundings, her gaze locked onto some steps carved into the rocky bluff just beside her, and she heard a strange metallic sound coming from far below. The steps obviously led down through the trees to the beach—and someone was down there. With her heart slamming into her ribs she hurried down the steep steps.

On the bottom step she stopped, paralyzed with joy and relief at the sight of Nick's lithe, familiar form. Clad only in a pair of brief white tennis shorts, he was crouched down, working on the motor of a small boat that had been pulled up onto the narrow crescent of sandy beach. For a long moment Lauren simply watched him, her eyes delighting in the sheer male beauty of his wide shoulders, muscular arms and tapered back, gleaming like oiled bronze in the sun.

As she stood there, he stopped working on the motor and looked down at his wristwatch. His arm dropped, and he slowly turned his head to stare at something on his right. He was so perfectly still that Lauren finally tore her eyes from his profile and followed his gaze. When she saw what he had done, tenderness vibrated through her entire body. He had spread blankets on the sand and placed a huge beach umbrella behind to screen them from the sun. A linen tablecloth had been carefully set with china, crystal goblets and silver. Three wicker picnic baskets were off to one side, and a bottle of wine was protruding from the open lid of one of them.

He must have made half a dozen trips up and down those steep steps, Lauren realized. Considering that a few minutes before she'd thought he didn't even care enough about her to wait until she got here, this evidence of how much he actually did care was doubly touching.

Not that touching, she hast

ily reminded herself, trying unsuccessfully to banish her smile. After all, what she was really looking at was the carefully prepared scene of her very own seduction… Attempted seduction, she corrected, with an inward grin.

Smoothing down the bright green V-necked velour top that matched her shorts, she decided she would say something witty by way of greeting. And Nick would, of course, be very casual and pretend he hadn't even noticed that she was late. With that scenario in mind she stepped forward. Unfortunately, she couldn't think of anything witty to say. "Hi," she called out cheerfully.

In his crouching position, Nick slowly pivoted around, the wrench still in his hand. He draped his arm across his bent knees and stared at her with cool, inscrutable gray eyes. "You're late," he said.

That was so far from what she'd envisioned that Lauren had to gulp back a stunned giggle as she walked over to him. "Did you think I wasn't coming?" she inquired innocently.

His dark brows lifted sardonically. "Wasn't that what I was supposed to think?"

It wasn't a question, it was a cool accusation, and Lauren's first impulse was to deny it. Instead she nodded her head, an irrepressible smile teasing her lips. "Yes," she admitted softly, watching his chilly gray eyes turn warm with fascinated interest. "Were you disappointed?" Instantly she regretted the question, because she knew Nick would now retaliate by saying something cutting.

"Very disappointed," he admitted quietly.

A treacherous heat was seeping through Lauren's nervous system as she gazed into those mesmerizing gray eyes, and as Nick put the wrench down and slowly stood up, she cautiously backed away a step.

"Lauren?"

She swallowed. "Yes?"

"Would you like to eat first?"

"First," she whispered hoarsely. "Before what?"

"Before we go sailing," he replied, studying her with puzzlement.