Double Standards

Stepping down off the ladder, Lauren knelt to pull more tinsel from the box lying beside the gaily wrapped packages beneath the tree. From the corner of her eye she glimpsed a pair of gleaming brown men's loafers. "Lenny, your timing is terrific," she teased softly. "I've already finished. Does the star look all right on the top, or should I go to the attic and bring down the angel?"

"Leave the star on top," said an achingly gentle, deep voice. "There's already one angel in the room."

Lauren's head jerked around, her gaze riveted on the tall, solemn man standing a few feet away from her. The color drained from her face as her mind registered the determination carved into every masculine feature, from his straight dark brows to the tough jut of his chin and jaw. Every line of his well-remembered body was emanating wealth, power and the same forceful magnetism that she ran from in her dreams at night.

His features had been seared into her brain; she remembered him perfectly. She also remembered the last time she had seen him: she had been on her knees then too—weeping at his feet. Humiliation and fury sent her surging upright. "Get out of here!" she blazed, too blinded by her own torment to see the tortured regret, the sorrow that darkened his gray eyes.

Instead of leaving, he came toward her.

Lauren backed away one step and then held her ground, her whole body shaking with exploding violence. He reached for her, and she swung, slapping him full force on his face. "I said get out!" she hissed. When he didn't move Lauren lifted her hand in an incensed threat, "Damn you! Get out!"

Nick's gaze shifted to her raised palm. "Go ahead," he said gently.

Trembling with thwarted rage, Lauren jerked her hand down and wrapped her arms around her stomach, moving sideways to escape him, trying to sidle around the tree, away from him, out of the room.

"Lauren, wait—" He stepped into her path and reached for her.

"Don't touch me!" Lauren almost screamed, recoiling wildly from his hand. She moved sideways to take the remaining three steps that would enable her to circle past him and out of the room.

Nick was willing to let her do anything, anything to him, except to leave him. That he could not let her do. "Lauren, please let me—"

"No!" she cried hysterically. "Stay away from me!"

She tried to run, and Nick caught her by the arms. She turned on him like a demented weeping wildcat, struggling wildly, striking out at him. "You bastard!" she screamed in hysterical, maddened pain, pounding on his chest, his shoulders. "You bastard! I begged you on my knees!"

It took all of Nick's strength to hold her until her fury was finally sent and she collapsed against him, her slim body racked with wrenching sobs. "You made me beg—" she wept brokenly in his arms "—you made me beg."

Her tears tore at his heart, and her words slashed him like knives. He held her, staring blindly ahead, remembering the beautiful, laughing girl who had walked into his life and turned it upside down with her glowing smile.

"What happens to me if this slipper fits?"

"I turn you into a handsome frog."

His eyes stung with remorse and he closed them. "I'm sorry," he whispered hoarsely. "I'm so sorry."

Lauren heard the raw ache in his voice, and she felt the wall of icy numbness she'd built around herself begin to melt. She fought to blank out the exquisite beauty of being in his arms again, of being pressed against his big, strong body.

In the lonely weeks of sleepless nights and angry desolate days, she'd come to the quiet conclusion that Nick was incurably cynical and hard. His mother's desertion had made him that way, and nothing she herself could do would ever change him. He would always be capable of shutting her out of his life and coldly walking away from her, because he would never really love her.

He had learned at five that a woman was not to be entrusted with his heart. He would offer Lauren his body, his affection—but nothing else. He would never let himself be completely vulnerable again.

His hands were moving up and down her back in a gesture of helpless comfort, spreading warmth wherever they touched her. Summoning the last vestiges of her self-control, Lauren firmly pushed away from him. "I'm fine now. Really." She dragged her gaze to his fathomless gray eyes and said quietly, "I want you to leave now, Nick."

His jaw tightened and his whole body tensed at the calm, deathly finality in her voice, but instead of leaving, he seemed to block her words from his mind, as if she had spoken in a language he didn't understand. With his eyes still holding hers, he reached into his jacket pocket and took out a flat box wrapped in silver paper. "I've brought you a present," he said.

Lauren stared at him. "What?"

"Here," he said, lifting her hand and putting the box in it. "It's a Christmas present. It's for you—go ahead and open it."

Mary's words suddenly rang through Lauren's mind, and her whole body began to tremble. "He intended to bribe his mother into coming back to him… He gave her the present… and insisted she open it right then…"

"Open it now, Lauren," he said. His face was carefully blank, but Lauren saw the desperation in his eyes and the rigid tension in his powerful shoulders, and she knew that he expected her to reject his gift. And him.

She pulled her gaze from his and shakily removed the silver paper from the flat velvet box, which was discreetly embossed with the name of a Chicago jeweler, followed by the name of a Chicago hotel. She opened the catch. On a bed of white velvet was a spectacular ruby pendant surrounded by a row of dazzling diamonds. The magnificent pendant was easily the size of a pillbox.

It was a bribe.

For the second time in his life, Nick was trying to bribe a woman he loved to come back to him. Tears of tenderness filled Lauren's eyes, and sweetness pierced her heart.

Her voice was hoarse and tight, as if the words were being wrenched from him. "Please," he whispered. "Please…" He jerked her into his arms, crushing her to his lean, hard length, burying his face in her hair. "Oh please, darling…"

Lauren's defenses crumbled completely. "I love you!" she said brokenly, winding her arms tightly around his neck, running her hands over the bunched muscles of his shoulders, smoothing his thick, dark hair.

"I bought you earrings too," he coaxed hoarsely, urgently. "I'll buy you a piano—your college said you were a gifted pianist. Would you like a grand piano or would you rather have—"

"Don't!" Lauren cried in anguish as she rose up on her toes and silenced him with her lips. A shudder ran through his body and he wrapped his arms around her, his mouth opening on hers with hungry desperation, his hands moving over her back and the sides of her breasts, then sweeping lower, pulling her hips to his as if he wanted to absorb her body into his.

"I've missed you so much," he whispered, trying to gentle his kiss, his mouth moving on her parted lips with tender, melting hunger as his hand sank slowly into the thick hair at her nape. But his control snapped almost instantly and with a groan, he tightened his hand, his tongue driving into her mouth with fierce, compulsive urgency.

Lauren kissed him back with all the bursting, aching love in her heart, arching closer to him, holding him tightly to her.

An endless time later, she surfaced to reality, her arms still wrapped around him, her cheek pressed against the violent pounding of his heart. "I love you," he whispered, and before Lauren could answer he continued in a husky voice that was part pleading, part teasing, "You have to marry me. I think I've just been voted off the committee on international trade—they think I'm unstable. And Tony took me off his list. Mary says she'll quit if I don't bring you back. Ericka found your earrings, and she gave them to Jim. He said to tell you that you can't have them unless you come back for them…"

Tiny colored lights twinkled on the Christmas tree in the immense sunken living room. Stretched out on the carpet in front of the fireplace, Nick held his sleeping wife cradled in the crook of his arm, watching the firelight dancing on the tumbled waves of her hair spread over his bare chest. They had been married for three days.

Lauren stirred, moving closer to him for warmth. Careful not to disturb her, he drew the satin quilt up around her shoulders. Reverently he touched her cheek, tracing its elegant curve. Lauren had brought joy to his life and laughter to his home. She thought he was beautiful. When she looked at him, he felt beautiful.

Somewhere in another part of the big house a clock began chiming the hour of midnight. Lauren's lashes slowly flickered open, and he looked into her enchanting blue eyes. "It's Christmas," he whispered.

His wife smiled up at him, and her answer made his throat tighten. "No," she said softly, laying her fingers against his jaw. "Christmas came three days ago."

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