Double Standards

But when the elevator doors swept open at the elegant revolving restaurant on the eighty-first floor, Lauren took one look at the animated crowd milling around, and a rope of tension coiled around her chest, suffocating her. Nick was somewhere in this room.

At the bar, Jim ordered their drinks, and Lauren cautiously glanced around just as a group of people shifted to one side.

And there was Nick…

He was standing across the room, his dark head thrown back as he laughed at something being said. Lauren's heart pounded uncontrollably as her gaze took in his handsome, tanned features; the elegant ease with which he wore his impeccably tailored dark suit; the casual way he held his drink in his hand. She noticed every painfully familiar thing about him. And then she noticed the beautiful blonde who was smiling up at him, her hand resting familiarly on his sleeve.

Anguish poured through Lauren's veins like hot acid. It was Ericka Moran, the woman with Nick in the newspaper photograph. And the gorgeous cream dress she had on was the same one Nick had sent over to Lauren herself in Harbor Springs…

She jerked her gaze away and started to speak to Jim, but the taut set of his jaw as he, too, saw the beautiful blond woman across the room stopped Lauren cold. On his face she saw angry desolation and helpless yearning—the same emotions she'd experienced a moment ago when she'd looked at Nick. Jim, she instantly concluded, was in love with Ericka.

"Here's your drink," he finally said, handing it to Lauren. "It's time to begin our little charade." With a grim smile he took her elbow and started to guide her toward Nick and Ericka.

Lauren drew back. "We surely don't have to rush right over to them, do we? If Nick is the host, it's his responsibility to make certain he greets everyone at his party."

Jim hesitated, then nodded. "All right, we'll make them come to us."

During the next half hour, as they circulated among the guests, Lauren became increasingly convinced that she was right about Jim and Ericka, and that her boss was trying to make both Nick and Ericka jealous. Whenever Ericka glanced in their direction, Jim would smile at Lauren or tease her about something. Lauren cooperated by trying to look as if she was having a positively wonderful time—but she did so for his sake, not for hers. In her shattered heart she knew that Nick didn't care what she did or with whom she did it.

She was sipping her second drink when Jim suddenly slipped his arm around her. She was so surprised that she overlooked the warning squeeze of his hand at her waist. "The group standing over there," he said with a deliberate smile, "is the board of directors—all wealthy, industrialists in their own right. The man on the left is Ericka's father, Horace Moran. Horace's family," he explained, "has been in oil for generations."

"How dreadfully uncomfortable for them," Lauren joked, comically batting her eyelashes to make him laugh.

Jim shot her a warning look, then he continued, "The man beside him is Crawford Jones. Crawford's family, and his wife's family, as well, are in bonds."

"I wonder why someone doesn't cut them loose?" Lauren teased.

"Because," said an achingly familiar, laughing voice right behind her, "Crawford and his wife are both ugly, and no one wants them running around loose, frightening little children."

Lauren's whole body snapped into rigidity at the sound of Nick's deep baritone, then she forced herself to turn. One look at the amusement in his gray eyes as he waited for her reaction made her pride come to her aid. Although she was crumbling into a thousand pieces inside, she managed to smile as she put her hand into his. "Hello, Nick."

His fingers closed around hers. "Hello, Lauren," he said, grinning.

She carefully pulled back her hand, then turned a bright, expectant smile on Ericka, whom Jim promptly introduced to her.

"I've been admiring your dress all evening, Lauren," Ericka said. "It's stunning."

"Thank you." Without looking at Nick, Lauren added, "I noticed your dress the moment we walked in." Then she turned to Jim. "Oh, there's Mr. Simon. He's been trying to talk to you all evening, Jim." With the last remaining ounce of her vanishing poise, Lauren raised her blue eyes to Nick's inscrutable features and said politely, "Will you excuse us, please?"

Shortly afterward Jim became absorbed in a conversation with a vice-president, so Lauren made an effort to be charming and witty and to manage on her own. She was soon surrounded by a flatteringly large cluster of interested, admiring males, and for the rest of the evening she scrupulously avoided looking in Nick's direction. Twice she accidentally turned and encountered his piercing stare, and both times she casually looked right past him, as if she was searching for someone else. But after three hours, the tension of being in the same room with him had become unbearable.

She needed some solitude, a few minutes' respite from the constant pull of his presence. She looked for Jim and saw him standing near the bar, talking to a group of men. Lauren waited until she caught his attention, then she tipped her head slightly toward the sliding glass doors that opened onto the outdoor patio portion of the restaurant. He nodded, his expression telling her that he would join her there.

Turning, she slipped out doors into the welcome quiet of the cool evening. Wrapped in the velvet blackness of the night, she walked over to the chest-high wall that surrounded the patio restaurant and gazed at the glittering panorama of lights fanning out for miles, eighty-one stories below. She had succeeded—she had managed to treat Nick with a perfect combination of impersonal friendliness and smiling disregard. No recriminations, no justifiable indignation because he hadn't called her. He must have been amazed by her attitude, Lauren thought with tired satisfaction, as she lifted her glass and sipped her drink.

Behind her, she heard the whisper of the sliding glass door opening and closing, and she resigned herself to the loss of her badly needed solitude. Jim had come out to join her. "How am I doing so far?" she asked, forcing a cheerful lightness into her voice.

"You're doing very well," Nick's lazy voice mocked. "I'm half convinced that I'm invisible."

Lauren's hand shook so violently that the ice cubes in her glass clinked together. She turned slowly, trying to gather her scattered wits. She should be unconcerned and urbane, she reminded herself, as if what had happened between them had meant no more to her than it had to him. She forced her gaze upward past his white shirt and striped tie, to his humor-filled eyes. "It's a lovely party," she commented.

"Have you missed me?"

Lauren's own eyes widened with pretended innocence. "I've been very busy."

Nick walked over to the wall, leaned his elbow on it and studied her in silence. He watched the breeze blowing her shimmering hair across her bare shoulder before he shifted his gaze back to her face. "So," he said with a smile, "you haven't missed me at all?"

"I've been busy," Lauren repeated, but her composure slipped a notch and she added, "And why should I miss you? You aren't the only willing and available man in Michigan."

His dark brow flicked upward in amused speculation. "Is that your way of telling me that after you tried sex with me, you decided y

ou liked it and you've been… ah… adding to your experience?"

Dear God! He didn't even care if she'd gone to bed with other men.

"Now that you've had other men to use as a basis for comparison, how do I rate?" he teased.

"That's an adolescent question," Lauren retorted scornfully.

"You're right. Let's go." Tossing down the remainder of his drink in one swallow, he put his glass on one of the tables, took hers and put it beside his, then caught her hand. He twisted his wrist and laced his strong fingers through hers, and Lauren was so giddily aware of his warm fingers firmly clasping hers that she didn't stop to think until he had started to lead her toward an unidentified door around the corner of the building.

When he reached out to open the door, sanity returned, and she drew back. "Nick, I would like to ask you a question, and I want an honest answer." He nodded and she said, "When I left you in Harbor Springs, did you ever intend to see me again—I mean, to take me out?"

Nick looked at her levelly. "No."

She was still reeling from the blow of that one word when he reached out again to open the door. "Where are we going?"

"To my place, or yours, it doesn't matter."

"Why?" she asked obstinately.

He turned and looked at her. "For a smart girl, that's a very stupid question."

Lauren's temper exploded. "You are the most arrogant, egotistical… !" She stopped long enough to draw a steadying breath and said tightly, "I can't handle casual, indiscriminate sex, and what's more, I don't like people who can—people like you!"

"You liked me rather well four weeks ago," he reminded her coolly.

Her color rose and her eyes blazed. "Four weeks ago I thought you were someone special!" she shot back angrily. "Four weeks ago, I didn't know you were a licentious millionaire playboy who changes beds as often as you change clothes. You're everything I despise in a man—you're unprincipled, promiscuous and morally corrupt! You're ruthless and selfish, and if I'd have known who you really were, I wouldn't have given you the time of day!"