Double Standards

Like hell you wouldn't! Lauren thought happily as she struggled to uncork the bottle of wine. "Of course you won't hold it against me," she said lightly. "You specifically said—"

"I know what I said," he snapped tersely. "Now, how many?"

She flicked a glance in his direction, implying that she was bewildered by his tone. "Only one."

Angry regret flared in his eyes, and his body tensed as if he had just felt a physical blow. "Did you… care about him?"

"I thought I loved him at the time," Lauren said brightly, twisting the corkscrew deeper into the cork.

"All right. Let's forget him," Nick said curtly. He finally noticed her efforts with the wine bottle and walked over to help her.

"Are you going to be able to forget him?" Lauren asked, admiring the ease with which he managed the stubborn cork.

"I will… after a while."

"What do you mean, after a while? You said there was nothing promiscuous about a woman satisfying her biological—"

"I know what I said, dammit!"

"Then why do you look so angry? You didn't lie to me, did you?"

"I didn't he," he said, slamming the bottle onto the bar and reaching for a glass from the cabinet. "I believed it at the time."

"Why?" she goaded.

"Because it was convenient to believe it," he bit out. "I was not in love with you then."

Lauren loved him more at that moment than ever. "Would you like me to tell you about him?"

"No," he said coldly.

Her eyes twinkled, but she backed a cautious step out of his reach. "You would have approved of him. He was tall, dark and handsome, like you. Very elegant, sophisticated and experienced. He wore down my resistance in two days, and—"

"Dammit, stop it!" Nick grated in genuine fury.

"His name is John."

Nick braced both hands on the liquor cabinet, his back to her. "I do not want to hear this!"

"John Nicholas Sinclair," Lauren clarified.

The relief Nick experienced was so intense that he hardly knew how to cope with it. He straightened and turned toward her. Lauren was standing in the center of the room, an angel in seductive black velvet, an exquisitely sensual young beauty with unconscious poise in every graceful line of her body. There was a fineness about her, a quiet pride in herself that had prevented her from becoming a convenient receptacle for the passions of boys and men.

She was in love with him.

He could make her his mistress, or he could make her his wife. In his heart he knew that she belonged at his side as his bride; anything less would destroy her pride and shame her. That beautiful body of hers had been offered only to him. He could not accept her gift and her love and in return offer her some obscure, tenuous thing called a "meaningful relationship." Although she was very young he loved her, and she was wise enough not to play games with his life. She was also stubborn, willful and courageously defiant, as he had learned to his intense fury and frustration during the past several weeks…

He looked at her in silence, and then he drew a long deep breath. "Lauren," he began gravely, "I would like four daughters with wobbly blue eyes and studious horn-rimmed glasses on their little noses. Also, I've become very partial to your honey-colored hair, so if you could manage…" He saw the tears of joyous disbelief filling her eyes, and he jerked her into his arms, crushing her against his heart, jarred by the same emotions that were shaking her. "Darling, please don't cry. Please don't," he whispered thickly, kissing her forehead, her cheek and finally her lips. Reminding himself that this was only Lauren's second experience with lovemaking, and that he was not going to rush her, Nick leaned down, swung her into his arms and carried her upstairs to the bedroom.

With his mouth still locked to hers, he slipped his hand from beneath her knees. The exquisite sensation of her legs sliding down his thighs made him catch his breath sharply. While he removed his clothes, Lauren undressed before his burning gaze. And when her lacy undergarments finally drifted to the floor, she lifted her face to his and stood before him unashamedly.

A shattering feeling of tenderness made Nick's hands shake as he cupped her face between his palms, his fingers trembling over her smooth features. After weeks of stubbornly defying him and coldly denying him, Lauren was looking at him now with unconcealed surrender. Love glowed in her eyes, a love so quietly intense that he felt both humbled and profoundly proud. "Lauren," he said, his deep voice raw with the new, unaccustomed emotions inside him, "I love you too."

In answer, she slid her hands up his bare chest, wrapped her arms around his neck and pressed herself against the full length of his naked, rigidly aroused body, sending flames of desire shooting uncontrollably through his bloodstream. Trying to restrain his exploding passion, he bent his head and kissed her. Her soft lips parted; his tongue slipped between them for one sweet arousing taste, withdrew… then hungrily, urgently, plunged again, and suddenly it was out of control. With a low groan he pulled her down onto the bed and rolled her onto her back, pressing her into the pillows, his hands and mouth fiercely urgent as he kissed and caressed her.

Somewhere in the tumult of her whirling senses, Lauren realized that Nick's lovemaking was different tonight. In Harbor Springs he had handled her body as a maestro handles a familiar instrument, his hands deft, skilled; tonight there was a tormenting gentleness, a subtle reverence in the way his hands caressed and excited her. In Harbor Springs his passion had been carefully controlled, restrained; tonight he was as desperate for her as she was for him.

His lips and tongue touched her breasts, circling her hardened nipples, and Lauren lost the ability to think at all. Her fingers clenched convulsively in his thick hair, holding his head to her breast, then glided over the bunched muscles of his shoulders and arms. "I want you," he whispered hoarsely. "I want you so much!"

His hoarse words of passion inflamed her, and his whispered endearments stirred her to her soul. Each touch of his seeking fingers, each brush of his lips and tongue sent her soaring higher and higher into a universe where nothing existed except the wild beauty of his lovemaking.

When his hands parted her thighs, Lauren moaned in her throat and arched her hips to him. Nick's restraint broke. His lips captured hers in a deep, raw kiss and he plunged into her incredible warmth. "Move with me, darling," he coaxed thickly, and when Lauren did, he groaned and drove full length into her. The fierce hunger of his deep strokes, the urgency of each thrust, sent waves of shivering ecstasy shooting through Lauren, an ecstasy that finally exploded with a force that tore a low scream from her throat. Nick tightened his arms around her, crushing her to him, and with one final plunge, he joined her in blissful oblivion.

Early the next morning she was jarred awake by the harsh ringing of the phone. Reaching across Nick's naked chest, she picked up the receiver and answered it. "It's Jim—for you," she said, handing him the phone.

After a brief conversation he hung up, then swung his legs off the bed and combed his hands through his hair. "I have to fly to Oklahoma today," he explained with a mixture of regret and resignation. "A few months ago I bought an oil company owned by a man who over the years had alienated all his employees. My people have been trying to negotiate with those same employees on their new contracts, but they're used to promises being made and not kept. They're demanding to talk to me, or else they're going on strike." He was already pulling on his trousers and shrugging into his shirt.

"I'll see you tomorrow at the office," he promised a few minutes later at the front door. He drew her into his arms for a long, drugging kiss, then reluctantly released her. "I may have to fly all night to get here, but I'll be back tomorrow. I promise."

18

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Dozens of watchful, speculative faces turned to watch Lauren's progress through the office Monday morning. Bewildered, she hung up her coat and continued to her desk, where she found Susan Brook and a half dozen other women gathered around it.

"What's up?" she asked. She fel

t radiantly happy; Nick had called her twice from Oklahoma, and sometime today she would see him again.

"You tell us," Susan said gaily. "Isn't that you?" She plunked the Sunday newspaper down on Lauren's desk and smoothed it out.