Double Standards

"Did you have a nice day, honey?" her mother asked as the two of them descended the curving staircase toward the dining room.

"It was okay," Lauren mumbled, wondering how she was going to restrain the urge to give Carter Whitworth a good swift kick.

At the bottom of the stairs, a maid announced that a Mr. Robert Danner was on the telephone. "You go on ahead," Gina told her daughter with one of her gentle smiles as she reached for the telephone on the small table at the foot of the stairs.

In the arched doorway of the dining room, Lauren hesitated. Beneath a glittering chandelier, the Whitworth family was already seated at the huge table. "I distinctly told the Danner woman to come down at eight o'clock," Carter's mother was saying to her husband. "It is now 8:02. If she doesn't have enough sense or manners to be punctual, then we'll eat without her." She nodded curtly to the butler, who immediately began ladling soup into the fragile porcelain bowls at each place.

"Philip, I've been as tolerant of this as I can be," the woman went on, "but I refuse to have any more of these trashy freeloaders as guests in my home." She turned her elegantly coiffured blond head to the older woman seated to her left. "Mother Whitworth, this will have to stop. By now you surely have gathered enough data to complete your project."

"If I had, I wouldn't need to have these people here. I know they've been an irritating ill-bred lot and a trial for all of us, but you will have to tolerate them a while longer, Carol."

Lauren stood in the doorway, a rebellious sparkle glittering in her stormy blue eyes. It was one thing for her to have suffered indignities at Carter's hands, but she would not allow these horrible, vicious people to belittle her brilliant father and her beautiful talented mother!

Her mother joined her at the entrance to the dining room. "I'm sorry to have kept you waiting," she said, taking Lauren's hand. Not one of the Whitworths bothered to reply but continued eating the soup the butler had served.

Seized by a sudden inspiration, Lauren darted a swift glance at her mother, who was unfolding a linen napkin and placing it in her lap. Piously bowing her head, Lauren clasped her hands together and, in her shrill childish voice intoned, "Dear Lord, we ask your blessing on this food. We also ask your forgiveness for people who are hypocrites and who think they are better than everybody else just because they have more money. Thank you, Lord. Amen." Meticulously avoiding her mother's eyes, she calmly picked up her spoon.

The soup—at least Lauren presumed it was soup—was cold. The butler, standing off to one side, noticed her put down her spoon. "Is something wrong, miss?" he sniffed.

"My soup is cold," she explained, braving his disdainful look.

"Boy, are you stupid!" Carter smirked as Lauren picked up her small glass of milk. "This is vichyssoise, and it's supposed to be eaten cold."

The milk "slipped" from Lauren's hand, dousing Carter's place setting and lap in a cold white deluge. "Oh, I'm so sorry," she said, muffling a giggle as Carter and the butler both tried to mop up the mess. "It was just an accident—Carter, you know about accidents, don't you? Shall I tell everyone about the 'accidents' you had today?" Ignoring his murderous glare, she turned to his family. "Carter had lots of 'accidents' today. He 'accidentally' tripped while showing me the garden and shoved me into the roses. Then, while he was showing me the dogs, he 'accidentally' locked me in the pen and—"

"I refuse to listen to any more of your outrageous, ill-mannered accusations," Carol Whitworth snapped at Lauren, her beautiful face as cold and hard as a glacier.

Somehow Lauren had found the courage to meet her icy gray eyes without flinching. "I'm sorry, ma'am," she said with pretended meekness. "I didn't realize it was bad manners to talk about my day." With all the Whitworths still glaring at her, she picked up her spoon. "Of course," she added thoughtfully, "I didn't know it was good manners to call guests trashy freeloaders, either."

3

« ^ »

Exhausted and dispirited, Lauren pulled up in front of the Whitworths' three-story Tudor mansion. She unlocked the trunk of her car and removed her suitcase. She had driven twelve hours straight in order to keep her appointment with Philip Whitworth that afternoon. She had been through two job interviews, fallen down in the dirt, spoiled her clothes and met the most handsome compelling man she'd ever seen. And by deliberately flunking her tests at Sinco, she had ruined her chances of working near him…

Tomorrow was Friday, and she would spend it looking for an apartment. As soon as she found one, she could leave immediately for Fenster to pack her belongings. Philip had not mentioned when he wanted her to start working for his company, but she could be back here ready to report for work two weeks from Monday.

The front door was opened by a paunchy uniformed butler whom Lauren instantly recognized as one of the witnesses to her dining-room performance fourteen years before. "Good evening," he began, but Philip Whitworth interrupted him.

Striding into the vast marble foyer the executive exclaimed, "Lauren, I've been worried to death about you! What's kept you so long?"

He looked so anxious that Lauren felt terrible for worrying him, and even worse for letting him down by not trying harder to get a job at Sinco. In a few words she explained that things had "not gone very well" with her interview. Hastily she sketched in details of her fall in front of the Global Industries Building, and asked if she had time to freshen up before dinner.

Upstairs in the room the butler showed her to, she showered, brushed her hair and changed into a tailored apricot skirt and matching blouse.

Philip stood up as she approached the arched doorway of the drawing room. "You're wonderfully quick, Lauren," he said, leading her over to his wife, whose glacial personality she recalled so well. "Carol, I know you remember Lauren."

Despite her personal prejudice, Lauren had to admit that with her slim elegant figure and carefully coiffed blond hair Carol Whitworth was still a beautiful woman.

"Of course I do," Carol said with a pleasantly correct smile that didn't quite reach her gray eyes. "How are you, Lauren?"

"Obviously Lauren is very, very well, mother," Carter Whitworth remarked, grinning as he politely got to his feet. His lazy, sweeping glance covered everything from her vivid blue eyes and delicately molded features to her gracefully feminine figure.

Lauren kept her expression neutral as she was reintroduced to her childhood tormentor. Accepting the glass of sherry Carter had poured for her, she sat down on the sofa, eyeing him warily when he sat beside her instead of returning to his chair. "You've certainly changed," he said with an admiring grin.

"So have you," Lauren answered cautiously.

He draped his arm casually across the back of the sofa behind her shoulders. "We didn't get along very well, as I remember," he mused.

"No, we didn't." Lauren flicked a self-conscious glance toward Carol, who was observing her son's little flirtation, her eyes cool and inscrutable, her expression regally aloof.

"Why didn't we get along?" Carter persisted.

"I, er, don't recall."

"I do." He smiled. "I was insufferably rude and thoroughly rotten to you."

Lauren stared in amazement at his frank, rueful expression, her prejudice against him beginning to dissolve. "Yes, you were."

"And you—" he grinned "—behaved like an outrageous brat at dinner."

Lauren's eyes brightened with an answering smile as she slowly nodded her head. "Yes, I did." A tentative truce was thereby declared. Carter glanced up at the butler hovering in the doorway, then stood up and offered his hand to Lauren. "Dinner is ready. Shall we?"

They had just finished the last course when the butler appeared in the dining room. "Excuse me, but there is a telephone call for Miss Danner from a man who says he is Mr. Weatherby, with the Sinco Electronics Company."

Philip Whitworth broke into a beaming smile. "Bring the phone here to the table, Higgins."

The phone conversation was brief, with Lauren mostly listening. When she hung up, she raised amaze

d, laughing eyes to Philip.

"Go ahead," he said, "tell us. Carol and Carter are both aware of what you're trying to do to help me."

Lauren was a little dismayed to learn that two other people were aware of her clandestine future, but she complied. "Apparently the man who rescued me when I fell tonight had a very influential friend at Sinco. This friend called Mr. Weatherby a few minutes ago, and as a result, Mr. Weatherby has just remembered a secretarial position that he thinks is perfect for me. I'm to be interviewed for it tomorrow."

"Did he mention who'll be interviewing you?"

"I think he said the man's name was Mr. Williams."

"Jim Williams," Philip murmured softly, his smile broadening. "I'll be damned."

Shortly afterward Carter left for his own apartment, and Carol retired for the night. But Philip asked Lauren to remain in the drawing room with him. "Williams may want you to start immediately," he said when the others had gone. "We don't want any obstacles in the way of you getting that job. How soon can you go home, pack and return to work?"

"I can't go home to pack until I've found an apartment here," Lauren reminded him.