Double Standards, Page 3

  Speechless, Lauren let her admiring gaze wander over the gigantic office. The long wall in front of her was glass from floor to ceiling, providing an uninterrupted view of nighttime Detroit in all its fantastic, glittering splendor as it fanned out for endless miles in the distance below. The three remaining walls were paneled in satiny rosewood.

  Acres of thick cream carpeting covered the floor, and a splendid rosewood desk was off to her far right, facing the room. Six chrome chairs upholstered in moss green were strategically placed before the desk, while on the opposite side of the office, three long, deeply tufted moss green sofas formed a wide U around an immense glass-topped coffee table, its base an enormous piece of highly polished driftwood. "It's absolutely breathtaking," she said softly.

  "I'll fix something for us to drink while Mike is getting the first-aid kit," Nick said.

  Lauren turned, watching bemusedly as he walked over to a blank rosewood wall and pressed it with his fingertips. A huge panel glided silently aside, revealing a gorgeous mirrored bar lit by tiny concealed spotlights above it. Glass shelves held rows of Waterford crystal glasses and decanters.

  When Lauren didn't reply to his offer of a drink, he glanced over his shoulder at her. She lifted her blue eyes from the recessed bar to his face and saw the expression he was trying to hide. Obviously, he was vastly amused by her thunderstruck reaction to this opulence, and the knowledge made her suddenly realize something she had heretofore overlooked; while she was acutely aware of his male attraction, he seemed completely oblivious to her as a female.

  After six years of enduring men's gaping admiration, their leers and stares, she had finally met a man whom she desperately wanted to impress, and nothing was happening. Absolutely nothing. A little puzzled and definitely disappointed, Lauren tried to shrug the matter aside. Beauty was said to be in the eyes of the beholder, and apparently Nick's eyes beheld nothing of interest when he looked at her. That wouldn't have been so awful if only he didn't find her so damned funny!

  "If you'd like to clean up, there's a bathroom right there." Nick inclined his head toward the wall beside the bar.

  "Where?" Lauren asked blankly, following the direction of his nod.

  "Walk straight ahead, and when you get to the wall, just press it."

  His lips were twitching again, and Lauren gave him an exasperated look while she did as he'd said. When her fingertips touched the smooth rosewood, a panel clicked open to reveal a spacious bathroom, and she stepped inside.

  "Here's the first-aid kit," the man called Mike announced as he entered the suite just then. Lauren started to close the bathroom door but paused when she heard him add in a lowered voice, "Nick, as the corporation's attorney, I'm advising you that the girl ought to be seen by a physician tonight to prove that she isn't seriously injured. If you don't insist on it, some lawyer could claim she's been crippled by her fall and could sue the company for millions."

  "Stop making such a big issue out of it," she heard Nick reply. "She's just a nice wide-eyed kid who got the hell scared out of her in a nasty fall. An ambulance ride would terrify her."

  "All right," Mike sighed. "I'm late for a meeting in Troy, and I've got to leave. But for God's sake, don't offer her anything alcoholic to drink. Her parents could sue you for trying to seduce a minor, and—"

  Feeling both puzzled and insulted at being called a wide-eyed frightened kid, Lauren quietly closed the door. Frowning, she turned to the mirror above the sink, then stifled a shriek of horrified laughter. Her face was covered with wide streaks of dirt and grime; her neat chignon was half undone, dangling crazily askew at her nape; wisps of hair were sticking out like scraggly spikes all over her head; and her suit jacket was hanging drunkenly off her left shoulder.

  She looked, she thought with a hysterical giggle, exactly like a caricature of herself—like a funny, hopelessly dirty urchin in disheveled clothing.

  And for some reason, it suddenly became imperative that she look vastly different when she walked out of this bathroom. Hastily she began stripping off her soiled navy jacket, gleefully anticipating the shock that was in store for Nick when she was cleaned up and presentable.

  If her pulse quickened with excitement while she scrubbed her face and hands, she told herself it was only because she was looking forward to having the last laugh on him, and not because she longed for him to think she was attractive. But she had to hurry; if she spent too much time in here her transformation wouldn't be nearly so effective.

  She pulled off her sheer tights, grimacing at the sight of the gaping holes in her knees, and lathered more soap onto the washcloth provided. Once she was reasonably clean, she dumped the contents of her shoulder bag onto the vanity and opened the package of spare tights she happened to be carrying with her. After smoothing them on, she pulled the pins out of her dark honey blond hair and began vigorously brushing it, tugging the brush through the tangled strands with ruthless haste. When she was finished, it fell in a soft, shining mass that curled artlessly at her shoulders and back. Swiftly she applied peach lipstick, a touch of blusher, then stuffed everything into her purse and stepped from the mirror to survey her appearance. Her color was high and her eyes were sparkling with lively anticipation. Her ascot-style white blouse was a little prim, but it flattered the graceful line of her throat and emphasized the curves of her breasts. Satisfied, she turned away from the mirror, picked up her jacket and purse and stepped out of the bathroom, closing the rosewood panel with a soft click.

  Nick was standing at the mirrored bar, his back to her. Without turning he said, "I had to make a phone call, but I'll have these drinks ready in a moment. Did you find everything you needed in there?"

  "Yes, I did, thank you," Lauren said, putting down her purse and jacket. Quietly she stood beside the long sofa, watching his swift, economical movements as he took two crystal glasses down from the shelf and pulled a tray of ice cubes from the compact refrigerator-freezer recessed into the bar. He had removed his denim jacket and tossed it over one of the chairs. With each movement of his arms, the thin fabric of his blue knit shirt tautened, emphasizing his broad, muscular shoulders and tapered back. Lauren let her gaze drift down the clean line of his narrow hips and long legs, outlined by the comfortably snug jeans he wore. When he spoke, Lauren started guiltily, her gaze flying to the back of his dark head.

  "I'm afraid this bar isn't stocked with soft drinks or lemonade, Lauren, so I've fixed you a glass of tonic with ice."

  Lauren suppressed a chuckle at the mention of lemonade and demurely clasped her hands behind her back. Suspense and anticipation built inside her as he replaced the stopper in a crystal whiskey decanter, picked up a glass in each hand and turned.

  He took two steps toward her and stopped cold.

  His brows drew together as his narrowed gray eyes slid over the luxurious tumble of burnished honey gold hair that framed her face and fell in glorious abandon over her shoulders and back. His stunned gaze shifted to her face, noting her vivid turquoise eyes sparkling with humor beneath thick, curly lashes, her pert nose, finely sculpted cheeks and soft lips. Then it drifted downward over her full breasts, trim waist and long shapely legs.

  Lauren had hoped to make him notice her as a woman, and he was certainly noticing her. Now she rather hoped he would say something nice. But he didn't.

  Without a word he turned on his heel, strode over to the bar and dumped the contents of one of the glasses into the stainless steel bar sink. "What are you doing?" Lauren asked.

  His voice was filled with amused irony. "Adding some gin to your tonic."

  Lauren burst out laughing, and he glanced over his shoulder at her, a wry smile twisting his lips. "Just out of curiosity, how old are you?"

  "Twenty-three."

  "And you were applying for a secretarial position at Sinco—before you threw yourself at our feet tonight?" he prompted, adding a modest amount of gin to her tonic.

  "Yes."

  He carried her glass to her and nodded toward the sof
a. "Sit down—you shouldn't be standing on that ankle."

  "It doesn't hurt, honestly," she protested, but she obediently sat down.

  Nick remained standing in front of her, regarding her curiously. "Did Sinco offer you a position?"

  He was so tall that Lauren had to tip her head back in order to meet his gaze. "No."

  "I'd like to have a look at your ankle," he said. Putting his drink on the glass coffee table, he crouched down and began unbuckling the thin strap of her sandal. The mere brush of his fingers against her ankle sent amazing jolts of electricity shooting up her leg, and she stiffened with the unexpected shock.

  Fortunately, he seemed not to notice as his strong fingers carefully explored her calf, moving slowly down toward her ankle. "Are you a good secretary?"

  "My former employer thought I was."

  With his head still bent, he said, "Good secretaries are always in demand. Sinco's personnel office will probably call you eventually and offer you a job."

  "I doubt it," Lauren said with an irrepressible smile. "I'm afraid Mr. Weatherby, the personnel manager, doesn't think I'm very bright," she explained.

  Nick's head jerked up, his gaze moving with frank, masculine appreciation over her vivid features. "Lauren, I think you're as bright as a shiny new penny. Weatherby must be blind."

  "Of course he is!" she teased, "Or else he'd never wear a houndstooth jacket with a paisley tie."

  Nick grinned. "Does he really?"

  Lauren nodded, and for her the companionable moment became strangely charged with an unexplainable, deepening awareness. Now, as she smiled at him, she saw more than just an extremely handsome male. She saw a mild cynicism in his eyes that was tempered with warmth and humor; the hardbitten experience that was stamped on his strongly chiseled face. To Lauren it made him even more attractive. There was no denying the power of his sexual magnetism, either. It emanated from every rugged, self-assured inch of his body, pulling her to him.

  "It doesn't feel swollen," he commented, bending his head toward her ankle again. "Does it hurt at all?"

  "Very little. Not nearly as much as my dignity."

  "In that case, by tomorrow your ankle and your dignity will probably be fine."

  Still crouching, he cupped her heel in his left hand and reached over to pick up her sandal with his right.

  Just as he was about to slip the sandal onto her foot, he glanced up at her and his lazy smile sent Lauren's pulse racing as he asked, "Isn't there some fairy tale about a man who searches for the woman whose foot fits into a glass slipper?"

  She nodded, her eyes bright. "Cinderella."

  "What happens to me if this slipper fits?"

  "I turn you into a handsome frog," she quipped.

  He laughed, a rich, wonderful sound as their gazes held, and something flickered in the silver depths of his eyes—a brief flame of sexual attraction that he abruptly doused. The companionable bantering was over. He buckled her sandal, then stood up. Picking up his drink, he drained it quickly and set the glass down on the coffee table. It was, Lauren sensed, an unwelcome signal that their time together was at an end. She watched him lean over, pick up the telephone on the far side of the coffee table and punch a four-digit number. "George," he said into the phone, "This is Nick Sinclair. The young lady you were chasing as a trespasser has recovered from her fall. Would you bring the security car around to the front of the building and drive her to wherever she left her car? Right, I'll meet you down in front in five minutes."

  Lauren's heart sank. Five minutes. And Nick wasn't even going to be the one who drove her to her car! She had an awful feeling that he wasn't going to ask how he could get in touch with her, either. That thought was so depressing that it totally eclipsed her embarrassment at having discovered that she had been fleeing from a security guard tonight. "Do you work for the company that built this high-rise?" she asked, trying to postpone their parting and discover something about him.

  Nick glanced almost impatiently at his watch. "Yes, I do."

  "Do you like construction work?"

  "I enjoy building things," he answered briefly. "I'm an engineer."

  "Will you be sent somewhere else once this building is finished?"

  "I'll spend most of my time here for the next few years," he said.

  Lauren stood up and picked up her jacket, her thoughts confused. Perhaps with sophisticated computers running everything from heating systems to elevators in the new high-rises, it was necessary to keep an engineer of some sort on staff. Not that it really mattered one way or another, she thought with an awful sense of foreboding. She probably wasn't going to see him again. "Well, thank you for everything. I hope the president doesn't discover that you raided his liquor cabinet."

  Nick shot her a wry glance. "It's already been raided by all the janitors. It will have to be locked to stop that."

  On the way down in the elevator, he seemed preoccupied and in a hurry. He probably already had a date tonight, Lauren thought glumly. With some beautiful woman—a model, at least, if she were to match his own striking good looks. Of course, he might be married—but he wasn't wearing a wedding ring, and he didn't seem like a married man.

  A white car with the words Global Industries Security Division had pulled up on the packed dirt in front of the building and was waiting, a uniformed security guard at the steering wheel. Nick walked her out to the car and held the door open while she slid into the passenger seat beside the guard. Using his body to block the chilly air from her, he leaned his forearm on the roof of the car and bent his head to speak to her through the narrow opening. "I know people at Sinco; I'll give someone a call and see if they can't persuade Weatherby to change his mind."

  Lauren's spirits soared at this indication that he liked her enough to try to intercede for her, but when she recalled the way she had deliberately bungled her tests, she shook her head in genuine dismay. "Don't bother. He won't change his mind—I made a terrible impression on him. But thank you for offering."

  Ten minutes later Lauren paid the parking-garage attendant and pulled out onto the rainswept boulevard. Forcing her thoughts of Nick Sinclair aside, she followed the directions Philip's secretary had given her and somberly contemplated her forthcoming meeting with the Whitworth family.

  In less than a half hour she was going to walk into their Grosse Pointe mansion again. Memories of her humiliating weekend at their elegant home fourteen years before invaded her mind, and she shivered with dread and embarrassment. The first day had not been bad; she had spent it virtually on her own. The awful part had begun just after lunch on the second day. Carter, the Whitworths' teenage son, had appeared in the doorway of Lauren's bedroom and announced that his mother had instructed him to get her out of the house because she was expecting some friends and didn't want them to see Lauren. For the rest of the afternoon, Carter had made her feel as miserable, insignificant and frightened as he possibly could.

  Besides calling her Four Eyes because she wore glasses, he constantly referred to her father, a professor at a Chicago university, as The Schoolteacher, and her mother, a concert pianist, as The Piano Player.

  While giving Lauren a tour of their formal gardens, he "accidentally" tripped her and sent her sprawling into a huge bed of thorny roses. A half hour later, after Lauren had changed her dirty, torn dress, Carter abjectly apologized and offered to show her the family dogs.

  He seemed so sincere and so boyishly eager to show her his dogs that Lauren instantly decided the rosebush incident must have truly been an accident. "I have a dog at home," she had confided proudly, hurrying to keep up with him as he stalked across the lush manicured lawns toward the rear of the estate. "Her name is Fluffy, and she's white," she'd added as they came to a clipped hedge, which concealed a huge dog pen enclosed by a ten-foot-high chain-link fence. Lauren beamed at the two Doberman pinschers and then at Carter, who was removing the heavy padlock from the gate. "My best friend has a Doberman pinscher. He plays tag with us all the time, and he does tricks
too."

  "These two know some tricks of their own," Carter promised, opening the gate and stepping aside for Lauren to enter.

  Lauren walked into the pen without fear. "Hi, dogs," she said softly, approaching the silent, watchful animals. As she stretched out her hand to pet them, the gate clanged shut behind her and Carter ordered sharply, "Hold, boys! Hold!"

  Both dogs stiffened instantly, baring their gleaming white fangs and snarling as they advanced on a petrified Lauren. "Carter," she screamed, backing away until she was pressed against the fence, "Why are they doing that?"

  "I wouldn't move if I were you," Carter mocked silkily from behind her on the other side of the fence. "If you do, they'll go for your throat and tear out your jugular vein." With that he sauntered off, whistling cheerfully.

  "Don't leave me here!" Lauren screamed. "Please—don't leave me here!"

  Thirty minutes later, when the gardener found her, she was screaming no more. She was whimpering hysterically, her eyes riveted on the snarling dogs.

  "Get out of there!" the man ordered, flinging open the gate and striding angrily into the pen. "What's the matter with you, stirring up these damned dogs!" he snapped, catching her arm and practically dragging her out.

  When he slammed the gate shut, something about his total lack of fear finally registered on Lauren, freeing her paralyzed vocal chords. "They were going to rip my throat open," she whispered hoarsely, tears racing unchecked down her cheeks.

  The gardener looked at her terror-glazed blue eyes, and his voice lost some of its irritation. "They wouldn't have hurt you. Those dogs are trained to raise an alarm and to frighten off intruders, that's all. They know better than to bite anyone."

  Lauren spent the rest of the afternoon sprawled across her bed contemplating a variety of bloodthirsty ways to get even with Carter, but while it was immensely satisfying to imagine him on his knees, begging for her mercy, all of the schemes she devised were highly impractical.

  By the time her mother came upstairs to get her for dinner that night, Lauren was resigned to the fact that she was going to have to swallow her pride and pretend that nothing had happened. There was no point in telling her mother about Carter, because Gina Danner was an Italian American who possessed the deep, sentimental Italian devotion to family, no matter how distant and obscure that "family" relationship might be. Her mother would charitably assume that Carter had merely been playing some boyish pranks.