Double Standards

by Judith McNaught

  Nick's eyes raked the tempestuous young beauty standing before him in all her scornful defiance. In a dangerously soft voice, he challenged, "But now that you do know who and what I am you don't want anything to do with me? Is that right?"

  "That's right!" Lauren hissed, "And I'll—" In one swift motion he caught her shoulders, jerked her into his arms, and captured her lips in a kiss of savage, insolent sensuality. The instant he touched her, every fiber of Lauren's being quickened with longing to know again the incredible pleasure of his hard body driving deeply into hers. Her arms went around his neck, and she arched against his hardening length. Nick groaned, gentling the kiss and deepening it hungrily. "This is insane," he muttered, his mouth tormenting hers with promises of his possession. ''Anyone could walk out here and see us."

  And then his mouth was gone. He let her go, and Lauren leaned weakly against the railing behind her. "Are you coming?" he asked. She shook her head. "No, I told you—"

  "Spare me your lecture on my morality," he cut her off icily. "Go find some man as naive as you are, and the two of you can fumble in the dark and learn together, if that's what you want."

  Like a deep, clean cut that doesn't bleed for several moments after the wound is inflicted, Lauren was blessedly numb to the pain of his words; she felt only fury. "Wait," she said, as he pulled the door open, "your mistress, or your girlfriend, or whatever Ericka is, has my mother's earrings. I left them in her bed, in her house, with her lover. She's welcome to you—I don't want you. But I do want my mother's earrings back." The pain was beginning to seep through her like a steady ache, intensifying with each moment until her voice shook with it. "I want those earrings back…"

  The ceiling above Lauren's bed was a shadowy void as dismal as her heart as she went over the parting scene with Nick. He had brought Ericka to the party, but he had wanted to leave with Lauren. At least tonight he must have desired her more than he desired Ericka. Perhaps she'd been a fool not to go with him.

  Furiously she rolled onto her stomach. Where was her pride and self-respect? How could she even consider having some fleeting, sordid relationship with that arrogant, unprincipled libertine? She would not think of him anymore. She would put him out of her mind. Permanently!

  12

  « ^ »

  With that resolution firmly implanted in her mind, Lauren drove to work on Monday and threw herself wholeheartedly into her job.

  At noontime some of the other secretaries invited her to join them for drinks after work at a local pub, and Lauren happily agreed. When she returned from lunch, the phone on her desk was ringing. Putting down her purse, she glanced over her shoulder into Jim's empty office, then answered it. "Miss Danner?" It was Mr. Weatherby. "Please report to me in the personnel department immediately."

  "We haven't much time, so I'll be brief," Mr. Weatherby said five minutes later, when Lauren was seated in his office. "To begin with, I should explain that the information contained on every employee's application for employment is automatically fed into the Global Industries computers. Then, whenever a project requires someone with specialized skills or talents, the personnel department is notified and a computer search is made. This morning the director of Global Industries personnel received a top priority call for an experienced, skilled secretary who is fluent in Italian. You are the computer's selection. Actually, you're the computer's second choice. The first was a woman named Lucia Palermo, who has worked on this project before, but she is on sick leave.

  "You should expect to be away from your regular position every afternoon for the next three weeks. I will notify Mr. Williams of your reassignment when he returns from lunch, and I'll arrange for another secretary to work for him in the afternoons while you're working on this project."

  Lauren's objections to this arbitrary reassignment tumbled out in a flow of disjointed words. "But I'm still trying to learn my present job, and Jim—Mr. Williams—isn't going to be at all pleased about—"

  "Mr. Williams has no choice," he interrupted coolly. "I don't know the exact nature of the project that requires your fluency in Italian, but I do know it is top priority, confidential." He stood up. "You are to report to Mr. Sinclair's office immediately."

  "Whaaat?" Lauren gasped, leaping to her feet in alarm. "Does Mr. Sinclair know I'm the one who's being assigned to him?"

  Mr. Weatherby gave her a withering look. "Mr. Sinclair is in a meeting at present, and his secretary did not feel that he should be interrupted to discuss this minor substitution."

  An atmosphere of suppressed excitement seemed to pervade the eightieth floor as Lauren walked across the thick, emerald green carpeting toward the circular desk in the center of Nick's private reception area. "My name is Lauren Danner," she told the receptionist, a beautiful brunette. "Mr. Sinclair requested a bilingual secretary, and I've been sent here from personnel."

  The receptionist glanced over her shoulder as the doors to Nick's office opened and six men emerged. "I'll tell Mr. Sinclair that you're here," she said politely. As she reached for the telephone it began to ring, and she picked it up. With her hand over the mouthpiece, she whispered to Lauren, "Just go on in. Mr. Sinclair is expecting you."

  No, Lauren thought nervously, he's expecting Lucia Palermo.

  The tall rosewood doors to Nick's office were slightly ajar, and he was standing behind his desk, his back to her, talking to someone on the telephone. Drawing a deep breath, Lauren walked into the immense cream-carpeted suite and silently closed the doors behind her.

  "Right," Nick said into the telephone after a pause. "Call the Washington office and tell our labor relations team that I want them at Global Oil in Dallas tonight."

  With the phone hooked between his shoulder and his ear, he picked up a file from his desk and began reading it. He had removed his suit coat, and as he slowly flipped the pages, his white shirt stretched rippling across his broad muscled shoulders and tapered back. Lauren's hands tingled as she recalled the rippling strength of that powerful male body, the feel of his warm, tanned skin beneath her fingertips…

  Tearing her gaze away, she tried to still the treacherous sensations unfurling inside her. Off to her left were the three moss green sofas that formed a wide U around an immense glass-topped coffee table. Nick had knelt there to examine her ankle the night she'd met him…

  "Notify the Oklahoma refinery that they may have some problems too, until this gets straightened out," Nick said calmly into the phone. There was a brief pause. "Fine. Get back to me when you've met with the labor relations team in Dallas." He hung up the phone and flipped over another page of the file he was reading.

  Lauren opened her mouth to announce her presence, then stopped. She couldn't very well call him Nick, and she absolutely refused to humbly and respectfully call him "Mr. Sinclair." As she started toward his rosewood desk, she said instead, "Your receptionist told me to come in."

  Nick turned abruptly. His gray eyes were unreadable as he casually tossed the file folder onto his desk, shoved his hands deeply into his pant pockets and silently contemplated her. He waited until she was standing directly across his desk from him before he said quietly, "You've chosen a poor time to apologize, Lauren. I have to leave for a luncheon appointment in five minutes."

  Lauren almost choked on his outrageous presumption that she owed him an apology, but she merely favored him with an amused smile. "I hate to bruise your ego, but I didn't come up here to apologize. I came because Mr. Weatherby in personnel sent me.

  Nick's jaw tightened. "Why?" he snapped.

  "To help with some special project that requires an additional secretary for the next three weeks."

  "Then you're wasting my time," he informed her bitingly. "In the first place, you aren't qualified or experienced enough to work at this level. In the second place, I don't want you here."

  His contempt brought Lauren's simmering fury to a rolling boil, and she couldn't stop herself from goading him.

  "Perfect!" she said brightly, backing away a step.
"Now would you just be kind enough to call Mr. Weatherby and tell him that? I've already given him my reasons for not wanting to work for you, but he insisted that I come up here."

  Nick jabbed at the intercom. "Get me Weatherby," he snapped, then his gaze sliced back to Lauren. "Just what 'reasons' did you give him?"

  "I told him," Lauren lied wrathfully, "that you are an arrogant conceited lecher, and that I'd rather be dead than work for you."

  "You told Weatherby that?" he asked in a low, threatening voice.

  Lauren kept the smile fixed on her face. "Yep."

  "What did Weatherby say?"

  Unable to endure the icy blast of his gaze, Lauren pretended to study her manicure. "Oh, he said that a lot of women you've slept with probably feel that way about you, but that I should put company loyalty above my understandable revulsion for you."

  "Lauren," Nick said silkily, "you're fired."

  Inside, Lauren was a churning mass of rage and pain and fear, but she held on to her composure. With a regal inclination of her head, she said, "You know, I was positive you wouldn't want me to work for you either, and I tried to tell Mr. Weatherby that." She started toward the rosewood doors. "But he felt that when you realized I'm bilingual, you'd change your mind."

  "Bilingual?" Nick scoffed contemptuously.

  She turned toward him with her hand on the doorknob. "Oh, but I am. I can tell you exactly what I think of you in perfect Italian." She saw a nerve jerk in his tightly clenched jaw, and she added in a low, scathing voice, "But it's much more satisfying to say it to you in English: you're a bastard!"

  Wrenching open the door, Lauren marched across the luxurious reception area. She was punching the button to summon an elevator when Nick's hand clamped over her wrist. "Get back into my office," he growled between his teeth.

  "Take your hand off me!" she whispered furiously.

  "There are four people watching us," he warned. "Either you walk into my office on your own, or I'll drag you in there in front of them."

  "Go ahead and try it!" she raged right back at him. "I'll sue you for assault and subpoena all four of them as witnesses!"

  Unexpectedly, her threat wrung a reluctant, admiring smile from him. "You have the most incredibly beautiful eyes. When you're angry, they—"

  "Save it!" Lauren hissed, jerking violently at her wrist.

  "I have been," he teased suggestively.

  "Don't talk to me like that—I don't want any part of you!"

  "Little liar. You want every part of me."

  His mocking confidence knocked the breath, and the fight, out of Lauren. Defeated, she leaned her shoulder against the marble wall and looked at him with helpless pleading. "Nick, please let me go."

  "I can't." His forehead creased into a dark frown of irritated bewilderment. "Whenever I see you, I can't seem to let you go."

  "You fired me!"

  He grinned. "I just rehired you."

  Lauren was too weakened by the turbulence of the last few minutes to resist that devastating smile of his, and besides, she desperately needed this job. Resentfully, she shoved away from the wall and accompanied him into his secretary's office, which connected to his by a door.

  "Mary," he said to the gray-haired woman whose sharp, bespectacled glance instantly lifted to him, "this is Lauren Danner. Lauren will be working on the Rossi project. While I'm at lunch, get her settled here at the spare desk and have her start translating the letter that came from Rossi this morning." He turned to Lauren with a warmly intimate smile in his eyes. "You and I are going to have a long talk when I get back."

  Mary Callahan, as the nameplate on her desk proclaimed, did not seem any more enthusiastic about Lauren's presence in her office than Lauren herself was. "You're rather young, Miss Danner," Mary summarized, her pale blue gaze scraping Lauren's face and figure.

  "I'm aging quickly," Lauren replied. Ignoring the older woman's piercing look, she settled into the secretarial desk opposite Mary's in the large office.

  At one-thirty, Mary's telephone rang, and Lauren got up from her desk to answer it. "Mary?" a cultured female voice asked doubtfully.

  "No, this is Lauren Danner," Lauren said in her best secretarial manner. "Miss Callahan is away from her office. May I take a message?"

  "Oh, hello, Lauren," the voice said with friendly surprise. "This is Ericka Moran. I don't want to interrupt Nick, but would you tell him I'm arriving on the late flight from New York tomorrow? Tell him I'll go directly to the Recess Club from the airport, and I'll join him there at seven o'clock."

  Lauren's astonishment that Ericka obviously remembered her was outweighed by her resentment at having to take messages from Nick's girlfriends. "He's still at lunch, but I'll give him the message," she promised briskly. She hung up the phone and it instantly rang again. This time the woman had a low, husky Southern drawl. She asked for "Nicky."

  Lauren squeezed the receiver so hard that her hand ached, but she said courteously, "I'm sorry, he isn't in at the moment. May I take a message?"

  "Oh dahm," the sexy voice breathed. "This is Vicky. He didn't tell me whether the party Saturday night is formal or not, and I haven't the foggiest notion what to wear. I'll call him at home tonight."

  You do that! Lauren thought, almost slamming the phone down.

  But by the time Nick returned from lunch, she was calm again. For the next three weeks, she promised herself, she was going to adhere to her original plan and treat Nick with the polite friendliness she would show any of her colleagues. If he pressed her, she would merely act amused, and if that annoyed him—well, good!

  The intercom on her desk buzzed. Nick's rich baritone voice sent a delicious little shiver through her, a shiver she stoically repressed. "Lauren, will you come in here please?"

  He was obviously ready to have their "long talk" now. Lauren picked up his messages and walked into the office. "Yes?" she said, lifting her delicate brows in inquiry.

  Nick was perched on the edge of his desk, his arms crossed over his chest. "Come here," he said quietly.

  Lauren warily contemplated his relaxed stance and the lazy, caressing look in his eyes. She came forward, but stopped just out of his reach.

  He said, "That's not close enough."

  "It's more than close enough."

  Amusement gleamed in his eyes, and his voice deepened coaxingly. "We need to straighten out some personal matters between us. Why don't we do it over dinner tonight?" he suggested.

  Lauren courteously refused with a half truth. "I'm sorry, I already have a date."

  "All right, how about tomorrow night?" he asked, holding out his hand for hers.

  Lauren plunked his messages into his outstretched palm. "You already have a date—Miss Moran at seven at the Recess Club."

  Nick ignored that reminder. "I'm leaving for Italy on Wednesday—"

  "Have a good trip," Lauren interrupted lightly.

  "I'll be back on Saturday," he continued with a trace of impatience. "We'll go—"

  "Sorry," Lauren said with an amused little smile that was intended to annoy him. "I'm busy Saturday, and so are you. Vicky called to find out if the party Saturday night is formal or not." And then because she was thoroughly relishing his visible frustration, she added with a dazzling smile, "She calls you Nicky. I think that's adorable—Vicky and Nicky."

  "I'll break the date," Nick stated tersely.

  "But I won't break mine. Now, is there anything else?"

  "Yes, dammit, there is. I hurt you and I'm sorry…"

  "I accept your apology," Lauren said brightly. "Anyway, the damage was only to my pride."

  He studied her with narrowed eyes. "Lauren, I'm trying to apologize to you so that—"

  "You already apologized," Lauren interrupted.

  "So that we can go on from here," he finished implacably. After a thoughtful pause, he continued, "For both our sakes, we'll have to be discreet in order to avoid gossip within the corporation, but I think if we're reasonably cautious when we're together,
we can manage."

  Fury, not pleasure, tinted Lauren's smooth cheeks, but she managed to sound merely perplexed. "Manage what? A sleazy affair?"

  "Lauren," Nick said in a warning voice, "I want you and I know you want me. I also know you're angry with me for initiating you sexually and then—"

  "Oh, but I'm not!" Lauren protested with deceptive sweetness. "I wouldn't trade that night for the world." Taking a cautious step backward, she added lightly, "In fact, I've already decided that when I have a daughter my age, I'll give you a call. If you're still 'active' I'd like to send her to you so that you—"

  One step wasn't enough. Nick lunged forward, seized her wrists, and jerked her between his legs, his muscular thighs clamped against her hips. His eyes were flaming with an alarming combination of anger and desire. "You beautiful, outrageous…" His mouth swooped down, seizing her lips with raw, devastating hunger and ruthless insistence.

  Lauren clamped her teeth together, resisting the shattering persuasion of his kiss. With a supreme physical effort, she twisted her face from his. "Damn you, stop it!" she choked, burying her face against his chest.

  His grip on her shoulders eased slightly, and when he spoke, his voice was rough with confusion. "If I could stop this, believe me, I would!" Threading his fingers through her hair, he cupped her face between his hands and forced her to look at him. "After you left Harbor Springs, I kept thinking about you. All during the meeting at lunch today I couldn't concentrate on anything but you. I can't stop it."

  His admission shattered Lauren's resistance, subduing and seducing her in a way that no kiss could have.

  Nick saw her capitulation in the trembling softness of her lips. He stared at them, the banked fires in his eyes leaping into flames as he slowly lowered his head again.

  "Is this the 'top priority confidential' project that required Lauren's presence up here?" Jim's amused drawl aborted the kiss, and their heads snapped around toward Mary's office, where he was lounging in the connecting doorway.