Double Standards (21 page)
"What do you think?" she evaded smoothly—but not smoothly enough, because he chuckled.
"Good.
How much?"
"Is your ego in need of bolstering today?" she countered lightly.
"Yep."
"Really, why?"
"Because I got shot down by a beautiful twenty-three-year-old, and I can't seem to get her out of my mind."
"That's too bad," Lauren said, trying unsuccessfully to hide the joy in her voice.
"Isn't it," he mocked. "She's like a thorn in my side, a blister on my heel. She has the eyes of an angel, a body that drugs my mind, the vocabulary of an English professor and a tongue like a scalpel."
"T
hank
s, I think."
His hands glided up her arms, then curved around her shoulders, tightening as he drew her to within a few inches of his chest. "And," he added, "I like her."
His mouth was making a deliberately slow descent, and Lauren waited helplessly for the physical impact of his lips covering hers. Instead he bypassed her lips and began to explore the creamy skin of her neck and shoulder, his warm mouth nuzzling the sensitive area,
then
slowly wandering upward along her neck toward her ear. With the kitchen table behind her and Nick's body in front, Lauren was incapable of doing anything except standing there, a mass of quivering sensations. His mouth left a burning trail of kisses up to her temple,
then
slowly began to drift toward her lips. A fraction of an inch above hers he stopped and repeated his earlier command. "Kiss me, Lauren."
"No," she whispered shakily.
He shrugged and began leisurely kissing her other cheek, stopping to linger sensuously at her ear, his tongue tracing every curve and hollow. He nipped her earlobe, and Lauren lurched forward in a startled movement that jolted their bodies together. A current leaped between them, and they both stiffened with the delicious shock of it.
"God!"
Nick muttered under his breath, and his lips began to trail down her neck to her shoulder.
"Nick, please," Lauren whispered weakly.
"Please what?" he murmured against her throat. "Please put us both out of this misery?"
"No!"
"No?" he repeated silkily, raising his head. "You don't want me to kiss you, and undress you, and make love to you?" His lips were tantalizingly close, and Lauren was almost faint with the desire to feel them crushing down on hers. Instead he bent his head and lightly brushed his mouth over hers, first in one direction,
then
the other. "Please kiss me," he coaxed huskily. "I dream about the way you kissed me in Harbor Springs, about how sweet and warm you felt in my arms…"
With a silent moan of surrender, Lauren slid her hands up his muscular chest and kissed him. She felt the tremor that ran through his body, the gasp of his breath against her lips in the instant before his arms closed around her, and his mouth opened passionately over hers.
Desire was racing through her like a wild fury by the time he finally dragged his mouth from hers. "Where's the bedroom?" he whispered hoarsely.
Lauren pulled back in his arms and lifted her eyes to his. His face was dark with passion, and demand was blazing in his gray eyes. She remembered the last time she had looked into those insistent eyes and had yielded to his fiery passion. Memories flashed through her mind in chilling sequence: he had made love to her in Harbor Springs, had held her and caressed her as if he couldn't get enough of her, and then he had coolly sent her home. She had learned to her own shame and anguish that he was completely capable of making tender, passionate, shattering love to a woman for the sheer physical pleasure of it—without feeling the slightest emotional involvement with her.
He wanted her more now than he had in Harbor Springs—Lauren knew that. She could feel it. She was also half convinced that he felt more for her than just desire, but then she'd foolishly believed that in Harbor Springs too. This time she wanted to be certain. Her pride would not permit her to let him use her again.
"Nick," she said nervously, "I think it would be better if we got to know each other first."
"We already know each other," he reminded her.
"Intimately."
"But I mean… I would like us to know each other better before
we
… before we start anything."
"We've already started something, Lauren," he said with a hint of impatience in his voice. "And I want to finish it. So do you."
"No, I—" She gasped as his hands cupped the thrusting roundness of her breasts and his thumbs began circling the hardened buds of her nipples.
"I can feel how badly you want me," he told her. His hands swept around her grasping her hips, holding her tightly against him and making her forcefully aware of his hardened manhood thrusting against her. "And you can feel how much I want you. Now, what else do we need to know about each other? What else matters?"
"What else matters?" Lauren hissed, pulling free of his arms. "How can you ask me that? I told you I couldn't handle a casual, unemotional affair with you. What are you trying to do to me?"
Nick's jaw tightened. "I'm trying to get you into that bedroom so that we can ease the ache that's been building inside us for weeks. I want to make love to you all day until we're both too weak to move. Or, if you prefer it more blunt than that, I want to—"
"And then what?" Lauren demanded hotly. "I want to know the rules, dammit! Today we make love, but tomorrow we're no more than casual acquaintances, is that it? Tomorrow you can make love to another woman if you want to, and I'm not supposed to care—right? And tomorrow I can let another man make love to me, and
you
won't care—is
that
right?"
"Yes," he snapped.
Lauren had her answer—he didn't care about her any more now than he had before. He merely wanted her more. Tiredly she said, "Coffee is ready."
"
I'm
ready," he said crudely.
"Well, I'm not!" Lauren stormed in mounting fury. "I'm not ready to be your Sunday-afternoon playmate. If you're bored, go play your games with someone who can handle a casual romp in bed with you."
"What the hell do you want from me?" he demanded coldly.
I want you to love me
, she thought. "I don't want anything from you," she said. "Just go away, leave me alone."
Nick's insolent eyes raked over her. "Before I go, I want to give you a piece of advice," he said icily. "Grow up!"
Lauren felt as if he had slapped her. Infuriated past reason, she struck back at his ego. "You're absolutely right!" she blazed. "That's what I should do. Beginning today I'm going to grow up and start practicing what
you
preach! I'm going to sleep with any man who appeals to me.
But not with you.
You're much too old and too cynical for my taste. Now get out of here!"
Nick pulled a small velvet box from his pocket and slapped it onto the kitchen table. "I owed you a pair of earrings," he said, already striding out of the kitchen.
Lauren heard the front door slam behind him, and with trembling fingers she picked up the little box and opened it. She expected to find her mother's small golden hoops, but instead there was a pair of glowing pearls in a setting so fragile that the pearls appeared to be two large, luminous raindrops suspended in thin air. Lauren snapped the box shut. Which of his girlfriends had lost those in his bed, she wondered in angry loathing. Or were they her "present" from
Italy
?
She marched upstairs to get her purse and a warmer sweater to cover her shoulders. She would go shopping for Jim's birthday gift exactly as she'd planned, and she would put the last hour out of her thoughts—permanently. Nick Sinclair was not going to haunt her anymore. She would erase him from her mind. She jerked open her bottom drawer and stood looking down at the beautiful silver gray sweater she'd knitted for that… that bastard!
Lauren removed it from the drawer. Jim was almost exactly Nick's size, and he would probably like it very much. She would give it to him, she decided, ignoring the sharp stab of anguish that shot through her.
L
auren walked into the office the next morning
wearing a chic burgundy suede suit and a determinedly bright smile. Jim took one look at her and grinned. "Lauren, you're gorgeous—but aren't you supposed to be upstairs?"
"Not anymore," she replied, handing him his mail. She had assumed that because their "game" was over, Nick would no longer want her upstairs in the mornings.
She was wrong. Five minutes later, as they were discussing a report Lauren was working on, the phone on Jim's desk rang. "It's Nick," he said, passing the receiver to her.
Nick's voice was like a whip crack. "Get up here! I said I wanted you here all day and I meant it. Now move!"
He hung up on her, and Lauren looked at the receiver as if it had just bitten her. She hadn't expected Nick to sound like that. She'd never heard anybody sound like that. "I—I think I'd better go upstairs," she said, hastily standing up.
Jim's face was a study in incredulity. "I wonder what the hell has gotten under his
skin?
"
"I think I have." She saw the thoughtful smile that slowly spread across Jim's attractive face, but she had no time to ponder it.
Only a few minutes later Lauren tapped on Nick's door and, with an outward calm she didn't feel, walked into his office.
She waited a full two minutes for him to acknowledge her, but after having practically shouted at her to get up there, he continued writing, ignoring her presence. With an irritated shrug she finally went over to his desk and held the little velvet jeweler's box toward him.
"These are not my mother's earrings, and I don't want them," she told his granite profile. "My mother's earrings were ordinary gold hoops, not pearls. They weren't worth a fraction of what these are; their only value was sentimental. But to me they're priceless. They
mean something
to me, and I want them back. Are you capable of understanding that?"
"Perfectly capable," he replied icily, without looking up. He reached out and buzzed for Mary to come in. "However, yours are lost. Since I couldn't get them back for you, I gave you something that had sentimental value to me. Those earrings belonged to my grandmother."
Lauren's stomach knotted sickly, and the resentment left her voice as she said quietly, "I still can't accept them."
"Then leave them there." He nodded curtly toward the corner of his desk.
Lauren put the box down and went back to her temporary office. Mary followed her a minute later, closed the door to Nick's office behind her and came over to Lauren's desk. Smiling kindly, she relayed the instructions Nick had obviously just given. "Sometime during the next few days he's expecting a call from Signor Rossi. He wants you to be available to act as translator whenever the man decides to call. In the meantime, I would be very grateful for your help with some of my work. If you still have time to spare, you could bring some of Jim's work up here to do."
During the next three days, Lauren saw sides of Nick that she had only imagined existed. Gone was the teasing man who had held and kissed and pursued her so relentlessly. In his place was a powerful, dynamic businessman who treated her with a brisk, aloof formality that thoroughly intimidated her. When he wasn't on the phone or in meetings, he was dictating or working at his desk. He arrived before she did in the morning and was still there when she left at night. Acting as his auxiliary secretary, she grew petrified of displeasing him in any way. She had the feeling he was merely waiting for her to make a mistake so that he would have a legitimate reason to fire her.
On Wednesday, Lauren made the mistake she'd been dreading: she left an entire paragraph out of a detailed contract Nick had dictated to her. The moment his summons snapped over the intercom she knew her time had come, and she walked into his office with limbs shaking and hands perspiring. But instead of flaying her alive, which she could see was what he wanted to do, he pointed out the error and shoved the contracts toward her. "Do it again," he snapped, "and
this time get
it right."
She relaxed slightly after that. If Nick hadn't fired her for that blunder, he obviously wasn't looking for an excuse to get rid of her. He must need her at hand for that call from Rossi no matter how poorly she performed.
"I'm Vicky Stewart," a breathy voice announced to Lauren at
"I happened to be downtown and decided to stop by and see if Nicky—Mr. Sinclair—is free for lunch," she informed Lauren. "Don't bother announcing me, I'll just go in."
A few minutes later, Vicky and Nick strolled out of his office together, heading toward the elevators. Nick's hand was resting familiarly at the small of her back, and he was grinning at whatever she was telling him.
Lauren swung back around to her typewriter. She hated Vicky Stewart's drawl; she hated the possessive way she looked at Nick; she hated the woman's breathless laugh. In fact, she loathed everything about her and she knew exactly why—Lauren was hopelessly, completely, irrevocably in love with Nick Sinclair.