Double Standards (15 page)

No wonder Bebe Leonardos had been so hostile! According to the magazine story, Nick and Bebe had once indulged in a widely publicized torrid affair that had lasted until he dropped Bebe for a French movie star—the same woman who had been playing tennis in her high heels that night in Harbor Springs…

Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside Lauren. While she had been driving back to
Missouri
, he had been making love to his mistress. While she had been sitting by the phone day and night last week, knitting him a sweater, he had been attending a charity ball with Ericka in
Palm Springs
.

Humiliation washed over her in drowning waves and exploded through her body. Her shoulders shook with silent wrenching sobs as she folded her arms on Jim's desk and buried her face in them. She wept for her stupidity, for her shattered illusions and broken dreams. Shame sent more tears pouring from her eyes—she'd made love with a man whom she'd known for only four days—and she hadn't even known his real name! If it hadn't been for sheer good luck, she could have been pregnant right now!

She remembered the angry hurt she had felt because his mother had abandoned him as a young boy, and she cried even harder. His mother should have drowned him!

"Lauren?" Jim's voice interrupted her sobbing.

She jerked her head up just as he reached her side. "What's wrong?" he demanded in alarm.

Swallowing her misery, she dragged her gaze to his concerned face. Her luxurious lashes were spiky with tears and her blue eyes were swimming. "I thought—" she stopped to draw a tortured breath "—I thought he was an ordinary engineer who wanted to start a business of his own someday. And he let me think it!" she choked. "He let me!"

The compassion in Jim's face was more than she could bear. She stood up. "Can I get out of here without anyone seeing me? I mean, has everyone gone home?"

"Yes, but you aren't driving in this condition. I'll take you—"

"No," she said swiftly. "I'm fine, really! I can drive."

"Are you certain?"

She finally got control of her quavering voice. "Positive, I was just shocked and a little embarrassed, that's all."

Jim gestured lamely at the file. "Are you done with this?"

"I haven't read it all," she said distractedly.

He picked up the magazine from the floor, put it in the folder with the newspaper clipping and held the thick file toward her. Lauren took it automatically, and then fled. She thought she would cry again when she got to her car, but she didn't. Nor did she cry during the three hours she spent reading the file. There were no more tears left in her.

Lauren pulled into the parking lot past the sign that read, Reserved for Sinco Employees. After what she'd read the night before, the name Sinco had a new meaning: Sinclair Electronic Components. The company had been founded, according to
The Wall Street Journal
, by Matthew Sinclair and his grandson Nick twelve years before, in a garage behind what was now Tony's restaurant.

She parked her car, picked up the file on J. Nicholas Sinclair from the seat beside her and got out. Nick had built a financial empire, and now he kept it alive by employing spys among his competitors. Obviously he was as unscrupulous in his business dealings as he was in his personal life, she thought fiercely.

The women in the office smiled cheerful greetings at her, and Lauren felt guilty because she was going to play a part in destroying the company for whom they worked. No, not destroying it, she corrected herself as she put her purse in her desk. If Sinco was fit to survive, then it should be able to compete honestly for contracts. Otherwise it deserved to die before it destroyed its honest competitors, companies like Philip Whitworth's.

She paused outside Jim's office. Did he know that Sinco was paying spys? Somehow she didn't think he did. She couldn't believe that he would approve of such a thing. "
T
hank
you for letting me take
the file home," she said softly, walking into his office.

His gaze leaped from the report in his hand to her pale, composed features. "How do you feel this morning?" he asked quietly.

Self-consciously she put her hands in the deep side pockets of her skirt. "I feel embarrassed… and pretty foolish."

"Without going into painful detail, could you give me some idea of what Nick did that hurt you so much? Surely you weren't crying like that just because you discovered he's wealthy and successful?"

Lauren felt a fresh stab of pain at the memory of how willingly she'd collaborated in her own seduction. But she owed Jim some sort of explanation for her hysterical behavior yesterday, and she said with a lame attempt at indifference, "Because I thought he was simply an engineer, I said and did some things that are extremely embarrassing to remember now."

"I see," Jim said calmly. "And what do you intend to do about it?"

"I intend to throw myself into my job here, and to learn everything I can," she replied with bitter honesty.

"I meant, what do you intend to do when you see Nick?"

"I never want to see him again as long as I live!" she retorted tersely.

A half smile tugged at his lips, but his voice was solemn. "Lauren, next Saturday there's a private cocktail party being given in the revolving restaurant atop the
Global
Industries
Building
. All the chief executives of our various companies are expected to attend, along with their secretaries. The purpose of the party is to bring together all of us who have worked in different buildings in the past, so that we can meet face to face. You'll have an opportunity to meet the secretaries you'll be dealing with in the future, as well as their bosses. Nick is the host."

"If you don't mind, I'd rather not go," Lauren said flatly.

"I do mind."

She was trapped. Jim wasn't the sort of boss who would allow her personal life to interfere with her job, she knew. And if she lost her job she'd never find out who Nick was paying to spy on Philip Whitworth's company.

"Sooner or later you're going to have to meet Nick face to face," Jim continued persuasively. "Wouldn't you rather have it happen on Saturday, when you're prepared for it?" When Lauren still hesitated, he said firmly, "I'll pick you up at seven-thirty."

«
^
»

L
auren's hand shook as she applied her lipstick
and brushed some blusher on her cheekbones. She glanced at her watch; Jim would be there in fifteen minutes. Walking over to one of the mirrored closets, she removed a flowing chiffon cocktail dress, the one she'd finally chosen that afternoon after trying on all of her newly acquired evening dresses.

Now that she knew what an unprincipled, deceitful, arrogant bastard Nick really was, she probably wouldn't find him the slightest bit attractive, she decided, zipping up the dress and stepping into dainty sandals. Even so, her battered pride demanded that she look her best tonight.

Closing the closet, she stepped back to survey her full-length image in the mirrored doors. Panels of cream chiffon drifted into deepening shades of peach, creating a subdued rainbow effect in the full skirt, while matching panels of chiffon crisscrossed beneath her breasts and swept upward in a deeply slashed halter top that clasped behind her neck, leaving her arms, shoulders and upper back bare.

She tried to feel pleasure in her appearance but couldn't. Not when she was about to confront the man who had effortlessly seduced her and then suggested she call him if she got pregnant; a multimillionaire whom she'd invited to lunch and assured him that they could afford anything on the menu.

Considering how low and cynical Nick was, it was amazing he hadn't actually let her pay for the expensive meal, Lauren thought, searching through her jewelry box for the precious gold earrings that had belonged to her mother.

She paused to mentally rehearse the way she was going to treat him tonight. Because of what had happened, Nick would naturally expect her to be hurt and angry, but she had no intention of letting him see that she was either. Instead she was going to convince him that their weekend in Harbor Springs had been nothing but an amusing little escapade to her, just as it had obviously been to him. Under no circumstances would she treat him coldly, because by coldness she would show him that she still cared enough to be angry. Even if it killed her, she was going to treat him with casual, detached friendliness—the same sort of impersonal friendliness she would show the gatekeeper or the janitor at work.

That
should throw him off balance, Lauren decided, still searching for her mother's earrings.

But where were they, she wondered a little frantically a moment later. She couldn't have lost them— she was always so careful with them. They were the only things of her mother's she had. She had worn them to the party in Harbor Springs, she remembered… and the next day at the Cove. And that night in bed Nick had been kissing her ear, and he'd taken her earrings off because they were in his way…

Her mother's earrings were somewhere in Nick's girlfriend's bed!

Lauren leaned her hands on the dresser, and her head fell forward as a fresh surge of anger and pain raged through her. Nick's girlfriend probably had her mother's earrings.

The doorbell pealed downstairs, and she straightened up with a jerk. Taking a deep breath she walked downstairs and opened the door.

Jim was standing in the doorway, looking every inch the impressive business executive in an attractive dark suit and tie. "Please come in," Lauren said quietly. He stepped into the foyer, and she added, "I'll just get my purse, and we can leave. Or would you like a drink first?"

When he didn't immediately answer, she turned. "Is something wrong?"

His gaze moved over her perfect features and the lustrous mass of her honey-colored hair, which spilled over her shoulders in deep, swirling waves. Appreciatively he examined her figure in the seductive chiffon, and her long, shapely legs. "Nothing that I can see," he said with a grin.

"Would you like a drink?" Lauren repeated, surprised but not insulted by his frank masculine appraisal.

"Not unless you need one to bolster your courage to face Nick."

Lauren shook her head. "I don't need courage. He means nothing to me." Jim shot her an amused look as he ushered her out to his dark green Jaguar.

"I gather you want to convince him that you no longer have any romantic interest in him, is that it?"

Lauren had the uneasy feeling that Jim was not deceived by her facade of indifference—but then he had witnessed her crying her heart out. "That's right," she admitted.

"In that case—" Jim shifted gears as they thundered onto the expressway "—I'll give you some unsolicited advice. Why don't you spend a few minutes chatting with him about the party or your new job and then, with a
very
charming smile, excuse yourself and walk over to someone else—me, if I'm close at hand, and I'll try to be."

Lauren turned toward him with a soft smile of gratitude. "T
hank
you," she said. Feeling calm and confident, she relaxed.

But when the elevator doors swept open at the elegant revolving restaurant on the eighty-first floor, Lauren took one look at the animated crowd milling around, and a rope of tension coiled around her chest, suffocating her. Nick was somewhere in this room.

At the bar, Jim ordered their drinks, and Lauren cautiously glanced around just as a group of people shifted to one side.

And there was Nick…

He was standing across the room, his dark head thrown back as he laughed at something being said. Lauren's heart pounded uncontrollably as her gaze took in his handsome, tanned features; the elegant ease with which he wore his impeccably tailored dark suit; the casual way he held his drink in his hand. She noticed every painfully familiar thing about him. And then she noticed the beautiful blonde who was smiling up at him, her hand resting familiarly on his sleeve.

Anguish poured through Lauren's veins like hot acid. It was Ericka Moran, the woman with Nick in the newspaper photograph. And the gorgeous cream dress she had on was the same one Nick had sent over to Lauren herself in Harbor Springs…

She jerked her gaze away and started to speak to Jim, but the taut set of his jaw as he, too, saw the beautiful blond woman across the room stopped Lauren cold. On his face she saw angry desolation and helpless yearning—the same emotions she'd experienced a moment ago when she'd looked at Nick. Jim, she instantly concluded, was in love with Ericka.

"Here's your drink," he finally said, handing it to Lauren. "It's time to begin our little charade." With a grim smile he took her elbow and started to guide her toward Nick and Ericka.

Lauren drew back. "We surely don't have to rush right over to them, do we? If Nick is the host, it's his responsibility to make certain he greets everyone at his party."

Jim hesitated,
then
nodded. "All right, we'll make them come to us."