Double Standards Read online

  v1.0

  July 2006

  Double Standards

  Judith McNaught

  "Kiss Me, Lauren," Demanded Nick…

  "No," she whispered shakily… "Nick, please."

  "Please what?" he murmured against her throat. "Please put us both out of this misery?"

  "No!"

  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…"

  "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?" Lauren's voice rose 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.

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc. 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  Copyright © 1984 by Judith McNaught

  Published by arrangement with the author. Originally published by Harlequin Enterprises Limited.

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address Pocket Books, 1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10020

  ISBN: 0-671-68129-X

  First Pocket Books printing January 1986

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4

  POCKET and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.

  Printed in the U.S.A.

  A great love and true friends are two of life's most precious gifts—and I have been twice blessed for I have had both.

  This book is dedicated to Kathy and Stan Zak, whose friendship I treasure.

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  Philip Whitworth glanced up, his attention drawn by the sound of swift footsteps sinking into the luxurious Oriental carpet that stretched across his presidential office. Lounging back in his maroon leather swivel chair he studied the vice-president who was striding toward him. "Well?" he said impatiently. "Have they announced who the low bidder is?"

  The vice-president leaned his clenched fists on the polished surface of Philip's mahogany desk. "Sinclair was the low bidder," he spat out. "National Motors is giving him the contract to provide all the radios for the cars they manufacture, because Nick Sinclair beat our price by a lousy thirty thousand dollars." He drew in a furious breath and expelled it in a hiss. "That bastard won a fifty-million-dollar contract away from us by cutting our price a fraction of one percent!"

  Only the slight hardening of Philip Whitworth's aristocratic jawline betrayed the anger rolling inside him as he said, "That's the fourth time in a year that he's won a major contract away from us. Quite a coincidence, isn't it?"

  "Coincidence!" the vice-president repeated. "It's no damn coincidence and you know it, Philip! Someone in my division is on Nick Sinclair's payroll. Some bastard must be spying on us, discovering the amount that goes into our sealed bid, then feeding the information to Sinclair so that he can undercut us by a few dollars. Only six men who work for me knew the amount we were going to bid on this job; one of those six men is our spy."

  Philip leaned farther into his chair until his silvered hair touched the high leather back. "You've had security investigations made on all six of those men, and all we learned was that three of them are cheating on their wives."

  "Then the investigations weren't thorough enough!" Straightening, the vice-president raked his hand through his hair, then let his arm drop. "Look Philip, I realize Sinclair is your stepson, but you're going to have to do something to stop him. He's out to destroy you."

  Philip Whitworth's eyes turned icy. "I have never acknowledged him as my 'stepson,' nor does my wife acknowledge him as her son. Now, precisely what do you propose I do to stop him?"

  "Put a spy of your own in his company, find out who his contact here is. I don't care what you do, but for God's sake, do something!"

  Philip's reply was cut off by the harsh buzzing of the intercom on his desk, and he jabbed his finger at the button. "Yes, what is it, Helen?"

  "I'm sorry to interrupt you, sir," his secretary said, "but there's a Miss Lauren Danner here. She says she has an appointment with you to discuss employment."

  "She does," he sighed irritably. "I agreed to interview her for a position with us. Tell her I'll see her in a few minutes." He flicked the button off and returned his attention to the vice-president, who, though preoccupied, was regarding him with curiosity.

  "Since when are you conducting personnel interviews, Philip?"

  "It's a courtesy interview," Philip explained with an impatient sigh. "Her father is a shirttail relative of mine, a fifth or sixth cousin, as I recall. Danner is one of those relatives my mother unearthed years ago when she was researching her book on our family tree. Every time she located a new batch of possible relatives, she invited them up here to our house for a 'nice little weekend visit' so that she could delve into their ancestry, discover if they were actually related and decide if they were worthy of mention in her book.

  "Danner was a professor at a Chicago university. He couldn't come, so he sent his wife—a concert pianist—and his daughter in his place. Mrs. Danner was killed in an automobile accident a few years later, and I never heard from him after that, until last week when he called and asked me to interview his daughter, Lauren, for a job. He said there's nothing suitable for her in Fenster, Missouri, where he's living now."

  "Rather presumptuous of him to call you, wasn't it?"

  Philip's expression filled with bored resignation. "I'll give the girl a few minutes of my time and then send her packing. We don't have a position for anyone with a college degree in music. Even if we did, I wouldn't hire Lauren Danner. I've never met a more irritating, outrageous, ill-mannered, homely child in my life. She was about nine years old, chubby, with freckles and a mop of reddish hair that looked as if it was never properly combed. She wore hideous horn-rimmed eyeglasses, and so help me God, that child looked down her nose at us…"

  Philip Whitworth's secretary glanced at the young woman, wearing a crisp navy blue suit and white ascot-style blouse, who was seated across from her. The woman's honey-blond hair was caught up in an elegant chignon, with soft tendrils at her ears framing a face of flawless, vivid beauty. Her cheekbones were slightly high, her nose small, her chin delicately rounded, but her eyes were her most arresting feature. Beneath the arch of her brows, long curly lashes fringed eyes that were a startling, luminous turquoise blue.

  "Mr. Whitworth will see you in a few minutes," the secretary said politely, careful not to stare.

  Lauren Danner looked up from the magazine she was pretending to read and smiled. "Thank you," she said, then she gazed blindly down again, trying to control her nervous dread of confronting Philip Whitworth face to face.

  Fourteen years had not dulled the painful memory of her two days at his magnificent Grosse Pointe mansion, where the entire Whitworth family, and even the