Double Standards Read Online Free PDF Page B

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, t hank 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 t hank 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