"Whitworth's mistress!" Rudy burst out eagerly, his voice ringing with pompous self-importance. "I checked her out personally. The dame is living like a queen in a fancy Bloomfield Hills condo that Whitworth's paying for. She dresses like a model, and…"
Dread exploded in Nick's chest, and his whole body tensed against the agonizing certainty already pounding in his brain. His mind formed the question, but before he could force the words out, he had to brace his hands on the bar for support. With his back still to them, he whispered, "Who is she?"
"Lauren Danner," the attorney said, cutting off a further descriptive outpouring from the eager security man. "Nick, I know she's been working for you personally and that she's the girl who practically fell at our feet that night. The publicity involved in her arrest will definitely help discourage anyone else who might consider spying on us, but I waited to talk to you before we pressed charges against her. Shall I—"
Nick's voice was strangled with fury and pain. "Go back to your office," he ordered, "and wait there. I'll call you." Without turning, he jerked his head in Rudy's direction. "Get him out of my sight, and keep him out—permanently!"
"Nick—" Jim spoke to Nick's back.
"Get out!" Nick's voice lashed like a whip crack,
then
became dangerously controlled. "Mary, call Lauren and have her come up here in ten minutes. Then you go home. It's nearly five."
In the tomblike silence that followed their departure, Nick straightened from the bar and tossed down the champagne he had poured to celebrate his marriage to an angel.
A princess with laughing blue eyes who had walked into his life and turned it upside down.
Lauren was spying on him, betraying him to Whitworth. Lauren was Whitworth's mistress.
His heart shouted a denial, but his mind knew it was true. It explained the way she lived, the clothes she wore.
He recalled introducing her to Whitworth on Saturday night, and as he remembered the way she'd pretended not to know him, he felt as if he was shattering into a million pieces. Fury and anguish poured through his veins like acid. He wanted to crush her in his arms and make her say it wasn't true; he wanted to pour his love into her until there was no room for anyone in her heart or her body but him.
He wanted to strangle her for her treachery, to murder her with his own hands.
He wanted to die.
Lauren glanced at the three security guards who were standing in Nick's private reception area as she hurried toward his office. They watched her, their expressions strangely alert, wary. She smiled slightly as she passed them, but only one of them responded—he nodded, a curt unfriendly inclination of his head.
At Nick's office door she paused to smooth her hair. Her hand trembled with a mixture of delight at seeing him again and fear over how he was going to react when she told him of her involvement with Philip. She had intended to tell him tonight, after he'd had time to relax, but now that Philip was blackmailing her she had to tell him right away. "Welcome back," she said, walking into his suite.
Nick was standing at the window with his back to her, one hand braced high against the frame, staring out across the city. The drapes were drawn over the remainder of the glass wall, and none of the lights had been turned on to dispel the gloom of a prematurely dark and rainy night.
"Close the door," he said softly. His voice sounded strange, but his back was toward her as she walked to him and she couldn't see his face.
"Did you miss me, Lauren?" he asked, still without turning.
Lauren smiled at the question he always asked her when he had been away from her. "Yes," she admitted, boldly sliding her arms around his waist from behind. His body seemed to tense at her touch, and when she rubbed her cheek against his broad, muscular back, it felt as hard as iron.
"How much did you miss me?" he whispered silkily.
"Turn around and I'll show you," she teased.
His hand came down from the window, and he turned. Without looking at her he walked over to the sofas and sat down. "Come over here," he invited smoothly.
Lauren obediently went over to the sofa and stood looking down into his handsome, shadowed face, trying to read his strange mood. His expression was impassive, almost aloof, but when she started to sit beside him, he caught her wrist and pulled her onto his lap.
"Show me how much you want me," he urged.
There was an odd note in his voice that sent unexplainable alarm dancing down Lauren's spine, but it was promptly squelched by the commanding insistence of his mouth on hers. He kissed her thoroughly, expertly, and Lauren helplessly surrendered to the torrid demands of his lips. He had missed her. His fingers were already unfastening her silk blouse, pulling her bra down to expose her breasts as he lowered her onto the sofa and covered her half-naked body with his. His mouth skillfully aroused her swelling breasts and hardened nipples, while his hand insinuated
itself
beneath her skirt and pulled down the lace band of her underpants. "Do you want me now?"
"Yes," Lauren gasped, writhing beneath him.
His free hand shoved into the hair at her scalp and tightened. "Then open your eyes, honey," he ordered softly. "I want to be sure you know it's me who's on top of you and not Whitworth."
"Nick
… !"
Lauren's frantic scream was strangled as Nick lunged to his feet, twisted his hand in her hair and cruelly jerked her up with him.
"Listen to me. Please!" Lauren cried out, terrified by the black rage, the virulent hatred blazing in his eyes. "I can explain everything, I—" A low scream tore from her throat as he tightened his grip in her hair, wrenching her head around and down.
"Explain that," he ordered in a terrifying whisper.
Lauren's gaze froze in terror on the papers scattered across the coffee table: copies of the four bids she had given Philip; enlarged black-and-white photographs showing her leaning into his car; the license plate on the back of his Cadillac, and the State of
"Lauren," he interrupted in a menacingly soft voice. "Will you still love me five years from now when you and your lover get out of prison?"
"Oh Nick, please listen to me," she implored brokenly. "Philip isn't my lover, he's a relative. He sent me to Sinco to apply for a job, but I swear I've never told him anything." The rage drained from Nick's face, replaced by a terrible contempt that alarmed Lauren so much her words tumbled out in a disjointed frenzy. "Until… until he saw us at the dance, he let me alone, but now he's trying to blackmail me. He threatened to tell you
lies
if I didn't—"
"
Your
relative," Nick repeated with freezing sarcasm. "Your relative is trying to blackmail you."
"Yes!" Lauren feverishly tried to explain. "Philip thought you were paying someone to spy on him, so he sent me here to find out who, and—"
"Whitworth is the only one paying a spy," Nick jeered scathingly. "And the only spy is you!" He released her and tried to push her away, but Lauren clung to him.
"Please listen to me," she begged wildly. "Don't do this to us!"
Nick jerked her arms loose, and she crumpled to the floor, her shoulders racked with deep choking sobs. "I love you so much," she wept hysterically. "Why won't you listen to me? Why? I'm
begging
you to just listen to me."
"Get up!" he snapped. "And button your blouse." He had already started toward the door. Her chest heaving with convulsive, silent sobs, Lauren straightened her clothing, braced a hand on the coffee table and slowly pushed herself to her feet.
Nick wrenched the door open and the security guards stepped forward. "Get her out of here," he ordered icily.
Lauren stared in paralyzed terror at the men coming purposefully toward her. They were taking her to jail. Her gaze flew to Nick, silently imploring him for the last time to listen, to believe, to stop this.
With his hands in his pockets, he returned her gaze without flinching, his chiseled features a mask of stone, his eyes like chips of gray ice. Only the muscle jerking in his tightly clenched jaw betrayed the fact that he was feeling any emotion at all.
The three armed guards surrounded her, and one of them took her by the elbow. Lauren yanked free, her blue eyes deep pools of pain. "Don't touch me." Without looking back, she walked with them out of his office and across the silent, deserted reception area.
When the door closed behind her, Nick went over to the sofa. Sitting down with his forearms resting on his knees, he stared at the enlarged black-and-white photo of Lauren handing Whitworth the stolen copies of the bids.
She was very photogenic, he thought with a stab of bittersweet pain. The day had been windy, and she had not bothered with a coat. The photograph had captured her delicate features in profile with the wind whipping her hair into glorious abandon.
It was a picture of Lauren betraying him.
A muscle moved convulsively in Nick's throat as he swallowed over the constriction there. The photograph should have been taken in color, he decided. Mere black and white couldn't capture her glowing skin, the gold highlights in her beautiful hair or the sparkle of her vivid turquoise eyes. He covered his face with his hands.
The silent guards escorted Lauren across the marble lobby, which was crowded with late-departing employees. In the press of so many people, Lauren was spared the humiliation of curious onlookers. Everyone else was rushing home, absorbed with individual thoughts. Not that she particularly cared who witnessed her shame; at the moment, she cared about nothing.
It was dark outside and raining, but Lauren hardly felt the icy sting of the rain pelting against her thin silk blouse. She looked disinterestedly for the police car that she expected to see waiting at the curb, but there was none. The guard on her left and the one behind her stepped back. The guard on her right also turned to leave,
then
he hesitated and said with curt compassion, "Do you have a coat, miss?"
Lauren looked at him with pain-dazed eyes. "Yes," she said inanely. She did have a coat; it was with her purse in Jim's office.
The guard glanced uncertainly at the curb, as if he expected someone to pull over and offer her a ride. "I'll get it for you," he said, and walked back into the building with his companions.
Lauren stood on the sidewalk, rain glazing her hair and pelting her face like a million icy hypodermic needles. Apparently she wasn't going to be taken to jail, after all. She didn't know where to go, or how to get there without money or keys. In a kind of trance she turned and started to walk down
Jim turned sharply, and Lauren's stomach clenched at the bitter, accusing fury in the single scathing glance he passed over her. "I have nothing to say to you," he snapped.
All hope died inside of Lauren and with its death came a blessed numbness. She turned on her heel, shoved her frozen hands into the pockets of her tweed skirt and started walking down the street. Six steps later, Jim's hand grasped her arm, turning her around. "Here," he
said,
his expression just as hostile as before. "Take my coat."
Lauren carefully pulled her arm from his grasp. "Don't touch me," she said calmly. "I don't ever want to be touched."
Alarm flickered in his gaze before he extinguished it. "Take my coat," he repeated tersely, already starting to remove it. "You'll freeze to death."
Lauren found nothing unpleasant about the prospect of freezing to death. Ignoring his outstretched coat, she lifted her gaze to his. "Do you believe what Nick believes?"
"Every single word," he averred.
With her hair plastered to her head and the rain driving into her upturned face, Lauren said with great dignity, "In that case, I don't want your coat." She started to turn,
then
stopped. "But you can give Nick a message for me when he finally discovers the truth." Her teeth chattered as she said, "T-tell him not to ever come near me again.
T-tell him to stay away from me!"
Without thinking about where she was going, Lauren automatically walked the eight blocks to the only people who would take her in without being paid. She went to Tony's restaurant.
With frozen knuckles she rapped on the back entrance. The door opened and Tony was staring at her, his black tuxedo a discordant contrast to the noise and steam of the kitchen behind him. "Laurie?" he said. "Laurie!
Dio mio
! Dominic, Joe," he shouted, "come quick!"
Lauren awoke in a warm comfortable bed and opened her eyes to a charmingly quaint but unfamiliar room. Her head was pounding ferociously as she struggled to her elbows and looked around. She was in the house above the restaurant, and Joe's young wife had put her to bed after a hot bath and a warm meal. She had not died of exposure, she realized. How disappointing—how anticlimactic, she decided morbidly. Her body ached as if she'd been beaten.