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compelling man she'd ever seen. And by deliberately flunking her tests at Sinco, she had ruined her chances of working near him…
    Tomorrow was Friday, and she would spend it looking for an apartment. As soon as she found one, she could leave immediately for Fenster to pack her belongings. Philip had not mentioned when he wanted her to start working for his company, but she could be back here ready to report for work two weeks from Monday.
    The front door was opened by a paunchy uniformed butler whom Lauren instantly recognized as one of the witnesses to her dining-room performance fourteen years before. "Good evening," he began, but Philip Whitworth interrupted him.
    Striding into the vast marble foyer the executive exclaimed, "Lauren, I've been worried to death about you! What's kept you so long?"
    He looked so anxious that Lauren felt terrible for worrying him, and even worse for letting him down by not trying harder to get a job at Sinco. In a few words she explained that things had "not gone very well" with her interview. Hastily she sketched in details of her fall in front of the
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, and asked if she had time to freshen up before dinner.
    Upstairs in the room the butler showed her to, she showered, brushed her hair and changed into a tailored apricot skirt and matching blouse.
    Philip stood up as she approached the arched doorway of the drawing room. "You're wonderfully quick, Lauren," he said, leading her over to his wife, whose glacial personality she recalled so well. "Carol , I know you remember Lauren."
    Despite her personal prejudice, Lauren had to admit that with her slim elegant figure and carefully coiffed blond hair Carol Whitworth was still a beautiful woman.
    "Of course I do," Carol said with a pleasantly correct smile that didn't quite reach her gray eyes. "How are you, Lauren?"
    "Obviously Lauren is very, very well, mother," Carter Whitworth remarked, grinning as he politely got to his feet. His lazy, sweeping glance covered everything from her vivid blue eyes and delicately molded features to her gracefully feminine figure.
    Lauren kept her expression neutral as she was reintroduced to her childhood tormentor. Accepting the glass of sherry Carter had poured for her, she sat down on the sofa, eyeing him warily when he sat beside her instead of returning to his chair. "You've certainly changed," he said with an admiring grin.
    "So have you," Lauren answered cautiously.
    He draped his arm casually across the back of the sofa behind her shoulders. "We didn't get along very well, as I remember," he mused.
    "No, we didn't." Lauren flicked a self-conscious glance toward Carol, who was observing her son's little flirtation, her eyes cool and inscrutable, her expression regally aloof.
    "Why didn't we get along?" Carter persisted.
    "I, er, don't recall."
    "I do." He smiled. "I was insufferably rude and thoroughly rotten to you."
    Lauren stared in amazement at his frank, rueful expression, her prejudice against him beginning to dissolve. "Yes, you were."
    "And you—" he grinned "—behaved like an outrageous brat at dinner."
    Lauren's eyes brightened with an answering smile as she slowly nodded her head. "Yes, I did." A tentative truce was thereby declared. Carter glanced up at the butler hovering in the doorway, then stood up and offered his hand to Lauren. "Dinner is ready. Shall we?"
    They had just finished the last course when the butler appeared in the dining room. "Excuse me, but there is a telephone call for Miss Danner from a man who says he is Mr. Weatherby, with the Sinco Electronics Company."
    Philip Whitworth broke into a beaming smile. "Bring the phone here to the table, Higgins."
    The phone conversation was brief, with Lauren mostly listening. When she hung up, she raised amazed, laughing eyes to Philip.
    "Go ahead," he said, "tell us. Carol and Carter are both aware of what you're trying to do to help me."
    Lauren was a little dismayed to learn that two other people were