I just listened to Vikki's version on YouTube.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbTVWKQ3-vA
Apparently it was released on a 1971 album VIKKI CARR'S LOVE STORY. It sounds like an edited version of Diana's version to me.
However, a poster said that her version was recorded two years before Ross. It seems rather unlikely that Vikki and co. would go through the trouble of reconstructing a song so definitively and then not sue when Diana's remake was released, copying theirs. It also seems very unlikely that Ashford and Simpson would give such a remake to a non-Motown artist, while they were under contract to the label.
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