Mistletoe Over Manhattan

3

Assoon as they were settled on the plane, she was going to let herself breathe. As soon as they were settled side by side in the generous first-class seats, she began to fear she might never breathe again.

One little hug and the lectures she'd given herself the night before had flown from her mind. All these years she'd done the right thing to hide on the other side of the room when she glimpsed him at professional meetings. At a cocktail party he might have kissed her! The kiss wouldn't have been any more passionate than the hug had been, but her libido didn't seem to care what state his was in. One kiss and she would have poured herself over him like a spilled Cosmopolitan. That first touch of his hand had brought back all the young, yearning feelings in full force-way too full, way too forceful.

His eyes, so darkly blue they were almost black, still advertised the passion in his body and soul-a passion for women, for life, for the law. Those eyes, and the expressive brows above them, were the key to his magnetism. Without those eyes he'd be a mere mortal-a tall, magnificently built mortal whose hair commanded you to touch it. If possible, while sitting on his lap. Straddling him. A heavy ache settled between her thighs. Not possible. Never would be possible, because…

"Something to drink before takeoff, sir?" asked the flight attendant. Her liquid hazel eyes slid smoothly over the entire and considerable length of Carter.

"Mallory?" Carter turned his gaze on Mallory rather than on the flight attendant with the roaming eyes.

"Hemlock." It came out like a soft moan. Carter and the flight attendant both stared at her. "Hazelnut," she said hastily. "Hazelnut coffee if you have it."

"No hazelnut," said the attendant.

"Plain is fine," Mallory conceded. "Decaffeinated." She couldn't take another jolt. Of anything.

"Orange juice," Carter said after a brief pause. "No, make it tomato."

You can make it with this tomato anytime, the attendant's eyes answered back.

Mallory spied on Carter out of the corner of her eye, waiting to see his flashing smile, his unspoken promise that he found the woman beautiful, and if things worked out, well, maybe. There it was, the start of a smile, followed amazingly by a frown.

That was new, Carter frowning at a flirtatious woman. And it didn't bear thinking about, because it might get her hopes up, and she had no hope of having a personal relationship with Carter. She'd just have to be content with relating to him in the one area in which she felt secure-the Green case.

"Could we use the flight time to talk about the case?" she asked him, knowing she sounded prim and stodgy next to the sexpot in uniform. "I'll boot up my laptop as soon as we're in the air so we can refer to the interrogatories."

"Oh, sure," Carter said, "the sooner we get to work the better."

Truer words had never been spoken, he thought. The plane took off smoothly, but he felt as if he'd been sucked into a tornado funnel. He only hoped the funnel would drop him somewhere safe. He had an odd feeling he wasn't safe with Mallory anymore.

He sneaked a sidelong glance at her. It wasn't her clothes. Her pantsuit looked like a good one, but it was definitely a working suit, prim and proper. Wasn't her makeup, either, even though at Sensuous, he suspected, makeup samples were among the perks of the job. Not that he knew much about makeup, but it looked as if all she'd done was darken her brows and lashes a little, put a smudge of powder on her nose and the shiny pink lipstick on her mouth and let it go at that.

They were long. Her eyelashes. He'd never noticed before. She hadn't darkened them in law school, or he hadn't been looking at anything but her grade point average. She'd gotten him through Constitutional Law, that was for sure. But now he couldn't imagine how she'd done it without his noticing her eyelashes.

"Do you think that's an approach we could use? I know it's a little unorthodox, but it might work in this particular case."

What the hell had she been saying while he was admiring her eyelashes? "Ah… um… I'll have to think it over," Carter said, tumbling out of the tornado cloud into extremely dangerous territory.

Directly onto solid ice, in fact. The ice of her blue eyes as she glared at him. "You weren't listening."

"Mallory, Mallory." He assumed the hurt, bassett hound look that had always worked when he was supposed to be romancing a woman and was instead thinking about a case. Except this time it was the other way around. "When have I ever not listened to you?"

"Just now," Mallory said, looking at him as if he were a bit of dog poop on her sturdy, sensible-looking black pump.

He guessed she'd never forget that without her help, he would have failed that Con Law exam and probably flunked out of law school. The night he studied with her had started him off on the road to respectability, but she would never be able to respect his intellect. That's why she'd never come on to him. Mallory would have to respect a man in order to feel an attraction to him.

Well, he'd just have to do something to change her image of him. He also knew it would take time to win her over. For now, he would do the only thing that seemed appropriate.

He smiled at her.

One minute she'd been flying on a horizontal line high above the clouds, and the next minute, transported by his smile, she was rocketing toward outer space. That smile said "woman," not "lawyer." The oddest little sensation started up in the region of her abdomen-well, lower than that-and buzzed out in all directions. Her body felt hot, damp and twitchy, while her mouth went dry.

It had also fallen open. She snapped it shut, then opened it again. "What I was suggesting was a touch of irony in the proceedings," she said from her position high above the clouds. Her voice sounded thin and high to her own ears, probably due to the lack of oxygen. "As in, 'What's so bad about pea-green hair and nails? Teenagers are paying big bucks to have green hair.'"

That smile of his widened. While it was a little less suggestive now that it was wider, it only increased its effect on her. The newspaper report flashed through her head:

Lawyer Assaults Colleague On Cross-Continental Flight

"I don't know what came over me," said Mallory Trent in her confession to the airline security squad. "I must have experienced a moment of insanity to have done something so out-of-character as to rip off my stockings and panties and fling myself on top of the plaintiff."

"You must have apprehended the wrong person," stated her immediate superior, William Decker, who heads up the legal staff of Sensuous. "It's unthinkable that Ms. Trent would behave in such a provocative way. She's not a woman, she's a-"

"That'd be an original line of defense," Carter was saying. His voice seemed to have deepened and softened. It sounded like the purr of a Rolls-Royce engine. "I'd say, 'Green hair takes thirty years off your age, madam.'"

"Then you flash her that drop-dead smile and we win the case."

She was distressed to see his smile fade, his lips tighten. For a minute she'd thought she'd stirred up a man-woman reaction in him at last, but then somehow she'd turned it off as fast as you could unplug an electric mixer. What on earth had she said?

There it was, his first clue that he'd been assigned to this case for his people skills, not his professional ones. No, damn it, I'm not doing it that way. I present an irrefutable argument and we win the case. Better yet, I crush the plaintiffs' testimony to dust and they beg for a settlement instead of a trial.

Carter couldn't imagine why he was letting her get to him like this. He'd graduated fourth in their class. Rendell and Renfro was a prestigious firm. He'd already made partner, the youngest partner they'd made in years. He didn't need a-what had she called it? A drop-dead smile?-to do a good job representing. Sensuous. Why couldn't she admit it?

She was tapping away on her laptop, so he let his gaze fix on her face. She was undeniably beautiful. Undeniably smart. But that didn't make him inferior. Two people could be smart at the same time.

Gazing at her, Carter made a vow. He could have sex with a host of women. What he wanted from this woman was her respect, and he'd get it while they worked on this case together, whatever the cost.

"If you'll handle the cab fare and the porter, I'll check us in," Carter said when they pulled up in front of the St.RegisHotel. The flight had seemed endless. The sooner he and Mallory were in separate rooms, the better. Leaving her whipping out bills and demanding receipts, he strode into the magnificent hotel lobby and approached the reception desk.

"Compton and Trent," he said to the navy-suited woman who greeted him.

"Yes, Mr. Compton," she said after she'd punched her computer keyboard enough times to have turned out a short story for her efforts. "We have a very nice suite for you." She eyed him as all women did-speculatively.

Carter responded with a credit card. "And for Ms. Trent?"

The woman's fingers slowed. Her confidence seemed to ebb. "You and she are sharing the suite," she said at last. "The person who made the reservation said-"

Too late, Carter remembered what he'd told Brenda. "It's just Mallory," he'd said. "Do whatever sounds most convenient."

Deeply regretting that statement, he leaned across the desk. "I've changed my mind," he hissed, glancing behind him to see Mallory approaching. "Give her the suite and find another room for me."

"Aw. Did you two break up on the plane?" The clerk brightened.

His lips tightened. "No. We're professional colleagues. I just think we'd rather have some privacy after working together all day." Besides, Mallory suddenly struck him as way too cute with her forehead wrinkled up the way it was right now.

A lot more clicking of the keyboard followed. "I'm sorry, Mr. Compton," the woman finally said, "but we're fully booked this week. It's the convention, you know. Hundreds of delegates in town."

"What convention?" Carter barked. He'd steal a room from a drunk conventioneer who'd be too sloshed to notice.

"National Rifle Association," she said, looking up from the keyboard.

"Oh."

Mallory appeared beside him, looking less like a harried traveler with a lot on her mind but just as cute. "Do I need to sign for my room?" she said.

"My secretary booked us a suite," Carter said, deciding to brazen it out. "Separate rooms and baths with a sitting room we can use as an office. Sound okay to you?"

She blanched, and he knew it wasn't okay. He stiffened his spine and waited to be blasted straight through the plate-glass windows.

It's not okay at all. But not for the reasons he was probably imagining. She'd thought the worst was over, that in a short time she'd be ensconced in her own room with her laptop up and running and no earthly need to torture herself with the sight of Carter until tomorrow. She'd skip lunch, spend the afternoon working, take a long, cool shower, order dinner from room service, snuggle up in her weightless travel robe that folded into its own pocket and spend the evening in splendid solitude. By morning, she'd have herself, pulled together.

What if he suggested they have dinner?

What if he smiled at her when he suggested it?

Her knees almost buckled.

"You all right?" Carter said.

"Just fine," she lied. All she needed was time alone to gird her loins for the next day.

She wished the word loins hadn't come to mind. Hers were aching, and girding wasn't what they were aching for. She'd probably stay awake all night wondering if he snored. She wouldn't mind if he snored. She'd love to sleep wrapped in his arms with a soft snore vibrating against her hair. Or her throat. Or whatever his head was resting on at the moment. But not on her travel-garb-catalog wash-and-wear gown. On something silk. On naked skin.

Her head spun. She was going crazy.

She couldn't go crazy. Trents coped; they did not go crazy. What in the world was wrong with her?

She counted to ten really, really fast. "I'm fine and the room arrangement is fine," she said smoothly. "It will be convenient for working late on the case."

"It'll be just like being back in law school, studying together all night," Carter said.

With a sinking feeling, she realized how desperately she didn't want it to be anything like those nights of all work and no play.

"Here are your keys," said the clerk. "The porter will be up with your bags in a minute."

"Honeymooners?" the porter asked, settling Carter's bag on a luggage rack in one of the bedrooms of a suite that was probably larger than most New York apartments. He winked at Carter.

"Professional colleagues," Carter growled, flexing his biceps. He leaned toward the man. "Legal counsel to the National Rifle Association," he improvised.

"Oh, sorry," the porter said hurriedly. "Um, I'll show you around the place. Now here you have your thermostat…"

At that moment Mallory stepped out of her room to put her laptop down on a desk in the living area. She'd shed her jacket and was wearing a sleeveless black top tucked into her black trousers. The trousers were loose and pleated, but they fit her just great, Carter thought unexpectedly. And she had really pretty arms. Touchable arms. Arms to slide your hands up and down.

Carter noticed that the porter was looking at Mallory, too, and his spiel had trailed off. He whipped his gaze away from Mallory and onto the man again.

"And," the porter squeaked, "here you have your kitchen."

His voice warbled on. Carter actually looked at the place. He'd expected a living room in the middle and a bedroom on each side, a standard suite. Instead, there were hallways, arches and hidden entrances.

The porter, who had been in the small kitchen nervously flicking switches off and on, reappeared in the living room babbling, "…laundry service and shoe-shine service. Just put your shoes outside the door at night and they'll be there in the morning, all shined up. Fitness center's in the basement. Business center's on the second floor…"

The suite was decorated in flowered stuff and velvet and Oriental rugs and crystal chandeliers. It was a home away from home-not as big as his home, but a hell of a lot neater without his stuff scattered all over it.

He was going to be shut up in here for a whole lot of nights with a woman he'd just discovered was a lot prettier and a lot sexier than he'd remembered. The stab of heat that inflamed his groin startled him. Respect was what he wanted from Mallory, and he sure wasn't going to get it if he tried to jump her bones.

"…room service twenty-four hours a day," the porter finished up. "Never have to leave the place if you don't want to."

At Carter's sharp look, he said, "But of course you'll want to, and the St. Regis offers the finest dining in New York. There's the five-star restaurant on the…"

Carter whipped out a bill and thrust it toward him.

"Oh, no need, sir," the man said, wiping sweat off his forehead. "It was my pleasure. May I get you some ice? Extra towels?"

Carter tucked the bill in the porter's breast pocket. "Leaving would be a good idea," he said.

With numerous muttered "yessirs" the man backed out of the room.

"What did you do to that poor man?" Mallory said, sticking her head out the door of her room.

"I threatened to shoot him with an unregistered gun," Carter said.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just kidding." He dusted his hands together. "Want some lunch?"

"No, thank you. I filled up on the plane." She looked thoughtful. "It wasn't good, but it was enough."

"Yeah…" He was feeling thoughtful, too. "You won't mind having dinner alone, will you? I made some dates, women I've known for a while, thought they'd be hurt if I didn't give them a call. Athena tonight and Brie tomorrow night for starters."

"And Calpurnia Thursday night? What's your plan, to start with A and work through the alphabet?" She made herself smile as if she were teasing.

His face reddened. "Um, yes."

"Maybe we'll settle before you get to Zelda." She might have known. Carter would spend his days working hard, but at night he'd be messing around with women named Athena and Brie. Had she actually been hoping he'd ask her to have dinner with him? Otherwise, where did this stab of disappointment come from? "Of course I don't mind," she lied. "This arrangement mustn't make either of us feel we have to spend any time together socially."

"I didn't mean… I mean… I didn't…"

"In fact, I have plans tonight, too," she said. While you cavort with Athena, I'll have weird food with my weird brother. The last time she saw Macon, he'd been into Tibetan cuisine. He'd read about it on the Internet.

"You're going out?"

"Yes. And I'll be going out other nights, too. So don't think I'm going to cramp your style. We're here to work together," she summed up.

It seemed to stop him cold, which was fine with her, because she'd gone cold all over with a sudden sense of purpose that was building up inside her and had nothing whatever to do with the Green case.

She spun on one heel and went back into her room. Dialing Macon's number netted her the same advice she'd gotten from his message the night before-send him an e-mail. Muttering under her breath, she opened her door, and as Carter was apparently in his room unpacking, she retrieved her laptop from the desk, plugged it into the phone line in her room and opened her e-mail.

Sure enough, there was a message from Macon: "dear malloryi'm not in new york right now i'm in Pennsylvania sorry we'll get together another time," it said.

No caps, no punctuation and he didn't sign it. He didn't feel a need to sign an e-mail when his entire name was in his address.

So Macon wouldn't be around to provide her with a reason for going out at night, or a means to compete with Carter for the "Most Active Nightlife" award. She stabbed at the reply key. "Dearest and only brother Macon: Where in Pennsylvania? What are you doing in Pennsylvania? Has it ever occurred to you that the country might use up its entire energy supply and without electricity you would simply vanish from our lives? Our cherished son and brother, lost in cyberspace. We would miss your e-mails, Macon, we truly would. Much love, your sister Mallory."

It would make him crazy-if he even saw the irony. She was in the middle of a deep sigh when Carter's voice boomed out of nowhere. "Mallory!" he shouted through her closed door.

"What!"

"I forgot to pack any socks."

She stared at the door for a minute. "I don't knit."

She heard a sound not unlike the snort of a bull as he paws the soil of the ring. Tough. If he'd read her mother's books he wouldn't have forgotten socks. She'd lend him her autographed copy.

"This is your excuse to do the loafers-no-socks thing. Of course-" she looked out the window at the bleak, gray day, at the smattering of snowflakes whitening the air, then opened the door so they wouldn't have to keep yelling at each other "-you might get frostbite and your toes would turn black and fall off. But that would cut down on your shoe size, although walking without toes might feel really odd-"

"I'm going up to Bloomingdale's to buy socks." His mouth already looked frostbitten. "I was just wondering if you'd forgotten anything and wanted to go with me."

It was her turn to be stopped cold, but she wasn't cold, she was a little bit too warm all of a sudden. "Oh. Thanks. I-" Of course I haven't forgotten anything. I never forget anything. When you've made a proper list… "Sure," she said. "I'll come along. I might find a Christmas present or two in the men's department." A present a day keeps the panic away.

No longer simply warm, she was burning up. Actually panting. Carter had asked her out.

He asked you to go to Bloomingdale's. Chill.

For the first time, it occurred to her that she was no less socially impaired than her brother was. Must have been some influence from their childhood. On the other hand, they had a handle on organization and efficiency few people could claim to have. Except that she was beginning to wonder if it was anything to boast about.

Fifteen minutes later Carter was randomly collecting socks from the sizeable collection in Bloomingdale's Men's First Floor Shop. Calf-length wool, patterned, whatever seemed to strike his fancy. Not a thought to matching socks which could be paired up later as they began to wear out. Mallory kept an eye on him while she chose between a black cashmere turtleneck sweater and a beige V-necked for Macon.

When she glanced back at Carter, he had built a wobbly tower of socks near the cash register. She couldn't stand it anymore. To give herself a legitimate reason to go to the cash register herself, she grabbed a sweater without looking at it and scurried over to plead her case.

"Carter?"

"Hmm? Seven, eight, nine…"

"Will that be all, miss?" A nattily dressed young clerk materialized and took the sweater from her grasp.

"Yes. Thanks," she said absently, and slid her single credit card out of its special slot in her handbag.

"Carter," she said again, "if I may make a suggestion, you really only need one more pair." As he wrestled for control of his sock pile, she imagined him saying, "Gosh, I never thought of that," and his smile would warm as he saw her in a whole new light-a womanly caretaker.

Socks clenched in his fist, he paused, turned, gazed at her. His smile didn't warm, though, and the salesman who was helping him looked positively venomous when he looked at her, "As I see it, I need a dozen."

"No, you don't, not if you wash out a pair every night."

His gaze intensified and his words slowed. "Why would I want to do that?"

"Because it's-" She floundered. "It's more efficient. You won't have to take all those socks back in your suitcase. You won't have to store all those extra socks at home. And if you'd buy matching socks, you could make up new pairs when one sock gets a hole in it."

"But I'd have to wash socks every night." He seemed closer to her than he had been a second ago, and the words were puffs of breath against her cheek.

She had to force herself to maintain eye contact. "Yes, you would."

"If I buy a dozen, when I get down to four pairs I'll send out to the hotel laundry."

His voice vibrated down her spine as he moved another half step closer. It wasn't the direction she'd intended the conversation to take, but she didn't want it to end. "Compare the cost," she said after a deep, hard swallow, "of a dozen pairs of socks plus laundry fees against one pair you have to wash out." She felt like a sock in the wash herself, agitating in the dark blue of his eyes.

"I change when I go out at night. That means I'd have to wash two pairs every night."

"Well, yes."

"What if they don't get dry by morning?"

Now his face loomed directly over hers. A compelling face, a face she was afraid she would begin to see in her dreams, a face she'd like to simply reach up and kiss. Even as she felt her lips swell in anticipation, she heard herself say, "They will if you wring them out properly and pat most of the moisture out of them by wrapping them in a towel, but if you're that worried about it, maybe you need three pairs."

He stared at her for a long, long moment, his eyes melting her, his mouth an easily bridgeable inch from hers-then turned away. "Ring 'em up," he said to the salesman.

The kiss-op had ended and might never come back again. Mallory's spine felt like a single strand of angel-hair pasta. Carter's salesman gave Mallory a triumphant sneer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her own salesman placing a burnt-orange sweater with blue diagonal stripes into a gift box. The sight of it stunned her. How had she managed to pick up that sweater? It looked like a University of Illinois pep squad uniform. Macon had been an undergraduate there, but he'd practically lived in the computer lab. He probably didn't know what a pep squad was. Had he even been aware there was a football team? He'd think she'd lost her mind.

Which was too true. Not only that, she'd blown it again with Carter. She didn't have a clue how to make him see her as a woman.

While she signed the sales slip for Macon's Amazing Christmas Surprise, Carter strolled off with his Big Brown Bag of socks. She wondered why his mother hadn't taught him a few basic things about packing for trips. Maybe he had a mother who knew other things, like which aria belonged to which opera. Still, sometime before Christmas she'd definitely slip him her copy of her mother's book.

Somehow she couldn't imagine Carter reading her mother's book. She couldn't imagine Carter going out with a woman who read her mother's books. This… this Athena person probably read-labels.

She could feel her mood darkening as rapidly as the afternoon sky. When she caught up with Carter at a display of hideously expensive shirts, his liveliness depressed her.

"My God, can you believe what people pay for stuff?" His gaze returned briefly to a last look at a navy-and-white-striped shirt with white collar and cuffs. "I did, too, once. I was twenty-five before I found out you could order a shirt from Lands' End for forty bucks that looks exactly like this one." He glanced at her. "All through here?"

"Yes," Mallory said, wondering if he knew the stripes in the shirt matched his eyes. He'd look great in it.

"What about a little Christmas cheer before we leave?"

"A drink?" At this hour?

"No, I meant go up to the Christmas floor. I like Christmas. You like Christmas?"

"Yes, of course." She felt embarrassed. Just because Carter forgot socks didn't mean he'd drink before five o'clock Central Standard Time.

She would have taken the elevator. He whisked her onto the escalator. "This will take longer," she couldn't help saying.

"We'll see more."

He was clearly not trainable. Just gorgeous, warm, utterly desirable…

"You'd look good in that dress."

She nearly decapitated herself leaning out over the escalator railing to see it. It was champagne-colored, clingy-and out of sight. "Umm," she said, and they continued upward, past sports clothes and more sports clothes, towels and sheets, china and silver, at last reaching a floor that smelled of bayberry and spice and glittered with heavily decorated trees.

They strolled through this fantasy land, Carter apparently enjoying himself, while Mallory tried not to think of the time they were wasting. Carter bought an ornament. Mallory rolled her eyes heavenward when she saw the price. While she was looking up, she noticed the balls of mistletoe hanging in each doorway. That's what she'd like to buy. She'd hang it in the doorway to her bedroom. Next time he yelled, "Mallory!" because he'd forgotten something, she'd open the door, stand directly under it and-

"Santa Claus is in the next room. Come on."

She had a crick in her neck. Rubbing it out, she followed him dumbly to the store Santa Claus who spied them and said, "Ho-ho-ho," in a thin, lonely sounding voice. The photographer sat in the store-fixture sleigh, hunched over an F-Stop magazine. It was a large room filled with shoppers, adults who seemed not to notice Santa as they grabbed up wrapping papers and ribbons, ornaments by the dozen.

"He's not getting much business," Carter whispered.

"I guess the kids are still in school. Or day care." Mallory glanced at her watch. "They have to wait until their parents come home from work to visit Santa." She was still obsessing on mistletoe.

Carter nodded, but said, "I feel sorry for him." He hesitated, then said, "Sit on his lap. Tell him what you want for Christmas." His hand nudged her elbow along.

"No, no," Mallory protested. "Don't be silly. Of course I'm not going to-"

"I dare you." A gleam in his dark blue eyes issued a challenge, but something else lay behind it-the certainty she'd refuse.

Could she rise to the challenge? Humiliate herself by doing something completely out of character?

It would certainly get Carter's attention, wouldn't it, and wasn't that what she wanted?

Without another thought, she made a beeline for Santa and perched herself on his lap. Behind her, she heard the most satisfying sound in the world, a sharp gasp of surprise from Carter. Once she was on Santa's red velour knees and could spin around to see a small and amused audience gathering, she saw he looked uneasy.

Good. Let him feel uneasy for once in his disgustingly self-confident life.

"Ho, ho, ho," Santa Claus said. "Well, have you been a good little girl this year?"

"Entirely too good," Mallory said, "which may be my problem…" She stopped short, realizing this wasn't a therapy session.

"Ho, ho, ho," Santa said, shifting a little in his tapestry wing chair. "So what does this very good little girl want for Christmas?"

Mallory let her gaze wander back to Carter. The group gathered around him was larger now, and he seemed edgy. Edgy but sexier than ever with his arms crossed over his broad chest and a slight frown drawing his dark eyebrows down in the middle and up at the ends.

She suddenly knew what she wanted. She knew with a confidence every bit as disgusting as Carter's. By Christmas, she would make him see her as a woman, a feminine, desirable, irresistible woman, or die trying.

"I want him," she whispered in Santa's ear. "I want Carter for Christmas."