Mistletoe Over Manhattan

did she know what Carter would or would not do?

He hadn't enjoyed his date with Athena enough to spend the night with her, and Mallory was simply thrilled. And he'd been curious about her 'date.' That was even more thrilling.

She looked down at herself. Maybe Maybelle was right. It would be pretty hard to believe she'd had a hot, intense encounter with anybody in these clothes. She was more appropriately dressed to give a speech to a kindergarten class. But the red jacket was just too, too-

'Mallory!' A shout came from Carter's room. 'Do you have a-' his door burst open '-copy of Lindon v. Hanson, you know, that other hair-dye case-'

'Right here.' Mallory fumbled for the printout in her briefcase. In his sock feet, with his shirt half open, Carter looked rumpled, sleepy and devastatingly desirable. She pulled out the document and with it, a half dozen sheets of paper that fluttered to the floor.

He swept them up with one large hand. 'I told Brenda to copy it to my laptop, but I guess she didn't. Or she filed it somewhere only she could find it.' He'd lowered his voice to a grumble. 'I don't know why nobody does anything right anymore. They just aim it and see if it flies. Hey, what's this?'

Mallory could see what he was holding and felt deeply embarrassed, her privacy violated. 'Um, that's my, ah, packing list, or wardrobe schedule, I guess you'd call it. Here's your-'

'So that's how you do it, pack in a briefcase. 'Tuesday-black pants, jacket, black shell. Wednesday-black skirt, jacket, white shell, scarf. Thursday, Friday, Monday'-what do you do over the weekend? Go naked?' He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.

She gritted her teeth to hide the shiver that ran through her. 'Not in the wintertime. I wear the black pants with a sweater. Give me that.'

He waved her off. ''Monday-black jacket, black skirt, cream shell.' Hey, the black jacket's sure getting a workout.'

'You only need one black jacket.' She viewed him coldly.

'What if something happens to it?'

'Nothing happens to a black wool jacket you can't fix with a little cool water.'

'Nothing?'

'If it does, you send it out for a rush cleaning.'

He narrowed his eyes. 'What if it's too much of a rush? What if, for example, something happened right now? You honestly think the hotel is going to get a jacket cleaned and back to you by morning?'

'Well, no, but what could happen?' He was fishing in his pants pocket and, for some reason, it made her nervous.

'Oh, maybe something like this.' In one swift gesture he tore a corner off a small plastic packet and aimed the opening in her direction.

Blobs of yellow flew through the air and plopped onto her clothes. She leaped up. 'Carter! This is… this is… mustard!'

He gave her a wicked smile. 'Right. Now what are you going to do?'

'I am going to my room,' she said frostily, and did.

There she viewed the ruin of the jacket she'd planned to wear every single day. There were a few spots on her skirt she could probably handle, or she could wear her black pants again, which smelled only faintly of the coffee she'd spilled on them in Maybelle's office, but even if she got the mustard off the coat, she'd smell like a delicatessen all day tomorrow.

She buried her head in her hands. She'd have to wear the red jacket, after all.

Carter opened his bedroom door warily to find Mallory emerging from her room looking as if she were expecting an ambush. He met her in the center of the room, where they eyed each other like opposing lines in a football game.

Mallory's team was the one in red. He cleared his throat. 'You did have something else to wear.'

'Fortunately.' She brandished the ruined black jacket.

He hadn't gotten a rip-roaring, let's-laugh-it-off, no-harm-done conversation going, that was for sure, but, wow, was she ever a bombshell in red. A surprisingly curvy, sexy red number that fired up the old imagination, and that wasn't all it fired up.

Feeling the need for something to hold over himself, he said, 'Give me that.' He took the jacket, stuffed it in the plastic bag the hotel provided and stuck it outside the door of the suite. 'The laundry will pick it up and have it back tonight. It'll be on my bill,' he added, and by the time he'd done all that practical stuff, he felt more in control. And increasingly foolish as she eyed him silently.

'What were you thinking?' she said at last.

'I don't know. The devil made me do it?'

'Why did you have mustard in your pocket? Did you take Athena out for hamburgers?'

'No, Athena and I had some very pricey raw fish. Then I took myself out for a hamburger.'

'Oh.' She shouldered a gleaming black leather handbag, grabbed the handle of her rolling briefcase and started toward the door. She glanced back at him briefly. 'Thank you for having coffee sent up early.'

'I thought it might help us get going.' He stubbed a toe into the carpeting, and that brilliant bit of conversation didn't net him any response at all.

His role was to follow her to the elevators, which he did, feeling like an embarrassed kid shuffling along in her wake. What had made him do something so childish as to squirt mustard on her? He hadn't been in a food fight since his sophomore year in high school. When a very pretty junior girl told him what a 'sophomoric' thing it was to do, that had ended his food-fighting forever. So this bizarre behavior of his must have something to do with the mood he'd come home in after enduring two hours of Athena's empty blathering to find Mallory all neat and dressed and working. Could she never fail to one-up him? That mood, plus the effect she was having on him, were making him feel like a kid again-and not in a nice way.

But while he stared at her back, thinking these thoughts, he made an important discovery. She had the cutest, roundest little butt any man could hope to find on a woman. He hadn't realized he was a butt man, but now it seemed he was. Suddenly she turned, and he whipped his gaze upward, but not before she caught him staring at her rear end.

She flushed and gave him a grim look. The tips of his ears felt hot and he tried to return her look with a nonchalant one.

Great start on getting her to respect you. All he'd accomplished so far was to make Mallory look a little less respectable in that sexy red jacket. The jacket that showed her butt. Quit it, Compton. They'd landed in the lobby, and he could smell eggs and bacon, hear clanking silverware. He intended to have a huge breakfast.

She'd be sitting down. That would help. If he could keep his eyes off the neckline. It plunged down between her breasts, which the jacket pushed out and clung to. Thank God she was wearing one of those things she called 'shells' underneath it.

Heat was traveling through him in waves, and this was only breakfast. He had to keep his hands off her. If he didn't, her respect for him would decrease to an all-time low. He was tough. He was strong. He could do it. No problem.

'Ms. Angell,' Carter said, and held out his hand. 'Carter Compton.'

'Mallory Trent,' Mallory said, and held out her hand. 'Glad to meet you in person at last after all our phone con…' She trailed off. The problem was that Phoebe Angell was still holding Carter's hand and appeared to be melting right there in front of both of them.

She was as tall as Mallory and there the resemblance ended. Phoebe Angell had raven's-wing hair in a short cut that stuck up in various directions, snapping black eyes, skin like almond custard, gunmetal-gray lipstick and fingernails, and a black leather skirt short enough to get a lawyer disbarred in Illinois. She wore it with a surprisingly proper, perfectly pressed white shirt. Her shoes were red, with trendy pointed toes and four-inch heels. In a word, she was dramatic.

Mallory supposed she could dress this way because she'd gone into practice with her father. The law offices of Angell and Angell had a prestigious midtown location on a high floor. With just the two of them plus a support staff of aides and paralegals, the suite wasn't large, but it was luxurious. Mallory wondered what was driving Phoebe Angell so hard, why she seemed to feel that winning this case would be the turning point in her professional