Mistletoe Over Manhattan

slipped the red one on again, buttoned it and faced her reflection head-on.

'A-h-h-h,' she squealed. 'I can't do it.'

'You okay?' Carter yelled from the sitting room.

For a man whose voice would carry from the president's Oval Office to the ExecutiveOfficeBuilding, his hearing was amazing. 'Fine,' she called back, hearing her voice tremble a little. 'Banged my elbow, that's all.'

She removed her hands from her eyes. The top button of the jacket landed just below her breasts. The lapels curved down over them, almost covering them, but not quite. If she kept her shoulders hunched together…

But that wasn't the idea, was it. One millimeter at a time, she straightened her shoulders, feeling her breasts swell. This was how she'd go out into that sitting room, showing everything she had and proud of it.

A woman bent on seduction. That was the attitude she needed.

So that's what she was going to do, right after she brushed her teeth, freshened up her lipstick, lint-rolled her skirt, washed her bra and shell, shined up her shoes-

Never veer, never veer, never veer…

That was unmistakably Ellen Trent's voice, weakened, fading but still there. Mallory cursed under her breath. It wasn't as if she planned to give up everything she'd learned from her mother. She liked efficiency, cherished neatness. She was just going to relax the rigidity of it all and see if it made her come off a little softer, a little more feminine.

Hell. She brushed her teeth, put on lipstick and headed back to Carter.

When she stepped into the sitting room, he looked up, and she saw the stunned expression that crossed his face. Quickly he looked back down at the document he'd been reading. 'You freshen up good,' he muttered.

'Thank you.' She perched on the edge of a chair and ever so slowly crossed her legs. 'Would you rather have a drink here or in the bar downstairs?'

'Here. I've already ordered. I said to hurry.'

'Good. I have to be somewhere at seven.'

'Me, too. How long will it take you to get there?'

'I should leave here at a quarter to.'

'Me, too.'

'We're on the same schedule, then.'

'Right. We have about thirty minutes to talk.' He glanced at her again and shifted a little in the overstuffed, chintz-covered chair he was occupying. She leaned forward and gave him an encouraging smile. 'So. What were your impressions of the witnesses today?' he said, and looked straight down the neckline of her jacket.

Get a grip, he growled at himself. Get… a… frigging… grip! And not on her. No gripping her. No touching her. You're a lawyer, man. Act like one. She's your colleague. Treat her like one.

I'm not letting her go out with anybody looking like that. How're you going to stop her?

'Time is on our side,' Mallory said, looking thoughtful and apparently not aware that her breasts were practically exploding out of her clothes. Wow, were they ever great breasts. She didn't have breasts when they were in law school. Couldn't have. He'd have noticed.

Flames stabbed him in the groin as he realized she wasn't wearing a bra, or if she was, it was the smallest, lowest-cut bra on the market. Damn. He could balance this brief on his erection. That would make a good impression.

He shifted his position again in a vain attempt to hide the clear evidence of what was really on his mind and said, 'I agree. The slow pace of the law is playing to our advantage.'

'Nobody got sick, the damage isn't permanent, not really, and the ordeal is almost over for the plaintiffs, at least in terms of their personal appearance.'

'Yeah. Let's see.' For something to do with his hands as well as something else to cover his lap, Carter reached for the printed calendar of events. 'The dye incident happened on March 17. The lot went out on the twenty-fourth… it was on the shelves by the… right… the last bottle was purchased on the… and used a week later… So the person who bought that last bottle has had six months to grow out. If Kevin would cut off half his hair he'd be a blonde again.'

He'd mentioned Kevin on purpose. He wanted to see her reaction. She got a little pink in the cheeks.

'Has Phoebe produced the pictures of her clients' hair yet?' she asked him.

'Nope. They're not due for another ten days.'

'Can we get her to speed it up?'

'Probably not.'

'We can try.'

'You try.'

'I will,' Mallory said. 'What about the other damages they're claiming?'

He answered her with half his brain. He really didn't think she was dating Kevin Knightson. He was as sure as he needed to be that Kevin was more interested in other men than in Mallory. So what was the connection?

'It's a shame we didn't succeed in negotiating with the plaintiffs back in the spring.' She sighed, and Carter held his breath, waiting for her breasts to pop completely free from that sexy little jacket. 'If we had, we might have managed to rehabilitate Tammy Sue. She might be selling cosmetics in a department store now.'

'Your legal department negotiated just fine. Problem was that Phoebe got hold of them. Do we know how she did it?'

'The way I heard it,' Mallory said, 'she and her parents were at their country club in New Jersey talking to friends who knew somebody who knew somebody whose hair had turned green-you know how news spreads. Phoebe grasped the implications of a bit of gossip and zeroed in. She's a vulture,' she concluded just as their drinks arrived.

A vulture and a black widow spider. Phoebe had slipped him her home phone number as they were leaving her offices. Once again, Carter faced the shameful possibility that he'd been given the case for just that reason, to seduce Phoebe into a settlement.

He took a sip of scotch. It went down smoothly, warming his throat. He could do it, seduce Phoebe into a settlement. Justice would be done. Sensuous was willing to make a fifty-million-dollar lump sum restitution to the plaintiffs. Phoebe would get fifty percent of that. Phoebe was asking for a hundred million. If the judge came even close to that, after years of filing appeals and generating their own enormous legal fees, it could bankrupt the company.

Carter looked at Mallory. She was chasing salt around the edge of her glass with the tip of a little pink tongue. Watching her was more warming than scotch. He thought about Phoebe, her spiky hair, her lipstick. Why did women wear gray lipstick? Did they think men were necrophiliacs?

Yes, he supposed he could seduce Phoebe, gray lipstick and all, but he wouldn't enjoy it and he'd hate himself. Nope, this one he was going to handle with his brain, and make sure Mallory noticed.

Mallory was sipping her drink and periodically checking her watch as she went on about the case. Should they push a little harder when they were reminding the witnesses of the settlement they might already have gotten? That's what she was saying when Carter cracked. He simply could not turn her loose in this town or, even worse, turn her over to the care of some man when she was showing her cleavage, wearing that skirt that displayed her thighs-oh, God, great thighs, too, slim but not skinny. Thighs to stroke. Thighs to slide between-

'Y'know,' he said, feeling like a whirlpool of boiling hormones and trying to sound like the most dedicated, responsible lawyer ever to grace the bar, 'we don't have any business going out tonight. Either of us. We ought to have a working dinner together. This is some good brainstorming we're doing here. I'm going to call Brie and tell her we'll make it another time.' He looked expectantly at Mallory. Her turn. She looked surprised and ominously uncertain.

'I can't…'

He frowned at her.

'Well, I guess I can…' she amended herself.

His heart lightened. He lifted his eyebrows, silently telling her, 'Go on, go on.'

'Here's how it is,' she said finally. 'I'll have to break the date in person and then meet you for dinner. I should be able to make it by eight-fifteen. Want to order from room service or go out?'