Mistletoe Over Manhattan

'I knew it!'

Now they had everyone's attention. Even Regis Philbin looked up from the intense conversation going on at his table. 'Carter,' she said in an urgent whisper, 'Kevin was Santa Claus.'

His eyes widened. His mouth, which had been fixed in a thin line, began to quirk up at the corners. 'That's his seasonal work?' Carter said. 'Being a department store Santa Claus?' His smile broke through, followed by a snort of laughter.

Mallory fixed him with a stern glare. 'I sat on the lap of a witness for the prosecution.' While it was a great pleasure to see him smile, this was no laughing matter, and he didn't know the half of it, nor would he ever if she was lucky.

He stopped laughing almost as quickly as he had begun, and before her very eyes, Mallory could see the legal part of his mind kick in. 'How do you know Kevin was Santa Claus?' His voice had cooled off.

Now she'd have to lie, which had been the best reason for not telling him anything. 'I'd rather not tell you that.' She set her jaw, knowing he wouldn't settle for that answer, but it would give her a second to think of another one.

'I'd rather you did.' He set his jaw, too.

'A Roquefort-PearTower for the lady,' their waiter droned above them. 'Curried Mussels for you, sir, and an order of our famous onion rings.'

Mallory could imagine the conversation going on in the kitchen. 'Will you hurry up with the orders for that pair at table nineteen before they draw blood?'

She attacked her salad with feigned gusto, but even with her gaze downcast she could feel him boring a hole through her forehead.

'I guessed,' she said suddenly.

'You guessed.'

'Yes.'

'How?'

'Oh, his voice. Or something.'

'So this is just a guess on your part.'

'No, then I asked.'

'When did you ask him?'

'At a time when you… weren't there.'

He frowned, probably trying to remember a point in the afternoon that she and Kevin might have been alone, and she hoped he didn't put too much pressure on himself. He wasn't going to remember one because there hadn't been one.

'I see,' he said at last. 'Well, now that that's out of the way, maybe we can get back to work. How do you think we ought to handle the woman with green teeth we're deposing tomorrow?'

Carter figured he could talk and brood at the same time. He didn't believe she'd asked Kevin. He didn't think there'd been a time he'd been out of the room when she and Kevin were still in it. She was still keeping secrets from him. And if her dates last night and tonight hadn't been with Santa Claus or Kevin, because they were one and the same, they'd been with somebody or bodies else and who the hell was he or they?

Damn! It really mattered to him. That was the problem. The time wasn't right for their relationship to turn physical, but there she sat, so beautiful, so desirable with her marshmallow-cream breasts peeping out at him, her pale hair swinging and her eyes the color of a freezer pack looking so wide and innocent. He could have slept with this woman five years ago if he'd turned on his charm when he'd had a chance, and the fact that he hadn't grabbed at that chance was killing him.

He had to get her off his mind-although it wasn't his mind that was giving him a problem-until he'd successfully settled this case and she was swooning with admiration. So he'd take Brie out tomorrow night and somebody else Friday night and then figure out how to get through the weekend.

She was arguing with him even now, and he couldn't blame her, because he'd been daydreaming and had said something stupid. No more stupidity. His life depended on it.

It was the following morning that Mallory felt the full impact of her recent veering-veering? careening!-from the beaten path to order and serenity.

By the time Carter came out of his room looking ready for breakfast-and a lot more coffee, judging from those bags under his eyes-she was dressed in her new tight pants, blue-green jacket, outrageous sheer tank top Maybelle had thrust into her bag at the last minute and high-heeled Pradas and was methodically dumping the entire contents of her handbag on the desk.

'What are you doing?'

'I can't find my credit card.'

'Call and ask them to FedEx you another one.'

She gave him a look that would have made her mother proud-until her mother saw her wearing aqua to the office.

'Okay,' he muttered. 'When did you use it last?'

She tried to focus on the lost card instead of on Carter's mouth. 'Bloomingdale's, I think, when we went up to buy socks. You volunteered to handle our meals together and file for the reimbursement, so I think, yes, it must have been Bloomingdale's.'

'You probably stuck it in some weird place.'

'I never, as you put it, stick my credit card in some weird place. It has its place and that's where I put it.'

'I might have known.' She heard the sarcasm in his tone. 'But this time-' he pointed a triumphant finger at her '-you didn't.'

Her mouth tightened. 'I hardly need you, who packed no socks, to point that out to me.'

'No, I guess you don't. You never forget anything, right?' He moved closer to the desk, his gaze scanning the objects scattered over it. 'Let's see what we've got here.' His smile was not what you'd call friendly.

'Stay out of my handbag,' she ordered him.

'I'm just looking for your credit card, not touching anything,' he said. 'A baggie full of first aid stuff isn't all that private, is it? Oh, my. Look what we've got here. A tiny tool kit. A tube of superglue. Do you have a foldaway crane in here somewhere? And where's the duct tape?'

Her face flamed with heat. She did, in fact, have small rolls of scotch tape and electrician's tape with her at all times, as well as a pair of scissors, two needles, one threaded with black and one with white, two small brass safety pins, self-sticking Velcro discs…

'It's good to be prepared in an emergency.'

'How often do you have an emergency?' he asked, zeroing in on her sewing kit.

'I pull out a hem from time to time.'

He raised his face to the ceiling. 'Oh… my… God, it's a crisis. Throw that woman out of this meeting. Her hem's hanging.'

'If you look your best, you work your best,' Mallory said, but it sounded pretty lame even to her.

'Not necessarily,' he said, suddenly shifting gears and becoming just Carter again, Carter without the attitude. 'For example, I look great.' He began helping her take things out of the handbag. When he ran onto the box that that held exactly twelve aspirin tablets, he opened it, shook four out into his hand and swallowed them dry. 'And now I'm going to work better. Hey! Here's your credit card.' He pulled it out of an inner pocket of the handbag and held it up triumphantly.

'Thank you,' she said, feeling wilted. 'I would never have looked for it there. That's my PalmPilot pocket, not my credit card pocket. No wonder I couldn't find it.'

'I think it works out better never to know where anything is,' he said as she repacked her handbag. 'That way, when you lose it, you know you'll have to look everywhere for it.'

'I see a flaw in your reasoning,' she muttered.

'We can talk about it at breakfast,' he said. 'Ready to go? I'm going to have pancakes this morning. All those eggs are giving me too much energy.'

I know a really great way you could use it up.

'Goon into the conference room,' she said when they'd breakfasted and arrived at Angell and Angell. 'I'm going to talk to Phoebe about speeding up the photographic evidence.'