Mistletoe Over Manhattan

'Ignore it.' He resumed his exploration with his tongue.

'It's the waiter. We have to-'

'Don't have to do anything.' He was undistractable. 'He'll let himself in, leave breakfast-'

She was pushing him away, but she was laughing, a delicious, throaty laugh. 'I'm not that sophisticated. Let him in and keep him out of here.'

With great reluctance he got up off his knees, then almost returned there at the sight of her heavy-lidded eyes, the pout of her desire-swollen mouth. 'Go,' she whispered.

He put on the hotel robe without drying himself off and pulled her tight against him. 'So much I didn't know about you,' he murmured.

'Like what?'

'Didn't know you ever kidded anybody, for one thing. Didn't know you could make love and laugh at the same time. Didn't know…'

Didn't know you could want me so much, or make me feel this way.

The depth of the emotion he felt scared him. 'Didn't know you could wait this long for your morning coffee,' he said, gave her bottom a little spank, and went to receive breakfast.

In a very short time they were propped up in bed devouring eggs and bacon, English muffins and sweet rolls, juice and coffee. 'Um-yum,' Mallory said, slathering ginger marmalade on a piece of muffin.

When he figured she'd had enough food to subsist on for a while, he let his arm drop casually around her shoulders, then tightened it and pressed her against his stubborn erection.

'You can't possibly want more,' she moaned.

'Why stop now?' he said reasonably, because he did want more, as soon as possible, 'The damage is done. We came to New York to work together and found out it was fun to play together, too.'

'I guess you could look at it that way.' She moved a little closer to him, but he sensed something different in her and wondered if he'd said the wrong thing.

Not knowing what he might have said wrong, he went on in the same cheerful vein. 'That's the fine line between a solicitor, which you are, and a barrister, which I am, if I may use the English system as an example,' he lectured. 'We barristers can rationalize anything.'

'Do we have to rationalize this?' True, her face was buried in his shoulder, but her voice sounded so faint that he was increasingly sure he'd hurt her in some way. Not knowing what to do about it, he tried tenderness.

'Again, that's what makes a solicitor,' he said, dropping little kisses on the parts of her he could reach. 'Always with the questions, always after the facts.'

Yes, he did need to rationalize this, but he didn't want to explain that he was too awed by her organized, retentive mind to feel worthy of her. So what? It was fun just being her boy toy. He kissed her a little more purposefully, feeling her respond, wondering if sex was the only way he could reach her.

'Don't tip over the tray,' she said, already sounding breathless. 'We'll get butter and crumbs all over us.'

'Breaded for frying,' he agreed, ignoring the precarious tray and blowing the words onto her neck, that spot just below her ear that seemed to turn her on.

She shivered. 'Buttered for eating,' she said, and then, 'Forget I said that.'

'I can't,' he said regretfully. 'It's given me ideas. Not butter exactly, but… how about marmalade?' He grabbed the spoon, dunked it in the marmalade dish and plopped the spoonful directly onto that enchanting puff of golden hair.

'Carter! I just showered! Now look at me! I'm all sticky!'

'Yum,' Carter growled, embarking on the delightful task of licking her clean.

He'd apparently restored her good mood. He had just one more problem to deal with. He had no desire to do anything today but stay in bed with Mallory, but he had to sneak away somehow for his third appointment with Maybelle Ewing. The woman was crazy, definitely. Anybody with seventeen diplomas on the wall had to be crazy, but what she'd been saying to him made sense.

He wasn't a bad kid anymore, hadn't been for years, and it was possible nobody thought of him that way except himself. It wasn't his image he needed to change,Maybelle had declared after talking to him about three minutes yesterday, it was his attitude.

She'd also told him that what he had to deal with was easy compared with the changes another client of hers was having to make. 'That girl,' Maybelle said, 'don't know she's a doll, don't know she's sexy as all get-out, don't unnerstand that anybody in the world'd give his right… arm to have her. You think you aren't smart. She thinks smart's all she is. Like I said, you've got it easy.'

He was sure he could think up an excuse to get away for that three o'clock appointment. After a little more caffeine and a little more love-in-the-morning.

Her appointment with Maybelle was at four that afternoon, and Maybelle had announced they'd be having tea at Lady Mendl's Tea Salon in New York's GramercyPark. Mallory had thought several times of telling Maybelle that she wasn't that put off by the horned desk, and now that they'd outfitted her they could resume the meetings in Maybelle's office, but Maybelle hadn't given her a chance. Tea on a wintry afternoon sounded wonderful, anyway. She hoped Lady Mendl's offered an extensive tea with scones and sandwiches, eclairs and butter cookies. She had to come up with a plausible reason to separate her body from Carter's, and she'd finally hit upon one.

'I have an appointment to have my hair trimmed this afternoon,' she told him over the clam chowder and crabcakes they had for lunch at the little round table in the sitting room. 'I may be gone a couple of hours. I need a few things, panty hose…' She trailed off. Was it her imagination, or had a look of relief crossed Carter's face? She could hardly blame him. She was exhausted. And ravenous. She rarely ate more than a salad for lunch, and she was attacking these crabcakes as if she hadn't eaten in days.

Carter had asked for two orders for himself and had offered her the same option. 'They're small,' he'd explained. 'That would be a good idea for me, too,' he said. 'I could use a haircut, and I'm out of shaving cream.'

'I couldn't tell.' She sent him a secret smile.

'You'd be able to by tomorrow.'

So he wasn't bored yet. That was good news. 'Okay, then, we can take off at-'

'I'd like to leave at about two-thirty,' he interrupted her. 'I might catch the end of the football game if I get an early start.'

'I'll hang around a little while longer and get my clothes in order for next week. I should be home by five- thirty.'

She eyed him, noticing that he seemed to be eyeing her in the same way, the way people look at each other when they haven't told the whole truth.

Her lie, of course, was perfectly innocent. She'd pick up some panty hose at Saks and dart into one of those no-appointment places that were all over New York for a trim, all before tea. She just wasn't mentioning her appointment with Maybelle, that was all. Carter's plan, she had a feeling, wasn't quite so innocent.

Maybe he had to tell somebody goodbye. Forever.

Maybe he had to keep somebody on the string until he got bored with Mallory.

Maybe he needed a haircut and shaving cream, but his hair looked fine to her. And everywhere his face had touched her, it had felt wonderfully smooth. She shivered.

'What I think, Jack,' Maybelle said to Carter, 'is that you've fallen for somebody and you're afraid you're not good enough for her.'

'I don't know-fallen might be going too far. Or maybe not. I sure have been obsessing about her. As for good enough, well, maybe I'm good enough, just not smart enough. Or maybe I'm even smart enough. I just can't get anybody to see me that way.' He felt dazed from too much breakfast, too much lunch, too much arousal, not enough sleep and not enough information about where the hell Mallory had to go this afternoon. There'd been something evasive in the way she'd mentioned her haircut. He knew enough about women to know haircuts didn't take two hours.

Of course, he hadn't been telling the truth, either, but he knew what he was lying about and it was perfectly innocent.

'Way-ell, tell me about your girl,' Maybelle said. 'How y'all met. Mebbesomethin'll click in my mind.'

'I've known her a long time. We were in law school together.'