Mistletoe Over Manhattan

Electricity shot through her at the intimacy of the touch. He was a man with presence, a powerful man, tall and muscled, and his hand was large and warm, with long, broad fingers. She could feel the single callus, the one between the first and second fingers of his right hand, where he'd always gripped a pen as if it were a cigarette, maybe still needing the feel of the cigarettes he'd given up long ago under the influence of his college football coach, he'd told her. Did he still grip that pen?

Memories of this legendary lady-killer flooded through her. They'd been in law school together, studied together, worked on the Law Review together. In fact…

That one memory she'd been blocking for years rushed to the front of her mind. Before the second semester final exams, she and Carter had once spent the night together studying in his apartment-and he hadn't made a single pass at her.

'Where've you been hanging out all this time?' he asked. 'I never see you.'

He was giving her a puzzled look, and she wondered how long she'd been staring at him, slack-jawed and cow-eyed. 'I've been here,' she said, slipping her hand out of his grasp. 'Just busy.'

His dark hair had been long and unruly then. For the last several years, when she'd glimpsed him at work parties-then escaped to the opposite side of the room-she'd noticed the short, crisp cut he was sporting. Was it soft to the touch, she wondered, or springy? He dressed more elegantly every year. Today he was in charcoal pinstripes and a shirt with a finely patterned tatersall check. A textured black tie and a starched white handkerchief in his breast pocket completed the polished look. He'd come a long way from the jeans and bomber jackets he'd worn as a law student.

Lord, how sexy he'd been in those hip-hugging jeans. A hot, heavy weight dropped straight down Mallory's center as the image crystallized in her mind.

What hadn't changed at all was the flashing indigo of his eyes, with their fringe of thick, dark lashes. Now, having those eyes focused on her, Mallory recognized the other thing that hadn't changed. She still lusted after him with all the sophistication of a high school sophomore in the throes of her first crush.

Heat rushed to her face when she realized she was staring again. 'And I guess I'm about to be busier,' she said, willing her voice to come out cool and steady. 'But I'm not sure our working together is a done deal yet.'

Bill laughed. 'It is as far as I'm concerned. Sit down, you two. We'll firm up the plans right now.'

Mallory collapsed into her chair. 'I'm flattered to be asked, of course,' Mallory said to Bill. 'I have spent quite a bit of time on the case. Did you say we'd be taking the depositions in New York?'

If she was going to work in close proximity to Carter, how would she manage to keep her hands off him? How could she work in a state of continuous arousal? 'Yes.'

She'd get herself under control. She had to. It would be too humiliating if she came on to him and he rejected her, and vastly more humiliating if he didn't even notice she was coming on to him. Besides, she was her mother's daughter. One simply got whatever it was under control.

'When would we leave?' She'd need a little extra time to get this one under control.

'Tomorrow,' Bill said.

'Oh, tomorrow.' With enormous relief, Mallory saw an escape hatch. 'Well, I can't do that.'

Decker frowned. 'Why not?'

'I just got back. You know what an in-box looks like after a few days out of the office.' She darted a glance at Carter, who'd sat down at last, reducing his physical impact on the room. Unfortunately his devastatingly electrical gaze was increasing his physical impact on her.

'Hilda can handle your in-box. So it's settled.'

'Hilda can't handle the Thornton patent case,' Mallory said, desperately grasping at her last salvation. 'Writing that brief is the number one priority on my to-do list. You wouldn't want me to let Product Development down.' She sent another glance at Carter. He'd winged up one eyebrow, which made her heart pound.

'Patents.' Decker dismissed patents with a wave of the hand. 'Cassie can write the brief.' Carter nodded his agreement.

Mallory counted Cassie as one of her best friends, but Cassie was highly competitive. Mallory could just imagine how thrilled she'd be to hear she'd gotten one of the dregs from the bottom of Mallory's in-box. 'That wouldn't be fair to her,' she said. 'I said I'd…'

'Mallory.' Decker's voice assumed a new level of authority.

'Yes, sir?' She swallowed hard.

'I need you in New York. Are you saying you won't go?'

'No, sir. That's not what I'm saying.' She couldn't help herself. Her early training had taught her to separate the generals from the privates.

'Good,' he said. 'Then it's settled.'

'Where do you live?' Carter said.

It was the last question she'd expected. 'Ah. I, um, I live, ah…' Surely she could remember her address. Finally she managed to spit it out.

'I was thinking we could drive to O'Hare together, but I'm too far out of your way. Okay if we meet at the gate? My secretary made the reservations. Your aide can call her, take it from there.'

'Gate,' Mallory stammered, nodding. 'Ticket.'

A quick goodbye to Bill, a flashing smile in Mallory's direction and he was gone. Mallory sank back into her chair.

Bill was wearing a satisfied expression. 'I knew you were the right person to do this job.'

'Why?' It came out like a sigh.

He beamed at her. 'You're immune to Carter Compton's manly charms. I can trust you. Anywhere. With anyone.' He leaned forward, his expression shining with sincerity. 'I can read a person like a book, and I saw it, just now, while you were chatting with Compton. Your colleagues think of you as a lawyer, not as a woman.'

On another day Mallory might have taken Bill's backhanded compliment in stride. All he meant was that she was a trusted colleague, a woman who didn't use her sexuality to her professional advantage. But seeing Carter had set off something weird in her mind. Her fingers fumbled with the PalmPilot she usually handled with such dexterity. 'High praise indeed,' she mumbled through lips that felt cold and numb. 'Thanks again, Bill.' She stood up. 'I'll be ready to leave tomorrow.'

On her way back to her office she thought, Bill saw it, too. Carter doesn't see me as a woman.

Suddenly overheated from frustration, she quickened her step and opened the door to her office suite, where she found Hilda, Cassie and Ned waiting like circled wagons.

'What happened?' they said in chorus.

'Did he fire you?' Ned added an appropriately lugubrious expression to his thick southern drawl.

'Did you find out what he's doing in the building?' Cassie's interest was no longer a mystery now that Mallory knew who he was.

'Should I order boxes for clearing out your office?' Hilda sounded anxious.

Still feeling dazed, Mallory let her eyes drift from one to the other. 'No, Hilda, you should call Carter Compton's secretary and get me a plane ticket.'

She heard Cassie's gasp, but forged on.

'He's taking on the Green case. Bill has assigned me to go to New York with him to depose the plaintiffs' witnesses.'

In the thunderous silence, Cassie's eyes widened while her mouth thinned out into a vicious line. 'I hate you!' she yelled. 'I was dying, dying, for that assignment.' She stomped into her office, from which immediately came the sounds of objects hitting the wall.

'Pack enough condoms to last a couple of days,' Ned suggested, his mild, owlish gaze swinging back from Cassie's closed door to Mallory's face. 'Carter's the Casanova of the twenty-first century, a legend in his time. Are you on the Pill?'

'Keep your knees locked together,' Hilda said, wincing as the crashing sounds increased in volume.

Still in slow motion, Mallory stared at Ned, then at Hilda. 'But you see,' she said in the calm manner of the totally shocked, 'that's why Bill's sending me. Because I don't need the Pill and I won't need the condoms. My knees are already permanently locked together. I am not a woman. I am a lawyer.'

She drifted into her own office and closed the door just in time to see her framed diploma from the University of