Mistletoe Over Manhattan

9

"Did the green spots give the baby any discomfort?"

"No, no thanks to your hair dye," McGregor Ross huffed. Carter worried the fountain pen between his index and middle fingers. He thought she might be a very pretty woman without that shrewish expression on her face. "I wiped the dye off immediately and put lotion on her chest."

"How long did the spots persist?"

"Long enough for her to miss out on a very important audition, one that might have launched her modeling career."

"But she's able to make auditions now." Carter smiled encouragingly.

"She's growing up! She's lost six crucial months of opportunity!"

"Did she have any assignments in the months before the dye incident?"

"No, but…" Mrs. Ross ruffled like an angry chicken.

"Did she have assignments after the green spots went away?"

"Well, no, but…"

"I object to this line of questioning," Phoebe broke in.

He needed a break, a break from the avaricious Ms. Ross, a break from Phoebe's come-hither eyes and the way they contrasted with her sharp comments and objections, and most of all a break from the pressure of Mallory sitting beside him, so close he could almost feel the heat of their bodies combining in an explosive chemical reaction.

He got his chance in the form of a telephone call. Excusing himself, he followed the paralegal who'd brought the message and picked up the phone in an empty office.

"Carter. Bill Decker."

"Hey. Bill. What's up?" Between them, he and Mallory had checked in with the boss three times a day, so Bill must have had an idea good enough that he couldn't wait to hear from one of them.

"I've been thinking." And he came to a halt.

"Thinking…" Carter said, using the same encouraging tone he'd used on McGregor Ross.

"Well, I sort of hate to bring it up."

Carter controlled his impatience. It was quiet in the empty room, no greedy moms, no Phoebe, no Mallory. Of course, he had no idea what they were up to in the conference room, and he really should get back.

"How are you and Phoebe Angell getting along?"

That brought back his focus. "Fine, I think. Did she complain about something I said or did?"

"No, no." Bill sounded as if his mind was off on another tangent. "Well, just that she inquired about what sort of relationship you had with Mallory, and I wondered…"

Now Carter just waited. He had a bad feeling he knew what was coming.

"I assured her that you and Mallory were merely colleagues, I mean, Mallory is Mallory."

Not anymore. Carter ground his pen between his fingers. Without considering the alternatives, Bill was dismissing any possibility that he might have a physical interest in Mallory. "My relationship to Mallory is none of Phoebe's business," he said, sounding as uptight as he felt.

"Of course not," Bill said quickly, "but…"

Carter sighed. "But what, Bill? Spit it out."

"I was just wondering if a little personal attention to Phoebe might pave the way, soften the atmosphere, re-channel her interests. You understand what I'm saying?"

How could I not understand? You explained it three ways.

"Is that why you put me on the case?" he asked. It was blunt and not the right thing to say to a man who was, at the moment, his boss, but he had to know. "You want me to prostitute myself to get Sensuous off the hook?"

"Of course not." Bill sounded so shocked that it confirmed Carter's suspicion that it was, in fact, precisely why he'd gotten this case. Then Bill went on, sounding smooth as tofu, "I wanted you on this case because I felt sure you could bring it to settlement-" he hesitated "-using all the means at your disposal."

There it was, the challenge, out in the open. "I feel just as sure I can reach settlement, Bill," Carter said, deciding that outrage wouldn't do him any good. "I'd prefer to handle it in a more straightforward way, though."

"Have you come up with a straightforward idea?" Bill's tone was dry.

"Mallory and I are full of ideas," Carter lied. "It's only a matter of choosing the one that will work best."

They ended the call on good terms, but Carter wasn't on good terms with himself. That call had been the straw that broke the camel's back. For the last five minutes he'd been fingering the ImageMakers card in his pocket and now he pulled it out. He needed to change his image-not merely to qualify for Mallory, but to approve of himself. He'd use a fake name, pay cash, no one would ever know that the up-and-coming Carter Compton was, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, having a crisis of confidence.

A male voice answered the ImageMakers number. "I'd like to make an appointment," Carter said.

"Yes," the voice purred. "Your name?"

Carter hesitated. "Jack Wright."

"Mr. Wright."

I'd like to be. Was that what this was all about? Being Mallory's Mr. Right?

As that thought shot through his head it startled him so badly he dropped his pen and was about to grind it out under his shoe before he remembered it was a Mont Blanc pen and not a lighted cigarette.

He bent his knees to pick it up. "Um, maybe this isn't such a good idea," he muttered, feeling perspiration pop out on his forehead.

"When our clients say that," said the voice, "it usually indicates an emergency. Can you come in right now?"

"Right now?" He actually squeaked the words. "No, no, I can't. I'm working."

"Lunch hour?"

Just as he'd thought. A quack. No clients. Not even enough sophistication to pretend that M. Ewing was very busy but perhaps they could sneak him in somewhere. But he was starting to think it might be an emergency, just like the man said, and he'd never get an appointment with a psychiatrist this fast. Maybe he just needed somebody to talk to and almost anybody would do.

"Icould make it by twelve-thirty," he said slowly.

"She'll see you then."

She? "She?" he said aloud.

The voice turned frosty. "You have a problem consulting a woman about your image?"

"No, no, no," he hastened to say, feeling his current image slipping right down through all twenty-four floors of the building that lay beneath his feet. "I just, you know, with the name 'M. Ewing' I thought…" He pulled himself together. "I'll be there at twelve-thirty," he said, using a firm tone of voice and knowing he needed someone to use a firm hand on him in this situation. It was time for Carter Compton, the talker, the negotiator, the one always in the lead, to do some listening.

First he had to listen to a woman who was determined to thrust her infant daughter into the modeling game. Poor kid.

At twelve twenty-five, having left Mallory and Phoebe back at the law offices staring oddly at him when he deserted them, he gazed with grudging approval at the mansion which apparently lodged ImageMakers. This place would sell for three or four times the value of his parents' house in suburban Chicago, but it was less flagrantly ostentatious. He liked that.

He went up the cleanly shoveled sidewalk to the front door, where his positive feelings took a rapid downturn. He stared at the doorknocker. No way was he picking up that thing and banging it on its balls. It gave him a cramp in the groin just to think about it. So he knocked with his knuckles. A moment later the door opened.

"Mr. Wright," the man at the door said, but his eyes went directly to the doorknocker. "Oh, thank goodness, I thought it had been stolen."

"Ever think of getting a doorbell?" Carter growled.

The man smiled. "I'm Richard," he said. "Maybelle's ready to see you."

"Maybelle?" Carter said, but followed him across the marble foyer, anyway. He took in the office of this Maybelle person in one swift scan, observed that it was unusual, then gave the woman behind the nonstandard desk a once-over and decided her hair must have gone through repeated shock treatment. He sat down, glared at her and said, "Your knocker is obscene. You being interested in other people's images, I'm surprised you're not more careful about your own."

The woman had been looking him over, too, but now she narrowed her focus to his face. "What y'all talkin' about?"

Carter winced just hearing her voice. A quack all right, and he was getting out of here just as soon as he made his point about the knocker.

"The doorknocker," he said.

"Oh, that. I toleDickie to pick one out. I don't never use the front door, so I don't know what he got. You don't like it? It sure bangs good."

He stood up. "You'd better take a look at it, decide for yourself."

If she said, "Hey, that's awesome," or whatever she'd say in that Texas accent of hers, he'd know he had no business being here. Instead, as they stepped outside together and she got a look at the door, she screamed, "Dickie."

The scream echoed off the elegant facades that lined the quiet, winterbound street. "Ma'am?" Richard appeared, wearing a sheepish expression.

"What is that?" Maybelle pointed with a shaking finger.

"Well, it's a-"

"Don't say it," Maybelle snapped. "You tryin' to ruin me? What are people gonna think? I'll tell you what-that I'm runnin' a male-escort service here."

Dickie drew himself up to his full, extremely muscular height. "To me, it said 'We have a sense of humor here.'"

"Way-ell, that ain't what it says to me. Get rid of it. Get me some nice antique thing that don't look like nuthin' but a doorknocker, you hear?"

"Okay," Dickie, or Richard, said with a long-suffering sigh.

"And make us some coffee. You like regular or dee-caf." She turned an assessing gaze on Carter, who was getting pretty cold out there on the stoop, while this skinny little woman in blue jeans and a T-shirt with a panther printed on it didn't seem to notice.

"Regular, but I don't-" He was leaving, was what he'd decided, just as soon as he got his overcoat back.

The gaze turned approving. "I'll be danged. He likes regular. Y'all hear that, Dickie? Brew us up a pot of real strong stuff." She turned to Carter, and her expression turned wistful. "Y'all don't happen to like it percolated, do you? Kindly muddy-like?"

"No, but you have what you like, because I-"

"He don't," Maybelle told Dickie. "So drip it. Nobody's perfect," she added before she marched Carter back across the foyer. He had his mouth open to ask for his coat when she said, "That's not all you come here for, was it? To yell at me about the doorknocker?"

Instead of asking for his coat, he looked at her, looked into big blue eyes that offered to listen to whatever he had to say. "No," he admitted. "The doorknocker thing was a sidebar."

"Then sit down," she said, marching toward the chair behind the desk that looked like the fossilized nest of some long-gone pterodactyl.

"Now that we've done the doorknob," she said, "tell me what y'all think of this here desk. Mebbe I'd better take a minute to work on my own image."

She'd done everything Maybelle had told her to do and still he'd taken somebody else out to lunch. It wasn't Phoebe Angell, either. At least Phoebe was a known quantity.

She'd refused Phoebe's halfhearted invitation to have lunch. The woman's expression had said, "I'd rather be a waitress on roller skates than have lunch with you." Instead, she went back to the hotel, netted a table for one in the restaurant, ordered a salad and darted up to the suite. She needed to take a look at herself in the full-length mirror, figure out what she might have done wrong.

She flung open the door of the room, and the first thing she saw was the tiny Christmas tree-wearing the ornament Carter had bought at Bloomingdale's their first night here.

The nonverbal message in that single ornament stunned her. She was too verbal to know what it meant, but she was certain it was meant to tell her something. "Glad you bought the mistletoe"-something like that. She became aware of the heavy weight that had settled in the lower half of her body, realizing it was nothing new, it was there every second she was with Carter, but it seemed to be getting heavier, harder to ignore.

While she gazed at the ornament, a certainty settled in her bones. Tonight or never.

Carter came back to Phoebe's conference room looking like raw skin. Shaken and vulnerable, those were the words that came to Mallory's mind. Also, he was late.

"Are you all right?" she said, then realized she'd looked at her watch. Scolding him about his lateness was hardly the path to seduction.

"Is anyone all right after a root canal?" he growled.

"Oh, sorry," she said lamely. He hadn't complained of a toothache. She hadn't noticed any swelling. He'd had crunchy bacon with his breakfast. It must have come on quite suddenly.

Or he was lying.

Apparently he wasn't feeling too bad, because he wound up the session with McGregor Ross at five-thirty promptly, and then said he had to leave.

At that point, she hoped it was a dentist he was running off to. Her resolve flagged as she stomped her way through a light snow to the hotel, her new snow boots the only bright spot in her cloudy sky. How could she ever have thought of wearing plastic thingies over her Soft 'N' Comfys?

With a desolate hour to spare before meeting Maybelle at Bergdorf's, she decided to check her e-mail.

It surprised her so much to see Macon's address in the Sender column that she ignored all her business messages and opened his. It was perfunctory as usual, but the message was not at all usual.

"mallory do you think anybody brought up like we were can relax enough to fall in love macon"

Macon? Asking about love? Was the earth still turning? Had the moon escaped?

She wrote back, "I don't know, but I think we have to give it a try to find out." Her fingers slowed on the keyboard, then she typed rapidly, "What exactly is it that you're doing in Pennsylvania?"

She got up from the computer. The suite seemed empty without Carter. She felt as if her life had been empty without Carter, would continue to be empty without him. That was pretty good advice she'd given Macon, now that she thought about it. She'd never know until she gave it a try.

"Tonight we go for underwear," she informed Maybelle when they met in Bergdorf's first floor Fine Jewelry. She looked her imagemaker straight in the eye.

"Oh, hon, this is startin' to sound good," Maybelle crooned. "I was thinkin' fingernails with stars on 'em tonight and save the underwear for the weekend, but if you're ready, let's go for it. Anything intrestin' happen today?"

They started up the escalator toward Lingerie. "Carter's out with somebody," Mallory said, feeling despondent. "Not Phoebe, and he didn't mention Athena or Brie, so this one's an entirely new challenge." She could bet her name began with a C, unless the Cs were all unavailable. "He might even have taken her out to lunch," she told Maybelle. "He said he'd had a root canal. He might have been lying, but he did look awful when he came back."

Maybelle let out a bark of laughter. "I consulted with a man today who acted like tawkin' to me was worse than havin' a root canal," she said, shaking her head.

"Men," Mallory said. "They just hate opening up, don't they?"

"Yep, jes' like oysters," Maybelle said. Her eyes gleamed with victory. "I knew jes' by lookin' at this one that pryin' wouldn't do no good. I had to smash his shell with a sledge hammer. I made him come back a second time in the same day. That's a record."

Mallory felt a certain sympathy for the guy. "What was his problem, since we're not mentioning names?" she asked.

"Oh, one of the old standards," Maybelle said offhandedly. "He's always had a way with the ladies, but now he wants 'em to look at him in a different way. If you ask me, he's in love with one gal and don't know it yet, and even if he did know it, he wouldn't have no idea how to tell her."

Turned around backward, that could describe me. But they'd arrived in lingerie, and Maybelle vanished into the foam of silk and nylon, pastels, blacks and leopard prints. While she circled, grabbing things up, chatting with yet another obsequious salesperson, Mallory stood transfixed, staring at a mannequin in a hot-pink gown and robe. The robe was kimono-style with wide, flowing sleeves and a sash. It was short, and the gown was shorter, lace-trimmed, a simple shift with spaghetti straps.

Maybelle zoomed by toward a dressing room. "I want this," Mallory said.

Maybelle screeched to a halt. "That's real purty." She said to the salesperson. "Get her one to try on, will you, hon?"

In the dressing room Mallory reached first for the hot pink ensemble. She had a feeling about it, pure intuition, and the feeling intensified when she stepped into the tiny gown. She was naked beneath it, and it brushed her body like a caress. She wriggled with pleasure. The familiar ache of wanting deepened until she thought her knees might buckle under her. If Carter had been in the dressing room with her-

She'd better try the robe. She put it on, wrapped it across her breasts, tied it, then watched it begin to part in the front, silk sliding against silk. For a moment she leaned against the dressing room wall.

"You doin' okay in there?" Maybelle screeched.

"Yes." She whispered the word.

"Huh?"

"I finally know what you mean," she said just loudly enough to carry through the door. "Now I feel sexy."

"Whatever she's got on," she heard Maybelle hiss to the saleslady, "we'll take it." Then her voice came faintly through the closed door. "Now that you feel it, hon, what're you gonna do about it?"

It felt a lot like how going to confession must feel. In the anonymity of the dressing room, speaking softly through the door, Mallory told Maybelle exactly what she intended to do.

When she got home with her treasure, lacy bras and panties, the pink robe and gown and several more equally sheer and arousing sleep outfits, she realized she hadn't asked Maybelle if she'd started reading her mother's book.

Her mother-and her books-were way down on her list of priorities right now. What was on her mind was that it was only eight-twenty and Carter was at home. She could tell he was at home because his overcoat lay on one chair and his tie on another, his briefcase was open and the contents spread out over the table that held the Christmas tree. A lot of Carter was there to look at, just not Carter himself. He had to be in his bedroom. Alone, she hoped.

She didn't hear any giggling female voices or see any evidence of a woman, no stiletto heels kicked into a corner, no feminine-looking coat or handbag. Whatever he'd done tonight must have ended in complete disaster. She tried to feel sorry, but it wasn't easy.

She tiptoed into her own room with her new unmentionables, then tiptoed back out. She couldn't help herself-she had to hang up that overcoat. Once she'd done that, she had to lay the tie out in a neat fold on the little table behind the mistletoe-hung arch, and once she'd done that, she had to put his papers into squared-off stacks.

Now she could put her own things away. Suddenly starving, she went to her bedroom and ordered from room service. "Shall we deliver your dinner with Mr. Compton's?" said the voice that answered the phone.

"One dinner or two?" she wanted to ask, but couldn't. She thought about it for a minute. "No, bring his when it's ready."

It was a little like a French farce. From her bedroom, she heard the bell ring, then heard Carter tiptoe out to receive his room service order. Mallory had her ear glued to the door. It sounded as if the waiter was setting up in his bedroom. So when the bell rang a second time thirty minutes later, she tiptoed out and steered the waiter with his cart into her room. As the waiter left her room, she heard Carter tiptoe out with his empty tray.

She felt the tension building. When she did what she intended to do, she might actually surprise him into compliance. Her plan was what you might call an ambush, very unsportsman-like, but highly effective.

The evening wore on. Mallory ate dinner and did another tiptoeing act to deposit the tray outside the door of the suite. From Carter's room came the muted sounds of an action movie-bam! bang! crash! ker-plooey! Next she took a long, soaking bubble bath. She washed her hair, blow-dried it to a smooth, silky fall, redid her makeup. She found herself drawn to the stock market channel and made herself switch to a romantic movie.

At last she couldn't stand it anymore and tiptoed over to listen at Carter's door. He was asleep. The soft, rumbling snore was a sure sign.

It was time.

As if it were a battle campaign, she checked her ammunition one last time. Makeup, not too much, not too little, her hair, the hang of the hot-pink gown and robe, her fingernails and toenails.

Quit stalling.

Okay, you can put on one dot of perfume first. The patchouli-based scent the makeup artist had tucked into her bag was heavy and musky, generating images of long, steamy afternoons of sex, which meant she had to keep Carter interested until summertime.

Maybe she was starting too soon.

Get yourself across the hall!

She sneaked across the sitting room floor, positioned herself outside Carter's door-

She'd forgotten the sheaf of papers she was supposed to wave in his face.

Back across the sitting room. Grab the papers. Back to Carter's door. No nonsense now. Go for it.

She threw open his door with a shattering bang. "Carter, I've had a brainstorm!" she announced, scurrying into the room before he could find something to throw at her. "Wake up. I have to talk to you now, while it's fresh on my mind." She'd reached his bed, where he was thrashing, trying to sit up. She plopped herself onto the edge and drew one knee up until it touched him.

"Is it morning?" he croaked.

"Not yet. This is too important to wait for morning." The act of parting her legs like that, feeling the robe slide open and the cool air of the room wafting between her thighs, all that while being so close to Carter's overwhelming maleness was having a startling effect on her. It was Carter she was supposed to be seducing, not herself.

She put the sheaf of papers on the other side of him, which gave her all the excuse she needed to lean over him, brushing his chest with her breasts. He seemed to be trying to pull more cover over himself, but her position made it impossible. "Can you wake up enough to listen?"

He was as awake as he'd ever been in his entire life. His eyes might not be fully open, but under the covers, everything was stirring. In the light that came through the doorway he could see her clearly enough to react to the silkiness of the robe she was wearing, and how little there was of it. Her knee pushed against his thigh and the robe parted, giving him a glimpse of her breasts, smooth, creamy, mounded like ice cream and just begging to be licked. The robe was pink. Strawberry sauce.

She wore a gown under the robe, but it concealed nothing. His hands were itching to slide into that opening in the robe, cup her breasts, bring them to his mouth one at a time, discover and explore her nipples. He wanted to make her scream with pleasure and beg him for more.

His erection, sudden and powerful, ached insistently.

"There's a thread that runs through all the depositions," she said, but his senses went on the alert when she moved a little closer, bent a little lower, then put her hand on his chest, splaying out the fingers. It was such a small gesture, and undoubtedly an innocent one. She had no idea how her touch branded him with its heat. He mustn't let himself reach out to her. If he touched her, he would have to kiss her, wouldn't be able to help himself.

Just like he couldn't help shifting under the pressure of her smooth, slim hand, turning the touch into a stroke, feeling her fingernails rasp lightly against his chest hair, making it tickle, making his own nipples harden with pleasure and anticipation.

The scent of her perfume wafted to his nose, not overpowering but intriguing, something rich, mysterious and suggestive. The gleam of her hair, the flash of her eyes, were casting a spell on him.

She felt it, too. He could tell by the way her voice slowed, thickened until it sounded like dark honey. "They all want something," she said, but her eyes had fixed on his face, and those long lashes were drooping down to her cheeks.

Did it mean there was a limit to her self-control? But was she feeling anything important for him, or was it just her excitement at having made a discovery? Or, just as hopeless, was it just a natural but impersonal reaction to the intimacy of being alone in a dark bedroom with someone, nearly naked? And did he even care?

God, how he wanted to pull her down to him and take her mouth so hard and fast that she'd want him to take the rest of her just as hard and fast. "Everybody wants something," he managed to say, hearing how his voice has hoarsened. He was desperate to tell her what he wanted. No, to show her, with his mouth, his tongue, his hands, his cock that throbbed so painfully with longing to be inside her.

That was more than he could hope for, no matter what happened.

"Yes," she said, starting to sound a little uneven, "and the interesting thing about these witnesses is that they all want the same thing. They want… they want…"

His heart stood still as her mouth came closer and closer, and suddenly she was there, her lips against his, his arms around her, his hands roaming that long, slim, sweet body. Then, at last, with a moan that vibrated through him, she straightened out her endless, silky legs and he tugged her on top of him, stretching her out over the full length of his body.

She was already in a state of such ecstasy she didn't know how she could bear anymore. He was all male hardness, the tongue that tangled with hers, the hands that gripped her buttocks and molded her against the hardest, most demanding part of him. In an agony of suspended desire she parted her thighs and their bodies meshed, all heat and wetness, and she instinctively moved against him, relishing the power of him as she sought the release she needed so desperately.

He kissed her with a passion that needed no words, no explaining. His chest pressed against her breasts.

Her nipples ached with pleasure, and she moved against him there, too, feeling the crisp hair against her skin, maddened by it, dissolving in a pool of liquid fire.

"We can't do this." He tried to push her away, but she knew his heart wasn't in it, nor was the rest of his body.

"Yes, we can," she said, breathing the words into his ear. She felt quite determined about it. "We are doing it."

"No, no, we shouldn't… oh, God," he said as she darted her tongue between his lips and seized his mouth again.

She nibbled her way along his jaw. "Why shouldn't we?"

"You don't really want to is why," he panted as her lips reached his neck. "It's just the moment. It's the night and the Christmas season and the tension of the case…"

With a soft oof, she found herself stretched out beside him. It was nice, but not where she wanted to be. "What's wrong with any of that?" she asked, her voice so husky with need, she could barely speak.

"Oh, Mallory," he said. "Nothing, except-you're going to respect me even less in the morning." Before she could organize her mind enough to ask what he meant by that, his arm went swiftly around her and his mouth came down to hers.

They'd passed the point of no return.