MISTLETOE OVER MANHATTAN Read online

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  © 2003

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  1

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  What a relief to be home.

  Mallory Trent stepped out of the elevator on the fifty-third floor of the Hamilton Building in the Chicago Loop and gazed lovingly at the brass plaque beside the massive walnut double doors. It read Sensuous, Inc., and below that, Legal Department. After the horrible experience she'd just escaped, that plaque looked like a Welcome, Mallory sign on the pearly gates of Heaven.

  The horrible experience had taken place on St. John's Island in the Caribbean. Five days on St. John's might be viewed as a vacation by some people. Some people might even have stayed the full seven days they'd originally planned to. Apparently some people enjoyed sunburn, scorpion sightings and sand grating between their toes. She wasn't one of those people. She was happier at work. Let the icy winds blow across Lake Michigan. She didn't care. She had a PalmPilot to keep her warm. She could pick up mangoes and pineapples at her local specialty market. And she had Sensuous, the cosmetics company whose offices filled the top five floors of the building and was her Heaven on earth.

  "Hi, Cassie," she said to the first of her colleagues she passed in the hall.

  Cassie, a smooth-skinned, pretty woman with soft, curly black hair who could open sealed boxes with her razor-sharp tongue, stared at her with wide, startled dark eyes. "You're finally back," she said in a whisper. "Bill's about to have a stroke."

  "But I wasn't supposed to be back until—" Mallory said.

  "Later," Cassie said, hurrying on. "Got to find out if he's in the building."

  "Who? Bill? I imagine he's…" But she was talking to thin air, and approaching her from Cassie's direction was Ned Caldwell, another of the junior members of the legal team that provided in-house counsel to Sensuous. Ned was Cassie's opposite, a bespectacled man who spoke slowly and thought deeply. He saw her, slowed and moved toward her with an increasingly funereal expression.

  "If it's serious," he murmured, "let me know how I can help."

  "Help with—" But he was gone, too, scurrying away with unusual speed as if Mallory were carrying a fatal virus—which, for all she knew, she might be. A virus transmitted by squadrons of foot-long mosquitoes that traveled in formation, like the ones in St. John's. Mallory fought down an urge to go back to her apartment, take two aspirin and check in the next morning. Instead, she forged onward into her office suite and looked warily at the administrative aide whose services she shared with Cassie and Ned.

  "Good morning, Hilda," she said firmly, daring the woman to say anything out of the ordinary.

  "You're back!" Hilda said in a loud whisper, clasping a hand to her ample bosom. "Bill Decker wants to see you immediately."

  "How does he know I'm here?" Mallory whispered back. "And why are we all whispering?"

  Hilda raised her voice to a low drone. "He doesn't. On Friday he called every thirty minutes to ask if I'd located you yet, and every thirty minutes I reminded him you were on vacation, and … and … I lied!" She rolled her eyes heavenward. "I told him you'd refused to tell me how to reach you."

  "Hilda!" No wonder Bill was hysterical. "He knows I'd never, never do that!"

  "I just wanted you to have a vacation for once in your life—" The phone buzzed. "Oh, hell, I bet that's him again."

  Hilda never swore. What was making everyone so tense?

  "Yes, Mr. Decker," Hilda was saying, her calm restored by her little outburst. "She, ah, she—" Hilda darted a quizzical glance at Mallory.

  Mallory nodded. "Tell him I just walked in. Two days early," she couldn't help adding. Something was out of kilter, and she couldn't deal with life when it went out of kilter.

  "She'll be there shortly," Hilda said, and when she'd disconnected, she gazed up at Mallory. "I want you to know—" she was back in her whispering mode "—I'm on your side, whatever happens."

  Mallory tightened her lips and squared her shoulders, picked up her PalmPilot and tugged at the hemline of her neat black suit jacket. She took a step forward, then paused to extend each leg in front of her, twisting each foot to the left and then to the right, to assure herself that the polished gleam of her sensible black pumps had not picked up a speck of dust while she had so unwisely exiled herself to the Caribbean.

  An early book of her mother's had advised, "Career success depends on keeping your work wardrobe in perfect condition—your suits clean, blouses pressed, shoes shined and protected by flannel shoe bags."

  Her friends hooted at Ellen Trent's literary masterpieces—how-to bestsellers that taught both housewife and career woman to achieve domestic perfection with maximum efficiency. Mallory followed them to the letter. If she were ever a witness in a court case, she'd demand to swear on a stack of her mother's books.

  Her mother would be proud of her now as she strode down the hall to the office of the legal department's head honcho, Bill Decker, with the confident carriage of a nobleperson. In this case, it appeared that the nobleperson might be on her way to the guillotine, but if her head rolled, her hair would be shining with good health and sporting a recent cut. She would die with her PalmPilot in her hand and her nails perfectly manicured.

  From the way her colleagues were acting, she could only infer that she'd done something terribly, disastrously wrong. Something she couldn't even guess at. Maybe she was about to be fired. For a second, that stopped her in her tracks. Of all the things in the world Mallory had imagined could happen to her—being overworked, underpaid, taken for granted, used, ignored—being fired was at the bottom of the list.

  You could cruise the indices of her mother's books until the end of time and you wouldn't find a reference to "adjusting efficiently to being fired." It was unthinkable in the Trent household, equally unthinkable for one of Ellen Trent's disciples and out of the question when you qualified for both categories.

  "You finally came back." Bill Decker, who should have been thrilled to see her, frowned, just as a woman at the gym frowns when you're emerging from a shower she's been waiting for. That frown saying, "What took you so long?" instead of a smile saying, "Thanks for showering so swiftly."

  "I'm back two days early." It was a point she felt she had to keep drumming into him. He had no right to expect her until Wednesday. This was Monday, the Monday after Thanksgiving, a Monday she'd intended to spend lying supine on a beach chair—until she found out how maddeningly boring, how unproductive, how inefficient that was. She'd even paid a hundred-dollar penalty to the airline for the privilege of coming back early. That's how badly she wanted out of that beach chair.

  The impatient wave of his hand prevented her from spelling it out. "Sensuous is in deep trouble," he said. "The Green case is more than we can handle in-house. We've hired outside counsel. The law firm we're using is Rendell and Renfro, and a young litigator named—" He broke off to pick up a phone. "Nancy, is Compton in the building today?"

  A cold chill crept up Mallory's spine, freezing the noncommittal smile on her face.

  "Ask him to come in for a minute," Decker was saying.

  Could there possibly be more than one Compton who was a trial lawyer at Rendell and Renfro?

  She steeled her spine while Decker's voice rolled on, seeming to echo through the fog in her mind. "As I was saying, Carter Compton's going to handle the case. I imagine you know him. Good lawyer. Bit of a rascal, I'm told." His chuckle was annoyingly indulgent. "He's going to New York to depose the plaintiffs' witnesses. We thought it would be a good idea to have a female on his team, and of course you're the right choice. Ah. Here he is."

  However steeled, frozen and otherwise numb, Mallor
y still wasn't prepared for Carter Compton to step through the doorway. Her heart pounded. Her mouth went dry. Her lips cracked as she managed a thin smile. It took all the energy she had to stand up.

  "Mallory! Great news we're going to be working together." With a flash of white teeth, Carter stepped forward and instead of shaking her hand, threaded his fingers through hers.

  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 Chicago School of Law jump off its hook from the impact of whatever Cassie had just thrown against the dividing wall. A thin ray of sunlight broke through the uncertain winter sky to illuminate its glass as it shattered into a million glittering shards.

  It seemed significant, somehow.

  Mallory opened her PalmPilot to her to-do list. "Have diploma reframed," she wrote with the slim plastic stylus.

  Carter returned to the legal department library in a thoughtful mood. He was very glad Mallory was going with him to New York. Good old Mallory. With her on the job, he wouldn't have to spend half his time in sexual fencing: the way he'd have to with most women.

  He was getting tired of it, starting to want something real, starting to think about settling down.

  With Paige, maybe. Well, no, not Paige. Not for the long run. Even a long weekend was sort of a stretch.

  He'd eliminated Diana last weekend.

  Andrea, then. Uh-uh. He never quite connected with Andrea, never felt they were talking about the same thing.

  What about Marcie? Marcie was smart and sexy, and had made no secret of the fact that she'd like their relationship to grow, blossom and produce an engagement ring set with a diamond of substantial size. He didn't know why, after he'd been with her, he sometimes felt a little—empty.

  An unprecedented mood of dissatisfaction settled over him. He dated dozens of girls, and dozens more wished he'd ask them out or accept their thinly veiled invitations. One of them had to be just right.

  In the meantime, he loved his work, and this was the craziest case he'd ever lucked into. Just thinking about it dispelled his bad mood. Its proper name was Kevin Knightson et al. v. Sensuous. Informally, they referred to it as the Green case, because last March a hundred or so women plus a few men had attempted to dye their hair Sensuous Flaming Red, and instead, had dyed their hair—and everything else the solution had touched—pea-green, as the brief described it.