“We can’t do this.”

Carter tried to push Mallory away, but his heart wasn’t in it, nor was the rest of his body.

“Yes, we can,” she said, breathing the words into his ear. “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…”

“What’s wrong with any of that?” she asked, her voice so husky with need, she could barely speak.

“Nothing, except—you’re going to respect me even less in the morning.” His arm went swiftly around her and his mouth came down to hers. Unable to hold back anymore, Carter decided that if he was going to be nothing more to her than a toy, something to relieve the sexual need she was surprising him with, then he was going to be the best sex toy she would ever possess.

Dear Reader,

Mothers—you have to love them. Mallory Trent not only loves her efficiency-expert mother, but faithfully follows the rules set out in Ellen Trent’s bestselling books on creating perfect order in one’s life and never veering from one’s routines. When Mallory is pushed, kicking and screaming, into a second chance with Carter Compton, a man she’s desired for years, she discovers that she’ll definitely have to veer if she intends to make Carter see her as a woman.

She needs an image change, and fast, if she expects Santa Claus to give her Carter for Christmas. In this moment of crisis along comes none other than Maybelle Ewing from A Long Hot Christmas, who, as Maybelle herself would put it, “gits bored real easy” and has given up feng shui decorating to become “ImageMakers, a new you in no time flat.”

But Carter’s not eager to be “gotten.” Tired of his “lady-killer” image, he wants Mallory to respect him as a lawyer, meaning it’s important for him to treat her like one of the guys.

Does he have a chance against Maybelle’s advice and Mallory’s wiles? Especially when he’s sharing a hotel suite with a Mallory who’s a lot sexier than she was when they studied together as law students and getting sexier every day? Surrounded by mistletoe and lighted trees in the glitter of New York in the holiday season? Poor man. As I was writing Mistletoe Over Manhattan, the story of his futile fight against amazing womanpower, I actually began to feel a bit sorry for him.

So turn to chapter one and let the battle begin!

Happy holidays,

Barbara Daly

Mistletoe Over Manhattan

Barbara Daly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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To Jennifer Green, in celebration of our first book together.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

1

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 hem-line 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, Mallory 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.

They didn’t think it was funny. He’d better make sure he didn’t let on he thought it was funny. Mallory sure wouldn’t think it was funny. He’d be able to count on her to keep his face straight.

He could count on her for everything, just as he had in law school. That time they’d studied all night—something in his head had gone click and he’d finally gotten it together. It had taken a lot of hard work, but that one night had turned his law school record around.

He’d been sorely tempted to end the night with Mallory in his bed, at least to hold that tall, slim woman in his arms and give her a kiss that said, “Thanks, and let’s get together sometime.” A kiss that would make her want to get together sometime.

Why hadn’t he?

He’d gotten himself together was what had happened, had gotten the second highest grade on that exam. Mallory, of course, had gotten the highest.

Funny, he’d forgotten how pretty she was with her pale, blue-green eyes and that incredible silvery-blond hair.

He realized he was worrying his pen between his index and middle fingers, a nervous habit he’d been trying to break. His time was too valuable to waste it like this. He’d been thinking about the case, which was all he could afford to think about until he negotiated a settlement. Sensuous had recalled that entire lot of dye upon getting the first complaint, of course, and had sent lawyers out to negotiate generous settlements to the first fifteen or twenty of those hundred plus complainants. Unfortunately, a couple of the complainants had found an ambitious lawyer—or she had found them, which happened sometimes—who got all of them together and filed suit. They weren’t going to settle for hair therapy, weekly manicures, new sinks, re-painted walls and regrouted tile floors anymore. They were after everything Sensuous was worth.

And all because a bored assembly line man had decided it would be fun to add a permanent green dye to a batch of hair color in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

Carter’s first priority was to keep the case from going to trial, which was one of the ironies of being a trial lawyer. He’d do his best to convince these pea-green plaintiffs that weekly manicures and new sinks were all the payback they needed.

He hoped Sensuous had hired him for his professional reputation, not his personal one. He hoped they didn’t think he could seduce the plaintiffs and their lawyer—a woman—into settling.

“Mr. Compton?” He looked up to see one of the department’s paralegals at the library door. “I know you have permission to access the Green case files on our network, but I made you a CD as backup in case you’re somewhere without a network connection.” The girl’s hands trembled as she handed him the packaged disk.

“Thanks,” he said, standing up, giving her a smile. For a second he was afraid she was going to faint. Then what would he do? But she mustered up some poise, returned his smile, batted her lashes and swung her hips provocatively as she made her way out of the library. At the door she paused, struck a sexy pose, gave him some more eyelash action and said, “I’m Lisa, and if there’s anything else I can do to help, like if you need clerical or paralegal backup in New York…”

It was the story of his life. He couldn’t help it. It wasn’t anything he did deliberately. Some chemical in his body—well, testosterone was what it was—must have sprung a leak at birth and had been oozing out of him ever since, attracting women like beer attracted slugs.

If he intended to settle down, he had to plug that leak. He had to become irresistible to just one woman. And he had to stop attracting every unattached female who came into view. There was no better time than right now to give it a try. He wondered what he could say that would leave no doubt in Lisa’s mind that he wouldn’t be calling her for a wild weekend in New York. And while he wondered and Lisa waited, a bright idea popped into his mind.

“Thanks, Lisa,” he said. “I’ll pass that on to Mallory Trent. She’s going to need plenty of support from the department.”

He was relieved to hear the smoky tone clear from Lisa’s voice. “Of course,” she said, releasing her body from the arched-back position that made her breasts and butt stick out at the same time. “I’m happy to give Mallory any help she needs.”

When she slammed the library door, Carter felt he’d made some progress. He’d discovered, he ruminated as he made his way back to his own handsome office at Rendell and Renfro, that it paid to have a woman on his team who could run interference for him with other women.

While they were in New York, Mallory would make a great blocker.

Of course, he didn’t want to be blocked completely. On his phone list were several women who lived in New York. This was his chance to go out with them, enjoy their company, treat them to a night on the town—and if he felt like it, a night in bed. Along the way, he’d determine if one of them might be someone he could settle down with forever. He’d make dates with a couple of them right now, tonight, before he forgot.

He reached his building, signed in and went up to his office. Too bad the plaintiffs didn’t have Mallory’s hair. Nobody with hair like Mallory’s would want to dye it red.

2

MALLORY DIDN’T OPEN her office door again until she’d heard her suitemates leave for the day. By that time she felt she’d successfully compartmentalized every facet of her life, including Carter, who’d gone into a read-only-don’t-touch file. And there he would stay, at least until she had to face him in person at the airport in the morning. By morning, she’d be herself again. Under control.

Dressed for the cold winter night, she caught a cab on LaSalle, which slipped and slid as it carried her through the velvety darkness. The streetlamps cast a golden glow on the snowflakes that misted the air and iced the streets. Christmas trees soared high within the lobbies of the commercial buildings she passed, and when she reached the more residential areas, glittered festively through the windows of brownstones and apartments.

“It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas,” the cab driver said.

Resisting an alarming urge to sing, “everywhere you go,” back at him, Mallory said, “We just had Thanksgiving.”

“That’s Chicago for you. Start on Christmas and Hanukkah while we’re still living on turkey leftovers.”

“We are mere tools of the commercial establishment,” Mallory said, sighing even as her spirits rose in anticipation of her parents’ pleasure in the gifts she’d already gotten for them—a new, state-of-the-art laptop for her mother, which she’d asked her brother Macon to select and load with the most up-to-date software, and a fully accessorized riding lawnmower for her father, which would enable him to keep the lawn in Oak Park groomed to military standards.

“You got that right,” her philosophical driver agreed, nodding. “No love in the presents anymore, just money.”

Money. She’d spent a ton of money on those gifts. But, she argued with herself, she’d also spent a ton of time deciding what might please them most.

Still, it was something to think about, and she had plenty of time to think while the taxi driver told her a heart-wrenching story about the Christmas his great-aunt gave him a sweater she’d knitted with her own two hands, and on the day after Christmas, had passed on, leaving her memory behind in perfect cable stitch.

She gave him a generous tip when he dropped her at her high-rise in the Carl Sandburg Village in Old Town. When she stepped through the door, she found her apartment, as always, silent, warm, spotless and perfectly neat, just as it should be and would be, unless she drifted unknowingly into senility—still living in this apartment.

A grim resignation came over her as that thought went through her mind, but this wasn’t the time to attack and disarm it. She put her black leather briefcase on the desk in her home office off the kitchen, lining it up precisely beside the desk pad. Today’s mail went beneath the mail that had arrived while she was stoically enduring her vacation. First in, first out. That was the rule.

Go through mail.

Pay bills. Respond to invitations and requests.

Read and throw away or file everything else.

This list, an excerpt from one of her mother’s books, popped into her mind. No wonder the surprise encounter with Carter had thrown her completely off balance. She’d gotten in too late the night before—and had been too traumatized by warmth, sand and the mandate to relax—to follow her customary mail routine. A happy life, her mother asserted in every book, was a series of learned habits, or routines. And if you ever veered from one of your routines, it was the first step toward a downward slide into chaos and misery.

As always, her mother was right. She’d veered, her mental state was in chaos and she was miserable. So the mail would be her top priority after she finished her homecoming routine. No more veering.

As she slid a black leather glove into each pocket of her black cashmere coat, her gaze fell to the rectangular box on top of the stack. It was a complimentary copy of the latest Ellen Trent book. Just what she needed at the moment—a quick refresher course.

She hung the coat in the foyer closet, her black cashmere scarf tucked under the collar, and centered her black hat on the shelf directly above it. With her snow boots drying in a special snow-boot box just outside the front door of the apartment, she carried the black flannel bag that held her still-gleaming Soft ‘N’ Comfy pumps to her bedroom.

The pumps were black, too, as were the snow boots. Why didn’t she have anything—red?

It’s always best to stick to basic black in cold-weather climates and beige for warmer environments.

Another quote from a book of her mother’s. That explained it. It didn’t explain a peculiar knot of rebellion that rolled through Mallory from her scalp to her toes. She did have something red. Wine. She went straight to the kitchen and poured herself a glass, then went back to the office to start her mail routine.

She swished the wine around in the glass, admiring its color and examining its rim, sniffed it, analyzing its bouquet, then took a totally undiscriminating gulp. The warmth cascaded down her throat, startling her into staring at the glass in her hand, unable to imagine how it had gotten there. Wine and paperwork didn’t go together. Everybody knew that, at least everybody who preferred a balanced checkbook. See what she’d done? She’d veered again! What was wrong with her, anyway? Nothing a dose of her mother’s wisdom couldn’t cure. She ripped open the box that held the new book.

Efficient Travel From A to Z was its predictable title, and clipped to the front was a sheet of notepaper with her mother’s letterhead. The message was typed: Compliments of Ellen Trent.

None too warm and motherly. Inside was a letter, also typed, but a little more warm and motherly.

Dearest daughter:

This one’s a compilation of all my travel tips plus a few exciting new ideas! Hope they help you remember Ellen’s Golden Rule: Efficiency is the key to a happy life.

Mother

Not finding a hug anywhere in the message, unless “dearest” was meant to be one, Mallory scanned the table of contents: “Beauty in a Baggie,” “Carry On,” “Delete, That’s the Key”—these chapter titles sounded familiar and had probably appeared as articles in women’s magazines. But “Returning to Serenity,” which cleverly filled two alphabet slots, was new. Mallory opened to that chapter.

Leave your paperwork in order.

That was already tops on Mallory’s to-do list.

Don’t leave any dirty laundry behind.

Well, of course not. Her dry cleaner opened at seven. She’d drop off her resort clothes on the way to the plane tomorrow morning. The dry cleaner would charge an exhorbitant rate for washing and pressing her clothes, but she didn’t have time to do laundry in the basement of the apartment building, and rules were rules.

Clean your refrigerator thoroughly, and pay special attention to the crisper. A rotten vegetable will spoil your return to hearth and home.

No problem there. She hadn’t been home long enough to put anything in the crisper.

Check the expiration date of your perishables—boxed, canned, frozen and refrigerated foods and over-the-counter drugs—and throw away those items that will expire while you’re away.

Mallory stared at the page, briefly considering the possibility that her mother had at long last gone over the edge. But millions of women bought these books, women who pursued the same kind of happiness her mother enjoyed, that Mallory relied upon and took comfort from.

Give your itinerary to a close friend or family member.

This brought her up short. If she called her parents, the conversation would take hours. Her mother would put her through a verbal checklist, and they might get into a fight over the expiration date thing. She had friends. Close friends. The friends with whom she’d taken the St. John’s trip, for example, who’d stared at her in disbelief when she’d announced her intention to come home early. They’d tease her mercilessly if she told them she’d traded sun and sand for sin and sex with Carter Compton.

Her head jolted up from the book with a snap that almost left her with whiplash. She was going to New York on business, not to engage in sin and sex.

She suddenly remembered she had a brother in New York she could send her itinerary.

It wasn’t surprising she was just now remembering that Macon was in New York. Macon was the sort of person whose location was vague, not so much a brother as a cyber-brother. He communicated with the family by e-mail. He sent Internet birthday cards and gifts he’d ordered online. Occasionally he came home for Christmas, but more often, he spent the holiday monitoring some public or private computer system. Macon was a computer ace. He lived and breathed computers, had since he met a keyboard and experienced love at first byte.

From time to time, their parents took a notion to make sure he still existed in the flesh. After their last trip to New York, Mallory’s mother had reported that he was dressing better these days. But then, it was hard to believe he could be dressing any worse.

She dialed his number. Predictably, the phone rang once and a message came on. “Trent Computer Consultants,” Macon’s familiar voice droned. “I’m not here. E-mail me at macontrent, all one word, at trent dot com.”

“My brother the robot,” Mallory muttered.

Whose sister isn’t a woman, she’s a lawyer.

The similarity was too great. Getting up from the computer after e-mailing Macon to tell him they should get together in New York, she felt exhausted. She’d better pack before she found herself checking the expiration dates on the box of crackers and tin of smoked oysters she kept on hand as an emergency hors d’oeuvre. She turned to the chapter entitled “Carry On.” She didn’t really need to look at it. This chapter she knew by heart.

CARTER COMPTON WRAPPED his fingers around his most recent cup of coffee, took a sip and made a face. It was the worst coffee he’d ever tasted—okay, except for the last cup he’d made for himself. He’d had to resort to the vending machine in the basement, since the staff in the firm’s lounge had gone home hours ago.

He put down the cup and picked up his pen, flipping it back and forth between his fingers. He figured if he worked until nine, he could pick up a pizza on the way home, eat it while he packed and be in bed by ten. His secretary had ordered a car service to pick him up at six-thirty in the morning. That left no time to think. Just the way he liked it.

Something had caused an atmospheric disturbance today. He’d thought his atmosphere had become as dependable as the sunrise and no longer vulnerable to disturbance. Not being able to pin down what had caused it was more disturbing than the disturbance itself.

He had a feeling it was something about Mallory.

The Sensuous files on the Green case had occupied him for several hours. Mallory being all business, she’d probably want to discuss the case during the flight, and he wanted to sound as if he’d given it some thought.

His life was crawling with women, and here he was, trying to impress Mallory. He guessed he’d never feel secure enough about his professional expertise to get over the early days, when he’d had to pull out all the stops to change people’s impression of him.

He got up, stepped over to the big windows of his office and looked out at the glitter of Chicago. Christmas lights already. In the posh suburb of Kenilworth where he’d grown up, his parents had always had the biggest, most beautiful florist-decorated Christmas tree in the neighborhood, if you could call a tree that had a recognizable theme a Christmas tree, and if you could call the collection of huge houses on large acreages a neighborhood. Under that tree were mountains of presents, everything he wanted plus things he didn’t know he wanted. And, always, a tiny box from his father to his mother, containing a diamond slightly larger than the diamond he’d given her the year before.

He’d been a spoiled rich kid, an only child who didn’t know the meaning of rules. With every advantage life could offer, instead of making the most of them, he’d run wild. He’d lost his driver’s license twice for speeding, had totaled three sports cars—somehow, he couldn’t imagine how—without hurting anybody. He’d done enough damage to end up getting accused of things he hadn’t done. His parents had had to post bail for him when he was arrested for burglarizing a neighboring house. He hadn’t, but he couldn’t blame the police for suspecting him. Stealing and drugs were about the only two things he hadn’t experimented with.

Oh, yes. He’d never gotten a girl pregnant, which he saw as something of a miracle—the miracle being that his father had deposited a huge box of condoms on his dresser every Friday morning.

Good grades would only have ruined his high school reputation. He’d played football, but the coach was a diplomat used to dealing with the rich parents of spoiled rich kids, and as long as the team made a decent showing, he didn’t impose many rules, either.

So Carter had managed to get into Northwestern University in Evanston by playing football. There the coach had made him quit smoking, drinking, eating junk food and staying up all night with the cheerleader of his choice to prepare himself for the game the next day. But nobody found out how smart he was until he took the LSATs before applying to law school.

One look at his scores, and the University of Chicago Law School had snapped him up. What they didn’t know was that he didn’t know how to study, and that’s where Mallory had turned his life around. He couldn’t remember exactly how it had happened, just that he’d called her, admitted he was floundering and asked for her help. And she’d been his unofficial, unpaid tutor. He’d never even taken her out for dinner. He’d been afraid to ask.

Did she remember what a dolt he’d been?

Carter frowned. He’d better do a little more work, get familiar with the details, have a few intelligent questions to ask Mallory and, even better, a couple of intelligent comments to make. In short, he’d better get off this nostalgia trip and focus on the damned files.

THE PHONE RANG JUST as Mallory finished packing the flexible wardrobe her mother had been claiming for years would get a woman through anything for any length of time. True to form, when she finished, she actually had room to spare.

“Mallory? Carter,” said the caller.

It was like a tummy punch, that deep, warm voice. “Hi, Carter.” She kept hers cool as a waterfall. That was just how great an impact her mother’s books had on her. A short session with that practical, unromantic voice had returned her to her normal, sane self. She would be fine on this trip.

“I’m calling with a question,” he said. “Why pea-green? Why not just green?”

Mallory blinked. “Well—” She was confident there was a reason, but the sound of his voice, the very fact that he’d called, was making inroads on her normal, sane self. It was maddening. “There are numerous shades of green, lime-green, forest-green, Kelly-green…”

“Would you be less upset if your hair were lime-green instead of pea-green?”

“Um. No, I suppose not.”

“Then the use of ‘pea-green,’ which has a negative connotation, instead of just ‘green,’ which is more neutral, is a deliberate attempt on the part of the plaintiffs to make the green sound as disgusting as possible.” He sounded triumphant.

“But I just said it wouldn’t matter if—”

“Just something to think about. Okay. See you at the gate tomorrow.”

“Okay, I’ll—” But he wasn’t there anymore. It was the first time he’d called her since law school, and all he’d wanted was to discuss the impact of pea-green over plain green on a potential jury.

She whirled to stare at herself in the mirror. She might not be gorgeous, but why, exactly, didn’t her colleagues think of her as a woman? Forget the colleagues. Why hadn’t Carter ever seen her as a woman?

She had to admit she looked none too sexy with her teeth clenched together. She whirled back, and her gaze fell on her suitcase. She still had room. What could she take that was a little more exciting than black and more black and a touch of white?

With frantic fingertips she went through the sparse collection of clothes in her closet, wondering why she bothered. She knew what she owned. More black, more white, a small navy grouping and the thrill of one gray suit and one beige. No surprises were hiding in there.

It was too late to go shopping, but not too late to call her friend Carol the Consummate Clotheshorse down on the fifth floor. Carol had flown back early from St. John’s, too, for a reason their friends understood, to make a raid on Marshall Field’s post-Thanksgiving, pre-Christmas sales racks. She’d have something old she’d be willing to loan.

“Carol,” she began, “I’m going to New York.”

“Mallory the Jet-setter,” Carol said. “Didn’t know you had it in you.”

Mallory clenched her teeth. “It’s business,” she said crisply. “I was wondering if I might borrow one extra jacket from you.”

“Anything,” Carol said fervently. “If you’d wear something besides a suit and midheel orthopedic pumps, I’d give you rights to my whole closet. All my closets,” she corrected herself. “What kind of jacket did you have in mind?”

“Something that goes well with black,” Mallory said, floundering in the alternatives and also realizing this wasn’t the first time a friend had commented on her penchant for suits and dowdy shoes. It was just the first time it had upset her.

A dangerous thought ran through her mind. Herself in a low-necked, scarlet top, and Carter’s fingertips edging the cleavage, then dipping beneath the fabric…

She stammered the words out. “I was thinking…red.” There. She’d veered again. It was getting easier each time. Not processing her mail, then wine, now red.

“Ooh,” Carol said. “I’ve got a red jacket that would look great on you. I’ll bring it right up and hang it on your doorknob. I know you’re busy packing.”

Mallory was already having second thoughts, but a red jacket seemed like such a tiny veer that it hardly seemed worth worrying about. “Thanks, Carol. I’ll return the favor as soon as possible.”

“You can return it right now. Do you have any stamps?”

“Of course.” She had every staple of everyday life in bulk, just as the efficient woman should. “I’ll leave them on the foyer table. And Carol?”

“Um?”

“May I leave you a copy of my itinerary?”

“Sure. But you said New York. Just tell me where you’re staying.”

“The St. Regis,” Mallory said, “but there’s more information than that. Flight numbers, who to call just in case….”

“And the suit you’d like to be buried in,” Carol said with a sigh Mallory had also heard from more than one of her friends. “I’ll wait fifteen minutes before I bring up the jacket.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice had taken on a new tone. “You’re going to love this jacket.”

Did Carol’s voice have a sly edge, or was she imagining it? She hadn’t been imagining it, a fact she learned when she unhooked the red jacket from her doorknob.

Mallory looked it over, and then, dismayed, tried it on. Had she gained weight? She and Carol had always been the same size. But this jacket hugged her waist, pushed up her breasts and flared out over her hip-bones, ending much too soon to hide her rear end, which Mallory felt was the best reason to wear a jacket.

Carol had undoubtedly meant well, but Mallory was sure she could never bring herself to go out in public in this jacket. Still, she didn’t want to appear ungrateful. She folded it in the “Ellen Trent fold” and used it to fill the empty space in her roll-on bag. If this insane craving for red lasted, she’d buy a proper blazer in New York.

She closed her mother’s book and held it in her hand for a moment, then slid it into her suitcase. Having it with her would be like wearing garlic to ward off illness or holding a cross to shield herself from the devil.

The devil being Carter.

CARTER DRUMMED ON HIS desktop with the pen he held the same way he used to hold a cigarette. He’d thought the pea-green query had been a good question for Mallory, but he could tell from her hesitation that she’d thought it was a damned silly question and she would probably have said so if she weren’t such a well-brought-up girl.

She wasn’t a girl anymore. She was all woman.

Feeling as if he’d regressed ten years, he threw everything into his briefcase and went home to his Lake Shore Drive apartment. It was a mess. He was glad to be leaving it, and his cleaning service would deal with it before he got back. He’d forgotten to pick up the pizza and had to order one in. It didn’t arrive until he’d finished packing, so he ate it in bed while he watched the news. He reflected that he still had that spoiled rich kid inside him, and every now and then, he had to let him out.

Feeling that the smell of pepperoni might follow him all the days of his life, he picked a thread of mozzarella cheese off his favorite pillow, pounded it into a comfortable configuration and tried very hard to get a good night’s sleep.

Good luck. But exhaustion took over, and next thing he knew, he was at the airport waiting for Mallory.

So where the hell was she?

He’d arrived at the gate at a time he thought was a polite compromise between the airline’s ridiculous demands and the reality of the situation, but he’d been there fifteen minutes now with no sign of the woman.

Maybe she was there and ignoring him, the way she did at work parties where he’d caught an occasional glimpse of her but could never seem to catch up with her.

With more relief than he wanted to admit to, he saw her aiming toward him, tall, elegant, dressed all in black with that silver-blond hair swinging forward on her shoulders.

As far as he knew, it was her natural hair color, and he assumed that as she grew older, it would go gently from silver-blond to silver-gray. You would hardly notice. Especially since you hardly noticed Mallory in the first place.

He stood up, started to smile at her, then felt his eyebrows drawing together in a frown as he wondered why his heart had speeded up a little. He really had to cut down on the caffeine. He had so much adrenaline pumping through him all the time he didn’t need caffeine at all.

She was, in fact, a great-looking woman. The man across from him was giving her an appreciative gaze as she moved between them, pulling a roll-on briefcase behind her.

Damn. She’d checked her luggage. Collecting it would take an extra thirty minutes at LaGuardia. His frown deepened, but whether it was because of the luggage or the appreciative male he was suddenly unsure.

“Hi,” was all she said.

The word came through full lips of the palest pink, and her voice was rich and throaty. Something about it, or maybe it was the look that man across from him was giving her, made him put his arm around her, nothing more than a cocktail party-type hug, but his heart did an even more violent flip-flop. This was absurd. He removed his arm in a hurry and said, “Mallory. What kept you?”

He was thinking about talking to his doctor about that little aortic thing when she said, “You’re here so early! How can you work here? You must be able to focus better than I can. I always wait until the very last second to get to the gate, because…”

As the appreciative man finally dropped his gaze to his newspaper, Carter had a cooling memory of the reason he hadn’t tried to make love to her during their law school years. It was clear she didn’t want him to. Although her voice sounded a little breathless, it was probably from hurrying, because everything else about her said, “Don’t touch.”

“I just got here myself,” he said, and this time he managed a smile. “I guess you got held up checking bags.”

“No,” Mallory assured him. “This is it.” She gestured toward the roll-on, and her ice-pale hair swung forward on her shoulders in a perfect, shining arc.

Carter gazed at the bag with new curiosity. What did she have in there, freeze-dried outfits that expanded when dipped in water? He’d taken Diana to Acapulco last weekend—Diana and four matched pieces of tapestry-covered luggage—where he’d discovered that looking at beautifully dressed Diana was all he would ever care to do. A wasted weekend, and he had so few free ones.

“Planning a shopping spree?” he asked Mallory.

With a single glance through blue-green eyes as ice-pale as her hair and lipstick, she made him feel like the worst and most odious of male chauvinists. “Of course not. I’m going to New York to work, not shop.”

Was she always that way? Or just with him? That made her the only woman in the world who was like that with him.

“Welcome to United Airlines flight four-oh-three,” an agent piped up. “We are now boarding First Class and Premier members.”

Carter chewed on his lower lip while they joined the line to board. He was afraid he knew why Mallory acted this way with him, and it didn’t bode well for their working relationship, which, he could easily see, was the only kind of relationship she cared to have with him.

But with so many other women in the world, why should he care?

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