Mistletoe Over Manhattan. Barbara Daly

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