Текст книги "Mistletoe over Manhattan"

Автор книги: Barbara Daly

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 11 (всего у книги 11 страниц)

“I started it,” Carter said abruptly.

Mallory swiveled her head to stare at him.

“I asked Bill to appoint you to the case.”

From the distance came the whir of a coffee grinder, but Mallory’s gasp was the only sound in the room.

“Why?” she said finally.

The gaze from his dark blue eyes was full of pain as it locked with hers. “Because I trusted you, for one thing. But the other thing, well, I wanted to show you I’d grown up. Prove to you I was a good lawyer. No, a great lawyer. A man you could respect.”

“But I’ve always respected you,” Mallory whispered. “All those years ago, I respected you for not giving up. You were always so smart, smart in ways I wasn’t. But nobody ever expected good grades out of you, so you’d never learned to study. That’s all I did for you, really, was show you that you could succeed.”

“Whoa,” Maybelle said. “Minute ago Mallory was about to say why she wanted you to see her as a woman. So. Why?”

Under Maybelle’s compelling stare Mallory knew the moment of truth had arrived. “Because I think, even way back then in law school, that’s what I really wanted.”

“You did a great job of hiding it,” Carter said suddenly. His voice was a fierce growl.

“I know.” She tried to shrink her voice, tried to pretend she was hardly there. “I was afraid you’d reject me. Every woman I knew wanted you. Why would you ever choose me?” She sneaked a peek at him. The fierceness was fading from his expression, which gave her the courage to add, “All I meant to do here in New York was, well, stop hiding it.”

“An’, Carter,” Maybelle went on inexorably as if the tension in the room wasn’t already close to explosive, “why’d y’all care what Mallory thought of you?”

“I guess it had always been a sore point thinking she saw me as a dumb jock who couldn’t have made it through law school without her,” he mumbled. Now his eyes were downcast.

“But why was it a sore point? Come on, Carter, am I gonna have to get out my sledgehammer?” Maybelle’s voice rose sharply.

“Because…” Now he sounded a little desperate. “Because I…”

“Keep goin’ hon,” Maybelle said. “You’ll get there evenshully.”

“Because I… liked her.”

“You did?” Some sensation flooded through Mallory-either relief, or building desire, or maybe it was just that simple affection she’d felt that afternoon in New York when all he was doing was getting into a football game.

Out of the corner of her eye, Mallory saw Kevin quietly leave the room. She was focused on Carter, though, who was giving her a defensive look and shifting uncomfortably in his chair. “Yes, I did,” he said.

“I wish I’d known,” Mallory said. “All I knew-” she was embarrassed to feel tears rising into her throat “-was that I was the only woman in law school you never came on to. Even when we spent the night alone in your apartment.”

“‘Scuse me,” she barely heard Maybelle say.

“I wanted to kiss you that night,” he said, and she saw the beginnings of a crooked smile, “but I didn’t think you wanted me to, and I was trying to act like one of the good guys.”

Mallory got up, tired of this side-by-side conversation when the things she had to say were the most important things she would ever say in her whole life. Carter got up, too, looking appealingly nervous. “Carter,” she said gently, “if you’d kissed me that night, I would have made love with you right there on the desk on top of Roev. Wade.”

Now he seemed stunned. “You would have?”

Mallory sighed. “Probably not. I probably would have filed Roe v. Wade first, in a file labeled Roe v. Wade.”

They gazed at each other for a long, long moment, suddenly aware they were alone in the room now.

Carter said, “I could have handled that.” He moved close to her, folding his arms around her, holding her tight, his face buried in that sensitive spot just under her ear. “I could probably have handled it if you’d checked the expiration date on my condoms first.” She jolted in his arms. “Oh, Mallory,” he said, “can we start over now that we have full disclosure?”

“No way.” She searched for his mouth with hers. “It was too tough the first time around. Let’s call that the cross-examination. Now we make our closing statements.” She found his mouth at last, or he found hers. Who knew, who cared? All that mattered was that they’d found each other.

“Let’s talk settlement,” Carter said to Phoebe when they’d trapped her in her office Monday morning. “We’re going to trial.”

“Phoebe, I’ve done a lot of research on these kinds of lawsuits and going to trial is a big gamble,” Mallory said. “Even when the plaintiffs win, they often don’t win enough to make them happy.”

“Settlement is in your clients’ best interests and in yours,” Carter added. “That was the judge’s opinion after reviewing the items of evidence and reading through the court reporter’s transcript to date. You were there. You heard him.”

Phoebe’s lips tightened. “You don’t understand. I have to go to trial. I have to win. I have to prove…” She stared at the wall behind Mallory and Carter where the portrait of her father hung.

“You don’t have to prove anything to your father,” Mallory said quietly.

“How would you know anything about my father and what I do or do not have to-”

“Because I have a mother. Have you ever heard of Ellen Trent?”

“Everybody’s heard of Ellen Trent. Martha Stewart minus the charm.”

Mallory winced. “The very same.”

“She’s your mother.”

“Yes.”

“If you settled a case when she’d told you to hold out for trial-”

“She’d disown me.”

“And you wouldn’t care.”

“I’d care. But I’d still do what I knew was right.”

Under the apron of the desk, Mallory crossed her fingers.

“In fact,” Carter said, “you don’t have to work with your father.”

Phoebe’s olive skin paled, but with her remaining bravado, she said, “Of course I don’t have to. I work with him because-”

“You work with him because he convinced you you’d never get a job anywhere else.”

“He did not!”

“Not in so many words.”

She crumpled. “I guess he did.”

“He’s wrong,” Carter said. “You’re good at your work. Terrific at your work.” He smiled broadly. “Look what you put us through.”

“You really think-”

“I absolutely know. I would be more than happy to write a letter of recommendation to my firm on your behalf-”

Mallory kicked him.

He gave her a look. “-for a position at the San Francisco branch of Rendell and Renfro,” he said distinctly, still looking at Mallory. “I hear they’re looking for a couple of experienced and super-sharp lawyers.”

Mallory held her breath through a lengthy silence. At last, with a look of steely determination in her eyes, Phoebe said, “Okay, what’s your offer?”

Mallory swallowed the whoosh of air that emerged involuntarily from her lungs. Carter handed Phoebe several stapled sheets of paper. “This is a summary of the offer. The full document is being prepared right now and you’ll have it by this afternoon.”

“As you can see,” Carter went on, not sounding at all like a man who’d been up all night working on that document, “we’re offering restitution in the amount of damages, doubled. You get half, the client gets half.”

Phoebe nodded, then looked up. “What in the world is this bit about a demo tape?”

“We looked over the transcript and observed that a majority of your clients had aspirations such as show business or modeling. Not surprising in New York, when you think of it.”

Phoebe nodded.

“Sensuous is offering each interested client the opportunity to have a demo tape made. It will be professionally filmed and directed, something Kevin’s agent can use to get auditions for him, something Mrs. Ross can use to get an agent for little…”

Mallory supplied him with the baby’s name, which she remembered from the interrogatories.

Carter’s head swiveled toward her. “Desiree? Did she really name that baby Desiree?”

“Carter…” She hummed a warning.

He cleared his throat. “Little Desiree,” he said calmly. “God bless her.”

Phoebe was quiet again, reading. “I’ll take this offer to my clients and see what they think of it.” She granted them a slight smile, her gaze going back and forth between them. “Maybe you’ll have more than one thing to celebrate before you go home for Christmas.”

“Could we have our own private Christmas tonight?” Carter asked her during the walk back to the hotel.

They were both dragging along, tired but victorious, clinging to the good feeling that they’d done their best and everybody had won. “I’m not up to a huge celebration,” Mallory said, proving her point with a huge yawn, “but a little champagne around the tree would be nice. It’s our last night in the suite,” she added with heartfelt regret. “Home to Chicago tomorrow. The first thing I’ll have to do is go through the mail-”

“The first thing you have to do is spend the night in my apartment,” Carter instructed her.

“Okay. That way I won’t feel as if I’ve actually gotten any mail.”

“And we won’t mess up your apartment.”

“Good point.”

“Then it’s my parents for Christmas Day,” Carter said.

“After mine for Christmas Eve.” She’d thought that of the two options, her mother’s frozen oyster stew on Christmas Eve would be preferable to her frozen turkey on the day itself. “Try not to scatter anything around while you’re there,” she said. “And remember, no shoes in the house, and after you shower, you’re supposed to wipe down the tile.”

“I’ll be on my best behavior,” he promised. “Don’t you think your mother will be flattered that I read her book?”

“Until you tell her what you thought about it,” Mallory said.

“I would never! Would I ever?” he protested. “Will I get to meet the invisible Macon?”

They’d spent a lot of time the day before just getting to know each other, telling childhood stories, discussing their parents’ eccentricities. Mallory laughed. “He finally answered my last e-mail this morning. He was doing a top secret job in Pennsylvania, where he met a woman who’d never laid fingertips on a computer-”

“No!” Carter said.

“But she has now.” She glanced up at him. “There’s a possibility, a strong possibility, that she might come to Chicago with him. Carter, I think the Trent kids have finally grown up.”

Carter looked thoughtful for a minute, then turned his heart-stopping smile on her. “So has the Compton kid.”

“And beautifully, I must say,” Mallory said. They reached the suite. “I’m going to slip into something more comfortable,” she told him.

“How about bed?”

“Champagne around the tree, remember?”

She came back wearing her pink gown and robe, carrying the box with Carter’s shirt inside, and noticed that he was sitting on the sofa holding an identical gift box. She stopped short. “When did you buy me a present?”

“Saturday.”

“You couldn’t have Saturday. We came right home after-”

“I bought it before we met at Maybelle’s,” he said, standing up to take her in his arms.

She clasped her hands around his neck. “I bought yours that first day at Bloomingdale’s,” she said, one-upping him quite nicely, she thought.

He smiled at her. “Never said you weren’t smarter than I am. Let’s open them now.”

“Just like a kid,” she teased.

“Yeah, because I think I know what mine is.” He ripped open the package and pulled out the striped shirt. “How can I afford you if you’re going to buy me designer shirts?” he grumbled.

She could tell he was pleased, but her attention was focused on the champagne-colored dress she’d pulled out of its box. It was exquisite, slender and clingy, and if she were not badly mistaken, it matched her hair exactly. “Carter, it’s beautiful,” she breathed.

“So are you.” He took her in his arms. “You were beautiful in those sweaters you used to wear in law school, the great big ones that hung down almost to your knees.”

“Oh, no, I wasn’t.”

“I didn’t say sexy.” When she tried to pummel him in the stomach, he said, “But I-”

She stopped trying to pummel him and looked up into his eyes. “Liked me anyway?” she whispered.

“Loved you anyway,” he said against her cheek.

His kiss left her breathless. “We can try on our new clothes in the morning.”

“At the earliest.”

Still she struggled a little in his arms. “We really should call Maybelle and tell her what happened today.” She drew back to look at him pointedly. “I think we’d better do it now, if you intend to kiss me like that again.”

“You dial. I’ll pour champagne.”

She dialed. The telephone rang three times, after which a recorded message came on. “You have reached the offices of Events by Ewing, razzle-dazzle parties in no time flat. Ms. Ewing can be reached during regular office hours, which are…”

Stunned, she put down the phone. “Event planner,” she muttered.

“Aw, Mallory,” Carter said plaintively, handing her a glass of pale bubbles, “do we have to have that kind of wedding? The kind you get an event planner for? I thought you were going to call Maybelle.”

“We drove her out of business,” Mallory said. “Strongest woman I’ve ever known and we ended her career.”

“What are you talking about?”

When would she stop falling in love with him all over again every time she looked at him? Never, probably. All of a sudden she realized he’d said the magic words. He’d said love, and he’d said wedding. She put down her glass, threw her arms around him and said, “Don’t bother your pretty head about it. I’ll explain it to you in the morning, darling.”