Текст книги "Mistletoe over Manhattan"
Автор книги: Barbara Daly
сообщить о нарушении
Текущая страница: 3 (всего у книги 11 страниц)
Her head spun. She was going crazy.
She couldn’t go crazy. Trents coped; they did not go crazy. What in the world was wrong with her?
She counted to ten really, really fast. “I’m fine and the room arrangement is fine,” she said smoothly. “It will be convenient for working late on the case.”
“It’ll be just like being back in law school, studying together all night,” Carter said.
With a sinking feeling, she realized how desperately she didn’t want it to be anything like those nights of all work and no play.
“Here are your keys,” said the clerk. “The porter will be up with your bags in a minute.”
“Honeymooners?” the porter asked, settling Carter’s bag on a luggage rack in one of the bedrooms of a suite that was probably larger than most New York apartments. He winked at Carter.
“Professional colleagues,” Carter growled, flexing his biceps. He leaned toward the man. “Legal counsel to the National Rifle Association,” he improvised.
“Oh, sorry,” the porter said hurriedly. “Um, I’ll show you around the place. Now here you have your thermostat…”
At that moment Mallory stepped out of her room to put her laptop down on a desk in the living area. She’d shed her jacket and was wearing a sleeveless black top tucked into her black trousers. The trousers were loose and pleated, but they fit her just great, Carter thought unexpectedly. And she had really pretty arms. Touchable arms. Arms to slide your hands up and down.
Carter noticed that the porter was looking at Mallory, too, and his spiel had trailed off. He whipped his gaze away from Mallory and onto the man again.
“And,” the porter squeaked, “here you have your kitchen.”
His voice warbled on. Carter actually looked at the place. He’d expected a living room in the middle and a bedroom on each side, a standard suite. Instead, there were hallways, arches and hidden entrances.
The porter, who had been in the small kitchen nervously flicking switches off and on, reappeared in the living room babbling, “…laundry service and shoe-shine service. Just put your shoes outside the door at night and they’ll be there in the morning, all shined up. Fitness center’s in the basement. Business center’s on the second floor…”
The suite was decorated in flowered stuff and velvet and Oriental rugs and crystal chandeliers. It was a home away from home-not as big as his home, but a hell of a lot neater without his stuff scattered all over it.
He was going to be shut up in here for a whole lot of nights with a woman he’d just discovered was a lot prettier and a lot sexier than he’d remembered. The stab of heat that inflamed his groin startled him. Respect was what he wanted from Mallory, and he sure wasn’t going to get it if he tried to jump her bones.
“…room service twenty-four hours a day,” the porter finished up. “Never have to leave the place if you don’t want to.”
At Carter’s sharp look, he said, “But of course you’ll want to, and the St. Regis offers the finest dining in New York. There’s the five-star restaurant on the…”
Carter whipped out a bill and thrust it toward him.
“Oh, no need, sir,” the man said, wiping sweat off his forehead. “It was my pleasure. May I get you some ice? Extra towels?”
Carter tucked the bill in the porter’s breast pocket. “Leaving would be a good idea,” he said.
With numerous muttered “yessirs” the man backed out of the room.
“What did you do to that poor man?” Mallory said, sticking her head out the door of her room.
“I threatened to shoot him with an unregistered gun,” Carter said.
“What?”
“Nothing. Just kidding.” He dusted his hands together. “Want some lunch?”
“No, thank you. I filled up on the plane.” She looked thoughtful. “It wasn’t good, but it was enough.”
“Yeah…” He was feeling thoughtful, too. “You won’t mind having dinner alone, will you? I made some dates, women I’ve known for a while, thought they’d be hurt if I didn’t give them a call. Athena tonight and Brie tomorrow night for starters.”
“And Calpurnia Thursday night? What’s your plan, to start with A and work through the alphabet?” She made herself smile as if she were teasing.
His face reddened. “Um, yes.”
“Maybe we’ll settle before you get to Zelda.” She might have known. Carter would spend his days working hard, but at night he’d be messing around with women named Athena and Brie. Had she actually been hoping he’d ask her to have dinner with him? Otherwise, where did this stab of disappointment come from? “Of course I don’t mind,” she lied. “This arrangement mustn’t make either of us feel we have to spend any time together socially.”
“I didn’t mean… I mean… I didn’t…”
“In fact, I have plans tonight, too,” she said. While you cavort with Athena, I’ll have weird food with my weird brother. The last time she saw Macon, he’d been into Tibetan cuisine. He’d read about it on the Internet.
“You’re going out?”
“Yes. And I’ll be going out other nights, too. So don’t think I’m going to cramp your style. We’re here to work together,” she summed up.
It seemed to stop him cold, which was fine with her, because she’d gone cold all over with a sudden sense of purpose that was building up inside her and had nothing whatever to do with the Green case.
She spun on one heel and went back into her room. Dialing Macon’s number netted her the same advice she’d gotten from his message the night before-send him an e-mail. Muttering under her breath, she opened her door, and as Carter was apparently in his room unpacking, she retrieved her laptop from the desk, plugged it into the phone line in her room and opened her e-mail.
Sure enough, there was a message from Macon: “dear malloryi’m not in new york right now i’m in Pennsylvania sorry we’ll get together another time,” it said.
No caps, no punctuation and he didn’t sign it. He didn’t feel a need to sign an e-mail when his entire name was in his address.
So Macon wouldn’t be around to provide her with a reason for going out at night, or a means to compete with Carter for the “Most Active Nightlife” award. She stabbed at the reply key. “Dearest and only brother Macon: Where in Pennsylvania? What are you doing in Pennsylvania? Has it ever occurred to you that the country might use up its entire energy supply and without electricity you would simply vanish from our lives? Our cherished son and brother, lost in cyberspace. We would miss your e-mails, Macon, we truly would. Much love, your sister Mallory.”
It would make him crazy-if he even saw the irony. She was in the middle of a deep sigh when Carter’s voice boomed out of nowhere. “Mallory!” he shouted through her closed door.
“What!”
“I forgot to pack any socks.”
She stared at the door for a minute. “I don’t knit.”
She heard a sound not unlike the snort of a bull as he paws the soil of the ring. Tough. If he’d read her mother’s books he wouldn’t have forgotten socks. She’d lend him her autographed copy.
“This is your excuse to do the loafers-no-socks thing. Of course-” she looked out the window at the bleak, gray day, at the smattering of snowflakes whitening the air, then opened the door so they wouldn’t have to keep yelling at each other “-you might get frostbite and your toes would turn black and fall off. But that would cut down on your shoe size, although walking without toes might feel really odd-”
“I’m going up to Bloomingdale’s to buy socks.” His mouth already looked frostbitten. “I was just wondering if you’d forgotten anything and wanted to go with me.”
It was her turn to be stopped cold, but she wasn’t cold, she was a little bit too warm all of a sudden. “Oh. Thanks. I-” Of course I haven’t forgotten anything. I never forget anything. When you’ve made a proper list… “Sure,” she said. “I’ll come along. I might find a Christmas present or two in the men’s department.” A present a day keeps the panic away.
No longer simply warm, she was burning up. Actually panting. Carter had asked her out.
He asked you to go to Bloomingdale’s. Chill.
For the first time, it occurred to her that she was no less socially impaired than her brother was. Must have been some influence from their childhood. On the other hand, they had a handle on organization and efficiency few people could claim to have. Except that she was beginning to wonder if it was anything to boast about.
Fifteen minutes later Carter was randomly collecting socks from the sizeable collection in Bloomingdale’s Men’s First Floor Shop. Calf-length wool, patterned, whatever seemed to strike his fancy. Not a thought to matching socks which could be paired up later as they began to wear out. Mallory kept an eye on him while she chose between a black cashmere turtleneck sweater and a beige V-necked for Macon.
When she glanced back at Carter, he had built a wobbly tower of socks near the cash register. She couldn’t stand it anymore. To give herself a legitimate reason to go to the cash register herself, she grabbed a sweater without looking at it and scurried over to plead her case.
“Carter?”
“Hmm? Seven, eight, nine…”
“Will that be all, miss?” A nattily dressed young clerk materialized and took the sweater from her grasp.
“Yes. Thanks,” she said absently, and slid her single credit card out of its special slot in her handbag.
“Carter,” she said again, “if I may make a suggestion, you really only need one more pair.” As he wrestled for control of his sock pile, she imagined him saying, “Gosh, I never thought of that,” and his smile would warm as he saw her in a whole new light-a womanly caretaker.
Socks clenched in his fist, he paused, turned, gazed at her. His smile didn’t warm, though, and the salesman who was helping him looked positively venomous when he looked at her, “As I see it, I need a dozen.”
“No, you don’t, not if you wash out a pair every night.”
His gaze intensified and his words slowed. “Why would I want to do that?”
“Because it’s-” She floundered. “It’s more efficient. You won’t have to take all those socks back in your suitcase. You won’t have to store all those extra socks at home. And if you’d buy matching socks, you could make up new pairs when one sock gets a hole in it.”
“But I’d have to wash socks every night.” He seemed closer to her than he had been a second ago, and the words were puffs of breath against her cheek.
She had to force herself to maintain eye contact. “Yes, you would.”
“If I buy a dozen, when I get down to four pairs I’ll send out to the hotel laundry.”
His voice vibrated down her spine as he moved another half step closer. It wasn’t the direction she’d intended the conversation to take, but she didn’t want it to end. “Compare the cost,” she said after a deep, hard swallow, “of a dozen pairs of socks plus laundry fees against one pair you have to wash out.” She felt like a sock in the wash herself, agitating in the dark blue of his eyes.
“I change when I go out at night. That means I’d have to wash two pairs every night.”
“Well, yes.”
“What if they don’t get dry by morning?”
Now his face loomed directly over hers. A compelling face, a face she was afraid she would begin to see in her dreams, a face she’d like to simply reach up and kiss. Even as she felt her lips swell in anticipation, she heard herself say, “They will if you wring them out properly and pat most of the moisture out of them by wrapping them in a towel, but if you’re that worried about it, maybe you need three pairs.”
He stared at her for a long, long moment, his eyes melting her, his mouth an easily bridgeable inch from hers-then turned away. “Ring ‘em up,” he said to the salesman.
The kiss-op had ended and might never come back again. Mallory’s spine felt like a single strand of angel-hair pasta. Carter’s salesman gave Mallory a triumphant sneer. Out of the corner of her eye she saw her own salesman placing a burnt-orange sweater with blue diagonal stripes into a gift box. The sight of it stunned her. How had she managed to pick up that sweater? It looked like a University of Illinois pep squad uniform. Macon had been an undergraduate there, but he’d practically lived in the computer lab. He probably didn’t know what a pep squad was. Had he even been aware there was a football team? He’d think she’d lost her mind.
Which was too true. Not only that, she’d blown it again with Carter. She didn’t have a clue how to make him see her as a woman.
While she signed the sales slip for Macon’s Amazing Christmas Surprise, Carter strolled off with his Big Brown Bag of socks. She wondered why his mother hadn’t taught him a few basic things about packing for trips. Maybe he had a mother who knew other things, like which aria belonged to which opera. Still, sometime before Christmas she’d definitely slip him her copy of her mother’s book.
Somehow she couldn’t imagine Carter reading her mother’s book. She couldn’t imagine Carter going out with a woman who read her mother’s books. This… this Athena person probably read-labels.
She could feel her mood darkening as rapidly as the afternoon sky. When she caught up with Carter at a display of hideously expensive shirts, his liveliness depressed her.
“My God, can you believe what people pay for stuff?” His gaze returned briefly to a last look at a navy-and-white-striped shirt with white collar and cuffs. “I did, too, once. I was twenty-five before I found out you could order a shirt from Lands’ End for forty bucks that looks exactly like this one.” He glanced at her. “All through here?”
“Yes,” Mallory said, wondering if he knew the stripes in the shirt matched his eyes. He’d look great in it.
“What about a little Christmas cheer before we leave?”
“A drink?” At this hour?
“No, I meant go up to the Christmas floor. I like Christmas. You like Christmas?”
“Yes, of course.” She felt embarrassed. Just because Carter forgot socks didn’t mean he’d drink before five o’clock Central Standard Time.
She would have taken the elevator. He whisked her onto the escalator. “This will take longer,” she couldn’t help saying.
“We’ll see more.”
He was clearly not trainable. Just gorgeous, warm, utterly desirable…
“You’d look good in that dress.”
She nearly decapitated herself leaning out over the escalator railing to see it. It was champagne-colored, clingy-and out of sight. “Umm,” she said, and they continued upward, past sports clothes and more sports clothes, towels and sheets, china and silver, at last reaching a floor that smelled of bayberry and spice and glittered with heavily decorated trees.
They strolled through this fantasy land, Carter apparently enjoying himself, while Mallory tried not to think of the time they were wasting. Carter bought an ornament. Mallory rolled her eyes heavenward when she saw the price. While she was looking up, she noticed the balls of mistletoe hanging in each doorway. That’s what she’d like to buy. She’d hang it in the doorway to her bedroom. Next time he yelled, “Mallory!” because he’d forgotten something, she’d open the door, stand directly under it and-
“Santa Claus is in the next room. Come on.”
She had a crick in her neck. Rubbing it out, she followed him dumbly to the store Santa Claus who spied them and said, “Ho-ho-ho,” in a thin, lonely sounding voice. The photographer sat in the store-fixture sleigh, hunched over an F-Stop magazine. It was a large room filled with shoppers, adults who seemed not to notice Santa as they grabbed up wrapping papers and ribbons, ornaments by the dozen.
“He’s not getting much business,” Carter whispered.
“I guess the kids are still in school. Or day care.” Mallory glanced at her watch. “They have to wait until their parents come home from work to visit Santa.” She was still obsessing on mistletoe.
Carter nodded, but said, “I feel sorry for him.” He hesitated, then said, “Sit on his lap. Tell him what you want for Christmas.” His hand nudged her elbow along.
“No, no,” Mallory protested. “Don’t be silly. Of course I’m not going to-”
“I dare you.” A gleam in his dark blue eyes issued a challenge, but something else lay behind it-the certainty she’d refuse.
Could she rise to the challenge? Humiliate herself by doing something completely out of character?
It would certainly get Carter’s attention, wouldn’t it, and wasn’t that what she wanted?
Without another thought, she made a beeline for Santa and perched herself on his lap. Behind her, she heard the most satisfying sound in the world, a sharp gasp of surprise from Carter. Once she was on Santa’s red velour knees and could spin around to see a small and amused audience gathering, she saw he looked uneasy.
Good. Let him feel uneasy for once in his disgustingly self-confident life.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa Claus said. “Well, have you been a good little girl this year?”
“Entirely too good,” Mallory said, “which may be my problem…” She stopped short, realizing this wasn’t a therapy session.
“Ho, ho, ho,” Santa said, shifting a little in his tapestry wing chair. “So what does this very good little girl want for Christmas?”
Mallory let her gaze wander back to Carter. The group gathered around him was larger now, and he seemed edgy. Edgy but sexier than ever with his arms crossed over his broad chest and a slight frown drawing his dark eyebrows down in the middle and up at the ends.
She suddenly knew what she wanted. She knew with a confidence every bit as disgusting as Carter’s. By Christmas, she would make him see her as a woman, a feminine, desirable, irresistible woman, or die trying.
“I want him,” she whispered in Santa’s ear. “I want Carter for Christmas.”
4
Asshe sat on Santa’s lap, a hot flush of humiliation climbing her face, the last thing Mallory expected to hear Santa say was “Him? Ooh. I can’t blame you.”
It was not a Santa-like thing to say. Mallory took a close look into his appropriately blue eyes.
“Ho, ho, ho,” he boomed suddenly, then threw her off balance again by whispering, “You mentioned a problem. So what’s the problem? You’re a dish, he’s a hunk, you’re both single, I presume. And straight.” He sighed.
It was not a Santa-like sigh. “I’m not a dish,” Mallory said, giving him another close look.
“Please don’t report me,” Santa said. “I shouldn’t have said ‘dish.’ I know better. Santa Claus is politically correct.”
“Oh, think nothing of it,” Mallory assured him, realizing he was a New York Santa, not a Midwestern Santa, and she should be sophisticated enough to adjust to slight differences in mannerisms. “I meant I’m not beautiful or sexy or any of the things I need to be to attract him.” She crooked her neck in Carter’s direction.
“Who says?” Santa’s eyes got very big behind his silver-rimmed spectacles.
“I says. I mean, I know I’m not.” The more whispering she and Santa did, the deeper Carter’s frown became. “My boss says I’m not. He-” this time she sent her thumb in Carter’s direction “-treats me like I’m not. So I’m not. I’m frumpy and dull and when he looks at me, he sees a-a law book.”
“Sounds like Santa needs to give him glasses for Christmas,” Santa muttered.
“No, Santa needs to give me-” she stopped and thought for a second “-a whole new image,” she finally got out. “I want to turn into a sex goddess.”
“By Christmas.”
“That’s my target date.”
“This is so serendipitous,” Santa breathed. “If it were in a book, nobody would believe it.”
“Believe what?” He wasn’t merely a New York Santa. He was truly a very odd Santa.
“That you need help and I know exactly where to send you to get it.” He darted a glance at the growing crowd, and apparently motivated by Carter’s thunderous expression, almost knocked Mallory off his lap with his next hearty “Ho-ho-ho.” Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out a peppermint and a card. “Call this number,” he whispered, then shouted enthusiastically, “Merry Christmas.”
Deafened by the sound, Mallory tucked the card into the breast pocket of her jacket and slid off his padded lap. If a department store Santa Claus had just referred her to a psychiatrist, that would be absolutely the last straw.
On the way back to the hotel, Carter was unusually silent. Not that Mallory could have heard him if he’d been chatting companionably away. They’d emerged from Bloomingdale’s to find the streets jammed with honking cars and the sidewalks packed with shoppers. Their Brown Bags jostled with Saks Fifth Avenue red ones, Bergdorf Goodman’s handsome navy totes, Lord & Taylor white ones printed in red script, Gucci, FAO Schwartz and Sony bags.
Through narrowed eyes she caught the glances women sent toward Carter as he effortlessly cut a path through the crowd, snowflakes dusting his navy overcoat and dark hair, while Mallory struggled to keep up with him. From time to time she peeked into her own Medium Brown Bag at the gift box that held Macon’s sweater. Burnt orange. Blue stripes. A shudder passed through her. While she’d inherited her mother’s Nordic blondness, Macon took after their father, a symphony in browns, chestnut hair, interesting amber eyes, olive skin. The pale beige V-necked sweater would have been perfect for him. What was he going to do with a-Save receipts at least three months. File them under Appliances, Gifts, Services and Personal. You never know when you may have to return an inappropriate gift or faulty appliance, or demand that a job done poorly be done over.
Ellen Trent again. One of her major rules for a well-run life. Until that thought popped into Mallory’s mind, her first priority had been to look at the business card Santa had slipped her. Now the worry that she might have forgotten her receipt took precedence.
Surreptitiously she began to grope around in the bag. When Carter cast a glance in her direction, she suspended her search, then resumed it when he wasn’t looking. She didn’t want him to know she was obsessing over a receipt, didn’t want him to know she’d been rattled enough to buy a sweater she was already thinking of returning.
At last she thrust her hand all the way down to the bottom of the bag where her gloved fingertips snagged a loose corner of paper and tugged on it.
The receipt. She glanced at it, gasped and came to a dead halt at the corner of Fifty-ninth Street. The crowd rear-ended her, righted itself, then divided like the Red Sea, casting nasty looks at her as they swarmed around her. Carter, who’d been turning the coiner, cut himself out of the pack and fought his way back in her direction.
“What happened? Whoa. Where are you going?” he said as she whirled.
“Back to Bloomingdale’s,” she said.
He contemplated her for a moment. “You have a thing for Santa Claus, huh?”
The snowflakes that whirled through the air swarmed on her eyelashes, and she blinked hard to clear them. When she saw his gaze riveted on them, she batted them again, more deliberately this time. “Maybe,” she said.
His jaw tightened. “I’ll see you back at the hotel.”
“You may have gone out with Athena by the time I get back, so-”
“Who? Oh. Athena.”
“So we should decide now on a time to meet in the morning.”
“We’re due at Phoebe Angell’s office at nine. What about going down to breakfast at seven-thirty.” It wasn’t a question.
“I’ll be ready. You’ll be home by then?” she said, and it was a question.
He gazed at her for a moment before he said, “Maybe,” and with a slight wave, joined the lemmings swimming east toward the St. Regis on Fifth Avenue.
Jostled by the annoyed shoppers who stepped around her, she watched him go, standing tall in the crowd, the wind rustling his crisp, dark hair, his step sure and purposeful. No wonder she’d just paid $425-plus tax, when she could have saved the tax by having it shipped-for the ugliest sweater in the universe. Proximity to Carter made it difficult to remember anything, even how to spend money wisely.
Everyone should have a budget and stick to it. Financial worries reduce one’s efficiency and-
“Shut up, Mother,” Mallory muttered, and charged through the crowd toward Bloomie’s.
“My faith in mankind is restored,” said the clerk when she returned the sweater. She watched him pluck it up with two fingers and put it aside, a look of distaste on his face. “Good decision.” Stepping out of the men’s department, her pace slowed. She really didn’t want to go back to the suite. Listening through a closed door to Carter getting ready for his date with Athena would be depressing. Pretending to get ready for an imaginary date of her own would be even more depressing.
Slowly she pulled the card Santa had given her out of her pocket. “M. Ewing,” it said. “ImageMakers.” Below that, in both quotes and italics, it said, “A new you in no time flat.”
Mallory drew her brows together. The words were engraved on heavy, expensive card stock. The address was one on the Upper East Side, a high-rent district. “A new you in no time flat” was a jarring addition to the otherwise elegant presentation of the card. “Be the person you want to be,” maybe, or “Realize your personal potential.” Something like that would have sounded more appropriate.
Still, this person claimed to be an imagemaker and came personally recommended by Santa Claus himself. Mallory knew what an imagemaker did. Was that what she needed? Somebody to help her show the world outside she was a woman-a passionate woman?
Forget the world outside. Her sights were fixed on one person in the world. She had her target date and her target victim. Damn straight an overnight imagemaker was what she needed. If M. Ewing turned out to be a charlatan, she’d be out-what? A few hundred dollars? Which she’d just saved by returning the sweater. Without another minute’s consideration, she darted into a small nook devoted to a display of Chanel handbags in their leathery, unaffordable splendor. Ignoring the scornful gaze of the woman behind the counter-an armed guard, probably, given the cost of these handbags-she dialed the number listed on the card.
“ImageMakers,” purred a smooth male voice. “Richard Gifford speaking. May I help you?”
The voice went with the card. The address went with the card. The only thing that didn’t go with the card was that “A new you in no time flat.”
“I’d like an appointment.” Mallory’s tone matched this Richard person’s in cool professionalism. “That is, if Mr. or Ms. Ewing sees clients in the evenings, because I’m only available then.”
“Ms. Ewing sees clients at their convenience.” A pause ensued. Richard was obviously consulting a schedule. “Her next evening appointment is on February 9. Shall I-”
Why had she assumed she could mosey on over to become a new her in no time flat, like, right now? “I’m sorry,” she said, “but I’m visiting here and-”
“Who referred you to us?” The man’s interest seemed to have picked up.
It burst out of her mouth. “Santa Claus.”
“Right. Ms. Ewing has had a sudden cancellation. She can see you this evening. As in now. When shall we expect you?”
Mallory felt dazed, and possibly conned. But she felt committed to an image change and she wasn’t going to let herself cop out.
“How fortunate,” she said. “I’ll be there-” She glanced at her watch. The afternoon had flown. “I’ll be there at seven.”
It wasn’t far. Ten minutes ought to do it.
She was committed. Wondering if she should just commit herself to some kindly healing institution instead, she started out of the store, then screeched to a halt, spun and sped back to the men’s department. A few minutes later she had paid $165 for a dark-blue-and-white-striped shirt in a very large size.
She’d also used seven of her ten minutes. Punctuality is key to your success in life. Arrive when you say you’ll arrive, and give yourself some leeway for the odd traffic jam, something you can’t control-
“Mother,” Mallory muttered to herself as she tossed her credit card into any old corner of her purse it chose to land in, “I already told you. Bug off. I’m in over your head.”
While she knew that Sixty-seventh Street just off Fifth Avenue would be an area of nice houses, she wasn’t prepared for a Beaux Arts mansion. Typical of Manhattan residences, it was small as mansions went.
Mallory clutched her black cashmere coat more tightly around herself and went up to the huge double doors.
There was no box of buttons and buzzers, no list of doctors or dentists or psychiatrists who had made this once-proud single-family residence their professional home. There seemed no alternative but to knock, which one did by grasping a long, pendulous brass thing and banging it against the two brass spheres beneath it. Mallory did a double take, and was having second thoughts about the wisdom of this project when the door opened and a glorious figure of a man said, “Like the knocker? I picked it out myself.” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Come in. Ms. Ewing will see you at once.”
“But I-”
“I’ll take your coat.”
“Thank you. I-”
“Follow me, please.”
Giving up, she followed him through a massive foyer, across a marble floor, under a sparkling chandelier and past a sweeping staircase and a few pieces of furniture that looked as if they should be sporting Don’t Touch signs. Richard swept open both halves of a tall, curtained French door, said, “Ms. Trent to see you,” and steered Mallory ahead of him and into the room.
“Hey, hon,” said a voice. “Come on in and set yourself down.”
One look at the woman behind the desk and Mallory knew she was in the wrong place. She turned to flee, but Richard blocked her path. She turned back. “You know,” she said in a quavering voice, “maybe this isn’t the right thing for me to do just now at such an extremely busy point in my life.”
“Au contraire,” Ms. Ewing said, drawling the words out to their legal limit. “Looks to me like y’all got here in the nick of time.”
Dragging her feet, Mallory headed for the chair opposite the desk. It was an ordinary chair, and she felt slightly better sitting down. The desk, on the other hand, was an alarming concoction of branches and horns, or antlers maybe, topped by a slab of stone that looked as if it should have crushed the desk to mulch and bone meal upon installation. But the desk, at least, had the good grace not to speak. If it had spoken, it would probably have mooed. Even that would have been better than listening to Ms. Ewing’s exaggerated country-music star accent.
She was a tiny woman with an enormous head of teased, gelled and sprayed blond hair. Half woman, half hair. Her face was thin and sharp-featured. Her eyes, huge and blue, surprised Mallory with their gleam of intelligence. And her mouth, a narrow hot-pink slash across her tanned, weather-beaten face, quirked up at the corners. She could be fifty, she could be ninety. It was that hard to tell.
