LITMIR.BIZ

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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

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