"When that anorexic bimbo Simonetta saw me, she screamed. Then she ran up to me and said, 'Who did that divine dress?' but she said it in Italian, and I thought she was trying to attack me for outbidding her on that apartment she wanted, so I got really mad and was about to start pulling her hair, but Fernando rushed up in the nick of time and told me what she'd said in English-"
"Dessert?" Carter said, hoping he didn't sound as desperate as he felt.
"Soon as I finish telling you," Athena said. "So I told her I'd found a brand-new designer and wasn't telling anybody about him until I was sure I had his absolute and total loyalty." She pursed her glossy, puffy lips into a stern line.
"You stole her apartment," Carter said. "Don't you think you owe her a dress designer?" Good God, I'm getting into the conversation. Another ten minutes and I'll be asking her if she thinks I'm more a Brioni type or a-who is that other guy, the one with the sloppy double-breasted suits? Ambrose. Armand. That's it, I think, Ar-
Athena stamped her four-inch spike of a heel on the floor beneath the table. It was dramatic enough to make him jump. "There was no designer," she said in a newly gritty voice. "He was just a student at the Fashion Institute of Technology. That was the whole point, that I did something really creative and knocked the lace Wolford stockings off Simonetta, and you weren't even listening."
"I was," he protested. "He wrapped you up like a toga. I mean, the stuff you bought, he wrapped it around you like a toga of many colors." He was pretty embarrassed about his manners. When you dated around, as he did, you were bound to have one of these bored-to-catatonia nights once in a while, but you learned to act decent for the duration of the catastrophe and just not call the woman again.
He must have enjoyed his last date with Athena or he wouldn't have called her again. Funny, he couldn't remember his last date with Athena.
"I was gorgeous." Athena's voice went up another notch. "I am gorgeous. And you aren't paying the slightest bit of attention to me." She stood up. "I wouldn't eat your dessert if it were the last dessert anyone ever offered me. I'm going to meet Fernando at the Fressen bar. He pays attention to me." She cast disapproving eyes down as much of him as she could see. "He," she added as a final blow, "wears Armani."
That's the guy's name, Armani. Regretting nothing but the fact that he had been rude to Athena and had forgotten a household word like Armani, Carter summoned the waiter.
Dinner, now that he thought back on it, had mainly consisted of a lot of plates. On the way back to the St. Regis, he bought and devoured a Double Meat, Double Cheese Bigger Burger with plenty of mustard from the packets he'd stashed in his pockets.
It was significant that he couldn't remember the last date he'd had with Athena. One thing for sure, there wouldn't be another one. Brie, now Brie was a hardworking, sensible girl, a bond salesperson on Wall Street. They'd eat steak and she'd order hers rare. Tomorrow night would go better.
He wondered how Mallory's night was going. If Santa Claus had asked her out, Carter swore he'd report it to the store manager.
After her lecture from Maybelle, Mallory was still feeling stubborn about the woman's insistence that she wear Carol's red jacket tomorrow. It was too sexy for the work scene, Mallory had argued. She'd buy something a little brighter in a day or two.
However, since she'd told Carter she was going out for the evening, she'd better look as if she'd just gotten home if he came in unexpectedly. So she switched her black pants for the black skirt and the black shell for the white one and put her jacket back on. She was in the sitting room working and paying a little attention to a movie on television when she heard a keycard slice into the lock and saw the door open. Startled, she looked up. "Carter. You're home early." Just seeing him made her heart do a flip-flop.
"You got home first." He glared at her. "Was it a great date?"
"Just fabulous," she said with a smile she hoped would mislead him. "But I got to thinking about the case."
"Me, too." He sounded grumpy. "I'm going to take my stuff into my room and work awhile."
"Me, too." He sounded grumpy. "I'm going to take my stuff into my room and work awhile."
She jumped up. "You can work here. I'll go to my room. I thought you'd be-"
"Well, I wasn't. I'm home, okay? But stay where you are."
"No, no, I'll" He was looking at her so impatiently she trailed off, deciding to drop it. His door slammed, and the suite fell into silence.
Mallory lowered the volume on the movie one more increment and went back to reading the full account of Sensuous's early attempts to settle the Green case with its green complainants. It still seemed to her that her company's offer had been extremely generous. Ms. Angell had seen her chance, though, and had convinced the clients she'd rounded up that being green could be worth millions.
As Maybelle had implied, Ms. Angell was the one who would be worth millions when the dust settled. Lawyers.
She was a lawyer, too. What was she doing, criticizing the habits of members of her own profession? But she would not personally do what Ms. Angell was doing, and she was fairly sure Carter wouldn't, either. Of course, how did she know what Carter would or would not do?
He hadn't enjoyed his date with Athena enough to spend the night with her, and Mallory was simply thrilled. And he'd been curious about her "date." That was even more thrilling.
She looked down at herself. Maybe Maybelle was right. It would be pretty hard to believe she'd had a hot, intense encounter with anybody in these clothes. She was more appropriately dressed to give a speech to a kindergarten class. But the red jacket was just too, too-
"Mallory!" A shout came from Carter's room. "Do you have a-" his door burst open "-copy of Lindonv. Hanson, you know, that other hair-dye case-"
"Right here." Mallory fumbled for the printout in her briefcase. In his sock feet, with his shirt half open, Carter looked rumpled, sleepy and devastatingly desirable. She pulled out the document and with it, a half dozen sheets of paper that fluttered to the floor.
He swept them up with one large hand. "I told Brenda to copy it to my laptop, but I guess she didn't. Or she filed it somewhere only she could find it." He'd lowered his voice to a grumble. "I don't know why nobody does anything right anymore. They just aim it and see if it flies. Hey, what's this?"
Mallory could see what he was holding and felt deeply embarrassed, her privacy violated. "Um, that's my, ah, packing list, or wardrobe schedule, I guess you'd call it. Here's your-"
"So that's how you do it, pack in a briefcase. 'Tuesday-black pants, jacket, black shell. Wednesday-black skirt, jacket, white shell, scarf. Thursday, Friday, Monday'-what do you do over the weekend? Go naked?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively.
She gritted her teeth to hide the shiver that ran through her. "Not in the wintertime. I wear the black pants with a sweater. Give me that."
He waved her off. "'Monday-black jacket, black skirt, cream shell.' Hey, the black jacket's sure getting a workout."
"You only need one black jacket." She viewed him coldly.
"What if something happens to it?"
"Nothing happens to a black wool jacket you can't fix with a little cool water."
"Nothing?"
"If it does, you send it out for a rush cleaning."
He narrowed his eyes. "What if it's too much of a rush? What if, for example, something happened right now? You honestly think the hotel is going to get a jacket cleaned and back to you by morning?"
"Well, no, but what could happen?" He was fishing in his pants pocket and, for some reason, it made her nervous.
"Oh, maybe something like this." In one swift gesture he tore a corner off a small plastic packet and aimed the opening in her direction.
Blobs of yellow flew through the air and plopped onto her clothes. She leaped up. "Carter! This is this is mustard!"
He gave her a wicked smile. "Right. Now what are you going to do?"
"I am going to my room," she said frostily, and did.
There she viewed the ruin of the jacket she'd planned to wear every single day. There were a few spots on her skirt she could probably handle, or she could wear her black pants again, which smelled only faintly of the coffee she'd spilled on them in Maybelle's office, but even if she got the mustard off the coat, she'd smell like a delicatessen all day tomorrow.
She buried her head in her hands. She'd have to wear the red jacket, after all.
Carter opened his bedroom door warily to find Mallory emerging from her room looking as if she were expecting an ambush. He met her in the center of the room, where they eyed each other like opposing lines in a football game.
Mallory's team was the one in red. He cleared his throat. "You did have something else to wear."
"Fortunately." She brandished the ruined black jacket.
He hadn't gotten a rip-roaring, let's-laugh-it-off, no-harm-done conversation going, that was for sure, but, wow, was she ever a bombshell in red. A surprisingly curvy, sexy red number that fired up the old imagination, and that wasn't all it fired up.
Feeling the need for something to hold over himself, he said, "Give me that." He took the jacket, stuffed it in the plastic bag the hotel provided and stuck it outside the door of the suite. "The laundry will pick it up and have it back tonight. It'll be on my bill," he added, and by the time he'd done all that practical stuff, he felt more in control. And increasingly foolish as she eyed him silently.
"What were you thinking?" she said at last.
"I don't know. The devil made me do it?"
"Why did you have mustard in your pocket? Did you take Athena out for hamburgers?"
"No, Athena and I had some very pricey raw fish. Then I took myself out for a hamburger."
"Oh." She shouldered a gleaming black leather handbag, grabbed the handle of her rolling briefcase and started toward the door. She glanced back at him briefly. "Thank you for having coffee sent up early."
"I thought it might help us get going." He stubbed a toe into the carpeting, and that brilliant bit of conversation didn't net him any response at all.