"I've been thinking." And he came to a halt.
"Thinking" Carter said, using the same encouraging tone he'd used on McGregor Ross.
"Well, I sort of hate to bring it up."
Carter controlled his impatience. It was quiet in the empty room, no greedy moms, no Phoebe, no Mallory. Of course, he had no idea what they were up to in the conference room, and he really should get back.
"How are you and Phoebe Angell getting along?"
That brought back his focus. "Fine, I think. Did she complain about something I said or did?"
"How are you and Phoebe Angell getting along?"
That brought back his focus. "Fine, I think. Did she complain about something I said or did?"
"No, no." Bill sounded as if his mind was off on another tangent. "Well, just that she inquired about what sort of relationship you had with Mallory, and I wondered"
Now Carter just waited. He had a bad feeling he knew what was coming.
"I assured her that you and Mallory were merely colleagues, I mean, Mallory is Mallory."
Not anymore. Carter ground his pen between his fingers. Without considering the alternatives, Bill was dismissing any possibility that he might have a physical interest in Mallory. "My relationship to Mallory is none of Phoebe's business," he said, sounding as uptight as he felt.
"Of course not," Bill said quickly, "but"
Carter sighed. "But what, Bill? Spit it out."
"I was just wondering if a little personal attention to Phoebe might pave the way, soften the atmosphere, re-channel her interests. You understand what I'm saying?"
How could I not understand? You explained it three ways.
"Is that why you put me on the case?" he asked. It was blunt and not the right thing to say to a man who was, at the moment, his boss, but he had to know. "You want me to prostitute myself to get Sensuous off the hook?"
"Of course not." Bill sounded so shocked that it confirmed Carter's suspicion that it was, in fact, precisely why he'd gotten this case. Then Bill went on, sounding smooth as tofu, "I wanted you on this case because I felt sure you could bring it to settlement-" he hesitated "-using all the means at your disposal."
There it was, the challenge, out in the open. "I feel just as sure I can reach settlement, Bill," Carter said, deciding that outrage wouldn't do him any good. "I'd prefer to handle it in a more straightforward way, though."
"Have you come up with a straightforward idea?" Bill's tone was dry.
"Mallory and I are full of ideas," Carter lied. "It's only a matter of choosing the one that will work best."
They ended the call on good terms, but Carter wasn't on good terms with himself. That call had been the straw that broke the camel's back. For the last five minutes he'd been fingering the ImageMakers card in his pocket and now he pulled it out. He needed to change his image-not merely to qualify for Mallory, but to approve of himself. He'd use a fake name, pay cash, no one would ever know that the up-and-coming Carter Compton was, at the ripe old age of twenty-nine, having a crisis of confidence.
A male voice answered the ImageMakers number. "I'd like to make an appointment," Carter said.
"Yes," the voice purred. "Your name?"
Carter hesitated. "Jack Wright."
"Mr. Wright."
I'd like to be. Was that what this was all about? Being Mallory's Mr. Right?
As that thought shot through his head it startled him so badly he dropped his pen and was about to grind it out under his shoe before he remembered it was a Mont Blanc pen and not a lighted cigarette.
He bent his knees to pick it up. "Um, maybe this isn't such a good idea," he muttered, feeling perspiration pop out on his forehead.
"When our clients say that," said the voice, "it usually indicates an emergency. Can you come in right now?"
"Right now?" He actually squeaked the words. "No, no, I can't. I'm working."
"Lunch hour?"
Just as he'd thought. A quack. No clients. Not even enough sophistication to pretend that M. Ewing was very busy but perhaps they could sneak him in somewhere. But he was starting to think it might be an emergency, just like the man said, and he'd never get an appointment with a psychiatrist this fast. Maybe he just needed somebody to talk to and almost anybody would do.
"Icould make it by twelve-thirty," he said slowly.
"She'll see you then."
She? "She?" he said aloud.
The voice turned frosty. "You have a problem consulting a woman about your image?"
"No, no, no," he hastened to say, feeling his current image slipping right down through all twenty-four floors of the building that lay beneath his feet. "I just, you know, with the name 'M. Ewing' I thought" He pulled himself together. "I'll be there at twelve-thirty," he said, using a firm tone of voice and knowing he needed someone to use a firm hand on him in this situation. It was time for Carter Compton, the talker, the negotiator, the one always in the lead, to do some listening.
First he had to listen to a woman who was determined to thrust her infant daughter into the modeling game. Poor kid.
At twelve twenty-five, having left Mallory and Phoebe back at the law offices staring oddly at him when he deserted them, he gazed with grudging approval at the mansion which apparently lodged ImageMakers. This place would sell for three or four times the value of his parents' house in suburban Chicago, but it was less flagrantly ostentatious. He liked that.
He went up the cleanly shoveled sidewalk to the front door, where his positive feelings took a rapid downturn. He stared at the doorknocker. No way was he picking up that thing and banging it on its balls. It gave him a cramp in the groin just to think about it. So he knocked with his knuckles. A moment later the door opened.
"Mr. Wright," the man at the door said, but his eyes went directly to the doorknocker. "Oh, thank goodness, I thought it had been stolen."
"Ever think of getting a doorbell?" Carter growled.
The man smiled. "I'm Richard," he said. "Maybelle's ready to see you."
"Maybelle?" Carter said, but followed him across the marble foyer, anyway. He took in the office of this Maybelle person in one swift scan, observed that it was unusual, then gave the woman behind the nonstandard desk a once-over and decided her hair must have gone through repeated shock treatment. He sat down, glared at her and said, "Your knocker is obscene. You being interested in other people's images, I'm surprised you're not more careful about your own."
The woman had been looking him over, too, but now she narrowed her focus to his face. "What y'all talkin' about?"
Carter winced just hearing her voice. A quack all right, and he was getting out of here just as soon as he made his point about the knocker.
"The doorknocker," he said.
"Oh, that. I toleDickie to pick one out. I don't never use the front door, so I don't know what he got. You don't like it? It sure bangs good."
He stood up. "You'd better take a look at it, decide for yourself."
If she said, "Hey, that's awesome," or whatever she'd say in that Texas accent of hers, he'd know he had no business being here. Instead, as they stepped outside together and she got a look at the door, she screamed, "Dickie."
The scream echoed off the elegant facades that lined the quiet, winterbound street. "Ma'am?" Richard appeared, wearing a sheepish expression.
"What is that?" Maybelle pointed with a shaking finger.
"Well, it's a-"
"Don't say it," Maybelle snapped. "You tryin' to ruin me? What are people gonna think? I'll tell you what-that I'm runnin' a male-escort service here."
Dickie drew himself up to his full, extremely muscular height. "To me, it said 'We have a sense of humor here.'"
"Way-ell, that ain't what it says to me. Get rid of it. Get me some nice antique thing that don't look like nuthin' but a doorknocker, you hear?"
"Okay," Dickie, or Richard, said with a long-suffering sigh.
"And make us some coffee. You like regular or dee-caf." She turned an assessing gaze on Carter, who was getting pretty cold out there on the stoop, while this skinny little woman in blue jeans and a T-shirt with a panther printed on it didn't seem to notice.
"And make us some coffee. You like regular or dee-caf." She turned an assessing gaze on Carter, who was getting pretty cold out there on the stoop, while this skinny little woman in blue jeans and a T-shirt with a panther printed on it didn't seem to notice.
"Regular, but I don't-" He was leaving, was what he'd decided, just as soon as he got his overcoat back.
The gaze turned approving. "I'll be danged. He likes regular. Y'all hear that, Dickie? Brew us up a pot of real strong stuff." She turned to Carter, and her expression turned wistful. "Y'all don't happen to like it percolated, do you? Kindly muddy-like?"
"No, but you have what you like, because I-"
"He don't," Maybelle told Dickie. "So drip it. Nobody's perfect," she added before she marched Carter back across the foyer. He had his mouth open to ask for his coat when she said, "That's not all you come here for, was it? To yell at me about the doorknocker?"
Instead of asking for his coat, he looked at her, looked into big blue eyes that offered to listen to whatever he had to say. "No," he admitted. "The doorknocker thing was a sidebar."
"Then sit down," she said, marching toward the chair behind the desk that looked like the fossilized nest of some long-gone pterodactyl.
"Now that we've done the doorknob," she said, "tell me what y'all think of this here desk. Mebbe I'd better take a minute to work on my own image."
She'd done everything Maybelle had told her to do and still he'd taken somebody else out to lunch. It wasn't Phoebe Angell, either. At least Phoebe was a known quantity.
She'd refused Phoebe's halfhearted invitation to have lunch. The woman's expression had said, "I'd rather be a waitress on roller skates than have lunch with you." Instead, she went back to the hotel, netted a table for one in the restaurant, ordered a salad and darted up to the suite. She needed to take a look at herself in the full-length mirror, figure out what she might have done wrong.
She flung open the door of the room, and the first thing she saw was the tiny Christmas tree-wearing the ornament Carter had bought at Bloomingdale's their first night here.
The nonverbal message in that single ornament stunned her. She was too verbal to know what it meant, but she was certain it was meant to tell her something. "Glad you bought the mistletoe"-something like that. She became aware of the heavy weight that had settled in the lower half of her body, realizing it was nothing new, it was there every second she was with Carter, but it seemed to be getting heavier, harder to ignore.