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.

His role was to follow her to the elevators, which he did, feeling like an embarrassed kid shuffling along in her wake. What had made him do something so childish as to squirt mustard on her? He hadn’t been in a food fight since his sophomore year in high school. When a very pretty junior girl told him what a “sophomoric” thing it was to do, that had ended his food-fighting forever. So this bizarre behavior of his must have something to do with the mood he’d come home in after enduring two hours of Athena’s empty blathering to find Mallory all neat and dressed and working. Could she never fail to one-up him? That mood, plus the effect she was having on him, were making him feel like a kid again-and not in a nice way.

But while he stared at her back, thinking these thoughts, he made an important discovery. She had the cutest, roundest little butt any man could hope to find on a woman. He hadn’t realized he was a butt man, but now it seemed he was. Suddenly she turned, and he whipped his gaze upward, but not before she caught him staring at her rear end.

She flushed and gave him a grim look. The tips of his ears felt hot and he tried to return her look with a nonchalant one.

Great start on getting her to respect you. All he’d accomplished so far was to make Mallory look a little less respectable in that sexy red jacket. The jacket that showed her butt. Quit it, Compton. They’d landed in the lobby, and he could smell eggs and bacon, hear clanking silverware. He intended to have a huge breakfast.

She’d be sitting down. That would help. If he could keep his eyes off the neckline. It plunged down between her breasts, which the jacket pushed out and clung to. Thank God she was wearing one of those things she called “shells” underneath it.

Heat was traveling through him in waves, and this was only breakfast. He had to keep his hands off her. If he didn’t, her respect for him would decrease to an all-time low. He was tough. He was strong. He could do it. No problem.

“Ms. Angell,” Carter said, and held out his hand. “Carter Compton.”

“Mallory Trent,” Mallory said, and held out her hand. “Glad to meet you in person at last after all our phone con…” She trailed off. The problem was that Phoebe Angell was still holding Carter’s hand and appeared to be melting right there in front of both of them.

She was as tall as Mallory and there the resemblance ended. Phoebe Angell had raven’s-wing hair in a short cut that stuck up in various directions, snapping black eyes, skin like almond custard, gunmetal-gray lipstick and fingernails, and a black leather skirt short enough to get a lawyer disbarred in Illinois. She wore it with a surprisingly proper, perfectly pressed white shirt. Her shoes were red, with trendy pointed toes and four-inch heels. In a word, she was dramatic.

Mallory supposed she could dress this way because she’d gone into practice with her father. The law offices of Angell and Angell had a prestigious midtown location on a high floor. With just the two of them plus a support staff of aides and paralegals, the suite wasn’t large, but it was luxurious. Mallory wondered what was driving Phoebe Angell so hard, why she seemed to feel that winning this case would be the turning point in her professional life.

The three of them stood just inside Phoebe’s office where Phoebe had greeted them. An enormous portrait of Alphonse Angell himself dominated the wall opposite her desk. A formidable-looking man, he hadn’t even managed a smile for his portrait. Mallory wondered how Phoebe got any work done under the vigilant scrutiny of his cold black eyes. She shivered. It was possible Alphonse Angell could win in a face-off against her own father. Maybe even against her mother, and that was saying something. She felt a flash of sympathy for Phoebe Angell, which she quashed, mainly because Phoebe was still clinging to Carter’s hand.

Having assessed the opposition with her own hand still flapping around emptily in front of her, Mallory sent a sidelong glance toward the man who was supposed to be on her side. Maybe it was just wishful thinking, but he did seem to be trying to get his hand back, and his smile was still an impersonal one.

“Thank you, Phoebe,” Mallory said sharply, giving up on the possibility of a handshake, “for offering us your conference room for the depositions.”

“Hmm?” Phoebe said dreamily. “Oh, yes.” She released Carter and regained her poise with admirable speed, herding them toward the conference room in question, which was several doors down from her office. “It seemed the sensible thing to do, to depose the plaintiffs here since they live close by. The green dye was all in Lot Number 12867 which was shipped to New Jersey.”

We know that. Mallory kept her gaze level with the woman’s eyes.

“And besides,” Phoebe said, sealing her fate with Mallory, “I’ve never known a Midwesterner who wasn’t looking for a junket to New York. And I have to say I can’t blame you.” She rolled her eyes, dismissing the Midwestern work ethic, standards and values,

Marshall Fields, the best pizza in the world and Frank Lloyd Wright architecture in that one gesture. Mallory didn’t know where to start-“It’s not a junket,” “Keep your hands off Carter” or “I’ll meet you out back by the Dumpster and we’ll see about changing your attitude toward the Midwest.”

Carter’s elbow nudged her. She was sure it was accidental that he nudged her just below her breast. Nonetheless, it took the breath out of her, so she didn’t say or do anything drastic, just surreptitiously hiked her skirt up a bit.