This delightful daydream faded when it occurred to him that she’d left the St. Regis wearing a skirt. What did a change in clothes indicate, a change of clothes that hadn’t happened in the privacy of her bedroom?

They sat down. She leaned forward. Carter closed his eyes, and when he opened them, she was fiddling with the silverware. Her date must have given her a hard time, must have been mad that she wasn’t going out with him, after all. So the man really liked her, or was really turned on by her, or both. Or maybe he was just a jerk with a bad temper, but Carter didn’t think Mallory would go out with a jerk. So he liked her or was turned on by her and maybe she was turned on by him, too, and upset that Carter had sabotaged her plans for the evening. Damn. What had her plans for the evening been? Besides changing clothes.

The answer hit him in the stomach. The guy had ripped the skirt off her. She’d had to put on the pants, which she must keep in his apartment because Carter hadn’t seen her in them before. Any fool could figure out what that meant.

The guy with the ponytail was back. “Would you like to start with a cocktail before dinner?”

“No,” said Mallory.

“Menus?”

“Yes,” Carter said.

“And a wine list?”

“You bet,” Carter said.

He’d have to find out what her relationship was to this guy. Better to know. “You’re all wound up about something,” he said after he’d taken a cursory glance at the menu and another at the wine list. “I hope your date didn’t go ballistic when you told him you had to work.”

“Who?” She looked up from her menu. “Oh. No.” At last she seemed actually to see him. “I was thinking you were all wound up about something. Was Brie mad?”

“She was okay about it,” Carter said. In fact, Brie had said she needed to work, too, that stocks were down and bonds were up and she needed to strike while the iron was hot. Those were her actual words, and she’d added that she had some bonds she wanted to get him interested in.

“Is that Regis Philbin over there?” Mallory said next.

“It wouldn’t surprise me,” Carter said. “This is a media mogul hangout. Now, back to your date. If he didn’t upset you, what did? Anything to do with Santa Claus?” He projected the words, noticing with satisfaction that she jumped, and with longing that her breasts undulated. The sudden emphasis on a couple of words was a technique he’d used in the courtroom, but it had never made anyone’s breasts roll like that.

“What on earth do you mean?”

She was regaining her poise, but if he’d ever seen a guilty party he was seeing one now. “I mean,” he said, “that you and Santa did a lot of whispering while he was holding you on his lap-” he projected that word, too “-and if a department store Santa came on to you, he should be reported.”

“Are you crazy?” Openmouthed, she stared at him.

“Are you ready to order?” The waiter hovered above them looking a lot like the referee in a boxing match. Carter realized his voice must have projected farther than he’d intended it to. He had to calm down before he got Regis Philbin’s attention.

“Yes, we are,” he said. “Mallory?”

She spoke to the waiter while still staring at him. “I’d like the pear and Roquefort salad and the sweetbreads.”

He stared back. “I’ll have the mussels and the steak. We’ll share an order of your onion rings. And a bottle of…” He’d forgotten which wine and had to break eye contact to find it again on the list.

This couldn’t be jealousy eating at him. He had no claim on Mallory. He felt responsible for her, though, a need to protect her from wolves and other predatory types.

Responsible for her in the big city. Yes, that was how he felt. “I just don’t want anything unpleasant to happen to you,” he said. “I made you go up there, and if he-”

“Made me go up where?”

“To sit on Santa’s lap.”

“Oh. There.”

Where else? “So if he did anything like come on to you, or ask you out-”

“He didn’t.”

“Then does it have anything to do with that Kevin person?”

This time she didn’t tell him he was crazy. Carter almost wished she had. Instead, she was pink with embarrassment and guiltier-looking than ever.

“Your wine, sir,” said the wine steward, proffering the bottle for Carter’s inspection.

“It’s fine,” he said without looking at it. “No, I don’t want to taste it. Just pour it.”

Mallory had walked the distance from Bergdorf’s to the restaurant hoping her sexy new snow boots would fail their first test. She’d slip on the icy sidewalk and fall down. As good as she was at not being noticed, she could lie there quietly on the cold concrete until she froze to death, which seemed infinitely preferable to telling Carter she’d sat on Kevin’s lap and spilled out her soul to him.

She’d told the opposition’s witness she wanted the lawyer for the defense for Christmas. Kevin could blackmail her. How far would she go to keep him from telling Carter how she felt about him? Worse, what if Kevin were, even now, telling Phoebe they had one of the defense lawyers in a bad spot? She groaned.

“Pardon?” Carter said, his eyebrows lifted.

“I’m dreading to tell you what I have to tell you.” There. That was a start.

He seemed to tense up a little. “Always better to do it and get it over with.”

She sighed. “It does have something to do with Kevin and with Santa Claus,” she answered him.

“I knew it!”

Now they had everyone’s attention. Even Regis Philbin looked up from the intense conversation going on at his table. “Carter,” she said in an urgent whisper, “Kevin was Santa Claus.”

His eyes widened. His mouth, which had been fixed in a thin line, began to quirk up at the corners. “That’s his seasonal work?” Carter said. “Being a department store Santa Claus?” His smile broke through, followed by a snort of laughter.

Mallory fixed him with a stern glare. “I sat on the lap of a witness for the prosecution.” While it was a great pleasure to see him smile, this was no laughing matter, and he didn’t know the half of it, nor would he ever if she was lucky.

He stopped laughing almost as quickly as he had begun, and before her very eyes, Mallory could see the legal part of his mind kick in. “How do you know Kevin was Santa Claus?” His voice had cooled off.

Now she’d have to lie, which had been the best reason for not telling him anything. “I’d rather not tell you that.” She set her jaw, knowing he wouldn’t settle for that answer, but it would give her a second to think of another one.

“I’d rather you did.” He set his jaw, too.

“A Roquefort-PearTower for the lady,” their waiter droned above them. “Curried Mussels for you, sir, and an order of our famous onion rings.”

Mallory could imagine the conversation going on in the kitchen. “Will you hurry up with the orders for that pair at table nineteen before they draw blood?”

She attacked her salad with feigned gusto, but even with her gaze downcast she could feel him boring a hole through her forehead.

“I guessed,” she said suddenly.

“You guessed.”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Oh, his voice. Or something.”

“So this is just a guess on your part.”

“No, then I asked.”

“When did you ask him?”

“At a time when you… weren’t there.”

He frowned, probably trying to remember a point in the afternoon that she and Kevin might have been alone, and she hoped he didn’t put too much pressure on himself. He wasn’t going to remember one because there hadn’t been one.

“I see,” he said at last. “Well, now that that’s out of the way, maybe we can get back to work. How do you think we ought to handle the woman with green teeth we’re deposing tomorrow?”

Carter figured he could talk and brood at the same time. He didn’t believe she’d asked Kevin. He didn’t think there’d been a time he’d been out of the room when she and Kevin were still in it. She was still keeping secrets from him. And if her dates last night and tonight hadn’t been with Santa Claus or Kevin, because they were one and the same, they’d been with somebody or bodies else and who the hell was he or they?