A Long Hot Christmas

She’d set up her laptop at once in order to have something to focus on besides him, but she wasn’t getting a lot done. For one thing, she was concentrating on hitting the laptop keys with the pads of her fingers, not her nails. Clear polish was definitely the way to go, and that’s the way she usually went, but for some reason she’d wanted to look especially, well, pretty tonight.

But only because she wanted to be sure she left the right impression with the boss’s wife. Lick your lower lip at somebody else. He’s mine!

“How do you want me to act tonight?” she said. She’d been thinking about it, but she hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

“Oh, I don’t know.” Sam rolled the brief a little in his hands and frowned. “Like a girlfriend, I guess.”

Wonder how a girlfriend acts. I haven’t been one since… She couldn’t remember since when. That was pathetic. Her sophomore year in college, she thought, when she’d dated a pimply philosopher.

“Like…smile up at you, and…”

“We should use terms of endearment,” Sam said. “You know, ‘Sam, darling, would you fetch me one of those adorable caviar canapés.’ That kind of thing.”

“I take it I can put ‘that kind of thing’ in my own words,” she said, giving him a sidelong glance.

“Whatever makes you comfortable.”

Comfortable? She was already not comfortable and she hadn’t even begun acting yet. “We shouldn’t try to pretend we’ve been together a long time,” she said to get back on track. “I’m popping up for the first time, and these people know you. You’d have said something about having a girlfriend.”

The thoughtful look that crossed his face told her that maybe he would’ve, maybe he wouldn’t. What he said was, “Could we claim love at first sight?”

“What about—” she did little quotation marks with her fingers “—fourth or fifth date, but we feel this really strong attraction?”

He nodded. “That’s the attitude. The overdone ‘how can I make you happy’ stuff, like ‘are you cold, here’s your cape, are you hot, let’s go out on the balcony, are you thirsty, I’ll get you a drink.’”

“Very good,” Hope said. “Then we do the sudden looks of appreciation at discovering something new about each other we’d never known before, like ‘you sail? Oh, my goodness gracious! I simply lo-ve sailing.’”

“That’d be you,” he said, looking uncertain for the first time, “saying ‘my goodness gracious, I simply lo-ve…”’

“Probably not,” said Hope. “But better me than you, now that I think of it. Incidentally, is there something you do that I should know about?”

“I work.”

“Well, yes, but…”

“That’s it. I work. Just say ‘he works.’ Anybody you’re talking to will know we’re well-acquainted.”

There was a faint bitterness in his tone, or had she imagined it. Must have, because almost immediately he turned to her with a quick, flashing grin. “Then there’s the ‘isn’t she wonderful’ face,” he said. “For me, that’d be a sappy smile.” He demonstrated.

“Yuck. You look like a lovesick gander. For me,” she said, “it would be a sort of parted lips, widened eyes kind of thing.” She demonstrated, embellishing her act by pouting out her lower lip as if it were swollen with lust.

He cleared his throat again. She hoped he wasn’t getting a cold. “By George, I think we’ve got it.”

“Sorry I interrupted your work,” Hope said.

“No problem,” he said.

She returned to her laptop and he returned to his brief. But first he had to flatten it out, he’d had it rolled up so tightly.

“CHARLENE.” Sam bowed slightly. “Phil. This is Hope Sumner.”

“I’m sorry about the circumstances that brought us here,” Hope said, looking properly funereal, “but thanks for letting us join you at the last minute. Sam has told me so much about you.”

Sam gave her a look. Where did she learn to do that, get all the right words into one receiving-line sentence?

“We’re delighted that you were willing to join us on such short notice,” said Charlene. A pair of huge blue eyes shot daggers in Hope’s direction, then Cupid arrows at Sam. He pretended not to notice, but it was hard not to notice that Charlene’s dress went down to here and came up to there, and that she was as voluptuous here as she was slender there.

Silicone at the top and liposuction at the bottom? He’d ask Hope what she thought.

“Please come in,” Charlene went on. “Make yourselves comfortable. You know almost everybody.”

“Yes, yes,” Phil murmured. “Sad time for all of us, but I know Thaddeus would have wanted us to go on with our—Harry!” he said, putting a manicured hand forward. “Great to see you. How’s the golf?”

Sam gripped Hope’s elbow and propelled her forward into the Carrolls’ magnificent reception room, a marble-floored space with twenty-foot ceilings and fifteen-foot windows. They ran directly into Cap Waldstrum. “Cap,” he said heartily. “This is Hope Sumner.” He paused. “You remember Hope.”

“No,” Cap said, “and I promise you I would’ve.” The caressing gaze of Sam’s colleague—his opposite number in the Corporate Department, the man who might edge Sam out of the partnership—slid down to Hope’s cleavage. This drew Sam’s gaze in the same direction, toward creamy breasts just barely peeking out above the lace.

He had a brief, satisfying daydream of socking Cap in the jaw. And not merely because Cap was apparently an early invitee to this dinner party while he, Sam, was just filling in. This was bad news.

He’d decided to try bluffing Cap about Hope, but as direct as lawyers were, subtlety was out of the question. He’d have to hit Cap over the head with the message to back off.

“I’ll get you a drink, darling,” he said.

“I’d love some sparkling water, angel,” she answered him, giving him the sappy smile he’d thought he was supposed to use. “With lime. I do better if I start out slowly,” she was explaining to Cap as Sam made a beeline for the bar, “especially during the holidays.”

The bar being a mano-a-mano scene, he barely got back to Hope in time to hear her say, “Pipe. I’m in pipe.”

“Not Palmer,” Cap said, sounding amazed. “What a coincidence. Our firm—”

“She knows,” Sam said abruptly. “Small world, huh?”

“So how did you two meet?” Cap was looking increasingly interested.

“I met Sam through…” Hope began.

“…mutual friends,” Sam interjected smoothly. “And for once, the friends had heads on their shoulders.” He gave Hope a replay of the sappy grin she’d blatantly stolen from the script they’d agreed on.

“Well, so nice to meet you.” Cap The Snake slithered off into the crowd to offer his apple to someone more vulnerable. Sam The Shark decided to let him go…this time.

“Two down,” Hope hissed. “Who’s next?”

“Not a new player,” he hissed back. “Charlene’s coming back for a second match.”

“Sam,” Charlene purred, “you’re my dinner partner this evening. Your friend…”

“Hope,” Sam supplied. “Hope Sumner.”

“Hope Sumner,” Charlene said, “will sit across from you between Cap—you’ve met Cap—” her gaze flitted briefly in Hope’s direction “—and Ed Benbow.”

“So it’s time to go in to dinner?” Sam said, relieved that Charlene hadn’t yet invited him to dally with her in some “private” location until the soup was on.

She gave him a mischievous look. “Soon, you impatient boy. Ed,” she said, “come and meet…”

“Hope,” said Hope.

“Sumner,” said Sam.

“Sad occasion we’ve got here,” said Ed. He did some appropriately lugubrious head shaking.

Hope turned suddenly to Sam, “Daring, I didn’t ever meet…”

“Thaddeus,” Sam supplied.

“Fine man,” Ed rumbled. “Salt of the earth.”

Sam slid a possessive arm around Hope’s shoulders. “We poured him into our opponents’ wounds,” he murmured.

It was important, of course, to behave as if he and Hope were lovers. About to be lovers, at least. But when she leaned into him, when he felt her shiver of pleasure, he wondered if putting his arm around her and whispering so directly into her ear, a small, very pretty ear, had been a good idea. That shiver had been disquieting, had awakened the sleeping monster inside him again. Except it wasn’t inside him. It was right out there in front for all the world to see. And for all he knew, Hope was just ticklish.

“How long have you known our boy Sam?” Ed asked Hope.

“Just a few weeks.” Hope smiled prettily. “Long enough to know all he does is work.”

“That’s Sam, all right,” Ed agreed.

Sam had let his hand begin to move against Hope’s shoulder in the most natural lover-like way—just testing for signs of response from her—when to his annoyance he felt something tugging at his other arm.

“Sam,” Charlene said, “I want to show you my new orchid.” She dug her spiky little heels into the floor and tightened her death grip on his elbow. “We can give Ed and…”

“Hope,” said Sam, sending a desperate glance in her direction as he slid away from her.

“Hope a chance to get acquainted.”

“I’d love to see your orchids,” Hope said warmly. “You, too, Ed? You interested in orchids?”

“My wife is,” Ed said. “Tanya?”

A stunning blonde half Ed’s age left the group she was visiting with and came over to him. “What, honey? Hi,” she said, holding out her hand to Hope, “I’m Tanya Benbow. Hey, Shark! What’s up?”

“We’re going to see Charlene’s orchids,” Ed said. “Knew you wouldn’t want to miss that.”

The merry party set out for the conservatory, led by Charlene. Earlier, her slim hips had swung seductively inside her lace sheath. Now she gave the impression of a woman on a forced march.

Sam caught Hope’s eye and winked.

3

SNUGGLED IN HER CAPE, standing on the crescent-shaped entryway to her apartment building, Hope said, “Tonight worked out pretty well, didn’t it?”

“Don’t sound so surprised.” He smiled reminiscently. “When Charlene’s toes were climbing up my leg and you attacked them with your foot…that was your finest hour.”

“It was a stretch from where I was sitting.” She watched his smile widen. It set her heart to pounding. “I think I gave Ed a little thrill with my knee, but it was worth it.”

“That look you gave Charlene.” He shifted into a generic-female falsetto that didn’t sound a bit like her, but did sound pretty cute coming from him. “‘Find your own leg to climb, you hussy.’”

She remembered the moment entirely too well. She’d had to work steadily at her computer all the way home to distract herself from the sensation that had climbed up from her toes as they caressed Sam’s muscular calf beneath the table, a tingly feeling that had made her wriggle against the seat of the dining chair. “Yes. Well worth it,” she murmured. “But she does do great orchids.”

His low laugh was like warm syrup in the cold night.

“So thanks for a really interesting evening,” she said.

He took her hand, held it lightly. “I hope we’ll have more of them.”

She hesitated. “Let’s take it a step at a time, okay? Tonight was successful. Now let’s try my milieu.”

His smile grew warmer. “Sure. When?”

“Next Wednesday night. My boss and his wife are having their big holiday party then.”

“Will you be wearing a mask?” His mouth twitched at the corner.

She really wished he’d stop doing that. It had a strange effect on her, made her twitch in turn somewhere deep down inside in a way that was distracting and unnerving. “Of course not. What do you mean, a… Oh. The masque.” The pressure of his hand sent an arrow of heat up her arm. From her shoulder it would spread to her throat, across her breasts. “No,” she said abruptly. “The masque is Thursdays and Sundays.”

“But…”

“Don’t start with me about my schedule.” There had to be a way to get her hand back without making a scene. But his hand felt so warm around hers. “So good night, Sam. See you Wednesday.” She tugged a little, got free, felt relieved, then deserted and a bit chilly.

“I’ll pick you up here.” He paused, looking thoughtful. “You did a great job tonight. I don’t suppose there’s a manual on arm-candy skills…” He took a look at her face. “No, I guess not.”

With a wave he slid back into the limo. Before he vanished behind the tinted glass, he flashed her a thoroughly wicked smile.

Hope turned toward the apartment entrance. Her feet were killing her. Funny, she hadn’t noticed while Sam was still around.

“Night, Rinaldo,” she said to the doorman as she hobbled into the lobby and summoned the elevator. Almost home, such as it was.

She hadn’t been acting. It had been fun being Sam’s clinging vine for an evening. He was a hunk with charm and brains and a goal in life. He’d been a sparkling conversationalist during dinner. The boss’s wife wasn’t the only woman to send an envious glance in Hope’s direction.

She felt she was close to agreeing to the arrangement, throughout the holiday season, at least.

But only if she could keep her emotions under control. When their knees accidentally touched, when he cradled her elbow or she took his arm, when their shoulders brushed and a warm, fuzzy feeling began to fluff up inside her, when his utterly charming smile came in her direction, seeming to be for no one but her, she’d wondered if she could keep her quick response to him in perspective. What woman wouldn’t respond? He was a very good-looking, a very masculine man.

But when he’d put his arm around her, caressed her shoulder, whispered words into her ear… Even now, she could feel the warmth of his breath, the ache that had spread through her, had made her snuggle into him, wanting more. The sense of urgency she’d felt had led her to ditch wondering about perspective and leap directly to worrying. Especially about the sex thing. He hadn’t brought it up again. Maybe it had slipped his mind. She wished it would slip hers.

As soon as she opened the door of her apartment, the night view of the New York skyline greeted her through the windows across the room. It always calmed her, made her feel serene and happy. Actually, what it did was justify the savings she’d plundered for the down payment, her huge monthly mortgage and the maintenance expenses.

She didn’t turn on the light at once. She wanted to relish the quiet of the moment, give herself time to think about the evening, to think about Sam.

She tossed her briefcase over the top of the sofa as she always did, then reached down to pull the shoes off her aching feet and heard the heart-stopping, stomach-clenching, career-ending clang of a five-thousand-dollar-extra-long-life-battery laptop hitting a hardwood floor.

With a shaking hand, she flipped on the light switch and screamed. An intruder was in her apartment, a creature swathed entirely in black!

A second later she slumped against the door. What a relief! It was herself she was seeing, reflected in the mirror that hung beside the window, a mirror which hadn’t been there this morning.

The sofa was gone, though. No, the sofa wasn’t gone, it was just in a different place.

Maybelle had made a preemptory strike. But it didn’t look as though she’d stolen anything. It looked like she’d added stuff.

Hope came to sudden attention. How could she have forgotten her laptop for even a second? Kicking off her shoes, she grabbed up the briefcase, whipped out the injured team member and ran with it to the sofa. She put it down on the coffee table, sent up a brief prayer and turned it on.

The computer did all its usual beeps and lights, and there was her marketing presentation, safe and sound. The breath she’d been holding whooshed from her lungs. She thanked her lucky stars she’d sprung for the optional two-hundred-dollar computer case with the shock-absorbing extra padding built in. With her next breath, she almost suffocated from the scent that rose from her briefcase.

The laptop had survived, the bottle of Shalimar in her makeup kit had not. But what was a quarter-ounce of Shalimar compared to the product of fifty hours of work?

Strong, that’s what it was.

With a feeling of having survived an attack from all sides, Hope collapsed against the sofa. Ummm. She wiggled her toes. Then she looked at the room.

She frowned. The sofa was on the diagonal, facing the little foyer. That was dumb. People came to her apartment to see the view, not the front door. The two squashy taupe armchairs flanked the sofa, also facing the front door.

At least the other two chairs, the antique ones the dealer had called fauteuil, the ones he’d warned her were not really for sitting in but were a terrific investment, faced the view. Great, Maybelle, just great.

Feeling rebellious, Hope struggled up from the sofa, which seemed to cling to her just as she’d clung to Sam. She crossed the room to sit in one of those chairs whether it liked it or not. Yes, the two chairs faced the view. It was also true—she moved to the other chair just to be sure—that each one looked directly into one of two mirrors that flanked the huge picture window. The mirrors not only reflected her, but also the front door. And the kitchen door. And the bedroom door.

What was this door fetish?

For a minute she sat there, bolt upright, which she’d assumed was the only way you could sit in a fauteuil, then felt herself start to settle in, lean a little against one of the sculpted wooden arms, rest her head against the faded, faintly dusty, original needlepoint upholstery.

What did the antiques dealer mean, a fauteuil wasn’t for sitting in?

Enough of this. She was exhausted. She emptied her briefcase and set everything out in her office, a small alcove off the living room, to air. The Shalimar had to fade by Monday. If it didn’t, she would have to announce a new marketing trend—the scented memo.

The message light was blinking on her phone-fax-copier-scanner-answering machine—next year’s model would probably have a built-in curling iron. She pushed “Playback.”

“Hey, hon! Maybelle!”

Maybelle was one person who didn’t need to identify herself on the phone. Hope reeled at the screech, then turned down the volume.

“I made a good start today,” the shrill voice continued. “Didn’t get no further than the parlor, because I was wanted by the police…”

Hope stiffened.

“…department to juggle the Chief’s office around a little.”

Hope relaxed. The New York Chief of Police was into feng shui? She hoped the Daily News didn’t get wind of it.

“Anyhoo, I got them mirrors at the Housing Works Thrift Shop, so you’re only out fifty bucks so far. Don’t give it a thought. We’ll settle up later. I sure hope you’re not one of those people who throws stuff onto the sofa soon’s she walks in the door, because I moved it. Throwing stuff on the furniture isn’t good for you speeritch-ully anyways. We’ll talk more about that later.

“Well, you try to get some rest. Soon’s I get the Chief and a coupla other clients squared away I’ll be back to work on your bedroom, have you sleeping good pretty soon. Oh, would you puh-leeze tell that doorman of yours to let me in next time without putting me through all that hassle?

“Night, hon.”

The message had come, her machine-which-never-lied said, at 11:00 p.m. Maybelle sounded like a woman who’d had a whole lot of fully leaded coffee.

Hope went to her bedroom, took off her clothes and hung them up. She’d left her daytime black-and-white tweed jacket at the office. Thank goodness. If she hadn’t, it would be permanently Shalimarred just like her briefcase.

She put on a soft flannel granny gown, washed her face, brushed her teeth. She turned down the bed, then stared at it. It stood against the wall just inside the door, facing the view. Nighttime Manhattan twinkled at her from a picture window like the pair in the living room. Already, the week after an early Thanksgiving and not even December yet, the Empire State Building was red and green for Christmas.

About to slip between the sheets, she paused. As tired as she was, it would be lovely to wake up to coffee set on a timer and already made. Yes. She’d sit on the sofa in the living room and have coffee while she read the newspaper.

And stared at the front door.

She tried it out on the way to the kitchen. Weird.

She passed the sofa again on the way to her bedroom, walked over to it, plumped it with her hand.

Maybe she’d pick up one of the magazines that had come today and just rest here a minute before she actually went to bed. She felt so wired, it might get her in the mood for sleep. She’d get that soft mohair throw to put over her feet. And a real pillow from the bed.

It seemed no more than a second later when she woke up to the slap of the New York Times against her door and the smell of freshly brewed coffee. Her body buzzed a little with sleepy warmth and something else, something deeper, something achier. She realized she’d been dreaming of Sam.

WHEN SHE ran into Benton in the hallway on Monday, he got as far as, “Morning, Ho—” before deep coughs racked his body and he hurried away with his face buried in his white handkerchief.

At noon on Tuesday, when she went into the executive café in search of an iced tea, she discovered a sign posted on one side of the dining area: “Perfume-Free Zone.”

At two that afternoon, a group of her colleagues made shadows outside her door without really showing their faces. “Has to be Hope’s office,” one said much too loudly. She recognized the oily-smooth tones of St. Paul the Perfect.

“She does have a certain aura about her,” said a feminine voice, which then dissolved into a giggle as the shadows vanished.

Ha, ha. Now that she’d become the office joke she’d have to break down and buy a new two-hundred-dollar padded case. The current one had soaked up Shalimar like a femme fatale dying of thirst in the desert.

It was only good-natured kidding, of course. But Paul Perkins, his real name, wanted this vice presidency as much as she did, and Palmer vice presidents were not office jokes. If she told them what happened—she’d brought the perfume to the office because she was spending the evening being arm candy, then broken the bottle because she’d tossed her briefcase onto a sofa a Texas-born-and-bred feng shui decorator had moved—she could think of that vice-presidency as nothing more than…

Ah. Yes. A pipe dream.

But perfume problems faded from her mind in the middle of the afternoon when her computer, which had performed several random tricks during the day, gurgled twice and froze. So much for the two hundred dollars worth of padding. Resigned to the inevitable, she picked up the phone.

“Tech Support.” The voice was laconic, sending the message, “Just try to get tech support out of me.”

“I’d like to report a homicide,” she said briskly.

“Desk or laptop.”

“Laptop.”

“Bring it down.”

“Wait!”

Silence. “Yes?”

“I can’t just hand it over to you. I need it. I can’t do without it.” She was having a panic attack just thinking about it.

“Then you shouldn’t have beaten up on it.” Sigh. “Bring it down, we’ll put your stuff on a zip disk and give you a loaner to use.”

“Oh. Oh, well, okay. Wait!” she yelled again.

“What!” Testy this time.

“Aren’t you supposed to do the traveling around the building with the computers and the zip drives and the…”

“How soon do you want it?”

“Immediately.”

“You better come on down.”

She wouldn’t take this kind of cavalier treatment from anyone else in the company. But the tech support group—an ungovernable collection of green-haired, jeans-clad cretins, some of whom had yet to be persuaded that deodorant is our friend—were different. They were geniuses. The entire company relied on them totally and treated them rather like rebellious can’t-teach-them-a-thing-but-we’d-never-give-them-away pets.

Grumbling, Hope slid back into her shoes, straightened her black skirt and cream blouse and picked up the laptop. Forget the case. She couldn’t take the kind of grief the tech group would give her about the Shalimar. Peeking into the Marketing Department reception area, she found the shared administrative assistants looking not merely busy, but somewhat harried. Okay, she’d take it down herself.