My Man Pendleton (24 page)

"So what turned you into a winner?" Kit asked with a smile.

He forced a smile in response. "Well, I wouldn't go so far as to call myself that," he said. "But one day, right in the middle of an executive meeting, during a presentation about luring the middle-class family consumer, I realized I wanted to have kids. Not just that, but I wanted to spend time with my kids. Hell, I wanted to spend time with my wife. I wanted to have weekends at the shore, and backyard barbecues, and carpools and recitals. But the only way I was going to be able to manage that was with a job that demanded a lot less from me. So, after giving it some thought, I quit my megabucks job."

Kit gasped at the announcement. "Just like that?"

He nodded. "Just like that."

"You
just turned your back on all that money and power? All that prestige?"

He shrugged. "Well, it wasn't exactly enriching my life. I wasn't happy."

Kit only gazed at him in silence for a moment, as if she simply could not understand his motivation. Then she asked, "And what did Sherry do?"

He chuckled morosely. "Oh, Sherry wasn't too happy about the new development at all. Especially when I told her I'd done it because I wanted a family. Turns out, she wasn't so hot to have kids."

"Um, color me presumptuous," Kit said, "but
wasn't that something the two of you should have discussed before you got married?"

"Hey, we
did
discuss it," Pendleton told her, indignant that she would suggest such a thing. "At some length, as a matter of fact." Then he conceded reluctantly, "Of course, we were only thirteen at the time, but
…
I just assumed that having kids was a foregone conclusion, you know? That's what people in our neighborhood did. They got married. They had kids. Granted, most of them weren't working seventy or eighty hours a week like I was, but still…"
He shrugged again. "I just thought Sherry would want what I did. Turns out, she didn't. So she left."

"And what did you do?"

Pendleton glanced back down at his hands, rubbing hard at one particularly stubborn smear of grease on his thumb that refused to budge. "I took a job with a small, nonprofit organization that was trying to raise awareness about inner-city kids at risk. Where before I'd just been making, as you yourself said, some rich, greedy corporation richer and greedier, my new job made me feel like I was actually doing something worthwhile. But it left me without that family I had taken it for. Sherry never came back. The divorce was final a year later."

"How come you didn't just ask for your other job back?" she asked. "If that would have made Sherry stay?"

He stared at her incredulously. "Because by then, the damage was done. I mean, would you have taken Michael Derringer back if your father had changed his mind and offered him
more
money to come back and marry you?"

For a moment, she said nothing. Then, very
qui
etly, she told him,
"Yes."

"Why?" he asked.

"Because then, at least I wouldn't have been alone."

He expelled a single, humorless chuckle. "Yes, you would. You would have known he didn't really love you."

"But he would have pretended to."

"And that would be okay with you?"

She shrugged, a gesture so nonchalant, so unconcerned, it gave Pendleton goosebumps. As if she truly didn't care whether or not someone loved her, as long as he at least pretended to.

"Oh, come on, Pendleton," she said. "Do you honestly think I ever believed Michael really loved me?"

"You don't think he did?"

"Of course not."

"Then why the hell did you agree to marry him?"

That careless shrug again then "Beats being alone."

"If you're going to go to all the trouble to marry a man, to spend the rest of your life with him, don't you think that man ought to honestly love you?" His words were more forceful than he intended, his feelings more intense than he'd realized.

Kit threw him a look of utter disbelief. "Pendleton, no man is ever going to honestly love me."

The way she tossed off the pronouncement, so casually, so matter-of-fact, as if it were something she'd said every day of her life, chilled him to the bone. She genuinely believed that, he thought. She was as convinced of the truth in that statement as she was convinced of her own name. She wasn't fishing for a contradiction or reassurance from him.
She really didn't believe any man could fall in love with her.

"You really believe that, don't you?" he asked, speaking his thoughts aloud. "You really don't think a man could love you."

But she only gazed at him in bemusement, as if she couldn't understand why he would even ask her such a thing.

"What would it take to make you believe a man was in love with you?" he asked, wondering why he was even bothering to continue with a conversation that had degenerated so badly.

His question obviously stumped her, because her eyes widened, and her lips parted slightly in surprise. "What do you mean?"

"I mean
…
what would a man have to do to convince you that he was in love with you?"

"Silly question, Pendleton," she said. "I just told you no man is ever going to—"

"Just answer me," he insisted. "What would it take to convince you that someone loved you?"

For a moment, he thought she would try to change the subject, but instead, she seemed to give his question some serious thought. Then, finally, her expression lightened, as if she'd come to a conclusion.

"A tattoo," she said simply.

He frowned. He should have known she wouldn't take him seriously. In spite of that he echoed, "A tattoo?"

She nodded. "If a man really loved a woman, he'd get a tattoo with her name." As if further inspired, she opened her right hand over the upper swell of her left breast. "Right here. Where kids put their hands when they say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag.

"Some guy gets a tattoo with my name on it, I know he's serious about me. Especially if it's a really big one with hearts and flowers and a big ol' nasty cupid playing a harp. And my name," she added. "Not 'Kit,' but 'Katherine.' The pain level would be significantly greater, and therefore the proof more positive."

For a long moment, he only stared at her. She couldn't possibly be serious. "I can't believe that's what would prove a man's love to you," he said.

She shrugged. "Hey, love hurts."

He shook his head. "Love doesn't hurt. And you should be able to take it on faith that a man loves you."

"Yeah, well
…
I never promised anybody a rose garden, Pendleton."

"Not without the thorns anyway."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"Just that every time I start thinking maybe you and I could—" Thankfully, he stopped himself before he said something he knew he'd regret later.

"Could what?" she asked.

"Nothing. Never mind. I just don't understand why you have to strike out like some wounded animal every time we—"

"Every time we what?"

But Pendleton only shook his head and refused to answer. Hell, he wasn't even sure what he had been about to say. Something stupid, no doubt. Something that Kit would have totally misconstrued and turned around later to mess with his head. What had gotten them on to this line of conversation anyway? he wondered. Oh, yeah. Sherry. Man, even after being divorced for years, his ex-wife was still messing up his life.

"Well, if you were so happy with your last job," Kit said, interrupting his thoughts and reading his mind—boy, he hated it when she did that—"then why did you come to work for Hensley's?"

He didn't want to tell her. Hell, he didn't like to admit it to himself. In spite of that, he found himself saying, "Because the last thing Sherry told me when she walked out the door was that I couldn't cut it, that's why."

God, he wished he hadn't said that.

"What?" Kit asked.

"Just before she left me, Sherry accused me of quitting my job because I couldn't handle the pressure. She told me I wasn't man enough to hack it."

Kit stared at him so intently that he could almost see the little wheels in her brain turning. Then,
fi
nally, she said "You took the job at Hensley's just to prove to your ex-wife, after all these years, that you can still big wheel with the best of them?"

He nodded silently.

"And she knows about your new life change, does she?"

"She may have heard through the grapevine," he said.

For a moment, Kit said nothing. Then, very softly, she asked, "And has she come running back to you, Pendleton?"

This time he shook his head. "No. As a matter of fact, she's getting married again at the end of April. To one of my former colleagues. One of my former coworkers. One of my former best friends."

Kit nodded slowly, knowingly, as if she now understood everything. Which was a lot more than Pendleton could say for himself.

"And I assume," she said, "that this former colleague, this former coworker, this former best friend, is still right there in the thick of the corporate game, hacking it in a manly manner?"

"You
assume correctly."

"You're still in love with her, aren't you?"

As with every other question about Sherry, Pendleton simply was not sure how to answer. So he replied honestly, "I don't know."

"What are you planning to do?" Kit asked. "Run up to
New Jersey
to crash the wedding? Walk in at the last minute with a few manly paycheck stubs and try to win her back?"

He dropped his gaze back down to the floor. "Can we talk about something else?" he asked.

He saw that Kit was about to say something else, but Maury tumbled into the shed and proceeded to attack her fingers. Smiling, she pushed the puppy away, only to have him crouch comically with his entire back hemisphere wagging like a live wire before assaulting her right ankle.

"You crazy mutt," she said, chuckling halfheartedly as she scooped him up into her arms.

Pendleton couldn't help but smile at the scene, relieved that the glacier floating around in his chest was beginning to melt away at the sight of Kit McClellan going all gooey over an inept, overzealous puppy. The only thing weirder than that was the way
he
was suddenly going all gooey over Kit McClellan. But there it was, all the same, and for some reason, the realization wasn't quite so scary as he would have thought it would be.

She nuzzled the dog's nose with hers, and when Maury nipped her playfully, she squealed with feigned outrage. "Maury! You big doofus! You don't bite the nose that feeds you. How many times do I have to tell you that?"

But the dog only licked her nose this time, with much affection, and somehow, Pendleton found himself wanting to repeat the gesture himself.

"Why did you name him Maury?" he asked.

She set the puppy on the ground, and he scampered happily over to the deconstructed motorcycle, sniffing each and every part as if they were delectable bits of kibble. Kit smiled, a gesture that softened all the sharp angles of her face.

"He reminds me of an old boyfriend," she said.

"Maury? Turk? Michael? You sure have had a lot of boyfriends." Pendleton told himself he did
not
sound jealous.

Kit switched her attention from the puppy to him, but her smile turned sad, and the light fled from her eyes. "I've had a lot of dates, Pendleton, not a lot of boyfriends."

"What's the difference?"

Still reeling from the news of Pendleton's marital state—not to mention the fact that he was still
very
preoccupied by his ex-wife's comings and goings—Kit expelled an errant breath and tried not to think about it.

"Boyfriend," she finally said, "suggests a relationship of some length of time. Date, on the other hand, indicates a solitary event that
may
lead to another, but maybe won't. In my life, there were many dates, many solitary events. Boyfriends, well
…
you've heard about all of my boyfriends now. All three of them."

His surprise was evident. "Only three?"

She nodded. "Maury actually only made it through four dates," she confessed, "but I let myself consider him as a boyfriend. Turk lasted nearly a month, and Michael…"
She sighed as her voice trailed off, leaving unfinished a discussion of whatever feelings she still had for her ex-fiancé. It wasn't important, she thought. Not anymore.

"Why so few boyfriends after having so many dates?" he asked, scattering her thoughts.

He plucked Maury up from the floor, then moved to sit down beside Kit and settled the puppy in his lap. She watched as the little golden furball made mincemeat out of his boot laces, feeling a bit unsettled by Pendleton's nearness. So she scooted away from him, ostensibly to make more room, but really because she just didn't want him to get too close.

"Because Daddy always sent a watchdog along for the ride," she said. "He wouldn't let me go out with anyone unless one of my brothers went, too. And they tended to put a bit of a damper on any romantic developments. Either their presence frightened my dates so badly that they didn't even speak to me, or else my dates wound up talking Cardinal basketball with my brothers all night. So, obviously, there was little chance for a relationship to blossom."