My Man Pendleton (26 page)

Not for the last few weeks,
he thought. "We need to talk," he told her through the door.

"Can't it wait?"

"No."

A heartfelt sigh, then, "Hang on a minute."

The water shut off, and he heard two quick splashes followed by the rattle of the shower curtain rings along the metal rod. "Okay," she called out sweetly. "You can come in now."

Pendleton grasped the doorknob, clipped it to the right, and entered the fray. Unfortunately, the fray wasn't quite what he had expected it to be, and he was already surrounded by the spicy scent of sandalwood before he realized he'd been set up. And by then it was too late, because he was frozen in place, completely unable to move.

What he had thought was the sound of the shower curtain being thrown closed had in fact been the sound of it being thrown
open.
And now he found himself staring at Kit, who was pink and dewy and humming what sounded like "That Man of Mine" as she nestled beneath a veritable mountain of Hollywood bubbles, one slender calf extended elegantly toward the ceiling as she loofahed her big toe.

"You bellowed?" she asked, not looking at him.

"Uh…
"

He got no further than that single, ineffectual sound, because his gaze suddenly lit on one particular set of bubbles. The ones snuggling against her right breast. The ones that seemed to be popping at an alarmingly fast rate.

"Pendleton?" she added when he didn't respond.

He sensed, more than saw, her glance up, but he had no idea what kind of expression she had on her face, because, simply put, he wasn't looking at her face.

"Yes?" he asked absently.

"You said we needed to talk," she reminded him.

He nodded.

"So talk."

He opened his mouth to do just that, but a good two or three hundred bubbles that had been
very
strategically placed chose that moment to burst, and he found that he simply could not say a word. Not until Kit shifted in the tub, folding her arms over the side, thereby taking her torso temporarily out of the public eye, and making moot any more bubble evaporation that might or might not occur.

"Pendleton?" she tried again.

He nodded, but said nothing.

"You want to talk or what?"

"Or what. I mean, talk," he quickly corrected himself. He gave his head a good shake to clear it, sending droplets of water—droplets of
cold
water—onto his face and neck. "Talk," he reiterated, the shock of the cold reenergizing him some. "Us. Yes. Talk."

"Oooh, that's a good start. Want to go for subject-verb now, throw in a predicate here and there, or would that be pushing it?"

He inhaled deeply, ignored the fact that she was naked and covered with skin—covered with soft, wet, glistening, rosy, luscious, hot, uh … where was he? Oh, yeah. He
wasn't
looking at her skin. And he tried to remember what had been so important that they needed to discuss.

But all he could think was … skin. Hot. Wet. Then he remembered. Water. Oh, yeah. That was what it was.

"Water," he said aloud, proud of himself for articulating even that much.

Kit glanced down at the bubbles that were effervescing way too fast for his comfort. "Yes. Water," she echoed, splashing the surface a bit. "Very good." She felt around until she located her sponge, which she then held aloft. "Loofah," she continued. "Loo-fah. Loofah. Now you try it."

He bit back a growl. "You used up all the hot water," he finally got out. "Again."

She dropped the sponge and rested her chin on her forearm. "Well, of course I used up all the hot water. What fun is a cold bath?"

"No, I mean
you
used up all the hot water while
I
was in the shower. Again."

"Bummer. I hate it when that happens."

Pendleton gazed at her helplessly. Well, what had he expected? An apology? From Kit McClellan? Not bloody likely. In spite of that, he continued, "I've asked you not to run the water when I'm in the shower. Remember?"

She smacked a palm soundly against her forehead, a gesture, Pendleton noticed helplessly, that popped even more bubbles. "Oh, wow, I
totally
forgot," she said. "I can't believe I did that. Imagine my embarrassment."

He supposed he
would
have to imagine it, because he was quite sure she wasn't feeling one iota of embarrassment in reality.

"Never mind," he relented, pivoting on his heel to leave. "I don't know why I bothered."

"Wait, Pendleton, don't go."

He heard her moving around in the tub, so he didn't dare turn to look at her again. Instead he shifted his gaze to the side a bit and said, "Why not?"

"It's Sunday," she reminded him.

"And?"

"And
…
it's Sunday," she repeated, as if he should understand implicitly why that was relevant.

"Which would mean
…
?"
he asked.

She uttered an exasperated sound, as if he were the densest person she'd ever had the misfortune to meet. "Sunday is the day when people do stuff together."

Oh, he didn't like the sound of that at all. "And by 'do stuff' you would mean
…
?"

"You know
…
do
stuff."

That's what he'd been afraid of. "As in?" More splashing followed, so he squeezed his eyes shut tight, because he really, really,
really
wanted to turn around to see how many bubbles were left.

"As in going out," she said. "To do things together. Like go to the park. Or shopping. Or to brunch. Or a movie. What do you say? You want to do stuff today?"

"Not really," he replied honestly.

"Oh, come on. It'll be fun."

He expelled a derisive chuckle. "That's what you said about me carrying you in kicking and screaming that night we got back from the
Caribbean
."

"But that
was
fun," she said.

"No it wasn't. It was humiliating."

She uttered a sound of clear disappointment. "You have a very funny definition of humiliating, Pendleton."

"And
you
have a very twisted definition of fun."

"So what do you say?" she insisted, ignoring his jab. "Let's do stuff. Let's go to KT's for brunch, and then to the Vogue for a matinee, and then we can do some shopping. We need some flannel sheets."

"We
need some flannel sheets?" he asked.

"Yeah. In case you didn't notice, we don't have any. And this house is just too doggone cold at night."

For some reason, he knew it would be pointless for him to argue. No matter what he said or did, by day's end, he was bound to find himself the proud new owner of flannel sheets whether he liked it or not.

"What's showing at the Vogue?" he asked.

"I don't know," she replied. "But you can bet it's either foreign, controversial, or completely beyond normal human comprehension."

"Sounds perfect," he muttered as he made his way back out the bathroom door.

* * *

By the time they returned from their Sunday excursion, Kit felt the oddest sense of well-being wandering through her system. She couldn't remember the last time she'd had such a good time with anyone. Oh, wait. Yes, she could. It had been that night in
Veranda
Bay
, when she and Pendleton had—

But that incident, she interrupted herself before her memories overran her, hadn't lasted very long at all, where this one had lasted
a
whole day.
So this one was infinitely more significant than that one had been. Even without the kiss.

Doggone it. She'd almost managed not to think about that. Then again, not a day had gone by since that kiss that she
hadn't
recalled in glowing, vivid detail every last second.

And as she did every day when the memory came over her, Kit tried to tell herself that the only reason Pendleton's kiss stood out in her memory was because, well, she just didn't kiss that many men these days. In fact, she hadn't kissed one since Michael Derringer. Nor had she really kissed one before Michael. Not like that, anyway.

She shook her head as she watched Pendleton hang up his leather jacket. What a sorry excuse for a woman she was. Almost twenty-eight years old, single, healthy, wealthy, reasonably attractive—and she'd only had one lover in her entire life. Only one man to want her. And only for her current market value, too.

Pushing away thoughts of Michael Derringer—she was surprised at how easy it was to do that these days—Kit shed her own coat and followed Pendleton into the kitchen, trying not to notice what a great tushie he had under those faded 501s, or what spectacular shoulders lurked beneath his charcoal-colored sweater. But as was usually the case when she tried to ignore those things, Kit failed miserably. Which was just as well, because when she joined him in the kitchen, where she found him opening the back door to let Maury out for his evening uproar, Pendleton seemed to be noticing more than his fair share of her anatomy, too.

Unfortunately, as always, the part of her anatomy that seemed to interest him the most was her face, and not the body parts below her neck that were currently decked out in sung jeans and her favorite scarlet velvet shirt. As always, when she realized where his scrutiny lay, Kit turned her face away. And when she did, her gaze fell on the answering machine that sat on the kitchen counter, and she noticed that the little red light was flashing.

"Oh, look, we had a call," she said, brightening some at the prospect.

"You mean
I
had a call," he corrected her as he closed the door behind the puppy. "This is still
my
house, even if I have allowed you to be a squatter."

She lifted her nose indignantly into the air. "Excuse me, but I prefer to think of myself as visiting royalty."

He uttered a derisive sound as he moved to the kitchen counter and pushed the button on the machine. Over the whir of the rewinding tape, he muttered just loudly enough for her to hear, "What a coincidence. Here I've been thinking of you as a royal pain."

Oh, hardy har har har.
She was about to open her mouth to comment aloud when a woman's voice interrupted her.

"Hi, it's me, Carny," the recorded voice chirped. Actually chirped, Kit marveled. How very annoying. "Just wanted to say hi," the perky little thing continued. "We haven't talked for a while, and I wondered how you were doing. Give me a call when you get a chance. I love you and I miss you. Bye."

I love you? Kit echoed to herself. Something hot and bitter pooled in her belly like a shot of belladonna.
I love
you?
Some woman actually loved
Pen
dleton? And he had neglected to mention this? Worse than that, however, was the fact that he was staring at his answering machine with
much
affection, as if he might potentially love the chirper, too.

"Who was that?" she demanded before she could stop herself, appalled at the rancor she heard in her own voice.

Pendleton's head snapped up. "That was my sister," he told her, his own voice none too sweet-sounding in response.

The word
foolish
didn't quite cover the feeling that came over Kit at the knowledge that the woman who loved Pendleton was a woman who was completely entitled to do so. And the word
oh
didn't quite cover an apology for her outburst.

Nevertheless, her response to his explanation was, "Oh."

"Is it all right with you, Your Majesty, if I give my sister a call back?"

Strange, Kit thought, how she'd never noticed before that slight accent, redolent of the northeast, that colored Pendleton's speech whenever his patience was pushed to the absolute limit. At the mention of his sister, he sounded just a tad like Sylvester Stallone.

"Why would I mind?" she asked.

Instead of answering, he picked up the phone and dialed a series of numbers, enough to total long distance. Not that Kit counted, mind you, just to make sure he wasn't misleading her about keeping some hot little tootsie under wraps here in town, but
…
He did dial eleven numbers. Then he glared at her as he waited for someone to answer at the other end, and for a moment, Kit couldn't figure out why he was staring darts at her that way.

Finally, he bit out an exasperated sigh and said, "Do you think I could have a little privacy while I— Hi, Carny?"

He spun around after the greeting, but not before Kit saw his face go warm and wistful all over. No, that wasn't some hot little tootsie he was talking to, she realized as she turned to make her way out of the kitchen. No man would ever look that affectionate unless he was talking to someone he genuinely loved.

Family.
It just now occurred to her that somewhere up in
New Jersey
, there was an entire Pendleton clan. Funny, how she hadn't considered the fact that he would have loved ones elsewhere in the world. Then again, when one's own family wasn't exactly as loving and close-knit as the Waltons, she supposed it was only normal for one to assume that other families weren't, either. She wondered if Pendleton had fared any better with his folks than she had with hers.