My Man Pendleton (37 page)

"Pendleton!" he fairly shouted. "My man! That's what I want to hear!"

Actually, Pendleton thought, he was Kit's man, not McClellan's. No need to dwell on that, though, he supposed. "Boy, whatever happened to the days when a guy beat the hell out of anyone who compromised his sister's virtue?" he asked.

McClellan shrugged. "We've been trying to compromise Kit's virtue for almost two years now, Pendleton. Forgive me if I find the news of your conquest to be…"
His smile broadened. "Incredibly good," he finished.

"Man, I can't figure you people out to save my life," Pendleton muttered, biting back some of the choicer words he wanted to use. "I have a kid sister, too, you know."

McClellan looked surprised, as if he'd never considered the possibility that there might be more to Pendleton than a corporate title. "Do you?"

"Yeah, I do."

McClellan sobered suddenly, his smile falling, his eyes darkening, as if an entirely new subject were at issue. "And did you spend the better part of your youth, as my brothers and I did, making sure no guy ever got close enough to hurt her?"

Pendleton shook his head. "No, I didn't. I let her live her own life. Make her own mistakes."

"And how did that turn out?"

Pendleton fidgeted a bit more. "Well, she sort of got knocked up when she was sixteen by some sonofabitch stupid idiot jerk moron sonofabitch."

"You
said sonofabitch twice."

"Yeah,
I know."

"Oh."

Pendleton waited to see vast disappointment and a total lack of respect on McClellan's face at hearing that a big brother had failed so egregiously in keeping his little sister safe from harm. But the other man only gazed at him speculatively in silence, as if he weren't quite sure what to make of him.

"Carny's done all right, though," he said by way of defending his sister. "The mistake she made when she was a teenager, she took responsibility for it, even if the sonofabitch stupid idiot jerk moron sonofabitch didn't. And her son has been the bright spot in her life ever since. She owns her own business now, and Joey is a straight-A student and major hockey fiend. The two of them have their share of problems with curfews and adolescent outrage, the usual stuff, but they do okay."

McClellan only continued to look at him in silence, then, slowly, he nodded. "You're saying we all should have left Kit alone to make her own mistakes instead of sheltering her from life. That she never had a chance to experience the good with the bad, so she has no way of knowing now exactly which is which. She hasn't really grown up, because she simply never had a chance to. If she's behaving like a child now, we have no one to blame but ourselves."

Pendleton nodded. "Yeah. That's what I'm saying."

"That ultimately, she would have done all right if we hadn't interfered."

"Yeah."

"That none of us would be in this mess right now if Kit had been left to her own devices."

"Exactly."

"Of course, that means she'd be married to that little prick Michael Derringer right now," McClellan pointed out, "and not sleeping in
your
bed."

Pendleton furrowed his brow at that. "I guess it would."

"Or maybe not," the other man conceded. "She probably would have come to her senses eventually when she realized how unhappy she was. Then again, I guess we'll never know for sure, will we? Since she never had a chance to fall on her ass like the rest of us."

"I don't know if I'd go that far," Pendleton said. "I think Kit's fallen on her ass more times than anybody wants to admit. She just hasn't had the opportunity to pick herself up and brush herself off, and lie and say, 'I meant to do that,' like the rest of us have. Someone else has always done that for her. I'm just saying maybe right now you guys should back off and see what happens."

Again, McClellan only gazed at him in silence for a moment, as if he were weighing some matter of great import. Then he said, "Look around you, Pendleton. What do you see?"

The question was unexpected, but Pendleton did as he'd been asked and scanned his surroundings. "I see a big, beautiful house. Some primo real estate. A couple of expensive cars." He turned to meet McClellan's gaze levelly. "But I also see a beautiful sunset. A basketball hoop. A couple of birds who warble a mean tune. And inside that house, there's a woman who'd really like to be closer to her family than she is."

"Meaning?"

Pendleton met the other man's gaze levelly. "Meaning maybe you and your father and brothers are worried about losing the wrong thing."

For a long time, McClellan said nothing, as if he were letting that little suggestion settle in. Then he replied, "So if Kit blows the entire fortune, loses every nickel that generations of my family have worked most of their lives to earn, then I shouldn't worry, because I'll still be able to watch the sunset every night, is that it?"

Pendleton nodded, but knew the suggestion sounded lame when phrased like that. In spite of that, he said, "It's my understanding that your great-great grandfather started off with nothing but a recipe and an illegal still way up in the mountains."

McClellan nodded. "Yes. That's true."

"So who do you think enjoyed his work more? You, or him?"

The other man inhaled deeply, then released the breath in a slow, steady steam. "I'm not a simple man, Pendleton. Neither is my father. Neither are any of us. We've grown up with a certain lifestyle, and I, for one, don't want to lose it. Especially when it's such an easy matter to preserve it."

"And I'm saying that maybe if you stepped back and looked at the big picture, you and your old man might have more success in preserving the family fortune than you've had messing around with Kit's life. There's more to that fortune than money. A lot more."

McClellan narrowed his eyes at him. "I don't follow you."

Pendleton nodded angrily. "Yeah, I know. That's the problem."

Concerned that saying anything more might further confuse the matter, he pushed himself up from the pavement and began to make his way to the house. Almost as an afterthought, he spun around and lobbed the basketball carelessly toward the goal. It bounced on the rim before hitting the backboard, then it spun on the hoop a few times before finally falling through the net. When it did, McClellan caught it deftly in both hands, then looked up at Pendleton with a frown.

And all Pendleton could do was shake his head, and wonder how a smart guy like McClellan, Jr. could be so damned dumb.

* * *

Kit fought off the ripple of déjà vu that threatened to swamp her when the dinner party retired to the living room with coffee. It was hard to believe that a month had passed since that first night at Cherrywood. Pendleton had been a complete stranger to her then, and she'd suspected he was nothing more than a corporate drone dancing at the end of her father's leash. She had so looked forward to taking him down a peg that evening. But things hadn't turned out quite the way she'd planned.

And since that night, everything, like clockwork, had blown up in her face. Because she, like an idiot, had gone and fallen in love.

Oh, but hey, no biggie. It was love, not brain surgery. She'd get over it. Eventually. Certainly by the end of the twentieth millennium or so. And by then, if what all those post-nuclear-holocaust movies said was true, the world would just be a big ol' ball of dried-up, burned-out carbon anyway. And where was the fun in pining for someone when you had to wear a gas mask all the time?

She sensed Pendleton's approach long before she felt him move up behind her, and a shudder of anticipation mixed with apprehension skittered through her. Before she could even acknowledge him, he leaned in close, his mouth hovering right at her ear. His breath, his entire body, was warm, welcome, intoxicating. And she found that she simply could not wait to go home and get naked with him.

"You ready to go?" he asked, his voice low and seductive, murmuring exactly her thoughts just loud enough for each of them to hear. "We could get an early start on all those things we planned on doing."

A sad, salacious smile curled her lips as she nodded. "Most definitely." She turned to her father and brother and added, more loudly, "Pendleton and I have to be going. It's getting late."

Her father's eyebrows shot up in surprise, but the smile that curled his lips was absolutely
…
Victorious, Kit noted dispiritedly. Strange, that he'd been acting so triumphant all evening, when not once had he mentioned her relationship with Pendleton. Not once had he demanded to know how things with the two of them were going. Not once had he asked if they'd made any wedding plans.

It almost felt as if he knew something they didn't. And she really hated feeling that way.

"So soon?" he asked. Then, before either of them could offer to stay longer—not that either of them was going to offer to stay longer—he rushed on, "Well, if you must. Good night. Drive safely. Holt? You up for a nightcap?"

And without further notice, he spun on his heel and departed for the library. Holt shook his head at her, smiled, and shrugged, then, after a quietly uttered good night, departed in the same direction as their father.

"My family," Kit said wistfully as she watched them go. "I suppose I have no choice but to keep them. They're just smart enough to leave a trail of bread crumbs if I tried to abandon them
in
an enchanted forest."

Pendleton smiled. "At least we have each other."

For now, at any rate, she thought.

They had made it all the way to the car before Kit realized she'd left her purse behind. And seeing as how it was one of those evening bags roughly the size of an electron, she knew it could be hiding almost anywhere.

"It's probably in the kitchen," she told Pendleton as he opened the passenger side door for her. "I put it down to set the table for Mrs. Mason. Go ahead and start the car. I'll only be a minute."

But it wasn't in the kitchen, she noted fairly quickly. So she must have left it in the dining room. That room, too, however, provided her with no clue as to her purse's whereabouts. So she mentally retraced her steps of the evening, and finally concluded that she must have left the accessory in the library.

Where her father and Holt had retired for a nightcap, she recalled. Gee, just like old times. They were doubtless having one of those major father-son conversations right about now, and there was always that outside chance that her name might crop up
…

She slipped her shoes from her feet and dangled them from her fingers as she tiptoed quietly toward the library, remembering idly that this was exactly how that first, fateful evening with Pendleton had concluded. How terribly ironic, she thought. Sure enough, the moment she entered the main hallway, she heard the soft murmur of masculine voices, and silently, she made her way to just outside the door. Then she hugged the wall and cocked an ear, and eavesdropped shamelessly on the conversation coming from within.

"…
about wedding plans?" Holt was asking.

"It wasn't necessary to ask them about any wedding plans," her father answered.

Holt chuckled anxiously. "We have a month before the deadline expires, and you don't think it's necessary to ask when Kit's getting married?"

Her father, chuckled, too, though the sound of his laughter was far more menacing. "Didn't you see the way she was looking at him? Kit is completely smitten. And you know how she is when she finds something she really likes. She wouldn't give up Pendleton now if her life—or one hundred million dollars—depended on it."

Holt uttered an exasperated sound. "Don't be so sure. Even if she's fallen in love with him—which is still open to debate, if you ask me—that doesn't necessarily mean she'll be
marrying
him before the deadline. It would be just like her to tie the knot the day
after
Mama's deadline, just to piss us all off."

Maybe,
Kit responded silently. Then she pushed the thought away. It was immaterial. Marriage, regardless of the timing, was out of the question, at least where Pendleton was concerned. Because it wasn't like he wanted to marry
her.
The only wedding he'd be showing up at in the future would be his ex-wife's.

"Trust me," her father continued in a confident tone of voice that snapped her attention back around right quick. "Pendleton will make damned sure they're married before the deadline."

"Oh?" Holt replied mildly, echoing the very word circling in Kit's head. "He doesn't seem to me to care one way or another. And even if he did, he's the type of man who would respect Kit's wishes in the matter. If she wanted to wait, he'd wait, too. He doesn't even have a stake in this thing."

"Oh, yes, he does."

"He does?"

Kit realized she whispered the words out loud herself at exactly the same time her brother uttered them to her father. She covered her mouth with one hand, lest she slip up like that again. Still, she couldn't deny the sick feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach at the unmistakable certainty in her father's voice.

"Damn right he has a stake in this," he stated further, too adamantly for her comfort. "I made it clear to Pendleton the day after Kit moved in with him that there would be a nice, fat reward for any man who took her on as his lawful wedded wife, thereby saving the family a bundle."