My Man Pendleton (5 page)

"Good choice," Kit said smoothly. "After all, the only hard liquor we keep on hand is Hensley's. Duh."

It was then that Pendleton decided he would have to be on his guard around the sole McClellan female. Not just because she was impossible to gauge, but because she didn't keep Scotch in the house. He didn't care how well she filled out her little va-va-voom dress. Or that her long, long legs looked even longer thanks to the black silk hugging them. Or that her family had millions and millions and
millions
of dollars, not to mention a house with a name. They had no Scotch. And a man had to draw the line somewhere.

He watched her graceful movements as she plopped ice cubes into a cut crystal tumbler, then splashed a generous two fingers of Hensley's over them. When she returned to Pendleton's side, she was carrying another drink identical to the first, and was still wearing the same expression on her face—one that resembled a cat's, when it has one paw on a mouse's tail and the other on a catnip salad.

"So, Pendleton, tell me about yourself," she said as she handed him his drink.

He shrugged off the request, sipped his drink and tried not to gag. God, he hated Bourbon. "What's there to tell?"

"You big-wheeling corporate types," she said with a nonchalant wave of her hand. "Always so unwilling to talk about yourselves. Why is that, I wonder? Is it because you have absolutely no life outside the workplace? And because having to talk about yourself would just make you face the fact once and for all that, gosh, your life is just a big fat zero when it comes to leisurely enjoyment?"

Pendleton pretended to consider the suggestion as he sipped his drink again, then he shook his head slowly as he swallowed. "Nah. I'm pretty sure that's not it."

She shifted her weight to one foot and eyed him speculatively. "Okay, fine," she said. "Then let me just give you a little quiz I developed to better understand the people who work for my father."

"Oh, now wait a minute," he interjected, feigning concern. "No one told me there was going to be a test. I didn't have a chance to study."

"Oh, don't worry," she cooed. "I'll take it easy on you. Only multiple choice and true or false."

"I don't know," he hedged. "I was never very good at pop quizzes. Will there be math?"

"Maybe for extra credit. Question number one,"
she continued before he had a chance to stop her. "I, Pendleton, received my MBA from (A) Harvard, (B) Stanford, or (C) Bob's
School
of
Big Business
."

He felt a smile threatening, so quickly bit it back as he replied, "A."

She nodded. "Question number two. I've always envisioned myself (A) as the ruthless, sadistic CEO of my own corporation, (B) retiring before I turn forty to sail around the world, or (C) following Jerry Springer's lead and hosting my own daytime talk show so I can meet lots of dysfunctional strippers with big hooters."

He gave some serious thought to that one, then replied, "D."

She narrowed her eyes. "D?"

"All of the above."

She considered his response, then evidently de
cided to allow him credit. "Okay. Final multiple choice, then we'll move on to the true or false portion of our exam.
"

Pendleton filled his mouth with a generous, fortifying sip of his drink, remembered belatedly that it was Bourbon, and somehow managed not to spit the entire mouthful on his examiner. "Shoot," he managed after swallowing, the word a bit strangled.

Kit smiled coquettishly, and for the briefest of moments, something inside Pendleton went zing.

"If I could be anywhere in the world right at this moment," she said, "I'd like to be (A) at home watching
Xena
Warrior Princess
and hoping it was an episode where she got wet at least once, (B) in the eye of a hurricane on a kayak with a broken paddle, or (C) why, right here with you, Miss McClellan—where else would I want to be?"

"Oh, now that's an easy one," Pendleton said smoothly. "I wouldn't think of insulting your intelligence by even bothering to answer that one."

She tilted her head to the side and eyed him with much interest, but gave no hint as to what she might be thinking. Instead, she straightened again and quickly launched into part two of what he supposed was the KMAT—the Kit McClellan Aptitude Test.

"True or false," she began. "I only receive the
Victoria
's Secret catalog by accident—I have never actually ordered anything from it."

"True."

She nodded, though whether she believed him, he couldn't have said.

"True or false," she went on. "When I'm flipping through my
Victoria
's Secret catalog, I always look at the faces of the models, too."

He started to fudge a bit on that one, then decided, What the hell, and told the truth. "Mmm
…
false."

She actually did chuckle at that one. But all she said was, "Final question. True or false. If given a choice between spending an evening with Mahatma Gandhi and Golda Meir, or two
Victoria
's Secret models, I would choose the models."

He didn't have to think about that one at all. "Absolutely true."

Kit smiled at him again before turning toward her father, who had moved to the other side of the room, where he appeared to be caught up in a very important conversation with McClellan, Jr.

"Hey, Daddy!" she sang out. When her father's head snapped up at the summons, she called further, "Gosh, he's really cute and everything, and he seems to be more intelligent than the last two you got me, but I couldn't possibly keep him. Thanks, anyway.
"

Her father inhaled a deep breath, excused himself from the company of his oldest son, and strode across the room as if nothing in the world was wrong. Then he completely ignored his daughter and said, "Pendleton, would you mind joining me and Holt? We're discussing the new trade agreement with
Canada
."

And before Pendleton had a chance to comment—or to say goodbye to the enigmatic Miss McClellan and her gorgeous legs—his boss was leading him away.

Chapter 3

«
^
»

A
ll
things considered, dinner didn't go nearly as well as happy hour, Kit decided. She drummed her perfectly manicured, coral-lacquered fingernails silently on the linen tablecloth, gazed at Pendleton sitting on the other side of the wisteria centerpiece, and pondered the benefits of lobbing a dinner roll at him. Ultimately, she decided it would have been frightfully impolite. Plus, she hadn't gotten a rise out of her father when she'd thrown summer squash at Novak last month, so why should a dinner roll make any difference tonight?

She sighed heavily, poked a fork into her ratatouille and guided the eggplant from one side of her plate to the other for aesthetic purposes. Seated on her left was the youngest of her older brothers, and on her right was a vacant chair. That was where she sat in the McClellan hierarchy. Just below Bart, right above the furniture.

She supposed it was something.

She snuck another peek at Pendleton from beneath her lowered lashes, and wondered why he intrigued her so much more than the others had. Probably because he was the first one who had actually passed her test, she told herself. He'd answered her questions honestly, and now she wasn't sure what to make of him.

Although he appeared to be exactly like every other man her father had paraded before her in the last two years—each of them bearing an uncanny resemblance to Michael Derringer—there was still something very unsettling about Pendleton. Worse, he unsettled her in a way that she hadn't been unsettled for a very long time now.

She hadn't been lying when she'd told her father that his new VP was really cute. Although, now that she thought about it, maybe
cute
didn't exactly suit this particular suit.
Cute
suggested a certain boyishness, and there was nothing boyish about the man seated opposite her now. On the contrary, he seemed to possess a maturity that even her father lacked.

Then again, that wasn't necessarily a compliment.

With a quick mental shove Kit swept the thoughts out of her mind. Pendleton, for all his cuteness and maturity was corporate. Simply put, ick. And he was Hensley's corporate, at that. Double ick. Like she was really going to fall for one of
them.

She would have thought by now that, in spite of his desperation, her father would have learned his lesson and stopped dragging her out to meet his latest acquisition. But
nooooo.
Holt McClellan, Sr. would stop at nothing to save the family fortune, even if it meant
finally
marrying off his daughter after years of chasing off—or paying off—every man that had ever dared to come near her. And he wasn't even holding out for the highest bidder these days. He was entertaining any and all offers for his only daughter's hand in marriage.

Too bad for him that Kit wouldn't entertain even one.

Hey, her father had had his chance years ago, and he'd blown it. All of them had. If the McClellan men had just left her alone to marry Michael Derringer, none of this would be happening now. Hensley's would be well in her father's hand, her brothers wouldn't be starving for female companionship, and Kit would be as happily married as she was ever likely to be.

Instead of sitting here at her father's dinner table, wondering if a big ol' marinara stain would come out of a one-hundred-dollar necktie, or if Pendleton would just have to toss the expensive accessory in the garbage.

"So, Pendleton," she said as she fingered her spoon with idle interest, "have you gotten all settled in?"

He leaned easily back in his chair. "Actually, Miss McClellan, no. I've barely had a chance to unpack."

Telling herself that her curiosity about her father's new VP was no different from her curiosity about oh, say, the molecular structure of boron, she asked, "Where did you find a place to live?"

He met her gaze levelly, looking far too confident for her comfort. "I bought a house in Old Louisville."

Kit nodded, thinking the neighborhood suited him for some reason. The
East End
and
Oldham
County
, where most of the suits settled, were too new, too hip, too happening for someone like Pendleton. Old
Louisville
, with its big brick Victorians and big, inner-city trees somehow seemed a more likely choice. She could somehow see him fitting into an old, urban setting far better than a shiny, new suburban one.

"

He shook his head. "Two blocks over."

She uttered a soft
tsk.
"Newcomer. Ah, well, it's something you can work on."

"Actually, it is," he agreed with a broad smile that went way beyond boyish, and right into the realm of
hubba-hubba.
But he said nothing more to clarify his remark.

So she steered the conversation down a new route. "You're not from
Louisville
originally, are you?"

He chuckled, a rough, masculine sound reminiscent of a wind-swept canyon, and all Kit could think was,
Ooooh, wow.
"Is it that obvious?" he asked.

"No," she told him honestly. "But Daddy hasn't hired anyone local for almost a year." She thought for a moment. "In fact, I think he's pretty much ruled out the entire
Midwest
now, haven't you, Daddy?"

At the head of the table, her father wiped his mouth with a linen napkin, glared at his daughter, and ignored her question by taking a sip of his wine.

So Kit returned her attention to the man seated across from her, and lowered her voice to a stage whisper before confessing, "I have a reputation for being rather
…
oh, unpredictable, shall we say? By now, it's reached as far as
Chicago
,
Cincinnati
, and
Atlanta
, thereby diminishing significantly the potential pool for Daddy to choose from."