My Man Pendleton (7 page)

* * *

In the library, Holt McClellan, Jr. sipped his third cup of post-dinner coffee and resigned himself to working through the night at the home computer.

Again. Because he knew there was no way his system was going to be shutting down anytime soon.

Not because of the caffeine that was currently rampaging through his bloodstream—that was a nice, however inaccurate, excuse—but because sleep had been eluding him for a while now. To be exact, for twenty-one months, fourteen days, six hours and…
He glanced at his watch. And forty-two minutes.

Ah, well. He was finally starting to get used to it. He'd been learning all kinds of things about the nighttime hours that he'd never known before. Problem was, he was learning all kinds of things about himself, too. And that could only lead to trouble.

As could his father's latest assignment for him, he thought, recalling the elder McClellan's insistence that morning that Holt be the one to handle the temperance people. "What the hell were you thinking to pass off the Louisville Temperance League to me?" he demanded, voicing his apprehension out loud.

His father glanced up from his seat opposite Holt and frowned. "What do you mean, what was I thinking? It makes perfect sense for you to be the one who deals with them."

"What if they find out about…"
Holt dropped his gaze down toward his coffee again. "About my
…
history?" At his father's rough chuckle, he snapped his head back up again. "I'm serious, Dad. You might think it's no big deal that the second-in-command of one of
Kentucky
's biggest distilleries is a recovering alcoholic, but there are other people who might use the information in a way that is, shall we say, not sporting? And that could affect us all."

His father grimaced. "Nobody knows better than I do what your
…
condition
…
has caused this family."

This time Holt was the one to chuckle, but there wasn't an ounce of good humor in the sound. "No, Dad, I think I can safely say that I do know better than you."

His father glared at him. "I'm no more anxious for anyone to learn about your past than you are. All I'm saying is that, your perception of temperance being what it is, you can keep an open mind better than I could, and you'll certainly be more tolerant of these people than anyone else would be."

"Don't count on it."

His father uttered an exasperated sound. "Just take care of it, all right? And don't screw up."

"Yeah, right." Holt shook his head and sipped his coffee and wondered what he'd done lately to piss his father off. Hell, usually Kit was the one who was the focus of all of the senior McClellan's miscreant tendencies.

As if reading his mind, his father said, "So. What did you think of Pendleton?"

The quick change of subject jerked Holt out of his reverie, and he was thankful for the interruption. "He's all right. But I don't know why you
think you'll have success with him when none of the others have worked out."

His father sipped his Bourbon slowly. "Pendleton's different."

"In what way? Other than the fact that he left the house tonight without a food stain on some part of his person."

"I'm not sure. I can just feel it. When I interviewed him to take over for Riordan, Pendleton came across as smart. Hungry. Plainspoken. The type to go after what he wants, but who doesn't put up with any nonsense." The older man glanced at his son with a knowing smile. "And did you see the way Kit was looking at him all through dinner?"

"Yeah. Like she wanted to strangle him."

His father smiled. "Exactly."

"And you think that's good?"

The elder McClellan nodded. "Damned right it's good. The way Kit was looking at Pendleton was just the way your mother used to look at me."

Holt shook his head. "I'm not sure that's such a good thing, Dad. By the time she died, Mama'd had it with you."

McClellan, Sr. waved off his son's concern. "She'd had it with all of us. That doesn't mean she didn't love us."

Holt glanced down into his coffee and said softly, "But she loved Kit best. She always loved Kit best."

"Kit was
Lena
's only daughter," his father replied softly. "Women always look out for each other."

"To the exclusion of the rest of the family?" Holt asked, unable to quite mask the bitterness he felt.
"Dad, we only have a little over two months to find someone to—"

"Pendleton is going to work out," his father insisted. "He's the man for Kit."

Holt wished he could feel as certain. "You know, we wouldn't be in this boat now if you'd just left her alone to marry Michael Derringer."

His father spat out an angry sound. "Michael Derringer was a self-serving, egotistical, gold-digging sonofabitch."

Takes one to know one,
Holt thought.

"He would have made Kit miserable," his father concluded.

And since when did you ever give a damn about Kit's happiness?
Holt wanted to ask. But aloud, he only said, "She seemed happy enough to me when she was with him."

His father waved him off again as he crossed to refill his glass. "Oh, what the hell do you know about it? Back then everyone seemed happy to you."

Instead of rising to the bait, Holt steered the conversation back to the task at hand. "Mama changed her will because of what you did."

"
Lena
changed her will because of what we
all
did. You can't hold me alone responsible. I seem to recall you and your brothers chasing off more than your fair share of Kit's boyfriends over the years."

"Yeah, at your insistence," he pointed out. "And because they were all creeps who couldn't care less about her. Kit deserves somebody who loves her. Not some jerk who's only after her money."

Only problem was, Holt thought now, that kind of somebody had never materialized in Kit's life. Or if he had, he'd never been given a chance by
any of the McClellan men. And now, thanks to that, the McClellan women were having the last word.

"Do you think Mama really thought this was the best way to get us to leave Kit alone so her daughter could get married?" Holt asked his father. "Or do you think she just wanted to get even?"

That seemed to surprise the elder McClellan. "Get even? For the Michael Derringer thing you mean?"

Holt shrugged. "Or something else."

"What else could
Lena
have wanted to get even for?"

For starters, how about the fact that you never loved her?
Holt thought. And then, of course, there was the fact that, where his father was concerned, family had always come second to wealth. And on those rare occasions when he
had
taken notice of the family, the old, man had always had an obvious pecking order of preference. Even as the clear favorite, Holt had never felt quite comfortable with that. He could only imagine how his mother and Kit—at the opposite end of the spectrum—must have felt.

Not too great, obviously.

"Kit's not going to go for it," Holt said. "And I sure as hell hope you have someone else waiting in the wings. Because in two months—"

"Don't worry about it," his father interrupted him. "Pendleton is the man for Kit. Bank on it."

* * *

As was invariably the case whenever her father and oldest brother segregated themselves to talk, Kit overheard every word they said. Not by accident, of course. But because she deliberately sought them out to eavesdrop on the conversation. It was a habit she had acquired as an eight-year-old, when she'd overheard—by accident, that time—her father discussing her performance at Louisville Collegiate Elementary compared to Holt's performance at Louisville Collegiate High.

Holt had been a senior that year, and his grades had begun to fall drastically, in direct relation to the rise in his drinking. Kit, on the other hand, was, as always, making straight A's. And on that day nineteen years ago, her father had held her up as an example for her brother to follow, had expressed his pride in her as a student.

It was the first time she had ever heard her father praise her or her accomplishments in any way. And because of that, she had sought out every opportunity to hear him do it again, whenever he and Holt separated themselves to talk.

Unfortunately, that was also the last time she ever heard her father's praise. Because as hard as she'd worked to overhear even the smallest tidbit of approval, he'd never spoken of her again. Instead, his conversations with Holt had always centered first around Holt's work at Hensley's, then about Holt's excessive behavior, then about Holt's failing marriage, then about Holt's return to the fold.

Holt, Holt, Holt. It had always been about Holt.

Until tonight. Tonight, Kit's father had talked about her again. But nothing he'd said was good. Nothing he'd said was exactly a surprise, she conceded, but none of it was good, either.

She pushed herself away from the wall outside the library and headed slowly for the stairs. There had been one thing her father had said, however, that Kit couldn't deny. Pendleton was definitely different from the other men he'd thrown at her over the last two years. Where the others had blithered and fawned over her in an effort to curry her favor—and her mother's fortune—Pendleton had had the nerve to be forthright and honest. Kit had been totally unprepared for that. Forthrightness and honesty were unnatural in a man. Despite their presence in Pendleton, however, and for all her father's conviction to the contrary, he was
not
the man for her.

Still, she thought as she closed her bedroom door behind her, that didn't mean she couldn't have a little fun in the meantime.

Chapter 4

«
^
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T
he
Thursday morning version of the Novak-Martin Variety Hour went much better than Monday's had. Best of all, the addition of even more visuals, like the productivity report and the strategy graph, provided Pendleton with something to look at while his brain had the opportunity to wander at will.

Unfortunately, the path his brain seemed most intent on wandering down ended with the not quite completed puzzle of Miss Katherine Atherton McClellan. Oddly, it was exactly the same route his brain had taken for nearly every one of the sixty-three hours and change—both conscious and unconscious—that had passed since he had first made her acquaintance. And that, he had decided quickly, was terrain no sane man should explore.

Just what the hell had Monday night been about anyway? he wondered yet again. For all the McClellans' dubious civil behavior, there had been a tension in the air thick enough to hack with a meat cleaver. Pendleton had felt like a dead fly in the soup of family politics all evening long.

"Pendleton!"

Damn. Caught again.

"Sir?" he replied halfheartedly.

"I'd like your opinion," McClellan, Sr. announced. "What do you think of the modifications Novak and Martin have made to their presentation?"

Pendleton pretended to study all the visual aids—and, my, how they'd grown in the time he'd been thinking about the enigmatic Miss McClellan—then leaned forward and propped his elbows on the table. Entwining his fingers thoughtfully, he said, "In my opinion, sir, the implementation of such a visionary objective does seem to impact our mission statement, but I wonder if it won't be more productive in segmenting our quality group."

McClellan, Sr. studied him through narrowed eyes. "In what way?"

This time Pendleton leaned back in his seat, exuding far more confidence than he felt. "Well, sir, reengineering uncompetitive criteria can't possibly achieve a strategic trend. I think we should focus instead on data compilation, the performance track, quality assurance, and a dynamic paradigm. And let's not forget core competency."

"Oh, I could never forget that."

"Then I think we're in agreement."

McClellan, Sr. nodded. "I think we are." He turned to Novak and Martin, who stood amid charts, graphs, what appeared to be a chemical equation of some kind, and a big blowup of something that somehow resembled a map of downtown
Trenton
. "Men," he stated, "good work."