My Man Pendleton (15 page)

Nothing major? "And on this fall, did he, oh … have any help?" Pendleton asked.

She gaped at him, clearly outraged at his suggestion. "Oh, please. Pendleton, what are you thinking? I would never help a man over the side of a battlement. I might chip a nail."

Of course. "What about
Carmichael
's hair?"

She smiled, the first genuine smile he'd seen from her all evening. "Oh, now that was a fun night. Carmichael and I actually hit it off really well, and after dinner—and oh, six or seven mai tais, I guess—I talked her into letting me give her a home perm. Unfortunately, it didn't take very well. In fact, she wound up looking kind of like a giant Q-Tip. So she got it cut out."

"Oh. And
Washington
's, uh … derriere?" he concluded halfheartedly. "If it wasn't you who bit him on the… If it wasn't you who bit him, then who did?"

She blushed a bit, her gaze skittering away. "Well, actually…"

This time Pendleton was the one to gape.

"You
bit
Washington
on the butt?" he asked. "Are you serious?"

"It was an accident," she said. "A terrible mix-up. It's a long story, too, but the gist of it was that I didn't realize it was
Washington
's, um, tushie that I was biting."

"Whose, um, tushie did you think it was?"

She stalled, tracing her thumb over a damask rose on the tablecloth. "I thought it was, uh…
Well, see, there was this, ah
…
Actually, with his back to me like that, and wearing that purple Speedo of his, I thought he was this perfectly nice scuba instructor named Julian, whom I was hoping to get to know better."

Pendleton bit his lip to keep from asking anything more. If the way Kit got to know men better was to bite them on the tushie, then he had no choice but to drag her back to the States and lock her up in Cherrywood as soon as was humanly possible. He owed it to the men of the global dating community.

"Miss McClellan," he began again.

"Look, Pendleton," she cut him off. "I know I owe you an apology—"

"Only one?" he interrupted.

She glanced up to acknowledge his interjection. "Okay, I owe you several. And I'd like to offer them in the form of an explanation." When he opened his mouth to say something more, she rushed on, "But don't start with all that 'endearing' stuff again, okay. It makes me nauseous. No offense."

"Oh, none taken, Miss McClellan. It doesn't bother me at all when a woman tells me I make her sick."

"That's not what I…"
She sighed impatiently. "Never mind."

He remained silent as she enjoyed deep swallow of her wine. Then, almost immediately, she downed a second of comparable size. Somehow, Pendleton thought she was doing it because she needed the false courage that alcohol brought on in some people. Either that, or she just really liked the wine a lot.

"Okay," she finally said as she set her empty glass on the table. "Here's the deal. I suspect that, unlike some of his other VPs, Daddy sent you to fetch me without filling you in on all the particulars."

"Gee, what makes you think that?"

She smiled. "Because you've been way too tolerant, and not at all obsequious."

"Ah. Then again, fetching you is in my job description."

"Yeah, well, you'll forgive me if I say that you don't seem like the kind of guy who takes his job description all that seriously."

He wasn't sure, but he thought he should be offended by that. "Are you saying I'm not a good VP?"

"No, Pendleton, I'm saying you're not a doormat."

"Ah."

"But the reason paragraph six, subheading A exists on page four of your job description is because it's essential for Daddy's executives to be the ones who come after me. It's the main reason he's hired them, after all."

"I'm afraid I don't follow you," Pendleton said, studying her with interest. "Why can't he send one of your brothers after you?"

She smiled again, but this time the expression wasn't exactly happy. "Because I can't marry one of my brothers. It's against the law. Even in
Kentucky
."

"Excuse me?"

"It's true," she said. "Not many people believe it, but it really is illegal to marry your own brother or sister in
Kentucky
. It has been for, oh, gosh
…
years now, I guess."

He made a face at her. "I meant why would your father find it necessary to hire men to marry you?"

"So that he can collect my mother's fortune."

"Excuse me?" Pendleton was hopelessly lost. What was it about the McClellans that turned his brain into pudding?

But instead of answering his question, Kit posed one of her own. And not some idle, oh-by-the-way question, either. No, when she opened her mouth again, the oddest thing came out.

"Pendleton? Have you ever been in love?"

As questions went, it wasn't one he heard often. Nevertheless, he replied honestly, "Yes. Once."

Her eyes widened in what was obvious surprise at his revelation. "Really?"

He nodded.

"Wow." She gazed at him with what he could only liken to awe, then asked further, "Was she in love with you?"

Now that one was difficult to answer with the truth, simply because he didn't know the truth. So he replied, "She told me she loved me. Many times, in fact."

Kit continued to gaze at him as if he were some mythic creature that had just risen from the surf amid fanfare and fire. Then, as he'd known she would, she asked the one question that he really, really hated to answer.

"What happened to her?"

And, as always, he answered anyway. "She left me."

That didn't seem to surprise Kit at all, because she only nodded as if she completely understood.

He had no idea why he would want to prolong such a discussion, but somehow, he heard himself ask in return, "How about you? Have you ever been in love?"

Evidently, she didn't have to think about her response, because, immediately, she shook her head. Then she reached for her empty wineglass and held it out to Pendleton in a silent request for a refill. So he plucked the bottle out of the ice bucket and obeyed her command.

As he was pouring, she qualified, "But I was engaged once, if that counts for anything."

Oh, it counted, he thought as the wine poured over the rim of her glass and cascaded onto the tablecloth. He jerked the bottle back and met her gaze levelly, but had no idea what to say.

All he could manage by way of a response was an echo of her earlier sentiment. "Really?"

She wiped her hand on her napkin, then sipped carefully from her over-filled glass. "Really."

"But you didn't get married?"

Still not looking at him, she replied, "Nope."

He knew it was none of his business, and probably a bad idea to boot, but he asked, "Did you get cold feet at the last minute?"

She turned her head to stare out the window, and inevitably, he repeated the gesture. The black ocean beyond stretched to infinity, linking with the black sky at some point on the horizon. But since
both were spattered with starlight, it was impossible for him to see exactly where that line between air and water lay. In the nighttime, both mingled and joined, becoming one. Only at daybreak would they part again.

"Nope," she said again, her voice insubstantial, as if coming from a great distance. "I didn't get cold feet. He did."

Pendleton felt a twist of regret turn inside him, and he wished he hadn't asked her to elaborate. He was about to say something about how the two of them had actually managed to find something in common, when she opened her mouth and, to his even greater regret, she elaborated some more.

"Actually, he didn't get cold feet," she said softly. "What he got was cold cash."

Thinking he'd misunderstood, Pendleton asked, "I beg your pardon?"

"Actually, that's not quite right, either," she said, finally turning to look at him again. "What Michael got was a check. From my father. Daddy gave him one for a quarter-million dollars at the rehearsal dinner as kind of a ditch-the-wedding present. But Michael cashed it the next day, so I guess that makes it close enough to cold cash, don't you think? It certainly made for cold feet. Michael couldn't get out of the restaurant fast enough."

"Your father paid your fiancé a quarter of a million dollars to leave you?" he asked. "The night before your wedding?"

Kit dropped her gaze to her wine again. "Yeah. Pretty tacky, huh?"

"And your fiancé actually
took
it?"

The chuckle that emerged from her mouth was obviously forced and false. "Gee, Pendleton. You almost sound surprised."

"Well of
course
I'm surprised. That's outrageous."

"Yeah, I guess a guy like you would have held out for a cool million. But Michael came from humble beginnings and all that. He'd never seen that many numbers in front of a decimal point in his whole life."

"That's not what I—"

"In fact," she interrupted him again, "Michael was so eager to take the money, that Daddy figured later he probably could have gotten off with a hundred gees instead of two hundred and fifty. But then, hey, that's my dad. Always overdoing things."

When she finally seemed to be through talking, Pendleton tried to jump into the conversation again. "What I meant was, it was outrageous for your fiancé to take any amount of money in exchange for abandoning you."

She glanced up again, her eyes dark and troubled and sad. "Why was that so outrageous?" she asked. "Any other guy would have done the same thing."

Pendleton refused to dignify the latter part of her objection with a comment. Instead, he said, "It was outrageous, because in the long run, he could have had the money and you."

For a long moment, she only observed him through narrowed eyes, as if she wasn't quite sure what to think of him. Then, slowly, she began to smile. It wasn't a big smile. But it wasn't bad. "Why, Pendleton," she said. "I'm not sure, but I think you just paid me a compliment."

He was as surprised by the realization as she seemed to be, but said nothing to retract his statement.

"At any rate," Kit hurried on, her gaze skittering away again, "my father's now paying about ninety-nine-point-four million more for that bribe than he thought he would."

"Excuse me?"

The question seemed to be Pendleton's response to everything that night, but honestly, he couldn't help but excuse himself. He'd never been more bewitched, more bothered, more bewildered in his entire life. Unfortunately, when Kit spoke again, he realized that he was nowhere near as befuddled as he was going to be.

"Unless I'm married in two months," she told him, "my family will lose everything."

"Excuse me?"

Kit chuckled at Pendleton's echo of bewilderment. Dearie dear. What to tell the poor boy that wouldn't overwhelm him. Maybe she should do something different for a change and tell him all about it. Obviously, no one else had. She twisted her wineglass by the stem and decided, What the hey? If nothing else, maybe it would make her feel better to finally talk about it.

"As you know," she began, "my family is very wealthy."

"I did rather notice that the night I was at your house."

She nodded. "What you may
not
know, however, is that the McClellan wealth comes entirely from my mother's side of the family."

"No, I assumed your father—"

"Daddy started off as a laborer for Hensley's, working in the bottling plant for union wages. He and my mother met at some big function that Granddaddy threw for the workers one summer. Mama was immediately smitten. And Daddy knew
a good opportunity when he saw it. They got married six months later. Mama was pregnant with Holt at the time."

"Whoa."

Kit smiled at Pendleton's slip into the vernacular, then continued. "For what it's worth, Daddy was a relatively decent husband to her. To the best of my knowledge, he was never unfaithful, and he always came straight home from work. But he never loved her."

"How do you know?"

"I just do," she said quickly before hurrying on. "And so did Mama. And I guess Granddaddy did, too, because he made my father sign a pre-nup, back in 1959, when such things were unheard of."

"No way."

Kit smiled again at his second lapse. "Way, Pendleton. Granddaddy wasn't about to condone the marriage, bastard child or no, unless Daddy agreed to enjoy the Hensley lifestyle without getting his grubby hands on the Hensley money. Daddy lived at Cherrywood, drove the cars, wore the clothes, walked the walk, talked the talk. But he never owned any of it. Mama did. He was groomed to take over the company, but the company—and everything else—always belonged to my mother."

"Get out."

This time, Kit chuckled out loud at Pendleton's exclamation. For some reason, telling the story tonight didn't make her feel quite so empty inside as it usually did. "It's true," she assured him. "It wasn't the outcome Daddy had expected when he'd deliberately knocked up the boss's daughter. But, in the long run, he realized he could do a lot worse. So he agreed to play by Granddaddy's rules."