My Man Pendleton (42 page)

"Oh, and hey," Kit interrupted, "with me, you got three out of four, anyway, didn't you?"

His smile fell some, but his eyes were still warm and affectionate as he watched her. "I didn't come up here to go to Sherry's wedding, either. Frankly, that's the last place I want to be."

Kit nodded. "Yeah, I bet. So then if you didn't come up here for that," she rushed on, "I guess you wanted to rescue your folks from the crazy McClellan daughter, didn't you? But I promise you, Pendleton, although I might do some crazy stuff, I'd never hurt anyone."

"Oh, sure. That's what you say."

Uncertain what he meant by the comment, Kit let it slide. "I just needed to get away from
Louisville
for a little while, that's all. After hearing you talk about your family, your hometown, I was kind of
…
curious. It sounded
…
nice." She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. "I wanted to see for myself."

"Why did you need to get away from
Louisville
for a while?" he asked. "Things were just starting to
…
to
…"
He waved a hand restlessly in front of himself, as if he were trying to pull the proper word out of thin air. "To go right. Between us, I mean."

Her eyes began to sting again, so she dropped her gaze back down to the barbecue. Axel seemed to realize where her attention lay, because he suddenly appeared at her side and snatched the tongs out of her hands.

"Why don't you and Rocky go talk?" he said, nudging her aside with an elbow that was in no way subtle. "I can handle things here."

Instead of arguing with Axel's suggestion, Kit dropped her arms to her side and her gaze to the ground, and wandered toward the back stoop. Not surprisingly, Pendleton followed right behind her. And with Carny and Irene having retreated into the house, the two of them were left pretty much alone.

"Mind if I ask what you're doing here at my parents' house?" he asked again.

There was really no easy answer, Kit thought. She was doing a lot of things here. She was taking a little vacation, enjoying a small break from her usual reality. She was visiting a part of the country she'd never seen before, observing a slice of life that she hadn't known existed. She was making friends and having some truly enlightening conversations. She was feeling like a human being, living life instead of struggling with it for a change.

And she was falling in love with Pendleton's family in much the same way that she had fallen in love with Pendleton.

Which was the last thing she had intended to do. Thinking about it now, she wondered if maybe her whole reason for heading north instead of south this time hadn't simply been that she wanted to exorcise Pendleton from her system by witnessing the source of his genesis. With some of his mystique removed, she'd thought, maybe the man himself would cease to be interesting.

Naturally, the maneuver had backfired, just as everything else in her life had backfired since Pendleton had entered it. Instead of disdaining his origins, she found herself charmed by them. Instead of viewing his family as alien life forms with whom she couldn't possibly ever relate, Kit found herself feeling more comfortable with them than she did with her own relatives. Instead of demystifying and commonizing Pendleton, her visit to his hometown only made him that much more intriguing, that much more appealing.

Doggone it, nothing worked the way it was supposed to anymore.

"Kit?"

With an impatient sound, she snapped her head around. "What?" she demanded.

"What'd I do?" he asked. "Just tell me that. What did I do that made you run off without a trace to, of all places, Deptford?"

She expelled a restless sigh, then returned her attention to the backyard. "I can't decide what's made me feel more foolish," she said softly. "The fact that you and Daddy cut a deal, the fact that I didn't even see it coming, or the fact that I let myself fall in love with you."

He said nothing in response to her revelation, so she braved a glimpse in his general direction. His face, she saw, was impassive, completely devoid of any expression. And his voice was nearly silent as he asked, "What did you say?"

For a moment, she only stared at him in silence. Then, corralling what little moxie she had left, she said, "True or false, Pendleton? My father offered to pay you a substantial amount of money if you married me before the deadline stipulated by my mother's will, thereby ensuring that the family would keep the Hensley millions."

A muscle twitched in his jaw, and his eyes darkened dangerously. "Why do you ask that?"

"Just answer the question. True or false?"

For a moment, she didn't think he was going to respond. Then, very, very quietly, he said, "True."

If she'd thought it had hurt to hear her father say that, she'd been way, way off. Because nothing could have prepared her for the slash of pain that twisted in her heart at hearing Pendleton verify it.

"Oh, God," she said, nearly choking on the words.

"Kit, you don't under—"

"True or false?" she interrupted him, before he could say anything to make matters worse. "You flat-out turned the offer down, said you were outraged by such a proposal, and told my father to go to hell."

Her question was met with another unsettling silence, then, even more quietly than before, Pendleton said, "False."

She swallowed hard as a chill wound through her body. "True or false?" she said softly, having no idea where she found the strength to continue. "You never really loved me at all."

"Absolutely false. Kit, I—"

"Oh, Pendleton," she said. "You've never lied to me. Why start now?"

"Kit, I'm not lying to you. I do love you. Don't you see that?"

She chuckled dryly. "No. I don't see that. What I see is a man just like Michael Derringer."

His eyes went flinty cold. "I am
nothing
like Michael Derringer."

She didn't—couldn't—say anything in response to that.

"How did you find out about your father offering me money to marry you?" he asked. "Did he tell you that?"

She folded her denim-clad knees up before her and wound her arms tightly around them, as if doing so might keep her from falling apart. Then, because she suddenly felt restless—and because she wanted to be far away from Pendleton—she scooted her body backward until she felt the cool roughness of the bricks abrading her back through her sweater. Strange that she even noticed the sensation outside her body, seeing as how she'd gone numb inside.

"Although I certainly wouldn't put it past Daddy to throw something like that in my face," she said softly, "no. He didn't tell me that. I overheard him and Holt talking in the library that night at Cherrywood when I went back in to get my purse." She turned to face Pendleton, and somehow managed to meet his gaze without flinching. "I heard Daddy tell Holt that the day after I moved in with you, he offered you a substantial bonus if you married me."

Pendleton nodded. "That's true. He did."

Wow. It hurt even more to hear him say it a second time. She hadn't thought that was possible. "And since my father was so confident that night that you would make an honest woman of me by the deadline, I can only assume that you took him up on his offer."

"That," Pendleton told her, his gaze never faltering, "is
not
true."

She opened her mouth to object, but he quickly cut her off. "Kit, I didn't say
anything
when your father offered me his bribe. I couldn't. Hell, all I wanted to do was pop him in the chops. I couldn't believe he would
…
would
barter
you like that. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, it would be to call him every name I ever learned in a
Jersey
schoolyard." He lifted one shoulder and let it drop, then offered her a little smile. "So I did like my mother always taught me. Since I couldn't say something nice, I didn't say anything at all. And I let him assume whatever he wanted to.

"Hey, you're the one who wanted to string him along," he added, "make him think things were going his way so he'd leave you alone. What makes what I did any different than what you did?"

Kit smiled sadly in response. "Nice try, Pendleton. But it ain't gonna wash."

"You'd believe what your father said before you'd believe what I said?"

Well, gee, when he put it like that
…
"Yeah," she said softly. "I think I would."

His eyes iced over at that. "Then you're the one who's a liar, Kit, not me."

She gaped at him. "Me? What did I lie about?"

"A minute ago, you told me you'd fallen in love with me."

She felt her cheeks burn at the reminder. Unable to tolerate the fierceness of his gaze, she dropped hers to the ground. "Yeah, so?" she asked softly.

"So if you'd take your old man's word over mine, if you'd trust him, and not me, then there's no way you could be in love with me."

She still couldn't look at him. But she could say quietly, "Oh, Pendleton. You are so wrong. You have no idea."

"Then have a little faith in me, will ya?"

She wished she could. Truly, she did. But she couldn't quite make herself believe him.

"I want to marry you, Kit."

She chuckled derisively. "Yeah, I bet you do. As soon as possible, too, right?"

"Wrong."

"What?"

She glanced back up to find him studying her with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. He wasn't smiling. He didn't look happy. But he did look dead serious.

"I said, 'Wrong,'" he repeated. "I mean, yeah, I want to marry you, but you're the one who's going to name the date. If you want to get married tomorrow, I'll call my cousin Sal's uncle-in-law, who happens to be a judge, right now, and see how fast we can make it happen. But if you want to wait, for however long, I'll wait."

She narrowed her eyes at him. "What are you saying?"

"I'm saying that I want
you,
not your family's money. I want to spend the rest of my life with
you.
I love
you.
Why is that so hard for you to believe?"

"You'd honestly marry me after the deadline?" she asked, incredulous. "But I won't have any money then. I'll be broke. I won't even have a job."

"And your point would be
…
?"

"I'll have nothing, Pendleton."

"Hey, you'll have me," he said, a genuine smile dawning on his face. "Then again, I'm not the greatest catch around, myself. I'm kind of unemployed right now."

She gasped. "Daddy fired you?"

He shook his head. "Nah. I quit."

She gasped again, louder this time. "You quit?"

"No offense, Kit, but I didn't much like working
for your family. I think I'd rather look around for something else."

"Like what? Where?"

He shrugged again. "Wherever you want. Although I have to admit that
Louisville
has kind of grown on me. I like our house there, and—"

"Our
house?"

"And there's Maury to think about," he went on blithely. "Don't want to disrupt the little guy's life any more than we have to."

"Hey, who's taking care of Maury, anyway?" she asked, sidetracking for a moment, because she suddenly felt way, way off-course.

"Holt. He's not nearly as steamed at me as your father is. Though, mind you, he's none too happy about losing a hundred million bucks."

"Ninety-nine-point-four," Kit corrected him automatically.

"Still, I think he's more worried about you."

That, Kit knew, was open to debate. Still, it was nice to think that maybe her brother was coming around, learning that there really was more to life than money. If only Faith Ivory would give him a chance. That would go light-years toward bringing him around.

"Anyway," Pendleton went on, "the main thing is that you and I are together. You have to believe that, Kit. You said it yourself—I've never lied to you. I will never, ever, lie to you. If you look deep inside yourself, you'll realize you know that's true. I love you. I
…
love
…
you. If you look deep inside yourself, you'll know that's true, too."

She came so close to believing him. So very close. But she just couldn't take that final step that would carry her over to his side. Even looking deep inside herself, she couldn't quite find the faith, the trust, that was necessary for the lifelong commitment he was talking about.

"Pendleton," she said, hardly able to hear her own voice, "I can't do it. I wish I could, but
…
I can't. I'm sorry. I just can't."

His expression told her he wasn't much surprised by her response. He smiled a little sadly, and extended his hand toward her. "Come on," he said. "I want to show you something."

Even feeling the way she did, there was no way she could deny him. Feebly, she started to lift her hand, and Pendleton reached out to meet her more than halfway. He curled his fingers around hers capably, possessively, lovingly. Then he pushed himself to his feet and pulled Kit up with him.