My Man Pendleton (9 page)

One week. That's how long he'd been granted to locate Kit McClellan, to bring her home to a father who demanded her return, yet clearly did not want her. For all the McClellan clan's wealth and prominence and opportunity, Pendleton thanked his lucky stars that his own family was one hundred and eighty degrees away from them.

The legal pad that his colleagues had so thoughtfully provided mocked him from atop his desk. Unwilling to tolerate the reminder of his duty, he ripped off the top sheet, folded it in half, then in quarters, then eighths, then sixteenths, and he stuffed it into his shirt pocket. Then he stood and straightened his tie, crossed to collect his blazer and overcoat from the coat stand near the door, and shrugged into the rest of his corporate uniform.

If McClellan, Sr. wanted his daughter returned, then Pendleton would retrieve her. It was, after all, in his job description. And bottom line, he needed his job. He needed the money his salary provided, the prestige his position afforded, the opportunity it offered him to show a certain person of his acquaintance that, hey, he could, too, hack it, so who's laughing now, huh? Therefore, resigned to his fate, he wrapped his fingers around the doorknob and prepared to face his destiny head on.

But his destiny was interrupted just then by a quick series of soft raps that greeted him from the other side of the door. "Mr. Pendleton?" Beatrice, his secretary, called out. "Are you still here?"

He opened the door to find her standing on the other side, her own coat buttoned up to her numerous chins, obviously on her way out, too. Beatrice had come with his office, having worked for Hensley's for longer than he himself had been alive. In spite of that, she left quite a lot to be desired in a secretary. He'd discovered that on his first day of work, when she couldn't seem to remember even the most rudimentary of company policies. Like, for instance, where they kept the microwave popcorn.

"I really apologize," she said, "but this arrived for you this morning while you were in your meeting with Mr. McClellan, and I just now realized I forgot to give it to you." She extended a cardboard overnight mailer. "I am so sorry. I hope it wasn't anything too important."

Actually, he thought, one might assume that the words EXTREMELY URGENT, in big red capital letters, emblazoned on both the front and back of the envelope, might have alerted her that there was some degree of importance attached to its delivery. But then, hey, that was just Pendleton—always assuming the obvious.

So all he said was, "Thank you, Beatrice. I'm sure it will be fine."

She smiled feebly, surrendered the overnight mailer, then spun around and fled without another word. When he glanced down to open it, he noted that instead of having a fancy, embossed label, the mailer had been addressed by hand and embellished by the word
CONFIDENTIAL.
Addressed by a bold, feminine hand, too, if he wasn't mistaken, he noted further, something that made a strange feeling of dread shimmy right down his spine.

Hastily, he tugged the plastic thread on the back and pulled the sides of the mailer open wide. For a moment, he thought it was empty. Then he tipped it upside down and shook it once, and a tiny bit of cardboard color came fluttering out, tumbling end over end to land on the pale peach carpet. He bent over to inspect it, for some reason reluctant to pick it up. Especially when he realized it was a postcard.

Of a beach.

Probably the
Caribbean
.

Dread filled him again as he snatched it up and flipped it over, only to find on the other side the same bold feminine handwriting that had appeared on the mailer.

Hi, Pendleton!
the words inscribed there read.
Having a great time! Wish you were here! Love, Kit.

For long moments he only stared at those words, reading them over and over and over. And then his gaze fell on the fine print
in
the lower left-hand corner of the postcard.
Sunset at
Veranda
Bay
.
St. John
,
U.S.
Virgin Islands
.

And all he could think was,
Oh, no. Don't make it easy. Please, whatever you do, don't make this easy for me.

Just to reassure himself, Pendleton turned the overnight mailer to the address side and checked the postmark.
Veranda
Bay
.
St. John
.
U.S.
Virgin Islands
.

Well, my goodness, hadn't Kit been just too, too clever to realize in advance that her father would be sending him to retrieve her from her current tropical locale. Why did he suddenly get the feeling that he was some pinstriped amoeba under a big, karmic microscope, and that McClellan, Sr. was the one rolling him in and out of focus?

"Dammit," he hissed under his breath.

He tucked the postcard into the breast pocket of his suit jacket, and withdrew the much-folded list of travel agencies from his shirt pocket. Then he forced his feet to move forward, tossing the latter into Beatrice's trash can as he passed it. Hey, he could make his own travel arrangements. He only wished he knew exactly what he was headed into.

Chapter 5

«
^
»

H
olt McClellan, Jr. folded himself into the big, executive chair behind his big, executive desk and gazed morosely at the big, executive pile of papers that required his immediate attention. Another day, another fifty-five hundred dollars, he thought blandly. In gross profit, anyway. All in all, life didn't get much better than this, right?

Of course, if Kit stayed in a snit, Hensley's Distilleries, Inc. and the rest of the McClellan legacy would be nothing but a sweet memory in a couple of months, and then he'd be lucky to pull in fifty-five hundred a month in salary. But hey, he reminded himself halfheartedly, they still had two whole months to find Mr. Right for his kid sister, and then they could marry her off like a good little heiress, right under the wire, and still be solvent. Otherwise
…

He let the thought go. He couldn't even imagine his life otherwise. Holt braced his elbows on his desk and knifed his fingers restlessly through his dark blond hair. Hell, you'd think Kit would have been grateful to have Michael Derringer—her intended
husband,
for God's sake—exposed for the money-grubbing, gold-digging sonofabitch that he was. But
nooooo.
Not Kit. No way. She would have been perfectly content to live the rest of her life as a lie, as long as it meant that she didn't have to be alone.

Just as Holt began to reach for the collection of pink telephone memos fanned out across his blotter, the intercom on his desk beeped discreetly.
"Yes,
Jeanette?" he responded absently, already feeling weary in spite of the early hour.

"Mr. McClellan, a woman who says she's a representative from the Louisville Temperance League is here to see you." After a slight, but significant, pause, she added, "Again."

Oh, great, he thought. Just what he needed to make a cold, rainy morning even more frigid and forbidding.

"Does she have an appointment?" he asked, even though he was already certain of the answer.

"No, she doesn't. Again."

Of course she didn't have an appointment. What distiller in his right mind would make an appointment with someone whose single-minded goal in life was to put him out of business?

For months now, the Louisville Temperance League had been after all the area manufacturers of spirits, hammering them mercilessly—however ineffectually—with petitions, surveys, press releases, flyers, and other various and sundry promotional materials. They'd hosted everything from bonfires to prayer vigils to walk-a-thons, had done everything within their power to raise money, hackles, and public awareness. All in the name of sobriety.

Like any normal person would want that.

Nevertheless, representatives from the organization had been turning up at all the local distillers' doors, pretty much weekly, since well before the holidays. They never had an appointment, but they always had an agenda. Holt supposed his father was right. Sooner or later, they were going to have to let the group's members vent their respective spleens—spleens untouched by the poisonous presence of liquor, he was sure. He might as well get it over with.

"Her name?" he asked his secretary with a sigh of resignation.

"It's a Ms. Ivory," Jeanette replied.

Naturally, he thought. Naturally such a woman would have a wholesome, uncorrupted name like Ivory.

"Ms. Faith Ivory," his secretary elaborated further.

Naturally. "Faith Ivory," he repeated, the woman's moniker feeling stiff and unpleasant on his tongue. Relenting some, he asked, "Do I have any other appointments this morning?"

"Not until ten," Jeanette told him.

He sighed again. "All right. I suppose it's inevitable. Show her in."

Expecting a hatchet-wielding grandma trussed up in black like Carrie Nation, Holt was almost pleasantly surprised by the woman Jeanette led into his office. Instead of black, she wore a suit the color of champagne—good, pale golden champagne, not the cheap, yellowy stuff. What didn't surprise him, though, was the fact that the hem of her skirt fell modestly below her knees, and that her snowy shirt was buttoned to the neck, then pinned closed even more tightly by what appeared to be an antique brooch.

Even from the other side of the room, he could see that her creamy complexion was flawless, touched by a blush of peach riding high on each cheek. Her hair, almost the same pale gold color as her suit, was also bound up snugly, her eyes were green, clear, almost bottomless, and framed by lush, dark gold lashes. And her mouth
…

Good God. Holt swallowed hard, feeling a part of himself swell and grow warm that had no business swelling or warming in public. Her mouth, that generous, erotic mouth, made it impossible for Faith Ivory to
ever
appear temperate.

Clearly nervous about their meeting, she transferred the coat folded neatly over one arm to the other, then back to its original position, then back over the other arm again, all the while looking at him as if she wished he were someone else.

"Ms. Ivory," he greeted her, tamping down his irritation. He rose to his full six-foot-four, rebuttoning his dark suit jacket as he went, then moved easily around to the front of his desk.

"Mrs.
Ivory," she corrected him immediately, taking a step backward for each one that he took forward.

At her designation of her title, he quickly dropped his gaze to her left hand, but he saw no sign of a ring on its fourth finger. Strange, that. Stranger still was the little twist of disappointment that wound through him at the recognition of her married state.

What difference did it make? he asked himself. The last thing he needed to do was involve himself with the Louisville Temperance League in any way, shape or form. Even if Mrs. Ivory's shape and form were too tempting to pass up.

"Mrs.
Ivory," he conceded reluctantly, emphasizing her title more for his own benefit than for hers. He swept his hand toward a chair that sat vacant opposite his desk. "Can I offer you a seat?"

She nodded, the motion jerky and anxious. Then she fled for the chair he had indicated and fairly collapsed into it, her entire body seeming to shrink into the upholstery the moment she was settled. She clutched her coat and purse on her lap as if she might need them later, to use them as a shield to ward him off. And it hit him then that she was genuinely frightened of him.

With no small amount of discomfort, Holt shrugged off her reaction, chalking it up to another extremist behaving, well, extremely. He returned to his chair and sat forward, steepling his fingers on his desk. With the big piece of furniture between them, the delectable Mrs. Ivory seemed to relax some.

"Now then," he tried again. "How can I help you?"

She inhaled deeply, her gaze darting everywhere in the room except to him. "As your secretary told you, Mr. McClellan," she began, her voice soft, well modulated, and a bit huskier than he would have expected, "I'm here as a representative of the
Louisville
Temperance League."