My Man Pendleton(16)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

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. 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, gee, hadn’t Kit been 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 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. He could make his own travel arrangements. He only wished he knew exactly what he was headed into.

Chapter 5

Holt 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 thousand dollars, he thought blandly. In base pay, 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 a thousand 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 no. 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 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 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 he took forward.