My Man Pendleton(26)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“No thank you,” she muttered. She’d rather have his head. On a platter.

He shrugged as he reached for his wine. “I’m so glad you were able to make it,” he said. She managed a chuckle for that. “Oh, I bet you are.”

He halted his glass just shy of his lips. “You don’t sound convinced of my sincerity.”

She placed an elbow on the table and cupped her chin in her hand. “Gee, I wonder why.”

“I can’t imagine. Oh, there’s Stacie,” he added, hailing the waitress. Upon her return, he took the liberty of ordering for Kit, a repeat of what he was having himself—lobster Newberry, arugula and goat cheese salad and, hey, what the heck, a bottle of 1989 Haut-Brion blanc to go with.

Before Kit could ask, he snapped the menu shut and explained, “They’re the most expensive items on the menu. I knew that would be what you’d want. It is, after all, going on the company credit card.”

Stacie jiggled off again, returning moments later with an additional wineglass, a bottle of wine, and another place setting. All Kit could do was watch in silence as Pendleton poured her a generous helping of wine.

Well, that, and ponder the fact that the evening wasn’t starting off at all the way she had planned.

Chapter 7

All things said and done, Pendleton had enjoyed one or two better dinner dates in his life. Thinking back, he supposed it was foolish for him to be so surprised when Kit didn’t show up on time. Just because she slipped up a little when he asked her to wear her sarong, and just because she looked so warm and rosy that afternoon, and just because, dammit, he had started to actually like her for some reason—

He sighed and watched her face as he filled her glass with wine. Just because of all that, there was no reason for him to think she might treat him a little differently than she did anyone else. Nevertheless, he did think she would treat him differently. For all her coolness during the episode that just transpired, she still seemed strangely fragile somehow. And that made no sense at all.

It was just that he’d expected better of Kit. Yeah, she was a spoiled, pampered brat. He noticed that about her almost immediately. But all this time, he’d suspected her rich bitch act was just that—an act. An attitude she adopted as a weapon of self-defense, a wall she erected whenever someone threatened to tear her down—which, thinking back on his dinner at the McClellan home, probably happened to her pretty frequently.

Now, however, he was beginning to wonder if it was an act at all. Maybe she really was as bad as the other Hensley’s VPs made her out to be. Maybe she really was a man-eater. Maybe she really did intend to do him grave damage. Maybe, in addition to his sunscreen, he really should have packed a piece.

“Did you really break Novak’s arm?” The question erupted from his mouth before he could stop it.

When he looked at Kit, she was staring at him as if he’d lost his mind. “Oh please. It was just a hairline fracture.”

“But did you do it?” he persisted, still unwilling to believe the worst of her.

She shook her head. “A cab driver in the Caymans did. When Novak tried to stuff me into the backseat of the cab. He thought Novak was attacking me.”

Something hot and heavy tightened in Pendleton’s midsection. “Was Novak attacking you?”

“Oh, God, no,” she was quick to assure him. “Novak is a pu**ycat. He was only trying to take me home I was just putting up a more, um, energetic fight than usual.”

“And Bahadoori’s ankle?” he asked.

She twirled her wineglass by the stem, watching the pale yellow liquid sheet up one side and down the other. “Um, he sort of fell down.”

“Sort of fell down?”

“Yeah. Well, actually, it was more like he fell off the side of a volcano.”

“A…volcano?”

This time she nodded. “See, there was this virgin sacrifice going on for Carnival—all mock, I assure you—and…well, it’s kind of a long story. But it wasn’t my fault,” she hastened to add.

Pendleton decided he didn’t want to know the details of that one. So he only asked, “And Ramirez’s wrist?”

“He fell, too. Over the side of El Morro.”

“El Morro?”

“It’s a popular tourist attraction in Puerto Rico. A big fort. Looks more like a castle. Ramirez went right over one of the battlements. It was only a drop of about twenty feet, though. Nothing major.”

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. In fact, she wound up looking kind of like a giant Q-Tip.”

“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 ass?” 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’ realize it waWs ashington’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… Well, there was this, ah… Actually, with his back to me like that, and wearing that purple Speedo, 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 ass, 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—”