My Man Pendleton(33)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

This time Holt was the one who stopped dead in his tracks. Faith kept walking for a half-dozen paces before she realized she had proceeded alone, then she, too, stopped and turned, her expression a silent question mark.

“I haven’t earned it?” he asked. “Says who?”

She blinked at him, but said nothing in response. Slowly, Holt began to walk again, covering the distance between them with measured, deliberate strides.

“There are a lot of different ways to earn things, Mrs. Ivory,” he said as he approached her. “There’s starting at the bottom and working your way to the top. There’s paying your dues in less tangible ways, through life experience. And there’s simple day-to-day survival.”

When he stood face to face with her again, he halted, gazing down into her eyes, nearly drowning in the eddy of emotions he saw there.

“Yes well I’m familiar with all of those,” she said, her tone colder than the wintry air that surrounded them. “But I find it hard to believe you’ve experienced any of them.”

“You might be surprised what I’ve experienced,” he told her.

In response, she turned and began to walk away, this time with a less hurried pace. Holt followed, staying even with her. Yet neither said another word until they slowed to a halt at the corner of Ninth and Broadway.

When Faith spoke again, it was after pointing to an older model sedan parked alone across the street. “There’s where I’m parked.”

The traffic on Broadway was surprisingly heavy for a Monday night, so they waited at the corner for the light to change before crossing. As they did, Holt realized his last chance with Faith was quickly slipping away. He didn’t know why it was so essential that he see her again. He only knew that it was. So while he had her captive on the corner, he turned to her again.

“Have dinner with me this week,” he said softly. “Tomorrow night. Please.”

He could see she wanted to decline, but she said nothing right away. Instead, she only watched the signal opposite them, a red flashing hand that seemed to be urging her, Don’t do it…don’t do it…don’t do it… For several moments, she remained silent. Then the signal changed. “Okay,” she said softly. “I’ll have dinner with you tomorrow night. Call me at work in the morning.”

Chapter 9

There was nothing—absolutely nothing—in life that brought Pendleton greater joy than rolling his car to a stop on the cobbled court in front of Cherrywood with Kit McClellan at his side. Not even that interlude on the dance floor the two of them shared in Veranda Bay, which, at the time, he found more enjoyable than he liked to admit. But it had taken them four days to get from there to here, and the sparkle of that moment had tarnished a looong time ago.

Kit McClellan, he had learned the hard way, was not a trustworthy woman.

For some reason, after dropping her back at her bungalow at the Veranda Bay Resort, he felt compelled to hang around, just to be sure she didn’t try anything funny. Like, oh, say… escaping, for instance. And imagine his lack of surprise when, less than thirty minutes later, she slipped out the door with suitcase in hand.

What ensued was a bout of island-hopping unlike anything Pendleton had ever experienced, culminating in a rather unforgettable—as much as he wished he could forget it—incident at the airport in San Juan, where Kit almost managed to give him the slip. Looking back, he supposed it really wasn’t anything too major. She just kind of shoved him from behind, yelled to a gaggle of security guards that he was carrying narcotics, then took off running at breakneck speed in the opposite direction.

At the time, however, Pendleton had been a little hacked off. But once he explained the situation to the guards—no easy feat, considering the fact that he barely knew what was going on himself—and once he was strip-searched and interrogated for more than an hour by the Puerto Rican authorities; everything was fine. Well, sort of fine. There was that compulsive need for a shower he still hadn’t quite shaken.

Luckily for him, he noted the terminal toward which Kit was running before they slapped the handcuffs on him. Unluckily for him, it emptied out into a half-dozen gates, any of which could have been her final destination. He had to resort to his dubious masculine wiles and his questionable good looks to cajole a terminal operator to search the manifests for a name. Thanks to the warning he received from the other Hensley’s VPs, not for the name Katherine Atherton McClellan, either.

Ultimately, Pendleton and the employee performing the search—a charming young woman named Rafaela, to whom he owed a night of dinner and dancing the next time he found himself in San Juan—decided the person traveling first class under the moniker Anne O’Cleves was, more than likely, the object of his pursuit. And how fortuitous that the plane had a three-hour layover before flying off to St. Maarten, so it was still on the ground.

It wasn’t pretty removing Kit from that plane. And now here he sat with the queen herself, in front of her palace, wanting to chop off Her Majesty’s head.

“We’re home, Your Highness,” he stated unnecessarily. “Now get the hell out of my car.”

She uttered a soft sigh. “Gee, Pendleton. Keep being so nice to me, and you’re going to turn my head.”

“Get out of my car,” he repeated, surprised at how even he managed to keep his voice.

She eyed him thoughtfully for a moment. “You’re still steamed about the San Juan thing, aren’t you?”

Somehow, he refrained from comment.

“How many times do I have to tell you? I’m really sorry. It was just a joke. I had no idea they’d actually strip-search you.”

“Get out. Now.”

“Aren’t you going to walk me to the door?”

“No.”

“Daddy’s going to be disappointed if you don’t carry me in thrown over your shoulder, kicking and screaming.”

“No.”

“Oh, come on, Pendleton. It’ll be fun.”

“No.”

“Novak carried me in that way.”

“No.”

She sighed heavily again and settled back into her seat, clearly not going anywhere.

“Miss McClellan, I have better things to do with my time than be a plaything for you and your father. You’ll excuse me if I reiterate. Get…out …of …my …car.”

She folded her arms over her midsection. “Daddy won’t be pleased. And you won’t have a car for me to get out of if you lose your job. The repo guys will come and take it back to Status Symbols-R-Us. Then where will you be?”