My Man Pendleton(44)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

She had the decency to look chagrined at that. “I’m sorry about that,” she said. “I had no right to—”

“You had every right,” he said with a shrug. “You were totally on the mark, at least where my old life was concerned.” But Pendleton wasn’t that man anymore, and he wouldn’t make the same mistakes twice.

“So what turned you into a winner?” Kit asked with a smile.

He forced a smile in response. “Well, I wouldn’t go so far as to call myself that,” he said. “But one day, right in the middle of an executive meeting, during a presentation about luring the middle-class family consumer, I realized I wanted to have kids. Not just that, but I wanted to spend time with my kids. Hell, I wanted to spend time with my wife. I wanted to have weekends at the shore, and backyard barbecues, and carpools and recitals. But the only way I was going to be able to manage that was with a job that demanded a lot less from me. So, after giving it some thought, I quit my megabucks job.”

Kit gasped at the announcement. “Just like that?”

He nodded. “Just like that.”

“You just turned your back on all that money and power? All that prestige?”

He shrugged. “Well, it wasn’t exactly enriching my life. I wasn’t happy.”

Kit only gazed at him in silence for a moment, as if she simply could not understand his motivation. Then she asked, “And what did Sherry do?”

He chuckled morosely. “Oh, Sherry wasn’t too happy about the new development at all. Especially when I told her I did it because I wanted a family. Turns out, she wasn’t so hot to have kids.”

“Um, color me presumptuous,” Kit said, “but wasn’t that something the two of you should have discussed before you got married?”

“Hey, we did discuss it,” Pendleton told her, indignant that she would suggest such a thing. “At some length, as a matter of fact.” Then he conceded reluctantly, “Of course, we were only thirteen at the time, but…I just assumed that having kids was a foregone conclusion, you know? That’s what people in our neighborhood did. They got married. They had kids. Granted, most of them weren’t working seventy or eighty hours a week like I was, but still…” He shrugged again. “I just thought Sherry would want what I did. Turns out, she didn’t. So she left.”

“And what did you do?”

Pendleton glanced back down at his hands, rubbing hard at one particularly stubborn smear of grease on his thumb that refused to budge. “I took a job with a small, nonprofit organization that was trying to raise awareness about inner-city kids at risk. Where before I’d just been making, as you yourself said, some rich, greedy corporation richer and greedier, my new job made me feel like I was actually doing something worthwhile. But it left me without the family I had taken it for. Sherry never came back. The divorce was final a year later.”

“How come you didn’t just ask for your other job back?” she asked. “If that would have made Sherry stay?”

He stared at her incredulously. “Because by then, the damage was done. I mean, would you have taken Michael Derringer back if your father changed his mind and offered him more money to come back and marry you?”

For a moment, she said nothing. Then, very quietly, she told him, “Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because then, at least I wouldn’t have been alone.”

He expelled a single, humorless chuckle. “Yes, you would. You would have known he didn’t really love you.”

“But he would have pretended to.”

“And that would be okay with you?”

She shrugged, a gesture so nonchalant, so unconcerned, it gave Pendleton goosebumps. As if she truly didn’t care whether or not someone loved her, as long as he at least pretended to.

“Oh, come on, Pendleton,” she said. “Do you honestly think I ever believed Michael really loved me?”

“You don’t think he did?”

“Of course not.”

“Then why the hell did you agree to marry him?”

That careless shrug again then “Beats being alone.”

“If you’re going to go to all the trouble to marry a man, to spend the rest of your life with him, don’t you think that man ought to honestly love you?” His words were more forceful than he intended, his feelings more intense than he’d realized.

Kit threw him a look of disbelief. “Pendleton, no man is ever going to honestly love me.”

The way she tossed off the pronouncement, so casually, so matter-of-fact, as if it were something she’d said every day of her life, chilled him. She genuinely believed that, he thought. She was as convinced of the truth in that statement as she was convinced of her own name. She wasn’t fishing for a contradiction or reassurance from him. She really didn’t believe any man could fall in love with her.

“You really believe that, don’t you?” he asked, speaking his thoughts aloud. “You really don’t think a man could love you.”

She only gazed at him in bemusement, as if she couldn’t understand why he would even ask her such a thing.

“What would it take to make you believe a man was in love with you?” he asked, wondering why he was even bothering to continue with a conversation that had degenerated so badly.

His question obviously stumped her, because her eyes widened, and her lips parted slightly in surprise. “What do you mean?”

“I mean what would a man have to do to convince you that he was in love with you?”

“Silly question, Pendleton,” she said. “I just told you no man is ever going to—”

“Just answer me,” he insisted. “What would it take to convince you that someone loved you?”

For a moment, he thought she would try to change the subject, but instead, she seemed to give his question some serious thought. Finally, her expression lightened, as if she’d come to a conclusion.

“A tattoo,” she said simply.

He frowned. He should have known she wouldn’t take him seriously. In spite of that he echoed, “A tattoo?”

She nodded. “If a man really loved a woman, he’d get a tattoo with her name.” As if further inspired, she opened her right hand over the upper swell of her left breast. “Right here. Where kids put their hands when they say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Some guy gets a tattoo with my name on it, I know he’s serious about me. Especially if it’s a really big one with hearts and flowers and a big ol’ nasty cupid playing a harp. And my name,” she added. “Not ‘Kit,’ but ‘Katherine.’ The pain level would be significantly greater, and therefore the proof more positive.”