My Man Pendleton(45)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

For a long moment, he only stared at her. She couldn’t possibly be serious. “I can’t believe that’s what would prove a man’s love to you,” he said.

She shrugged. “Hey, love hurts.”

He shook his head. “Love doesn’t hurt. And you should be able to take it on faith that a man loves you.”

“Yeah, well… I never promised anybody a rose garden, Pendleton.”

“Not without the thorns anyway.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Just that every time I start thinking maybe you and I could—” Thankfully, he stopped himself before he said something he knew he’d regret later.

“Could what?” she asked.

“Nothing. Never mind. I just don’t understand why you have to strike out like some wounded animal every time we—”

“Every time we what?”

Pendleton only shook his head and refused to answer. Hell, he wasn’t even sure what he was going to say. Something stupid, no doubt. Something Kit would have totally misconstrued and turned around later to mess with his head. What had gotten them on to this line of conversation anyway? he wondered. Oh, yeah. Sherry. Man, even after being divorced for years, his ex-wife was still messing up his life.

“Well, if you were so happy with your last job,” Kit said, interrupting his thoughts and reading his mind—boy, he hated it when she did that—”then why did you come to work for Hensley’s?”

He didn’t want to tell her. Hell, he didn’t like to admit it to himself. In spite of that, he found himself saying, “Because the last thing Sherry told me when she walked out the door was that I couldn’t cut it, that’s why.”

God, he wished he hadn’t said that.

“What?” Kit asked.

“Just before she left me, Sherry accused me of quitting my job because I couldn’t handle the pressure. She told me I wasn’t man enough to hack it.”

Kit stared at him so intently that he could almost see the little wheels in her brain turning. Finally, she said “You took the job at Hensley’s just to prove to your ex-wife, after all these years, that you can still big wheel with the best of them?”

He nodded silently.

“And she knows about your new life change, does she?”

“She may have heard through the grapevine,” he said.

For a moment, Kit said nothing. Then, very softly, she asked, “And has she come running back to you, Pendleton?”

This time he shook his head. “No. As a matter of fact, she’s getting married again at the end of April. To one of my former colleagues. One of my former coworkers. One of my former best friends.”

Kit nodded slowly, knowingly, as if she now understood everything. Which was a lot more than Pendleton could say for himself.

“And I assume,” she said, “that this former colleague, this former coworker, this former best friend, is still right there in the thick of the corporate game, hacking it in a manly manner?”

“You assume correctly.”

“You’re still in love with her, aren’t you?”

As with every other question about Sherry, Pendleton simply was not sure how to answer. So he replied honestly, “I don’t know.”

“What are you planning to do?” Kit asked. “Run up to New Jersey to crash the wedding? Walk in at the last minute with a few manly paycheck stubs and try to win her back?”

He dropped his gaze back down to the floor. “Can we talk about something else?” he asked.

He saw that Kit was about to say something else, but Maury tumbled into the shed and proceeded to attack her fingers. Smiling, she pushed the puppy away, only to have him crouch comically with his entire back hemisphere wagging like a live wire before assaulting her right ankle.

“You crazy mutt,” she said, chuckling halfheartedly as she scooped him up into her arms.

Pendleton couldn’t help but smile at the scene, relieved that the glacier floating around in his chest began to melt at the sight of Kit going all gooey over an inept, overzealous puppy. The only thing weirder than that was the way he was suddenly going all gooey over Kit. But there it was, all the same, and for some reason, the realization wasn’t quite so scary as he would have thought it would be.

She nuzzled the dog’s nose with hers, and when Maury nipped her playfully, she squealed with feigned outrage. “Maury! You big doofus! You don’t bite the nose that feeds you. How many times do I have to tell you that?”

But the dog only licked her nose this time, with much affection, and somehow, Pendleton found himself wanting to repeat the gesture himself.

“Why did you name him Maury?” he asked.

She set the puppy on the ground, and he scampered happily over to the deconstructed motorcycle, sniffing each and every part as if they were delectable bits of kibble. Kit smiled, a gesture that softened all the sharp angles of her face.

“He reminds me of an old boyfriend,” she said.

“Maury? Turk? Michael? You sure have had a lot of boyfriends.” Pendleton told himself he did not sound jealous.

Kit switched her attention from the puppy to him, but her smile turned sad, and the light fled from her eyes. “I’ve had a lot of dates, Pendleton, not a lot of boyfriends.”

“What’s the difference?”

Still reeling from the news of Pendleton’s marital state—not to mention the fact that he was still very preoccupied by his ex-wife’s comings and goings—Kit expelled an errant breath and tried not to think about it.

“Boyfriend,” she finally said, “suggests a relationship of some length of time. Date, on the other hand, indicates a solitary event that may lead to another, but maybe won’t. In my life, there were many dates, many solitary events. Boyfriends, well…you’ve heard about all of my boyfriends now. All three of them.”

His surprise was evident. “Only three?”

She nodded. “Maury actually only made it through four dates,” she confessed, “but I let myself consider him as a boyfriend. Turk lasted nearly a month, and Michael…” She sighed as her voice trailed off, leaving unfinished a discussion of whatever feelings she still had for her ex-fiancé. It wasn’t important, she thought. Not anymore.

“Why so few boyfriends after having so many dates?” he asked, scattering her thoughts.

He plucked Maury up from the floor, then moved to sit down beside Kit and settled the puppy in his lap She watched as the little golden furball made mincemeat out of his boot laces, feeling a bit unsettled by Pendleton’s nearness. So she scooted away from him, ostensibly to make more room, but really because she just didn’t want him to get too close.