My Man Pendleton(46)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“Because Daddy always sent a watchdog along for the ride,” she said. “He wouldn’t let me go out with anyone unless one of my brothers went, too. And they tended to put a bit of a damper on any romantic developments. Either their presence frightened my dates so badly that they didn’t even speak to me, or else my dates wound up talking Cardinal basketball with my brothers all night. So, obviously, there was little chance for a relationship to blossom.”

Pendleton scratched Maury behind his ears, and the puppy yawned with much gusto. “Why would your father send your brothers on your dates?”

“Simple,” she said. “Because he knew the guys who asked me out were only after one thing.”

Pendleton nodded knowingly. “Sex.”

Kit shook her head. “Money.”

He arched his eyebrows in astonishment, but said nothing in response to her assertion.

So Kit took it upon herself to state the obvious. “Well, why else would any of them want to go out with me?”

Strangely, he still seemed startled by her train of thought, because he replied, “Um, just a shot in the dark, here, but…maybe because they were attracted to you and wanted to get to know you better?”

She almost laughed at that. Almost. “Oh, right. Attracted to me. That’s a good one.”

“Well, why wouldn’t they be?”

“Look, I’m not stupid,” she said. “I know I’m not beautiful.”

When he opened his mouth to comment, Kit stifled him with a quick wave of her hand. “You’ve never lied to me, Pendleton. And you’re about the only person I know who hasn’t. It’s one of the things I admire about you. Don’t start now.”

Without uttering a sound, he closed his mouth.

Saddened by his honesty, Kit continued, “And I know I don’t have the most tolerable personality, either. The only reason anyone asked me out was because of the Hensley millions. Hey, Daddy got Mama pregnant on purpose, just to get his hands on her money. There was no reason for him to think some guy wouldn’t try the same thing with me.”

For a long time, Pendleton gazed at her without speaking, studying her face, her eyes, her mouth. His scrutiny became so maddening, in fact, that Kit finally dropped her head to stare at the fingers she had tangled together in her lap. Why did he keep looking at her that way? He acted as if she were something worth looking at.

“If your father never gave you a chance to have a relationship with anyone,” he finally began again, “then how did you get so far as a rehearsal dinner with the notorious Michael?”

Kit was surprised to discover she didn’t feel nearly as angry about the Michael Derringer incident now as she had before. Before her mother put the fate of her family in her hands. Before she was offered the opportunity to extract a little revenge on her father. Before Pendleton came along and made all kinds of funny things go jumping around inside her.

“I met Michael when I went away to Vanderbilt for my master’s,” she told him. “Daddy sent Dirk with me to do his doctoral studies, but I was old enough by then to have developed a few evasive maneuvers. Plus, Dirk was totally consumed by his studies and extremely easy to elude.”

“You snuck out to meet with your beau.”

She nodded. “Usually under cover of darkness. But there would be the few stolen moments in the library, and once or twice, I managed to make a frat party. Michael even scaled the side of my sorority house once when my roommate was out of town, just to be with me. It was all very romantic.”

“Sounds like.” For some reason, Pendleton’s voice had gone a little rough around the edges. Before Kit could comment, he added, “And by ‘be with me,’ you mean…”

She laughed quietly. “Yes, Michael and I were lovers. I was twenty-three when I finally lost my virginity. Long overdue by some standards, don’t you think?”

“Depends on your standards.”

“Oh, really?” she retorted. “And how old were you when you lost your virginity, Mr. High Standards?”

He began to fidget, then leaped up from the floor and moved back to his motorcycle. But he never answered her question.

“Well?” she demanded.

He glanced back over his shoulder sheepishly. “Um, I was, uh…” He emitted a restless sound. “Fifteen.”

“Fifteen?”she asked incredulously. “You were ha**ng s*x when you were fifteen? Pendleton! Are you crazy? You could have been arrested for statutory!”

“Um, no I couldn’t,” he assured her. “Because she was, uh…she was eighteen.”

“Eighteen?”Kit sputtered”. Eighteen? Then she could have been arrested for statutory. Jeez, Pendleton, what were you? The Casanova of South Jersey? Don PendletJuan?”

“No,” he said, obviously feeling defensive. “I was just an early beginner. Don’t get so bent out of shape. It didn’t happen again until I was seventeen.”

“Oh, really? And how old was that one? Thirty-two?”

He arched a dark brow and threw her a salacious smile. “No, only twenty-one. Why? You jealous?”

“Oh, please. Spare me the details. But then,” she hurried on, “we were talking about me, weren’t we?”

“We always are.”

She narrowed her eyes at that, then continued hastily, “When Michael proposed to me, I told him we should elope, because my father would only cause trouble. But Michael said I was entitled to a big, fancy white wedding, and he was going to see to it that I got one. At the time, I thought he was being terribly romantic and showing some real initiative. Later, I couldn’t help but wonder if by making our relationship known to my family, he wasn’t hoping for exactly the outcome he got.”

“Kit, surely you don’t think that he—”

“What I think,” she interrupted him, her voice quiet, contemplative, and controlled, “is that I’ll never be able to trust a man again.” She unclenched her fingers only long enough to curl them tighter. “And that’s why I can’t forgive my father, Pendleton. Not because he paid Michael off. Hey, I knew all he wanted was my money. I knew he didn’t love me. Like I said—I’m not stupid.”

“Kit—”

“But I could at least pretend that he loved me, no matter who my family was or how much money they had. I couldream that it was me, not the Hensley millions, that he really cared about. Once Michael took that check and left the restaurant, though, that fantasy was gone forever.”