My Man Pendleton(47)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“Kit—”

“So see, it isn’t the fact that my father bribed and banished my fiancé that I can’t forgive,” she interrupted him again. “What I can’t forgive is that by doing it, he robbed me of my dream. And that is why I will not get married before my mother’s deadline. So that my father and brothers will know what it feels like to lose what’s most important to them, just like I lost what was most important to me.” She met his gaze levelly. “They stole my fantasy, Pendleton. They stole my dreams.”

Tears were beginning to well up in her eyes, and suddenly, she didn’t want to talk to Pendleton anymore. So she pushed herself up from the floor, ignored Maury when he began to yip and bounce playfully around her feet, and stepped carefully over the puppy. Once she cleared that barrier, however, she realized another. Because Pendleton, too, stood, and he placed himself between her and the door.

“Kit, listen to me. I—”

She held up her hands, chest-high, palm out. “Don’t,” she said simply, tilting her head back in an effort to keep the tears from spilling. “Just…don’t.”

She surged forward, shouldering him out of the way as she hurried past. And as she made tracks over the frosty grass in a bee-line back to the house, she congratulated herself on making an escape that was, if not particularly clean, at least complete.

Chapter 12

What ensued after that was a truce—of sorts—that lasted two full weeks. Well, not a truce exactly, because that suggested there were no displays of tension or pique, and that wasn’t quite true. So it was really more like a status quo that lasted two weeks. Then again, it wasn’t a status quo, either, because that smacked of politics, and although one might consider what went on between them to be political in a bizarre kind of way, wasn’t really. So maybe what ensued was more like a sense of peace and quiet that lasted two full weeks. Actually, that wasn’t quite right, either, because with Kit being the kind of person she was—namely, disagreeable and loud—Pendleton’s house was in no way peaceful, nor was it particularly quiet.

The two of them did, however, manage to maintain their sleeping habits, for what that was worth. Pendleton continued to sleep on the couch while Kit slumbered in the bedroom, and Maury divided his time between the two, a bond that afforded them some kind of connection. Sort of, at any rate. In a way. At least, they were linked in spirit. Or maybe thought. Or perhaps awareness.

Yes, awareness. That was it. Because whatever else was going on the house, however indefinable, Pendleton and Kit were certainly aware of each other’s presence there.

As he soaped up in his shower, Pendleton congratulated himself on finally pinning down a definition—however vague—of his relationship with Kit since that mutual baring of souls they shared two weeks earlier. Yep, by god, that was it. Awareness. Deep, abiding awareness. In fact, he was aware of her the moment he woke up every morning, because she had adopted the unfortunate habit of rising early to cook him breakfast before he went to work. Not his usual Wheaties with skim milk and bananas, either. No, Kit insisted that since he was living in Kentucky now, Pendleton should start eating like a Kentuckian. To her, that meant sausage, eggs, and biscuits dripping with butter.

He fared little better upon his return home in the evening, because she cooked dinner for him, too, usually something with pork. Or pork fat. Or pork rinds. Or pork bones. She even prepared vegetables by throwing them into a pot with a big ol’ hamhock and boiling them within an inch of their lives. Just like her mama had done, and her mama’s mama had done before that. Kit’s mother had been a country girl at heart, and made sure her daughter knew how to please a man in the kitchen. A man who liked pork, at any rate. Pendleton, however, preferred poultry.

He still hadn’t quite figured out what Kit did during the day while he was at work. Aside from prowling the city in her celebrated Mercedes S-class, in a quest to find things that would really annoy him. Things like a concrete garden gnome for the front yard—which he immediately exiled to the back—or lace curtains for the front windows—which he simply tried his best to ignore—or more of those intolerable Bill Monroe CDs—which he refused to admit were starting to grow on him in spite of the proliferation of banjos.

Just as Pendleton was rinsing his hair, the steamy stream of hot water spurting from the faucet suddenly went arctic cold, and he yelped at the shock of it. “Dammit,” he hissed as he leaped away from the icy cascade.

Blindly, because he still had soap in his eyes, he fumbled to turn the water off, then snatched a towel from the rack, and stepped out into the quickly dissipating steam. As he jerked his robe from the back of the bathroom door, he heard the unmistakable sound of water running elsewhere in the house, and he realized Kit was the culprit behind his sabotaged shower.

He had told her and told her and told her about the temperamental plumbing in the old building, had warned her and warned her and warned her that when someone was running the shower, the slightest trickle of water elsewhere in the house could potentially cause frostbite for the showerer. Of course, that was why she invariably chose his shower time to take her baths, he reminded himself. So that he would freeze his—

Assembling what little control he could, Pendleton scooped his wet hair from his forehead and made a decision, right there on the spot: No more. Kit had interrupted his leisurely Sunday morning shower for the last time. With a resolute cinching of his bathrobe belt, he exited the second-floor bathroom and proceeded to the one downstairs. He was still dripping water and shivering enough to qualify for the puree setting on a blender when he rapped hard on the bathroom door.

“Kit!” he called out over the rush of water on the other side, envisioning the steam that must be curling up from all the hot water running into the tub.

“What?” she called back.

“Are you decent?”

She didn’t respond for a moment, then sang out, “Maybe. Maybe not. Do you feel lucky?”

Not for the last few weeks, he thought. “We need to talk,” he told her through the door.

“Can’t it wait?”

“No.”

A heartfelt sigh, then, “Hang on a minute.”

The water shut off, and he heard two quick splashes followed by the rattle of the shower curtain rings along the metal rod. “Okay,” she called out sweetly. “You can come in now.”

Pendleton grasped the doorknob, clipped it to the right, and entered the fray. Unfortunately, the fray wasn’t quite what he expected it to be, and he was already surrounded by the spicy scent of sandalwood before he realized he’d been set up. By then it was too late, because he was frozen in place, completely unable to move.