My Man Pendleton(56)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

When she glanced back over at him, her expression divulged nothing of what she was thinking. “Are you going to tell him?”

Holt shook his head. “I ought to, but I won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because I think it’s important that you come to your senses on your own. Not because someone jerked you there against your will.”

She eyed him in silence for a moment, but he had no way of knowing whether she would heed his suggestion.

“Did you know he’s originally from New Jersey?” she asked instead.

Holt arched his eyebrows at the quick change of subject. “Pendleton?”

She nodded. “And did you know he has a big ol’ Harley hog? And he likes R&B? And he used to be married? And before he came to work for Hensley’s, he was working for a nonprofit organization that helped underprivileged kids?”

“Pendleton?”

She nodded. “Yeah, boy, you think you know a corporate drone and then bam. He pulls a stunt like this.”

“Like what?”

“Like turning into a human being.”

Holt laughed. “So you like him then?”

“No,” she said too quickly. “Yes,” she then amended just as rapidly. She sighed as she tangled her fingers nervously together in her lap. “Oh, I don’t know.”

Holt chuckled. “Maybe Dad was right. Maybe Pendleton is the man for you.”

“Don’t get cocky,” she muttered. But her heart clearly wasn’t in the admonition.

Holt sipped his soda and loosened his tie and tried to pinpoint when, exactly, his little sister had stopped being such a doormat. He didn’t have to think long. He recalled the exact moment with crystal clarity, even though he was three sheets to the wind at the time. The reading of their mother’s will. Scarcely two seconds after Abernathy apprised them of the conditions surrounding their mother’s final wishes, Kit scooped up the McClellan scepter and ran like the wind, and none of them came close to catching her.

But then, at first, once the shock of their mother’s last will and testament wore off, the McClellan men didn’t feel particularly concerned about the problem. Marrying off Kit wasn’t such a big deal. She’d been trying to have a relationship with one kind of loser or another since she was fifteen. Just because the McClellan men chased—or paid—them all off didn’t mean there wouldn’t be others. Kit wasn’t half-bad-looking, Bart reminded them. As long as the lights weren’t too bright. And despite her abrasiveness, Dirk added, she could be fun. Sometimes. And she was smart, too, Mick threw in. Maybe a little too smart on occasion. But surely a man could overlook those things in light of millions of dollars, couldn’t he? Why worry about some silly little condition of the trust, right?

Yeah, right.

They should have known better, Holt thought now. And they should have given Kit a little more credit, long before Mama died.

“So how are things going with your new girlfriend?” she asked suddenly, pulling him out of his reverie. Although he knew perfectly well who Kit was talking about, he feigned confusion. “Girlfriend? What girlfriend?”

She clearly wasn’t buying any of it. “Oh, come on. You remember,” she said, “that sweet blond creature you were entertaining in the dining room the night Pendleton brought me home from the Caribbean. Faith Ivory of the Louisville Temperance League, I believe you introduced her as?”

“Oh, her.”

“Yeah, her. How are things going?”

“They’re not.”

“Oh.”

Neither of them said anything further for a moment, and just as Holt opened his mouth to change the subject, Kit opened hers to keep it right where it was.

“You really like her, don’t you?” she asked.

It would be pointless to lie, Holt thought. Kit wasn’t stupid. Hadn’t they all learned that the hard way? “Yes,” he said, staring down into his glass, if not at his sister. “I like her very much.”

“Why?”

He shrugged. “I honestly don’t know.” Now he glanced up at Kit, searching her face as if she might somehow give him the answer he was looking for. “But I can’t stop thinking about her. There’s something there between us. I just can’t… I just don’t…” He sighed restlessly, unable to complete the thought.

“So call her,” Kit told him, as if that were the solution to all the varied and numerous obstacles facing him and Faith.

“I did better than that. I went to see her in person.”

“And?”

“And she made it clear that she doesn’t want to see me.”

“Why not?”

“Her late husband was an alcoholic,” he said. “He treated her badly. She has a small problem with trust.” There, he thought. Succinct and to the point. All done.

Not quite, he realized when he looked over to find Kit gaping at him. “You told her about your drinking?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Boy, you must really like her.”

Yeah, you could say that, he thought. Aloud, he only told her, “Although she thinks my overcoming my problem is admirable, she’s by no means convinced that I won’t, in a moment of weakness, do something stupid like, oh…fall off the wagon and turn mean.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Kit said. “You’ll never fall off the wagon. And you couldn’t be mean if your life depended on it.”

“Yeah, well tell her that.”

“Maybe I will.”

He eyed her warningly. “Don’t you dare. Stay out of this, Kit. This is between me and Faith. And it’s over now. She’s not going to come around.”

Kit said nothing in response, something that troubled him greatly. In an effort to change the subject and dispel any crazy schemes she might be cooking up in that wily head of hers, he hurried on, “I still can’t believe Pendleton hasn’t tossed you out by now. Not unless there’s more to this arrangement, in spite of the sleeping assignments, than you’re letting on.”

Kit sighed, obviously disappointed by the lob back into her own court. “Well, he doesn’t have much choice, does he? If I come crying back to Daddy that Pendleton doesn’t love me anymore, Daddy will fire him.”

“Pendleton’s a savvy guy,” Holt said. “He could find work anywhere he wants.”

“Not at the stud rate Daddy’s paying him.”