My Man Pendleton(60)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

He rocked back on his heels. “Yeah, well, we’ll see.” Out of nowhere, for the first time, he found himself actually wanting to fit in down here. “You keep eating like that,” he countered, “and you’re going to wind up a Christmas ham with clogged arteries yourself.”

She smiled. “Not a chance. I have an incredibly fast metabolism. Not to mention a standing date with a certain treadmill at LAC every weekday afternoon.”

For a long time, neither of them said anything more. Kit only stood in the middle of the room staring at him, and all Pendleton could do was stare back. Something had changed. He wasn’t quite sure what, but there was something there between them that wasn’t there before, not even after that raging hormonal embrace earlier in the week. Comfort, he finally realized. He suddenly felt comfortable with Kit in his house.

“So…” he began again, before the awkwardness and uncertainty of his newly discovered feelings for her turned into a stark, raving terror that stampeded out of his control. “If you want to call for the pizza, I could run upstairs to take a shower and change.” He tucked a hand idly under the bib of his overalls and scraped his fingers casually over his chest. “I’m not much fit for human consumption right now.”

She shrugged, but somehow the gesture was in no way nonchalant. “Okay. Impellizzeri’s all right with you?”

“Sure.”

She nodded, but again, Pendleton got the feeling there was nothing smooth or unconcerned about her reaction. She seemed to be completely preoccupied with something other than dinner, because she wasn’t meeting his gaze at all, nor did she make any move toward the telephone. Instead, her attention seemed to be focused entirely on…entirely on his… um…on his chest.

He glanced down to see if something had happened to his person that he should be aware of—like if maybe a slime-dripping alien with retractable teeth had suddenly burst from his chest cavity or something like that. But he saw nothing out of the ordinary, just his half-naked, completely dirty chest fully intact, and he grew more puzzled. Why would Kit be staring at his body like that? he wondered. As if she wanted to have something other than pizza for dinner? Unless…

He smiled as understanding dawned on him like a good, solid blow to the back of the head. Deliberately, he rubbed his hand over his chest one more time, then drove both arms up above his head and launched into a lengthy, lusty stretch. Her eyes widened, going as round and as large as silver dollars. Oh, yeah. Now he knew what was going on.

“Well,” he began again. He completed the stretch, then reached up to unhook the buckle that was fastened on his bib, letting the bit of faded denim fall down to completely expose his bare torso. See if she could resist that. “You go ahead and call, and I’ll clean up. Give me about fifteen minutes, and I’ll be down.”

Her face was kind of pale now—except for the two bright spots of pink riding high on her cheeks—and she lifted a hand to her forehead, as if she were trying to ward off a sudden fever. “O-okay,” she said, stumbling over the word.

“You want wine to go with?” he asked, reaching for the metal stud at the side of his overalls. “There’s some in the basement.”

She nodded quickly. “Fine. I’ll run down for a bottle as soon as I call. You go on upstairs.” He unfastened the first stud at his side and reached for the second. “You sure?”

“Yes. Go. Now.”

He took a step forward. “I don’t mind getting it for you. You kind of look like you could use a drink.”

She held up a hand to ward him off. “I’m fine. Really. Fine. You. Go.”

“Well, okay…”

Before he could comment further, she spun around and fled for the kitchen, little more than a lavender blur. Pendleton smiled as he turned to go back up the steps. Oh, yeah. Dinner was definitely going to be interesting. And it went without saying what they were going to be having for dessert…

Kit was still feeling rattled when she submerged the last of the supper dishes into the soapy water in the sink, and she told herself to puh-leeze get a grip. Okay, so Pendleton just looked too yummy in his plaster-covered overalls without a shirt underneath. She’d seen him naked, she reminded herself, that first night she climbed into bed with him, and the sight didn’t have any kind of effect on her at all. Well, not a big effect, she amended reluctantly. Then again, all she’d seen was his bare back and tushie that night, and even then, only in the spastic beam of a flashlight. She hadn’t glimpsed the rich scattering of dark hair that decorated his chest from one side to the other. Nor did she much take note of the hard, sculpted muscle beneath. Or the glow of his skin that looked like satin over steel. Tonight, however…

She inhaled deeply as she rinsed a plate beneath a stream of tepid water and handed it to Pendleton, who readily dried it and stacked it in the cupboard near his head. He had changed into a pair of blue jeans and an exhausted gray sweatshirt emblazoned with the words, Property Colonial High School Athletic Department, Deptford, New Jersey, XXL, and somehow the baggy shirt only enhanced the solid build of his torso. He leaned an indolent hip on the counter beside him as he waited for her to wash another plate, and she could feel his gaze pinned to her face, just as she’d felt it lingering there all evening.

So, naturally, she kept her face in profile and didn’t look back at him. She couldn’t look back at him. Every time she did, she saw a fire burning in his brown eyes that she told herself she couldn’t possibly be seeing. Damn the man for not installing a dishwasher yet, anyway. And damn her for not realizing the inconvenience of that before now.

“Are you ever going to speak again?”

She started at his softly uttered question. Speak? she wondered. About what? About the way he had her all tied in knots? About how the only thing she’d been able to think about last night as she lay in her bed at Cherrywood was how alien and unwelcome had become the bedroom that had been hers since she outgrew the nursery? About how all she’d wanted to do was pick up the phone in the middle of the night and call Pendleton, just so she could hear the exasperating “Good night, Kit” that he bit off every evening before she turned in with her cocoa? How could she speak to him about that?

Ultimately, what she settled on was, “Speak? Who? Me?”

He chuckled low. “Speak. Yeah. You. Who else would I be talking to? Maury never shuts up.”