My Man Pendleton(67)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

But surely, Pendleton thought, the suggestion that she couldn’t be loved without money wasn’t so deeply ingrained in her that she couldn’t at least give their budding relationship a chance.

“We have lots of time to talk about this,” he said. “But right now I have to get ready for work.” He dipped his head to hers and kissed her tenderly, first on one cheek, then the other, before brushing her lips softly with his.

Reluctantly, he pushed himself off the bed and padded na**d across the bedroom, but he couldn’t resist turning around for one more glimpse of her warm, rosy body. “Get some sleep, because you’re going to need it,” he told her. Then, rousing the most libidinous smile he could muster, he added, “I have plans for you, tonight, Kit. Big, big plans.”

Chapter 16

“But I told you this morning I already made plans for tonight.”

Pendleton hooked his hands on his h*ps and glared at Kit, silently demanding an explanation. She was dressed for an evening out, wearing an elegant little sapphire dress that hugged her in much the same way he wanted to be hugging her himself. Her long, long legs—which he’d frankly planned on having wrapped around his waist right about now—looked absolutely decadent in smoky silk, and her black high heels defined quite nicely the calves he’d rather be gripping in his fists.

Briefly, he wondered if maybe she had on stockings instead of pantyhose, wondered, too, just how long it would take to skim her panties down around her ankles, hike up her skirt, lift her onto the dining room table behind her and—

“Well, what was I supposed to say?” she asked, interrupting what was becoming a very nice daydream. “I can’t remember the last time my father invited me to dinner.”

“That’s because until about a month ago, you were living with him. An invitation hardly seems necessary under those conditions.”

“Well, it still would have been rude to turn him down. He invited you, too, you know.”

“How thoughtful of him.”

Pendleton shook his head morosely. Damn. All day, he’d been looking forward to coming home to Kit and picking up where they left off this morning. Now, here he was, barely in the door, not even close to being undressed, and she was telling him they had to turn around and head out again. Out into public. To her father’s house, no less. Like they were going to have any chance to strip down and do the na**d boogaloo there.

“Do we have to?” he asked, telling himself that wasn’t a petulant little whine that colored his voice.

She reached out and patted his hand. “There, there,” she cooed. “We don’t have to stay late. I promise when we get home, we can do all the naughty things you’ve been planning all day.”

“I’ll hold you to that.” Then he’d hold her to himself. For hours and hours and hours.

“By the way,” she added offhandedly, her voice going way too perky all of a sudden. “Something interesting came in the mail for you this morning.”

With a quick, jerky motion, she spun around to the dining room table and lifted a creamy vellum envelope from the assortment of scattered mail. When she turned again to hand it to Pendleton, her smile was way too bright, way too sweet, way too kind.

“It’s an invitation to your ex-wife’s wedding in two weeks,” she told him before he even had a chance to look at the envelope.

“Two weeks?” he said. “I thought it was still a month away.”

“Well, I guess that grapevine of yours has a short circuit or two.”

“But two weeks,” he said softly, knowing the objection was pointless, because Sherry already set the date. And how did Kit know about that date, by the way, he wondered, unless she was—

“Not that I was snooping or anything,” she said hastily, reading his mind in that damnably annoying way she had of doing. “I just accidentally glimpsed the return address and saw that it was from an S. Pendleton in Mount Holly, New Jersey. Then I accidentally held the envelope over a steaming teakettle until it opened. Then I accidentally turned it upside down and shook it real hard until the invitation fell out. That actually accidentally happened twice, because it had one of those inside envelopes, as well. It, by the way, I noticed accidentally, was addressed to R. Pendleton and guest, so in a sense, I suppose it was addressed to me, too, because, hey, who else would you take to your ex-wife’s wedding but a new flame, right? So really, when you get right down it, I didn’t accidentally break any postal laws at all, did I? You ready to go?”

Pendleton’s head was spinning by the time Kit concluded her story. Only now did he notice the exterior envelope was indeed open, the flap still neat and tidy and the return address smeared by steam. When he glanced back up at Kit, she was looking at him as if she had nothing more on her mind at the moment than what was on tonight’s dinner menu.

“Sherry invited me to her wedding?” he asked.

Kit nodded quickly. “Looks like.”

“Doesn’t Miss Manners frown on that sort of thing?”

Kit threw her arms open wide in what was quite clearly a nervous gesture meant to look nonchalant. “Hey, etiquette has changed so much in the past few years, who can keep up, huh?”

“But still…” Pendleton’s voice trailed off before he completed the thought.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” she said, her voice still annoyingly happy as she crossed her arms over her abdomen in what looked, for some reason, like a gesture of self-preservation. “A woman inviting her ex-husband to her wedding? Sounds to me like she’s still thinking about him. A lot.”

He snapped his head up at that. “What do you mean?”

Her too-bright smile nearly blinded him. “Just that you must still be on Sherry’s mind in a big way if she wants you to come up for the wedding, that’s all. Maybe she’s having second thoughts about taking a powder on your marriage.”

Pendleton eyed her carefully. She was way too cheerful for his comfort. Kit McClellan that happy could only mean trouble.

“And hey, now you won’t have to crash it, will you?” she asked. “Because you’ve been invited. That’s just so convenient, don’t you think? So… Are you going?”

A weighted question if ever there was one, Pendleton thought. But because it involved his ex-wife, he knew exactly how to answer it. “I don’t know.”

Kit nodded, but instead of commenting, she only asked again, “Ready to go? We don’t want to keep Daddy waiting, do we?”