My Man Pendleton(78)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

As he followed the sound toward the open back door, some great weight in Pendleton’s chest shifted aside. Yeah, he thought, it was definitely good to be home.

Kit studied Pendleton’s father in the waning light of a day in the life of New Jersey and marveled again at how much he looked like his son. A bit softer around the middle, maybe, a little grayer and thinner on top, but all in all, a striking likeness. In twenty-five or thirty years, she thought, this would be Pendleton. Man of the House. Head of the Household. Master of the Suburban Domain.

Keeper of the Holy Barbecue.

Axel stood on the minuscule cement patio, gripping a Rolling Rock beer in his bare hand and a pair of tongs in the one that was covered with a lobster claw oven mitt. The apron protecting his plaid shirt and sans-a-belt trousers read Who invited all these tacky people? Somehow, even having spent only a few days in the man’s company, Kit felt closer to him than she’d ever felt to her own father.

“Now, Axel,” she said, “don’t be so hasty. We’ve been over this before. I don’t know why you refuse to even consider the possibility that just a touch of cumin might improve your special sauce.”

“Don’t nobody mess with my special sauce, little girl.” He shook his tongs at her. “This barbecue sauce took ribbons eight years straight at the Deptford Township Fall Festival.”

She adopted her most solicitous smile and tried again. “But a little cumin would go a long way toward—”

“No.”

His reply was succinct, to the point, and final. Kit shook her head. Fine. She gave up. No cumin.

“How about a little rosemary?” she asked.

“No. No cumin, no rosemary.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but he cut her off with a quick swipe of his tongs.

“And no marjoram, either. Foggiddabbuddit, Kit.”

Foggiddabbuddit, she learned on her first day in New Jersey, was Northeastern for Forget about it. Kind of like how y’all was Southeastern for youse.

“But, Axel—”

“No,” he said again. “My recipe ain’t gonna change in this lifetime.” He eyed her warily. “And it better not change after I go to my reward, either, you hear what I’m sayin’?”

“All right, all right,” she conceded reluctantly. “Boy, you are so much like your son, you know that?”

That, at least, made Axel smile. “Rocky? Yeah, he’s a good kid.”

As if conjured by the comment, a familiar voice called from behind, “Yo, Dad!”

A huge grin split Axel’s face at the same time Kit’s smile fell. They spun around as one to find Pendleton striding casually across the backyard, one arm slung over Carny’s shoulder, the hand of the other shoved deep into the pocket of his jeans. The sleeves of his faded blue sweatshirt were shoved up nearly to his elbows, exposing one of those incredibly sexy forearms that even now, in the middle of a family gathering, made Kit go hot and bothered inside.

“Sonny!” Axel cried, throwing his arms up into the air.

He set down his tongs and beer and went to meet his son, intercepting him halfway across the yard. Immediately, fiercely, both men embraced. Not one of those phony, he-man, homophobic embraces, either—the kind where the guys slap each other silly on the back for a few seconds before springing uncomfortably apart. But a truly heartfelt hug, both men gripping each other tightly for a solid minute before letting go.

In the meantime, Irene Pendleton cried out happily and jumped up from the chaise lounge where she’d been reading, and she thrust herself into what became a three-way, marathon hug. Behind them, Carny shook her head and laughed, before she, too, came forward and threw her arms around the lot of them as best she could. Then the Axel Pendletons of Deptford, New Jersey clung together as if their lives depended on it.

Something stung Kit’s eyes suddenly, and she quickly swiped a hand across them. When she looked up again, it was to find Pendleton gazing at her over the top of his mother’s head, and somehow she received the distinct impression that he wanted her to join in the fray.

Yeah, right, she thought. She’d probably suffocate in a huddle like that. So she only picked up Axel’s discarded tongs and flipped the ribs over to the other side. No reason to interfere in a family thing.

She felt, more than saw, the group disperse, and likewise only sensed Pendleton’s approach. She told herself to be a man about it, to meet him head-to-head on his own turf. Just because she’d fallen in love with another guy who only wanted her for her money, hey, what was so terrible about that? It wasn’t like she didn’t already traveled this road before, right? She ought to be used to it by now. Next stop, heartbreak. She should have seen it coming from a mile away.

Pendleton came to a halt with a good six feet of lawn and patio still separating them, then softly greeted her, “Hi.”

She dropped her gaze back down to the grill. “Your folks promised they wouldn’t call you until I told them it was okay.”

“They didn’t call me. Carny did.”

Kit nodded. That’s right, she recalled. Carny never did state in so many words that she would abide by Kit’s request. Sisters were always such troublemakers. She should know that by now.

“Well,” she said softly, still forcing herself not to look at Pendleton, “I suppose I should apologize. But at least this way you get to visit with your family on Daddy’s dime, don’t you?”

“You think that’s the only reason I came?”

Unable to stop herself, Kit glanced up to look at him, and immediately wished she hadn’t. He looked tired. Anxious. Sad. Then again, he’d had some dizzy dame turning his life upside-down for a couple of months now, hadn’t he? How else was he supposed to look?

“That’s right, I almost forgot,” she lied, not even bothering to feign good humor. “Your ex-wife is getting married this weekend, isn’t she? Wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

His response stumped her. Hey, if he didn’t know the answer to that one, she sure wasn’t going to try and jog his memory. In spite of that, she heard herself say, “Well, there is that small matter of you still being in love with her. Of you wanting to show her that you’ve still got what it takes to flex PR and push pencils with the big boys.”

He smiled, a wistful kind of smile unlike any Kit had ever seen from him. “Although I have to confess tha there was a time not too long ago when I did indeed fantasize a nice little revenge about attending Sherry’s wedding with some big, busty, bitchy blond—”