My Man Pendleton (36 page)

"Well, what was I supposed to say?" she asked, interrupting what had become 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."

"Gee, how thoughtful of him."

Pendleton shook his head morosely. Damn. All day long, he'd been looking forward to coming home to Kit and picking up where they'd 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 naked boogaloo there.

"Do we have to?" he asked, telling himself that was
not
a petulant little whine that colored his voice.

She reached out and patted his hand soothingly. "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." And 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 had already set the date. And how did Kit know about that date, by the way, he wondered, unless she'd been—

"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. And 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 that 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 very nervous gesture meant to look very 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?"

Instead of pointing out to her that she'd been keeping Daddy on pins and needles for nearly two years now, he only nodded. "Yeah, I'm ready," he lied. He only wished he knew for what.

* * *

Pendleton was nearly overcome with dread as he turned off River Road into Glenview and approached the majestic McClellan home. Again. So far, he was zero for two in having a good time at Cherrywood. And even when Kit directed him to pull his car around to the back of the house this time, thereby providing him with at least one small change, he was more than a little uncomfortable at the prospect of another evening spent cozily curled up at home with those crazy—oops, he meant
eccentric,
of course—McClellans.

It helped little when he rolled his roadster to a stop near the four-car garage, only to see Holt McClellan, Jr. not ten feet away, wearing one of his two-thousand-dollar power suits and dribbling a basketball on the pavement. Evidently, he'd been at it for some time, because he'd worked up a sweat, despite the cool evening.

"Oh, goody," Kit said when she noted her brother's activities. "It's been a long time since I went one-on-one with Holt."

Before Pendleton could say a word, she leaped out of the car and made a mad dash for her brother. So he climbed out, too, eager to see just what kind of chance she thought she had at roundball when pitted against an adversary who was four inches taller, seventy-five pounds heavier,
not
wearing spike heels, and, well
…
a guy.

"Kit!" Holt shouted in greeting when he saw her, clearly delighted by his sister's arrival.

He laughed when she made a grab for the ball, and deftly ducked aside. Kit laughed, too, then feinted to the right, her maneuver successful in psyching him out enough for her to steal the ball. With a few easy dribbles and a couple of swift, elegant moves—and in no way hindered by the handicap of her high heels—she spun and executed a beautiful jump, tossing the ball toward the goal. Then she landed easily, poised like a pro, watching as it arced through the air and descended cleanly through the net with a soft, but unmistakable,
swish.

"In your face, Holt!" she shouted with another laugh. "Just like old times!"

Okay, so maybe she had a pretty decent chance, Pendleton conceded. He made a mental note to brush up on his own moves a bit before taking her on himself. Then he smiled when he realized that he should have followed that advice a long time ago.

Her brother grinned at her before he moved to retrieve the ball from where it bounced below the goal. Pendleton wasn't sure he'd ever witnessed a stranger scene than two people dressed like a photo shoot for
Vogue
behaving like a spread for
Sports Illustrated.
But this was clearly an activity that the two siblings had played out for a long time, and he wasn't about to do anything to interrupt it. Especially since Kit looked so happy. Really, genuinely happy, and not the phony happiness she'd adopted when she'd presented the invitation to Sherry's wedding.

Man, she was beautiful, he thought. Whether she would ever believe it or not herself, he didn't know. But Pendleton was sure that he'd never encountered a woman in his life who looked better than Kit McClellan. Funny, how he hadn't noticed that long before now.

The sister and brother completed another half-dozen baskets before Kit looked up and saw Pendleton watching. She blushed a bit when she did, as if she'd completely forgotten he was there and only now remembered. He wasn't prepared for it when she shot the ball out quickly toward him, and he only barely caught it with a muffled
oof
as it slammed into his belly.

"You and Holt shoot a few," she told him. "I'll go see if Mrs. Mason needs any help in the kitchen."

Although he much preferred to follow Kit, something in her suggestion and demeanor made him think that she wanted to go in by herself for now. So he let her go, watching until she had passed completely through the back door. Then he spun around to find McClellan, Jr. posed for action.

"Give it your best shot, Pendleton," he said.

Somehow, he seemed to be talking about something other than basketball, but Pendleton shrugged the impression off. He tipped his hand over and let the ball drop, then dribbled it a few times before taking a shot from where he was. The ball missed the hoop by a mile, but for some reason, he didn't really care.

"Jeez, Pendleton," McClellan said as he moved easily to retrieve the ball. "How long has it been since you played?"

"A long time," he confessed. "Too long, really."

"How about a game of twenty-one?" the other man goaded. "Dinner won't be ready for an hour."

Pendleton nodded.
"Yeah,
okay. Why not?"

For the better part of that hour, he and McClellan went at it like two adolescents. Well, almost like two adolescents. There was that small matter of a rapid-fire pulse rate barely a few minutes into the game that Pendleton simply did not remember from his youth. Nor did he remember his muscles pulling so painfully tight so terribly easily back then as they seemed to now. Nor had even the simple act of dribbling caused him to feel just so damned exhausted.

Two discarded suit jackets, two loosened neckties, and four rolled cuffs later, the two men were tied at eighteen points and two cardiac arrests each.

"McClellan," Pendleton panted as he scooped up the ball after the latest of his foe's aborted attempts at a basket. "What say we pick this up where we left off later, hmm?"

The other man nodded, but declined comment, probably because he was too busy gasping for breath himself. With no small effort, he made his way over to Pendleton, then the two of them, obviously of the same mind, sank down against the side of the garage for a session of deep breathing. As the sun sank low, staining the sky with the pinks and oranges of another spectacular
Kentucky
sunset, the only sound to be heard in the McClellan backyard was the warble of two feuding cardinals and gasps of two dying men.

McClellan leaned his head back against the garage wall and swiped a damp sleeve over his forehead. "I don't remember basketball being nearly that taxing."

Pendleton knifed a hand awkwardly through the air. "It's the suits. You can't possibly play good ball when you're wearing a suit."

McClellan nodded, as if he were sure that was the only reason for his state of total exhaustion.

For another few moments, they sat in silence, until McClellan broke it by asking, "So things with you and Kit aren't going too well, huh?"

Pendleton arched his eyebrows in surprise and turned his head to look at the other man. "They're not?"

McClellan, on the other hand, arrowed his eyebrows down. "Are they?"

Not that it was any of his business, Pendleton thought, but
…
"Yeah. They are. At least, I thought they were. You heard something I haven't?"

His companion eyed him warily. "Are you sleeping with my sister or not?"

Pendleton gaped at him. "What the hell is it with you McClellan men?" he demanded before he could stop himself. "Did it ever occur to any of you that it's none of your damned business who's doing what to Kit?"

"Hey, there's a hundred million dollars at stake, and my mother put it all in Kit's hands," McClellan said. "I'd say we all have a stake in Kit's activities right now."

"Ninety-nine-point-four million," Pendleton corrected him, mainly because he knew it bugged the hell out of the McClellans to hear that.

"Whatever," McClellan said. "Are you and Kit being intimate or what?"

"Maybe you should ask Kit."

"Maybe I already did."

Oh. Well. That sort of changed things. And it sort of stumped him for a response, too. So he asked, "And what did Kit say about it?"

McClellan eyed him thoughtfully. "She told me the two of you were sleeping in separate rooms."

"When did she say that?"

"Two days ago. When she spent the night here during the blizzard."

Pendleton fidgeted a bit nervously. "Yeah, well, um
…
Maybe you should ask her again."

He braced himself for the fist of an outraged older brother that was certain to land in his face, but when he braved a quick glimpse at McClellan, he found a broad, white smile splitting the other man's face.