My Man Pendleton (32 page)

For a moment, he almost refused her the luxury of changing the subject. Then he decided maybe she was right. Maybe they should just ignore, for now anyway, whatever was going on between them. It wasn't a good idea to go off half-cocked. He really should explore this strange new development a little closer before he did that.

So he jutted a thumb over his shoulder, toward the living room. "I knew I wasn't going to be able to get in to work this morning, so I used the time to get some things done around the house. I've been at it since about one."

She nodded, obviously impressed. "It's only
six o'clock
now. You did a lot in five hours."

"Not
one P.M.
," he corrected her, only now realizing the extent of his work. "
One A.M.
"

She gaped at him. "You've been up all night working?"

He forced a chuckle, trying to make light of the situation, but the sound came out thin and weak. "Yeah, well, you get me started on a project like this…"

"But all night?" she asked again, clearly incredulous.

This time Pendleton was the one to shrug. "I wasn't sleepy."

"Why not?

He waited until she turned to look at him again, then he told her, "Because I was worried about you."

She stared back at him in silence for a moment, but instead of commenting on his declaration, she only asked, in a very small voice, "Are you hungry? I could cook us some supper."

He hadn't eaten in nearly twenty-four hours, he suddenly realized. Since collecting his tools and materials from the basement in the wee hours of the morning, he'd been so focused on working on the house—anything to keep from worrying about Kit—that he hadn't taken a break. Then again, he'd hadn't been hungry all night, anyway, thanks to that full feeling of unmitigated terror filling his belly. Now, with that gone, however, he suddenly became ravenous.

"Yeah,
I could eat," he said. "But let's order a pizza or something, all right? And let me fix a salad. No offense, but I think I've had enough country ham and black-eye gravy to last me a lifetime or two."

She smiled. "That's red-eye gravy, Pendleton. You big, dumb Yankee."

He smiled back. "Whatever. I can't remember the last time I ate a meal without pork fat in it."

She breezed past him into the living room, tossing over her shoulder, "I want sausage and pepperoni."

He rolled his eyes. "You can have it on your half. My half is going to be vegetarian."

"You keep eating like that," Kit told him, "and you're never going to fit in down here."

He rocked back on his heels. "Yeah, well, we'll see." And 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 Richard Simmons every weekday afternoon."

For a long time, neither of them said anything more. Kit only stood there 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 hadn't been present 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 that 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 had gone pale by now—except for the two bright spots of pink riding high on her cheeks—and she'd 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, now 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 now. 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 had 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 hadn't had 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 much glimpsed the rich scattering of dark hair that decorated his chest from one side to the other. Nor had she much taken note of the hard, sculpted muscle beneath. Or the ruddy 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. Because every time she did, she saw a fire burning in his brown eyes that she told herself she couldn't possibly be seeing.

"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 all of a sudden? About how the only thing she'd been able to think about last night as she'd lain in her bed at Cherrywood was how alien and unwelcome had become the bedroom that had been hers since she'd outgrown 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 exasperated "Good
night,
Kit" that he bit off every evening before she turned in with her cocoa? How could she speak to him about that?

So 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."

As if to punctuate the point, the puppy beneath the kitchen table sounded off with a few perfunctory yaps, then went back to gnawing on his rawhide chewy with a growl of satisfaction whose rumble never seemed to end.

Kit scrunched up her shoulders uncertainly. "Well, what am I supposed to say?"

Pendleton tossed the dish towel over his shoulder and crossed his arms—those incredibly sexy arms—over his chest—that incredibly sexy chest. "I don't know," he said. "But it's not like you to keep quiet. In fact, this lack of a running monologue on your part is making me nervous."

She arched her eyebrows in question. "Oh?"

"Well, God only knows what you're plotting over there," he said. "At least when you're talking nonstop, I know you can't be preoccupied with plans for my downfall."

She met his gaze levelly. "Says who?"

He narrowed his eyes at her, but didn't comment. Instead, he only retrieved the dish towel from his shoulder and folded it neatly in half lengthwise, then hung it on a rack between the counter and stove, a silent indication that he was through being domestic for the day, thank you.

"Hey, you left a cup," she said, pointing to the solitary dish sitting in the drainer.

"Doesn't matter," he tossed off casually.

Doesn't matter?
she echoed to herself.
Whoa, whoa, whoa.
This wasn't like Pendleton at all. He never left anything unfinished. He was annoyingly anal about stuff like that.

"You know, you never paid me that dollar you owe me," he said out of the blue.

"What dollar?" she asked.

"That dollar you promised me for dancing with you down in
Veranda
Bay
. You never gave it to me."

She settled a damp fist on her hip. "What, are you running short already? Boy, this is what happens to you executive types. The minute you hit that six-figure salary, you start living beyond your means. When's payday?"

In response to her question, he only smiled. And Kit decided right away that she didn't like that smile at all, nor, she suspected, was she going to like what was sure to come after it.

"Tonight," he said. "Payday's tonight."

Yeah, she'd known she wasn't going to like what came after it. "Sorry," she said, "but I'm busted, too. I didn't get a chance to go to the money machine."

His smile didn't falter at all. Uh-oh. "That's okay," he said. "I know another way you can pay me back. Dance with me."

"Dance with you?"

"Yeah, then we'll be even."

Before she could object, he spun on his heel and headed through the swinging door into the dining room, and Kit took advantage of his disappearance to debate the pros and cons of fleeing through the back door.

Pro, she would be saved from whatever weird
…
stuff
…
was currently possessing Pendleton. Pro, she would avoid having to come within touching distance of him, thereby maintaining what little composure she had managed to collect since he'd begun undressing himself in the living room a short while ago. Pro, she wouldn't have to tolerate any longer the racing of her pulse, the frazzling of her brain, the heating of her blood, and the zinging of the strings of her heart. Pro, she'd stay sane.

Con, she'd get her feet wet, because she'd taken off her shoes some time ago and left them under the dining room table, and the ground outside was still pretty mushy from all the melted snow.

Well, that was it, then, wasn't it? No contest. No way was she going outside in her stocking feet with it all muddy and icky and everything. Hey, those were new socks.

So she wrung out the dish rag, hung it up on the rack by the towel, and tiptoed cautiously toward the kitchen door. She was about to push it open when she heard the sound of music coming from the other side. And not just any music, but the slow slide of fingers along the strings of an electric guitar, the melancholy wail of a saxophone, the soft, leisurely scuff of brushes over the surface of a drum.