My Man Pendleton by Elizabeth Bevarly Page B

maneuver, she uncorked it, spun around, and waved it over his glass, until it was half-full of the dark amber liquid.
    "Thank you," he said.
    "No problem," she assured him. "That'll be ten bucks. And don't forget to tip your bartender at least fifteen percent. You want I should just charge it to your room?"
    He had begun to reach for the glass, but now his fingers hesitated. "Ten dollars?" he echoed incredulously. "For one drink?"
    She shook her head as she returned the bottle to its shelf. "Pendleton. Honey, sweetie, baby, cookie. That's Abelour Scotch. You wanna play the resort game, big guy, you gotta pay the resort prices. Don't you get around much? I mean, where were you brought up? A barn?"
    "No,
New Jersey
," he responded before thinking. She emitted a sound that was a mixture of disbelief and delight, and he knew at once that Kit McClellan was almost certainly envisioning him as the product of a Bruce Springsteen video, complete with vacant lots, crumbling rowhouses, factory smokestacks, and Lady Liberty's backside in the background.
    " South Jersey ," he felt compelled to clarify.
    But all she said in response was, "
New Jersey
? Really?"
    "Yes, really."
    She eyed him with much speculation. "Funny, but I don't picture you as coming from
New Jersey
."
    He sipped his Scotch, enjoyed the smoky, mel low flavor, and felt his testosterone levels surging mightily. "Why is that?" he asked.
    As she considered him in silence, it occurred to Pendleton that for a woman who wasn't beautiful, Kit McClellan was certainly very attractive.
    "I don't know," she finally admitted. "You just don't seem…"
    "What?" he asked.
    Her—naked—shoulders lifted and dipped again, but she only shook her head slowly in silence.
    So he sipped his drink once more, rolling the warm liquid around in his mouth, and focused on Kit McClellan's striking face as she watched him. Her lips parted softly as he relished the dusky flavor of the liquor on his tongue, and her eyes darkened dangerously when he took his time to swallow it.
    And a hot splash of lightning ignited in his belly, long before the Scotch ever got there.
    "Actually," he said, the word coming out a bit strangled for some reason, "the part of
New Jersey
I come from isn't much different from your part of the country."
    Except, of course, he amended to himself, for the funny way of talking people had in
Kentucky
. For instance, no one in
New Jersey
had ever asked him if he was brought up in a barn. And he still wasn't sure which of the half-dozen different pronunciations for " Louisville " he'd heard was correct, although the garbled, incomprehensible version seemed to be the one used most frequently.
    For a long, intriguing moment, Kit only continued to stare at him with dreamy eyes, as if she were thinking of something totally unrelated to the conversation at hand. Finally, however, she said, "Funny, but I have trouble seeing you as a product of my part of the country, too."
    This time Pendleton was the one to remain quiet and thoughtful for a bit too long. He gazed down into the depths of the liquid he swirled nonchalantly in his glass, and wondered if he should even bother to clarify any conclusions—whether accurate or not—that the boss's daughter might be drawing about him.
    Ultimately, his curiosity—and surely it was nothing more than that—got the better of him, and he heard himself ask, "Well, then, Miss McClellan, just where do you picture me as coming from?"
    That mystified expression cluttered her face once more, and she expelled another nervous chuckle. "I don't know," she repeated.
    She continued to scrutinize him, and it occurred to Pendleton that she was expending an inordinate amount of energy trying to figure him out. It seemed to bother her that she couldn't easily peg him and send him on his merry way. And for some reason, it irritated the hell out of him that she was trying so hard to peg him, because he knew he shouldn't care one way or another what Kit