All things considered, dinner didn’t go nearly as well as happy hour, Kit decided. She drummed her perfectly manicured, coral-lacquered fingernails silently on the linen tablecloth, gazed at Pendleton sitting on the other side of the wisteria centerpiece, and pondered the benefits of lobbing a dinner roll at him. Ultimately, she decided it would have been frightfully impolite. Plus, she hadn’t gotten a rise out of her father when she’d thrown summer squash at Novak last month, so why should a dinner roll make any difference tonight?

She sighed heavily, poked a fork into her ratatouille and guided the eggplant from one side of her plate to the other for aesthetic purposes. Seated on her left was the youngest of her older brothers, and on her right was a vacant chair. That was where she sat in the McClellan hierarchy. Just below Bart, right above the furniture.

She supposed it was something.

She snuck another peek at Pendleton from beneath her lowered lashes, and wondered why he intrigued her so much more than the others had. Probably because he was the first one who actually passed her test, she told herself. He answered her questions honestly, and now she wasn’t sure what to make of him.

Although he appeared to be exactly like every other man her father had paraded before her in the last two years—each of them bearing an uncanny resemblance to Michael Derringer—there was still something very unsettling about Pendleton. Worse, he unsettled her in a way that she hadn’t been unsettled for a very long time now. She hadn’t been lying when she told her father that his new VP was really cute. Although, now that she thought about it, maybe cute didn’t exactly suit this particular suit. Cute suggested a certain boyishness, and there was nothing boyish about the man seated opposite her now. On the contrary, he seemed to possess a maturity that even her father lacked.

Then again, that wasn’t necessarily a compliment.

With a quick mental shove Kit swept the thoughts out of her mind. Pendleton, for all his cuteness and maturity was corporate. Simply put, ick. And he was Hensley’s corporate, at that. Double ick. Like she was really going to fall for one of those.

She would have thought by now that, in spite of his desperation, her father would have learned his lesson and stopped dragging her out to meet his latest acquisition. But Holt McClellan, Sr. would stop at nothing to save the family fortune, even if it meant finally marrying off his daughter after years of chasing off—or paying off—every man that ever dared come near her. He wasn’t even holding out for the highest bidder these days. He was entertaining any and all offers for his only daughter’s hand in marriage.

Too bad for him that Kit wouldn’t entertain even one.

Hey, her father had his chance years ago, and he blew it. All of them did. If the McClellan men had just left her alone to marry Michael Derringer, none of this would be happening now. Hensley’s would be well in her father’s hand, her brothers wouldn’t be starving for female companionship, and Kit would be as happily married as she was ever likely to be.

Instead of sitting here at her father’s dinner table, wondering if a big ol’ marinara stain would come out of a one-hundred-dollar necktie, or if Pendleton would just have to toss the expensive accessory in the garbage.

“So, Pendleton,” she said as she fingered her spoon with idle interest, “have you gotten all settled in?”

He leaned easily back in his chair. “Actually, Miss McClellan, no. I’ve barely had a chance to unpack.” Telling herself that her curiosity about her father’s new VP was no different from her curiosity about oh, say, the molecular structure of boron, she asked, “Where did you find a place to live?”

He met her gaze levelly, looking far too confident for her comfort. “I bought a house in Old Louisville.”

Kit nodded, thinking the neighborhood suited him for some reason. The East End and Oldham County, where most of the suits settled, were too new, too hip, too happening for someone like Pendleton. Old Louisville, with its big brick Victorians and big, inner-city trees seemed a more likely choice. She could somehow see him fitting into an old, urban setting far better than a shiny, new suburban one.

“St. James Court?” she guessed.

He shook his head. “Two blocks over.”

She uttered a soft tsk . “Newcomer. Ah, well, it’s something you can work on.”

“Actually, it is,” he agreed with a broad smile that went way beyond boyish, and right into the realm of hubba-hubba. But he said nothing more to clarify his remark.

So she steered the conversation down a new route. “You’re not from Louisville originally, are you?”

He chuckled, a rough, masculine sound reminiscent of a wind-swept canyon, and all Kit could think was, Ooooh, wow. “Is it that obvious?” he asked.

“No,” she told him honestly. “But Daddy hasn’t hired anyone local for almost a year.” She thought for a moment. “In fact, I think he’s pretty much ruled out the entire Midwest now, haven’t you, Daddy?”

At the head of the table, her father wiped his mouth with a linen napkin, glared at his daughter, and ignored her question by taking a sip of his wine.

So Kit returned her attention to the man seated across from her, and lowered her voice to a stage whisper before confessing, “I have a reputation for being oh…rather, unpredictable, shall we say? By now, it’s reached as far as Chicago, Cincinnati, and Atlanta, thereby diminishing significantly the potential pool for Daddy to choose from.”

To his credit, Pendleton offered no discernible reaction whatever. “Do you? I have a cousin who has a reputation like that.”

Kit returned to her regular voice as she asked sweetly, “And is she an embarrassment to her family, too?”

Pendleton shook his head. “Not at all. We just love her to pieces on the weekends they let her out of the home.”

Kit drummed her fingers more restlessly on the table. This wasn’t going at all the way she had planned. “So where are you from?” she asked.

He hesitated only a moment, but it was long enough for her to see that he was stalling. “Before coming to Hensley’s, I worked in Philadelphia,” he told her.

“Doing what?”

He shrugged, but she got the impression the gesture was anything but negligent. “Pretty much the same thing I’m doing now.”

“Oh. You were making some rich, greedy corporation richer and greedier?”

He smiled as he nodded, obviously proud of his accomplishments. “Something like that, yes.”

“So are you from Philadelphia originally?”

“No.”

She waited for him to elaborate, but he showed no sign that he would do so. She had opened her mouth to ask for more details when, for some reason, she turned her gaze to the head of the table. Her father was leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed over his chest, his attention utterly fixed on the byplay between her and Pendleton. He was watching her reaction to his new VP with great interest, a smug little smile playing about his lips. He looked to Kit very much like a man who was about to get exactly what he wanted. Like maybe ninety-nine-point-four million bucks in his name, and his daughter living under someone else’s roof.

Ah, ah, ah, Daddy, she thought. Not…so…fast.

As she thought further, a truly masterful idea began to take seed in her brain. A dark corner of her brain where, really, nothing should ever take root. No, she told herself quickly, even as the idea took root. She couldn’t do that. Not to her family. Even if her family did bushwhack every opportunity she’d ever had to put a little romance into her life. Even if they did chase off—or pay off—every guy who’d ever taken an interest in her. Even if they did mess up any and every chance she would ever have to find happiness with a man...

She still couldn’t do that to them. Could she?

Bit by bit, as she considered her father’s satisfaction with the way his little tableau was proceeding, the idea in Kit’s head began to blossom. And slowly, she began to think that yes, maybe she could do that to them. Maybe…

This situation with her father’s new VP could work very well to her advantage. But she was going to have to make sure she played her role juuust riiight.

She smiled, the first genuine smile she’d felt in some time. And she asked, “So, Daddy, what’s for dessert?”

“What’s this all about?”

Pendleton’s question diverted Kit’s attention from the plotting that had kept her busy throughout dinner. When she turned, she found him gazing at the photograph that hung above the fireplace in the living room. The dinner party had retired here with the three C’s—coffee, cognac, and cigars—to wind up the evening. Except that in the McClellans’ case, the cognac was really Bourbon, because they didn’t keep any other hard liquor in the house.

Like every other room in Cherrywood, the main living room was filled with old things—old furniture, old rugs, old smells, old memories. And an old black-and-white photograph blown up to poster size, which hung where most people would post a portrait of the family patriarch. Though, in essence, she supposed that was exactly what the photograph was.

“That’s my great-great-grandfather, Noble Hensley,” Kit told Pendleton.

“What’s that big, um, machine he’s standing next to?”

She smiled proudly. “That would be his still.”

“Ah.”

“He was a moonshiner.”

Pendleton nodded. “How fortunate for him to have had the opportunity to make his living working out in the sunshine and fresh air like that.”

“I assume you’ve never been within smelling distance of a still, have you, Pendleton?”

“No, I can’t say that I have been.”

“I could tell.”

Before she could elaborate, he gestured again toward the photograph and asked further, “And who are all those men surrounding your great-great-grandfather?”

“The ones with the guns?” she asked benignly.

“Yes, those.”

“Those would be his VPs.”

“Ah.”

“They were always on the lookout for revenuers. Back then, Hensley’s Distilleries, Inc. was known as Old Noble’s still up in Hoot Owl Hollow.” She pronounced “Hollow” as “Holler,” as the locals would, giving her Appalachian heritage, of which she was extremely proud, its due. “Instead of things like research and development and public relations, Noble’s boys handled things like corn acquisition and midnight distribution.”

“Ah.”

“The distilling business was much more romantic back then.”

“And more dangerous, I’ll wager.”

Kit eyed him blandly. “Is there a difference?”

Pendleton eyed her back. “Between romantic and dangerous?”

She nodded.

“Don’t you think there is?”

Now she shook her head.

“Ah.”

He was driving Kit crazy with his total lack of reaction, especially when she’d been doing her best all evening to be annoying. The complete absence of animosity on his part was starting to get her really steamed.

“It was your great-grandfather, Amon Hensley, who legitimized the Bourbon-making process, though, wasn’t it?”

Pendleton’s question roused Kit from her thoughts. “I don’t know that I’d say he legitimized it,” she replied.

“He wasn’t the one who made it legal?”

“Oh, that. Yes. He did, eventually. Except during Prohibition, when they went back to the old-fashioned way of doing things. But a lot of people said the Bourbon tasted better when Noble was stirring it up out in the woods. God only knows what kind of woodland creatures found their way into it.”

That, if nothing else, seemed to get a reaction from Pendleton. Not a big one. Just a funny little kind of squinting. But it was a reaction nonetheless, and Kit gave herself a point for it.

“You mean wild animals drinking from the mixture allegedly made it taste better?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No. I mean little critters falling into the mixture, drowning and dying in it made it taste better.”

He hesitated only a moment this time before remarking, “Ah.”

“After Amon, came my grandfather, Beaumont Hensley,” she continued, “who was really the one to turn the company into a big success.”

“Excuse me,” her father cut in from his position on the sofa. “I think you could include me in that equation.”

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder at her father. “Well it is called Hensley’s Bourbon, and not McClellan’s, isn’t it, Daddy?”

“That’s beside the point. The product was established under the name Hensley’s. It would have been foolish to change it to McClellan’s, just because the power shifted on Beaumont's retirement.”

Kit feigned surprise. “Did the power shift then? Really?”

“You know it did.”

Instead of acknowledging her father’s remark, Kit turned back to Pendleton. “Did you know Granddaddy asked Daddy to change his name when he married Mama?”

“Katherine,” her father growled in warning.

She could see Pendleton hiding a smile. “No, I didn’t know that,” he said.

“It’s true,” she assured him.

“Katherine,” her father tried again.

She hurried on, “Granddaddy didn’t have any sons, just my mother, and he wanted Daddy to be Holt Hensley, so that when he became the figurehead, there would still be a Hensley cutting through the surf, instead of a McClellan. Can you imagine? Asking a man back in 1969 to change his last name to his wife’s?”

“Katherine.”

“Anyway,” she continued blithely. “I suppose calling it ‘McClellan’s’ would make it sound like Scotch, and it might potentially confuse the consumer. Not to mention make Noble spin in the ol’ grave, if you know what I mean.”

She was just starting to warm to the subject of the more colorful aspects of the Hensley’s history when her father rose from the sofa and stubbed out his cigar.

“The show’s over for tonight,” he announced resolutely, his voice still tinted with his irritation. “Maybe this weekend we can hold a matinee for Pendleton, but I think you’ve exhausted your repertoire for now, Katherine. See Pendleton out, will you?”

Without awaiting her reply, he bid farewell to his newest executive, then waved his sons out of the room behind him. That left Kit alone in the living room with Pendleton and a cold sensation of empty accomplishment.

Her gaze lingered on the vacant doorway as she asked quietly, “You can find your own way out, can’t you, Pendleton?”

A moment passed in silence before she realized he hadn’t answered her. When she turned to face him, she found him standing as if he hadn’t heard her, a snifter of Bourbon cradled in one hand, a smoldering cigar in the other. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought he looked like he felt sorry for her. But hey, why would anyone feel sorry for her? She was a member of one of the wealthiest, most prominent families in the state. Obviously, it was just a trick of the light.

“Pendleton, can you find your own way out?” she asked again, a bit more softly this time.

He hesitated before answering, and she wondered for a moment if he had a problem with his hearing. And his eyesight, too, for that matter. He seemed to be spending an extraordinary amount of time staring at her, as if he couldn’t quite bring her into focus.

“I don’t know,” he finally said. “It’s a big house. I’m not quite sure how I got here.”

Join the club, she thought. “It’s this way,” she said halfheartedly, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder.

She watched with veiled interest as he swallowed the last of his Bourbon and stubbed out his cigar. She tried not to notice how comfortably he completed the gestures. For some reason, it bothered her that the good life seemed to suit him so well, and that he wore the mantle of wealth and luxury so easily. Why couldn’t he be just an ordinary guy?

And why, suddenly, did she wish that he was?

She knew he didn’t deserve the reception he’d received from her all night. Really, none of her father’s executives did. Well, except maybe Novak. But Pendleton, like those other men, was a symbol of something she would just as soon forget. And even though she tried to keep a rein on her feelings, there were times when she just couldn’t quite keep herself from striking out, in spite of the fact that nothing she did would ever completely erase the wrong. Or the memories. Or the hurt.

Restlessly, Kit shifted her weight from one foot to the other, watching as Pendleton rebuttoned his suit jacket. Then she hastily straightened when he swept his hand forward in a silent indication that she should precede him. When they came to the front door, she opened the foyer closet to retrieve his coat. She started to hold it up for him, but he deftly claimed it himself and shrugged into it, unfolding the collar around his neck before reaching for the buttons.

He really was very handsome, she had to admit. And there was something about him that was different from most men. If the situation were different, she might possibly be able to like him. But he was working for her father, and that meant money mattered to him more than anything else in the world. It was a shame. But then, she supposed, nobody was perfect.

“Good night, Pendleton,” she said as she opened the door. “It’s been real.”

“Thank you for dinner,” he said as he took a step forward.

She shook her head slightly. “You don’t have to thank me.”

“Thank your father then. For dinner, at least.”

She crossed her bare arms over her midsection as the wintry wind whipped into the house, and she wondered at the merriment that danced in his dark eyes. “What does that mean?”

“Just that there was more to like tonight than the ratatouille, that’s all.”

Oh, right, she thought. Like she was supposed to believe that.”Good night, Pendleton,” she said again, more vigorously this time.

He smiled at her, what appeared to be an honest-to-goodness smile of pleasure. But all he said was, “Good night, Miss McClellan.” Then he passed through the door and out into the chilly night.

As Kit watched him go, all she could do was stand there with the cold wind swirling around her, and puzzle over why she suddenly felt so warm inside.

In the library, Holt McClellan, Jr. sipped his third cup of post-dinner coffee and resigned himself to working through the night at his laptop. Again. He knew there was no way his system was going to be shutting down anytime soon. Not because of the caffeine that was currently rampaging through his bloodstream—that was a nice, however inaccurate, excuse—but because sleep had been eluding him for a while now. To be exact, for twenty-one months, fourteen days, six hours and… He glanced at his watch. And forty-two minutes.

Ah, well. He was finally starting to get used to it. He’d been learning all kinds of things about the nighttime hours that he never knew before. Problem was, he was learning all kinds of things about himself, too. And that could only lead to trouble. As could his father’s latest assignment for him, he thought, recalling the elder McClellan’s insistence that morning that Holt be the one to handle the temperance people.

“What the hell were you thinking to pass off the Louisville Temperance League to me?” he demanded of his father, seated nearby with his own laptop, also working late.

His father glanced up and frowned. “What do you mean, what was I thinking? It makes perfect sense for you to be the one who deals with them.”

“What if they find out about…” Holt dropped his gaze down toward his coffee again. “About my history?” At his father’s rough chuckle, he snapped his head back up again. “I’m serious, Dad. You might think it’s no big deal that the second-in-command of one of Kentucky’s biggest distilleries is a recovering alcoholic, but there are other people who might use the information in a way that is, shall we say, not sporting? And that could affect us all.”

His father grimaced. “Nobody knows better than I do what your… condition… has caused this family.”

This time Holt was the one to chuckle, but there wasn’t an ounce of good humor in the sound. “No, Dad, I think I can safely say that I do know better than you.”

His father glared at him. “I’m no more anxious for anyone to learn about your past than you are. All I’m saying is that, your perception of temperance being what it is, you can keep an open mind better than I could, and you’ll certainly be more tolerant of these people than anyone else would be.”

“Don’t count on it.”

His father uttered an exasperated sound. “Just take care of it, all right? And don’t screw up.”

“Yeah, right.” Holt shook his head and sipped his coffee and wondered what he’d done lately to piss off his father. Hell, usually Kit was the one who was the focus of all of the senior McClellan’s miscreant tendencies.

As if reading his mind, his father said, “So. What did you think of Pendleton?”

The quick change of subject jerked Holt out of his reverie, and he was thankful for the interruption. “He’s all right. But I don’t know why you think you’ll have success with him when none of the others have worked out.”

His father sipped his Bourbon slowly. “Pendleton is different.”

“In what way? Other than the fact that he left the house tonight without a food stain on some part of his person.”

“I’m not sure. I can just feel it. When I interviewed him to take over for Riordan, Pendleton came across as smart. Hungry. Plainspoken. The type to go after what he wants, but who doesn’t put up with any nonsense.” The older man glanced at his son with a knowing smile. “And did you see the way Kit was looking at him all through dinner?”

“Yeah. Like she wanted to strangle him.”

His father smiled. “Exactly.”

“And you think that’s good?”

The elder McClellan nodded. “Damned right it’s good. The way Kit was looking at Pendleton was just the way your mother used to look at me.”

Holt shook his head. “I’m not sure that’s such a good thing, Dad. By the time she died, Mama’d had it with you.”

McClellan, Sr. waved off his son’s concern. “She’d had it with all of us. That doesn’t mean she didn’t love us.”

Holt glanced down into his coffee and said softly, “But she loved Kit best. She always loved Kit best.”

“Kit was Lena’s only daughter,” his father replied softly. “Women always look out for each other.”

“To the exclusion of the rest of the family?” Holt asked, unable to quite mask the bitterness he felt. “Dad, we only have a little over two months to find someone to—”

“Pendleton is going to work out,” his father insisted. “He’s the man for Kit.”

Holt wished he could feel as certain. “You know, we wouldn’t be in this boat now if you’d just left her alone to marry Michael Derringer.”

His father spat out an angry sound. “Michael Derringer was a self-serving, egotistical, gold-digging sonofabitch.”

Takes one to know one, Holt thought.

“He would have made Kit miserable,” his father concluded.

And since when did you ever give a damn about Kit’s happiness? Holt wanted to ask. Aloud, he said, “She seemed happy enough to me when she was with him.”

His father waved him off again as he crossed to refill his glass. “Oh, what the hell do you know about it? Back then everyone seemed happy to you.”

Instead of rising to the bait, Holt steered the conversation back to the task at hand. “Mama changed her will because of what you did.”

“Lena changed her will because of what we all did. You can’t hold me alone responsible. I seem to recall you and your brothers chasing off more than your fair share of Kit’s boyfriends over the years.”

“Yeah, at your insistence,” he pointed out. “And because they were all creeps who couldn’t care less about her. Kit deserves somebody who loves her. Not some jerk who’s only after her money.”

Only problem was, Holt thought now, that kind of somebody had never materialized in Kit’s life. Or if he had, he’d never been given a chance by any of the McClellan men. And now, thanks to that, the McClellan women were having the last word.

“Do you think Mama really thought this was the best way to get us to leave Kit alone so her daughter could get married?” Holt asked his father. “Or do you think she just wanted to get even?”

That seemed to surprise the elder McClellan. “Get even? For the Michael Derringer thing you mean?”

Holt shrugged. “Or something else.”

“What else could Lena have wanted to get even for?”

For starters, how about the fact that you never loved her? Holt thought. And, of course, there was the fact that, where his father was concerned, family always came second to wealth. And on those rare occasions when he did take notice of the family, the old, man always had an obvious pecking order of preference. Even as the clear favorite, Holt had never felt quite comfortable with that. He could only imagine how his mother and Kit—at the opposite end of the spectrum—must have felt.

Not too great, obviously.

“Kit’s not going to go for it,” Holt said. “And I sure as hell hope you have someone else waiting in the wings. Because in two months—”

“Don’t worry about it,” his father interrupted him. “Pendleton is the man for Kit. Bank on it.”

As was invariably the case whenever her father and oldest brother segregated themselves to talk, Kit overheard every word they said. Not by accident, of course. But because she deliberately sought them out to eavesdrop on the conversation. It was a habit she had acquired as an eight-year-old, when she overheard—by accident, that time—her father discussing her performance at Louisville Collegiate Elementary compared to Holt’s performance at Louisville Collegiate High. Holt was a senior that year, and his grades had begun to fall drastically, in direct relation to the rise in his drinking. Kit, on the other hand, was, as always, making straight A’s. And on that day nineteen years ago, her father held her up as an example for her brother to follow, expressed his pride in her as a student.

It was the first time she had ever heard her father praise her or her accomplishments in any way. And because of that, she sought out every opportunity to hear him do it again, whenever he and Holt separated themselves to talk.

Unfortunately, that was also the last time she ever heard her father’s praise. Because as hard as she worked to overhear even the smallest tidbit of approval, he never spoke of her again. Instead, his conversations with Holt always centered first around Holt’s work at Hensley’s, then about Holt’s excessive behavior, then about Holt’s failing marriage, then about Holt’s return to the fold.

Holt, Holt, Holt. It was always about Holt.

Until tonight. Tonight, Kit’s father talked about her again. But nothing he said was good. Nothing he said was exactly a surprise, she conceded, but none of it was good, either.

She pushed herself away from the wall outside the library and headed slowly for the stairs. There was one thing her father said, however, that Kit couldn’t deny. Pendleton was definitely different from the other men he’d thrown at her over the last two years. Where the others had blithered and fawned over her in an effort to curry her favor—and her mother’s fortune—Pendleton had had the nerve to be forthright and honest. Kit had been totally unprepared for that. Forthrightness and honesty were unnatural in a man. Despite their presence in Pendleton, however, and for all her father’s conviction to the contrary, he wasn’t the man for her.

Still, she thought as she closed her bedroom door behind her, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun in the meantime.