Where the hell was she?

Pendleton paced the length of his living room, then hastened to the front window again, shoved aside the lace—God, lace—curtains again, and stared out into the white eddies of snow dancing in the darkness beyond. He could barely distinguish the anemic glow of the lamp at the end of his front walk, and he certainly saw no sign of a Mercedes S-class, double-parked or not. It was past midnight, and he was worried about Kit.

Worried about Kit, he marveled again. How could this be happening? He was honestly concerned about the safety and well-being of a woman who had turned his life inside-out and his house into a Speigel catalog. Worried in the truest, most clichéd sense of the word, that she was out there lying dead in a ditch somewhere. Hell, he ought to be celebrating the fact that his house—his life—was finally his own again.

As he had ever since that ill-fated, albeit unbelievably enjoyable, embrace in front of the fireplace less than a week ago, he forced himself to stop thinking about it. He was no closer now to understanding what that particular incident was about than he’d been the night it happened. Surely there was some psychologically sound, socially acceptable explanation for what occurred that night. He’d been all warm and rosy and missing his family, and Kit was handy. Likewise, she probably only responded to him out of some intense physical needs that had been too long neglected.

Simple stuff. Basic chemistry. They were both feeling lonely, and they both turned to each other in a fit of handiness. Period. Fortunately, Kit came to her senses before anything very important happened. Well, nothing more important than a soul-shattering, reality-bending, mind-scrambling explosion of libido, anyway. Still, no reason to dwell on it, right? He should simply continue to pretend it didn’t happen, just as the two of them had been pretending—however lamely—all week long.

So Pendleton only gazed out at the white-on-black night, as if in doing so, he might somehow conjure Kit up from the darkness, safe and sound. Behind him, from a cowering position on the rug before the fireplace, Maury whined his distress, as if he, too, were worried. Pendleton turned and offered the dog a halfhearted smile.

“It’s okay, boy,” he said. “She’s fine. She’ll be home any minute now.”

But he knew Maury didn’t believe him any more than he believed himself. He shoved a restive hand through his hair, bit back the panic that threatened to overtake him, and wondered if he should call the police. Hell, there must be almost a foot of snow on the ground by now.

The storm had come out of nowhere and caught everyone by surprise. The weather guy on channel three said not to worry, though, that these spring blizzards were notorious for appearing quickly, only to be followed by balmy, springlike conditions that erased the results just as rapidly. By dark tomorrow night, the meteorologist promised, the temperatures would be pushing seventy, and the snow would be melting faster than the Wicked Witch of the West.

But right now, the temperatures were hovering around thirty, and right now, the snow wasn’t going anywhere except higher. Normally, Pendleton liked snow. But not when it was wet and heavy like this. Not when it trapped people in their houses so they couldn’t get out and find people they were worried about. Not when it could be potentially lethal to people who happened to get caught out in it in their Mercedes S-class.

Dammit, where was she?

He released the curtain, somehow not minding anymore that it was lace. Kit was fine, he told himself adamantly. More than likely, she ventured out to do something that would wreak more havoc in his life, only to realize, too late, that she wouldn’t make it home. For all he knew, she was snuggled safe in her bed at Cherrywood, blissfully asleep, dreaming about the kinds of things that only the incredibly rich dreamed about. Still, it would have been nice if she phoned to let him know she wouldn’t make it back tonight. To tell him that she was safe and sound, and not lying dead in a ditch somewhere. To reassure him that she would be home soon.

Home. Now that was a good one. He really was worried beyond sense if he were thinking that his house was her home. Obviously, he needed some rest.

He should just go to bed, he told himself. Even if there was no way he’d be going in to work in the morning, it wasn’t going to help matters to stay up worrying about Kit. Surely she was all right. Yeah, he ought to just use this opportunity to sleep in his own bed for a change, instead of on the couch.

But as Pendleton turned toward the stairs, a section of loose, crumbling plaster on the wall near the stairwell caught his attention. Really, it wouldn’t take long at all to patch that, he thought. He had the materials in the basement. It would be a snap. He could take care of that one by the fire-place, too, he thought further, turning back toward the exposed area by the chimney. While he was at it, he might as well patch those places on the dining room wall and ceiling. And the ones in the kitchen.

Hey, it wasn’t like he was going anywhere anytime soon.

He’d finished patching up all the places on the first floor and was taking care of the ones on the second when Kit finally came home. Her arrival made Pendleton feel very, very good inside.

For about three seconds.

Then that very, very good feeling was immediately eclipsed by one that was decidedly much less good, because all of the worry, concern, anxiety and yes, dammit, fear, he managed to keep at bay for too many hours than he cared to think about suddenly roared up inside him in one huge, angry rush of emotion.

At the sound of the front door closing downstairs, he leaped down from the ladder in his bedroom, nearly toppling it and the tub of wet plaster beneath it. Then he stomped with great gusto out the door, down the hallway, to the top of the stairs. Kit gazed back up at him from her position just inside the door, appearing to be only mildly surprised to see him. Dammit, she was standing there looking at him as if nothing in the world were wrong. As if she hadn’t been missing from his life for almost thirty-six hours without explanation. As if he hadn’t been terrified of losing her.

As if she didn’t care for him nearly as much as he was beginning to care for her.

And that, he decided, was the scariest thing of all. That he actually cared for Kit McClellan. When that happened exactly, or how, he had no idea. But there it was just the same, submitted for his approval, as Rod Sterling used to say on The Twilight Zone. The comparison was way too appropriate. Because as bizarre as those feelings of affection were, Pendleton did approve of them. Still, there was no reason Kit had to find out about them, was there? God only knew what she would do with the knowledge that he actually liked her.

He expelled a ragged breath of air and knifed his fingers through his hair, remembering, too late, that his hands were still covered with plaster. He glanced down at his clothes to see that they, too, were decorated with clumps of white, dusted with bits of ceiling and wall. In spite of the inclement weather outside, his labor had made him overly warm during the night, and he shed his sweatshirt some time ago. Now his overalls were buckled on one side—the other was broken—over his naked, and likewise plaster-spattered, chest. Kit, too, seemed to be lingering on his upper regions, and a thrill of something hot and urgent ripped through him at the speed of light.

“Where the hell have you been?” he bellowed at the top of his lungs before he could stop himself.

Her eyes widened at the vehemence of his delivery, but she offered no other sign that she found his behavior out of the ordinary. “I…I… I spent the night at Cherrywood.”

Okay, so maybe there was that little stammer he might take as a sign that she found his behavior to be a bit peculiar.

“I…I went over for a visit,” she continued, “and I…I got caught by the storm.” She scrunched up her shoulders and let them drop. “Once it cleared up, I came home,” she pointed out, her tone of voice indicating that even she found the explanation to be tad lame. “It’s like sixty degrees out there now. The roads are pretty much clear.”

He nodded, clenching his jaw tight. “What, and you couldn’t pick up the phone and call me last night?” he demanded further. “Just to let me know you were okay?”

Her lips—those lips that cost him hours of sleep over the last few weeks, so profound was his preoccupation with thoughts of them—parted fractionally. “Frankly, Pendleton, I… I didn’t think you’d notice I was gone.”

She was serious, he realized, amazed. She honestly didn’t think he would notice her absence. He shook head in disbelief. What the hell would give her a stupid idea like that?

Slowly, very slowly, he made his way down the stairs, hoping his leisurely pace might somehow disguise the turmoil tearing him up inside. Little by little, as he moved nearer to Kit, he found that instead of calming down, his feelings only grew more turbulent. She was dressed in another one of those soft, clingy, velvety shirts she seemed to favor, over soft, even clingier jeans. The shirt was a soft lavender that made her eyes appear even bluer than usual. When he finally cleared the last step and stood before her, face to face, he was helpless not to reach out and touch her.

Lifting a hand carefully, so as not to dirty her with the remnants of the decay he’d spent the night repairing, he brushed a finger softly over her cheek. “Oh, I noticed,” he said, his voice gentling. “I definitely noticed.”

Her lips parted a bit more, as if she wanted to say something, but she suddenly snapped them shut and jerked her head away. Pendleton was left touching nothing but air, so he dropped his hand down to his side.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have called you. I just didn’t think…”

“What?”

“I didn’t think you’d be worried about me, that’s all.” Before he had a chance to comment on that, she took a hurried step away from him. “What on earth have you been up to?” she asked as she went, her voice sounding more than a little shaky.

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 at 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 told her, “Because I was worried about you. I was worried a lot.”

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 didn’t take 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.” 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 a certain treadmill at LAC every weekday afternoon.”

For a long time, neither of them said anything more. Kit only stood 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 wasn’t there 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 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 was kind of pale now—except for the two bright spots of pink riding high on her cheeks—and she 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, 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. 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 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 didn’t have 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 glimpsed the rich scattering of dark hair that decorated his chest from one side to the other. Nor did she much take note of the hard, sculpted muscle beneath. Or the 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. Every time she did, she saw a fire burning in his brown eyes that she told herself she couldn’t possibly be seeing. Damn the man for not installing a dishwasher yet, anyway. And damn her for not realizing the inconvenience of that before now.

“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? About how the only thing she’d been able to think about last night as she lay in her bed at Cherrywood was how alien and unwelcome had become the bedroom that had been hers since she outgrew 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 exasperating “Good night, Kit” that he bit off every evening before she turned in with her cocoa? How could she speak to him about that?

Ultimately, 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.”

“Oh?”

“Well, God only knows what you’re plotting over there. 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 glass,” 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. 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 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. Kit decided right away 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 is tonight.”

Yeah, she knew 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. “That’s okay. 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. 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’d managed to collect since he began 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 took off her shoes a while ago and left them under the dining room table, and the ground outside was still 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. Hey, these were new socks.

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. 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 skins of a drum.

Uh-oh. Blues. Touchy music. Feely music. Sexy music. No chance they’d be marimba-ing to that.

“Oh, Kii-iit,” he called out, his voice a gentle cajole. “I’m waaaiiitiiinnng.”

When, precisely, the earth shifted on its axis, she supposed she would never be able to say. She only knew that one minute, everything in her life was neat and orderly and well within her control, and the next minute, a whipcord of delicious possibility was slapping at the edge of her soul. In spite of its sting, there was something very appealing about the pull.

As she pushed open the door and passed through it, Kit reminded herself there was still time to scoop her shoes off the floor and hie herself out the back door, safely into the night, regardless of its mushiness. But she ignored the three-inch heels as she passed them, and focused instead on the man who stood center stage in the living room beyond.

It was just a dance, she told herself. Hey, she could handle that. She’d been dancing since she was eight years old, and put all the instructors she ever had to shame. Kit McClellan was nothing in this life if not an absolute expert at dancing.

Unfortunately for her, though, Pendleton was pulling her well into his arms before she realized that dancing was the last thing he had on his mind.