“But I told you this morning I already made plans for tonight.”

Pendleton hooked his hands on his hips and glared at Kit, silently demanding an explanation. She was dressed for an evening out, wearing an elegant little sapphire dress that hugged her in much the same way he wanted to be hugging her himself. Her long, long legs—which he’d frankly planned on having wrapped around his waist right about now—looked absolutely decadent in smoky silk, and her black high heels defined quite nicely the calves he’d rather be gripping in his fists.

Briefly, he wondered if maybe she had on stockings instead of pantyhose, wondered, too, just how long it would take to skim her panties down around her ankles, hike up her skirt, lift her onto the dining room table behind her and—

“Well, what was I supposed to say?” she asked, interrupting what was becoming 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.”

“How thoughtful of him.”

Pendleton shook his head morosely. Damn. All day, he’d been looking forward to coming home to Kit and picking up where they 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 wasn’t a petulant little whine that colored his voice.

She reached out and patted his hand. “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.” 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 already set the date. And how did Kit know about that date, by the way, he wondered, unless she was—

“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. 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 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 nervous gesture meant to look 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 oh for two in having a good time at Cherrywood. 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 curled up at home with those crazy—oops, he meant eccentric, of course—McClellans.

It helped little when he rolled the Carrera 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. 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 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. This was clearly an activity 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 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 she wanted to go in by herself for now. So he let her go, watching until she 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 off the impression. 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 didn’t remember from his youth. Nor did he remember his muscles pulling so painfully so 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 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?”

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 pissed off 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 glimpse at McClellan, he found a broad, white smile splitting the other man’s face.

“Pendleton!” he fairly shouted. “My man! That’s what I want to hear!”

Actually, Pendleton thought, he was Kit’s man, not McClellan’s. No need to dwell on that, though, he supposed. “Man, whatever happened to the days when a guy beat the hell out of anyone who compromised his sister’s virtue?” he asked.

McClellan shrugged. “We’ve been trying to compromise Kit’s virtue for almost two years now, Pendleton. Forgive me if I find the news of your conquest to be…” His smile broadened. “Incredibly good,” he finished.

“Jeez, I can’t figure you people out to save my life,” Pendleton muttered, biting back some of the choicer words he wanted to use. “I have a kid sister, too, you know.”

McClellan looked surprised, as if he’d never considered the possibility that there might be more to Pendleton than a corporate title. “Do you?”

“Yeah, I do.”

McClellan sobered suddenly, his smile falling, his eyes darkening, as if an entirely new subject were at issue. “And did you spend the better part of your youth, as my brothers and I did, making sure no guy ever got close enough to hurt her?”

Pendleton shook his head. “No, I didn’t. I let her live her own life. Make her own mistakes.”

“And how did that turn out?”

Pendleton fidgeted a bit more. “Well, she sort of got knocked up when she was sixteen by some sonofabitch stupid idiot jerk moron sonofabitch.”

“You said sonofabitch twice.”

“Yeah, I know.”

“Oh.”

Pendleton waited to see vast disappointment and a total lack of respect on McClellan’s face at hearing that a big brother failed so egregiously in keeping his little sister safe from harm. But the other man only gazed at him speculatively in silence, as if he weren’t quite sure what to make of him.

“Carny’s done all right, though,” Pendleton said by way of defending his sister. “The mistake she made when she was a teenager, she took responsibility for it, even if the sonofabitch stupid idiot jerk moron sonofabitch didn’t. And her son has been the bright spot in her life ever since. She owns her own business now, and Joey is a straight-A student and major hockey fiend. The two of them have their share of problems with curfews and adolescent outrage, the usual stuff, but they do okay.”

McClellan only continued to look at him in silence, then, slowly, he nodded. “You’re saying we all should have left Kit alone to make her own mistakes instead of sheltering her from life. That she never had a chance to experience the good with the bad, so she has no way of knowing now exactly which is which. She hasn’t really grown up, because she simply never had a chance to. If she’s behaving like a child now, we have no one to blame but ourselves.”

Pendleton nodded. “Yeah. That’s what I’m saying.”

“That ultimately, she would have done all right if we hadn’t interfered.”

“Yeah.”

“That none of us would be in this mess right now if Kit had been left to her own devices.”

“Exactly.”

“Of course, that means she’d be married to that little prick Michael Derringer right now,” McClellan pointed out, “and not sleeping in your bed.”

Pendleton furrowed his brow at that. “I guess it would.”

“Or maybe not,” the other man conceded. “She probably would have come to her senses eventually when she realized how unhappy she was. Then again, I guess we’ll never know for sure, will we? Since she never had a chance to fall on her ass like the rest of us.”

“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” Pendleton said. “I think Kit’s fallen on her ass more times than anybody wants to admit. She just hasn’t had the opportunity to pick herself up and brush herself off, and lie and say, ‘I meant to do that,’ like the rest of us have. Someone else has always done that for her. I’m just saying maybe right now you guys should back off and see what happens.”

Again, McClellan only gazed at him in silence for a moment, as if he were weighing some matter of great import. Then he said, “Look around you, Pendleton. What do you see?”

The question was unexpected, but Pendleton did as he’d been asked and scanned his surroundings. “I see a big, beautiful house. Some primo real estate. A couple of expensive cars.” He turned to meet McClellan’s gaze levelly. “But I also see a beautiful sunset. A basketball hoop. A couple of birds who warble a mean tune. And inside that house, there’s a woman who’d like to be closer to her family than she is.”

“Meaning?”

Pendleton met the other man’s gaze levelly. “Meaning maybe you and your father and brothers are worried about losing the wrong thing.”

For a long time, McClellan said nothing, as if he were letting that suggestion settle in. Then he replied, “So if Kit blows the entire fortune, loses every nickel that generations of my family have worked most of their lives to earn, then I shouldn’t worry, because I’ll still be able to watch the sunset every night, is that it?”

Pendleton nodded, but knew the suggestion sounded lame when phrased like that. In spite of that, he said, “It’s my understanding that your great-great grandfather started off with nothing but a recipe and an illegal still way up in the mountains.”

McClellan nodded. “Yes. That’s true.”

“So who do you think enjoyed his work more? You or him?”

The other man inhaled deeply, then released the breath in a slow, steady steam. “I’m not a simple man, Pendleton. Neither is my father. Neither are any of us. We’ve grown up with a certain lifestyle, and I, for one, don’t want to lose it. Especially when it’s such an easy matter to preserve it.”

“And I’m saying that maybe if you stepped back and looked at the big picture, you and your old man might have more success preserving the family fortune than you’ve had messing around with Kit’s life. There’s more to that fortune than money. A lot more.”

McClellan narrowed his eyes at him. “I don’t follow you.”

Pendleton nodded angrily. “Yeah, I know. That’s the problem.”

Concerned that saying anything more might further confuse the matter, he pushed himself up from the pavement and began to make his way to the house. Almost as an afterthought, he spun around and lobbed the basketball carelessly toward the goal. It bounced on the rim before hitting the backboard, then it spun on the hoop a few times before finally falling through the net. When it did, McClellan caught it deftly in both hands, then looked up at Pendleton with a frown.

And all Pendleton could do was shake his head, and wonder how a smart guy like McClellan, Jr. could be so damned dumb.

Kit fought off the ripple of déjà vu that threatened to swamp her when the dinner party retired to the living room with coffee. It was hard to believe a month had passed since that first night at Cherrywood. Pendleton was a complete stranger to her then, and she suspected he was nothing more than a corporate drone dancing at the end of her father’s leash. She’d so looked forward to taking him down a peg that evening. But things didn’t turn out quite the way she planned. Since that night, everything had blown up in her face.

Because she, like an idiot, had gone and fallen in love.

Oh, but hey, no biggie. It was love, not brain surgery. She’d get over it. Eventually. Certainly by the end of the twentieth millennium or so. By then, if what all those post-nuclear-holocaust, dystopian movies said was true, the world would just be a big ol’ ball of dried-up, burned-out carbon anyway. And where was the fun in pining for someone when you had to wear a gas mask all the time?

She sensed Pendleton’s approach long before she felt him move up behind her, and a shiver of anticipation mixed with apprehension skittered through her. Before she could acknowledge him, he leaned in close, his mouth hovering right at her ear. His breath, his entire body, was warm, welcome, intoxicating. She found that she simply could not wait to go home and get naked with him.

“You ready to go?” he asked, his voice low and seductive, murmuring her own thoughts just loud enough for them to hear. “We could get an early start on all those things we planned on doing.”

A sad, salacious smile curled her lips as she nodded. “Most definitely.” She turned to her father and brother and added, more loudly, “Pendleton and I have to be going. It’s getting late.”

Her father’s eyebrows shot up in surprise, but the smile that curled his lips was victorious, Kit noted dispiritedly. Strange that he acted so triumphant all evening, when not once did he mention her relationship with Pendleton. Not once did he demand to know how things with the two of them were going. Not once did he ask if they’d made any wedding plans. It almost felt as if he knew something they didn’t. She really hated feeling that way.

“So soon?” he asked. Before either of them could offer to stay longer—not that either of them was going to offer to stay longer—he rushed on, “Well, if you must. Good night. Drive safely. Holt? You up for a nightcap?”

Without further notice, he spun on his heel and departed for the library. Holt shook his head at her, smiled, and shrugged, then, after a quietly uttered good night, departed in the same direction as their father.

“My family,” Kit said wistfully as she watched them go. “I suppose I have no choice but to keep them. They’re just smart enough to leave a trail of bread crumbs if I tried to abandon them in an enchanted forest.”

Pendleton smiled. “At least we have each other.”

For now, at any rate, she thought.

They made it all the way to the car before Kit realized she left her purse behind. Seeing as it was one of those evening bags roughly the size of an electron, she knew it could be hiding almost anywhere.

“It’s probably in the kitchen,” she told Pendleton as he opened the passenger side door for her. “I put it down to set the table for Mrs. Mason. Go ahead and start the car. I’ll only be a minute.”

But it wasn’t in the kitchen, she noted quickly. She must have left it in the dining room. That room, too, however, provided her with no clue as to her purse’s whereabouts. She mentally retraced her steps of the evening and finally concluded she left it in the library. Where her father and Holt had retired for a nightcap. Gee, just like old times. They were doubtless having one of those major father-son conversations right, and there was always that outside chance that her name might crop up…

She slipped her shoes from her feet and dangled them from her fingers as she tiptoed quietly to the library, remembering this was exactly how that first, fateful evening with Pendleton concluded. How terribly ironic. Sure enough, the moment she entered the main hallway, she heard the soft murmur of masculine voices, and silently made her way to just outside the door. She hugged the wall and cocked an ear, eavesdropping shamelessly on the conversation coming from within.

“…about wedding plans?” Holt was asking.

“It wasn’t necessary to ask them about any wedding plans,” her father answered.

Holt chuckled anxiously. “We have a month before the deadline expires, and you don’t think it’s necessary to ask when Kit’s getting married?”

Her father, chuckled, too, though the sound of his laughter was more menacing. “Didn’t you see the way she was looking at him? Kit is completely smitten. You know how she is when she finds something she really likes. She wouldn’t give up Pendleton now if her life—or one hundred million dollars—depended on it.”

Holt uttered an exasperated sound. “Don’t be so sure. Even if she’s fallen in love with him—which is still open to debate, if you ask me—that doesn’t necessarily mean she’ll be marrying him before the deadline. It would be just like her to tie the knot the day after Mama’s deadline, just to piss us all off.”

Maybe, Kit responded silently. Then she pushed the thought away. It was immaterial. Marriage, regardless of the timing, was out of the question, at least where Pendleton was concerned. Because it wasn’t like he wanted to marry her. The only wedding he’d be showing up for would be his ex-wife’s.

“Trust me,” her father continued in a confident tone of voice that snapped her attention back around. “Pendleton will make damned sure they’re married before the deadline.”

“Oh?” Holt replied mildly, echoing the very word circling in Kit’s head. “He doesn’t seem to me to care one way or another. And even if he did, he’s the type of man who would respect Kit’s wishes in the matter. If she wanted to wait, he’d wait, too. He doesn’t even have a stake in this thing.”

“Oh, yes, he does.”

“He does?”

Kit realized she whispered the words out loud herself at the same time her brother uttered them to her father. She covered her mouth with one hand, lest she slip up like that again. Still, she couldn’t deny the sick feeling that settled in the pit of her stomach at the unmistakable certainty in her father’s voice.

“Damn right he has a stake in this,” he stated further, too adamantly for her comfort. “I made it clear to Pendleton the day after Kit moved in with him that there would be a nice, fat reward for any man who took her on as his lawful wedded wife, thereby saving the family a bundle.”

“Oh, Dad. No. Please. Tell me you didn’t do that.”

For a moment, Kit thought she had said those words aloud, too. Then she realized it was Holt who echoed the plea erupting in her head.

“Of course I did that,” her father said, his voice colored with impatience. “I told Pendleton I paid that little prick Michael Derringer a quarter-million to abandon Kit, then assured him I could be even more generous to any man who would marry her now.”

The dinner she consumed less than an hour ago rolled over in Kit’s belly like a dead, bloated fish, threatening to replay itself on the foyer carpet. With no small effort, she kept herself from spilling her guts all over her mother’s favorite Aubusson. With an even greater effort, she kept herself from sobbing out loud.

Well, what did she expect? she asked herself. She should have known her father would do something like this. She should have realized the only reason Pendleton was tolerating her presence in his life was because he’d been promised a substantial reward for his trouble. She should be in no way surprised to discover his motivation all along had been financial, not emotional.

But Kit was surprised. And that surprised her. Because if she was surprised to discover Pendleton was only wooing her for her monetary value, then somewhere deep inside herself, she had started to believe—to really, truly, honestly believe—that he liked her. Perhaps even loved her. Loved her. Katherine Atherton McClellan. And not the Hensley millions.

She should have known better. Any logical human being would have realized what was going on from the beginning. Any logical human being would have been able to see exactly what was what. Unfortunately, it was kind of hard to be logical when your heart was calling all the shots. And then, when your heart starting breaking into a million pieces… Well, forget about it.

Although her father and brother continued to talk—Holt’s voice, she noted vaguely, becoming remarkably angry about something—Kit knew she’d heard enough. No longer caring where her purse was—no longer caring about much of anything—she made her way silently back through the house. When she got to the kitchen, she only stood for a moment, gazing out the window at the sleek little sports car idling in the darkness, its parking lights glowing in anticipation of her return.

Pendleton had made it clear he wanted to make love the minute they arrived home. Until a few moments ago, that was what she wanted, too. Now that was going to be something of a problem. Because Kit suddenly realized that what she told him the night before was true. Although, at the time, she only made it up in an effort to put him off, she realized now that she really didn’t intend ever to make love with a man again unless she loved him and he loved her.

Last night, subconsciously anyway, she knew—she thought—Pendleton loved her. Tonight, however, she understood the truth. And knowing what she did, there was no way she could tumble into bed with him when they got home. Or ever again, for that matter.

This one-sided stuff, she thought as she made her way slowly and without enthusiasm toward the back door, was really for the birds. Not only that, but it sure could make a person powerful sick to her stomach.