“She’s out in the backyard with Mom and Dad.”

Carny repeated the announcement she made over the phone the night before as Pendleton entered his parents’ house. Filled with relief, affection, exasperation and so much more, he pulled his sister into a massive bear hug, and dropped his duffel bag onto the floor with a comfortable thump. An emotion so strong he dared not try to identify it shuddered through him, and for a moment, he could only cling to his sister and will his taut body to relax. Then he pushed himself to arm’s length and cupped his hands over Carny’s shoulders, studying the face that looked so much like his own.

Less than two months had passed since he last saw his sister, but she suddenly looked so much older than he remembered. Her brown eyes crinkled at the corners with the smile that lit her whole face, and her dark hair, half-in and half-out of a stubby ponytail, was kissed with bits of silver. Jeez, when did Carny start to go gray? If she was starting to show signs of aging herself—however appealing they were on her—how must he be faring himself?

He pushed the thought aside. “So Kit’s here? She’s safe?”

Only now was he beginning to realize how worried he’d been that Kit might be gone for good. At best, he thought she’d taken off for the Caribbean again. Over and over, he’d imagined her standing behind a bar in her sarong, being hit on by some jerk who wouldn’t have a clue how to handle her. Or worse, who would have more than a clue how to handle her. The week and a half that passed in her absence felt more like a decade and a half to Pendleton. Even now, he couldn’t quite believe he had her back.

Of course, he reminded himself, he didn’t have her back. Not completely. Not yet. But once they talked, once he explained everything, once he told her how he felt about her, he was certain everything would be all right. And somehow, it was just so appropriate she turned up here, at his parents’ house. Kit being with his family somehow made perfect sense, felt totally right.

Besides, he recalled with some distaste, Sherry’s wedding was only three days away. And, hey, Kit had been invited, after all. Social creature that she was, he was sure she was planning on making an appearance. Or a spectacle. Whatever.

Carny chuckled, jerking him out of his ruminations. “Kit’s safe enough for the time being,” she said. “But if she keeps telling Dad how to cook ribs, he’s gonna send her straight to the moon.”

Pendleton laughed, too. His father was generally a good-natured, easygoing man, the kind of person who made immediate friends with everyone he encountered. Unless you tried to come between him and his barbecue. Do that, and Axel Pendleton of Deptford, New Jersey became more temperamental than a Paris-dwelling, cordon bleu chef.

“She’s actually a very good cook,” he told his sister. “She could probably teach him a thing or two.”

Carny chuckled some more. “Yeah, I know. Mom says Kit hasn’t let her cook a meal since she arrived.”

For some reason, that didn’t surprise him at all. For all Kit’s wealthy, upwardly mobile upbringing, there was an earthiness, a down-home quality about her that was completely inborn. Her mother’s doing, he supposed. As well as Kit performed in high-brow social settings, she was still too real a human being to ever be too good for something like a blue-collar, South Jersey kitchen.

“I’m sorry no one called you before now,” Carny said. “I just found out about it myself last night. Evidently, she’s been here since Monday, but somehow she talked Mom and Dad into not telling you she was here. Said she wanted to surprise you.”

Pendleton could believe that. Kit could probably talk Queen Elizabeth into abdicating her throne and giving it to Izzy the charwoman.

“She’s been staying here at the house?” he asked his sister. Somehow, that didn’t surprise him, either. Hey, he’d seen for himself she had a propensity for such things.

“She started off at the Holiday Inn,” Carny told him, “but Mom talked her into checking out a couple nights ago and taking your old room instead.”

Pendleton paled. "My old room?” he demanded. “Kit’s been sleeping in my old room? Why not your old room? Those pink ruffled curtains are more appropriate for her than my race car wallpaper.”

Carny gaped at him as if his brain was oozing out his ears. “‘Cause Mom knows how I am about my Barbie collection, you big jerk.”

Oh, yeah. He forgot. Anybody who came between Carny and her Barbies, even now, wound up with a little plastic high heel sticking out of their nose.

Reluctantly, Pendleton released his sister. “It’s good to see you again,” he said. “I’ve missed you and Joey, and Mom and Dad. A lot.”

“We’ve missed you, too. But be warned—Joey’s still majorly pissed at you for moving away before the end of hockey season.”

“I’ll make it up to him. He can come visit in a couple weeks for the Kentucky Derby. Apparently, it’s something of a big deal down there.”

“So, you liking it all right in your new town?” she asked, the question carrying far more importance than her voice let on.

Pendleton took a moment to really think about it. South Jersey was in his blood, and Philadelphia was, to his way of thinking, the greatest city ever erected on the planet. Every milestone of significance in his young life had occurred within a few miles of the very spot where he now stood. He took his first step, rode his first school bus, cracked his first bat, copped his first feel, all within blocks of his parents’ house.

Yet somehow, this place didn’t quite feel like home anymore. He didn’t know why that was. It just felt different now. There was no longer a pull on his soul toward the history he had here. Instead, he felt tugged toward the future, wherever Kit McClellan called home.

“Yeah,” he finally told Carny. “I like it just fine.”

She nodded. “Maybe I’ll come down with Joey and to that Derby thing. And Mom and Dad, too.” She smiled one of those all-knowing sister smiles. “Or maybe we’ll all just wait and come down this summer. Like for the wedding, maybe.”

He smiled back. “Wedding? What wedding? Whatever could you be talking about, Carny?”

Carny wiggled her brows playfully. “Yours. Kit’s. Whatever.”

He was about to comment when a cry from the direction of the backyard silenced him. His father was yelling at the top of his lungs, something about…cumin?

Carny rolled her eyes. “Not again,” she muttered. “Mom says they’ve been having this argument ever since the night Kit arrived.”

Even knowing Kit as well as he did, Pendleton found this news to be a little confusing. “They’ve been arguing about cumin?”

Carny nodded. “Yeah.”

But she said nothing more to elaborate, only spun around and made her way through the living room toward the kitchen, with Pendleton following helplessly on her trail.

“Will you just trust me on this, Axel?” Kit’s voice rose from the backyard. “For once in your life? Don’t be such a Pendleton.”

As he followed the sound toward the open back door, some great weight in Pendleton’s chest shifted aside. Yeah, he thought, it was definitely good to be home.

Kit studied Pendleton’s father in the waning light of a day in the life of New Jersey and marveled again at how much he looked like his son. A bit softer around the middle, maybe, a little grayer and thinner on top, but all in all, a striking likeness. In twenty-five or thirty years, she thought, this would be Pendleton. Man of the House. Head of the Household. Master of the Suburban Domain.

Keeper of the Holy Barbecue.

Axel stood on the minuscule cement patio, gripping a Rolling Rock beer in his bare hand and a pair of tongs in the one that was covered with a lobster claw oven mitt. The apron protecting his plaid shirt and sans-a-belt trousers read Who invited all these tacky people? Somehow, even having spent only a few days in the man’s company, Kit felt closer to him than she’d ever felt to her own father.

“Now, Axel,” she said, “don’t be so hasty. We’ve been over this before. I don’t know why you refuse to even consider the possibility that just a touch of cumin might improve your special sauce.”

“Don’t nobody mess with my special sauce, little girl.” He shook his tongs at her. “This barbecue sauce took ribbons eight years straight at the Deptford Township Fall Festival.”

She adopted her most solicitous smile and tried again. “But a little cumin would go a long way toward—”

“No.”

His reply was succinct, to the point, and final. Kit shook her head. Fine. She gave up. No cumin.

“How about a little rosemary?” she asked.

“No. No cumin, no rosemary.”

She opened her mouth to say something else, but he cut her off with a quick swipe of his tongs.

“And no marjoram, either. Foggiddabbuddit, Kit.”

Foggiddabbuddit, she learned on her first day in New Jersey, was Northeastern for Forget about it. Kind of like how y’all was Southeastern for youse.

“But, Axel—”

“No,” he said again. “My recipe ain’t gonna change in this lifetime.” He eyed her warily. “And it better not change after I go to my reward, either, you hear what I’m sayin’?”

“All right, all right,” she conceded reluctantly. “Boy, you are so much like your son, you know that?”

That, at least, made Axel smile. “Rocky? Yeah, he’s a good kid.”

As if conjured by the comment, a familiar voice called from behind, “Yo, Dad!”

A huge grin split Axel’s face at the same time Kit’s smile fell. They spun around as one to find Pendleton striding casually across the backyard, one arm slung over Carny’s shoulder, the hand of the other shoved deep into the pocket of his jeans. The sleeves of his faded blue sweatshirt were shoved up nearly to his elbows, exposing one of those incredibly sexy forearms that even now, in the middle of a family gathering, made Kit go hot and bothered inside.

“Sonny!” Axel cried, throwing his arms up into the air.

He set down his tongs and beer and went to meet his son, intercepting him halfway across the yard. Immediately, fiercely, both men embraced. Not one of those phony, he-man, homophobic embraces, either—the kind where the guys slap each other silly on the back for a few seconds before springing uncomfortably apart. But a truly heartfelt hug, both men gripping each other tightly for a solid minute before letting go.

In the meantime, Irene Pendleton cried out happily and jumped up from the chaise lounge where she’d been reading, and she thrust herself into what became a three-way, marathon hug. Behind them, Carny shook her head and laughed, before she, too, came forward and threw her arms around the lot of them as best she could. Then the Axel Pendletons of Deptford, New Jersey clung together as if their lives depended on it.

Something stung Kit’s eyes suddenly, and she quickly swiped a hand across them. When she looked up again, it was to find Pendleton gazing at her over the top of his mother’s head, and somehow she received the distinct impression that he wanted her to join in the fray.

Yeah, right, she thought. She’d probably suffocate in a huddle like that. So she only picked up Axel’s discarded tongs and flipped the ribs over to the other side. No reason to interfere in a family thing.

She felt, more than saw, the group disperse, and likewise only sensed Pendleton’s approach. She told herself to be a man about it, to meet him head-to-head on his own turf. Just because she’d fallen in love with another guy who only wanted her for her money, hey, what was so terrible about that? It wasn’t like she didn’t already traveled this road before, right? She ought to be used to it by now. Next stop, heartbreak. She should have seen it coming from a mile away.

Pendleton came to a halt with a good six feet of lawn and patio still separating them, then softly greeted her, “Hi.”

She dropped her gaze back down to the grill. “Your folks promised they wouldn’t call you until I told them it was okay.”

“They didn’t call me. Carny did.”

Kit nodded. That’s right, she recalled. Carny never did state in so many words that she would abide by Kit’s request. Sisters were always such troublemakers. She should know that by now.

“Well,” she said softly, still forcing herself not to look at Pendleton, “I suppose I should apologize. But at least this way you get to visit with your family on Daddy’s dime, don’t you?”

“You think that’s the only reason I came?”

Unable to stop herself, Kit glanced up to look at him, and immediately wished she hadn’t. He looked tired. Anxious. Sad. Then again, he’d had some dizzy dame turning his life upside-down for a couple of months now, hadn’t he? How else was he supposed to look?

“That’s right, I almost forgot,” she lied, not even bothering to feign good humor. “Your ex-wife is getting married this weekend, isn’t she? Wouldn’t want to miss that, would you?”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

His response stumped her. Hey, if he didn’t know the answer to that one, she sure wasn’t going to try and jog his memory. In spite of that, she heard herself say, “Well, there is that small matter of you still being in love with her. Of you wanting to show her that you’ve still got what it takes to flex PR and push pencils with the big boys.”

He smiled, a wistful kind of smile unlike any Kit had ever seen from him. “Although I have to confess tha there was a time not too long ago when I did indeed fantasize a nice little revenge about attending Sherry’s wedding with some big, busty, bitchy blond—”

“Oh, and hey,” Kit interrupted, “with me, you got three out of four, anyway, didn’t you?”

His smile fell some, but his eyes were still warm and affectionate as he watched her. “I didn’t come up here to go to Sherry’s wedding, either. Frankly, that’s the last place I want to be.”

Kit nodded. “Yeah, I bet. So then if you didn’t come up here for that,” she rushed on, “I guess you wanted to rescue your folks from the crazy McClellan daughter, didn’t you? But I promise you, Pendleton, although I might do some crazy stuff, I’d never hurt anyone.”

“Oh, sure. That’s what you say.”

Uncertain what he meant by the comment, Kit let it slide. “I just needed to get away from Louisville for a little while, that’s all. After hearing you talk about your family, your hometown, I was kind of curious. It sounded…nice.” She lifted a shoulder and let it drop. “I wanted to see for myself.”

“Why did you need to get away from Louisville for a while?” he asked. “Things were just starting to…to…” He waved a hand restlessly in front of himself, as if he were trying to pull the proper word out of thin air. “To go right. Between us, I mean.”

Her eyes began to sting again, so she dropped her gaze back down to the barbecue. Axel seemed to realize where her attention lay, because he suddenly appeared at her side and snatched the tongs out of her hands.

“Why don’t you and Rocky go talk?” he said, nudging her aside with an elbow that was in no way subtle. “I can handle things here.”

Instead of arguing with Axel, Kit dropped her arms to her side and her gaze to the ground and wandered toward the back stoop. Not surprisingly, Pendleton followed right behind her. With Carny and Irene having retreated into the house, the two of them were left pretty much alone.

“Mind if I ask what you’re doing here at my parents’ house?” he asked again.

There was really no easy answer, Kit thought. She was doing a lot of things here. She was taking a little vacation, enjoying a small break from her usual reality. She was visiting a part of the country she’d never seen before, observing a slice of life she hadn’t known existed. She was making friends and having some truly enlightening conversations. She was feeling like a human being, living life instead of struggling with it for a change.

And she was falling in love with Pendleton’s family in much the same way that she had fallen in love with Pendleton.

Which was the last thing she intended to do. Thinking about it now, she wondered if maybe her whole reason for heading north instead of south this time wasn’t simply that she wanted to exorcise Pendleton from her system by witnessing the source of his genesis. With some of his mystique removed, she thought, maybe the man himself would cease to be interesting.

Naturally, the maneuver backfired, just as everything else in her life had backfired since Pendleton entered it. Instead of disdaining his origins, she found herself charmed by them. Instead of viewing his family as alien life forms with whom she couldn’t possibly ever relate, Kit found herself feeling more comfortable with them than she did with her own relatives. Instead of demystifying and commonizing Pendleton, her visit to his hometown only made him that much more intriguing, that much more appealing.

Dammit, nothing worked the way it was supposed to anymore.

“Kit?”

With an impatient sound, she snapped her head around. “What?” she demanded.

“What’d I do?” he asked. “Just tell me that. What did I do that made you run off without a trace to, of places, Deptford?”

She expelled a restless sigh, then returned her attention to the backyard. “I can’t decide what’s made me feel more foolish,” she said softly. “The fact that you and Daddy cut a deal, the fact that I didn’t even see it coming, or the fact that I let myself fall in love with you.”

He said nothing in response to her revelation, so she braved a glimpse in his general direction. His face, she saw, was impassive, completely devoid of any expression. And his voice was nearly silent as he asked, “What did you say?”

For a moment, she only stared at him. Then, corralling what little moxie she had left, she said, “True or false, Pendleton? My father offered to pay you a substantial amount of money if you married me before the deadline stipulated by my mother’s will, thereby ensuring that the family would keep the Hensley millions.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw, and his eyes darkened dangerously. “Why do you ask that?”

“Just answer the question. True or false?”

For a moment, she didn’t think he was going to respond. Then, very, very quietly, he said, “True.”

If she’d thought it hurt to hear her father say that, she’d been way, way off. Nothing could have prepared her for the slash of pain that twisted in her heart hearing Pendleton verify it.

“Oh, God,” she said, nearly choking on the words.

“Kit, you don’t under—”

“True or false?” she interrupted him, before he could say anything to make matters worse. “You flat-out turned the offer down, said you were outraged by such a proposal, and told my father to go to hell.”

Her question was met with another unsettling silence, then, even more quietly than before, Pendleton said, “False.”

She swallowed hard as a chill wound through her body. “True or false?” she said softly, having no idea where she found the strength to continue. “You never loved me at all.”

“Absolutely false. Kit, I—”

“Oh, Pendleton,” she said. “You’ve never lied to me. Why start now?”

“Kit, I’m not lying to you. I do love you. Don’t you see that?”

“No. I don’t see that. What I see is a man just like Michael Derringer.”

His eyes went flinty cold. “I’m nothing like Michael Derringer.”

She didn’t—couldn’t—say anything in response to that.

“How did you find out about your father offering me money to marry you?” he asked. “Did he tell you that?”

She folded her denim-clad knees up before her and wound her arms tightly around them, as if doing so might keep her from falling apart. Then, because she suddenly felt restless—and because she wanted to be removed from Pendleton—she scooted her body backward until she felt the cool roughness of the bricks abrading her back through her sweater. Strange that she even noticed the sensation outside her body, seeing as she’d gone so numb inside.

“Although I certainly wouldn’t put it past Daddy to throw something like that in my face,” she said softly, “no. He didn’t tell me that. I overheard him and Holt talking in the library that night at Cherrywood when I went back in to get my purse.” She turned to face Pendleton, and somehow managed to meet his gaze without flinching. “I heard Daddy tell Holt that the day after I moved in with you, he offered you a substantial bonus if you married me.”

Pendleton nodded. “That’s true. He did.”

Wow. It hurt even more to hear him say it a second time. She couldn’t see how that was even possible. “And since my father was so confident that night that you would make an honest woman of me by the deadline, I can only assume you took him up on his offer.”

“That,” Pendleton told her, his gaze never faltering, “Is not true.”

She opened her mouth to object, but he quickly cut her off. “Kit, I didn’t say anything when your father offered me his bribe. I couldn’t. Hell, all I wanted to do was pop him in the chops. I couldn’t believe he would…would barter you like that. I was afraid if I opened my mouth, it would be to call him every name I ever learned in a Jersey schoolyard.” He lifted one shoulder and let it drop, then offered her a little smile. “So I did like my mother taught me. Since I couldn’t say something nice, I didn’t say anything at all. And I let him assume whatever he wanted to. Hey, you’re the one who wanted to string him along,” he added, “make him think things were going his way so he’d leave you alone. What makes what I did any different than what you did?”

Kit smiled sadly in response. “Nice try, Pendleton. But it ain’t gonna wash.”

“You’ll believe what your father said before you’ll believe what I said?”

Well, gee, when he put it like that… “Yeah,” she said softly. “I think I will.”

His eyes iced over at that. “Then you’re the one who’s a liar, Kit, not me.”

She gaped at him. “Me? What did I lie about?”

“A minute ago, you told me you were in love with me.”

She felt her cheeks burn at the reminder. Unable to tolerate the fierceness of his gaze, she dropped hers to the ground. “Yeah, so?” she asked softly.

“So if you’ll take your old man’s word over mine, if you’ll trust him, and not me, then there’s no way you could be in love with me.”

She still couldn’t look at him. She could only say quietly, “Oh, Pendleton. You are so wrong. You have no idea.”

“Then have a little faith in me, will ya?”

She wished she could. Truly, she did. But she couldn’t quite make herself believe him.

“I want to marry you, Kit.”

She chuckled derisively. “Yeah, I bet you do. As soon as possible, too, right?”

“Wrong.”

“What?”

She glanced back up to find him studying her with an intensity that made her uncomfortable. He wasn’t smiling. He didn’t look happy. But he did look dead serious.

“I said, ‘Wrong,’” he repeated. “I mean, yeah, I want to marry you, but you’re the one who’s going to name the date. If you want to get married tomorrow, I’ll call my cousin Sal’s uncle-in-law, who happens to be a judge, right now, and see how fast we can make it happen. But if you want to wait, for however long, I’ll wait.”

She narrowed her eyes at him. “What are you saying?”

“I’m saying I want you, not your family’s money. I love you. I want to spend the rest of my life with you. Why is that so hard for you to believe?”

“You’d honestly marry me after the deadline?” she asked, incredulous. “But I won’t have any money then. I’ll be broke. I won’t even have a job.”

“And your point would be…?”

“I’ll have nothing, Pendleton.”

“You’ll have me,” he said, a genuine smile dawning on his face. “Then again, I’m not the greatest catch around, myself. I’m kind of unemployed right now.”

She gasped. “Daddy fired you?”

He shook his head. “Nah. I quit.”

She gasped again, louder this time. “You quit?”

“No offense, Kit, but I didn’t much like working for your family. I think I’d rather look around for something else.”

“Like what? Where?”

He shrugged again. “Wherever you want. Although I have to admit that Louisville has kind of grown on me. I like our house there, and—”

“Our house?”

“And there’s Maury to think about,” he went on blithely. “Don’t want to disrupt the little guy’s life any more than we have to.”

“Hey, who’s taking care of Maury, anyway?” she asked, sidetracking for a moment, because she suddenly felt way off-course.

“Holt. He’s not nearly as steamed at me as your father is. Though, mind you, he’s none too happy about losing a hundred million bucks.”

“Ninety-nine point four,” Kit corrected him automatically.

“Still, I think he’s more worried about you.”

That, Kit knew, was open to debate. Nevertheless, it was nice to think maybe her brother was coming around, learning there really was more to life than money. If only Faith Ivory would give him a chance. That would go light-years toward bringing him around.

“Anyway,” Pendleton went on, “the main thing is that you and I are together. You have to believe that, Kit. You said it yourself—I’ve never lied to you. I will never, ever, lie to you. If you look deep inside yourself, you’ll realize you know that’s true. I love you. I love you. If you look deep inside yourself, you’ll know that’s true, too.”

She came so close to believing him. So very close. But she just couldn’t take the final step that would carry her over to his side. Even looking deep inside herself, she couldn’t quite find the faith, the trust, that was necessary for the lifelong commitment he was talking about.

“Pendleton,” she said, hardly able to hear her own voice, “I can’t do it. I wish I could, but… I’m sorry. I just can’t.”

His expression told her he wasn’t surprised by her response. He smiled a little sadly, and extended his hand toward her. “Come on,” he said. “I want to show you something.”

Even feeling the way she did, there was no way she could deny him. Feebly, she started to lift her hand, and Pendleton reached out to meet her more than halfway. He curled his fingers around hers capably, possessively, lovingly. Then he pushed himself to his feet and pulled Kit up with him.

Although his eyes never left hers, he called over his shoulder, “Yo, Dad!”

Axel looked up, clearly surprised by the summons. “Yeah?”

“How’re those ribs coming?”

His father glanced down briefly, then back up again. “Just about done.”

Pendleton nodded and continued to look at Kit, but his words were still clearly intended for his father. “How long has it been since you and Mom had dinner with the Robys next door?”

“’Bout a week. Why?”

“Why don’t you and mom and Carny treat Mr. and Mrs. Roby to a nice rib dinner tonight?”

Axel smiled knowingly. “You know, Sonny, I was just thinkin’ that exact same thing. You remember how much Denise Roby likes her ribs.”

Pendleton nodded. “Yeah, I remember.”

“And Dick Roby, well…foggiddabbuddit.”

“Dad?”

“Yeah?”

“Think you could collect Mom and Carny and get lost for a couple hours?”

“Sure thing, Rocky. Just gimme five minutes.”