Here Comes Trouble (2 page)

She heard his heavy boots on the steps behind her, and a little tingle shot straight down her spine. Okay, so maybe she was a teeny tiny bit hungry. But she was also a well-educated, savvy businesswoman and any second now she was going to start acting like it.

She’d already decided to fax a copy of his driver’s license over to Thad at the sheriff’s office and get him to check the guy out. Smart business even if her hormones were acting stupid…and she was admittedly curious to know more if she could. Her new guest didn’t exactly strike her as the chatty sort.

She stepped behind the small counter she’d had designed and built under the stairs where they made their turn up to the second-floor landing. “I’ll need to see your driver’s license or some other form of photo ID.” She smiled as she turned the antique guest book around, hoping her chatter made him less aware of the fact that there weren’t many names filled in before the line where his signature would go. In fact, other than Aunt Frieda, who’d come up from Florida over the summer to help her with the window treatments and the finishing touches of her interior design plan, and a small group who’d stayed for a wedding in the area around the holidays…well, the page wasn’t exactly full of scrawled names.

“Interesting book,” he said, surprising her with voluntary conversation. If you could count two words as conversation. He lifted the worn and faded leather cover to look at the front.

“I found it at an antiques market. It was the guest register for a hotel that was here back in the late eighteen hundreds when the town first started up. And, don’t worry, I use more technologically advanced record keeping, but I kind of liked the idea of the more personal touch, too.” She’d actually envisioned folks leaving little notes about their stay, perhaps coming back again and again over the years and looking back over previous entries. At the moment Kirby was just thankful that there was a stack of previously signed pages in the book. No one had to know that the signatures on those pages had been signed with a fountain pen. Well over a hundred years ago.

So, of course, he flipped back a few pages.

She kept the smile on her face and busied herself making a copy of the driver’s license he’d slid across the countertop. Great, not only was he the only current guest, but now he’d realize she wasn’t typically booked up. Ever. Made for a great setup for any number of horror movie scenarios.

Kirby turned back, smile still set in place, and handed his license back to him, belatedly realizing she’d been so distracted she hadn’t even looked at it. She’d check out the photocopy just as soon as she was alone.

She began explaining the rates, but he stopped her with, “I just need a single. Top floor if you have it. Doesn’t have to be fancy.”

She nodded and snagged a key from the hook under the counter. “One key will be okay?”

He nodded and palmed the key off the polished wood countertop. His hands were broad, tanned, and surprisingly well maintained. In fact, the brief flash she’d had of his long fingers, she’d have sworn he had a manicure. That…so didn’t seem to go with the rest of the persona. “How many nights?” She glanced up to find him looking at her, but she didn’t think he was actually seeing her. Hard to say. He was still wearing his sunglasses.

“Not sure. Is that a problem?”

So many things about this guy weren’t adding up. She could lie and tell him she was booked solid starting the coming weekend, but given the fact that he’d seen just how busy she’d been over the past month…or three, she didn’t think she could pull that off with the sincerity required. “No, that’s fine. How will you be paying? I take all major credit cards—”

“Cash,” he said.

She tried—and was certain she failed spectacularly—not to gape when he pulled out a wad of bills being held together with a wide paper band. The kind of band that looked like a bank band. What the hell did that mean?

He peeled off several bills and laid them on the counter. “That should take care of the next few days.” He wasn’t trying to flaunt it, nor was he coming off with any braggadocio or arrogance. In fact, he tucked the wad away as swiftly as he’d pulled it out.

“I—um, yeah, I mean yes,” she said, taking the bills—the one-hundred-dollar bills—off the counter. He hadn’t even asked her rates. “That will be fine. Wine, cheese, crackers will be available in the front parlor at five and I can direct you to several local restaurants for lunch, dinner, depending on—”

“That won’t be necessary,” he said, sliding the strap of his gear back over his shoulder. “And don’t go to any trouble for me with the wine. I doubt I’ll be back down tonight.”

“Okay,” she said. Despite the mane of curly, wind-tossed hair, the beard stubble, and beat-up leather jacket, he seemed a rather decent sort. Quiet, mannerly. Then there was the wad of bills and salon-maintained hands. And the fact that she still hadn’t seen his eyes yet. Eyes said a lot about a person. She tried to pull her thoughts together. After sliding the bills into the cash drawer under the counter, she stepped out from behind the desk. “Let me show you to your room.”

He glanced at the key. “Number seven?” Then his lips curled briefly and he muttered something like “Lucky seven,” under his breath.

“Yes, top floor, back corner, nice view down the valley and the front range from your window.”

He curled the key into his palm and shifted his gear bag up farther on his shoulder. “I’m sure it will be fine. Thanks.” He gave her a nod, then started up the stairs.

She watched as he turned at the first landing and kept climbing, his heavy tread on the steps at odds with his otherwise quiet demeanor. She briefly thought that perhaps she should follow him up for security reasons, but it wasn’t like he wouldn’t have ample time to explore the place, and she couldn’t be everywhere at once. There were cameras installed discreetly in the top corner molding at the ends of each hallway, but they weren’t hooked up to anything yet. The guests didn’t have to know that, however.

As soon as she heard the creaking floorboards up overhead, she slid the paper from the copier and turned it over. “Brett Hennessey,” she read, then skimmed the rest of the information. He was from Las Vegas. And, noting he’d just turned thirty right before the holidays, he was ten years younger than she was. She smiled at herself and all her fluttery little hormones. So he was a little older than she’d thought, but the only other surprise was that he hadn’t ma’am’d her. If he’d noticed her reaction to him at all, he’d probably thought she was having a hot flash.

She penned a quick note on a small sticky pad, peeled it off and stuck it on the paper copy of his license, and then slid it in the fax machine and sent it off to Thad. Not that she was truly concerned, not really. Still, Las Vegas, long way from home, big wad of cash, dusty motorcycle–riding, road-weary, hunky rider in black chaps with a sweet ass and perfectly maintained cuticles…Yeah, that was not your typical inn guest. She might not ever find out what he was all about, but there was definitely a story.

That was actually, in part, her attraction to wanting to be an innkeeper. As a child, growing up in a small resort town in the middle of the Rockies, she’d always looked up at airplanes flying overhead and wondered where the passengers inside were going, what adventure or journey they were embarking on…or returning from. Of course, in her youthful fantasies, the stories were always fantastical. Nothing so mundane as a burned-out businessman heading back from a boring meeting on the coast. But, even in her far more mature, far less naïve forty-year-old mind, she still found people endlessly fascinating and wondered what their story was, what path they were on. As someone who provided a way station along that path, she’d get to find out.

Like the group who’d stayed through the holidays. Three couples, each in their late twenties, all of whom had begun dating each other while in college together, had reserved rooms to attend the wedding of the fourth couple in their college quartet. Two of the couples were simply enjoying the reunion and time spent catching up, but the third woman had confided in Kirby that she was hoping that watching two of their oldest and dearest friends tie the knot would prompt her significant other to finally pop the question. Kirby had kept her opinion on the likelihood of that happening to herself, but she’d enjoyed the confided secret nonetheless.

Not that she was nosy—okay, she totally was, but she didn’t pry. Not exactly. Mostly because she didn’t have to. She’d grown up inside a ski resort, and had literally done every job conceivable along the way, from cleaning rooms and working registration, to busing tables and even running the ski lifts. One thing she’d learned was that if she was friendly and outgoing, and tried to make her guests feel at home—a feeling that she hoped her bed-and-breakfast-style inn would encourage—people talked, chatted, and generally shared far more with her, a complete stranger, than they sometimes did with those in their own party.

She looked at Mr. Hennessey’s license and wondered what his story might involve. Why was he such a long way from home…and where was he going from here? Why did he have such a big wad of cash? Had he gambled big in Vegas and won? Except he lived there according to his license. Had he stolen the money? And why had he biked cross-country instead of hopping a plane? Was he on the run? Or merely taking a long road trip, seeing the country? Plus, why did a guy wearing dusty biker leathers have the hands of a Wall Street investment banker?

She laid the paper down and entered all the information into the computer…and wondered if he’d be here long enough for her to find out.

B
rett Hennessey just needed a place to stop.

And think.

He was tired. Tired of running, tired of not knowing what the best course of action was, tired of worrying about the people he cared about. His life had never been normal, but he thought he’d finally gotten a handle on balancing the expectations that had been placed on him. Somehow, over the past six months, it had all spun out of control. He wasn’t even sure when it had begun unraveling, really. So many little threads, he supposed. Threads he’d let go and ignored because they annoyed him and he hadn’t wanted to deal with the bullshit they presented. None of them particularly important, in and of themselves, but collectively, they’d all seemed to unravel completely at once.

Easy to say now that he should have spent a little more time on the annoying bullshit part as it had come along, but he’d never been good at that part. He’d told them all that. The sponsors, tournament directors, media agents, casino owners, television producers. Repeatedly. They’d told him to hire people to handle the details. Delegate. But he wasn’t comfortable with having people counting on him for their personal livelihood. Hell, he hadn’t been all that crazy about earning his own livelihood that way. Not to mention the fact that the idea of people hanging around him all the time, looking over his shoulder, waiting to see if he would win big again, and thereby get to keep their jobs, would have driven him bonkers. There were already too many people, too much noise, too much…everything in his life.

It was true, he had a knack for cards. He’d grown up in Vegas casinos, literally, so of course he knew how to play poker. And yeah, when the Texas Hold’em craze had swept the nation, he’d swiftly become an attention getter, whether he’d wanted to be or not. He’d been a little—okay, a lot—younger than most back then, but he could hardly help that. It had been fun, in the beginning, sort of like a hobby. He’d been a kid, a minor, so there wasn’t much he could really do with his innate skills other than show them off.

It hadn’t been until later on that he’d started to think of it as a way to earn money. Even then he hadn’t pictured it as a career. At best, it was a way to pay for college a little faster than just banging nails and hauling lumber on the renovation jobs he worked on for his best friend’s dad. He definitely hadn’t counted on winning often enough to make it pay long term.

He’d been around the game his whole life, so he knew better than most that when it came to cards, the odds would always balance things out. Often. And usually not in your favor. The trick was respecting that, not getting greedy, and being willing to walk away with a little and never banking on winning a lot. That was one fundamental rule he’d never broken.

Or wouldn’t have, had it been necessary to heed it. Because when Brett Hennessey played, he tended to win. A lot. In fact, he won so often even he had begun to wonder what the hell was going on. Skill only accounted for so much, and nobody was that lucky. His life up to that point hadn’t exactly been blessed. Which, granted, had partly been what had endeared him to the poker crowd in the first place. Young kid, tough childhood, a bit of a rebel. At least that’s the way the sponsors played it. He didn’t see himself as a rebel so much as a survivor.

The day he’d hit twenty-one he’d been hot bait for every cable show producer and online gambling site on the planet. It had been a lot after a long time of not much. He’d had a hard time—an impossible time as it turned out—saying no to being given a chance. Any chance. But no matter how much he tried to keep things sane, he didn’t seem to have much say on where the white hot glare of the celebrity spotlight shined. And, for quite some time now, it had been shining on him.

He’d played his way through college, then grad school, and then figured that would be it. He’d call it even and walk away, having provided whatever the hell draw it was that he’d become in exchange for the chance to earn enough to better himself, better his life, give himself a chance to get up and finally out, once and for all. Win-win for both sides.

But it hadn’t exactly turned out like that. College was long in the past, his degrees were gathering dust, while what had originally been a way to pay off school loans had, nine years later, somehow become a way of life. A life he’d long since grown weary of, but had continued to participate in because it never seemed the right time to walk away. He was always left feeling like he was leaving someone in the lurch. Someone who had helped him out when he’d needed it. But he’d finally burned out, wised up…and walked away.

Which was when things had gotten really interesting.

That good luck charm that had been his constant companion for the past decade had abandoned him, and rather swiftly at that. He hadn’t really thought much about it at the time, not initially anyway, beyond being pissed off at the string of little incidences that had been more a nuisance than anything. He’d replaced the missing supplies on his current job site. Over the years, he’d never stopped banging nails, although his contributions to the renovation company his buddy, Dan, now owned, having taken it over from his father several years ago, hadn’t always been consistent during the craziest of times. But Dan had convinced him to take over one of his easier contracts while trying to sort out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and Brett had been happy for the distraction.

The missing materials had been irritating, but he’d resolved that, only to have his work truck broken into. It was a pain in the ass to fix the jammed door lock, and he’d wondered what the hell anyone thought they were going to steal out of the old rust bucket, but it had never occurred to him to tie those minor annoyances to the barrage of requests that continued to pour in for him to come back to the tables and play.

The bad luck streak had continued, though, with the stakes escalating each time. Dan’s brand-new work truck had been stolen and found in a drainage ditch, half bashed in, tires gone, one door missing, and another job site had flooded due to a water pipe break that hadn’t been anywhere near where Brett’s crew had been working at the time. Brett had begun to wonder what in the hell was going on, but the cops hadn’t turned up any evidence on who might have been responsible for the stolen truck much less tied it to the job site problem he’d been sure was vandalism, so he’d done a little digging on his own, but got no answers. Then another one of his job sites half burned down, his landlady started having a string of trouble at the boarding house she owned and he lived in…and the demands for his return to the tables had taken on a decidedly…concerned tone.

And he’d finally put two and two together.

So he did the only thing he could do. He got out of Vegas, putting as much distance between the folks he cared about and himself as possible. He’d let it be known that he was leaving town, leaving Dan’s employ, his leased rooms at Vanetta’s place…all of it, behind him. If somebody wanted him that badly, they were going to have to come after him, and no one else.

And here he was, four, almost five weeks later, in Vermont, of all places, exhausted, confused, and no longer sure he’d done the right thing in leaving. Nothing else had happened since he’d left, which initially he’d taken as proof that he’d been the target all along. Only, as the weeks continued to pass, no one was tracking him down as far as he could tell, and no one was trying to contact him, either, much less pressure him to return. Apparently his blunt declaration of permanent retirement and the added step of leaving his hometown completely had been taken seriously.

He’d talked to Dan throughout his cross-country sabbatical, who’d been monitoring everyone Brett was worried about, and…nothing. Not a single incident. He’d begun to think Dan was right, that it was just a string of incredibly bad luck. That, maybe, after all his amazing good fortune, the odds had simply finally caught up with him. But there was still that niggle, that suspicion, that wouldn’t entirely go away.

If he was right, and returned, as Dan was encouraging him to do…he was afraid it would stir things up again. And, to be honest, he didn’t know if he wanted to return or what, exactly, he’d be returning to. Dan’s renovation business was something Brett had done while figuring out his next step, but working for or with Dan wasn’t the actual step he wanted to take. Not in the big picture, anyway. He wanted to finally put all his education to use, do something that energized him, that he could be passionate about. He just didn’t know exactly how to go about doing that, or what form, exactly, that passion would take.

But it was time he figured his shit out. So he’d stopped running, stopped trying to second guess, just…stopped. He’d checked into Kirby’s bed-and-breakfast because it was as good a place as any to stop his flight…and because the unique architecture of the old place called to him.

His thoughts turned to his hostess. Kirby Farrell. It was true that he’d been a little self-involved of late—okay, more than a little—but not so much so that he wasn’t aware of the way she’d been watching him. And that, more surprisingly, he’d wanted to watch her right back. She hadn’t recognized him, which he’d have never presumed she should, at least not outside Vegas. But on his trek around the country, he’d been amazed at the number of people whose paths he’d crossed who apparently had nothing better to do than watch a bunch of strangers bet ridiculously large sums of money on a card game on late-night cable.

He’d been relieved that Kirby wasn’t one of them. Which was only part of why he’d been drawn to her. On the surface, she was a contradiction. Her frame was long, lean, and willowy; her hair a soft brown, her eyes an even softer gray. He’d seen his share of dancers and she had that long, lean dancer’s body. Only she was all ballet and
Swan Lake
…not two pasties and a monstrous sequin-covered head piece.

She was all grace and refinement and he would have guessed her to be the quiet and reserved type. Very proper. Classy. Elegant.

But there had been nothing reserved about the way those soft gray eyes had cataloged every inch of him. She came across as educated, smart, her expression one of polite kindness when she smiled…and yet as he trudged up the stairs to his room just now, he’d have bet against the house that she was staring openly at his ass.

So, instead of thinking about the bed that awaited him, and the sweet oblivion of sleep, he found himself wondering how a real honest-to-God smile would transform that oh-so-serious face of hers, and what her laughter would sound like. And if she was as direct in all areas of her life as she’d been standing in her own driveway, giving him quite the once-over.

He dropped his bag by the door, yanked his clothes off, and let them drop where they fell. Then he debated for all of two seconds on the merits of taking a shower first, before giving in to the siren call of the huge sleigh bed with its soft-looking spread and mounds of pillows. At the moment, it looked like heaven on earth. And something told him, after meeting Ms. Inn Proprietor, who seemed attentive to detail, at least where his person had been concerned, she hadn’t been any less so in her accommodations.

And he was right.

A long groan of abject appreciation rolled out of him without a conscious effort as soon as his weight sank into the heavenly perfection that was his new bed. He might not climb back out of it ever again.

He tugged a pillow under his head, tucked another one under his arm, his eyes already drooping before he could even contemplate getting under the covers instead of laying stark naked on top of them…but that was the last thought he had.

Until she screamed.

He shoved up on his elbows and blinked the cobwebs away. He had no idea how long he’d been out, and for a moment thought maybe he’d just been dreaming. Then there came a loud clatter from somewhere outside the back of the house, which had him instinctively moving off the bed and ducking to look out the window in his room before he really put thought to deed.

There, almost directly down below, was Kirby Farrell, Proprietor, hanging from a rather high limb of a huge oak tree. If it hadn’t been for the season and total lack of foliage, he wouldn’t have seen her at all. Her feet and legs were wiggling as she tried to get a better grip on the branch, but it was clearly much bigger around than her slender hands.

He shoved the window open and stuck his head out. “Hang on, I’ll be right down.”

She angled her head to look up, then her eyes rounded and she struggled even more furiously as the movement seemed to loosen her already precarious grip.

Brett turned and headed for his bedroom door; then he belatedly realized he wasn’t wearing anything. He hopped into his jeans and snagged his shirt off the floor before running down the winding staircase, pulling the black tee over his head as he went. He had no idea where there might be a back door to the place, so just headed out the front and ran to the back. There he found a long ladder laying on the ground and the innkeeper still hanging on for dear life, far too high above him to drop safely to the ground, or for him to attempt to catch her. He didn’t see where he could climb the tree and get her down without risking shaking her off, so he grabbed the ladder and lifted it off the ground and tried to position it as close to her as he could.

“I’ll hold it steady,” he called up. “Just let me get it against the branch, then swing your leg over so you get your footing. Then you can let go with one hand and grab the side.”

To her credit, she wasn’t squealing or obviously freaking out. She didn’t yell back down to him, either, so he just worked to get the thing as stable as possible. “Okay, just swing your left leg over.”

He could see the grit and determination on her face and found himself still marveling a little over the dichotomy that was Ms. Farrell. She of the cool elegance and cultured features who would look perfectly at home in tutu and toe shoes…was presently swinging from a tree in baggy khakis, a hoodie, and a pair of well-worn hiking boots. He assumed she’d been wearing the very same thing earlier, but he honestly hadn’t noticed. All he remembered really were her soft gray eyes and prim-looking mouth, and the incongruous directness of her personality.