Here Comes Trouble (23 page)

He chuckled, and when she blinked the water from her lashes to look at him, she could only think how purely happy he looked. She knew what that felt like.

“Kirby,” he said, turning her just slightly so he blocked the water from her head and face. “Bliss is exactly what I’m feeling right now.”

“Good to know the shower spa was a wise investment, then.”

He smiled but ran his fingertips over her lips, making her shudder and her body leap right back to life again, which should have been anatomically impossible at that moment. But clearly was not.

“I wasn’t talking about the shower spa, wonderful as it is. I was talking about you. Us. This.”

She blinked a few more times, though it wasn’t water from the shower getting in her lashes this time. He really wasn’t going to do this now, here. Was he? The “it’s been incredible and you’re amazing, I’m going to miss you” speech? Now? Here? She wasn’t ready. Not yet. Not so soon after…

“Kirby,” he said, his finger still pressed to the fullest part of her bottom lip.

Which was now quivering, despite her best efforts not to. God, seriously, and she was supposedly the mature one here?

His expression had grown serious. “What’s wrong? Too much, too soon? I know it’s a lot, but I can’t…I mean, I know I should probably pull back, go slow, or more slowly, but…God, there’s just so much there. So much more than I thought. And today…it all kind of came together and crystallized, and I couldn’t wait to tell you about it. That’s when I knew. I mean, I thought I knew before, missing you, wanting to be here more than anywhere else, all of it. But I couldn’t figure out the rest of the bigger picture. Until today.”

“What are you talking about?” she said, pulling his hand down but unable to make herself pull away when he simply wove his fingers through hers. “Is this that thing you wanted to talk about before?”

“It is. Only I was picturing telling you all about it over a quiet dinner, with wine and candles and no interruptions. Somehow we ended up here instead.”

“Imagine that,” she said dryly, and not unkindly. He was too excited about whatever the hell it was he had to tell her for her to be upset, even if she was going to come out the loser at the end of it all. He was simply too pure, too genuine, and what you saw with Brett Hennessey was definitely what you got. And it was just so much. And all so good.

How could she be upset? So what if it felt like one good tap and her heart would shatter into a million tiny pieces? She’d put it back together and move on. She was a champ at moving on. It was just…for all she thought she’d loved before, or wanted to love, nothing had come close to tapping into the part of her that Brett had so effortlessly reached with just a smile, a laugh, a twinkle in the eye. Could she have fallen that hard, that fast? She would have said no…but it was hard to break a heart that hadn’t been given.

“I found a house,” he said, looking like a kid on Christmas morning.

“You—what?” She hadn’t a clue what he was going to say, except that wasn’t even close to it. “Were you looking for one?”

“No. I took off today, on my bike, so I could get away from the resort, the folks, everything, and just try and sort out what I wanted.”

“Hasn’t that been the point of your whole journey?”

“Yes…but this is the first time I was finally in a place that I didn’t want to leave.”

Her heart started thumping, so loudly that between the shower and the thrumming in her ears, she couldn’t hear him. “You…want to stay? Here?”

The ultimate grin that had been on his face a mere moment ago froze for a second, then faded. “I—maybe I presumed too much. I should have talked to you first, I know, it was just…you’d rather I not stay?”

Her eyes widened. “No! I mean”—she paused, trying to calm herself down before she blew this—“I knew you probably wouldn’t, so I’ve been sort of trying to keep myself prepared for when you left. You’ve been here longer than I thought in the beginning, because of the event, and it’s made it really difficult to not…” She trailed off, knowing if she tried to explain even a fraction of her growing feelings for him, he would run fast and far. And she wouldn’t blame him. No one spouted stuff like that only a few weeks after meeting someone. Even if they had pretty much been living together since about eight hours after laying eyes on one another.

God, when she thought it through like that it all sounded more than a little crazy and unstable. Only it had always felt anything but. Being with him, from the very first moment, had been easy and good and normal. And perfect.

He tipped her chin up so their gazes met.

“It’s been too good to be true,” she told him. “And I’m not the same lucky son of a bitch you are. Stuff like that doesn’t generally go the way I’d like it to.”

There was so much in his expression she didn’t know if she dared allow herself to believe in it. There was hope, and joy, and this kind of deep well of affection she’d never seen directed at her, not like this.

“Well, I am. And I know when to hold and when to fold.” He tugged her closer. “Kirby, I know I rolled into town and into your life without so much as a plan for my own. Not the best of situations to get yourself tangled up with, given how hard you’ve worked to get where you are to put roots down here. I knew I wanted to put down roots, to start building something to last a lifetime…I just didn’t know it would be here. And I didn’t know it would be with you.”

Okay, now her heart was simply going to burst. “What are you saying?”

“Were you planning on my leaving?”

“I thought it was a given.”

“How would you feel if I didn’t? If I stayed? I’m not saying I have to stay here, underfoot. I know we’ve kind of gone about this whole thing backward, and I’m not asking for some kind of commitment up front. Okay, maybe that’s wrong, maybe I am. Because I don’t want to share you. Or wait. But I am willing to work from the start, and build on this the right way. Whatever the hell way that is.”

“What are you saying, Brett?”

“I’m saying I want to stay here. I know what I want to do, and I’ve already found the first step in making it happen.”

“The house?”

“Not just any house. Kirby, wait until you see it. I wanted so badly for you to be there when I discovered it. I want your advice and input. In fact, I’d like you to help me with the whole project.”

“Project?”

He tipped his head back and let the water thrum on his face; then he shook it off and looked back at her. “I know I’m not making any sense.”

She shook her head slowly, but that smile, that same one that wouldn’t go away in the bathroom earlier when she wanted so badly to get her perspective back, spread across her face again. “But you’re awfully damn cute about whatever it is that’s got you so excited. And to answer the one question you did ask that I did understand…” She reached up and cupped his cheek with her hand and slid it around so that her fingers wove into the wet curls plastered against the back of his neck. “I don’t mind you staying. Here, in this other place, in a tent for all I care. But no,” she said softly, “I definitely don’t mind you staying.”

Then she pulled his head down and kissed him, hoping he felt the commitment he was wanting from her. Because while she might be thoroughly confused on his plans for his future, she knew the one thing she absolutely wanted in hers.

B
rett worked on the sauce while Kirby chopped vegetables. “This is kind of how I imagined it would be. When I let myself think about things like that. As a kid, I mean.”

Kirby looked up from her studious attempt at slicing tomatoes. “Like what would be?”

“Home life. Partnership life.”

“I take it you didn’t have this kind of life, then? Fixing dinners in the kitchen, that sort of thing?”

He shook his head and stirred the sauce again. “I grew up in and around casinos.”

“We’re more alike than you think. I grew up in a ski resort.”

“Your folks ran one?”

She shook her head. “No, I got abandoned in the restroom of one.”

His eyes popped wide and he stopped stirring. “What? When? How old were you?”

“Old enough to walk, but too little to remember any of it.”

“What happened?”

“Well, it was a small resort town, and one of the ladies that worked in the food concession part took me in. The closest protective services kind of thing was hours away in Denver, so…” She shrugged. “They kind of adopted me. Not formally or anything. But someone made sure I had food and a place to sleep. Dottie was in her sixties—she was the first one to take care of me—and eventually got to where she couldn’t really keep up. Then I stayed with—” She tilted her head. “Gosh, I don’t even know the whole list at this point, but honestly I really lived at the resort. I was kind of like the mascot or something.”

“And no one ever came and got you out of there?”

She shook her head. “Honestly, Brett, it’s not hard to fall through the cracks when no one knows you exist.”

“They never found out who your mother was?”

“No. When I was thirteen and all angst-ridden like most teenagers, I thought about trying to figure it out, but since I wasn’t formally abandoned no search had ever been done and that many years later it was doubtful anyone would ever figure it out. One thing that was for sure was that she never came back to find out.”

“Did you wish that she would?”

Kirby went back to slicing tomatoes. “When I was really little, and I figured out how families were supposed to work from watching the folks who came to stay at the resort, I used to wonder, make up stories, and think if I just stayed there she’d always know where to find me.” Kirby slid the chopped tomatoes onto the top of the tossed salad greens. “But eventually I got over that. Along with the fairy tale that one of the rich, foreign families would come to stay at the resort would fall in love with me and insist that I come back home with them. To their castle, of course. I’d have a title, at least. And my own pony.”

She laughed and shook her head. “Honestly, for the most part, I liked how I grew up. I mean, there were times when I was ashamed a little, or felt bad.” She smiled over at him. “They used to dress me from lost-and-found stuff, and I remember thinking that if I could just get two mittens that matched, then people wouldn’t know I came from an untraditional home.” She laughed. “Like that was the only clue.”

Brett was listening, certain his mouth was still hanging open. It was hard to believe this bright, articulate, witty, gorgeous woman had grown up in such a vagabond lifestyle. Maybe that explained her self-assurance. And also why she might have stayed with her former lover for so long, with only a promise of a ring.

“You could have easily passed for royalty,” he said, unthinkingly uttering the first thought that had come to mind.

She looked surprised for a moment, then glanced away again, blinking a few times.

He sat his spoon down and crossed the kitchen, laying his hand over her wrist until she put the knife down, then turned her into his arms and tipped up her chin. “I always thought you were.”

“Would that be when I was hanging from a tree, or when I had a kitten attached to my midsection?”

He smiled and leaned down to kiss her. “Always.”

When he lifted his head a few moments later, she had that bemused look on her face again. Like she was trying hard to figure out if it was okay or not. If he was okay or not. He knew, without doubt, she was attracted, and she’d made it clear, up in the shower, that she was happy he was going to stick around a while, but since they’d come down to start making dinner, he’d catch her looking at him with this considering look in her eyes.

Which made the anxious knot in his stomach only wrench more tightly as he imagined telling her the rest of the news he’d only begun upstairs. She wanted him, but maybe only temporarily. And his thoughts were already racing well past that.

But maybe, given what she’d just revealed, and how her last love affair had gone, maybe she simply refused to think in anything but temporary measures. What she’d started here, what she’d built was clearly meant to last, to be a solid future. But perhaps she saw that future alone. She’d said as much, early on.

Would she take a chance? Play the hand despite the odds?

“I have a pretty unconventional background, too,” he reminded her.

“Did your parents run a casino?” she asked, smiling as she rephrased his earlier question.

“Actually, my mother was a showgirl. I haven’t a clue who my father was.” Her gaze sharpened on his and he suddenly realized why she’d gone back to chopping vegetables as she’d told him about her childhood. Clearly she’d long since come to terms with how she’d been raised, and she had even spoken about it pretty fondly. But that didn’t mean it was easy to share with someone else. Perhaps someone whose opinion might matter to her.

And as much as that thought brought a little unknotting to the anxiety he was feeling, it didn’t help that he had to bear his soul in the same way with her. He’d also come to terms with it, but it mattered to him what she would think. “She was also a prostitute. And a drug addict.”

Kirby’s mouth shaped a little “o” and her eyes filled with sadness. “Was it just the two of you?”

He nodded. “Until I was about nine. Then we moved into the boarding house, the one Vanetta runs, that I told you about. Vanetta couldn’t do much at the time, but she went easier on my mom when she couldn’t come up with rent. She’d stopped performing by the time I was twelve. Her lifestyle was taking a toll on her body and her looks, at least by her bosses’ standards. By then I was already playing cards, working odd jobs at the casinos to make money. Mom, uh…well, there were more men coming around. Vanetta put a stop to that when she found out, but that just meant that Mom was gone all the time instead. I’d have to go find her…” he trailed off, realizing that Kirby didn’t need to hear the gory details. It was bad enough that he’d had to deal with finding a parent who’d oftentimes been left beaten up, or was strung out. He didn’t think back to those days much, if at all, anymore. “She died when I was fourteen. Overdose. Vanetta kind of did what your friends at the resort did. Made sure I had food, clothes, that I went to school, though that was never a chore. I loved school.”

“Me, too,” Kirby said, the light of true kinship in her eyes. “It was the most normal thing in my world. And taught me how big the real world really is. It gave me such a better perspective of what my possibilities were. I would have stayed there twenty-four-seven if I could have.”

“That’s exactly how I felt. Well, there and at the casino. Even though I knew the latter part probably wasn’t healthy, it was home for me.”

“Maybe the resort wasn’t quite the same, in terms of not being so great an environment for a child. But I know what you mean, it was home to me, too.”

“Except I never left the casino life, while you grew up to build your own version of home.”

She laughed. “Right, where people still come and go and nothing is permanent. But a permanent home for me, I guess.”

He leaned back to look into her eyes. “We do what we know. I know cards. You know resorts.”

She lifted a shoulder. “Makes sense, I guess.”

“If things had gone differently with…what was his name?”

“Patrick.”

“Right. Say he had married you, been partners at work, partners at home. Would you still have wanted this?” He gestured to the room around them, and what lay beyond.

“You mean did I want the more traditional home? Babies, a puppy, nine-to-five day job, that kind of thing?”

“Yes. I know the resort was never going to be nine-to-five, but you know what I mean.”

“I do, and I don’t know. Patrick had other properties, but the resort was his baby. We lived on premises, very nice premises, but…that was home. A very familiar one to me, of course, though certainly more posh than the one I grew up in.”

“Were you happy? Doing that, I mean?”

“I was certainly good at it, given my background. But…I don’t know that I yearned for the white picket fence world, really. We never really got that far and my life didn’t really ever seem suited quite for that. But I did know that if I could do whatever I wanted, I wanted to take what I knew about running hotels and run my own smaller place. Intimate, personal—mine. I think it was maybe my way of combining what I knew with what I wanted to have.”

“And now you have.”

“Trying to, anyway.”

“Is it what you wanted?”

She didn’t answer right away. “Yes, and no. Yes, Pennydash Inn is exactly what I wanted, and I love the place. I had pictured being in the West, because my vision didn’t extend beyond that, but being here feels very right to me. Possibly because of how things ended out west, starting over truly fresh was not only practical financially here, but emotionally a good move, too.”

“And the no part?”

“I’m finding there are things I’m not as personally good at, I guess, as I thought I might be. But I suppose that’s to be expected. At least I tell myself that.”

“Like?”

“Well, I do like running my own ship, and I like being out from under any kind of corporate presence, both business-wise and personally. So, small, intimate, mine, is definitely the right thing for me. And I’m good with people, though I know I haven’t had the chance to prove that so much yet, but I know that’s going to be a good fit with me. That’s not something I doubted.”

“Folks in town like you; you have earned respect here. At least from what I’m hearing as I’m putting together the event.”

She smiled more brightly. “Really? That’s nice to hear. I’ve felt very welcomed here, but it’s always nice to know I’m not just imagining that part.”

“Definitely not. So…what’s the no part, then?”

“Maybe I’m not as, I don’t know…proprietary isn’t the right word, because I feel that and am that in all senses of the word. Maybe more maternal? That doesn’t seem like the right term, either, but…I think it’s more like…when you talk about Vanetta, she sounds nurturing. My ‘aunt’—Frieda—is the same. Did Vanetta have kids of her own?”

Brett shook his head. “Married a couple of times, but no. Her boarders are her babies, so she is fond of saying.”

“See, I guess I thought it would be that way for me. But despite feeling strongly about this being my place and putting my stamp on it, the business part is really just business to me. I love having guests, making them happy, getting to know them…but I don’t know that it goes beyond that. Not sure what that says about me, but…”

“Did you and Patrick discuss having a family? Do you feel that you missed out on that?”

“We did in a general sense. It was important to him to have someone to carry on the family name, but I never got the impression that he was all that interested in personally being a father.”

“And you?”

“I didn’t know what kind of parent I would make. Frankly, the idea terrified me for most of my twenties. I’m sure any shrink would tell me it’s because of my upbringing and they’d very probably be right. We were both pretty career focused, so it was an easy discussion to put off.”

“And now? Any regrets?”

She started to say something, then stopped. “What about you? You’re still in that stage where families get started.”

“You’re forty, not eighty. Families can start at any time.”

Her look instantly shuttered, though she held his gaze. “Is that a goal of yours? I mean, it’s the natural thing, so not surprising, just—”

“Kirby, I have the same fears as you do, for probably even more reasons than you do. And I definitely don’t want to know what any shrink would tell me about the long-lasting effects of my childhood. I think it was a triumph just to get myself raised. I don’t know that I was ever anxious about raising anyone else. Don’t let that spook you, okay?”

“I wasn’t spooked—okay,” she added, when he gave her a look that said he clearly knew otherwise. “Maybe a little, but it’s a knee-jerk reaction. You see, I was worried about it, but not anymore. I—I can’t have kids.”

“No?”

She shook her head. “Not by choice. It’s a long story, but I found out about eight years ago that I have a few genetic issues that make carrying a baby pretty much impossible.”

“Did Patrick know about it?”

She nodded. “He was with me when I found out. We had—well, we had a little pregnancy scare once. I’d missed a few months, but the home tests were negative, so I made an appointment to find out what was going on. Turns out my plumbing isn’t exactly normal. Anyway, I was fine, but the end result was finding out that I probably won’t ever get pregnant.”

“How did he take the news?”

“Well, or so I thought. I mean, like I said, he had made a big deal out of carrying on the family name. He mentioned adopting a few times, but we quickly got absorbed back into our work lives and it never really came up again.”

He ducked down to keep her gaze when she would have glanced away. “But?”

“But nothing; there’s nothing more to tell. I know it makes me sound like less than a woman, maybe, to say that I’m okay with that future. I never ruled out adoption, but then things turned out like they did, I moved here…I’m forty now, and…well, I made peace with it.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else.” She finally sighed when he kept staring. “Okay, okay, so the personal assistant he was with when I walked in on them…they’re married. She’s already had their first child by now, at least I assume so since she was pregnant when I left Colorado.”