She pushed him to his back, shifting against him so she could prop her chin on her hand, which was laying on his chest. He thought perhaps all conversations between them should take place just like this.
She smiled at him, looking so content, so relaxed. But her thoughts were already on to other things. Not that he could blame her. She was facing rather critical circumstances. He was just happy she was more willing now to talk to him, with him, about it.
“You’re really wonderful, you know. Stepping in like you are, to help me save my place.”
He didn’t stop stroking her hair as it soothed them both. He wished she wasn’t so hard on herself, about accepting help, especially his help, but he didn’t know much more about her past than how her last relationship ended. And that it had also been tangled up in her business career at the time. He was getting that it had to have been complicated and that there was probably even more, deeper below the surface. But those were all layers he wanted to know, too. She was imperfect. So was he. So he’d give her whatever time it took for her to work it out. But he’d also let her know that he wasn’t her past. He was, at the very least, her present. And he wasn’t going anywhere while they saw this through. “But?” he queried when she didn’t continue right away.
“I know it’s your call, your business…but, be honest with me, would you have returned to playing poker if not for this generous offer of yours?”
“I don’t mind playing poker.” Which, he realized, saying it, was the truth. “I don’t plan on playing professionally any longer, but for charity, and helping out a town in need, I don’t mind playing. I like the game itself.” Also true. “It’s endlessly fascinating to me, in fact.”
“Why? What about it appeals to you?”
He knew she wasn’t asking the obvious question, or expecting the obvious answer, which was usually some variety of “because I’m good at it” or “because it made me rich.”
“It makes me think. I like the randomness of it, and the specificity. There are only so many of each kind in each deck, only so many hands you can draw, and yet add in the mental element and the emotional element, and it’s not just about doing the math or playing the percentages. You’re also playing the people sitting around the table, who don’t have to be winners to rob you of the pot. I like the mathematical challenge; I like the mental challenge. But mostly I like the people challenge. And how the outcome is never obvious.”
“Interesting.” She smiled, like she’d figured something out about him she hadn’t already known.
He smiled back. “Interesting how?”
“You never mentioned the risk. Or the high you could get from pushing all that money around, the thrill of winning.”
“That’s never been why I played.”
She nudged him with her chin. “Easy to say for the guy with all the chips.”
“You don’t just get those handed to you, you know.”
“True. So, you’re not a risk junkie. Thrill seeker?”
“No. Risk is simply a factor of playing the game. One element, like all the rest, to be looked at, analyzed, and played accordingly. You can either seek to minimize the risk or exploit it. Everyone at the table is facing the same odds you are. You can play that angle, too.”
“So, it’s all angles, math, people, perception.”
“Yes.”
“And winning,” she said, her grin daring him to disagree.
“It was a handy by-product of my fascination, yes.”
“You sound so…clinical about it. Assuming you’ve had above-average success, I guess I’d have assumed you’d be more passionate.”
“About the game itself, I have been. Maybe not so much of late. But keeping a clear head—clinical if you will—is key. At least for me. Lose your head; lose your wallet. And your heart. I never wanted to be in a position where a game had the power to break my heart.”
“So…what happened to change that? Did you burn out or decide to get out before it did break your heart?”
“I love the game of poker, just not the rest of what comes with it. However, it’s given me pretty much everything I have, outside of family and friends that is. And it’s provided for them as well. So I have to respect it, respect that.”
“But?”
“But, it’s not what I pictured myself doing, or being. Not long term. It just sort of happened, and at a time when the income was needed and the help for others was needed. Then, it sort of took on a life of its own. And, I guess, to some degree, I felt kind of responsible for keeping it going, even when I was well past needing it for myself any longer.”
“So, why not walk away? At some point, you’re not obligated to help anyone else, right? It can’t always be about putting everyone’s needs above your own. What you want and need has value, too. The people you care about would respect that, want that even. And if they don’t, well that’s something to think about, isn’t it? But even worse would be if you don’t—” As soon as the words were out of her mouth, something struck her. Her expression shuttered almost immediately, as if long used to the protective measure, but not before a stark look of pain had flashed through her eyes.
“What’s wrong?”
She blinked and looked at him. “Nothing,” she said too quickly.
He brushed a soft thumb across her cheekbone. “Not nothing,” he said quietly.
She held his gaze then. “I’m not used to anyone being so in tune with me. It’s…flattering. But also a little disconcerting.”
“I’d offer to look less deeply, but you compel me, Kirby. And I can’t help what I see.”
“What do you think you see?”
“Tell me what just ran through your mind, when you said at some point I shouldn’t feel obligated any longer. It wasn’t about my helping you out now.” He didn’t make it a question.
She shook her head. “Though maybe it should. I—it just, thinking about the position you were in made me think about my own past.”
“Patrick?”
“More me, actually. Who I was with him, who I was before him. I just realized something about myself. Maybe you and I are both a little alike. At the time, I certainly wouldn’t have said that I was doing everything because of some misplaced sense of obligation to Patrick. But…” She blew out a short breath. “Now, looking back, I have to wonder.” She lifted her gaze to his again. “I was with him for over eleven years, Brett. The last eight, almost nine of those we lived together.”
“A rather substantial chunk of your adult life.”
“Almost all of it, certainly up to that point.”
“The same with me, only my significant other was my job.”
“I was very career oriented, too, and all that time I saw the two of us, Patrick and I, as a team, united toward the same career goals. Albeit his were far more expansive than mine, but when it came to the resort, we were a united front.”
“And?”
“You know, you finally came to your own realization that your relationship with your career was not a fulfilling one, that this wasn’t enough, or possibly all there could be for you.”
“Is that what just struck you, that maybe you’d have never figured that out for yourself if you hadn’t discovered that Patrick wasn’t as united with you and your joint goals as you thought?”
“Partly, yes. I don’t know that I would have,” she said. “If I ever did, it certainly would have taken me much, much longer, before the dissatisfaction set in. If it ever did.”
“You can’t beat yourself up if your goals were clearly stated and you were doing everything in good faith, believing—rightly—that your partner was being truthful with you about sharing those goals. It’s not about being blind or stupid, or even self-unaware, when someone you absolutely believe you can trust takes advantage of that.”
“Thank you for saying that,” she said, “but I’m not even really talking about Patrick’s duplicity in this. Yes, it was both a devastating blow and a huge big beacon of illumination into what was really going on
with my life. But it’s really my part in all of it that still throws me, still keeps me wondering about myself.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean…here I was, with a man for over a decade, enjoying what I thought was a fully realized, healthy relationship. I absolutely assumed that we’d get married, have a family, but that we were both focused on achieving other goals, career-oriented ones, first. I had moved in, we were all but joined in holy matrimony in my mind…so I just sublimated the rest.”
“The rest of what?”
“The rest of what I wanted from us as a partnership, but wasn’t getting. I was constantly compromising my wants and needs for his, but he always made it seem like it was our idea, not just his idea. And I’m far, far from being an idiot or the kind of person who just blindly trusts and adores without any return of the same.”
“But?”
“But that’s exactly what I did. For a long time. A very long time. Why did I do that? It’s so not who I am, and yet I was totally that girl, that woman. And just now, what I said about not being obligated forever, and that making yourself happy should be a valid goal, too. It’s all about balance. You give; you get. I had no balance, yet I still felt obligated.”
“Why? What did he do that made you feel that way? Give you the job?”
“The job, his heart. Or so I thought. He was like this bright shining beacon of everything I wanted, everything I was working toward, and there he was, willing to shower me with all of my dreams come true, both personally and professionally. It was really pretty heady stuff for me. I couldn’t believe I was going to be that lucky.”
“But you were giving him something as well.”
“See, I guess that’s where I never quite really grasped that equity. I always felt I had to live up to it, earn it.”
“It being what, exactly?”
“Happiness. In my case, in my mind, that meant making Patrick happy, or making him love me. And that sounds so deeply pathetic. Like I didn’t think I was worth anything just by being myself. But I did. At least where the business part of it was.” She fell silent again, her thoughts clearly drifting inward.
“Just maybe not with the relationship part, huh?” he asked quietly.
She looked at him, and her eyes were stark again. “Yeah,” she said, her voice softer, a bit rougher. “Just maybe not with the relationship part.”
He stroked her hair a while longer, let her epiphany simmer a bit longer inside her head. Because he was pretty sure she already had most of this figured out long before this conversation. She’d felt duped, used, both in their private life and in their professional one. He couldn’t imagine the pain of that, coming from the most trusted person in her world. It had to have been the deepest blow imaginable. But Brett assumed she already figured out why she’d hung in there so long on a promise that was never delivered upon, the one of marriage and family.
That flash of pain, of sudden, stark awareness, had been some other link, some other connection, she’d finally made within herself. It made him want to know more. She’d said it made her think about who she’d been with Patrick and who she’d been before him. So, this went deeper into the past, he thought, to her childhood maybe. Something to do with the link the love of her adult life had to the love given to her in her childhood.
A pain that stark, a sadness that profound, had to reach pretty deep. He knew that part from personal experience. Experience he was no more excited to delve into and share than she probably was. It was enough that she’d gained a bit of insight, perhaps put a few more puzzle pieces of herself together. He’d thought about things like that a lot on his trek. Who he’d been, who he’d become, who and what were important to him. And what would truly make him happy.
He didn’t know how it would affect how she felt about him, but he was beginning to see the struggle she faced. Having loved a man for so long who, in reality, had never fully loved her back. Now getting herself involved with him, a man who, at best, didn’t even know what he wanted for himself, much less in a relationship with someone else.
It bothered him, more than a little, to realize that he was not, perhaps, someone she should invest herself in emotionally. He might not have had anything close to a traditional upbringing, and adulthood, thus far, certainly hadn’t changed that path. But he’d always known himself to be a good, honest, decent person, with a strong heart and solid dedication to those he loved. He had pride and integrity. He was a good man who felt worthy of giving and getting love.
So it was hard to accept that he might not be worthy of her. That, because of the kind of life he led, the uncertain future ahead, he could never be the right man for her.
More stunning still was the realization that, for the first time, outside family, he wanted to be the right man. There was a brief sensation of finally, and the relief of knowing for absolute certainty he did have that inside of him. He’d wondered. More than once. But there was no continued glory or joy in the discovery…because his finally was with Kirby.
Dammit.
She reached up and tapped his chin gently with the pad of her fingertip. “Now who’s lost in thought?”
His lips curved briefly, but for once he didn’t feel much like smiling.
She shifted a bit higher until his gaze met hers. “We’re quite a pair, you know.”
“Why do you say that?”
“I think we both have some stuff, in our past, that makes us a little misfit for traditional roles.”
“I don’t know why you’d say that about yourself. You’re running a place trying to make it a home away from home for other people.”
“Right,” she said softly, “because I haven’t figured out how to make one for myself. So this gives me one by proxy.”
It made his heart tight. “Kirby—”
“Don’t go feeling all sorry for me; that’s not what I meant. I just meant, we’ve both reached a certain age, we’ve both had our successes in life, but we’re both still trying to figure the rest out.”
“Maybe that’s what life is anyway. Trying to figure out what comes next. Life changes; goals change.”
“True. But I know some of the things I want. Or wanted, anyway. And I couldn’t get them.”
“So you make new goals.”
“I did.”
“But?”
She smiled, but there was a definite wistfulness in her eyes. “Life goes on, and you try and move along with it, but you realize that maybe the old goals are still the ones you wanted all along.” She slid up a bit farther until she could take his face in her hands. “Don’t look all worried on me. I’m not going to try and mold you to fit my dreams, okay? I know you’ve got your own things to work out.” She kissed him, and it was sweet and stirring and achingly poignant, all at the same time. “I’m not going to get in your way, okay?”
He pulled her the rest of the way up, then rolled so she was under him again. He kissed her, and there was nothing sweet or tender about it. She responded to him instantly. And his body, so recently sated, roared to life again. He didn’t know what he was doing, just that he was suddenly angry and scared and uncertain and he didn’t want to be any of those things. What he wanted was to be buried deep inside Kirby again, where everything felt intensely, perfectly right.
If she seemed surprised by his sudden ardor, by the ferocity in the way he took her, she didn’t show it. Instead she rose right to the occasion and matched him thrust for thrust. She was moaning and he was all but growling when he came. It was wrong, venting his fear like this, but she was there to take it, to accept it, to make it all seem so very, very right.
She clung to him, her heart thundering against his, their breath deep and raspy gasps.
“Brett,” she whispered, her lips hot against the slick side of his neck.
“Mmm” was all he could manage. Only when he felt her hands on his face did he finally find the strength to open his eyes again.
“That was…unbelievable. But…what was that?”
/> He could have bluffed. And he knew he should. At any other time in his life, with the stakes insanely high, he would have done exactly what he knew had to be done. And he’d have won.
So why, when it was the most important game of his entire life, he went with the truth, he had no idea. Because the minute the words were out, he knew he was going to lose. And that was going to cost him the only thing that might have ever really mattered.
“That was me,” he said, still panting for air, but locking his gaze absolutely intently on hers, “telling you, that I want you to get in my way. Because, right or wrong for each other, I plan to get in yours.”
Chapter 13
Kirby hung up the phone and looked at the clock on the wall behind the check-in counter. A little after nine p.m. Hunh. She sat down on the stool and slid the registration book a little closer. She was still reeling over the changes that had taken place in…what had it been? Not quite forty-eight hours. Most of those had been spent glued to the phone, taking room reservations for the next five weeks. It was crazy really.
Apparently, when Brett Hennessey decided he wanted to do something, it got done. People jumped. Plans were made. Things happened.
And phones started ringing.
She hadn’t seen much of him during that time. Which was probably just as well. Even with the frantic burst of business, his heated declaration was still uppermost in her thoughts. And every damn time she replayed those last few minutes they’d spent together through her mind, it gave her the exact same heady little rush.
Which she hadn’t yet decided was a good thing, or a really foolish thing.
While she’d been tied to the phone the last two days, taking reservations and frantically contacting vendors to make sure she could get in the supplies needed to support her suddenly full house, Brett had been over at the resort, hammering out all the actual event details with the folks there. Which was fine, really, as she’d been rather busy herself. So busy, in fact, that she was a little afraid of what she might have gotten herself into. “Careful what you wish for, Farrell,” she murmured as she flipped through the remainder of the January log and the first half of the February log.
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