“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 fi
nding 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.”
“Ah. Fresh start a few thousand miles away. Good choice.”
“I thought so.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Things tend to work out the way they do for a reason. I don’t know that I’d have ever stepped out from his shadow to build my own life. Now we both apparently have what we wanted. It’s not a bad thing, Brett.”
And it was clear that she meant it.
“I just didn’t—”
“Want the pity party. I know. That’s not you. And, for what it’s worth, I’m kind of glad it worked out like it did, too.” He snugged her closer against his body. “Purely selfishly speaking.”
She giggled, which made him smile in return. He framed her face with his hands and kissed her. “I guess we’re both a couple of misfits, finding our own place,” he said.
“Something like that, I guess.”
“I like this place, Kirby. Your space. You. This. All of it. I couldn’t have said what it was that was going to make me feel content, or at peace. Or excited about life. About what I was going to do next. I should have never stayed in that world as long as I did, but I didn’t know where to go. I just knew where I wasn’t going. And that was into business with Dan.”
“The guy who came to see you?”
“Mmm hmm,” he said, bussing her on the nose, then hopping over to the stove when his sauce started to boil. “Turns out he’s not as happy for me as I thought he was.”
“Oh?” Kirby had picked up her knife again, but put it right back down. “In what way?”
“He was thinking I’d get over this…ennui, or whatever you want to call it, and come back and work with him. I worked for his dad as a kid, and with him off and on the whole time I was playing cards. His dad retired about five years ago, moved to Palm Springs. Dan runs their home building and construction company now. And though I enjoy aspects of it, it’s not really want I wanted to do full time, or how I wanted to make use of my degrees.”
“Which are?”
“Architecture and design theory.”
“There wasn’t a way to join his world to yours? They sound related.”
“Not the type of business he does, no. And…frankly, maybe I always knew that I wanted to get out of the desert, take on a new challenge. Vegas and the surrounding counties aren’t exactly known for their architectural brilliance, at least beyond the magnificence of the resort casinos. And I don’t have any interest in commercial building.”
“What did you want to do?”
“That’s just it. I only knew what I didn’t want to do. And I guess Dan thought he knew me better than I did, and figured I’d finally realize that I was destined to work with him. Things aren’t apparently going so well right now, and I’ve offered to help him out, but he’s too proud to accept a loan, much less an outright gift.”
“I understand the feeling.”
He smiled briefly. “I know you do. And I’ve tried to be more discreet and creative in the way I offered help, but…let’s just say it was a sore subject which has been closed for a long time.”
“Until this morning?”
He nodded.
“I’m sorry.”
He looked over, surprised.
“It’s obviously eating away at you. You
’re a nurturer, Brett. You take care of people. You want to help Dan because you love him. He can’t accept your help because it makes him feel less of a man, less of an equal. I don’t know what it’s like being in Vegas with you, where you’re like some kind of rock star poker legend, but I’m guessing it can’t be easy on him. So…I guess I kind of understand where he’s coming from. But it’s a shame he can’t see the rest, about your future, I mean. Have you told him?”
“About?”
“The rest, whatever it was you discovered today. About the house and whatever that means to you.”
“I told him about you.”
She looked up; now she was the one with the surprised expression. “You did?”
He nodded. “I wanted him to meet you. And for you to meet him. It’s important to me.”
“Do you think that’s part of why he begged off tonight? I mean, first you turn him down on going back to work with him and I’m guessing he see’s me as an obstacle to that.” Her eyes widened. “Oh, wow, the charity event. He knows you’re helping me? I mean, not directly, but in finding a way to drive guests to the area, to the inn?”
“Not the particulars, but yes.”
“It’s no wonder he stayed away.” She put her knife down. “Maybe you should go over there, talk to him. Spend the evening hanging out, get room service or go out.” She lifted a shoulder and smiled that half smile of hers. “Be anywhere other than here playing house with me.”
She’d said it affectionately, easily. But that’s what they were doing. Playing house. Only he didn’t want to play at it. Not forever, anyway. Slowly, Hennessey. She’s had a lot of experience with temporary. Let her get used to the idea of you becoming permanent. Hell, he still needed to get used to the idea. There was no need to rush anything, anyway. She wasn’t going anywhere, and neither was he. She’d realize that sooner or later. He would find his niche here. And it if it was all meant to be, it would all figure itself out in time.
So there was absolutely no reason for him to switch off the burner, cross the short distance to the counter where she was chopping, put her knife down, then scoop her up against his chest and kiss the daylights out of her. But that’s exactly what he wanted to do…so that’s exactly what he did.
Here Comes Trouble Page 25