Here Comes Trouble (14 page)

Brett leaned in as she stopped her cart by the conveyor belt. “So, how is it that a person who dreamed of being an innkeeper doesn’t know how to cook?”

She started setting items on the conveyor belt. “It’s not for lack of trying. I learned early on to go with your strengths. I figured if I ever became wildly busy and folks were clamoring for home-cooked food after a day on the slopes, I’d hire someone. Frankly, running a full house doesn’t really leave any time for that anyway.” She glanced up at him as he leaned past her, his chest brushing her shoulder, to help her unload the cart. “So, how is it that a professional poker player also knows how to make his own spaghetti sauce from scratch?”

“Man can only live on room service for so long.”

She pretended to pause and think about that, then said, “Right. I could see where that would get old. Ordering from an extensive menu and having one of the world’s best executive chefs in a world-renowned Vegas resort hotel whip something up, then having it delivered to your door, and, oh, right, no cleanup, either.” She patted him on the arm. “I don’t know how you managed.”

He smiled. “It’s a trying existence.”

He resumed putting things on the conveyor belt, but Kirby was left thinking about his life. He was a professional poker player, which essentially translated to professional gambler. It was funny, but she’d always kind of pictured gamblers as either a seedy, desperate bunch, spending their days and nights in smoke-filled rooms, never knowing if the sun was shining or the stars were out, drinking too much, losing too much. Or the opposite, with flashy bordering on tasteless fashion choices, overly groomed hair, too much jewelry, expensive dental work, and at least two surgically enhanced companions hanging on their arm at all time.

Both were the extreme clichés and she should be embarrassed by thinking like that, because, clearly, Brett Hennessey with his fine cashmere sweaters and well-maintained cuticles was hardly seedy or trashy-flashy. Actually, he was more college professorial than anything else. She hid a private grin. Yeah, if there was such a thing as a really hot, Harley-riding professor.

Still, it made her wonder what it was really like, to be a high roller, to live like that. Although technically she supposed high rollers were men who had made their fortunes in other realms and simply enjoyed the luxury of risking gambling huge chunks of it away whenever the whim struck them. Men who made huge fortunes usually were risk takers, so she could see the draw.

But that wasn’t Brett, either. He did it for his livelihood. What must that be like? According to Thad, Brett was very successful, so it was doubtful he was scrabbling to keep a roof over his head these days, especially if that wad of bills was anything to go by. But he had to have started somewhere. And where was that, she wondered? What led a person to that career path?

“Kirby?”

She blinked and looked up to find their purchases bagged, paid for, and back in the cart. “Oh. Sorry, my mind was drifting there.”

Brett and the check-out guy both smiled indulgently, but only Brett’s expression was tinged with a little something else. He knew where her train of thought had gone. She sighed inwardly. So much for keeping their respective jobs off the conversational table. If she was going to spend continued time with him, then there were things she was curious about, wanted to know. She’d just have to find a way to make him understand that whatever money he did or didn’t have, wasn’t of any interest to her.

He was. All of what he was. Or wasn’t.

B
rett stirred the simmering sauce, but his mind wasn’t on whether or not he needed more basil or oregano. His mind was on the woman presently on the phone in her office. He hadn’t been thinking, when he’d invited Kirby to go to the store with him, about her small town, the folks in it, and what they might have to say to her stepping out with her only guest. Not that hitting the grocery store together was like a candlelit dinner for two, but why would she be shopping for the ingredients for one with a paying guest if that wasn’t her intention?

No, all he’d been thinking about was spending more time with her before she latched on to whatever grip she was clearly looking for and stopped spending time with him. He was her source of income at the moment, and he hadn’t discounted that she might be willing to play tagalong for that reason alone. But what had happened right over there next to the fridge, and in her shower, made him think otherwise.

Plus, she was too straightforward for that kind of subterfuge. She was such a refreshing change from the life he’d led, one that demanded straight faces and a lot of bluffing. He didn’t think Kirby was capable of pulling a bluff. Everything she was thinking was out there to see. Good and bad. And, in the store, he could tell that she’d felt a bit put on the spot, having to figure out how to play off their joint venture. He wished he’d planned things a bit better…but his thoughts had been on getting her on the back of his bike—and wrapped around him. He didn’t want to put her in a bad spot…but he didn’t want her finding excuses for walking away just yet, either.

But where the bike had been a great idea…the store, and the folks in it, not as much. On the bike ride back she’d kept things more chaste. And before he could set her up next to him with a cutting board and a good chopping knife, the phone had started going off and she’d had to go take what was presumably a business call. She’d disappeared into her office shortly after answering the phone. Which was where she’d been ever since.

Hiding? Or taking a particularly difficult call?

He turned the pan down to simmer and thought maybe he’d go find out, when his own cell phone hummed on the clip on his belt.

There was only one person who’d be calling him. He checked the read-out anyway and smiled before answering it. “Hey, what’s going on?”

“That’s what I was calling to find out,” Dan said. “You on radio silence? Something up?”

“Not in the way you mean,” he said, thinking he’d been more up in the past twenty-four hours than he’d been in the past twenty-four years. “I was going to call you later this evening. How is everything out there?”

“Fine, good. You all done with the Brett Hennessey USA tour? Coming home anytime soon?”

“I—I’m not sure. That’s what I stopped here to figure out.”

“And here is exactly where?”

“Pennydash, Vermont.”

Dan chuckled. “Right. Because you suddenly had a craving for snow and wanted to learn to ski, desert boy?”

“I hope not,” he said with a chuckle. “There’s no snow here. It’s a warm winter in New England.”

“Ah.” Dan paused, then said, “So, what’s her name, then?”

That caught Brett off guard and he took a moment too long to respond. Not that he knew what he’d have said. And not that he wouldn’t tell Dan about her, just…he hadn’t figured out what he was thinking about her just yet.

Dan hooted. “Wow. And the best bluffer in the world can’t even pull off a simple denial. She must be something.”

Brett fought a brief internal battle, then said, “She definitely is that.”

There was another moment of silence, then Dan said, “You’re not kidding, are you?”

“I haven’t kidded about anything now in quite some time. If you didn’t really want to know, you shouldn’t have—”

“Whoa. No, I want to know. Everything, actually.” There was a short whistle, followed by another laugh, only this one sounded kind of stunned.

“Is it so impossible to believe?” Brett asked, both amused and a little surprised.

“That a woman would go for you? No. Assuming she’s breathing, that doesn’t surprise me in the least. That you noticed? Yeah, that surprises me.”

Now Brett smiled. “It was hard not to notice.”

“That hot, huh?”

“Something like that.”

“How did you meet her?”

“She…kind of fell right into my lap.”

“They have those kinda places in Pennydash, do they?”

“Very funny.”

When he didn’t add anything else, Dan sighed. “I want details and you’re not going to give them to me, are you? My closest buddy finally trips over his own heart…or some body part anyway, and I get nada.”

“When I figure things out, you’ll be the first to know. So, listen, how are things otherwise? Your dad good? Vanetta okay? Did you get the buy-in numbers for me on the Omaha series?”

“I’ll let you change the subject, but be forewarned, we’ll be circling back.”

Brett smiled briefly. He and Dan had always shared everything with each other. Dan was both best friend and brother. His father was the closest thing Brett had ever had to the real deal, with Vanetta there to keep him walking the straight and narrow. “Fine,” he said, “just give me the latest.”

Dan sighed. “No news is good news, right? Dad’s good, his golf game still sucks, and Vanetta is riding herd on a bunch of college students who have shacked up in her place looking to make their college tuition at the casinos this summer.”

Brett laughed. “Well, they picked the right place to stay then. If they win anything, she’ll be the one to see that it actually goes for classes and books.” Vanetta was pretty much single-handedly responsible for keeping him focused on the prize. Which was not a shiny diamond-studded bracelet. No, he owed a good chunk of his degrees to her riding herd on him to keep his studying up to par and learn to say no every once in a while to the promoters and marketers. Born and raised in Vegas, she’d seen it all in her seventy some years. Her boarders were all her babies, regardless of age, background, length of stay, or reason for coming to the gambling capital. If those students staying there now thought they’d come to Sin City for something other than college tuition, they didn’t stand a chance with Vanetta holding court. Might be the best education of their lives. “And the Omaha buy-in?” There was another silence and Brett snorted. “That good, huh? Dammit.”

“It was down over thirty percent from last year when you competed.”

“Who are they marketing? Who’s the new poster boy?”

“You mean whose soul are they sucking from?”

Brett didn’t rise to the bait. By not bailing out sooner, he’d essentially allowed them to do the sucking, while he quietly or not so quietly really, went about making a shit ton of money. So, he could hardly complain about that now, could he? “What about that Irish kid, Iain Summerfield?”

“You mean the kid with only two measly championships wrapped around his wrist? He’s like, what, twelve?”

“He’s twenty-five.”

“And you had, what, like nine of them by then? Now you could cover both arms with them, Brett. It’s going to take a very long time, if ever, before they stumble across anyone who is the dream machine you were. And are.” He paused. “No…urges?”

“Other than to mess up your prettier-than-average face right about now? No.”

“Good.”

“You that worried about me?”

“It was a surprise when you walked away like you did, you know that.”

“You’d been telling me to for years.”

“And you’d been ignoring me. And I sure as hell didn’t expect you to walk all the way to freaking Vermont. So sue me if I’m making sure you’re okay now that you’ve had some time away. What are your plans?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Me. Dad. Vanetta. Folks who care. There are a few that exist who want you back for reasons other than making dime off your pretty face and freakish ability to get good cards. Don’t forget that.”

“Trust me, I haven’t. It’s why I stopped. I needed to think.”

“If you’re waiting for them to latch on to somebody else who can do what you do, then you might as well set up camp in Vermont. I doubt they’ll come hounding you there.” He paused, then said, “But if you’re thinking you might want to come back to the place that is also your home, you know they’ll hound you for a while. Given what you’ve done for them, they’d be stupid not to try. But it’ll settle down; at some point, it has to.”

“Or they’ll burn your house down.”

“Goddammit, Brett, we told you, me, Dad, even Vanetta. We’re not buying that bullshit. Shit happens, sometimes bad shit. Believe in bad karma after so many years of good, whatever. But even the most desperate manager, promoter, or casino owner wouldn’t reach to that extreme.”

“Your naïveté is both touching and amusing, but also dangerous. Wait,” he said, before Dan could launch into a refrain of the argument they’d had far too many times, never with a new result. “I know that world; you don’t. You think I’m living in a fifties’ movie and I know it’s still very real. It’s all beside the point. It’s more about what I want, what I’m willing to risk, and how much shit I’m willing to put up with if what I want is to still live in Vegas.”

There was a much longer silence this time, then, “You think you really might not want that?”

“I don’t honestly know,” Brett said, never more utterly truthful.

“You have some other place in mind where you think you should be?”

“Again—”

“Like Vermont, where the mountains apparently aren’t snowy and a guy can get laid regularly?”

“Because you’re pissed off and worried about me, I’m not going to beat your face in when I see you, but…tread carefully there, my friend.”

“So…it is like that.”

“It’s like…I don’t know. But I know enough to realize that it’s like something I’ve never encountered before.”

“Okay,” Dan said, this time sounding more sincere…and considering.

“And don’t even think about putting Vanetta on my ass. She knows I worry and you know I worry and I don’t need her worrying about me.”

Dan snorted. “Right. Like saying that will make it so. You know she worries about you day and night. Until you come home—”

“I might not, Dan,” he said. It was the first time he’d let himself say it, even think it, really. And it wasn’t as scary and weird as he thought it would be. In fact, it was kind of…exhilarating. In a way that nothing in his life had been up to that point, maybe other than the day they’d handed him those diplomas…or in the early days of winning at cards. But there was another really high-stakes game he might want in on…the kind where you risked something other than your bank balance.

“You don’t mean that,” Dan said, sounding far more subdued, maybe even a little hurt. “This is your town, your people, your family.”

“Sometimes people grow up and move away from their families.”

“Brett—”

“Dan…it’s not about you. Or your dad, or Vanetta.”

“I know that. We all do know that. We just…we can’t imagine you anywhere else.”

“I think that’s been my problem all along. It’s why I got stuck for so many years, doing what I never expected to be doing, not for that long. I really couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else.”

“And what, working for my dad, or with me—”

“Was good for my soul, and saved it. Regularly, Dan. You know that. Your dad was the closest thing I ever had to a real male role model. You’re my brother. And, in her own way, I guess Vanetta is like my crazy old grandmother. You are my family, always will be. At least I would hope so. But maybe in order to figure out what I’m supposed to do, or what I really want to do, the thing that will truly satisfy me, fulfill me…I need to not be there. Where routines and patterns and ruts—no offense, you know better—aren’t there to pull me back into that sense of complacency. Because it doesn’t feel complacent any longer. It feels suffocating. Not the people, the work. And I need…I need more than people.”

“I wish it was different,” Dan said quietly. “I don’t like it, and I wish there was more for you here, but…” They both took a break, and a breath. Dan spoke first. “So…it’s Vermont, huh?”

“For now. I need to stop running. I need time. To allow myself to just be, to think, to figure out what works. Or what might work. But, right now, what works isn’t being in Vegas. That much I do know.”

“Okay,” Dan said. He didn’t sound happy about it, but he sounded, well, resigned to it. Which was a start.

“I still need you to keep an eye out, just…don’t let your guard down. Okay?”

“Sure. But I swear to you, nothing’s happening. I really think it was all just a freak bad streak.”

“All the same—”

“Right, got it. I will. Has anyone been in touch? Anyone hounding after you?”

“No.”

“Good. Then maybe, at least, while you’re sitting there contemplating your navel, you can let that part go. We’re all fine here. We miss you, but mostly we just want you to figure out what comes next. Consider what is, not what might be. Okay? Promise me that much.”

“Dan—”

He sighed deeply. “Right. I’ll keep an eye, okay? I have to get back to work. Enjoy your…stay.”

“I already am.” Then he hung up before Dan could piss him off again, or worse stick his nose in, and his unwanted opinions, about Kirby.

Speaking of which, she walked, just then, into the kitchen. He had just clipped his phone back on his belt and was stirring the sauce again, but he stopped when he saw her face. “What’s wrong?” She was pale, well, paler than normal, and she looked…hollow. “Is everything okay?” Which was a stupid question, given everything clearly was not okay, but what else was he supposed to say? He didn’t know enough about her yet, or anything really, to know what to ask about.

It was right then, however, that he realized that he wanted to know. Wanted to be more involved.

He put the sauce spoon down and walked around the center cooking island to the kitchen table where she’d stopped. She was looking at him, but it was obvious her thoughts were somewhere else completely. “Kirby?”

It was like the little bubble they’d created had burst. First with Dan’s reality check and now with this, and suddenly he didn’t know what the boundaries were or what she’d accept from him. But what the hell, he thought, he’d saved her from falling out of a tree. He’d made love to her. He figured that gave him some options. At least ones he wouldn’t have to apologize for making assumptions about later.