Here Comes Trouble (16 page)

“Wasn’t going to say a word,” she said, looking a bit stunned.

“Good.” He nudged the bowl at her. “Eat.”

“Not all that hungry all of a sudden.”

“Hmm. Well.” His smile spread slowly. “Maybe we should focus on building your appetite, then. As it happens, I have quite an appetite. Where you’re concerned, anyway.”

Her entire body responded to his suggestion in ways that the best comfort food in the world couldn’t have appealed to her. “Shouldn’t we be working on…whatever it is we have to do to see if your idea will work?”

“I just have to make a few calls, find out what the time frame will have to be. It won’t take that much to generate interest; then it’s just a matter of figuring out the logistics.”

He kissed Kirby’s knitted brows. “Don’t worry. I’ll set it up so it works out for the best. For both of us.”

“Okay,” she said, still torn between massive relief and being a little worried that he was leaping before he was looking. “So, what happens next?”

“I’ll make those calls; then we’ll have to wait to get some feedback. I don’t think it will take long.” He brushed her hair from her cheek. “I know we can make this work.”

She took a short, shaky breath. “Okay. Wow, but okay.” She looked at him. “You’re sure?”

“One hundred percent sure. The question isn’t will it work, but how long it will take to put together.”

“All right.” She smiled a little, then, more confidently. “All right.”

He laughed. “See? Not all that hard, right?”

She laughed, too. “Oh, I didn’t say that. But I appreciate this, Brett. All of it. Your proposed solution and making it easier to say yes to accepting your help. This is the best solution I could hope for. Win-win.” Then she held his gaze in steady regard and grew more serious. “As long as you promise me this isn’t going to put you in a place you don’t need to be. I don’t know all the reasons you stopped playing, or why you left Vegas. But I can’t move forward with fixing my problem if it adds to yours.”

“I’m a big boy. I know what I’m doing.”

“Okay.”

“Okay.” He bracketed her hips and tugged her closer again. “So, I was thinking, we could either stand around here in the kitchen and talk about not eating my very fine pasta, or…”

Her stomach chose that moment to growl. Loudly. They both laughed.

“I’m not sure, but I think I was just flattered and insulted all at the same time.”

She shook her head. “But maybe I should at least make an effort. Is there anything I can do…with the rest of this? Any calls I can make locally to get the ball rolling?”

“Once I get things started out west, then yes, it’s definitely going to have to be a team effort.”

“Team efforts are good.” She picked up the pasta and found that she was kind of ravenous all of a sudden.

“Agreed.” He stepped back, gave her some space, and went to fix himself a cup of coffee.

Too late, she thought to warn him about the toxic level of caffeine she’d been shooting for earlier and had to apologize when he gagged. “Sorry.”

“Wow,” was all he said after he finished choking. “Sort of like a caffeine Slurpee.”

“Pretty much. I didn’t sleep. I needed a boost.”

“Astronauts need a boost. This is…wow.”

She sat down her bowl. “Let me make another pot.”

“I can do that. Eat.”

She saluted him with her fork. “Yes sir, captain sir.”

“It’s not so much about bossing you around as it is about me making a cup of coffee that won’t keep me up until 2025.”

“I’d call you on that, but you might have a point.” She gestured to the cupboard over the coffeemaker. “The beans are in there, and the grinder.”

His eyebrows lifted. “Freshly ground coffee?”

He looked like a kid on Christmas morning. She went back to forking up her now cold pasta. It was quite possibly the most delicious thing she’d ever eaten. “You know, and I’m not trying to butt in or anything, but given that you have apparently cashed in more than a few poker chips in your day, you could go out and get your own grinder and coffeemaker and have freshly ground and brewed coffee every single morning. Just saying.”

“For that I’d have to stay in one place for more than a week at a time. And remember to buy beans.”

“So you travel a lot? Are famous poker players like rock stars where you have a list of things you request that have to be in your dressing room?”

“We don’t get dressing rooms.”

“Right, you get actual rooms. Humongous suites in fancy hotels. Well, if the movies are to be believed.”

She looked at him expectantly. He didn’t refute her supposition, other than to say, “Little inns in Vermont are more my speed.”

“So, in these big, fancy suites, can’t you make a few demands?”

“I could try.”

“But you don’t.”

“Never thought I needed anything that badly to be a pretentious ass about it.”

“Back to that arrogant-cocky argument.”

“Something like that.”

She made a humming noise and continued to regard him while she ate and he went about making the perfect cup of coffee with his new bright, shiny object. Boys and their toys, she thought. In Brett’s case, that included bikes and, apparently, bean grinders. She wondered to what other realms his interests extended.

“I can hear the wheels,” he said as he flipped off the grinder.

“That was the coffee grinder.”

He shot her a smile over his shoulder. “No, that was you, trying to figure out which of the million questions you have were okay to ask.”

She waved her fork at him. “Now that could be mistaken for arrogance.”

“Only if it wasn’t true.” He continued to look at her.

A little flush climbed her cheeks. “Okay, okay. Guilty as charged. But I wasn’t going to say anything, or ask anything.” At least not right that second.

“Well, now that I’m bringing my world to yours, I can hardly ask that you take me separately from all that. And you might as well know what you’re really getting into.”

“Such as?”

“In order to pull this off, it needs to be an event. A big event.”

Kirby still hadn’t wrapped her mind around all of the ramifications of Brett’s offered solution as yet. Heck, she hadn’t even wrapped her mind around the basic concept that Brett would be willing to do any of this for her in the first place. They hardly knew one another. She didn’t know him well enough to know for certain if this was a truly selfless act, or perhaps a step he wanted or needed to take for himself. Then again, if it got her what she needed, and helped him in some way, wasn’t that a win-win proposition? What did she care what he got out of it, if it solved her immediate problems?

“How big is big? I assume it will help the resort, since they’re hurting pretty big, too. And their continued success is vital for my continued success, so that’s all a good thing. And the town wins, too, with increased revenue, however briefly, from more visitors coming and spending their money here. What else do I need to know?”

He ducked his chin for a moment, and Kirby wondered again about his stake in this. He had, on the surface, anyway, left poker playing behind. Did he want to go back? Was this a way to ease himself back into the limelight and possibly garner the goodwill and support of event coordinators who might have been less than thrilled with his sudden defection from the game?

But then he was looking at her again, and there was nothing in his expression to help her decide. Only what he had to say, which was, “You know from Thad that I’m well known in that world.”

“All I know is what Thad said. If that’s what you’re wondering. I haven’t Googled you or anything. But yes, I did get the impression that you were something of a rock star in Vegas.”

“Poker tournaments are played all over, but even outside of Nevada, there is always a Vegas element to it all. I call it seedy glamour. Those are our roots, and while we might have dressed it up quite a bit over the years, scratch just below the surface and it really hasn’t strayed too far from that.”

“Are you saying that Pennydash is too conservative to handle a little flash?”

Brett chuckled at that. “Sweetheart, where I come from there’s no such thing as a ‘little flash.’ But no, I wasn’t speaking to the conservative bent of the area, though that might make a few folks uneasy, so it shouldn’t be discounted. I meant that it will be a spectacle by anyone’s standards, and everyone on board would need to understand that.”

She sat her empty container in the sink. “Define spectacle.”

“In addition to some very flashy players and, in some cases, the ridiculous entourages that come with them, you’ll have the promoters, who rarely say no to bling in any form, and that includes the complete media circus in all its many forms.”

“So, you’re saying we’ll be overrun with paparazzi or something?”

“Possibly.”

“For poker?” She lifted a hand. “That sounded like an insult, it wasn’t. I just meant—”

“The sports media will be there for the regular pros. The paps come out for the Hollywood celebrities. You might be surprised by how many of them play at a pretty high level. Promoters love them because they raise the buy-in.”

“Buy-in?”

“Players have to pay to enter the tournament. A ten-thousand buy-in is normal once you get to a certain level. And the more players buying in, the bigger the pots.”

“Ten thousand? Dollars? Just to play?”

He nodded. “And for many celebrities, that’s chump change, so it’s like their version of going to Disney for the weekend. Only the rides are a little more exciting.”

“So…you’re planning on inviting celebrities? I mean, ones known outside your field?”

He nodded. “It’s for charity. It will be a no-brainer, trust me. And I’ll get some pretty serious poker names here, too.”

“Because of charity?”

“Partly. There are some pretty big philanthropists in the upper echelons.”

“Including you?”

“I make it a point to give back, yes.”

“So, am I your current charity, then?” She wasn’t exactly insulted by it. She could hardly afford to be, and she knew his heart was in the right place.

“I don’t look at charity perhaps the same way you do. I like to give a helping hand or a leg up when I can. Folks did that for me, so it’s just giving back. I simply have the good fortune of being able to give back a lot.”

“That’s pretty great. And even greater that you do. I’m not even sure where to start in saying thank you. You’ve saved my life. Twice.”

“Just help me get this thing up and running. If it helps you get through this initial hump with the inn, helps the town and the resort get through this opening season, and supports a worthwhile cause at the same time, then it’s all worth it. You have many more winters to weather. I’m just helping you through this first one.”

“As leg ups go, it’s a pretty big one. I don’t know what to say.”

“I think we’re good on that score.”

She felt her eyes begin to burn a little, and she’d be damned if she cried in front of him every time things got a little emotional. She felt like an idiot for the whole shower thing yesterday. Sure, it had been a monumental moment for her, but he must have thought she was at least a little pathetic. And now, today, he was trying to rescue her. Again.

She felt, strongly, that this…relationship, if she could call it that, wasn’t anything like what she’d fallen into with Patrick. With what she’d allowed her life to become while being part of his. She tried, hard, to cling to what Brett had said, about finding opportunities and choosing to take advantage of them. He was here; he was willing to help. And whatever he got out of the deal would have nothing to do with her when it was all said and done. Totally, completely, different from Patrick. Not a rescue. More like a joining of forces. Because she was a force.

Even if, at the moment, she felt like a force on the verge of becoming a failure.

Brett finished brewing his coffee and she thought back over what he’d said. “The other players,” she said, thinking out loud, “you said some of them would come to support a good cause, but most of them are going to come to get a chance to play against you, aren’t they?”

He took a careful sip of his coffee, then turned back to face her. “Yes.” Neither humble nor arrogant. He’d said it like a simply stated fact.

“How long has it been since you played?”

“Long enough to make folks hungry.”

She didn’t push, but she was unabashedly curious to know more about his world. “You’ve really thought that part of this through? I don’t want you doing anything rash in the heat of the moment.”

“I’m very well aware of what I’m doing.”

She tilted her head. “That’s kind of a non-answer.”

“It’s the truth.”

So, she decided, this was how he was going to go with it now. He’d made his past fair game for her, but he was going to be all about the facts and just the facts, ma’am. She could hardly be picky. But it only served to make her more curious, not less. She decided it might be less awkward all around if she did her own digging on the subject of his career, get her own answers. And, if possible, do as he’d initially asked, and use what time they did have together to get to know him, outside of all that.

“What’s on the agenda today for you?” he asked.

“Cleaning the rooms.”

He lifted a questioning eyebrow.

“Yes, I’m aware the inn isn’t exactly overflowing, but the rooms have to be dusted, swept, polished, fluffed. I can’t have someone just stroll in unannounced and then make them wait in the foyer while I rush up to make sure there’s no dust on the furniture. I need to keep it guest-ready at all times.”

“I think about what the workload would be like if the place was full. Were you planning on hiring help? Like cleaning or cooking?”

“I was, during the busy season. But I planned on doing as much of it myself as I could, too. I like keeping busy—the busier the better. Less time to think.” She hadn’t meant to say that last part out loud, and when his gaze narrowed a bit on her, she rushed on. “It’s actually kind of fun, all the rushing around and making things right for my guests. I enjoy the noise and the general chaos of it all. It feels…vital. And I like being in the middle of all that.”