Here Comes Trouble Page 0,102
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.