Here Comes Trouble Page 0,22

to dab a bit of errant butter from the corner of her mouth before he thought better of such a personal action. Her gray eyes widened a bit, but she didn’t jerk from his touch. “Sorry, I just…” He smiled…and licked his finger.

She cleared her throat then and shifted back in her seat. “No problem.” He saw the color steal into the smooth cream of her cheeks and figured he should feel badly about that. But…not so much, as it turned out.

“Would you care for another helping? More salad? I don’t know who I thought I was feeding. Enough here for an army. Biscuit?”

He liked the nervous chatter. A lot. “I’m hungry enough to eat at least a platoon’s worth.”

“Please then,” she said, all but shoving the serving dish at him. “Help yourself.”

He did…but he was thinking how what he really wanted to help himself to wasn’t on the table, but sitting at it. Although having her on the table wasn’t exactly a bad idea, either.

Now he was stifling a smile at his own expense. Big talk for a guy who hadn’t put moves on a woman in…well, it was too embarrassing to actually factor out. But, safe to say, a long while. Hard to put moves on women who were already draping themselves all over you. Then, with the string of bad stuff happening over the month or so after he’d left the casino world, that hadn’t exactly been uppermost in his mind.

Unlike now. When it seemed to be all he could think about. Thank God he knew his poker face was unshakable. Because if she could read even a fraction of the thoughts running through his mind at that moment, a whole lot more than her cheeks would be turning pink. And he doubted he’d be a guest at her dinner table again anytime soon.

He’d read the stuff that had come tucked in the well-worn leather folder on the dresser in his room. Or some of it, anyway. Pennydash Inn provided a gratis breakfast and evening après ski wine, cheese, and hot toddy hour…and box lunch service to order if placed the night before. Nowhere on there was any mention of dinner. Just a list of places in town, and at the resort, along with carryout menus for the local deli and pizza shop.

Dinner with Kirby definitely didn’t come with the room.

Which meant he owed her. This was a debt he wouldn’t mind settling. He wondered if she’d let him reciprocate by taking her out to dinner. She looked up just then, caught him staring, so he said the first thing that popped into his head. “What made you decide to open up your own place? Where did the long-ago dream begin?”

She was splitting open her third biscuit and paused, then tore it the rest of the way open and put it on her plate uneaten.

“That’s okay, you don’t have to answer,” he said, realizing he might have stumbled into a sensitive area. “Just making conversation.”

She flashed a quick smile, but it was polite, nothing more, then reached for the butter, keeping her hands busy. “No, that’s okay. I basically grew up in a ski resort out west, in Colorado. Eventually got a degree in resort management, but thought I’d rather do something on a more intimate level.”

It was clearly the polite, rehearsed answer, but for obvious reasons he didn’t press. “Why Vermont and not Colorado?”

“Couldn’t afford the property out there. And it’s all pretty much developed at this point. I heard about the resort coming in here from some connections I had out west and thought it was the perfect opportunity to make the dream finally come true. So, I did my research, found this place, and the rest is history. Or would be, if it would just start to snow.” She smiled, shrugged a little, then bit into her biscuit. Subject closed.

There was more to it. He could easily read from her face, to her body posture. But it wasn’t his place to dig any deeper. And that right there should have been the moment where he pulled back, regrouped, and shifted his focus back to where it should belong. It was nice of her to cook him a meal, but he was here to catch his breath, do some thinking, and make some very important decisions. Kirby was nothing more than a distraction, an excuse to put off doing the hard thinking that needed to be done.

He caught her looking at him from the corner