Here Comes Trouble Page 0,46
hearing things properly. Or maybe he’d just hallucinated that entire phone call. His worst fear. Well, not his worst, not given what was going on back home, or had…but in this particular intimate situation, certainly up there on that list. “Who was the guy?” he asked, wondering both who knew he was here…and, maybe, what he was to Kirby.
“Thad. Deputy Johnson,” she clarified. “That’s who I faxed the copy of your driver’s license to.”
Brett supposed he’d been kidding himself, thinking he’d remain some kind of phantom lover or something. Although, outside of Vegas, unless you were a gambler, an online player, or a late-night watcher of ESPN, it would be kind of unusual to know of him. He wondered which category Deputy Thad fell into.
“It does explain a few things,” she said, apparently mistaking his silence for a desire on his part for her to say something, anything.
“Like?”
“The cashmere under the leather. The manicure. The bank-wrapped wad of cash.”
His lips curved briefly. “Worried that I was a bank robber?”
“Not worried, no, although you don’t see a bank roll like that every day. Or ever. At least in my line of work. I was curious, mostly. But I’m always curious. Everyone has a story. It’s partly why I run an inn. You meet a lot of people, hear a lot of stories.”
He cocked his head, watched her. “Why not be a journalist?”
She smiled then. “I have no aptitude for storytelling. And I’m not particularly compelled to share the stories. I just enjoy hearing them.”
He nodded. “You said partly. What’s the other part?”
“Long story. Boring story.”
Now she was bluffing. It might be boring to him, but that had been an entirely different sort of vulnerability flashing across her face just then. The kind he’d bet went much further back than the stinging blow her former boss and lover had delivered to both her pride and her heart. That other part of the story, whatever it was, was a whole lot of things to her, but he doubted boring was one of them.
“And since we agreed not to delve into any more personal stuff where you’re concerned, that mercifully saves you from having to listen to mine,” she said, smiling as she scooted off the edge of the bed and headed toward what he presumed was her bathroom.
So. Conversation closed. For now, anyway.
He wondered what she’d say if he told her he didn’t necessarily want to be saved? That he wanted to know every last thing about her?
The shower came on. Would it be different now? Awkward when he thought it wouldn’t be? Would Thad’s call and her obvious duck just now become the elephant in the room—or the shower—that they would stumble over not talking about? He supposed there was only one way to find out.
He slid off the bed and walked to the bathroom. She was already under the spray. He hadn’t paid much attention to how she’d decorated her own space, being somewhat preoccupied, but he did now. Her bedroom was just as tastefully decorated as the one he occupied. Warm, polished antique bedstead, with a carved head and footboard. Hers was covered with an old quilt and lots of linen-covered pillows with handstitched patterns along the hem of the slipcovers. There were colorful, handwoven rugs on the hardwood floor, mismatched old lamps, the odd knickknack or crafted art piece placed here and hung there. Dried flowers mixed with potted plants. It wasn’t overtly feminine, or masculine, for that matter, but he knew it was her. Her taste, her style. Classic, but a little offbeat, a good eye for design, mixed with a bit of whimsy.
He liked the attention she’d paid to detail, to making the whole place feel more like someone’s home than a sterile, cookie-cutter, hotel environment. He’d stayed in his share, more than his share, including some of the most ridiculously over-the-top suites one could imagine. He’d rather have this.
It was one of the reasons he still rented rooms from Vanetta and had never gotten his own place. Vanetta would like Kirby’s inn, he thought, though he couldn’t picture the older woman living anywhere but at the edge of the desert. He already knew she would never even consider leaving Vegas. When all the trouble had started and he’d begun to piece together the possible origin of the threat, he’d tried to talk her into retiring, maybe moving to Palm Springs or something. He’d known she wouldn’t go for it. He’d tried to get her to retire